and sometimes there's just pie.

Two of our best friends are getting ready to leave Portland to move to New York, which has set me thinking a lot about our city over the last few days. Maybe this is dorky to admit (not that we're exactly charting new territories of cool with this blog), but I am a huge Portland booster. I follow a slew of local arts-and-culture blogs, I excitedly track the future plans for our city, and sometimes I get goosebumps when I read the editor's intros to local dining guides or the Willamette Week Finder. Together with A, I keep a running list of recommendations for out-of-town visitors - so many that we probably turn most guests off of Portland permanently.

I understand that Portland is no utopia. We can be insular, myopic, overly self-congratulatory, quick-to-settle, and insecure. We still don't have decent public transit on most of the Eastside, a lot of our neighborhoods seem hell-bent on making themselves into themed malls, and there appears to be no end in sight to the bland condo development. In spite of these failings (and more), there is a lot of energy in this town that gets channeled into some really exciting projects; projects that make it feel alright to stay in Portland, even when I sometimes long for a change.

Time for a little PDX boosterism.

MTV News came to Portland recently and they didn't eff-up the coverage! They even picked decent bands to interview. Experimentation, collaboration, positive vibes. Watching this kind of stuff just makes me swell up with pride. If you don't already have plans - check out the PDX Pop Now! festival next weekend.

As for other festivals, PICA just recently posted their Time-Based Art 2008 Festival preview video. I've mentioned TBA before, so I'll keep this short: it is one of the best parts of my year. I've gone into every year excited about a few events, skeptical of a lot more. Each time, I'm blown away by how engaging and entertaining the whole festival is. Sure, there was that terrifying Japanese noise music last year, but riding my bike between events and late-night happenings, I just end up feeling totally in love with the city. Somewhere in the video around Mark Russel saying, "Portland is the only place where this happens in the US...," I still start to choke up.

So while the PDX future is brimming with music and arts, what about A and my real love? Last year, the New York Times proclaimed that Portland was in a "golden age of dining," so doesn't it follow that food would be the best indicator of Portland's zeitgeist? Artist Tricia Martin is in the process of reviewing submissions for her Pietopia contest, using baked goods as a cultural barometer. This isn't about cliched Portland aphorisms - this is chance for highly personal readings of the city. According to Martin's original call, participants are to submit pie recipes that reflect their current perspective on life, describing how the technique, ingredients, or style of the pie represents their experience. Taken together, these pies will portray how people are living in Portland. [Note: It is taking all of my self-restraint to avoid bad pie-centric puns.]

Unfortunately, the submission date came and went, but I'm looking forward to the unveiling of the pies on August 20. I think this project has so much potential - it doesn't just get people thinking about Portland, it begins to unpack the myriad things that food can represent and communicate. If the Portland food-scene is to grow, it certainly needs more intelligent and creative approaches to the culture surrounding eating.

I feel like there are good things happening in Portland and, for the time being, I like it here.

Then again, I suppose New York has some pretty decent music, arts, and food, too.

garden update

While our enthusiasm for vegetables is boundless, neither myself nor A have particularly green thumbs. I grew up with bountiful gardens that my parents tended, though I never evinced any real interest in them as a teenager. A's family gardened back when she lived in New Mexico, but gave in to the weeds once they moved to the Northwest, maintaining only some strawberries in an old toilet bowl.

As for houseplants, I retain a windowsill of sad cacti that our cat repeatedly walks across in his attempt to see out the window. Time and time again, I diligently re-pot them, hoping the cat finally tires of tormenting their spiny limbs.

Clearly, neither of us have very much successful growing experience.

However, our bellies often tell us what to do, and it was our veggie-hunger that led us to try our luck at container gardening as soon as we had moved into a place with a patio. Last year, we started out small and blindly. We planted two tomatoes in too-small containers; a handful of herbs crammed into shared, shallow pots; and a habanero pepper that longed for warmer climes. We ended up with a bumper crop of resilient herbs, some chiles that ripened in color only, and a few runty tomatoes. We resolved to do better this year.

Nationwide, there has been a surge of activity this year from non-profits and artists in reviving the idea of victory gardens. We've actively followed the many projects, but I have to admit that it didn't exactly translate into bountiful rows of veggies in our yard. Blame it on apartment living. We did make some big improvements over last season, though - we got proper-sized containers, we increased the number of tomatoes we planted, and we tried a few new varieties. So far, so good. As small as our patio container garden is, I've really come to enjoy tending it. It's nice to walk out on our back stoop and water the plants in the evening, pinch back the buds on the basil, and obsessively check the growth of our tomatoes.

There is a lot we still have to figure out. We didn't fertilize. We didn't really pay much attention to sun/water needs. We still don't quite understand pruning. We certainly didn't start anything from seed. I can only imagine that gardening in the actual ground is even trickier. Still, we have picked up a few new tricks and our plants are doing worlds better than they were last year.

Easily the best advice I've received this year is that harvesting herbs requires care, not just willy-nilly plucking. Maybe this strikes everyone else as obvious, but it never occurred to me that you just don't head out to the garden and pick leaves. Mint should be snipped between leaf pairs, basil should be plucked so as to leave the delicate shoots below the developed leaves, and umbelliferae like parsley and cilantro should be harvested from the outside of the plant in, because new growth begins in the center. I get a real kick out of these kinds of details, sort of like, "Wow, there's a reason you do it this way, huh?" While I'm on the subject of herbs, flat-leaf, Italian parsley has been the real standout star this year - its flavor is much bolder than store-bought, with strong anise notes. Next year, we'll be planting much more of that.

And in my imagination, we'll also be planting artichokes, brussels sprouts, tomatillos, chicories, climbing peas, pole beans, lovage, fenugreek, winter squash, potatoes, cavolo nero. It's fine to dream, but once I start planning out make-believe succession schedules and looking at plans for cold-frames and greenhouses, it might be time to remind myself that I'm a real greenhorn at this.