Anyway, the inn is offering some good wintertime packages. Check them out soon; with all the publicity, rooms might get scarce—particularly for Valentine’s Day. Of course, there’s always the Best Western down the road…

2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons dried rosemary
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (to taste)
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a non-reactive container and let marinate for an hour or two up to overnight. Saute breasts in a nonstick pan, flip, and cook until each side is lightly browned. Chef’s hint: After flipping breasts, cook for just a couple minutes more, turn off heat and cover, and let breasts finish cooking until done. You’ll be amazed at how tender and moist the chicken turns out. Enjoy! 

Also like most people, I’m all for keeping its tenants local, ensuring that Annapolis’ version has its own unique Naptown flavor. But the thing about Lehr Jackson properties is that they’re not unique. They all feel somewhat similar and have a similar mix of businesses.

Just like a shopping mall developer, Jackson looks for the proper mix of successful businesses to attract the most people. So instead of a Gap or Banana Republic, in the Gone to Market mix, you have Neopol smokery (in Belvedere Square, Easton, and proposed for Annapolis), Atwater’s Breads (Belv. Square and Annapolis), an Italian market (Belv. Square and Annapolis), a vegetable/produce stand (all), a florist (Easton and Annapolis.)  Vaccaro’s is, of course, a Baltimore-based business with outlets in other malls. It’s not that this mix is a bad thing—these are all fine businesses—it’s just that all these Gone to Market markets start to look/feel the same, and thereby, lose their uniqueness.

What do you think?

If you’d like to meet Tangier Island’s mayor, James “Ooker” Eskridge, who is featured prominently in the ads, he’ll take you out on his boat. Dustin Hoffman joined him several years ago. Really.

We wonder if the folks on Smith Island are upset at being passed over by ESPN—not to mention the week’s worth of income spent by the visiting film crews. Is there an ESPN4?

Here’s the backstory: I received a call last week from a Hollywood Guy looking for back issues of Chesapeake Life to be used in Barry Levinson’s upcoming movie, called “The Bay.” It’s apparently a sci-fi flick about some sort of viral outbreak on the Eastern Seaboard. According to industry press, “the story is told via a series of recordings on camera phones, 911 calls and other scraps of video as the town of Claridge, Md., is engulfed by chaos.”

But the town of Claridge (more than a passing similarity to Cambridge?) isn’t in Maryland. It’s somewhere way down south where hush puppies—not crab cakes—are the culinary specialty. Truth be told, the Hollywood Guy said Mr. Levinson wanted to shoot in Maryland, but the tax breaks in South Carolina were too good to pass up. Bummer.

Well, at least Chesapeake Life magazine might make a cameo. Hopefully, nowhere near a plate of hush puppies. 

This was not diamondback terrapin soup, mind you. I made the soup from 5 pounds of frozen snapper turtle sourced from Martin’s Seafood in Jessup, Md.—the only place I could find turtle meat after a long search. It was apparently from a “turtle farm” somewhere in Louisiana. I brought it back to work and stashed in the refrigerator. (People look at you funny when you’re carrying a big mysterious bag of frozen brownish stuff. I didn’t tell anyone what was actually in the bag and luckily, no one mistook it for their lunch.)

So I brought the bag home, much to the consternation of my wife. She promptly left the room—and took the children as far away as possible.

If you’ve ever diced 5 pounds of turtle meat, you know what a tedious—and messy—process it is. They say that turtle contains seven different types of meat, and after spending nearly an hour cutting the thing up, I can concur. I will spare you the gory details—if you’ve even decided to read this far—but turtle meat is a weird combination of gristle, fat, tough, tender, and spongy meat in colors ranging from white to pink to blood red. Really, it’s nothing like I had ever experienced.

My recipe came from the Tidewater Inn’s old Restaurant Local. We had published Chef Richard Hamilton’s recipe previously in Chesapeake Life, and being a big fan of his soup, I thought I’d give it a try. Besides, the recipe called for an entire bottle of dry sherry, which sounded good to me.

So how did it turn out? Not bad. Add a little sherry to anything and it’ll taste good, I say. Unfortunately, I have lots of leftovers. Let me know if you’d like to try a bowl cause it’ll be a long time before my wife lets me bring home turtle meat again.

But the happiness of Tangier’s populace is tempered by the news that their physician—Dr. David Nichols, a selfless man who has flown to Tangier Island every Thursday from his home in White Stone, Va., for the last 30 years—is dying of cancer. According to an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, he only has four months or so left.

I can’t imagine how the Nichols’ family—and the people of Tangier Island—must be feeling at this time. This is a guy who has literally saved countless lives on the remote island. In a place where food has to brought in by boat several times a week, medical supplies are at a premium. Numerous physicians have come and gone since the clinic was established in the 1950s. “Sometimes it’s intense, but I love the people,” Nichols told Chesapeake Life four years ago. “They’re all so familiar to me now and appreciative. They give me hugs and kisses and food. They’re fiercely independent people who don’t beg. They’re always appreciative of people doing things for them. I just hope we can provide them with a better place for healthcare. No matter what, I plan to keep doing this as long as I’m needed.” 

And the feeling was mutual: “He’s been coming here since I was a little girl,” resident Jamie Bradshaw told the Times-Dispatch. “I don’t know what we’d do without him. I can’t even describe in words what he’s meant to all of us.”

Several years ago, I was on Tangier Island researching another story when an old building was razed to make room for the new clinic. I stood with 20 or so other islanders watching a bulldozer take down the building’s shell. “It’ll be good to finally have a new clinic,” a woman told me. “Dr. Nichols will finally have a proper place [to practice].”

Not that the facility mattered so much to Nichols, who was awarded the Country Doctor of the Year in 2006, and just last year was featured in a major national article in Parade Magazine. For him it was always about the island—and its hardy breed of people.

“I have a saying,” he told Chesapeake Life. “When you’re on Tangier Island, you’re a little closer to heaven.”

And, surely, so is Dr. Nichols.

The space occupies the three rear rooms of a historic house. The old pantry is now filled with bookshelves holding cookbooks, a pizzelle-maker ($25), a basting gun ($5), and a deluxe model KitchenAid mixer for $199. (“It sells new for $299,” Hilliard informs me.)

The house’s old dining room boasts a mix of used goods for entertaining, from Fiestaware to antique glassware to funky, colorful aprons hand-stitched by Hilliard’s mother.

Hilliard tells me customers and consignors, range from older folks who are looking to downsize to younger transplants looking for a bargain. There’s a healthy helping of tourists, too. Consignors get 40 percent of the final sale price or 50 percent if the item fetches more than $150.

Generally, I found the prices pretty decent and the selection of goods definitely eclectic. Besides, for lovers of kitchen paraphernalia, The Backburner is a unique find unto itself.

Check the website for an abbreviated listing of current items, upcoming events, and terms and conditions.
915 Bay Ridge Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland, 21403, 410-591-2108

And then it hit me: Why not open the facility right here at the Towne Centre? Really. There’s no farmland to destroy. It’s already noisy. And there’s decent parking.

Can’t you just see commandos-in-training repelling from the towering stacks of merchandise at Bed Bath & Beyond? Or dodging fast-moving knives at Ziki Japanese Steakhouse. Heck, there’s already a climbing wall at Eastern Mountain Sports. The mechanical bull at Cadillac Ranch opens up all sorts of training scenarios, too. Visiting politicos could stock up on blue pinstripe suits at Brooks Brothers and then conduct high-level meetings over fro-yo at Menchies.

Really, the idea clearly has legs, don’t you think? Frank? Barbara? Are you reading? Hello…?

“Every Gulf Coast Republican is the biggest anti-environmentalist you can imagine. And these Gulf Coast Republicans—and to some extent Gulf Coast Democrats, too—these Gulf Coast Republicans voted to eliminate the Endangered Species Act. They voted for the ‘Dirty Water Act in 1995, [a bill to weaken the Clean Water Act]. Every time we tried to bring in some really good environmental policy—whether it was fisheries or clean air or preserving wetlands or managing the oceans or whatever it was—they voted against it. They brought in big oil and now they’re all crying foul: ‘All of the fishermen are out of work. The oil is killing our marshes.’ Well, no kiddin’! Look what you did for 30 years.”

He’s also doubts that its long-term environmental impact is getting through to people: “I listen to the people who own charter boats or fourth-generation fishermen or people who own hotels and I don’t hear them saying that we’ve exploited nature far too long. I don’t hear them saying that. I hear them saying, ‘I wanna get paid by BP.’ They don’t understand that they’ve been a part of this—whether they’re oil men or hotel owners or fishermen—that they’ve contributed to this because of their activity to the degradation of the local ecology.”

As you can see, Gilchrest still isn’t afraid to speak his mind. (Likely one of the reasons why he lost the Republican primary to Andy Harris in 2008.) You’ll be able to read a lot more of my interview with the Kent County resident in our Fall 2010 issue, due out in late August.