Full disclosure: Bag Lady and Shopping Siren have no idea what past governors have served at their inaugural celebrations.
Could have been lobster, could have been burgers, could have been lightly toasted floor mats with blueberry zest.
When we read that Janet Mills’ spread tonight includes a mashed potato bar and a sausage station with Lewiston sausages?
Well, we’re suddenly feeling political. And very peckish.
The carefully curated menu (are we keeping “curated” in 2019? relegating it to 2018? we haven’t gotten the memo) features food from all 16 Maine counties, providing a ton of inspiration for a bonus Bliss this week.
If needhams from Norway and a special brew “Inaugur-ale” can’t move us to shop, well, consider us burnt out.
• Tumbledown Brewing, Farmington (Franklin County)
Tumbledown makes a dozen unique beers, including Dog Star Stout (a “dark, smokey wonder of a beer has a healthy dose of malt smoked over peat moss”) and Dawn Patrol Coffee Porter (with coffee and chocolate, maybe good as a nightcap?). But we hear its flagship beer, Tumbledown Red, will be the one served tonight. If you have any left over, it’s apparently good for making mac and cheese, and anything that can be turned into mac and cheese gets our vote.
• Bubier Meats, Greene (Androscoggin County)
Places like this are honestly a little hard for us to secretly shop — we can’t exactly saddle up, subtly admire the tenderloin and scram. So for an example of Bubier’s offerings, we turned to Facebook and discovered a past sale on a 291-pound side of beef. That’s 291 pounds at once. That’s basically like a quarter of a cow cut and frozen into brisket, steaks, hamburger, you name it!*
* We’re guessing here that a “side” is a quarter of cow because cows, um, have four sides? Unless, of course, they only have two sides, in which case a “side of beef” is half a cow? UGH! We failed butcher math in school! Help!)
• Stonecipher Farm, Bowdoinham (Sagadahoc County)
Ah, this one’s much easier. So you only need to know two things about Stonecipher: Guests tonight will be dining on this organic farm’s carrots and watermelon radishes, AND its website has the cutest picture of a baby eating a carrot that you will ever see. Ever. We’ll wait a minute so you can go look … Flipping adorable, right?
• Mailhot Sausage Co., Lewiston (Androscoggin County)
You can find Mailhot’s hot and sweet sausages locally at stores like Hannaford or, if you’re away, find Mailhot’s Best creton online at W.A. Bean & Sons out of Bangor.
One word of caution: Bean & Sons notes that the creton is “not available for shipment to correctional facilities,” which begs so many questions. Why can’t one have it in jail? Has it been used to grease up the bars so someone could slip out? Would it make every other prisoner riot with jealousy that your girlfriend cared enough to send you creton and theirs did not?
It practically demands an expose! We’ll write it just as soon as we can pull ourselves away from the sausage station.
• Pineland Farms, New Gloucester (Cumberland County)
First: We mentioned this at the beginning, but it bears repeating. There will be a mashed potato bar tonight. Mashed. Potato. Bar.
Second: Pineland will provide the potatoes AND the cheddar cheese for said paradise on a plate. We’re not sure whether that cheddar will be sharp or smoked, but you can buy both online to try yourself.
Third: We just discovered that Pineland also sells handcrafted cowbells! They’re green and steel and utterly (udderly?) awesome. So when someone trots out the old “Saturday Night Live” joke “More cowbell!” you can provide it. Because that happens often enough that you should be ready.
For $3 and up, you can try a bunch of different brews on tap at the Brunswick brewery, including a mango wheat beer and citrusy IPA. For tonight? It’s created a special “Inaugur-ale” to be served at the celebration. We imagine it tastes like … winning.
Bag Lady and Shopping Siren’s true identities are protected by a pair of stylish, sweater-wearing Doberman pinschers (who dream of sausage bars) and the Customer Service counter at the Sun Journal. You can reach them at baglady@sunjournal.com and shoppingsiren@sunjournal.com.
Pineland Farms will provide cheddar cheese for Gov. Janet Mills’ inauguration celebration on Friday. To top the mashed potato bar. We dare say this represents the best of all possible food groups. (Online photo)
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