Upper crust

Looking for good food and stimulating conversation? Check out the first Belfast Storytelling and Pie Baking Festival from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday, June 22, at the Belfast Boathouse. Anyone can enter the pie-baking contest, and participants can sample the entries for $1 a slice, and later vote in categories such as best overall pie, most beautiful, and most original. While you’re eating, you can listen to a collection of storytellers young and old share tales of Belfast’s history. Storytellers include Mike Hurley, Diane O’Brien, Jeff McKeen, Wes Cotton, Belfast Area High School students and the afternoon’s emcee, singer-storyteller Jennifer Armstrong. To enter the pie-baking contest, bring a pie to the Boathouse between 11 and 12:30 on the day of the event. For information, call Jennifer Armstrong at 338-6616 or Susan Guthrie at 338-6140.

It’s the pits

Finding fresh cherries at the grocery store is a wonderful thing. Trying to get the pits out is not. Enter the Leifheit Cherry Pitter from Williams-Sonoma. This little tool quickly punches the pits out of cherries without maiming the fruit. It costs $12.50 and is available online at www.williams-sonoma.com or by calling (877) 812-6235.

By the book

Jo-Carol Alford, editor of “Favorite Recipes of Friends of Edith Patch,” will hold a book-signing from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday at Borders Books, Music and Cafe in Bangor. As a fund-raiser for the Friends of Edith Patch, a group dedicated to restoring the historic Patch House on the University of Maine Campus, Borders will donate 15 percent of all purchases made by coupon-bearing customers this Saturday and Sunday. If you’re interested in helping the cause, call Alford at 866-7517 and she will e-mail you a coupon.

Tidbits is hungry for news about local food products and events. Send your Tidbits by mail to: Bangor Daily News, attn: Kristen Andresen, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor ME 04402-1329; by fax to 941-9476; or by e-mail to kandresen@bangordailynews.net.