How I managed six weeks of receptions, food included, for 40

Food preparation and presentation: Not my thing. Still. Especially after my dinner-date disaster earlier this month.

Making food available and attractive for others is still my sore point, about 10 months after I vowed in public that I would do better.

After turning 56 last October, I recognized my lifetime of laziness with respect to more nutritious eating, food preparation and meal-making.

I should just surrender now, because I know I never will be a kitchen goddess. An entire summer passed without me falling in love with farmers’ markets. But I am holding off just yet, because I sensed a promising glimmer of food-hope in the last six weeks.

I am an active volunteer with a nonprofit organization locally, Lubec Landmarks, of our small, coastal Maine town, Lubec. Landmarks’ mission is preserving the former McCurdy’s Smokehouse. The Water Street location employed dozens of local people until its closure in 1991. Most of them are gone now.

The Smokehouse used traditional ways of smoking herring and shipped hundreds of thousands of boxes of packed fish in its heyday. Its five buildings on the waterfront now form a small museum complex. Board members are on the verge of a capital campaign in 2017 that will inject some sustainability and new life into the place and the project.

With that in mind, I organized five weekly presentations, plus one more unrelated event, that brought people into the Lubec Landmarks buildings on six occasions since July.

We called it the Salt Air Series. We invited the former owner to speak. We listened to four of the workers whose last day on the job was 25 years ago. We heard from the woman who now guides tours of the smokehouse museum, explaining the many steps of the process, from boat to box. Each time, we drew a crowd of close to 40 people.
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These weren’t your ordinary talks on the waterfront, though. These were five talks (plus the sixth occasion, a Paint Water Street reception for artists) that detailed Lubec’s herring heritage. They also fell in line with Lubec Landmarks’ 20th anniversary summer. Receptions followed each of the talks, intended to keep people mingling in the room with the speakers and each other.

Naturally, the receptions called for light refreshments — and we wanted more than merely wine and cheese. Problem was, I put myself in charge of the food, because this speaker series had been my idea, my thing to make happen, in all aspects.

Long story short: We put food out there, for 30 or 40, over six straight weeks. Finger food, mostly, and not anything exceptionally elegant. The kind of stuff that people might nosh on before heading for dinner at one of the Water Street restaurants.

Lest you think I am getting ahead of myself — no, I didn’t cook anything or labor too long in my own kitchen. But I did ask others to pitch in and to bring things. Some of **them** brought home-made dips, or nicely arranged cut-up veggies, or home-baked cookies. The overall outcome is that, for six weeks straight, I organized well-received food events, from planning to coordinating to serving to clean-up.

I filled out the offerings with whatever came from my Tuesday-afternoon dash into Hannaford. Then I returned to Lubec Landmarks to set up 40 chairs, welcome the public and reassure our speakers that a crowd would assemble in time. For the food, we put out different kinds of cheeses and crackers, and this-or-that, including nuts, salsas and hummus. Of course, there was no shortage of red and white wine both, plus ginger ale and lemonade as alternatives.

The very best of our hors d’oeurves spreads were consistently delivered to us by Ann Rudolph. Also an active and longtime Lubec Landmarks volunteer, Ann knows how to prepare a plate of smoked herring very well. She placed the herring bits onto greens from her garden, then served the plate with lemon wedges on the side. We had forks, toothpicks, plates and napkins nearby for gracious and easier eating.

And boy oh boy, Ann’s plates of herring treats became the most popular dish of all. Best of all, her decision to bring smoked herring to the table brought back memories for many of the days, now decades ago, when herring was the toast of Lubec’s Water Street.

Personally, I came to try and like a food — smoked herring — that I had never before given two thoughts to. (I still have lots of food learning to go, remember).

We didn’t have to do such receptions after the talks, which stood on the summer calendar as significant social events on their own. But the receptions, with the nibbles embellishment, raised the level of what we were able to do — get more first-time visitors in the door of Lubec Landmarks. Those newcomers may become members, and those members may become donors. We may, in fact, have a capital campaign on our hands to organize for the Summer of ’17.

But I’m not volunteering to do the receptions with food just yet. I need a rest.

Katherine Cassidy

About Katherine Cassidy

Making meals is an everyday occurrence for everyone else, yet this writer has gone years without making much of anything in the kitchen. On the verge of turning 56, she is committing herself to learning to cook at last -- both late in life and in public. Watch her as she ventures beyond boiling an egg,