I wonder if any of you have watched The Lost Kitchen on Magnolia Network. It’s a cooking show that chronicles the journey of Erin French and her restaurant in Freedom, Maine called The Lost Kitchen. I’ll let you go down the rabbit-hole of reading her story, but the quick version is she runs this restaurant in a town of only about 700 people and it is one of the hardest restaurants in the country to get a reservation at.
The only way to get a reservation is through a mail-in postcard system. During the winter, you can send in a postcard requesting a reservation, and then at the end of spring they begin drawing postcards at random and calling to offer reservations for dinner during the upcoming summer season. Pretty crazy!
We have, unfortunately, not been selected just yet for dinner, but watching the show has given us lots of cooking inspiration. I think last year for Mother’s Day, I got Kim one of The Lost Kitchen cookbooks. And this Mother’s Day, since we can’t quite make it to Freedom, ME, we decided to prepare a Lost Kitchen meal for Kim. The only input that we let Kim have was what type of main course she wanted. She picked sea bass, and it just happened that our cookbook had a recipe for that.
The coolest thing about The Lost Kitchen is that they strive to source all their ingredients from local farmers. Each week as they create their menu, they look for what is fresh and ready for harvest; it’s those items that make the menu. We didn’t quite have time to source everything locally, but we used some of the fresh herbs and wildflowers in our garden to keep with the tradition of The Lost Kitchen.
Maddy made a menu, and the girls dressed in Erin’s signature striped shirt to be servers. We had Cold Beet Soup, Grilled Sea Bass with Bread Salad and Wild Bidens, and, for dessert, Grilled Peaches (from the girls’ peach-picking adventure) with Blue Cheese and Honeycomb. It was all very yummy, and the girls were amazing in the kitchen and as servers.
And although it wasn’t a trip to Maine, it was time together, delicious food, and an evening where we lost ourselves in our own kitchen. I guess now it’s time to get out in the garden to find ourselves again.
Mark your calendar: to celebrate the Dog Days of Summer, we’re holding our annual Plants and Pets Event on Saturday, August 26, 9am – 1pm. Bring your pets to the nursery for fun with a photo booth, our Pet-Friendly Plants Seminar, a shaved ice truck, animal organizations, giveaways, and more! Who is going to bring their llama this year?!
