This Week’s Events: UFF Workshops, Cookie Swap, Pig Butchering, Viva Lebowski, Beekeeping Classes

| Posted in Events

Wednesday — a hard cider workshop will be held at the Urban Farm Fermentory.

Thursday — an mead workshop will be held at the Urban Farm Fermentory, and The Great Lost Bear is showcasing Smuttynose Brewing.

Friday — there will be a wine tasting at the West End Deli.

Saturday — the 2nd Annual Viva Lebowski festival is taking place at Bayside Bowl.

Sunday — Rabelais is holding their 4th Annual Cookie Swap, Nate Brimmer from the Giant’s Belly Farm is teaching a pig butchering workshop at Local Sprouts, and the 20/20 wine charity event is scheduled to take place at Five Fifty-Five.

Beekeeping Classes — The Honey Exchange will be teaching a set of beekeeping classes January, February and March of next year. Visit thehoneyexchange.com for more details.

For more information on these and other upcoming food happenings in the area, visit the event calendar.

If you are holding a food event this week that’s not listed above, publicize it by adding it as a comment to this post.

Review of Zapoteca

| Posted in Reviews

The Portland Phoenix has published a review of Zapoteca.

Zapoteca inherited a brick oven from the previous tenants, and they use it to good effect in their entrées — for example to roast four kinds of enchiladas. We tried a version filled with very tender white chicken and jack cheese. What we liked best about this dish is that they were not afraid to really bring the goopy sauce. In this case it was creamy tomatilla sauce that was a bit like a green-chili stroganoff.

Celebrity Coffee

| Posted in Profiles

LiveWork Portland has put together a select list of coffee shops in Portland.

Perhaps the current epicenter of Portland’s Coffee Universe is Bard, at the corner of Middle and Exchange streets. Here’s where budding entrepreneurs set up shop early in the morning, laptops open and buzzing, conducting business all day long. There are some obligatory sofas at Bard, but the crackle of commerce (or, at least, intense discussions) is in the air. If Bard were a movie actor, it’d be George Clooney.

Dining Out on Thanksgiving

| Posted in General News

Today’s Portland Daily Sun explores why people dine out for Thanksgiving.

For those heading out, the numbers are telling, and aside from the convenience factor, the NRA states consumers’ reasons for dining out on Thanksgiving are: Because people are traveling and don’t have the ability to cook (22 percent), they prefer to go to restaurants on special occasions (15 percent), somebody else is hosting and they prefer to dine out (15 percent), and they don’t have enough space to host a Thanksgiving event (12 percent).

Check the PFM Thanksgiving Resource Guide for a list of local restaurants serving Thanksgiving dinner.

Processing Oversized Lobsters Allowed

| Posted in Fisheries

According to a report in today’s Press Herald, a rules change will now allow Maine lobster companies to process oversized lobsters.

The new rules roll back restrictions that had forced Maine lobster processors to follow the same size limits as the state’s fishermen, even on lobsters caught outside the state. They allow the processors to turn the oversized lobsters, most of which come from Canada, into products sold to restaurants and retailers.