So this food column has been running for a solid year! The first one, “What’s for supper?” ran on Feb. 23, 2016. Man! How time flies. A lot has happened around Boothbay Harbor and the rest of the USA since then — some good, some bad.

Wow, that was deep huh? I hate politics, and it has no place in this column.

My first column began with this: “I love food. I have an obsession with food and anything food-related. From the time I wake up and start thinking about what I’ll have for breakfast to the time I finish my last morsel of whatever I dreamed up for dinner, there’s probably not a full hour that goes by without at least a thought of food.”

If you've read any of them you know this much is true. You also know a lot, maybe more than you care to know, about my childhood antics, and my love of manhattans. As for all the nonsense about ex-boyfriends and husbands, that was all a figment of my imagination.

Just kidding. It's all true, unfortunately. I haven't shared some of the juiciest anecdotes though. You can read about those in the memoir. I will share one memory though. I wrote of it in one of my first stories for this paper, about the summer McSeagull's became McSeagull's. It was titled “McSeagull's, in the beginning.”

When I first came back to Boothbay Harbor, in 2002, I went to a local bar for a beer. The bartender was a woman I recognized from back in the day at McSeagull’s. I asked her if she remembered a life-size framed drawing of a nude that hung outside the ladies room. It had been purchased by Joe Williamson, for me, and I often wondered what had become of it after he sold McSeagull’s.

“The one of you?” the bartender asked. I told her it wasn’t me. She laughed and said, “Everyone thought it was.”

As I was leaving I recognized another woman from those days coming into the bar. I laughingly told her what the bartender had said about the drawing.

“That wasn’t you?” she said.

Anyway — just one more thing before we get to food. I love writing, almost as much as I love food, and I have my former manager at the Boothbay Register to thank for giving me the chance to prove I’m not totally illiterate. I had been in newspaper graphics for around 100 years, and my eyes were glazing over. I walked into Joe Gelarden’s office one day and said just that.

He said, “Well, Suz, what do you want to do?” “Write,” I said.

“Well, go write something,” he said.

Thanks, Joe. I'm forever grateful. Just wish I'd started 100 years ago, instead of three.

The photo from my first food column, one year ago, was of an empty place setting. It was telling of what was in my mind at the time I set out to write it. I really didn’t have a clue what I’d say. Oddly, I managed to come up with 52 ideas.

I have favorites, mostly based on the degree of humor exhibited. I’ve been having a blast writing them. Sometimes I’ll be sitting at my desk, typing, and laughing. I am my own best audience. Sarah Morley is a good audience too though — not for my stories — she doesn't read them unless I insist, but she gets a kick out of listening to me laughing, all by myself, from her desk a few feet away.

So far I've written about Friday night pizza, a good sandwich, manhattans, weekday and weekend breakfasts, biscuits, crepes, manhattans, Yorkshire pudding and popovers, elegant chocolate cake, gingersnaps, manhattans, oysters (ugh), scallops, lobster, pecan-encrusted chicken, manhattans, steak au poivre, hamburgers … manhattans, and a lot more.

Now I'm starving. And I need a manhattan.

Anyway. A few friends and I celebrated with a brunch at the Carriage House on Feb. 12. It was a blast, the food was great, the bloody marys and mimosas were ridiculous, and our stomachs hurt when we left. As much from the laughter as the copious amounts of food.

See ya next week! I'm looking forward to the next 52.