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Nothing is cozier than coming in on a cold night and smelling onions frying on a woodstove.
At the Good Life Center in Harborside, Bob St. Peter is cooking those onions over a monstrous woodstove. The stove is full of additional promise, including a cast-iron skillet of vegetables and a bubbling pot of black beans. Within the stove’s belly are two other culinary treasures, baked squash and blueberry cobbler.
Juli Perry, Bob’s wife, is at the sink trying to clean a giant parsnip. She has competition, though. The couple’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Luna, wants to help so much that she’s vibrating with eagerness.
“I want to do it,” Luna cries.
“Okay, use the brush,” Perry says.
St. Peter and Perry are stewards at the Good Life Center’s Forest Farm, the famed homestead founded by the late Helen and Scott Nearing. The Nearings are considered by many to be the pioneers of the modern back-to-the-land movement, and their books on simple living such as The Good Life are still revered by homesteaders today. St. Peter and Perry farm and run the center, living in a stone house hand-built by the Nearings when Helen was 70 and Scott 90.
In the winter, the house’s two woodstoves serve as radiators, stoves, and water heaters. St. Peter says woodstove cooking has its difficulties, though. The kitchen woodstove can take up to 90 minutes to achieve baking temperature, so advance planning is a must.
“Breakfast can be difficult,” his wife says, pointing a wooden spoon in Luna’s direction.
Still, St. Peter raves about his first year cooking on a woodstove.
“I don’t want to cook on anything else,” he says. “It’s a much more intimate experience and the food tastes better.”
The family usually eats in front of the glass-front woodstove in the family room, but tonight they elect to use the room’s rustic wood table. Like the table, virtually everything in the house is handmade from local materials, right down to the wooden bowls and spoons they use for dinner.
Helen and Scott Nearing liked simplicity, and it was apparent in their culinary tastes: Their standard meal was often baked potatoes and a salad. Yet friends often raved about the tastiness of their meals, and eventually persuaded Helen to write a sort of anti-cookbook, called Simple Food for the Good Life.
Bob St. Peter’s and Juli Perry’s culinary creations tend to mirror the Nearings’ tastes. Each dish served tonight is relatively naked, so the eater knows exactly what he or she’s getting: black beans with mushrooms, parsnips in oil and salt, steamed greens, baked butternut squash, and a mixed salad with light dressing. The center of the meal is the most complicated concoction: mashed potato pancakes with herbs and goat cheese. But these, like everything else on the table, can be made easily, St. Peter says.
“Take some things you might have kicking around your fridge, mash them up, pat them out, and throw them in a hot pan.”
The meal is startlingly good. His strategy seems to be to make sure seasonings stay out of the way of each dish’s natural flavor. The first bite of salad is the high point of dinner, as its freshness instantly evokes the feeling of summer.
St. Peter says he can make more complex dishes, but believes “all the best food in the world came out of peasant cultures. Simple is best. “The key to making a simple feast, he says, is starting with good ingredients—and that means local ingredients. For this couple, local really means local. The vast majority of what they eat they grow themselves; most of the rest comes from a farm down the road.
“A local vegetable has better taste and character than a vegetable grown in a big farm across the country,” St. Peter says. “It’s fresher, but there’s something else. You can taste the land.”
From an environmental standpoint, buying local makes sense because less energy is consumed to get food to your plate. By buying local, he points out, consumers can then support smaller farmers, who tend to have more ecologically sound farming techniques and better labor practices.
While eating his Maine wild blueberry cobbler, St. Peter admits that sometimes it’s nice having an international food market. “Fair-trade chocolate is a wonderful thing.”
----
Good Life Potato Cakes
Makes 4–8 cakes
6 medium–large potatoes (or 4 cups leftover mashed potatoes)
2 large leeks
2–4 garlic cloves
6 oz. goat cheese
1 1/2 Tbs. finely chopped rosemary
2–4 Tbs. flour
1 egg, optional
Sea salt to taste
1 Tbs. fat, plus more for frying
Cut the leeks in half lengthwise and check for dirt or sand between the layers. Wash, if necessary, and slice the white and light green part thinly. Mince garlic and cook together with the leeks in 1 Tbs. fat of choice. Add a pinch of salt, if desired. Stir often over medium heat until soft and golden. While the leeks and garlic are cooking, wash and chop potatoes, with the skin on, and boil until tender in salted water.
Drain potatoes, return to cooking pot, and mash. (Or place leftover mashed potatoes into a large mixing bowl and mash until softened.) Add cooked leeks and garlic, crumbled goat cheese, egg, rosemary, 2 Tbs. flour, and sea salt to taste. Mix well. If the mixture is wet and sticky, add flour until a ball of potatoes holds together and is not sticking to your hands.
To make 8 small cakes, take 1/2 cup of potatoes into your hand and make a ball. Gently press the potato ball into a flattened disk about an inch thick. Use your hand to smooth the edges of the potato cake and help keep it together. To make 4 large cakes, use 1 cup potatoes and do the same. Using enough fat to cover the bottom of your pan, cook the potato cakes until golden brown on each side.
----
Bob St. Peter and Juli Perry see their role at the Good Life Farm as to educate and inspire fellow-Mainers toward the Nearings’ ideals of social justice and simple living. Here are some thoughts they shared:
Recycle for a great meal
We eat variations of this delicious, nourishing dish (Good Life Potato Cakes) all throughout the winter. Just mix mashed potatoes with most anything you have in the fridge or pantry, like beans, squash, cheese, reconstituted dried mushrooms or tomatoes, or a variety of fresh or dried herbs. Try substituting caramelized onions for leeks, use a stronger tasting local cheese (or none at all), or use fresh sage in place of the rosemary. It’s also really good with finely chopped kale, collards, or Swiss chard cooked the last few minutes with the leeks or onions.
Add more local to your table
Most people don’t realize that 20% of Maine’s daily calories are from food grown in Maine. Half of those calories are from dairy and 3%–5% are from potatoes. And if each Maine family spent $10 more a week on Maine food, it would add $100 million to Maine’s economy.
Respect the small farm difference
Since we’ve included animal ingredients [they do not eat meat, but consume dairy products], we feel responsible for encouraging people to make more compassionate choices, such as by buying items such as cheeses from local farms. It’s important to understand the difference between how animals are treated on a factory farm and a small local farm, where their nature is respected.
At the Good Life Center in Harborside, Bob St. Peter is cooking those onions over a monstrous woodstove. The stove is full of additional promise, including a cast-iron skillet of vegetables and a bubbling pot of black beans. Within the stove’s belly are two other culinary treasures, baked squash and blueberry cobbler.
Juli Perry, Bob’s wife, is at the sink trying to clean a giant parsnip. She has competition, though. The couple’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Luna, wants to help so much that she’s vibrating with eagerness.
“I want to do it,” Luna cries.
“Okay, use the brush,” Perry says.
St. Peter and Perry are stewards at the Good Life Center’s Forest Farm, the famed homestead founded by the late Helen and Scott Nearing. The Nearings are considered by many to be the pioneers of the modern back-to-the-land movement, and their books on simple living such as The Good Life are still revered by homesteaders today
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In the winter, the house’s two woodstoves serve as radiators, stoves, and water heaters. St. Peter says woodstove cooking has its difficulties, though. The kitchen woodstove can take up to 90 minutes to achieve baking temperature, so advance planning is a must.
“Breakfast can be difficult,” his wife says, pointing a wooden spoon in Luna’s direction.
Still, St. Peter raves about his first year cooking on a woodstove.
“I don’t want to cook on anything else,” he says. “It’s a much more intimate experience and the food tastes better.”
The family usually eats in front of the glass-front woodstove in the family room, but tonight they elect to use the room’s rustic wood table. Like the table, virtually everything in the house is handmade from local materials, right down to the wooden bowls and spoons they use for dinner.
Helen and Scott Nearing liked simplicity, and it was apparent in their culinary tastes: Their standard meal was often baked potatoes and a salad. Yet friends often raved about the tastiness of their meals, and eventually persuaded Helen to write a sort of anti-cookbook, called Simple Food for the Good Life.
Bob St. Peter’s and Juli Perry’s culinary creations tend to mirror the Nearings’ tastes. Each dish served tonight is relatively naked, so the eater knows exactly what he or she’s getting: black beans with mushrooms, parsnips in oil and salt, steamed greens, baked butternut squash, and a mixed salad with light dressing. The center of the meal is the most complicated concoction: mashed potato pancakes with herbs and goat cheese. But these, like everything else on the table, can be made easily, St. Peter says.
“Take some things you might have kicking around your fridge, mash them up, pat them out, and throw them in a hot pan.”
The meal is startlingly good. His strategy seems to be to make sure seasonings stay out of the way of each dish’s natural flavor. The first bite of salad is the high point of dinner, as its freshness instantly evokes the feeling of summer.
St. Peter says he can make more complex dishes, but believes “all the best food in the world came out of peasant cultures. Simple is best. “The key to making a simple feast, he says, is starting with good ingredients—and that means local ingredients. For this couple, local really means local. The vast majority of what they eat they grow themselves; most of the rest comes from a farm down the road.
“A local vegetable has better taste and character than a vegetable grown in a big farm across the country,” St. Peter says. “It’s fresher, but there’s something else. You can taste the land.”
From an environmental standpoint, buying local makes sense because less energy is consumed to get food to your plate. By buying local, he points out, consumers can then support smaller farmers, who tend to have more ecologically sound farming techniques and better labor practices.
While eating his Maine wild blueberry cobbler, St. Peter admits that sometimes it’s nice having an international food market. “Fair-trade chocolate is a wonderful thing.”
----
Good Life Potato Cakes
Makes 4–8 cakes
6 medium–large potatoes (or 4 cups leftover mashed potatoes)
2 large leeks
2–4 garlic cloves
6 oz. goat cheese
1 1/2 Tbs. finely chopped rosemary
2–4 Tbs. flour
1 egg, optional
Sea salt to taste
1 Tbs. fat, plus more for frying
Cut the leeks in half lengthwise and check for dirt or sand between the layers. Wash, if necessary, and slice the white and light green part thinly. Mince garlic and cook together with the leeks in 1 Tbs. fat of choice. Add a pinch of salt, if desired. Stir often over medium heat until soft and golden. While the leeks and garlic are cooking, wash and chop potatoes, with the skin on, and boil until tender in salted water.
Drain potatoes, return to cooking pot, and mash. (Or place leftover mashed potatoes into a large mixing bowl and mash until softened.) Add cooked leeks and garlic, crumbled goat cheese, egg, rosemary, 2 Tbs. flour, and sea salt to taste. Mix well. If the mixture is wet and sticky, add flour until a ball of potatoes holds together and is not sticking to your hands.
To make 8 small cakes, take 1/2 cup of potatoes into your hand and make a ball. Gently press the potato ball into a flattened disk about an inch thick. Use your hand to smooth the edges of the potato cake and help keep it together. To make 4 large cakes, use 1 cup potatoes and do the same. Using enough fat to cover the bottom of your pan, cook the potato cakes until golden brown on each side.
----
Bob St. Peter and Juli Perry see their role at the Good Life Farm as to educate and inspire fellow-Mainers toward the Nearings’ ideals of social justice and simple living. Here are some thoughts they shared:
Recycle for a great meal
We eat variations of this delicious, nourishing dish (Good Life Potato Cakes) all throughout the winter. Just mix mashed potatoes with most anything you have in the fridge or pantry, like beans, squash, cheese, reconstituted dried mushrooms or tomatoes, or a variety of fresh or dried herbs. Try substituting caramelized onions for leeks, use a stronger tasting local cheese (or none at all), or use fresh sage in place of the rosemary. It’s also really good with finely chopped kale, collards, or Swiss chard cooked the last few minutes with the leeks or onions.
Add more local to your table
Most people don’t realize that 20% of Maine’s daily calories are from food grown in Maine. Half of those calories are from dairy and 3%–5% are from potatoes. And if each Maine family spent $10 more a week on Maine food, it would add $100 million to Maine’s economy.
Respect the small farm difference
Since we’ve included animal ingredients [they do not eat meat, but consume dairy products], we feel responsible for encouraging people to make more compassionate choices, such as by buying items such as cheeses from local farms. It’s important to understand the difference between how animals are treated on a factory farm and a small local farm, where their nature is respected.
