Vacation Chowder
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 1:02AM 
By Lori Powell
All this week, Special Fork bloggers will be sharing recipes for vacation cooking. And to celebrate summer vacations, Special Fork is giving away a beautiful, English-style picnic basket fitted with service for four by Picnic Time. It’s easy to enter the sweepstakes.
Lucky me, I get to spend a couple of weeks each year in Mid-Coast Maine at a house on a cove that I have rented now for the past six years. It is my Northeast Oasis where I fatten myself up with all that Maine has to offer, including all the seafood, berries and great produce that I can consume in that short period of time.
Of course, all of that cooking (yes, I love to cook on vacation with the indigenous ingredients that surround me), eating and then reading need to be combined with a lot of hiking so that I can do more of the first two things.
Maine, to me, screams seafood and Seafood Chowder in all its glorious forms… whether it is lobster, scallops, shrimp or even clams. To me it generally involves some shellfish, vegetables, herbs, sometimes pork and a creamy, slightly thickened base.