Category: People

Hayward’s Maine Fresh Seafood Pies & the Local RootZ Project

| Posted in Cooking, People

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an interview with Fore Street’s chef Sam Hayward about his new line of Maine Fresh seafood pies,

“It took months of trials – mostly down here at Fore Street in my spare time, and also in my home – to come up with a format that worked for different seafoods, and we settled on four species that are harvested locally,” Hayward said. “So there are Maine shrimp, Maine scallops, Maine lobster and rock crab.”

and a profile of a Portland couple who have just finished a year of eating locally and blogging about it,

On the first day of the local eating adventure, Fuller and Madison showed this isn’t a deprivation diet. Their meals that day included a kale, onion, Gouda and goat cheese omelet with home fries for breakfast and a dinner of boiled lobster, roasted red beets and parsnips complemented by a wheat berry salad with delicata squash.

Chef Bob Smith, 49

| Posted in People

Members of the Portland and broader Maine food communities are mourning the loss of Bob Smith. The Locavore column in today’s Portland Daily Sun is a remembrance of Bob.

Generous, vivacious, energetic, hilarious; those words come quickly when people speak of Bob Smith.

“I see him in his white t-shirt with a flannel shirt over it, jeans and a pair of clogs, moving a million miles an hour. His goatee, perfectly parted hair and those signature eyebrows. Nobody had more passion for life than Bob had,” said Marc Doiron who worked with him at the Commissary, the lunch and dinner eatery at the Portland Public Market.

A Passages article on Bob appeared in today’s Press Herald,

“He was brilliant, funny, and had a huge heart,” Wright said. “Bob’s motto was, ‘Food is love,’ and there was more than enough of it wherever he was.”

Steven Gerlach, his friend for the past 31 years, remembered Mr. Smith on Monday as a “beautiful and joyous man” who had a deep appreciation for “beauty in the world.”

and the Maine Cheese Guild also posted a small notice about Bob this weekend,

This is a shock – a loss of one of our own…Terribly sad – such a sweet guy and wonderful cheesemaker.

Jack Rosen

| Posted in People

Jack Rosen passed away on Sunday. Rosen was a long-time fixture at Full Belly Deli working along with his son David who is the restaurant’s owner. Today’s Press Herald includes a Passages article on Rosen and an obituary.

His son said it was his father’s dream to open a deli. He said customers expected to see him there – even those who he insulted for ordering a sandwich wrong.

“It’s inappropriate to order corned beef or pastrami on white bead,” his son said. “He wouldn’t let them do it. He told them to order a different bread and they listened.”

Winter Markets & Terry Thiese

| Posted in General News, People

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an article on Portland area winter farmers markets,

“As long as the (Monday) meeting goes well, we’ll be in the Irish Heritage Center starting Jan. 8,” said Lauren Pignatello of Swallowtail Farm, who is one of the coordinators of the Portland Winter Market and a vendor at the Brunswick Winter Market. “We’ll have lots of winter greens, root vegetables, cheese, yogurt, kefir, hard salami, pork, beef, chicken, lamb, rabbit, tempeh, bread, eggs, apples and flower bulbs.”

and an Appel on Wine column about wine guru Terry Thiese. Thiese will be in Portland Tuesday for a book signing with Rabelais and a sold out dinner at Bar Lola.

This is simultaneously the hardest and easiest column for me to write. Easy because it concerns Terry Theise, my personal wine hero (and writing hero, and life hero), and I have waited a long time for the opportunity to write publicly about him. Hard because the stakes are so high: if I fail to convince you to form a long-term relationship with Theise’s work, then I wonder why I speak about wine at all.

Winter Markets & Terry Thiese

| Posted in People, General News

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an article on Portland area winter farmers markets,

“As long as the (Monday) meeting goes well, we’ll be in the Irish Heritage Center starting Jan. 8,” said Lauren Pignatello of Swallowtail Farm, who is one of the coordinators of the Portland Winter Market and a vendor at the Brunswick Winter Market. “We’ll have lots of winter greens, root vegetables, cheese, yogurt, kefir, hard salami, pork, beef, chicken, lamb, rabbit, tempeh, bread, eggs, apples and flower bulbs.”

and an Appel on Wine column about wine guru Terry Thiese. Thiese will be in Portland Tuesday for a book signing with Rabelais and a sold out dinner at Bar Lola.

This is simultaneously the hardest and easiest column for me to write. Easy because it concerns Terry Theise, my personal wine hero (and writing hero, and life hero), and I have waited a long time for the opportunity to write publicly about him. Hard because the stakes are so high: if I fail to convince you to form a long-term relationship with Theise’s work, then I wonder why I speak about wine at all.

Vegan Thanksgiving, Box Wine and Brett DeBlieck

| Posted in Wine, People, General News

The Food & Dining section of today’s Press Herald includes advice on cooking a vegan Thanksgiving dinner.

In recent years, supermarkets have been flooded with processed vegan foods. And while faux meat products such as Tofurky and Celebration Roast can work in a pinch, you’ll satisfy more people at your table when you go the scratch-cooking route.

Also in today’s paper is a declaration by the Appel on Wine column that you can get good wine from a box and a Q+A with sous chef Brett DeBlieck.

Meat at Work, Red Crab, John Martin

| Posted in People, Fisheries

Today’s Press Herald includes a feature story about the red crab fishery,

He owns the majority of the handful of permits allowed to catch deep-sea red crab — a fishery valued at $2.4 million to $4.2 million a year between 2004 and 2008, according to the New England Fishery Management Council. Williams owns the dominant share of the crab fishing fleet and has just opened his own deep-sea red crab processing plant.

a Maine at Work article where reporter Ray Routhier learns to butcher meat at Fresh Approach,

We started the morning cutting some New York strip steaks, which would sell for $9.99 a pound. McCourt put the hunk of meat on the cutting table and handed me a knife — it looked more like a machete to me. It was about 2 feet long, with a curved blade.

and an obituary of John P. Martin,

Martin is probably best known in the Portland area for his restaurants, such as the Merry Manor in South Portland and the Art Gallery in downtown Portland, which operated for many years.