What’s for breakfast, dinner, supper in Maine?

Three times a day or more, looking for something to eat. It is a fix most of us want to address. Wikipedia defines a foodie as “A foodie is a gourmet, or a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food and alcoholic beverages. A foodie seeks new food experiences as a hobby rather than simply eating out of convenience or hunger.”

I was in the local Shop and Save supermarket this week and thinking I need to hit the deli.

The lady slicing, holding up a wedge and asking if this was the right thickness turkey got a nod, smile and “yes please” from me. But I asked her what happens to this big cart of food?

I had interrupted her exercise.

Of loading up the wire cart with food wearing an expiration date of tomorrow. I motioned to the food stash and ask what becomes of all the whisked away food? “Dumpster” she uttered sadly.

I asked couldn’t it go to the jail, a nursing home, hospital, a battered women’s shelter or at least a pig farm?

Then realized not her call. Worry about lawsuits if someone ate a bad egg roll, a tainted foot long hoagie.

Making the most of rescuing food in Maine who’s death sentence was not commuted by the Governor.

To salvage something from it for value. To end up down the gullet not the drain. To help, fuel someone that does not know where his next meal is coming from, on limited income and getting public assistance. Or has kids that are always hungry.

And not because they have worms. They are just growing leaps and bounds.

Always grazing so the food with a day left for shelf shoppers would make it disappear. Before the buzzer sounds. If someone just gave them a heads up. For the come and get it, no charge.

The excess food in Maine that needs to be cleaned up like the advice about your plate growing down low to way tall.

You might think stop making so much and that cures the wasted food blues. It is not put together locally where the lady lathering on the mustard, miracle whip or whatever lubricate to help it slide down and stay moist punches the time clock.

If local and not trucked in from central HQ down state or further, he or she with the stylish hair net. Could simple look over the deli counter. See the shelves are overstocked for the retail supply needed.

And it’s quitting time by pulling the sash to the long whistle blast maker. Stop the production conveyor belt. Just don’t make any more until empty happens. Or better yet near just above the “E” for supply maintained to avoid waste.

So foodie in Maine.

Not thinking how an ordinary pizza, or a lobster creation, seared prime rib could be marinated, be turned into ambrosia for the God’s in Portland’s Old Port. But just taking part of the food chain that never gets digested, dined on by locals who need the food.

Heck, that are used to if an English muffin gets rescued from a dumpster, and only has a few mold spores waking up to do their tap dance. Like vegetables, culls or seconds for a stew, just cut off the spoiled part. Save, use, savor what is still good.

Growing up on a Maine farm we did not waste anything.

It is how we survived, stayed on and did not lose the Maine farm. The same logic applies but if you have always had a never ending supply, plenty of food, the down the drain of any thrown away is not gonna make you lose sleep.

I wish someone needing the surplus shipped to local grocery stores owned by national chains. With kitchen’s elsewhere could redirect the end of it’s life for retail foodstuffs. To do good. Are you this kind of foodie that is not a snob? That does not get snarky or turn your nose up at cheap yellow mustard? Demands only Grey Poupon. Or something even more expensive, imported and raved about around the food critic circles. And boy there are a lot of those type reality shows.

Foodie in Maine. Not always talking gourmet. Usually talking grown local, close to home and organic Maine food. Organic food in Maine means you know where it came from, what it was not sprayed with and that it is safe for your family’s dinner table.

With Maine organic food it is not about produce that is perfectly shaped, all the same shade and consistency is everything.

Just wholesome, nutritious and none of it wasted. The natural resource put to good use.

I know a Nature’s Circle Maine organic food that has it’s end of the line culls not plowed under and lost. But shared with a supplier of Houlton Farms Dairy Milk. Which mean their holstein dairy cows are eating right too in your local milk production.

Everyone happy, the cows that don’t live on factory farms. The locals who don’t have to wonder how many states or countries away the white stuff came from before landing up in your local dairy case.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573 |
info@mooersrealty.com |
MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton Maine 04730