One of the ways fall is celebrated in Maine is with an annual pig roast that has been going on for the last 25 years thrown by four generations of the Hammond family. Once you're invited you always have an invitation. The patriarch Skip is in his mid-eighties and his wife is much younger by two years. They were married in the next town but got their blood test by a local doctor in Belgrade, who when he took blood from Skip’s wife couldn’t get it to fill the vial so he said to Skip give me some of your blood to fill the vial. The doctor then pronounced them husband and wife. They have been married for 60 years so far.
The pig roast started as a prelude to hunting season when a caterer would drive all night from South Carolina with six 80-pound pigs and masses of ground corn for the mountain of hush puppies. People brought all their best desserts and the table groaned under the weight. Over the years more tables have been set up and there is everything imaginable from bean hole beans to salads and deviled eggs of every know variation. The past 10 years clams and lobstershave also been cooked over a roaring oak wood fire pit. There are many people having their first and only lobster of the year and everyone wears a big contented smile of appreciation.
I'm pretending it's a crisp Fall day and I'm sitting in the sunlight enjoying a warming bowl of this creamy soup. The truth be told...I have the air conditioning turned down to 70 and I am enjoying this soup while wearing shorts and flip-flops. It's a little hot outside.
When Brian and I took the boys to Italy, we wanted to eat lunch at a place near the Vatican that a lot of these 
Libby loves apples. Roy does not. Nevertheless, I subjected them both to an apple taste-test last Saturday. They were good sports, even when I suggested they use words like “tangy” and “tart” to describe an apple’s flavor rather than “sour” and “yucky.” Actually, Libby was right there with me through the whole thing, but we noticed Roy was standing next to the compost bucket for most of the time, and I’m not entirely sure he really ate all of his apple portions. (Libby, on the other hand, called for a time-out half way through; I’d forgotten to tell her just to take a bite, not eat the whole wedge.) It didn’t matter that we all gradually lost steam, because the last apple was so crisp and juicy and flavorful and WOW! that it woke us all up and easily claimed it’s spot as number one. It was a Honey Crisp, which probably won’t surprise many of you. This one happened to be Island grown, too, and it was a doozy.
