You’ll surely want in your regular soup-season rotation
Leslie Bridgers
Columnist
Leslie Bridgers is a columnist for the Portland Press Herald, writing about Maine culture, customs and the things we notice and wonder about in our everyday lives. Originally from Connecticut, Leslie came to Maine by way of Bowdoin College and never left. She joined the Portland Press Herald in 2011 as a reporter and spent seven years as the paper’s features editor, overseeing coverage of arts, entertainment and food.
How to build a nonalcoholic bar so everyone feels included
Remember to offer drinks for all guests – not just the ones that drink alcohol.
‘Priscilla’ a dreamy but stultifying portrait of an American princess
There’s a scene in the middle of “Priscilla,” Sofia Coppola’s biopic of Priscilla Presley, which contains a surreal detail that had to have been at least one of Coppola’s sparks of inspiration. Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny), heavily pregnant, has gone into labor. As her husband, the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) rushes […]
Art review: Two artists process trauma in works up in Woolwich
Sarah Bouchard Gallery has paired pieces by Josefina Auslender and Tom Butler in a show up through December.
You asked: Why is my quick bread raw in the middle?
“I made a Washington Post recipe for Carrot Bread. The flavor is excellent, but the center 2 inches was completely unbaked, even after 90 minutes in the oven (baking time was supposed to be 1 hour). My loaf pan was slightly larger than called for, but the batter filled it to about half an inch […]
In many murder mysteries, gardens provide the plot twist
Marta McDowell’s ‘Gardening Can Be Murder’ looks at examples of where the hobby appears within this genre.
Not your grandparents’ Chianti: The straw-wrapped wine goes high-end
This is not your grandfather’s Chianti. Forget the old straw-wrapped bottles, called fiaschi, that used to define Chianti. Forget the flasks of nameless local vino you enjoyed at a trattoria in Florence and remember nostalgically every time you hear Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” And forget “spaghetti wine.” I’m talking about an exciting […]
McDonald’s mambo sauce is a tasty, if largely token, nod to Black America
Some publications claim the condiment was born at a rib joint on the South Side of Chicago. Others say carryouts in Washington, D.C., created it, a sort of spicy riff on sweet-and-sour sauce.
Jonathan Lethem’s love-hate relationship with Brooklyn
In “Brooklyn Crime Novel,” he blends fictional narrative and historical essay into a metanarrative that has crime as its main character.
‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ an admirable yet vexingly uneven film
The four most dreaded words for a film critic are, “What did you think?” And never have they been more problematic than when it comes to “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorsese’s eagerly anticipated adaptation of David Grann’s 2017 book of the same name. In that gripping, magisterial account, Grann chronicled in sickening detail […]