Maybe you’ve heard this news already, but just in case you missed it: The Great State of Maine is considering making the Whoopie Pie its official state dessert.
It wasn’t already? There are lots of places to get a great wh0opie pie, including your very own kitchen. If you take this route, here are two excellent cookbooks to consult:
Whoopie Pies By Sarah Billingsley, Amy Treadwell
Making Whoopies by Nancy Griffin
Did you know that there’s a Maine Whoopie Pie Association? Me neither!(Although a Google search of this phrase got me zero hits). I read about it in a Portland Press Herald Article on 2/1/11.
Did you know that there’s a whoopie pie song? Me neither! It’s by John Linscott (see link to above article, right side of the page for the lyrics).
I was returning my books at the library this weekend, two of which happened to be about cake baking, when one of the staffers said, “Have you tried that new cupcake bakery in Sanford?” “There’s a new cupcake bakery in Sanford??” I asked (of course, she had me at “cupcake”). She did a little research for me and discovered Cupcake Fetish Bakery, 883 Main Street in Sanford.
An hour and a half later, we were there. It’s in a little group of stores next to Get Fired Up! The parking lot is just before the shops, and if you see St. Ignatius St. on your right, go back! You’ve just passed it.
When you enter the shop, the counter is on the right, but if you look to the left, you’ll see Amy the baker through the window, plying her craft. Jennifer will take your cupcake order, which you can get boxed up to go, or you might choose to sit at one of the cute little tables (as my daughter Izzy and her friend Madi did) in the shop.
Our choices today were a Chocolate Dream Warrior cupcake with pink vanilla bean frosting, a MegaDough cupcake (complete with chocolate chip cookie on the top and cookie dough hidden inside!), and a red velvet whoopie pie. We took a Coconut Bunny cupcake and a traditional chocolate whoopie pie home with us. All were excellent.
There are different items every day, but not all of the menu items are available every day, so check out their Facebook Page to find out what they are offering the day that you are going. They categorize the cupcakes as “Groupies” and “Rock Stars”… hmmm…wonder what that’s about?
Note: the menu states that they will close early if they sell out!
After the bakery? An hour of Wii Just Dance 2 to work off the goodies. 🙂
Apart from the ocean, the other cure for anything is homemade chicken (or turkey) soup.
Who supports using chicken soup as a curative? Well, besides me and most of the mothers and grandmothers in the history of the world, The Mayo Clinic sings its praises. Chicken soup acts as an anti-inflammatory and it also speeds up the passage of mucous…good if you have a head cold.
Now, don’t get me wrong; you will still see me going to bed clutching my bottle of (generic or otherwise) NyQuil if I have a cough that’s keeping me (or other unsympathetic spouses who shall remain nameless) awake at night.
For today, I’d like to sing the praises of Kamasouptra’s Chicken Noodle Soup, which I had the great good fortune to eat this week. I was sold as soon as the counter person told me that they cook the noodles separately and add them into the soup when they serve it on a bowl by bowl basis so that “they don’t get overcooked”. I told him, “That’s exactly how I make it at home!” (he didn’t seem impressed when I told him this though).
I originally thought that this would be one of the worst Christmases ever. It had three strikes against it before it even started:
I had to work late and wouldn’t get home until 8:20PM Christmas Eve.
My husband had to work early Christmas Day, leaving at 5:10 AM, and would be gone the entire day and night.
My son had to work Christmas Day as well. He was home in the morning, which was nice, but then couldn’t come with us to have dinner with relatives.
We tried to make the best of it. The kids each opened a couple of gifts with Dad on Christmas Eve while I listened in from work over the phone. My husband and I had a little time to exchange our gifts Christmas Eve.
Christmas morning, after Bill went to work, I stayed up and baked some bread and then put our traditional Christmas morning breakfast (cinnamon buns) into the oven. We opened up the gifts, then got ready for our (mostly separate) day.
We stopped to see Grammy and Papa before heading to my brother’s house for Christmas dinner…which may well have been one of the Best Christmas Dinners of all time. We played Wii games between dinner and dessert, rationalizing that we’d have more room for tiramisu (was that wrong?).
Then we brought some dinner to my son and his girlfriend Lauren at work. Unfortunately, we didn’t get there until 6:30PM…oh well. The food was worth the wait! My sister-in-law Andrea is an excellent cook!
Kathy, Alexis, Kristen (our teacher!), Janna, Me, Jeannie
Last night was a special yoga class at Windsong Yoga Studio in South Berwick. My friend Kristen (right in the center) is the instructor, and she teaches nice blend of many different styles of yoga. She has studied with some of the top teachers in the United States, including Doug Keller, Desiree Rumbaugh, Sianna Sherman, and Judith Lasater, to name just a few. A bonus: she teaches women (no men allowed!). 🙂
She planned a special class to celebrate the winter solstice (the shortest day of the year).
After this excellent class, we were treated to an excellent meal, prepared for us by Kristen. A Tempeh Wreath was the main course, accompanied by a side salad of mixed greens, lightly dressed. Dessert was partially by way of Whole Foods (and may I just say, OMG! Especially the chocolate covered figs? Unbelievable!). There were also some delicious Christmas cookies made for us by Janna, because, after all, what is Christmas without the cut outs? I ask you.
Now, if you are someone who practices yoga, and midway through most classes you start thinking about pizza and/or assorted baked goods, this was like a class made in heaven. Thank you, Kristen! Put that Tempeh Wreath recipe in your cookbook!
What holiday celebrations are you participating in this year?
This month’s meeting was at Mekong Thai in Wells. The six of us met there at 6pm and were given a nice table by the windows, which they opened to give us some fresh air (a 65 degree evening in Maine in late October? Booyah!).
Susan is a quick study!
The wait staff was lovely, solicitous, and helpful. Lemon for your water? Sure! Another piece of lemon? No problem! A straw? Okay, at this point even I was getting annoyed with me, but not the waitress…she cheerfully went back to get me another straw.
And not only did she produce the straw, but when some of us expressed interest in the decorative way the straw was presented, she came back to the table with a fresh straw, paper intact, and taught us how to make one ourselves! My friend Susan was actually able to reproduce the effect, so our waitress was a good teacher, having transferred the skill to another in less than 5 minutes.
The great service was evident in other small ways as well, like when I was given a small container of peanut sauce (instead of scraping what remained of my used condiment in the bowl on my plate) to go with my leftovers that I had doggie bagged.
The food was great too. I had checked online for healthy Thai food choices (when eating out) beforehand, and easily found plenty of choices within this framework. I chose the Tom Yum soup with chicken, which was excellent, as was the chicken satay with peanut sauce. The free salad was a nice bonus; it had a mildly spicy peach colored dressing that was great.
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Why am I talking so much about the food, and so little about the book? Well, you may have guessed this: the book was…distressing. None of us liked it much. What was interesting though is that (as Shannon pointed out), we seem to have a much better, involved discussion about books that we don’t like than about books that we do like.
When we met to talk about The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, we didn’t have much to say, other than that it was a good book. When we met to discuss Lowboy by John Wray, we were all talking over each other, interrupting each other, and in general making a big commotion in the small, otherwise pretty quiet, restaurant.
Hmmm, maybe this should be a go-to destination for book clubs?
Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker 
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