Category: Profiles

Maine Cookbooks, Becoming a Vegan, Old Port Wine Merchants

| Posted in General News, Profiles, Cooking

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an article about 3 new Maine cookbooks,

Here’s a first look at the Standard Baking Book, followed by the latest on Maine home cooking from food writer and food historian Sandy Oliver, and a new cookbook featuring nearly 50 Portland restaurants from Margaret Hathaway and Karl Schatz.

a guide to eating vegan (with restaurant recommendations),

In the past month, I’ve had a host of people – old and young, men and women, professional chefs and novice cooks – ask for advice on how to eat a totally plant-based diet.

So it must be time to provide a basic starter kit on eating vegan in Maine.

and a profile of the Old Port Wine Merchants.

Owner Jacques de Villier loves wine and cigars but his true passion is people, and that’s what makes him the shopkeeper’s shopkeeper. He’s old school. Plenty of people open stores because they love their product or want money, but neither the product nor the cash is the heart and soul of it. Anyone who doesn’t like de Villier is a wretched misanthrope who needs serious professional help.

Grace Interview

| Posted in Profiles

Love & Lobster has published an interview with Grace.

L&L: We love your fun cocktail names and Maine-themed menu.  Does your menu change often?  Do you take special requests for rehearsal dinners and weddings as well?
GRACE: Our menu changes constantly. We try to utilize as many local ingredients as possible and work with farmers and other local purveyors in order to do so. We do have a lot of special requests, from signature cocktails to cakes in the shape of a stack of pancakes for one couple that got engaged over a special breakfast.

Interview with Dean’s Sweets

| Posted in Profiles

Kristin Thalheimer Bingham and Dean Bingham are the subject in an article in today’s Press Herald about how they balance between the work at the chocolate shop and their other jobs.

Kristin Thalheimer Bingham so easily moves from the role of textbook editor to fitness instructor to business coach that the notion of starting a chocolate shop with her husband, Dean Bingham, appeared almost effortless. Dean Bingham, a self-taught chocolatier and the name behind Dean’s Sweets, also works as an architect.

 

Wine Cellar Dining & Mushroom Hunting

| Posted in Profiles, Farming

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an article about Dan Agro, an expert in foraging for edible and medicinal mushrooms,

After we make our way to the base of the birch tree, we gaze high above our heads at two dark, misshapen knots protruding from either side of the white bark. We all ponder the same question: is the growth the sought-after medicinal mushroom known as chaga or is it a wooden burl?

and an article on the wine cellar dining rooms at Caiola’s and the White Barn Inn.

Just last week, Caiola’s hosted a wedding in the cellar. It’s also been used for business meetings, birthday celebrations, marriage proposals, and lots of rehearsal dinners. “With the music going,” Vaccaro said, “it’s pretty romantic.”

Tandem Coffee Roasters

| Posted in Profiles

LiveWork Portland has published a profile of Tandem Coffee Roasters,

While Portland already has a wealth of high-quality local coffee shops, the trio noted that there weren’t many roasters focused on high-end wholesale coffee for the city’s restaurants, and they moved here early this spring with plans to establish their own roasting company in a year or two. But when a real estate broker showed them the mid-century brick industrial building on Anderson Street — a former office for a scrap metal recycling business — they decided to go for it, and open up a small retail coffee shop of their own in the light-filled corner room at the front of the building.

Check the LiveWork Portland blog later today for a profile of Tandem’s East Bayside neighbor Bunker Brewing.

Spring Day Creamery Visit

| Posted in Profiles

Vrai-lean-uh has published a report of her visit to Spring Day Creamery.

[Owner] Sarah [Spring] makes both cow and goat milk cheeses, pasteurized and non-pasteurized, and gets her milk from a few different nearby Maine dairies. She produces mostly traditional French cheeses, with some forays and experiments. What struck me the most about her, and I think part of why I enjoyed our visit so much, was her palpable passion and enthusiasm and curiosity for the craft. You don’t make these cheeses accidentally: they are fussy and demanding and particular.

Strawberries Squared & Kids Gone Raw

| Posted in Profiles, Cooking, Farming

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald has an article on strawberries which includes recipes from 3 Portland chefs, a guide to farms where you can pick your own strawberries, details strawberry dishes on the menu at local restaurants, a calendar of strawberry festivals in Maine and info on a strawberry jam making class taught by Kate McCarty.

“My advice to people is to get out a little earlier this year to get what you want, and certainly call the farmer ahead of time to see how things are going,” David Handley, a small-fruit specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, said in an interview after last week’s stretch of hot weather. “I’ve been out in the fields for the last couple of days, and I’ve been amazed how two days of temperatures approaching the 90s will ripen strawberries so quickly.”

The season started a little early as well, anywhere from a week ahead of schedule to just a day or two, depending on the location of the farm.

Also in today’s paper is an article about Kids Gone Raw,

Sensing an opportunity, Knowles quickly contacted her friend Elizabeth Fraser, who runs the Girl Gone Raw cooking school in Portland. Over lunch at Local Sprouts Cooperative Cafe, the two came up with the idea of a raw foods cookbook filled with kid-friendly recipes.

The book is now written and the pair is in the process of determining which publisher they want to work with…In the meantime, the two are busy creating a line of raw vegan foods for children, making appearances at events and teaching classes.

MOOMilk

| Posted in Profiles, Farming

NPR’s food blog, The Salt, has published an article about MOOMilk.

Now, things are looking up, albeit modestly. MOOMilk has been picked up by Whole Foods and Hannaford’s, as well as by a swath of small purveyors across northern New England. Even with demand for organic milk booming, though, the cooperative is struggling to push past 5,000 gallons in weekly sales.