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.

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.”

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.

According to a report in today’s Press Herald, the Stonyfield Cafe is headed to the US Open to sell their eats to hungry tennis fans.

Sports fans at the 2010 U.S. Open in New York City will be able to dine on the normal sports venue fare, from hot dogs to burgers, pizza and ice cream.

But they’ll also be able to partake in healthy parfaits, flatbread sandwiches, cold soups and salads from Maine’s own Stonyfield Cafe.

In a new twist on the bake sale concept, vegan/gluten-free bakery Cakeface is using the web to raise capital and expand operations. (via Avery Yale Kamila)