Maine Harvest Festival

Bangor Auditorium & Civic Center

Saturday November 10 10am-4pm

Sunday November 11 10am-4pm

www.maineharvestfestival.com

See, sample, and buy Maine made and Maine produced products from Festival farmers, producers, and fiber artisans.
Experience fabulous cooking demonstrations by Maine chefs and cookbook authors.



THE WORK OF SANDRA OLIVER
FOOD NOW AND THEN: HOW OUR FOOD EXPRESSES WHO WE ARE

A Lifetime Insight into Cooking, Gardening, and Living Sustainably
Writer and speaker Sandy Oliver has established her niche as a recognized authority on New England home cooking and American food history and their impact on American life.

Her latest book, Maine Home Cooking, was released in September by DownEast Publishing; it is a distillation of her life's work, as an essayist on contemporary New England life and food history. A joyous, spirited cookbook and narrative, it contains a collection of wonderful and insightful recipes and anecdotes that capture the close relationships she has developed over seven years with the loyal readers of "Taste Buds," her weekly Bangor Daily News column. Beautifully illustrated with photos of Sandy's kitchen and gardens located in Islesboro, Maine home, the island setting where she lives and writes, Maine Home Cooking is also an illustration of her wit, excitement for people, interest in contemporary home cooking, and reminiscences about cooking told by today's Maine islanders and mainlanders.

Her readers rave about and respond to Sandy's wonderful cookbook, as in this review:
Really, I read it like a novel. Or maybe a history story, or no, a travelogue. Sandy Oliver's clear, cheery, down-home voice makes Maine Home Cooking feel like a visit to a neighbor's kitchen in a place long gone in America - a rural village where friends stop by to pickle cukes and share recipes. But then, as she reminds us, cooking is not a place long-gone, since even neighbors who claim to never cook are raising strapping healthy teenage boys. Somebody's been cooking for them! Sandy helps the American cook see that everyday home cooking is indeed "cooking." Her recipes tend to be simply done, with good fresh ingredients with plenty of room for substitution and creativity… Overall, a delightful cook book and a fun read.
Her live audiences also rave, react, and interact. Her lively and evocative talks zigzag with the flood of ideas that pour out. Her audiences laugh and respond to her anecdotes and ask questions that reveal her wide-ranging knowledge food and people from the past and today. Her insightful and perceptive intelligence, charismatic sense of humor make a personal connection with her interests and her audiences.

One New England bookstore publicized Sandy's upcoming talk and signing this way:

Oliver has gained widespread regional attention from hundreds of readers who wait and wonder whose recipes will gain Sandy's attention and appear in Taste Buds, her weekly Wednesday Bangor Daily News column, which focuses on the recipes and stories from cooks in Downeast Maine.

Maine Home Cooking and its beautiful illustrative photos of Sandy's Islesboro farmhouse and gardens reveal the core of who Sandy Oliver is through what she cares about and how she expresses it. Her love of food and people is its essence, heaped with copious amounts of humor and a deep understanding of regional taste and the Mainers that make it so. And Maine Home cooking shows us the real food of real people, drawn from their handwritten letters that come to Sandy through the mail. It's a happy read, wonderfully meaningful and old-fashioned, and shows respect for the joys that come from home gardens, canning with glass Mason and Ball jars, and cooking in her 19th Century kitchen on a vintage Dual Atlantic combination wood and gas stove.


A Glossary of Sandy Oliver's Work

Contemporary Regional American Food

Maine Home Cooking (2012)
A distillation of her life's work, Sandy's latest cookbook is a joyous narrative that contains a collection of wonderful and insightful recipes and anecdotes that capture the close relationships she has developed over seven years with the readers of her weekly Bangor Daily News column, "Taste Buds".(

Early American Food History

Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century, Mystic Seaport Museum, 1995. First-ever history of New England's seacoast and seafaring food and its evolution through the Nineteernth Century. Winner of the 1995 Julia Child Cookbook Award

Saltwater Foodways Companion Cookbook, Mystic Seaport, 2008. A collection of authentic 19th Century recipes from histocic meals recorded in Saltwater Foodways, many hardly altered, adapted for preparation by 21st Century modern cooks and kitchens.

Food in Colonial and Federal America, Greenwood Press, 2005. A comprehensive study of the importance of food in the daily lives of European settlers and immigrants of these two periods, the food they brought with them and the food they found here, the influences of Native Americans and slaves cultures, as well as typical meals and cooking methods of the time.

Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes (coauthored with Kathleen Curtin of Plimoth Plantation) Crown Publishing/Clarkson Potter, 2005. The traditional American holiday, from its Plimoth Plantaion harvest celebration of 1621 to today. Over 80 traditional recipes to make, and the stories behind them, including the Wampanoag tribe and turkey prepared five ways.

Communicating
Sandy can be reached by email at sandyoliver47@gmail.com; phone at 207-734-8140, or at 1061 Main Road, Islesboro ME 04848. To access her weekly Taste Buds column, log onto Sandy Oliver BDN Maine Blogs, or tastebuds.bangordailynews.com/about.

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