PORTLAND

Two Fat Cats Bakery invites public to sample its goods

Stop in at Two Fat Cats from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Wednesday to try items from the bakery’s Halloween and Thanksgiving menu, plus have the chance to sample and comment on new products under development.

Offerings will include pumpkin pie, decorated cookies, apple, cheddar cheese and rosemary bread, Thanksgiving pumpkin roll and pear pie.

Two Fat Cats is located at 47 India St. Call 347-5144

Martinis and Art event supports cancer patients

More than 8,000 Maine residents are living with cancer. Help them by supporting the third annual Martinis and Art event at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, 350 Commercial St., from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday. Sip martinis while exploring three floors of donated Maine art from artists such as Jac Ouellette, Matt Welch, Sally Loughridge, Holly Ready, Anne Ireland, Lindsay Hancock and Dietland Vander Schaaf.

There will be live jazz, appetizers and an open bar with tastes provided by Maine Craft Distilling. The ticket price of $85 includes one entry to win a piece of art. All proceeds benefit the American Cancer Society’s Maine Patient Navigator Program.

Visit martinisandart.com or call 373-3742.

Harvest dinner Thursday at Cantina El Rayo

Cantina El Rayo will host a special dinner on Thursday. The menu includes Maine oysters, served warm with chile pesto; “drunken turkey” with picadillo stuffing; and apple cajeta gallete with cinnamon whipped cream.

The cost is $30 per person. For reservations, call 780-8466.The cantina is located at 85 York St.

Rosemont Market throws a Brighton block party

Rosemont Market Brighton will host a block party featuring their foods and wines, as well as the products and services of other merchants in the Rosemont neighborhood, from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday . There will be outdoor activities, information tables, craft sales, yoga demonstrations, pumpkin carving and more.

The market is located at 580 Brighton Ave. For more information, call 831-2553.

Cultivating Community will celebrate growers, cookbook

On Thursday, National Food Day, Cultivating Community is hosting a Harvest Festival to celebrate the organization’s youth gardeners and immigrant Fresh Start Farms growers. The public is invited to the festival, which begins at 7 p.m., right around the corner from the Boyd Street Urban Farm at Mayo Street Arts Center, 10 Mayo St. in Portland.

In addition to a multicultural feast, music and dancing, the event will honor nine graduates of Fresh Start Farms’ farmer training program and offer a sneak peek at the Grow Cart, a tricycle-powered mobile farmstand built by Maine College of Art graduate Hannah Merchant, which will debut next spring.

The festival also serves as the debut for Cultivating Community’s new cookbook, “Beyond the Vegetable,” featuring recipes from the immigrant farms.

For more information, visit freshstartfarms.com.

Restaurant, market planned at the site of Danforth store

Brooklynite Keith Hickman and his business partner, Portland-based chef Joshua Kaplan, are building a neighborhood restaurant and market in the space currently occupied by Vespucci’s store and a hair salon. The business is tentatively named for its address, 211 Danforth.

Kaplan said he and Hickman were “still working on the details of the concept, but stressed that 211 Danforth will be “a comfortable neighborhood restaurant that serves New American food.”

Kaplan’s culinary background includes high-end kitchens in New York City, most notably in restaurants owned by well-known chef Charlie Palmer. He has also worked at Hugo’s, Cinque Terre (now Vignola Cinque Terre) and Gepetto’s at Sugarloaf.

In addition to the new restaurant, the convenience aspect of the longtime store is part of the plan, he said. “We consider Vespucci’s a commodity to the neighborhood – where people can get a six-pack of beer, a bag of chips, a sandwich – so we want to keep that feel,” Kaplan said. “But we want to breathe a little new life into that corner.”

Drawings show a 54-seat dining room and 10-stool bar, with an entrance on Danforth Street. The entrance to the store will be around the corner on Clark Street.

Farmers market to move indoors in December

The Portland Farmers Market will remain open until Thanksgiving this year in both of its locations, Monument Square (7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays) and Deering Oaks Park (7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays).

The indoor winter market will begin Dec. 7 and will be held in a new location this year, at 200 Anderson St. in the Bayside neighborhood. The winter hours will be 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Cook with beer at LeRoux, then sharpen your knives

LeRoux Kitchen, 161 Commercial St., has scheduled three cooking-with-beer demonstrations for Saturday as part of Harvest on the Harbor week.

At 11 a.m., guests will learn how to make fresh beer bread with Rising Tide Daymark and homemade baked beans featuring Allagash Dubbel.

At 1 p.m., make mushroom risotto with Allagash Trippel and roasted pork tenderloin basted with Brother Adams Bragget from Atlantic Brewing Co.

The 3 p.m. session will feature ice cream churned with Rising Tide Ursa Minor and creme brulee made with Allagash Curieux.

All three demonstrations are free, and will be held on the second floor of the store.

From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Nov. 2, Wusthof Cutlery will hold a knife-sharpening clinic at LeRoux to benefit Preble Street Resource Center. Bring one knife that will be sharpened for free, and up to three more for $3 each. No serrated knives or scissors, please.

Pumpkin ale tasting boasts a big assortment

If you like pumpkin ales, sample some of the new ones being made by craft breweries dabbling in this seasonal libation Thursday at the Great Lost Bear’s annual Smashing Pumpkins event.

At this tasting of pumpkin ales from 5 to 9 p.m., you’ll be able to sample Dogfish Head Punkin Ale, Long Trail Pumpkin Ale, Rogue Farms Pumpkin Patch Ale, Sam Adams Fat Jack, Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale, Southern Tier Pumking, UFO Pumpkin Ale, Uinta Punk’n Harvest Pumpkin Ale, and Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale.

The Great Lost Bear is located at 540 Forest Ave.

Food co-op wants new members, with store as goal

The Portland Food Co-op is trying to recruit 1,000 new members so it can open a new storefront market in the city. The new store will be a full-service grocery open daily.

The co-op currently has 400 members but needs more to raise the $1 million it will take to open the storefront, which will be open to the public. Members make a one-time $100 equity investment for a share in the co-op.

Member-owners currently must work a shift running the co-op, but they also get benefits such as special discounts, rebates and a voice in decision-making. Once the store is open, members will no longer be required to work a shift because the market will be fully staffed with employees.

To become a member, go to portlandfood.coop.

Slovenian wine tastings to include amphora wine

Slovenian wine maker Jean Michel Morel, owner of Kabaj in Slovenia, will be hosting a dinner at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the Cumberland Club, 116 High St.

Kabaj is famous for his amphora wine, which he was taught to make by monks living in the mountains of Georgia.

Cost of the dinner is $75. Call 773-6402 for reservations.

Morel will also be at Tandem Coffee at 5 p.m. Thursday for a Kabaj tasting in partnership with Rosemont Markets. He’ll serve his fermented-on-the-skin orange wines paired with snacks from Rosemont. The event will conclude with coffee from Tandem, which is located at 122 Anderson St.

The Tandem tasting costs $27; tickets can be purchased online at brownpapertickets.com/event/495988.

KENNEBUNKPORT

Italian cooking class will honor Marcella Hazan

Jillyanna’s Woodfired Cooking School in Cape Porpoise will celebrate the life of renowned Italian cooking teacher and cookbook author Marcella Hazan, who died last month, with a special non-pizza class and menu from 4:30 to 8 p.m. Saturday.

Jill Strauss, owner of Jillyanna’s, studied with Hazan’s son at a cooking school in Verona, Italy, where she learned to make pasta by hand.

Some of the class will be demonstration and some will be hands-on. The cost is $155 and participants are invited to BYOB. The menu includes: Grilled Littleneck Clams on the Half Shell; Homemade Fettuccine with Alfredo Sauce; Veal Scaloppine with Lemon; Mushroom Salad with Parmesan Cheese, Crispy Pancetta and White Truffle Vinaigrette; and Braised Pears with Bay Leaves and Amarone Wine.

The school is at 141 Wildes District Road. Visit jillyannnas .com or call 967-4960.

SKOWHEGAN

Workshop teaches how to best use Maine-grown grain

How do you successfully get Maine grains from the field to the commercial oven? Borealis Bread baker/owner Jim Amaral, along with Maine Grain Alliance’s resident baking adviser and director of education, Dusty Dowse, will show you how in a new workshop, “Evaluating flours from Maine-grown grain: What the farmer, miller and baker need to know.”

The workshop, scheduled for Oct. 28 and 29, will culminate with baking proof tests under controlled conditions in the Maine Grain & Bread Lab at the Somerset Grist Mill kitchen, 42 Court St.

The cost is $150.

Call 620-0697 or email wendy@kneadingconference.com.

– Compiled by Meredith Goad and Susan Axelrod, staff writers