Category: restaurants

The Annual Ides of March Quest for Fried Clams

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Adult children, celebrations, comfort, family, good grief, quest for the best, restaurants

My dad’s last meal was fried clams.

Flashback to 1998. Dad was dying of lung cancer. The living room was dominated by the hospital bed sent by hospice once it was clear he could no longer manage the climb to the second floor bedroom. He had been in and out of consciousness for several days when he suddenly became alert again, like himself. This day also happened to be my mother’s birthday. She had died two years prior of cancer.

After he had been turning up his nose at solid food for days, he said he wanted to eat. What do you want, Dad? Whatever it is, we’ll get it.

He wanted fried clams and french fries from (the famous!) Kelly’s Roast Beef in Revere. So, my brother drove to Revere (not so very far from where we were) to get him what he wanted.

He ate and enjoyed every last bite.

And then he fell asleep, drifting into a coma from which he would not awaken. He died peacefully two days later on March 15, 1998.

Every year, I have fried clams on March 15th to commemorate this experience and to celebrate my Dad.

This year, at the recommendation of my friend Stephanie, we tried a new place in New Hampshire, Petey’s Summertime Seafood and Bar.

It was definitely worth the trip!

So maybe I expanded on the fried clams…Dad loved ice cream sundaes, too, and I am my father’s daughter. 🙂

And he loved martinis, dry, with two olives…but that’s a different story.

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**Disclaimer: This is my memory of this experience. Other’s remembrances may differ.**

Be kind

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, celebrations, restaurants, Travel

I recently had the pleasure of travelling to meet hundreds of like-minded individuals and as part of this adventure, we all went out for dinner together (I know) at a restaurant that (I daresay) is not used to receiving parties of this size routinely.

We blew them away.

The kitchen went under in about thirty seconds. We learned that the staff that was desperately trying to prepare our food was all brand new.

Talk about trial by fire!

As a former restaurant manager and former graduate nurse, I was no stranger to this sink or swim indoctrination into a new job. It’s no fun, but one silver lining for both employer and employee is this: it often works. You know pretty quick who is cut out for the job and who is not.

Anyway, I was so proud of my group! We could see how hard they were all working to serve us, to keep their heads above water. How hard they were trying to get us what we needed as quick as they could under what was probably the most adverse conditions most of them had ever encountered on the  job.

They didn’t think about themselves. They thought about us.

A friend, Chris, pointed out that this reminded him of a quote:
BE KIND, FOR EVERYONE YOU MEET IS FIGHTING A HARD BATTLE. –Socrates

All of us were kind, patient, and used one of our secret weapons, humor, to keep this evening fun and productive. (Spoiler alert: We didn’t starve!) They kept at it until everyone was taken care of. They did their best, and isn’t that something we all aspire to? By them giving us this gift, we all received another gift.

The gift of community.

As we in the ‘audience’ observed and discussed ‘the performance’, we all learned more about each other (not to mention about ourselves).

Today’s actionable: “Give everyone the benefit of the doubt today…” ~Lori Deschene, Tiny Buddha’s 365 Tiny Love Challenges

Also, I have to say that I had one of the best bowls of soup I have ever had in my life at that restaurant!

Here are some other photos from the dinner:

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Boston Flower Show

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, local fun, restaurants

My husband and I usually go to the Portland Flower Show every year, but as you many know, there best flower show exhibitwasn’t one this year. We hadn’t been to the Boston Flower Show in, um, decades, but we both had fond memories of all of it except the getting there and getting home part. We thought about going this year and were lucky enough to find a bus to drive us almost all the way there and back.

Yay! Alpine Leisure Tours. Based on our experience, I would recommend them highly.

As for the flower show, it was fine. It was smaller than we remembered. It seemed like half of the show was made up of vendors, maybe more than half, and there were fewer actual exhibits than I expected.  I only noticed one lilac! And it was half dead!

My favorite exhibit wasn’t a flower at all. It was the fountain and stone carving in the photo above. I kept going back to look at it. So beautiful.

Anyway, we had a great time being there and loved the bus ride. Our tour guide, Claire, was the best-est tour guide ever. She printed out a word search for us to do on the ride! It was hard! But I finished it! (Full disclosure: my husband thought it was easy).

The bonus was the surprise stop at Kelly’s Roast Beef on the way home. Heaven. I may have liked that part more than the flower show. What can I say? It’s all about the food.

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Birthday club

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, friends, quest for the best, restaurants

Strawberry Nutella CrepeI am part of a great group of nurses who all work from home. Once a month we (mostly) all get together for breakfast and to celebrate a birthday, if there is one that month. This month we went to Two Hands Crepe and Juice Bar in Brunswick.

Okay, it’s a hike to Brunswick from Wells, but you can get thay-uh from he-uh, and it was totally worth the trip.

I ordered a sweet: the Strawberry and Nutella Crepe (pictured on the left) and it was EXCELLENT. The birthday girl, Annette, ordered a savory: the egg, ham, and cheese. Annette, who has spent time recently in France (I know, right??), said that her crepe compared favorably to ones she’d had there. So…Two Hands got a hit!

The space itself was sunny and bright. The staff was caring and conscientious. The artwork (paintings of animals) that adorned the walls was compelling. The giraffe Made. My. Day. 🙂

My only regret was that I didn’t have time to go visit the farmers market happening around the corner. It looked fabulous (note to self: plan extra time for the next Friday morning visit).

If you are in Brunswick for breakfast, go check them out.

(Hint: There is no parking lot. Find a space on the street out front.)

Bon appetit! 

(I know, predictable! But I couldn’t resist!!)

🙂

 

 

The day I ate whatever I wanted

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, Party for one, quest for the best, restaurants, writing

starbucksWhen I read the title of this book by Elizabeth Berg, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted, I thought, YESSSSS!!!! That’s all I want! To eat whatever I want! So in honor of my birthday month, I did that today. Full disclosure: I was using food to comfort myself because I had to work the day before, on Mother’s Day. You know. Again. Solace eating. I’m on it.

I started with, believe it or not, a bowl of Cheerios and milk, with a banana (the revered food of Minions everywhere!) cut up in it. Hello, childhood. I have been craving this meal lately, for some reason. I’m going with it.

Then I had a chocolate croissant (Him: Do you want me to heat it up? Me: Yes! Yes, Please!) from Starbucks at the mall.  This was completely unplanned! I was going to get a Tiramisu Frappuccino, but then I heard the croissants calling my name. How could I let them down?

Next I had Maple Roasted Butternut Squash soup from Kamasouptra. With the tag line: Steamy. Hot. Soup. Really?kamasouptra  The best thing about Kamasouptra Soup is the (steamy, hot) roll that comes with it. Once you’ve had it, you’ll want it again. And again. Hey, maybe that could be another (racy)slogan for them..? 🙂

Mid-afternoon, I got hungry again (I know, right?). On my way to get a healthy snack (an apple) from the fridge, I remembered that I picked up a whole wheat wild blueberry muffin from New Morning Natural Foods new-ish Kennebunk Deli earlier new morningin the day. If you get one, here’s a tip: zap it for 20-30 seconds in the microwave before you eat it. You’re welcome.

Finally, I picked my daughter up from track, and she asked that question that daughters everywhere have been asking their mothers for centuries. “Mom, what’s for supper?”

I had no idea.
She noticed my hesitation and knew an opportunity when she saw it. “Let’s get Chinese! Like you wanted to yesterday! For Mother’s Day!” Okay, so you know.

She had me at Mother’s Day.

We went to Maple Leaves. I forgot to take a picture of our food, but I did take a (blurry) picture of my fortune.

fortune

My daughter was all over this, because I’m getting ready to either a) find an agent to sell my book or b) publish it myself.

Hey, any and all signs are welcome here.

🙂

Mental health break

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, italian, Marriage, NaNoWriMo, restaurants, writing

IMG_0012I took a two-day break from Nano writing and went away overnight to celebrate my husband’s birthday (and, you know, to take a break from sitting! At the computer! Writing! OMG! I haven’t been able to feel two of the fingers on my left hand for a week!).  We had supper at Nolita,  a new-ish Italian restaurant in York that we like.

I felt a little bad that he hadn’t had a cake on his birthday and gotten to hear the sweet strains of the “Happy Birthday to You” song wafting toward his ears on his day, but so be it. We wanted to have the cake with the entire family, and that couldn’t happen until the following day.

When we arrived at the restaurant, my husband had to run back to the car to get his reading glasses (he is so not into my rendition of “This is what’s on the menu” that he’d rather run back out into the 27 degree cold dark night that to listen to it).

That’s when the waitress came over and I mentioned it was my husband’s birthday. She said, “Does he like tiramisu?  We give a free tiramisu for someone’s birthday.”

Now, Bill does not like tiramisu, but oh my God! I love it!  But, it was his birthday after all, so I asked if there were other dessert options and she said they have gelato. As (my) luck would have it, I’m pretty sure the only thing he dislikes more than tiramisu is gelato.

“Yes, he does like tiramisu! Bring that!” I said, conscience clear.

What I hadn’t realized (and in fairness to me, I was halfway through my Italia Margarita at the time) was that said tiramisu would be accompanied by, um, fanfare. And I’m pretty sure that if there is one thing Bill dislikes more than gelato and tiramisu, it’s fanfare. In our 26 or more (we can’t agree on this) years together, he has never, ever seen a cake coming toward him with a gaggle of servers singing the birthday song to him.

And yet, I lived to tell the tale, so it’s all good.

Also, that tiramisu rocked!

 

 

 

Home is where?

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Date night, Marriage, relationships, restaurants, the beach

Recently my husband and I took a vacation. This is news, because it was OUT OF STATE. Way out. Like, in NJ. Just getting the same days off from work together to go took weeks-and an aligning of the planets AND and act of congress.

What was better about Atlantic City than Wells, ME? Not much. I had to really think hard  for things.

  1.  The seagulls had black heads. Kind of cool.
  2. The ocean was WARM. WARM. The OCEAN.
  3.  The ocean was very close to the hotel; you could walk to it. There also didn’t seem to be very much
    variation between high tide and low tide.
  4. There were some different kinds of seashells from what I find here in Maine.

That’s about it.

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The best thing about Atlantic City? We were on vacation! We were together! That is all we needed.

Cardinals

by Karen, posted in Adult children, Angels, family, good grief, Life in the cube, restaurants

cardinalI recently spent a few minutes (okay, hours) trolling the Facebook news feed and something caught my eye. Someone (sorry, I have no idea who or what or when exactly) posted that every time you see a red cardinal, that is a sign that a loved one that has died is saying hello to you, or something to that effect.

That’s nice, I thought.

Then a funny thing happened. I started noticing red cardinals.

  1. My friend Christine at work has a tapestry hung up in  her cube that depicts multiple red cardinals.
  2. I went to the movies to see The Nut Job (skip this one-see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty instead) and the bad guy’s side kick was a red cardinal. A squat, mean, nasty caricature of a cardinal, but still a cardinal.
  3. Today, I went to brunch at The Good Table in Cape Elizabeth and there in the foyer was a fake tree with cardinals all over the branches.

So, maybe this is just that phenomenon that happens to you when you are pregnant and you suddenly start seeing pregnant women everywhere you go.

On the other hand, this is the time of year that my mother and father died (mom 2/29/96 and dad 3/15/98) and so I am already thinking about them.

Maybe they are thinking about me, too.

Mantra for 2013

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, Midlife Crisis, restaurants, teens

At a company that I worked for a while back, the atmosphere was dark and heavy. People often described the job as “Well, it is what it is.” Body language and facial expressions left no doubt that what it was, well, was yucky.

After years of hearing this “It is what it is” crap, it became kind of ingrained in my subconscious. This phrase popped up in all kinds of situations that were unpleasant. “It is what it is” makes you feel powerless, even desperate.

I was thinking about it this morning as I drove to work. It’s New Year’s Day. I had gotten up extra early (hello, can you say 4:15AM?) so I could make a stop on my way. My quest for an early morning breakfast treat (a small baked good; not too much to ask for, right?) proved fruitless, because even though the McD’s and Dunkin Donuts in Sanford and Wells are open at 5AM, the McD”s and Dunkin Donuts in Kennebunk, alas, are not.

There I sat at 4:55AM, waiting for the drive thru to open up. At 5:03AM it occurred to me to give a quick check of the hours sign at the front door and I realized my error. I got on the highway, thinking that I would still have just enough time to go to the DD’s close  to my job (the bad one that I have been avoiding since the cashier dumped an early morning coffee on a colleague).

I made it in time, got to the drive thru, and (hurray!) ordered my coffee and muffin. The clerk interrupted my happy dance to say, “Well, the muffins aren’t ready yet.”
What?

What?

My first thought was (you guessed it), “It is what it is.” Then, it occurred to me that this is indicative a Bad Attitude. I am not going to start my new year off with that old shoe on my foot. I’m going to put my best foot forward in 2013 and so I’ve adopted a new mantra:

“It is what you make it.”

When I got home from work, my daughter (who knew nothing about my morning) had a surprise waiting for me on the kitchen island:

Bran muffin from Hannaford
Bran muffin from Hannaford

This reminded me of another (worthy) mantra:
“Life is good.”

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 :

Wicked good? Not!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, health, local fun, no fear, restaurants, Someone's gotta say it, tweens
Ew. Just...ew.

I recently visited a popular restaurant in Wells, one that I go to frequently. Usually I go with my husband but this time I was with  my daughter. We went there on Saturday. My twelve-year-old picked the restaurant and was excited to be going out for lunch with her mom.

My preference is always to sit in a booth, but they were all filled, so we agreed to take one of three small, two-seater tables in the center aisle. Before we ordered a booth opened up to our right, and we asked our server if we could move there. “Sure, if it’s not spoken for already,” she said. “I’ll go check.” We watched her talk to a woman in a Wicked Good! sweatshirt who was making the judgment calls at the door in terms of who sat where.

After a few moments, our waitress returned, apologetic. “A larger party is waiting to sit there,” she said. Really? There was no one at the door.  This is an establishment that does not take reservations. I say again, “Really?”

Okay, so we stay put. We order. The table sits vacant. Two more parties of two (women) come in, ask for the booth, and are given the same story by the girl at the door in the Wicked Good! sweatshirt. They take small tables like my daughter and I did.

But then….a party of two (wait for it….) men come in. At first, the Wicked Good! girl gives them the same story that the rest of us (women) got…but then she says, “Well, all right,” to them, and proceeds to sit this party of two (men) in the booth that my daughter and I couldn’t have (not to mention the other 4 women that asked for it).

Did I mention that it was two men who got the booth? I guess the Wicked Good! girl can’t do math. Hello? A party of two is not larger than a party of two.

To add insult to injury, when my fried seafood came, it was on a dirty plate.