When Worlds Collide

I went into the little gourmet food store around the corner from my house just to see what they had, and to my amazement a dazzling array of Stonewall Kitchen goods met my eyes. Jams, sauces, jellies, mixes, and mustards were scattered throughout a collection of delicacies originating all over the world and the country, but it was the Stonewall Kitchen products which threw me for a loop. I associate Stonewall with the Old Port, with free snacking while wandering downtown, in a word, with home. To see a jar of Wild Maine Blueberry Jam tucked onto a bottom shelf alongside apple and pumpkin butters from Colorado and Italian fruit sauces seemed supremely out of place. Wild Maine Blueberry Jam (personal feelings on wild Maine blueberries aside, DAD) is a hallmark of summers in Maine. Our blueberries are like our lobster and our moose; world famous, probably overrated, but the underlying reasons for many Mainers' livelihoods nonetheless. While it is an honor (and a feat of Stonewall's marketing, I'm sure) to Maine that its blueberries are so well renowned, it is an affront to my own philosophies on eating and to my escape from Maine to see jars of Maine jam on a shelf in a tiny gourmet food shop in the middle of nowhere in Colorado in December. It just seems absurd to me to buy Maine blueberry jam out here. Colorado should have their own fruit to make a jam out of. Leave the blueberries to us Mainers, and let me live my new life in peace without such interjections from the old.


On the brighter side, I did buy my first cookbook out here: The Bread Bible. (There are two of them...this now means I'll have to get the other also.) I'm psyched - if only I hadn't just used the last of my flour on the loaf I made earlier.