WILTON – Meals prepared at The Boiler Room and several other local restaurants this weekend will have a few special ingredients.

The third annual Maurer Meals will be held Friday and Saturday at 11 area restaurants in 10 Western Maine communities. The restaurants will offer specials that use locally grown foods with a focus on organic and all natural foods. For these two nights, special meals are offered to raise money for the Justin A. Maurer Memorial Scholarship Fund and at the same time, support local agriculture.

“This is one of my biggest nights of the year,” said Rick Mealey of The Boiler Room. “People who come in twice a week marvel at the quality. It’s not from the output … it’s the same cooking but it’s the ingredients that make customers say ‘wow.'”

There’s a twofold motive for holding the meals, he said, first, to raise funds for the scholarship but also to keep business local by tying in the farmers and local people to give them and their products more exposure.

Mealey plans to serve a pork dish with apple chutney. The meat is from White Water Farms and the apples from Trask’s in Wilton. Other dishes will include local honey, organic sirloin, stuffed squash and a dish made with local tomatoes and purple basil. Parsley, basil and edible flowers will be purchased from a greenhouse in New Sharon, Mealey said.

His bread will come from the organic Fare Share Farm and Bakery in Canton where Maurer interned.

“The local food is just so much better,” he said. “There is such a big difference with even just a potato.”

Justin Maurer, a University of Maine at Farmington graduate, died in a motorcycle accident shortly after graduating. He worked at The Boiler Room, and his father, Gary Maurer, of Leeds, with help from Mealey, developed the idea for local restaurants to annually serve special meals as a memorial to Justin and to raise scholarship funds. The scholarship is given to a UMF student in the Community Health Program.

“Justin had become such a supporter of the small farm in Maine, and the whole approach of producing food without poisoning the earth and preparing and eating it without poisoning the body,” Maurer said in a statement. “We thought that this might be a good way to carry on his beliefs and honor his legacy. Last year’s Maurer Meals raised more than $1,700 for the Scholarship Fund.”

As a senior project, Justin worked with other students to develop a series of raised bed organic demonstration gardens built next to the campus. During his internship in Canton, he also helped develop farmers’ markets in Dixfield and Mexico.

Justin believed it was important for healthy food choices to be as available to people as the popular and unhealthy choices. From his son’s belief, Maurer developed a collaboration among restaurants to offer healthy menu choices prepared from locally grown foods, increasing awareness of health through personal food choice and highlighting local agriculture, the release stated.

The Homestead Bakery and The Granary in Farmington started participating the first year, but the goal is to add new restaurants each year, he said.

This year, Jacoby’s of Norway, The Olde Mill Tavern of Harrison and the Lake House Inn of Waterford will participate.

Along with The Wilton Boiler Room, The Boiler Room in Rumford will serve specials these two nights. Other restaurants include Farmington’s Homestead Bakery and The Granary; the Carriage House Cafe in Livermore; The Sedgley Place in Greene; LaFleur’s in Jay and The Porter House in Eustis.

Each restaurant will do its own special dishes.

Restaurant reservations may be made.