Recently, I was with photographer Russ Dillingham at McMahon Elementary School for a story about healthier lunches and new menu choices. The school’s nutrition director Linda Boudreau insisted we eat.

We agreed, just to be polite. Yum! Healthy did taste good, and hot lunch has certainly improved. I ate three grilled chicken bites — one plain, one buffalo, one barbecue. They were as delicious as the students said they were. (Of course, that was obvious by the way they cleaned their trays.) So was the mixed green salad, the veggies and melons.

I especially liked the black bean salsa and planned to make it at home. According to Boudreau, it’s high in protein, low in fat and high in taste.

If you want to try it, the ingredients are canned black beans (drained), corn (I’ll use frozen corn that’s been thawed), and cut up pieces of fresh tomatoes and green pepper, flavored by lime juice. (Tip: Boudreau recommends using two times the amount of black beans versus the corn, tomatoes and green pepper.)

— Bonnie Washuk

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

So I’m writing up a Rumford police report last Thursday on a young man who police accused of pirating two bottles of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum from Hannaford and breaking a third in the aisle.

As I’m writing about the rum portion, into my email box pops an unsolicited news release from Flying Irish Wild Geese Rum Collection thanking me for my interest in high quality Caribbean rum.

I busted up laughing at the coincidence of receiving rum spam at that very instant. Or was it coincidence?

Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

— Terry Karkos

Lewiston workers didn’t want Auburn repeat

While covering the Lewiston school budget referendum last Tuesday, I ran into assistant superintendent Tom Jarvis, who was voting at the Multi-Purpose Center on his lunch hour. At 6 p.m., Special Ed Director George Veilleux and a few other school workers were voting.

Several mentioned they made sure they voted because they didn’t want what happened in Auburn to happen in Lewiston: few people voting, a tie vote, followed by what was reported as a close vote, all which could have likely been avoided if more voters turned out.

— Bonnie Washuk

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