George

The Maine Harvest Festival is an amazing event — and mouthwatering, too. In its fifth year, Judy Perkins of Garden Ridge Farm and her staff have turned this into a major statewide event, featuring more than 150 farmers and other creative people who filled the entire Bangor Auditorium.

I spent a good part of the day eating my way from booth to booth. The festival features great presentations on three stages, my favorite being Kate Krukowski Gooding’s presentation on cooking wild game. Her cookbooks are favorites of mine. Kate served an awesome lasagna with moose sausage and beaver meat. Dana Masters, of Beast Feast Maine, a Maine Guide who invented the “Sportsman’s Blend Sauce,” supplied the sauce for the lasagna. We purchased Dana’s maple BBQ sauce, and I can tell you it is very flavorful.

Deer Isle’s 44 North Coffee got our day off to a great start, along with a very tasty pancake from A Better Pancake in Skowhegan. We had a great visit with Amber Lambke at the Maine Grain Alliance booth, where Linda signed up for Amber’s Kneading Conference next July. You better believe I lingered at the Hotties booth, where Andrew Marble of Marble Family Farms, in Farmington, was serving his delicious pocket meals. Linda enjoyed a spinach and feta pocket while I loved the shepherd’s pie pocket.

We were impressed with the home-delivery system initiated by Siberia Farms in Hermon. Suzanna Moreshead recruited 19 farms offering everything from pasta to meat,eggs, milk and coffee for home delivery in the greater Bangor area. What a great new (old) idea! And we’ll be trying to get up to Skowhegan for their indoor farmers market, where Blue Ribbon Farm in Mercer sells homemade pastas.

In addition to all the farm food, produce and products, there was live music, educational seminars, a fiber fashion show, brewers and vintners, and even a gorgeous display by one of my favorite photographers, Mary Hartt. And no one could walk by those two adorable little girls selling Chase Farm Bakery hot-off-the-grill donuts.

You can access the names and websites of all the farms and other vendors at the Maine Harvest Festival website (www.maineharvestfestival.com). Just don’t do it when you are hungry.

And speaking of hungry, we still had room for a late lunch at our favorite Bangor restaurant, Geaghan’s, just across the street from the Bangor Auditorium — a great ending to a great day.

Linda

We couldn’t get over how much bigger the festival was this year. One of the vendors told us an article in USA Today ranked it in the top five nationally.

Aisle after aisle of Maine product showcases displayed the creativity of Mainers. We sampled delectable cheeses from a number of businesses and were happy to see Winthrop’s Wholesome Holmstead Farm there. George attended 4-H meetings on that farm with the Markowskis when he was a kid. Anne Trenholm (daughter of cheese maker Karen Markowski) and Benjamin White were friendly and full of energy as they explained the different types of cheeses they were selling. We doubled back to purchase some cheese curds before we left. I was drawn to the texture, flavor and saltiness of this cheese.

I remembered Luce Farm’s meat samples from our last visit to the festival. This time I came prepared with a cooler for planned purchases. People come here to shop. It’s a place you can count on for fresh or preserved local food. One taste of Luce’s hickory-smoked bacon and I was sold. I plan to savor every bit of it, using this bacon as a flavoring ingredient in quiche, risotto and scalloped potatoes. I imagine George thinks he’s getting bacon and eggs for several mornings, but he’d be wrong.

Smith’s Log Smokehouse produces smoked meats and jerky, but it was the smoked cheese samples that had me swooning. I purchased some smoked mozzarella and made the best pizza imaginable with some garlic olive oil, my preserved tomatoes (roasted and dried) and fresh spinach and chard.

Many businesses that caught my attention offered unique, creative products. Blue Hill Spoonworks makes gorgeous wooden utensils. Bob Gillmor was clever enough to produce right- and left-handed spoons. Each one is different and one is drawn to pick up each item to see how it fits in your hand.

Sally Erickson explained how her Vegibags, fabric bags for storing produce, work. Dampen the bag and store washed veggies in your fridge to greatly prolong their freshness. Sally is from Eastport and has employed several women from the area to make these items.

I learned a lot about Maine mushrooms at Cap n’ Stem from the two young entrepreneurs who knew a whole lot about mushrooming and how to cook with dried mushrooms. (I’m now planning mushroom risotto with those black trumpets dried and frozen in my freezer.) And after talking potatoes with Tim Hobbs of the Maine Potato Council, I found out the variety of Chef’s potatoes I purchased this fall was Katahdin. Turns out it is a great potato variety and now I know what I am cooking with.

Visit George’s website — georgesmithmaine.com — for book reviews, outdoor news and all Travelin’ Maine(rs) columns, found listed by town in the “Best of Maine” section.

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