Common Ground Country Fair Food Vendor List Of Non-Maine Ingredients
The Common Ground Country Fair has always encouraged the vendors of fantastic and famous food offered every year at the fair to celebrate the bounty and diversity of Maine in their products. As the fair, and Maine agriculture has changed since the first fair in 1976, the food guidelines for the fair have evolved to request that at least 50%, by weight, of the finished product be produced in Maine.
Serious Maine gardeners know that it's possible to grow just about any crop in the State of Maine, including sesame seeds, apricots, and even tropical fruits (in greenhouses) if you're determined. After all, as Eliot Coleman likes to point out, Portland is located at the same latitude as the Cote D'Azure in France. The barrier to buying Maine-grown ingredients is often that they're not commercially available in the quantities that the food vendors at the fair require.
Many times, demand for an ingredient for the Common Ground Country Fair has been the spark that inspired one or more growers to culitvate the crop in quantities large enough to satisfy the food vendors, which allowed the growers to offer the crop at other times during the year, which inspired other growers to cultivate the same crop to satisfy a new market, and so on. This is the ultimate aim of food guidelines at the Common Ground Country Fair -- to support Maine agriculture, and to develop new markets.
Toward that aim, MOFGA has compiled a list of ingredients used by food vendors at the most recent (2002) fair that were not sourced in Maine. We hope to inspire growers around the state to fill the gap, create new markets, and continue to astound fairgoers with fantastic food experiences at every future fair.
Link to an Alphabetical List of Maine Grown Ingredients Needed for the 2003 Fair
Maine Grown Ingredients Needed For The 2004 Fair
| Ingredient | # Times Mentioned |
|---|---|
| Sea salt | 4 |
| Olive Oil | 4 |
| Vanilla | 4 |
| Canola Oil | 4 |
| Tamari | 4 |
| Tahini | 4 |
| Ginger | 3 |
| Raisins | 3 |
| Safflower Oil | 3 |
| Mayonnaise | 3 |
| Lemon Juice | 2 |
| Golden White Flour | 2 |
| Popcorn | 2 |
| Sesame Oil | 2 |
| Chick Pea Flour | 2 |
| Tomato Puree | 2 |
| Cornmeal | 1 |
| Lentils | 1 |
| Lemons | 1 |
| Balsamic Vinegar | 1 |
| Kasha Buckwheat Flour | 1 |
| Herb Teas | 1 |
| Bananas | 1 |
| Barley Malt | 1 |
| Beer | 1 |
| Flour, Golden White | 1 |
| Cream Cheese | 1 |
| Corn chips | 1 |
| Brown Basmati Rice | 1 |
| Chick Pea | 1 |
| Corn Starch | 1 |
| Corn meal | 1 |
| Corn Chips | 1 |
| Corn (for corn chowder) | 1 |
| Bulgar Wheat | 1 |
| Carob powder | 1 |
| Natural Spices | 1 |
| Cider Vinegar | 1 |
| Chickpeas | 1 |
| Cayanne Pepper | 1 |
| Black olive paste | 1 |
| Rye flour | 1 |
| Yeast | 1 |
| Whole Wheat Pasta | 1 |
| White Buckwheat Flour | 1 |
| Wheat pasta | 1 |
| Wheat Flour | 1 |
| Walnuts | 1 |
| Tropical fruit juices | 1 |
| Tomato Paste | 1 |
| Sweet Potato | 1 |
| Sweet brown rice flour | 1 |
| Split Peas | 1 |
| Spices | 1 |
| Soybean Oil | 1 |
| Mustard | 1 |
| Peanut butter | 1 |
| Miso | 1 |
| Mung Bean Sprouts | 1 |
| Apple Cider Vinegar | 1 |
| Natural Birch Extract | 1 |
| Yellow corn flour | 1 |
| Soy Sauce | 1 |
| Oil | 1 |
| Shell Pasturized Eggs | 1 |
| Pecan pieces | 1 |
| Rice | 1 |
| Rice Noodles | 1 |
| Rice Vinegar | 1 |
| Rolled Oats | 1 |
| Long-grain Brown Rice | 1 |
| Non-fat Dry Milk | 1 |