Category: Events

Flea Bites: Mobile Food Fun in Bayside

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A set of food trucks and food carts were at the Portland Flea-for-All for Flea Bites Friday night. Bite into Maine, Gorgeous Gelato, Top Hat Coffee, Pretty Awesome Street Food, and Pizza by Fire participated in the event.

Shown above is Andy Graham, Chairman of the Creative Portland Corporation, buying a lobster roll from Sarah Sutton at Bite into Maine. You may recall that it was an interview with Sarah in the Portland Phoenix and Andy’s focus and energy on the topic that initially put the issue on the city agenda.

Bakery Tours at Standard Baking

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Standard Baking Company will be offering tours behind the scenes tours, baking demonstrations and tasting on noon to 3 pm on October 20th at their shop on Commercial Street. Tours will start every 15 minutes, and are free and open to the public.

Standard is one of 55 bakeries in the country participating in Bread Bakers Guild of America Bakery Open House. Beach Pea Baking Company in Kittery and The Bread Shack in Auburn are also taking part in the Guild’s nationwide open house event.

Taste, Memory by David Buchanan

| Posted in General News, Events, Farming

Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors and Why They Matter, a book by Portland resident, local farmer, and expert on heirloom fruits and vegetables David Buchanan, is being launched later this month.

In his Forward for Taste, Memory Gary Paul Nabhan writes,

Taste, Memory may well be the most beautiful book ever written about food biodiversity and how it has “landed” on earth, in our mouths and in our hearts. Once you have read and digested David’s book, you will never again regard this two-word phrase as an abstraction, but as a essential element of our common food heritage, one that continues to nourish and enrich our lives. In turn, we must nourish it, or it will surely fade away. As Poppy Tooker famously says, “You’ve got to eat it to save it.” Taste, Memory offers the rationale and the inspiration you need to embark upon your own voyage of food discovery.

SPACE Gallery is hosting a launch part for Taste, Memory on October 24.

We’ll set up cider pressing equipment and taste a variety of apple blends, as well as samples of hard ciders from David and Eli’s fermentation experiments (feel free to bring apples if you’d like to press some of your own). David will read passages from his book about collecting rare fruits and working with Eli, and the movement to preserve biodiversity and traditional foods. Acoustic live music by Jake Hoffman and Tyler Leinhardt of Sugar Shack.

A pair of excepts from the book (Seeds of an Idea and The Cider Tree) are available on the publisher’s website.

This Week’s Events: Feastland, Fall Wine Dinner, Kombucha Workshop, Falmouth Kitchen Tour, Food History Lecture, Pocket Brunch, Open Creamery Day

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Wednesday — Carmen at the Danforth is holding a Fall wine dinner, there will be a wine tasting at Rosemont, and the Monument Square Farmers Market is taking place.

Thursday — Urban Farm Fermentory is teaching a Kombucha workshop,  Rosemont is hosting Eleanor Leger for a tasting of dessert ciders from Eden Ice Ciders, Oktoberfest is the theme of the Great Lost Beer’s weekly brewery showcase.

Friday — there will be wine tastings at Rosemont Market and the West End Deli, Roost is having an open house, The Salt Exchange is hosting a bourbon tasting, it’s the first day of the Falmouth Kitchen Tour.

Saturday — SPACE Gallery and Broadturn Farm are producing Feastland, an “evening of seasonal food, site-specific art projects, drinks and entertainment”, there will be wine tastings at LeRoux Kitchen and Browne Trading, Sandy Oliver is giving a Maine Food History talk in Falmouth, it’s the second day of the Falmouth Kitchen Tour, Wine Wise is holding a wine cruise, and the Deering Oaks Farmers Market is taking place.

Sunday — Pocket Brunch #3 (sold out) is taking place, and it’s Open Creamery Day—check this handy map from the Maine Cheese Guild to find a list participating creameries.

Milbrandt Vineyard Dinner — Bar Lola is collaborating with Milbrandt Vineyard on a wine dinner October 23, 5 courses, $75 per person. Butch and Lisa Milbrandt will be at Bar Lola for the dinner.

For more information on these and other upcoming food happenings in the area, visit the event calendar.

If you are holding a food event this week that’s not listed above, publicize it by adding it as a comment to this post.

Pocket Brunch Interview with Joel Beauchamp

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Bangor Daily News blogger Alex Steed has published an interview with Joel Beauchamp about Pocket Brunch.

What is the significance of not revealing the menu ahead of time?
This was a huge decision for us. On our end, Pocket Brunch is about being creative as possible without someone standing over us and telling us not to do this or that. We didn’t want to attract people who had limitations to what they were interested in eating. We wanted people to know about us by word of mouth about the quality of what we are doing. We do some weird stuff, which is fun. When else do you get to do that? Josh doesn’t get to do weird stuff over at 158.

Maine Lobster Competition Preview

| Posted in Events

Today’s Press Herald provides a preview of the Maine Lobster Chef of the Year competition. The cook-off will take place later this month at Harvest on the Harbor.

Bouchard, the executive chef at DiMillo’s on the Water, is coming back for seconds in the Maine Lobster Chef of the Year competition, after her maple butter-poached lobster tail failed to claw its way to the top in the 2009 contest.

“This is our year,” said a determined Bouchard, who will join forces with another DiMillo’s chef, Cliff Pickett. Pickett competed for the title in 2010 with a steamed Maine lobster and sweet corn tamale.

Tickets for the competition are on sale at the Harvest on the Harbor website.

NYT: Common Ground Fair

| Posted in Events, Farming

The New York Times has published an article about last weekend’s Common Ground Fair in Unity Maine.

Organic food may not be feeding the world yet, but it was feeding thousands of people at the Common Ground Country Fair last weekend.

They lined up at 10 a.m. to pay $4 for Steve’s Organic French Fries, made with organic potatoes fried in cold-pressed safflower oil for the vegetarian crowd. Although “beef tallow is better,” said Steve Aucoin, 61, who has been selling fries here since the first fair, in 1977.

BSA Popcorn Cooking Competition

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According to an article in the Bangor Daily News, Chefs from Nosh, Zapoteca, Sea Dog Brewing, Frog & Turtle and Hot Suppa were in Monument Square yesterday for a popcorn cooking contest.

Five of the city’s most popular eateries sent teams to Monument Square on Wednesday afternoon to put gourmet spins on Boy Scout popcorn in an effort to help raise the profile of the organization’s signature fundraising snack. Judges for the light-hearted first Popcorn Bowl were Gonneville, the Pine Tree Council’s top popcorn seller for 2011, WMTW TV news anchor Erin Ovalle, Southern Maine Community College culinary arts program chairman and chef Wil Beriau, and Portland Press Herald food writer Meredith Goad.

Visit Maine a la Carte for all the details on each restaurant’s entry in the competition.

James Tranchemontagne brought his son as his sous chef, and made a Creole popcorn with ground ancho, filo, onion and garlic powder, cumin, salt and pepper, cayenne and smoked paprika.