SOUTH PORTLAND – The South Portland Planning Board voted unanimously Tuesday to allow the Maine Mall to bring its farmers market out of the parking lot and into center court for its sophomore season, which opens Friday. “So, last time did not work out, I gather?” asked Planning Board member Caroline Hendry. “That’s one way to look at it,” said the mall’s general manager, Craig Gorris. “We thought there would be a little more synergy next to Hannaford in what we call our festival lot. That was probably a miscalculation on our part. It wasn’t the ideal location.” Among the issues, Gorris admitted the expanse of pavement, while also reflecting summer heat onto shoppers and vendors, did not present the agricultural feel one normally associates with a farmers market. A lack of surrounding trees also left the vendors open to the vagaries of the wind, he said. “There are a couple of returning vendors who remember their tents falling down a few times [from the wind],” said the mall’s marketing manager, Stefanie Millette, on Monday. “They don’t have to deal with that this year, so they’re very excited about the move inside.” (read more at Weekly Observer)
The rumors are true: The Lost Kitchen, the acclaimed locavore restaurant opened by Chef Erin French in late 2011 in downtown Belfast has officially closed it doors. Almost immediately, however, another restaurant has sprung up to take its place: The Gothic, which will offer locally inspired food and drink on, is set to open Friday, June 7. Even more tantalizingly, chef Matthew Kenney, a Searsport native and part-time Belfast resident who is internationally renowned for his take on raw and vegan food, will be the one opening The Gothic – named for the old coffee shop that was located at 108 Main St. until the mid-2000s. Kenney, who owns two restaurants in Santa Monica, CA and Miami, and who has written ten cookbooks, will offer a mix of raw foods, vegan and non-vegan dishes, and artisanal cocktails at his new eatery. (read more at Bangor Daily News)
To the members of the Knox-Lincoln Beekeepers Club, springtime means the appearance of the honeybees that have wintered over in their hives. It also means bringing together a class of new beekeepers for six weeks of Bee School. Of the nearly 50 people at a class in the American Legion Hall in Thomaston, fewer than 10 people already have their bees. Karen Carroll of St. George purchased her bees last year and is now attending her second Bee School. She was proud to say that her bees survived this hard winter, when many veteran beekeepers lost theirs. She started with bees in her first year because she didn’t want to just test the waters. “I wanted to start right in with a hive,” she said. Jean Vose opened the first class with information about managing your hive in spring and summer. A beekeeper for 27 years, Vose and her husband, Dick, have cared for many hives, first in Massachusetts and in recent years in Nobleboro. (read more at Wiscasset Newspaper)
LEE, N.H. — Unlike maple syrup-drenched Vermont and lobster-rich Maine, New Hampshire doesn’t have much to call its own in the food world. But it could find a future claim to fame in birch syrup, a nontraditional but increasingly popular product pulled from New Hampshire’s state tree. For now, New Hampshire has just one known commercial producer of birch syrup, which is made in a similar manner as maple syrup but tastes completely different and commands a significantly higher price. But the industry is growing in western Canada and Alaska, and it’s being studied as a possible add-on venture for maple syrup producers across the northeastern United States. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)
POLAND — At Russell Hill Farm, owner Kurt Russell was busy tending the evaporator and answering questions in his 20-foot-square sugar shack on the 30th Maine Maple Sunday. In front of his house family members served up pancakes and maple-related wares, including maple candy and baked goods. It’s his fourth year of sugar production but his first with a shack to work from. Russell described his evaporator as a two-by-six, a designation syrup producers use referencing the size of the actual evaporation surface area. The $6,000 unit is perfect for Russell’s 375 tapped maples on his property. Russell said there are approximately 1,000 trees that could potentially be tapped if he could keep up with the sap flow. Russell showed off his system to a small group that had gathered. First a vacuum draws sap from the trees via plastic taps with check valves, through tubes of various gauges, to a larger collection tank a few yards from his shack. The check valves in the taps prevent the possibility of sap flowing back into the trees in the event of pressure failure. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)
BANGOR, Maine — With her “Pinch me, I will punch you” green Irish T-shirt and a golden ale in her hand, Amy Douglass sat in Paddy Murphy’s Irish pub on Sunday morning measuring just how far from Kansas she has come. “I have never been up this early in my life. I am totally not kidding,” said the 39-year-old hairdresser and bartender, who moved from Kansas to Orrington about three weeks ago. “I have never celebrated St. Patrick’s Day like this before, unless you count in Kansas, and there the bars aren’t open at all on Sundays.” “Maine,” Douglass said solemnly, “is very cool.” Douglass was among about 75 people who celebrated the Irish-American holiday by doing exactly what Gov. Paul LePage and the state Legislature allowed them to do — start the party early. She and other Paddy’s patrons cheered the emergency legislation LePage signed into law allowing bars and restaurants to sell alcoholic beverages at 6 a.m. on St. Patrick’s Day when the holiday falls on a Sunday. (read more at Bangor Daily News)
If you order tuna at a local restaurant, chances are half the time you’ll be getting another, less expensive fish in its place. But those odds are better than if you had wanted snapper. Testers nationwide found that 87 percent of the time, restaurants and grocery stores were selling something else under that label. As much as one-third of seafood sold in restaurants and groceries is fraudulently labeled, according to a report the advocacy group Oceana released Thursday. The group sampled 674 retail outlets in the District of Columbia and 20 states between 2010 and 2012, often finding cheaper, farmed fish being sold in place of wild-caught ones. Ninety-five percent of the sushi restaurants, 52 percent of other restaurants and 27 percent of grocery stores surveyed sold mislabeled seafood. While academics, consumer groups and media outlets in the United States and elsewhere have scrutinized fish labeling before and found major errors, Oceana’s effort is one of the largest seafood investigations to date. (read more at Bangor Daily News)
FORT KENT, Maine — Let the worldly socialites have their Soho House, the male powerbrokers their Bohemian Club and the old money Yalies their Skull and Bones. It’s a pretty safe bet none of them could crack what could be the most exclusive piece of real estate in North America. Every day, rain, shine, snow, sleet or gloom, the circular, four-foot table in the middle of the Fort Kent McDonald’s is home to a small group of regulars who guard that turf with all the fervor of the Jets versus the Sharks — minus the Bernstein and Sondheim songs and choreography. They come every day, this group of area retirees. They come to enjoy some coffee and soda, to get out of the house and socialize and to catch up on the latest local news and gossip. But mostly, they come to play cards. Not just any card game, mind you. They are here to play Charlemagne, that uniquely French Acadian game that, to an outsider anyway, looks like an incomprehensible mashup of bridge and cribbage. (read more at Bangor Daily News)
CHARLESTON, Maine — The fifth century philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras may be best known for his theorem, but he is also credited with being the world’s first-known vegetarian. He led a group that was well known in ancient times for not eating meat, fish or fowl. His followers, known as “Pythagoreans,” didn’t consume animal meat for ethical reasons and religious objections. The Pythagoreans believed in the idea of metempsychosis, which is the transmigration of a person’s soul into the bodies of other animals. Those who abstained from eating meat were considered to have adopted the “Pythagorean diet” in ancient times. The term “vegetarian” was later adopted in the 19th century for those who didn’t consume meat for ethical or health reasons. (read more at Bangor Daily News)
Russell Libby, who for more than 17 years was executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, died Sunday. He was 56. Libby, of Mount Vernon, resigned from the MOFGA post Nov. 2 and became the organization’s senior policy advisor. He had been battling cancer for quite some time, according to Barbara Damrosch, president of MOFGA’s Board of Directors. “He was an incredible man,” Damrosch said Sunday from her home in Harborside. “I’ve known very few people as exemplary in leadership as Russell. He was a very strong leader, very wise. He had a lot of acumen about what do to at any given moment.” MOFGA hosts the annual Common Ground Country Fair, which draws about 60,000 visitors to Unity each fall. (read more at Kennebec Journal)
SOUTH PORTLAND – The South Portland Planning Board voted unanimously Tuesday to allow the Maine Mall to bring its farmers market out of the parking lot and into center court for its sophomore season, which opens Friday. “So, last time did not work out, I gather?” asked Planning Board member Caroline Hendry. “That’s one way to look at it,” said the mall’s general manager, Craig Gorris. “We thought there would be a little more synergy next to Hannaford in what we call our festival lot. That was probably a miscalculation on our part. It wasn’t the ideal location.” Among the issues, Gorris admitted the expanse of pavement, while also reflecting summer heat onto shoppers and vendors, did not present the agricultural feel one normally associates with a farmers market. A lack of surrounding trees also left the vendors open to the vagaries of the wind, he said. “There are a couple of returning vendors who remember their tents falling down a few times [from the wind],” said the mall’s marketing manager, Stefanie Millette, on Monday. “They don’t have to deal with that this year, so they’re very excited about the move inside.” (read more at Weekly Observer)
