I’m in Camden, Maine this week and next for PopTech 2009, and yesterday I drove to Maine from Brooklyn, leading to this morning’s milestone of 100,000 miles on my car odometer—something I’ll celebrate on the way back to Brooklyn later this month.

On yesterday’s drive, I stopped at the Maine Diner for very traditional Maine food in keeping with the vintage car in the parking lot:

lobster pie (think hot lobster chunks with crumbled cracker bits arriving with a ramekin of butter) alongside mashed potatoes and a corn muffin ,

and the dessert I’ve been waiting to try, grape-nut custard pudding—hiding here under a hearty ruffle of whipped cream with the cereal flakes softly sitting on top of the firm custard.

Coastal Maine makes you think, as the bright foliage begins to fall away, about resolutions, and one of mine may be to recreate lobster pie—a clever recipe that keeps the warmth (so hard to retain when cracking the shell), lets one regulate the amount of butter and have the fun of pouring it on top of the dish, and best of all, keeps the charm of a grandmother’s receipt with the cracker crumbs binding it together…

Related posts:

1. lobster roll quandary and lemon meringue
2. children, costumes, leaving Maine
3. kthread cooks: chess pie

1. oso:
   October 17th, 2009 at 6:12 am

   You are very Balinese in your ability to find a ritual to celebrate nearly every day. I like that.

2. Kristen:
   October 17th, 2009 at 7:10 am

   How do you find a way to compliment a province and me at the same time, D? Thank you.

   I almost ordered blueberry pie, but that’s for when we explore Maine—

3. Mica:
   October 17th, 2009 at 9:15 am

   Coastal Maine sounds beautiful and delicious. I’m ready to pack up now and head out there for some lobster pie and custard. Mmmm, melted butter and lobster chunks…

4. Kristen:
   October 17th, 2009 at 11:45 am

   Mica, you’d love it here. Just run over from Chicago—you’ve been training hard enough ;) We’ll keep the lobster warm until you arrive—

5. Ben:
   October 17th, 2009 at 1:44 pm

   My flight from LA (counting a connection) should arrive about the same time as Mica, at which time we can all feast on buttery lobster pie. Sounds so delicious, as does coastal Maine, whose apocalyptic climate of autumn breathing its final breaths must no doubt inspire the resolution-making of which Kthread speaks.

6. Kristen:
   October 17th, 2009 at 5:54 pm

   Ben, so happy to order extra lobster pie for you (this is a dreamy dish, if ever there was one)—I hadn’t thought of the autumn leave-taking as apocalyptic but, of course, you are right (as you so often are) and that inspires me further—

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Posted by Kristen Taylor on Friday, October 16th, 2009, 10:18 pm * Filed in Food, Travel. * Tags: camden, custard, grapenut, kristen, kthread, lobster, maine, pie, pudding, taylor. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.