Category: General News

The Bollard reports that Fresh Approach Market is at risk of closing due to an administrative issue that’s impacted their ability to process food stamp EBT transactions.

Federal authorities have pulled the food-stamp retail license of a mom-and-pop neighborhood market in Portland’s West End due to what appears to be an administrative snafu at the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), which administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Congresswoman Chellie Pingree’s office is attempting to rectify the situation, but without a speedy resolution, the market’s owners say they may not make it through the month.

Fresh Approach is located at 155 Brackett St. They’re open Monday through Friday, 8 am – 7 pm, Saturday 9 am – 7 pm, and Sunday 9 am – 5 pm.

Update: A GoFundMe has been launched to raise funds to help Fresh Approach while they regain their ability to process food stamp transactions.

Mrs. Gee Free Living (website, instagram) has published a guide to gluten-free food and drink in Maine and New Hampshire.

It includes 19 fully gluten-free establishments like Bam Bam Bakery and Lucky Pigeon Brewing, as well as dozens of other places that offer gluten-free options and resources like dedicated GF fryers.

Kaitlin Gee expects to update the guide on a quarterly basis.

Two Maine businesses are looking for your votes:

Allison Lakin from Lakin’s Gorges Cheeses is being considered as an Entrepreneur of Impact with the chance to win a $25,000 grant, mentorship with Daymond John of Shark Tank, and an appearance in Forbes magazine. You can vote up to once per day at the entrepreneurofimpact.org website.

The Canopy Hotel in Portland has been nominated in the Travel & Leisure World’s Best Awards 2025. You can cast a vote for them on wba.m-rr.com and be entered for a “chance to win a $15,000 cash prize or a Viking cruise for 2 people to Australia & New Zealand.”

Eat Drink Lucky is once again offering a Maine artist tea towel subscription for the coming year. Each month subscribers will receive a tea towel designed by a different Maine artists—see the EDL website for a list of partners.

Subscriptions are available in 3-month increments for the full year. The New York Times has included the Eat Drink Lucky subscription in their 2024 Gift Guide.

The photo above shows an assortment of towels from the 2024 subscription.

The Press Herald has published a report on the free Thanksgiving meal program that Taj restaurant has run for the last four years. This year the owner Sai Guntaka and his family were on track to hand out 1000+ meals.

The restaurant was providing food for all on Thursday, whether customers could pay or not. By early afternoon, owner Sai Guntaka said Taj was on track to give away between 1,000 and 1,200 free meals by the end of the day, in addition to the hundreds of meals they served to paying customers.

The James Beard Foundation posted an open call for recommendations from industry professionals and the general public earlier this fall. The deadline for everyone to send in their submissions is coming up on November 29th.

If there’s an exceptional food or drink business or hospitality professional you want to see win a Beard Award then visit jamesbeardawards.awardsplatform.com to create an account and send in a submission on their behalf.

For reference here’s:

• a list of the chef and restaurant awards categories
• an overview of the overall awards process
• a list of past award winners, nominees and semifinalists from Maine

The Maine Center for Entrepreneurs held their biennial Food Producers Showcase today at Thompson’s Point. The event included dozens of Maine companies from oyster farms to bakeries to packaged good producers like Pen and Cob Farm and Ragged Coast Chocolates. The MCE announced the winners of the three Golden Fork Awards:

• Parlor Ice Cream won Retail Best in Show for their Salty Toffee Ice Cream
• Grandy Organics won Best New Products for their Peanut Butter Coconola
• Fishermen’s Net won Foodservice Best in Show for their Maine Seared Scallops

The latest episode of Maine Calling on Maine Public Radio focuses on Maine’s Food businesses. Panelists and callers include representatives from FocusMaine, the Maine Department of Agriculture, the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs and callers from Tootie’s Tempeh, Maine Harvest, CEI and more.

Practical Pomology: A Field Guide, a new book guide for identifying and describing apples is now available to pre-order on Kickstarter. The 150-page book explains how to differentiate between seedling and grafted trees, how to recognize and name the various features of the apple, and includes anatomical photographs of the thirty-four varieties (Saint Lawrence shown below) that most commonly grow in historic orchards. The books is extensively illustrated with photos an drawings.

Practical Pomology has been written by Sean Turley, a Portland-based apple author, historian, photographer, cidermaker, forager and the creator of The Righteous Russet instagram account. Turley worked extensively with Maine’s preeminent apple expert John Bunker on writing the book, as well as with designers, artists, and photographers to bring the subject to life.

Apples are everywhere; so are books about apples. But despite the extraordinary quantity and quality of tomes about pomes, no text has ever been printed that provides a comprehensive, systematic approach to describing and identifying historic varieties of apples—let alone one that condenses the foundational work by pomologists over the last couple of centuries into a simple-to-follow, practical resource for the expert and novice alike.

Practical Pomology: A Field Guide aims to fill that void. Across its pages, you will be taught how to recognize and differentiate between seedling and grafted trees; describe and classify the anatomical features of the apple; and identify and distinguish among the varieties most commonly found in historic orchards. It is a resource that can be pulled off the shelf when deciphering descriptions of lost varieties in antiquated texts and a portable manual you can toss in your backpack when heading out into the field. Whether you are new to pomology or an old hand at describing and identifying pomes, this book should prove to be an indispensable resource.

You can pre-order your copy of Practical Pomology on Kickstarter now through December 14th. The book is expected to go to print in early January and be shipped to customers in mid-March.