Maine Fare- Celebrating the Bounty of Maine! Is a three day event held each year in the mid-coast area with tastings, book signings, cooking classes and demonstrations, great food and beverages of all kinds, and over thirty of the best chefs in the state getting together to show off the bounty of food in Maine. If you are a foodie, then this is the place to be the third weekend in September, Friday 9/14, Saturday 9/15, and Sunday 9/16/2007.

Originally this event started out as the 2005 Camden Food and Wine Festival but it grew so rapidly that the focus had to widen as well. Now Maine Fare is coordinated by Maine Festivals and Events, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to preserving, protecting, and sharing the cultural resources of Maine through a wide range of educational programs and special events.

It's an endless summer in LA:

• He's a "kid" in LA, but Matt Molina is running the kitchen at the hottest restaurant in town, Mozza.
• For Labor Day, break out the keg
• The best way to chill out if you're Korean (or not) is with an ice cold bowl of naeng-myun
• Take advantage of the height of fig season with a Fresh Fig Tart
• Speaking of tarts, SOS gets its hands on the Walnut Praline Tart with Espresso Ice Cream from Hatfield's

Melissa Clark can't resist bringing home bags of tomatoes from the farmers market this time of year. She offers up a tomato recipe for every night of the week (plus one to grow on) including Multi-colored Tomato Tartlets, Baked Stuffed Tomatoes with Goat Cheese Fondue and Green Tomato and Lemon Marmalade.

Eric Asimov searches for a beer that can cool you down without leaving you feeling weighted by the heaviness of hops and too much alcohol. The winner? A Belgian Pale Ale.

An evangelical Christian and a Kosher meat packer work together to further humane and sustainable farming practices. Mark Bittman cooks the perfect steak and shares secrets of the dry rub.

Frank Bruni reviews Rayuela. You can learn to cook in Paris without spending your whole vacation in front of the stove. You can feel safe eating all the deep-fried Oreos you want at the Indiana State Fair, as they are now cooked in trans-fat free oil.

Yesterday I read that McDonald's is exiting the so-called home-meal replacement market with its sale of Boston Market to Sun Capital. Heck, I didn't even know they owned it.

To my credit I do know that Boston Market started in Colorado, just like Chipotle, which McDonald's sold its interest in a while back. At one time Mickey D's had its greasy fingers in a lot of pies, including Donatos Pizza and the Aroma coffee chain. It still owns one-third of Pret a Manger, but that, too, may soon go on the block since Pret itself is shopping around for a buyer.

Specifics of the deal, which should close in a few weeks, have not been divulged. A McDonald's spokesman had this to say: "This is consistent with our successful strategy to focus on brand, a strategy that continues to deliver results." Well, duh. I can't even begin to understand why McDonald's bought into a chain that presents itself as an alternative to an old-fashioned turkey dinner.

Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries, a D.C.-based chain that has garnered rave reviews up and down the East Coast recently entered the New York metro area. I visited their Queens location and, despite Five Guy's obsession with cooking all their meat well done, I found the burger quite good.

The Guys recently opened a shop in Hackensack, N.J. Now here's where it starts to get interesting. Überblogger Jason Perlow reports that Burger Boys, an independent joint, has also set up shop in nearby Fairview. They copied Five Guys' menu format. No big deal, right? But that's just the tip of intellectual property rights infringement iceberg. Rather than give these con artists any free advertising, I chose a pic of the Five Guys ordering area from Perlow's site. The shots he took of Burger Boys are pretty shocking.

How shocking you ask? Let's put it this way. Burger Boys didn't stop at copying the Five Guys' menu. They also lovingly reproduced the Guys' interior design, presentation of the food in brown paper bags and its insistence on cooking everything well done. I almost forgot, the Boys dress their staff in red T-shirts and hats, just like the Guys. I'd love to think that this is merely some confluence of East Coast burger synergy, but clearly it's a simple case of out-and-out theft of the Five Guys' concept.

Since I've been writing for Slashfood, my mother has taken to sending me daily emails with links to different food-related articles she encounters on her own trips through the interwebs. She's sent me several in the last few days, and while none of them seem to be able to hold up their own post, they all are interesting enough that I thought a little "round-up" post might be in order.

Back in May, MSN Money printed a list of the Ten Things Your Restaurant Won't Tell You. The list includes such gems as the fact that fast food restaurants encourage rapid turnover by playing loud music and providing uncomfortable seating and that expensive restaurants create return customers by making their food as luscious as possible with the addition of lots of butter.

Just posted last Monday was a list of the 16 Ways to Keep Healthy While Keeping it Cheap on the Get Rich Slowly blog. Some of the gems on that list include recommendations to make a food plan, buy in bulk, don't run around looking for bargains (wasting gas in the process) and take your lunch to work. They might sounds like the same old advice you've heard before, but the list has some good tips, especially if you are trying to follow a lower carb diet on a budget.

Lastly, she sent me a little tidbit she scanned from the Oregonian about the safety of drinking sparkling water. I haven't been able to find an online version of that story, but did find this short piece on Chow that says essentially the same thing, that sparkling water isn't necessarily better or worse for you than still water. It mostly depends on the water with which it was made and if extra sodium as added.

Last week I wrote about Rameniac, a guide to all things ramen so detailed and descriptive that it left me jonesing for a hot bowl of the stuff. As promised, I did indeed trek from my native Queens to Manhattan's East Village that same afternoon to satisfy my urge.

Rather than head to one of the neighborhood's longstanding ramenyas, I decided to try out Ramen Setagaya, a new spot that opened in mid-June amid much fanfare and accompanying long lines. Part of the reason for all the buzz surrounding Setagaya's opening lies in the fact that it's the first U.S. restaurant of a popular Tokyo chain. And a large part lies in the fact that they make one kickass bowl of soup.

It's no secret that I am obsessed with Jonathan Gold. "Who the heck is Jonathan Gold?" some of you may be asking.

Don't worry, I'm not offended that you may not know. If you don't live to eat in Los Angeles, or maybe even New York, then you might not know him. Jonathan Gold is the current restaurant critic for the LA Weekly, and I will most certainly have you all know that I had a cybercrush on him waaaaay before he was even in the running for a Pulitzer Prize, let alone named the winner! Yes, yes, y'all, Mr Jonathan Gold is a Pulitzer prize-winning writer.

Some of the obsession has to do with what he writes about -- though he has dined around New York, he started in LA and makes his dining home here now. He also tends to focus his dining experiences on places that don't get written up by every other person on the planet.

However, the real reason I gush like I do about Mr. JGold is not his subject matter. It's his writing.

In my travels through the interwebs yesterday, I stumbled across this gorgeous banana, chocolate and peanut butter cake. E bakes for a little cafe in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia, and when faced with a bunch of overripe bananas, she drew inspiration from a cupcake that another blogger made back in January to create this cake. Every time I look at the photos of it, a part of me wants to leap up and head to the kitchen to recreate it myself.

photo by Elizabeth Halene

I watched The Phantom Gourmet on Boston's NECN station for years. It was hosted by Billy Costa, who is also a DJ on the long-running KISS-108 morning show with Matt Siegel. After the show ran for eight years, producer Dan Andelman and his family moved the show to WSBK 38, another Boston station. Costa stayed at NECN and launched a new show, TV Diner. The Phantom Gourmet is a mysterious person (they won't say whether the diner is male or female) who goes around in secret and reviews Boston and New England eating establishments. The show gives the restaurants a grade. The show also features other reviews and features as well.

TV Diner is a little different. They feature a lot of chefs and go behind the scenes of restaurants. The do reviews too, giving a "plate" grade, but it's not as much of a focus as it is on the other show.

To say things are tense between the two shows is an understatement. Besides the typical tension you would expect from two similar shows in the same TV market, Costa is a little ticked that The Phantom Gourmet asks their guests (chefs, foodies, customers, etc) not to appear on the other show for a few months.

I don't have any kids of my own, and I'm a little bit too old to remember what it was like for me when I was a kid to go out to eat in restaurants, but I have recently become more attuned to the entire "Dining Out with Kids" thing because I have new nieces.

Wow.

Not only is it a production to get a kid set up at the table, but the very act of eating for a kid is quite a big deal. I honestly do not remember it this way when I was a kid, but like I said, I tend to remember only the good things.

For those of us who do have kids and still want to be able to enjoy a nice meal out in a restaurant, or maybe not even "nice," but just "out," Fodor's has some advice, which I am calling the Seven Deadly Sins of Dining Out with Kids. I may have to pass these on to my sisters (and if you have any of your own to share, please do!):

1. Don't go somewhere that doesn't have other kids
2. Don't force your kids to eat off the Kids' Menu
3. Don't try something brand new
4. Don't forget that kids do have meltdowns
5. Don't let the server bring kids' dishes out first - eat altogether
6. Don't forget to taste your kids' food before they do to make sure it's okay
7. Don't be mean if your kids act up. For gosh's sake, they're kids.

This week, a slight departure from pure food and dining with a story on where animals that were once destined for the dinner plate actually go for sanctuary. Also, beef jerky becomes haute cuisine, sort of.

In the kitchen, Mark Bittman does chicken wings and blackberries come into season.

On the dining scene, Frank Bruni vists Perilla, the restaurant by Top Chef winner Harold Dieterle, gluten-free menus are becoming more popular, and the best way to eat during the summer is a series of starters.

Growing up in Portland, OR, when it came to drinking water, we were pretty lucky. The water that came out of the tap was clear and tasty. One of the hardest things to adjust to when I moved to Philadelphia was the fact that the water that came out of my kitchen sink didn't taste too great. For a while I bought bottled water, but my bank account couldn't handle that expense and I didn't like the amount of plastic I generated, especially living in an apartment building with sketchy recycling practices. It also felt wrong to me to buy bottled water, when I live in one of the few countries in the world where the tap water is pretty much universally safe for general consumption.

It appears that all across the country, upscale restaurants are making similar choices, leaving behind the bottled water and serving filtered still or carbonated water. Serious Eats has a nice round-up of recent establishments that are turning to the tap and choosing not serve bottled water, despite the financial sacrifice it entails.

photo by Marisa McClellan

** UPDATE: Apologies for including a video that was on auto-start! Changed to screen capture. Click over to their site to watch the actual video! **

Apparently, amateur video making and sharing is all the rage, with new sites popping up faster than dandelions on cow manure. I am guessing they are all hoping to become the next YouTube.

TastyFood.tv is a new site that is worth checking out because it has a variety of food videos ranging from people cooking their favorite recipes to experiences in restaurants to walk-throughs of markets. Right now there seems to be a heavily Asian bent, or at least a very active user who is doing Thai cooking. The above video is a how-to for Panang Curry.

I play this game often when dining out with my foodish friends. After grossly indulging in whatever gluttonous gourmet feast was placed before us, deeply buzzed on wine and cocktails, sitting back in our chairs to wait out the digestion, we ask one another, "If you were going to die tomorrow, what would you want your last meal on earth to be?"

Strangely enough, even when the group of dining companions is a group of professional chefs, people in the food industry, or hard core "foodies," the answers are usually very similar. There is no answer of a fancy sit down dinner with multiple courses of preciously presented dishes. Almost always, people answer with favorite comfort foods, foods that remind them of home, family, and the experiences they've had in this life.

A few weeks ago, Caley from ChewonThatBlog asked us at Slashfood what we would want for our "Last Supper." We don't seem to have much variety on our team, with a fairly even split on only a few things: Mediterranean (since pizza is Mediterranean, right?), seafood, and Japanese food. Our individual answers are below, but we'd love to hear what our Slashfoodie readers would want as their last meals on earth, too!