Today’s Press Herald reports on efforts to bring the Monday Farmers Market back to life,
Farmers on the wait list said they won’t come on Mondays because no customers attend. They can’t afford to take time from planting and harvesting to travel downtown and not sell anything. Likewise, customers won’t come on Mondays because no farmers attend.
It’s a self-defeating cycle, but a group of immigrant farmers will soon try to revive the Monday market. Dawud Ummah, president of the Center for African-American Heritage, is coordinating the effort.
an article about tequila featuring staff from Zapoteca,
For a lot of people, sitting in front of a line of three shots of tequila might conjure some flashbacks involving a pinch of salt, a lemon wedge and a pounding headache. But the shots that come in a flight of tequila at Zapoteca, a new Mexican restaurant and tequileria in Portland, are meant to be sipped and savored like a fine single malt Scotch, not downed in one gulp by a drunken college student.
and an article about the macrobiotic diet and the macrobiotic cooking classes at Five Season Cooking School,
The school is run by Lisa Silverman, and it hosts frequent visits from well-known macrobiotic teachers.
Next week, Jessica Porter, a former Portland resident and author of “The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics,” will teach a class at the school. At the end of September, internationally acclaimed macrobiotic educator Warren Kramer will come to the school to offer a lecture and teach a class.
I find it rather appalling that the coordinator of the two busy Portland Farmer Markets doesn’t a Monday Market because it would draw business away from those markets! Is he pissed because there’s now a South Portland FM? What if Westbrook gets one going?
Neither one of the two existing Portland markets can really be expanded in their present locations without doing something radical, say kicking the crafters and musicians out. (That would be a very bad idea.) So expanding to another day of the week is going to have to happen. And it sounds like these new farmers might be the way to make it work.