Frequently Asked Questions

Who is publishing the book?

The MCC creative team and Maine Message are the publishers of the Maine Bicentennial Community Cookbook and Maine Community Cookbook. Maine book publisher Islandport Press is the wholesale distributor of the book.

Who or what is MAINEMESSAGE?

Maine Message is a communications consulting and content creation firm led by Karl Schatz, team lead for the MBCC and MCC, through which the legal and business aspects of the project are being managed.

Where will the bookS be sold?

The Maine Bicentennial Community Cookbook is available on this website, and is sold everywhere fine books are sold. It is available at Maine bookstores, gift shops, major online booksellers and retailers, through Islandport Press. The Maine Community Cookbook, Vol 2, will be available for pre-ordering in December 2021, with a publication date of April 15, 2022.

WHAT IS A COMMUNITY COOKBOOK?

A community cookbook is defined by three things: 1) A defined community, in this case, the state of Maine; 2) The recipes come from that community; and 3) The cookbook raises funds for some cause that benefits the defined community, in this case, fighting hunger in Maine.

How will this project SUPPORT the fight against hunger in Maine?

Two dollars from every book sold will be donated to non-profit organizations in the state working hard on issues of food insecurity and hunger in Maine. You can see a list of all the organizations that have received support on this website. To date, more than $15,000 has been distributed.

How Were the Recipes for the book Selected?

In early November 2019, we set up this website to allow recipe submissions online, and accepted submissions of recipes, stories, photos, and recipe cards through the end of January 2020. We were overwhelmed by the response! We recieved more than 360 recipes from people all over the state, in each of the sixteen counties (and a few from people who’ve left, but maintain deep roots). 

We are sure that there are people who missed our pleas for recipes on social media, television, public radio, at libraries, and in the newspapers. We tried to solicit recipes through all the channels that we could think of, but we know that there are families full of wonderful cooks who may have missed our call.

Selecting the recipes for inclusion was no easy task—in truth, we wanted to include them all. As it is, we prioritized including all 16 counties, as many individuals as we could, and as much variety as possible. There were many foods for which we received multiple recipes—molasses cookies could have had its own section, and we decided to devote an entire chapter to beans. In some cases, when we had dishes that were similar, we included the family stories, but not the actual recipes. (These are marked with an * in the lists of selected recipes on this website).

I Submitted a Recipe, How Will I know if my Recipe is Selected?

The list of selected recipes appearing in the cookbook is available here.

How Was the Cookbook Funded?

To fund the cookbook, we’ve accepted paid ads from local businesses part of the tradition of community cookbooks, as wells as paid recipe and photograph sponsorships, and pre-sale of books through a successful Kickstarter campaign that concluded in January 2020.