Category: General News

Hannaford has eliminated trans fat from their house brands.

The Scarborough-based grocery chain modified the recipes of 295 products over the past year to remove the fats, which help in the production and preservation of processed foods but clog the arteries of people who eat them.

The Portland Daily Sun has published an interview with Guy and Stella Hernandez on their purchase of the Hilltop Coffee Shop.

Deciding whether to expand seating in the cozy shop and offer live music are things the new owners have yet to decide on. “We don’t really know potential of space yet, but we wouldn’t rule anything out,” said Stella. “We want to figure out who our customers are, and what they like about it.”

The Portland Daily Sun has published an interview with Guy and Stella Hernandez on their purchase of the Hilltop Coffee Shop.

Deciding whether to expand seating in the cozy shop and offer live music are things the new owners have yet to decide on. “We don’t really know potential of space yet, but we wouldn’t rule anything out,” said Stella. “We want to figure out who our customers are, and what they like about it.”

According to today’s Press Herald, Tracy Reiman from PETA has written a letter to Governor Baldacci to object to his efforts to convert the Stinson sardine cannery to a lobster processing plant.

“Can the cruelty,” Reiman urged the governor, “and turn Stinson into a cannery for Maine’s famous wild blueberries instead.”

To which Baldacci spokesman David Farmer, who heard about the letter for the first time Tuesday, tactfully replied, “But what about the blueberries?”

Today’s Press Herald reports on a research to better understand the lifecycle of alewives which are an important bait fish for lobstermen,

Like the Atlantic salmon and other anadromous fish, which live in salt water but return to freshwater rivers and lakes to spawn, the alewife population has declined drastically. In the late 1950s, 70 million pounds of river herring were being landed along the East Coast annually, compared with fewer than 1 million pounds today. Researchers are trying to understand what is causing the decline.

and an article on elimination of restrictions on producing lobster products,

Tens of millions of pounds of Maine-caught lobster are shipped each year to Canada, where they are turned into value-added products that can be processed there — but not in Maine. A new law taking effect this summer aims to even out the playing field for processors and marketers.

Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram reports that the Bangs Island Mussel aquaculture business is up for sale.

Olson, of South Portland, is selling his 10-year-old Bangs Island Mussels farm off Clapboard Island, believed to be the first commercial rope-grown mussel operation on the East Coast. Olson is focusing full time instead on his seaweed venture, Ocean Approved, which is one of the first, if not the only, cultivated kelp businesses in the country.

Olson is hoping his mussel farm will catch the eye of an enterprising Mainer who can see the advantages of working on the open water rather than in a cubicle.

Food writer Margo Mallar reports on her recent visits to Asmara and The Merry Table in today’s Portland Daily Sun.

On Friday we returned to an old favorite, Asmara, the Eritrean restaurant on Oak Street between Congress and Free street.  The dishes are served on injera, a pancake made from teff, a grain that is native to the Ethiopian highlands…Injera doubles as a utensil; you tear off small pieces to use like little gloves to grasp the chunky bits of the stew and to scoop up the broth-soaked injera beneath.

The Portland Maine Facebook page has been gathering feedback on last night’s No Reservations show on Maine. 111 comments and counting.