Springtime Dining in Maine - Part 2

On Saturday we decided to enjoy the sunny day by getting in a nice hike in Camden Hills State Park, which is about an hour drive from my place. We decided to hike Mount Megunticook from the entrance off Route 52. I believe we hiked up to the Ocean Lookout via the Ridge Trail and then back to Maiden Cliffs along the Jack Williams Trail, but I am not 100% certain of that. It was very windy (no black flies!), but also cool and clear.  It was a really pretty hike and a great way to spend the day.  After hiking down, we drove into Camden to have a little picnic on the grass by the harbor of curried chicken salad sandwiches (my mom's recipe) with grapes and pecans and some brown butter chocolate chip cookies that didn't turn out so great (maybe I'll share the recipe if I ever manage to perfect it...). 



Looking out to the Atlantic from Mount Megunticook



On our way back to Belgrade, we stopped at Uncorked Wine & Cheese shop in Augusta.  This little shop is one of my favorite things about Augusta.  Kim, the proprietress, is lovely and she always offers an interesting and reasonable selection of wines and cheeses to select from. We ended up with a lovely bottle of an Italian red (the variety escapes me at the moment) and some tasty cheese to have before dinner. We also picked up a bottle of St. Peter's Grapefruit Beer from England!

Once home, Hakim set to work marinating the steak tips we had procured for for dinner.  He used a super-secret combination of different sauces, oils, and vinegars from my cabinet, so I will leave it up to him to decide to share his recipe with the world or not. Hopefully he does, because the tips were delicious!

Some ingredients for the Spring Farro Salad

After the meat had marinated for a couple hours, I set to work preparing my Spring Farro Salad inspired by this recipe that I found on FoodGawker.  But before we go any further, let's back up a moment...wtf is farro? Well, farro once fed the greatest military on the planet (at the time), the legions of the Roman Empire! It's a grain (kind of like Spelt), but due to its low yield, many farmers switched to higher yielding grains as time went on. I first encountered farro thanks to my Uncle Jeff, who is the family foodie and oenophile, when he brought it to a gathering (he later gave me a bag of farro as part of my Christmas gift).  I really enjoyed its nutty flavor (so much better than brown rice) and was curious to learn more recipes to use it in, which brings us back to the aforementioned recipe.  I pretty much followed it exactly, except I used Better than Bouillon, omitted the peas (I couldn't find any fresh ones at the supermarket), and used a very small amount of dill (neither of us are particularly fond of it).  It came out splendidly! It was light and refreshing - a perfect side to any spring or summer meal. It'd also be great to bring to cookouts, since it's easy to make ahead (I'd just wait to add the avocado until the day of). 

The delicious result!

In other exciting news, we just purchased tickets to the Food Truck Festival of New England (Charlestown Navy Pier Edition) and we're pumped! Now we just gotta figure out how to get the MobileCone in there next year...