Maine Event: Day 38

Today was another lovely day with a bit of mugginess and some beautiful clouds showing up in the evening. This evening we walked downtown and had dinner at a Japanese place that was very good called Mami. It's right downtown on cobblestone streets. It was a cool and breezy evening after a warm and muggy day. We shared a bunch of dishes including a seaweed salad, noodles with local vegetables, shishito peppers, Japanese fried chicken with smoky mayo sauce, etc. Downright tasty! We will definitely go there again. Matt had a crisp citrusy local beer, it wasn't bad. I would have liked it with a little bit more bitterness but it was drinkable. I had a grapefruit kombucha which tasted more like soda than kombucha (it's a fermented tea mixed with fruit juice like grapefruit or others). 

The days are definitely getting dark earlier and it feels later than it is. This weekend we are hoping to explore off the peninsula and around the Back Cove and possibly also go to another island. So many islands to visit and so little time :) It all depends on how much it will rain this weekend. All plans might be dashed. 

I have a few thoughts about the food here, perhaps the reason the food is not as good as usual is that this was a strange year with a super wet and cold July. I think the rain made my great textured carrots lack flavor and the tomatoes the same. Then some farmers let their vegetables grow too big which is a style thing (or a financial thing). However, the meat and milk, cheese, etc are significantly better than in California. There are fewer regulations and raw milk and cheeses are commonplace here and there are competing dairies both selling yogurt and kefir and raw milk cheeses. I think there is better infrastructure for smaller farms and less heavy-duty regulation. The different cheeses taste really different and are all over the place in terms of funk. It's fun. This thinking led me to Tide Mill Organics and that led me to the fact that 13.6% of the people of Maine have food insecurity and People of Color even higher percentages of food insecurity. 

As usual, we start the day by delivering our compost to the local community garden. So you get a picture each day of the lovliness.

And if there is time we sit at Harbor View Park for a second or two which is around the corner from the garden.

Particularly nice specimen of lambs ear on the way home.

And right at our door was this giant bee that I couldn't get a good shot of because he kept moving.

We came across another garden by the hospital that was in lovely form also

And my friend the red oak looking as lovely as ever...

This is a lively area in Old Port (downtown) and the view from where we had our wonderful Japanese food at Mami.

More beautiful buildings across from where we were dining al fresco.

The view of the sky as we walked home.

That's all for now. I hope you are all well.

Sending oodles of love, Tawnia