Category: Events

This Week’s Events: El Rayo Farm Dinner, Cider at Novare Res, Standard Bakery Tours, 188 Freedom Farm Dinner, Harvest in the Hood

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Monday — the first day of Petite Jacqueline’s Le Semaine du Gout as “a celebration of dinning, agriculture and education”. Each night Monday through Friday “will feature a different culinary theme and create a 3-course prix fixe menu”.

Tuesday — Local Sprouts is hosting a Local Foods Networking Breakfast.

Wednesday — El Rayo is offering a prix fixe dinner to showcase the farms they work with, Margaret Hathaway and Karl Schatz will be at El Rayo to sign copies of their new book Portland Maine Chef’s Table, and the Monument Square Farmers Market is taking place.

Thursday — The Great Lost Bear is showcasing beers from Peaks Organic.

Friday — Novare Res is featuring 30+ ciders from North America and Europe as well as a selection of pumpkin ales, Rosemont on Brighton is holding a wine tasting.

Saturday — As part of Bread Bakers Guild of America Bakery Open House Standard Baking will be giving behind the scenes tours, Local 188 is organizing a 5-course dinner at Freedom Farm as a benefit for the Portland Farmers Market, author David Buchanan will be holding a book signing for Taste, Memory at his farm in Cape Elizabeth, Sea Change is teaching a seafood cooking class, a Harvest Festival to benefit Broadturn Farm’s Long Barn Educational Initiative is taking place, a wine tasting is taking place at Browne Trading, and the Deering Oaks Farmers Market is taking place.

Sunday — Rosemont Market is gathering East Ender, Local Sprouts, Flatbread, Bunker Brewing, Devenish Wines and UFF for the Harvest in the Hood street party. The founders of Blue Bottle will be at Tandem Coffee for a book signing.

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.

This Week’s Events: Cooking for Crowds, Beekeepers, Hunter Harvest Dinner, Wine Cruise, Slow Food Potluck

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Wednesday — the Monument Square Farmers Market is taking place.

Thursday — The University of Maine Cooperative Extension is teaching a class on food safety when cooking for crowds, and The Great Lost Bear is showcasing pumpkin beers from several breweries.

Saturday — the Maine State Beekeepers Association is holding their annual meeting where speakers include State Apiarist Tony Jadczak and celebrity beekeeper Michael Bush, Bard Coffee co-owner Bob Garver will be speaking at the Mid-Atlantic & Northeast Coffee Conference taking place in Rhode Island, the Peaks Island Gastro Society is holding a 7-course hunter harvest dinner, and the Deering Oaks Farmers Market is taking place.

Sunday — Wine Wise is leading and Italian wine cruise and Slow Food Portland is holding a potluck dinner as a send-off for this year’s Portland delegates to the Slow Food’s International Terra Madre event.

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. Call (207) 775-5652 for reservations.

Vignola Wine Dinner — Vignola is holding a wine dinner in collaboration with Podere Ciona Estate and Vineyards later this month on October 26. $75 per person. Call (207) 772-1330 for reservations.

Eve’s Caviar Dinner — Eve’s will be holding their annual Caviar Dinner on October 26. 4 course, $120 per person.

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 @ Broadturn Farm

| Posted in Events, Pocket Brunch

The October edition of Pocket Brunch took place earlier today at Broadturn Farm. Coffee by Tandem, creative cocktails by Nathaniel Meikleljohn (imagine ginger-infused Hendrick’s with cucumber-wasabi puree, lime juice, ginger beer and siracha ice cubes) and fresh pressed cider accompanied premeal bites: cider donut holes, mini-muffins with goat cheese frosting and walnuts, and small buckets of fresh cooked bacon.

With preliminaries completed everyone headed into the barn where two long communal tables were set for the main meal:

  • Salad: a communal pile of fresh and pickled Broadturn vegetables paired with anchovy dust and a smoked onion dip
  • Soup: a broth of ham and toasted hay enriched with acorns, roasted garlic and parsley
  • Egg: a miniature omlet resting on a birds nest of potato sticks with breakfast mayo tamago, local mushroom, house ketchup and nasturtium leaves
  • Meat: a pork sausage corndog with a sweet potato and local berry dipping sauces
  • Dessert: gingerbread with rum caramel pear buttermilk ice cream which as a suprise were served up in clay pots filled with “potting soil” that had served as table decorations

The menu was a collaboration of Joel Beauchamp, Josh Potocki, and guest chef Karl Deuben. This was an astoundingly good meal and the room showed its appreciation with a standing ovation for the chefs and event organizer Katie Schier-Potocki during the gap between the last two courses.

A photographer from Portland Magazine was there as was Zwickerhill Photography and nearly everyone seemed to grabbing shots on their iPhones. I’ll add links here to other photo sets as they get put online.

UPDATE: David Zwickerhill has posted a large set of photos from the event online, and so has Shel Doyle.

 

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.