Category: General News

The weekend edition of the Portland Daily Sun reports on an effort to allow community gardens to run farm stands that sell to the general public.

The planning board will review a proposed draft that would allow produce sales as follows: “A single produce stand shall be permitted on the premises of a community garden for the sale of flowers, vegetables, herbs or fruit produced on the premises; provided that the stand is no more than two hundred (200) square feet in floor area, and that sales are limited to two days per week between the hours of 9:00 am and 6:00 pm during the growing season from June 15 through October 15…”

and an article about G & R DiMillo’s new Great Bite Hope challenge meal which consists of 2 1-lb meatballs and 2 pounds of spaghetti.

Those with eyes bigger than their stomachs will face no shortage of embarrassments should they fail to finish the meal. DiMillo said that the restaurant will feature a wall of shame with photos of the gastro-poseurs, who along with the shame of it all have to pay the $22.95 bill.

The Portland Phoenix bids farewell to the Summer tourists and welcomes Fall as a season for the rest of us.

Perhaps we’ll see you again on your way back from apple-picking and leaf-peeping, but for the next few weeks Maine is wide open to those of us who braved summer traffic jams and regular denials from our favorite restaurants for attempting to dine on a weekend night without a reservation. But it was well worth the aggravation, because these next few weeks promise all those things that tourists come to Maine for — and more.

The Maine Observer has published a piece about the Portland Farmers Market.

Located directly across from the Portland Public Library and surrounded by the high-standing buildings of corporate offices, the market is hard to miss. You know you’ve entered it when you see the reusable shopping bags decorated with cheerful images of trees and animals. Stamped messages like “I am a plastic bottle” or “I am earth-wise” gloss over the underlying goal of buying and grown locally: to personally meet your food’s producer and to pollute less.

The weekend market is taking place this morning in Deering-Oaks Park and will be there until noon. For more information on the market, visit their website.

Dean’s Sweets won top honors in both the Best Truffle and Best Traditional Chocolates categories as well as placing in four other categories at the 2010 Boston Luxury Chocolate Salon.
Gifford’s Ice Cream won 1st place at the 2010 World Dairy Expo in the category for Regular Chocolate Ice Cream, according to a report in Maine Ahead magazine.

Gifford’s Ice Cream (www.giffordsicecream.com), central Maine’s third-generation family ice cream business, swept the competition at the 2010 World Dairy Expo, earning not only the title of “World’s Best Chocolate” for the third time, but also being recognized as “Grade A & Ice Cream Grand Champion,” besting the entire Championship Dairy Product category, considered a coup in industry circles.

An article in today’s Sun seeks to explain/describe Women Who Lunch.

Major metropolitan areas are their natural habitat, but evolution and sharp environmental adaptation skills have been kind to them. Those at the top of the socio-economic food chain are endangered, but for the most part, they can thrive almost anywhere there are two or more of them. They are Women Who Lunch (WWL).

This week’s Phoneix includes their annual Student Survival Guide. The guide is packed with eating advice for the college set such as 5 Bars to Drink at When You’re Nearly Broke and 4 Places to Go for Food at 3 am.

An article in Wednesday’s Portland Daily Sun writes about outdoor eating in Portland with special attention paid to The Porthole and Silly’s. For a complete (I think) list of outdoor eating spots in Portland see this list on PFM.

An endless summer doesn’t appeal to everyone, and even I look forward to pulling out my oversized sweaters, roasting freshly carved pumpkin seeds with different spices, and hitting the Cumberland County Fair to ogle the pies and bovines. It’s the change of seasons that makes each individual one so tasty; but for now, as Springsteen says, I’m going to keep “drinkin’ warm beer in the soft summer rain” as long as Mother Nature will allow.