Category: Profiles

Tony’s Donuts & Lobster Certification Controversy

| Posted in Fisheries, Profiles, People

For this week’s Maine at Work article reporter Ray Routhier makes donuts at Tony’s.

My first question was: When do I flip them? I was hoping for a specific answer, such as “in three minutes.” But I soon learned that Proulx, a 10-year veteran doughnut maker at Tony’s Donuts in Portland, didn’t have a lot of specific answers.

“When they’re done on one side,” was Proulx’s reply to my flipping question.

…and for a good laugh watch this 3-Minute Maine video produced by Down East about making donuts at Tony’s.

Also in today’s Press Herald is a report on the controversy surrounding efforts to get Maine’s lobster fishery certified as a sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council.

“To have somebody in England evaluating our product and our conservation and how we do things doesn’t really cut it,” said Sheila Dassatt, executive director of the Downeast Lobstermen’s Association, which represents about 300 lobstermen along the Maine coast.

Oakhurst Dairy, Who Owns Organic, Ending the Currant Ban, Overfishing Ends

| Posted in Fisheries, Farming, Profiles, People

Also in today’s paper were articles about Oakhurst Dairy and the Bennett family who have run the business since it started in 1921,

“We have been able to stave off being bought by maintaining a strong brand identity. People know what we do and what we stand for,” Oakhurst President and Chief Operating Officer William Bennett said during a tour this week of the Oakhurst production plant on Forest Avenue.

reports on the effort to repeal the ban on growing currants in Maine, and on organic programming at the Maine Agricultural Trades Show,

Lisa Fernandes of Cape Elizabeth, who leads the Portland Permaculture Meetup, is coordinating the effort to get an old Maine law banning Ribes plants repealed. The law was enacted decades ago in an effort to control white pine blister rust, a plant disease that requires both pines and Ribes plants to persist.

and on statements made by the former chief scientist of NOAA’s Fisheries Service that overfishing will end this year,

The projected end of overfishing comes during a turbulent fishing year that has seen New England fishermen switch to a radically new management system. But scientist Steve Murawski said that for the first time in written fishing history, which goes back to 1900, “As far as we know, we’ve hit the right levels, which is a milestone.”

Others!, Bar TV Etiquette and Hot Beverage Culture

| Posted in Profiles, General News

The Portland Daily Sun has published an article about the guiding philosophy of Others! in Monument Square,

“Our mission is in our name. We try to leverage money that comes through here to help as many as we can through Fair Trade coffee and tea and try to have a direct relationship with the growers and farmers,” said McCurtain.

a lesson in bar TV etiquette,

To which he said, “It’s just the way things are done…you ask your neighbor in a bar if you want to switch the channel. You must not go out very much.”

and an article about hot beverages, seasonal and otherwise.

Although we are a soup-eating people, we really don’t have a strong culture of hot beverages. Coffee, tea, hot chocolate and the occasional cider are typically the only hot beverages that you’ll find on menus in this country. Hot broths and savory brews are really a home affair, made to order when it’s bitter cold. The only local exception I’ve found is the buttery rich tea that is served at Korea House.

Barber Foods, From the Land, Linda Bean

| Posted in Farming, Profiles

The Maine Sunday Telegram includes a Q+A with the Executive Director of the Maine Farmland Trust about their new book From the Land: Maine Farmers at Work,

Q: How did this book come about?
A: The idea grew out of the photos. We had a need for the organization to do some basic photography to document some of the work we were doing on different farms. We engaged Bridget for that project, and had no idea that it would develop into something more extensive. We were really impressed with the quality of the photos, and that led to a showing. We have a small gallery at our headquarters, and we have shown the photos there and at a few other places, the Frontier at Brunswick and the statehouse. And that led to the idea of a book. It really was an evolution rather than a plan.

a pair of articles about Barber Foods and the family that has run the business since its founding in 1955,

From here, the Portland-based company, launched 55 years ago from the back of a truck, cooks up 900,000 pounds of frozen prepared food every week, fighting for market share in the $31.7 billion frozen food industry and the roughly $20 billion food service industry. Barber competes with such mega corporations as Tyson Foods, Perdue and ConAgra Foods.

and a business profile of Linda Bean,

Bean spent her first year in the business learning everything Albano could teach her. Today, she said she depends heavily on CEO John Peterdorf’s knowledge of the lobster market. But she is very hands-on in other aspects of the business. She works the crowds at trade shows, dollops lobster into rolls at country fairs and studies the fine print in all her business contracts.

Boston Globe: Boda & Pai Men Miyake

| Posted in Profiles

The Boston Globe Travel section has published an article about a new generation of Asian restaurants in Maine. The article focuses on Boda and Pai Men Miyake in Portland and Long Grain in Camden.

The partners are from northern Thailand and came to Portland by way of Seattle. They opened Boda in February with general manager Katie Boone, who with endless patience sets just the right mood for the front of the house. “We wanted to take the Asian restaurant out of its typical giant menu and giant portions and lots of takeout business Americanized box,’’ says Boone, “to serve Thai food, but to do it in a way that makes sense for Portland.’’