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.
Outdoor Eats at The Porthole and Silly's
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.
Outdoor Eats at The Porthole and Silly’s
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.
Immigrant Kitchens: Vietnamese Fried Spring Rolls
Immigrant Kitchens met up with Suu Lee Martin, originally from Ho Chi Minh City, to learn how to make Vietnamese Fried Spring Rolls (intro, photos, recipe).
When you get Vietnamese spring roll lessons from Suu Le Martin, you learn they’re basically ground pork, really thin rice noodles, carrot, salt, sugar, pepper, onion, and egg, wrapped up in special paper and deep fried. But by the time you’re chomping into the crispy, hot, handheld treat, you understand she also did something else: she took sheer human love, wrapped it in courage and glued it all together with a scramble of prayers.
Review of Caiola's
Edible Obsessions has published a review of Caiola’s.
I am going to start simply by laying out the fact that I am undeniably and absolutely in love with Caiola’s. I am biased from the second my hands hit the keyboard and I am more than ok with that. Truth be told, in spite of what my friend Kate says, they serve up the best brunch in town (or within at least a 50-mile radius) and we haven’t gone to another spot since they started serving it over two years ago.
Review of Caiola’s
Edible Obsessions has published a review of Caiola’s.
I am going to start simply by laying out the fact that I am undeniably and absolutely in love with Caiola’s. I am biased from the second my hands hit the keyboard and I am more than ok with that. Truth be told, in spite of what my friend Kate says, they serve up the best brunch in town (or within at least a 50-mile radius) and we haven’t gone to another spot since they started serving it over two years ago.
Figa Water Line
According to the restaurant’s Facebook wall, a date has finally been set (september 13-15) for installing the new water line at Figa. Access to a water supply has been the essential missing ingredient holding up the opening of the restaurant.
The Locavorian Lunch Tray
The Natural Foodie column in today’s Press Herald is on the strides made by school systems in bringing locally grown food and freshly prepared food to the student lunch trays.
One of the most visible changes in Portland this year is the addition of fruit and vegetable buffets at all nine elementary schools.
Less visible is the drive to make more dishes in-house and rely less on processed food.
“We’ve made pretty big strides in bringing scratch-made food back to Portland schools,” Adams said. “We still serve chicken nuggets once a month, but now we do breaded drumsticks made in-house and baked red potatoes instead of tater tots.”
NYT: the Maine Kneading Conference
The New York Times Dining section visited the 2010 Kneading Conference that took place this Summer in Skowhegan and reports on the expanding capacity to grow and process local wheat, in Maine and elsewhere.
The Kneading Conference is part of a quiet revolution whose center is Skowhegan, a town in central Maine that produced enough grain in the 1830s to feed 100,000 people. As interest in local food has risen, federal and state agriculture departments are underwriting experiments to find the best varieties of wheat, and artisanal bakers are eagerly trying the flours they produce. But it is the conference that has helped turn the scattered movement into the next new thing for locavores, and the practical topics discussed this year — building more gristmills, making old farm manuals available — reveal its progress from infancy to adolescence.
Rare Apples in the Sun
Today’s edition of the Portland Daily Sun reports on Out on a Limb, a rare apple CSA that’s starting its second year this Fall.
The Rare Apple CSA took root at Super Chilly Farm in Palermo, where “John Bunker and Cammy Watts grow apples, pears, plums and cherries on Super Chilly Farm in Palermo,” according to their website. “Founded in 1972, the farm’s specialty is a collection of rare and historic apple varieties, at last count well over 200. Many of the varieties originated in Maine, from York County to The County. John and Cammy think of the farm less as a commercial orchard and more as a repository for rare and endangered varieties.”