An early Valentine

I know it is only January, and mid-month at that but I am, as they say, feeling the love. (And wishing happy birthday to my brother George who took his hospitality inclination to Whitetail Bluff Camp and Resort, a fun campground and bar and grill they started in southwestern Wisconsin).

I had heard that Cullen from Fairwinds Florist, our local flower girl and purveyor of many things gorgeous, had her picture in February's Martha Stewart Living magazine. So I found myself paging through the glossy celebration of red hearts and deliciousness. And, turning corners down on lots of pages, before even getting to the lovely article that focuses on Black Dinah Chocolatiers.
During the season, the inn is a playground for new recipes, pretty flower arrangements, and hospitality adventures. The quiet season brings its charms--snowshoeing, reading books (just finished the Elegance of the Hedgehog; Juliet, Naked; and A Gate at the Stairs); and visiting restaurants (tried Finn's in Ellsworth--get the artichoke appetizer, the Mache Bistro in Bar Harbor--I'm still melting over the beef bourguignon). But I apparently was hungry for some entertainment on entertaining so you might see me whipping up some glittered roses (page 41) or you might find a filigree heart on your waffle (page 39). For certain, though, you will find me praising Black Dinah Chocolatiers all the more.

Kate, the chocolate maker, led a class at the inn during the October Food and Wine Festival last year--the aromas! The oooooos and ahhhhhhhs from the guest-cum-apprentice chocolate makers (and the innkeeper). My tip, though? Don't be so cliche as to get your loved one chocolates for Valentine's Day; you will be dismissed as unoriginal and your amazingly fabulous gift of Black Dinah Chocolates will go under appreciated. Instead, choose to pamper your sweetie on Groundhog's Day, or perhaps the Ides of March, or even April Fool's Day ("Ha! You thought I didn't get you anything for Valentine's Day!"). One last tidbit about the mouthwatering candy Kate produces--the ingredients are so fresh that it makes no sense at all to save the box day after day waiting for the perfect time. They are meant to be savored right away. Mmmmmmm.

Blue Hill for the Holidays

I can only hope you are having as luscious a holiday season as I am. For me, the highlights are music, people, and food.

Blue Hill is lucky to have the Bagaduce Chorale, with 80-plus voices. They perform two concerts a year at the Congregational Church. Their winter concert included a newly commissioned piece by Anna Dembska. The spring concert, schedule for April 30 and May 1, will include new work by Paul Sullivan.

High school concerts can be scary but not when you have an award winning music department. George Stevens Academy, directly across the street from the inn, has a wonderful array of musicians and their winter concert includes a band, various steel drum combos, a handful of jazz combos, and an acappella vocal ensemble. Guests have asked about George Stevens. The history of who he is and how the school acquired his name can be found at the school's website. One of the great things about living in a small town--the cast of characters is small, even with a history that goes back to the early 1800s.

Ellacappella is another Blue Hill treasure.
They've been out in their bright colors for the tree lighting and at the library for my favorite Christmas event of all--the reading of Dickens' Christmas Carol. As you may know, our library is beautiful, with its central room flanked by fireplaces. In front of one is where three local gents read out the carol, with appropriate chain rattling and hat changing to cover many characters. We laugh, we cry, we eat more cookies.

For me, too, part of the charm of the season in this small town is the proximity. The inn is just around the corner from the Congregational Church and the library and shops on Main Street. We can walk to three bookstores! For me, that describes a great town perfectly. The fact that you can get great espresso in one and fresh bread in another and the third has the best, smartest inventory of a bookstore ten times its size is just like frosting on the cake.

On Last Night, we wander the streets listening to live music and being entertained by an impressive array of locals. This year, Noel Paul Stookey began the evening to a standing room audience. Guests staying at the Cape House, where there are two options of rooms for you, had a great time. One couple ventured to the Arborvine for a fabulous dinner and then walked about town in the snow, to return to the Suite before midnight to enjoy a cozy fire.

If you stayed with us at the inn, you know that we don't have televisions in the rooms in the inn, just in the Cape House next door. But we have books, boy, do we have books. Just in the last month I've added a new one by Rebekah Raye, Bear-ly There. Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City is finally out (I had the pleasure--O so pleasurable!--of hearing him read from an almost final copy with a small group tucked into the East Blue Hill Library). You can borrow it when I'm finished.

Then, too, I've added some art to the inn's collection.
But I'll have to tell you about that another time as the snow is still falling and I'm the snow shoveler today. I do hope you are making snow angels and enjoying the winter wonderland. (Sand angels, for you folks a bit more south, sound painful... You should just visit us and bring your snowsuits).

Happy, happy 2010 to you!
Sarah Pebworth

Big Fall Finale

I wish you had been able to join us for the fourth Foliage, Food, and Wine Festival. Put it on your calendar for next year right now--it's the third weekend in October, Oct. 14-17, 2010. Each year more fabulous activities have been added. One of the most delicious was a chocolate making workshop held at the inn. Kate from Black Dinah Chocolatiers taught a sold-out crowd everything about chocolate making. Let me tell you--having a vat of warmed chocolate in the kitchen makes the inn smell heavenly! Not only is Kate a wiz in the chocolate kitchen, she writes of chocolate and Isle au Haut living stunningly well. Check out her blog and you will agree with me.

El El Frijoles amazed our guests during the sold-out wine dinner we hosted as part of the festival. Even long time fans of the taqueria were dazzled by the food that kept coming out of the kitchen that night. The queso fundido, the pork loin, the apple tart... this and more paired expertly by Maxx from the Blue Hill Wine Shop made for a smashingly successful evening. El El Frijoles went on to win "Best of the Fest" at the Taste of the Peninsula event on Sunday. Their posole... Mmmm, mmm.
The inn offered browned butter cookies, apple walnut cake, and those graham crackers I keep raving about. I was very very popular with my trays of goodies. Kathy from Blue Hill Hearth had one of the prettiest displays--look at her patchwork pizza.

Guests at the inn attended the wine dinner at the Arborvine, the beer lunch at Table, the lobsterbake at Barncastle, just some of the special events with the festival.

As summer downshifts to fall, we get more excited about books again. Kevin Hawkes stayed with us, lured here by friends who are returning guests (they really like room 2). Their friends presented the inn with a copy of Kevin's book, Library Lion. If you haven't read this before, go get it now--so sweet. You will fall in love with the illustrations immediately.

We continue to grow our library at the inn--I think we have more books than any other inn in Maine! Guests will sometimes end up in the middle of a book when it's time to check out. Trudy, a longtime friend of the inn, checked in this fall with a book in hand she had started last year. She and her husband always stay in room 3.

Speaking of gifts from guests, I had to pull out the tree book Catherine gave us last year (see the blog entry from Sept. 27, 2008) to identify the American Mountain Ash, or Rowan Tree, we have in our yard that produces the most eye-catching orange berries in the fall.

I received an email the other day with the subject line: "Our stay with you was fabulous." Margaret ended her email with, "Can one be homesick for a place visited only for four or five days?" Blue Hill does has a certain magic...

Autumn's Bounty

October brings us to that time of year when I convince myself that candy corn looks great in a silver dish and can be offered in the parlor and the staff gently insists it doesn't and it can't.

Luckily they agree with me about the glass pumpkin now gracing the mantelpiece. This was a find from the farmer's market, where I also picked up two chevre spreads from Seal Cove--one with cranberry and the other a chili lime--not for the faint of heart!

Autumn also brings pumpkin donuts! Jill at Millbrook Bakery is now forcing us to decide--nutty sticky bun or pumpkin donut? Clever lady that she is, you can get a donut hole, and a sticky bun. And now she's offering soups and sandwiches, too. I tried the potato leek today. Scrumptious.

The Surry Inn will close up for the season soon. I'm hoping to get there for the beef salad one more time. This is the pretty view from their dining room.

I went to the Maine's Office of Tourism site this week after seeing an ad for the art museum trail. You'll find oodles of helpful information here. You can also see information on antiquing throughout the state, and great foliage tours, and food tours...

I had dinner at Fisherman's Friend last week, enjoying their cornbread and a crabmeat and swiss sandwich. Guests raved about the lobster puff--and had plenty for lunch the next day. I also had my favorite caesar salad and onion rings at Marlintini's, here in town. We do eat well in this area of tiny towns and very fresh seafood.

At the inn, guests have been raving about Jeff's sorbet, his cranberry scones, and one of my new favorites, the apple walnut cake, made with apples from our trees!


The inn will close up for the season at the end of the month but the Cape House Suite and Studio are open year round. Let us know if you'll be in the area.

Now go enjoy the season! There are leaves to scuff through, golden afternoons to enjoy, a fall bounty to partake in.

Eagle Island Lighthouse

September in Maine is amazing. The warm days, cool nights, and hints of autumn make Blue Hill especially lovely.

I took advantage of Maine's first Open Lighthouse Day to get on the Eagle Island mailboat. Guests Bob and Margie from Illinois joined me and we agreed it was a magical day. From Audrey, our mailboat captain, to the Quinns, our hosts for the island tour, we were entertained and well tended to. Bob Quinn gave us the tour across the island to the lighthouse and took us all up inside the lighthouse. The views were spectacular but I also loved the historical feel of the light and the spiral stairway leading to it. Bob and his wife Helene are fifth-generation Eagle Islanders and have great stories to tell. I can't hope to capture his wit and style but he was a delight. One quip about lighthouse tenders, "You have to be able to sleep with the light on." More poignantly, he spoke of when the light became automated and no longer needed someone to tend it: "They took the keepers away from the light."

My Saturdays have a lovely rhythm. I help with breakfast at the inn and then dash to the farmer's market. This week I picked up bread from Jill Smith's Millbrook Bakery, some produce from one of the local farmers, and a goat cheese spread from Sunset Acres Farm. Assistant innkeeper Maura used the cucumber for one of my favorite hors d'oeuvres--Greek grilling cheese with tomato and balsamic reduction with the cucumber slice becoming the cracker. After dropping off the farmer's market purchases, I often stop in other shops about town. This weekend I returned to Handworks Gallery and am now in love with some silver earrings with lots of hoops. They have a truly wonderful selection.

"How is breakfast?" I asked a guest the other morning.
"Just as yummy as the bed."

Summer summer summer

Going, going, gone... August was a whirlwind of sending guests off to the local swimming areas, doing some research in restaurants and at events, and just enjoying the scrumptious weather.

I volunteered one day at the quarry park in Stonington. Opera House Arts (OHA), in collaboration with local conservation group Island Heritage Trust (IHT), presented a preview of a new “story at the quarry.” “Q2: Habitat” is a multidiscipline performance commissioned by OHA and directed by founding artistic director of Pilobolus Dance Theater, at the historic Settlement Quarry. “Q2” is a theatrical spectacle including professional dancers in aerial performances; community members; steel drum music from a live community band; giant puppets; and heavy equipment operated by Rick Weed of Deer Isle and Charlie Peabody of Stonington. “Q2: Habitat” is in its first of two years of development leading up to a spectacle at the quarry in August 2010.

On the way back to the inn, I stopped for lunch at the Bagaduce Lunch. What a view. I would be hard pressed to know which take out place had the best view. There's the Bagaduce, the Bayview between here and Castine, the Breeze in Castine. In Blue Hill, we have to make our own by getting take out at the Fish Net and heading to the town park. The steel drum band has been playing there the last few Mondays.

And speaking of live music... Had you been able to come to the Innkeeper's Birthday Party, you would have gotten to hear the University of Maine--Machias Ukulele Band! Gary Bushee, aka the singing waiter, has been a friend of mine since 1988. He suggested inviting the ukulele players to the birthday bash. To the delight of guests and party goers, they played all evening, taking requests and ending with a full on dance party!

In the kitchen, I'm loving Jeff's three-pepper biscuits. We offer them at breakfast and with hors d'oeuvres. Matt has been making his fabulous popovers which give guests a vehicle for tasting Nervous Nellie's jams. I continue to make the pecan coffee cake--it's an easy crowd pleaser (the recipe is on the Oct. 4, 2007 blog entry. I will often bake the batter in a pie plate, rather than muffin tins, as I like the wedge shape.)

Guests have been so complimentary about the staff here. I cannot agree more. I must have the nicest, most talented staff of any inn in Maine. And staff are talented in many directions: Elizabeth Sawyer is a painter whose work in being shown in a number of places in the area, including the Castine Historical Handworks. This is one of her pastels. Heather Lyon, a new staff member at the inn but someone I worked with back in the Left Bank Cafe days, has a self portrait in Rockport's Center for Maine Contemporary Arts show, "Just Look at Yourself!" Jon Imber's work can be seen there, too.

More soon, I promise. There's so much to tell you about this fall, including a class in Artisan Chocolate Making to be held here at the inn with Kate from Black Dinah Chocolatiers! during our Foliage, Food and Wine Festival Oct. 16-18. Call the inn for more details.

Check your calendars!

I have to jump ahead to October for just a minute--not that I want to leave the gorgeous August weather we've been having but you have to know about the October events before they go too public and get filled up.

First, Columbus Day weekend, we are collaborating with Paul Sullivan, OK, collaborate might be too strong a word. We are lodging and feeding guests who will be attending Paul's music workshops and events all weekend long. Paul is hosting three days of music workshops during this "musical getaway weekend." It's your chance to visit one of the most beautiful villages on the coast of Maine, hang around with Paul, and indulge in music to your heart's content. There will be piano master classes, improvisation sessions, some interesting and unusual musical adventures (steel drums and synthesizers, for example) and great meals including a lobster feast. Paul will also perform a solo piano concert for you on Saturday night. You'll be staying with us at the inn and fall foliage will be at its height. We only have room for twenty participants, so be sure to act on this quickly. Paul and his partner Jill will send you a brochure with more details. Contact them at 207/359-8432, or by email: Jill@rivermusic.com.

And then it will be time for the Foliage, Food and Wine Weekend! This year's event will be bigger than ever.
We will again be hosting El El Frijoles for a Latin inspired, wine paired dinner. This will absolutely sell out so if you want to join us, call us now! Maxx, from Blue Hill Wine Shop, will be on hand to pour and educate.

A new event at the inn this year is Kate from Black Dinah Chocolatiers. She will hold a very small chocolate making class at the inn on the festival weekend. Not to sound like a broken record, but this will absolutely sell out--and our kitchen isn't half as big as our dining room--so you must call us immediately if you want to be included. Of course, you can always just go to the Blue Hill Co-op or Fairwinds Florist while you are in town and buy her chocolates. Sexy Mexi might be my favorite. Or lavender... She and her husband Steve run the cafe on Isle au Haut and they do send their chocolates off island.

And then we're hosting Inn Your Dreams! Have you ever wondered about running an inn of your own? My friends thought I was crazy when I first started talking about it. "What if you don't like it?" they wondered. "Can't you try it out?" Here's your opportunity to explore your dream. I took his class in spring 2006 and look at me now! Come to the inn for a few days as part of Don Johnson's Inn Your Dream seminar and learn all about innkeeping. You'll have field trips, sessions with experts in the field and professionals you need to work with, and solid information about innkeeping from a man who has been there, plus you'll have an opportunity to see the behind-the-scene workings of this inn, where we'll let you get as hands-on as you want.

Blue Hill is stunning in the fall. Pick your activity and come see. Of course, if your activity choice is reading a book under a golden canopy of fall leaves, we'll take good care of you.

In the meantime, sunscreen and raspberry iced tea... August in Maine is fresh blueberries, ginger-pear ice cream from Millbrook's little shop, drinks at Table on the patio...