Summer is officially under way as tomorrow is the first day of July. I’ll assume you’re reading this on Friday, and delivery hasn’t been delayed. We’ll begin with the Church Sale on Saturday July 1 from 9 am-1 pm with some homemade items, the ever-popular Rada Cutlery and of course homemade pies. Then you can come back to town to the Fire Station at 5 p.m. and get the Barbeque Chicken dinner that the fire fighters have been diligently preparing throughout the afternoon.

After your tummies are full and you have conversed with friends, some of whom have returned to their cottages for the summer, you can attend the Street Dance on Mill Street at 7 p.m. Mill Steet will be closed to traffic from 5 to around 10:30 p.m., please use the Back Road past Dummer’s Beach Road and up the hill to the Church Road-Phillips Road intersection to go into Weld Village.

Weld Community Rec. (formerly Weld Extension) meets Thursday July 6 at 5 p.m.-be prepared for a busy night of planning our events for the year – and volunteering to help, so the responsibilities don’t fall on just a few – the more helpers the faster the work goes. Anyone wishing to join in is more than welcome even if you’re only in Maine for a few months, as those are probably our busiest.

Hopefully the drizzily, cloudy weather pattern has finally broken for any holiday festivities you have planned for Independence Day and we will have more than a few days of reasonably pleasant weather with occasional rain “storms”. And although it seems like it did nothing but rain in the month of June, it was really just persistently gloomy with consistent sprinkles I think, because my lawn “crunches” when I walk on it..

Now, I have a few questions for you – how many different editions of Weld Cookbooks have been printed? In what years were they printed? What Weld organizations printed them? How many pages were in each book? I am going to ask you a few trivia questions in the next couple of issues about the first book’s contents. And I found many interesting things in reading the recipe, not just the title.

The first page of the first Cookbook has a cooking timetable which seems pretty accurate except a little longer than today’s times, perhaps because it was done on wood fired cook stoves. How long did you have to boil dandelion greens? Probably depending on size of the beets, how long was the cooking time for these? All of the following turnip, spinach, cauliflower, onions, parsnips, carrots – were pretty much the same, can you guess how long it was? How long were you supposed to cook string beans?

The first section is “Soup” which contains 12 recipes all of which are pretty standard except a cream soup, of what? Containing the main ingredient plus cream, rice, onion, butter, egg yolk, and nutmeg?

The second is “Fish” nothing truly unusual about this category, however it is prefaced by F. Colburn Clarke stating “Back to the old home haunts again, Back where the clear lake lies; Back through the woods Where the Blackbird broods, Back to my rod and flies.”

The third “Meat” another category with no unusual recipes but “Chicken a la Providence” simply caught my eye as the title was French in this old “Weld” cookbook. Which is a boiled chicken with a sauce of butter, flour, egg yolks, peas and carrots. Which ingredient caught my eye? This category is prefaced by Holman F. Day – The whole blamed house used to shake When old Elkanah pounded steak, For he used to say what made meat tough Was ‘cause some cooks warn’t strong enough.

The fourth “Vegetables” and there’s 2 recipes for what? One sliced and served with cream, salt, pepper and butter and the other cut lengthwise and put on toast with a sauce of butter, lemon juice, salt and flour.

The fifth “Entres and Side Dishes” is full of Fritters, Macaroni & Cheese, Welsh Rarebit, Waldorf Salad, Cabbage and Egg Salads and Dressings. But there was one fruit salad dressing that had a Wine Dressing containing ½ cup sugar, and what two wines?

The sixth “Eggs” which was merely ways to cook eggs & omelets” but in looking at one recipe rather than just the Title, it may surprise you as it did me – “Stuffed Eggs”, as the cooked yolks are mixed with cooked chopped chicken or veal, bread crumbs, onion, parsley, salt & pepper which is put in the halved whites, then the two halves are put back together, rolled in beaten eggs and bread crumbs then cooked how? And served with tomato sauce.

The Seventh “Bread, Rolls, Etc.” was traditional bread, rolls, muffins, dumplings recipes but the last entry is for “Pain Peadu” which is what kind of French Toast served with powdered sugar? We’ll continue next week.