From Aaron Laflamme, Chewonki’s Outdoor Equipment & Logistics Coordinator: Long a staple of Chewonki trips, the Wilderness Trip Cookbook has traveled throughout Maine, the Northeast and beyond dispensing culinary wisdom. Loaded with nutritional facts, cooking methods, and recipes, it has everything the backcountry chef needs to prepare adventure ready meals. Check out the often overlooked …
This spring several Semester 52 students led by faculty members Pete Sniffen, Esther and James Kary, and Steve Kerchner have tapped 18 maple trees on Chewonki Neck to collect the sap for syrup making. After the first three days of collecting, the group had amassed 21 gallons of sap. The sap was then frozen and …
Here are some observations on cheese making and Chewonki by Clare Churchill-Seder, one of our Outdoor classroom instructors: I just have to tell you, the feta Bill and I made last week is wild. It’s delicious. It has a smoother texture than the traditional sheep or goat’s milk feta and tastes tangy, salty and fresh. …
Here’s another great fish from Salt + Sea in Portland: Atlantic Pollock (Pollachius virens). We’d catch these guys occasionally when we were fishing for mackerel as kids and my mother would cook them up for the dog or cats to supplement their daily ration of dried food. The fillets that Jay delivered last night were …
…or haymaker’s punch is a favorite beverage both with the kitchen staff and farm crew here at Chewonki. Switchel may have originated in the 1600’s in the West Indies although the ancient Greeks were drinking oxymel, which was a honey sweetened vinegar syrup. Herman Melville wrote in I and My Chimney, “I will give a …
In tandem with Chewonki’s Refined Sugar Awareness Week, I decided to look into how Chewonki can use natural alternatives to refined sugar in the kitchen for my Human Ecology Project. Specifically, I explored the feasibility for the kitchen to stop using refined sugar. Human ecology is the study of the relationship between humans and their …
“What! No sugar? Are you crazy?” These are the words I was expecting to hear from my fellow Chewonki community members, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by their excitement and encouragement for our week of no refined-sugar. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything other than curiosity and support for this endeavor, but after researching …
Earlier this semester, Courtney and I were discussing what the kitchen has made in the past. When she mentioned kimchi/ spicy fermented cabbage (김치) my ears perked up. I was excited to hear Chewonki had fermented one of my favorite foods before. We talked about the process the cooks used, and I wanted to do …
The ramp (Allium triccocum), also known as wild leek and wild garlic, is a wild growing spring delicacy found across much of the eastern half of North America. It is a perennial member of the onion family with a strong garlic-like odor and a pronounced onion flavor. Because these plants are rare in Maine, though …
About a week ago three of our cattle went to slaughter at Curtis Custom Meats in Warren, Maine. It’s my job to communicate with the butcher and let them know how we would like the meat returned to us. This is a process that I go through with the pigs and lambs as well. One …
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