cherry-pickin'

Last Saturday we woke up way-too-early for a way-too-cold-for-July morning adventure. Yet, in spite of our groggy protestations, we knew we'd made a good decision as soon as we arrived at Sherwood Orchards. We discovered the farm in mid-October of last year when I got an itch to make quince paste, but refused to pay the premium at the markets in-town. After a little research, we found this farm just down highway 99 that had a few rows of quince trees, along with dozens of varieties of heirloom apples. We picked boxes worth of fruit and went home happy, redolent of quince's potent and flowery aroma.

Following a few months off, Sherwood Orchards opened for this year's season at the beginning of July. And with that announcement, we returned in search of another hard-to-find fruit: pie cherries. Luckily, the fiery older couple that runs the farm have sour montmorency cherries in spades. Pie cherries are almost comically perfect in their appearance, resembling a child's drawing of a cherry: plump, glossy red, and paired off on dangling stems. They also happen to be bracingly tart, which makes them perfect for sour jams and well-balanced pies. We picked 9 pounds for canning and freezing.

But we didn't leave before gathering 11 more pounds of Sherwood's sweet varieties. While the richly-colored, inky Vans were few-and-far between, we managed to find a few dozen of the grape-flavored fruits. We had much better luck with the Royal Annes, which also happen to be one of my favorite varieties. They usually have a blushing hue and marvelous sweetness, but these particular Royal Annes also gave off the strongest almond scent I've ever smelled in a cherry. I finally understood the French tradition of including stone fruit pits in desserts for their almond-like flavor. A and I were so taken by the heady perfume of the cherries that we had to stop ourselves from eating more fruits than we put in our buckets.



Last year, we ended up making far too many jars of each jam that we tried, which meant we didn't try as many varieties as we would have liked. To spread out the enjoyment and expand our options, we're trying to make smaller batches this year and try new recipes like fig preserves or plum jam. We're already planning on returning to Sherwood Orchards for some August peaches.

You can view more of our photos from last fall's visit to Sherwood Orchards here.

you might think twice before eating that vegetable

Blueberry Danish, 2006

While googling DIY scratch-and-sniff (it's a long story), I came across a series of completely enthralling photos by Kathryn Parker Almanas. Among the hospital photos and the pictures from her trip to the Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence (I've been, and it's awesome), she's done a lot of work staging medical dissections and "studies" of everyday foods.

Anatomia di Pane VIII, 2008

Even though I'm a fairly squeamish person, I am totally enamored of taxidermy. Whether it is a hunter's trophy or a natural history diorama, it is all about theatrics. For every codified taxonomy of species, there is a kitten tea party; it's equal parts science and fiction, and I love it. I even just enjoy the basic aesthetic of taxidermy, with it's wooden plaques, glass display cases and pseudo-scientific instruments.

Breakfast I, 2006

So while I covet all of the beakers and trays in Almanas' photos, what I really latch onto about the images are her compositions. She does a fantastic job of quoting 17th century Dutch still lives, with their low, slanting light and that same entwined artifice of sterility and decay. Or that famous Rembrandt painting of the anatomy lesson. The photos are partially reserved and objective in the prim manner of early medical science, but there's also a real fetish made of out of the repulsive and gratuitous. The way she lingers over the graphic details gives her photos a violent, forensic quality, like the evidence of a hastily cleaned-up attack. Her site has a few truly grotesque pictures of berry-stained bread dough, or dark fruits in a stainless steel sink, but this one really got me when I first saw it:

Swiss Chard, 2006

When I noticed the red-juice stains on the asceptic trays, my stomach did a turn. They look so animal.
And they're just vegetables.

putt putt putt

Tuesday night, A and I rounded up some friends for a little "tee time" at the 4th Annual Holocene Minigolf Art Invitational. Each year, the organizers enlist a roster of artists, designers, galleries, and stores to build out their dream putt-putt holes. In past years, there have been 3-D fun houses, giant labyrinths, life-size atari games, and a whale with an air-jet blowhole that ejected your golf ball. People get seriously ambitious - it almost puts the Adult Soapbox Derby to shame.

This year, I'd say the course was even stronger and the holes were definitely more playable. One green was populated with fey garden creatures and over-sized, candy-colored radish flowers. Another was a modeled critique of our crazy car-culture and freeway system. Free pancakes (and self-esteem boosts) were served for every hole-in-one. And overtop of it all, they projected Caddyshack on the walls and hosted club-circuit regulars to DJ the festivities. It's that classic love-it or hate-it Portland event. You either embrace the self-aware, irony-laden quirkiness or end up muttering bitter things about the "creative class."

But if you're too busy wandering around sulking over hipsters, you might get nailed by a vicious windmill with its fast-moving ceiling fan blades!


And wouldn't that just be a horrible way to go? Getting a concussion from a salvaged-wood cabin covered in dream catchers and garden gnomes. Ha!

Even though most of my photos were drunkenly blurry (the tournament is held at a bar, afterall), I did manage to find one of my favorite holes online:


Everyone else was really into the mustachioed bunny, but I would have taken home that little Indian headdress bird in a heartbeat. He's like a lazy-eyed neo-hippie. Priceless!






You can see more (re: less blurry) photos on the Portland Mercury's website.

the alaska of the tropics, part two (big island)

P:

So, Alaska. I mean, Hawaii. I mean ... We (inevitably) got a little long-winded in our post about the first island we visited, which meant that I didn't get to explaining the title. Well, guess what? The title only gains more clarity on the Big Island.

As we drove along the edge of Kailua on our last day on Oahu, I suddenly had an insight (!) that Hawaii was a lot like somewhere I'd been before: Alaska. Maybe it's their isolation from the continental 48. Maybe it's that both states tendered prominent political candidates this year. Maybe it's their similar climates. Wait, scratch that - it's actually hard to put my finger on what exactly gave me that idea. But there are some similarities between the two states that are worth pointing out:

-a disenfranchised native population that's a tourist-draw (totem poles and luaus)
-incredible natural beauty
-rich and hearty local cuisine (moose? plate lunch?)
-senior citizens on tour buses (and cruise ships)
-blue tarps (seven out of ten homes in both states have a plastic tarp covering some sort of junk in the front yard - it's an empirical fact)

Granted, a place like Waikiki is a far cry from "The Last Frontier" to the North, but we did an admirable job of avoiding the touristy resorts and sticking to a little more of an off-the-beaten-path trip, making my comparison a bit more understandable. In the end, Alaska and Hawaii boast their own quirky cultures, where people lead lives unique from anywhere else in the states. I mean, where else would A have run off first thing in the morning in her pajamas to pick giant, tropical fruit from the top of a fence off of a neighbor's tree? Yeah, it probably wouldn't have been Alaska, but my point remains: Alaska = Hawaii.

A:

We had papaya trees in our front yard. Having arrived at our rental in the middle of the night, I first glimpsed the trees when I awoke the next morning. I picked the first papaya right off of our back lanai, but it was a small, under-ripe specimen and I knew it must be only the beginning. Thus, I set off to explore the rest of our acreage, and came back with two enormous, deliciously ripe papaya.

I don't know what came over me, really - it was as if my true, animal nature came bursting out of me and I had to hunt and gather. So, I hunted the best papayas (which just so happened to be right beyond our fence on neighboring land)...and once I found them, I gathered. Below, you will see the fruits of my labor.


Papaya is particularly good eaten cold, but we were so excited to try the fresh-picked fruit that we sliced one right open. The perfume was intoxicating, almost overwhelming.
Perfectly ripe and seductively sweet, I can safely say that I have never in my life tasted a better papaya. We devoured the fruit in a matter of minutes, and I was hungry for more.

As we drove into Kona later that morning, I noticed a sign for the South Kona Fruit Stand and immediately requested a detour. Though the smoothie bar and cafe were closed, the stand had plenty of exotic fruits for sale, most grown organically next door. Struck with the idea that I probably would not return to a tropical island in the forseeable future, I loaded up on everything in sight - local Ka'u oranges, Rangpur limes, butter pear avocados, mangos, organic estate-grown coffee, abiu, and haupia/lilikoi (coconut pudding with passionfruit). The pudding was a nice, mid-morning snack, as all of the fruit was a day or two from ripeness. The abiu - small, yellow fruit with a translucent flesh that has the texture of lychee and the sweet, rich flavor of vanilla pudding - were the most unlike any other fruit I've tried. Our bags bulging with treats, we trekked off to find snorkeling gear for P's introduction to the sport.

P:

As the storm clouds gathered closer to shore, we suited up for my inaugural foray out snorkeling. Even though it may make me a weenie, I'm not a big fan of swimming in lakes - the feeling of plants and fish brushing past me in the murky waters just gives me the jeeblies. So, to put it mildly, I was withholding judgment on snorkeling. It remained to be seen whether I'd be better with non-pool swimming if I could see with whom I was sharing the waters, or if it was best left to my imagination.

We'd been steered towards a sheltered bay that boasted a lava rock shoreline and a historic park: Pu'uhonua o Honaunau. The waves slapped me against rocks as I fumbled with my flippers, before I made an ungainly plunge out into the waters. Holy. Crap. That is one strange, claustrophobic feeling to be breathing underwater, through a tube, with your eyes wide open. But wow, did I see some cool fish: puffer fish, trumpetfish and too many butterfly fish to count. At about the same time as I reached my limit for swimming with the fishes, a torrential thunderstorm broke over the coast. I'd just climbed out of the waters, but A (a true lover of the sort of quiet time that snorkeling affords) was drifting further and further out, oblivious to the weather. She did eventually look up from her aquatic reverie to realize we were calling her back to shore.


In October, we read a feature in Gourmet magazine about 20 great American restaurants from when the magazine was founded that are still going strong. Among them was the Manago Hotel, in Captain Cook, Hawaii, not far from where we'd been snorkeling. We'd called ahead that day to make a reservation, since the place still operates on plantation hours, meaning you need to be in by 7:30 pm to be served. The hotel dining room was not nearly as stately as that phrase makes it sound, but it was awesomely kitschy and probably hasn't changed since the day it opened. On the wood-paneled walls, a felt letter board menu listed the entrees and while almost everyone at the table ordered some local fish, I took the article advice and ordered the house special: a gravy-drenched pork chop.

Everyone at a table shared the family-style side sides, which came out with a pot of genmaicha tea before the rest of the meal. Sugary-sweet black-eyed peas, pasta salad, steamed vegetables and lots of white rice - island food circa 1950. With liberal dosings of soy sauce, we devoured most of the plates before our main courses even arrived. My pork chop was pretty delicious, covered as it was with a brown gravy and pan-seared on the bone, but A's choice of opelu, a less-fishy mackerel, caught all of our notice as the best-tasting fish at the table.

On our way back to our house that evening, we made a short detour to the southernmost bar in the US, Shaka Restaurant in Na'alehu. I don't mean to be a spoil sport, but they are resting on a tenuous claim - they're at least a few miles from the very southern tip of Hawaii. If someone wanted to be a huge jerk, that crown is there for the taking. Other than that, there's not much else to say on that front other than that my beer did taste very southern.

A:

Our third and final day on the Big Island was volcano day. After a breakfast of cold papaya, linguisa, and toast with jaboticaba jam (grapes that grow out of the trunks of trees - my brother's find at the fruit stand), we set out for a black sand beach. Punalu'u beach is known for the presence of endangered sea turtles, that often drift onto dry land to sunbathe on the warm sand. We were lucky enough to see three while we were there - surrounded, of course, by tourists trying to get there picture taken with the turtles. It always astounds me when people blatantly ignore both posted rules and common sense, standing within inches rather than the suggested fifteen feet from the basking animals. I'll admit that I am particularly attentive to rules - perhaps I should be an officer of the law when I grow up? - but, seriously, regardless of regulations, is it that difficult to understand that standing nearly on top of living creatures might distress them in some way? And that maybe if you distress these turtles too much, you might not have a turtle to take your picture with next time around?


Off of my soapbox, and onto lunch. On our way into Volcano National Park, we stopped to grab food in a small town that was rumored to have outstanding malasadas. Unfortunately, the donuts were only available on the weekends, but the rest of the food at the unassuming cafe was surprisingly tasty. I briefly contemplated a hamburger made with local, grass fed beef, but eventually settled on the loco moco with fish. Traditionally consisting of white rice topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg and brown gravy, ours replaced the patty with a cut of fish. Looking back, I wish I'd gotten the patty, but the meal was still a satisfying way to prepare for a hike through a lava crater.

Kilauae Ika erupted in 1959 and formed a lava pool at the base of the crater. The cooled lava now provides a short, scenic hike that begins and ends in rainforest and allows you to trek across the floor of the crater. We had lots of fun muttering from above about stupid tourists getting too close to the steam vents in the crater, only to head straight for them once we reached the floor. We even took a family photo next to one of them. It's always particularly touching when a family risks severe burns while posing for next year's Christmas photo.


As late afternoon wore on, we drove out to the edge of the park where you could watch eruption meet ocean. Before dusk, the site is impressive enough - as you drive up through the lava fields and hike over cooled lava coils toward the viewing area, a HUGE, billowing steam cloud looms ahead. Every so often, a spray of rocks shoots into the air and the crowd collectively "ooohs". As dusk settles and the sun sets, however, the real show begins. The base of the steam cloud begins to glow red, and the shooting rocks become red sparks that burst into the sky. These were far and away the best New Year's fireworks I have yet to see.

P: That night, with the spoils of a surprisingly good local grocery store and farmer's market, we made up a hodge-podge dinner to celebrate New Year's Eve. Thai fish curry to take advantage of the local produce; hoppin' john for some New Year's fortune. After a long day of volcano hikes, everyone began to crash by 10:30, but not before A could run outside with a coconut, a dull machete and a few glasses of wine in her. Looking back, I can not believe I let her tippsily hack at coconut in the dark, but then again, I was distracted by the sparklers. Between her efforts and her mom's even-more-nerve-wracking chopping, they split the outer husk and set to work boring out a hole for the juice. With the help of a lava rock, they split the fruit for everyone to taste and I remembered that I don't really like fresh coconut all that much. Thanks for your hard work, sweetie! It probably wouldn't have been a good end to the trip to lose her finger in Hawaii.

the alaska of the tropics, part one (oahu)

A -
P was not thrilled that we were headed to Hawaii. From everything he'd heard, people who went to Hawaii spent half their time tanning (as many of you know, we don't really "tan") and the other half golfing (golf? we prefer croquet). Besides, Hawaii over the winter holidays? Isn't it all so very cliche?

All of his skepticism changed when our Hawaiian airlines flight attendants began slipping local words into their presentations, and P realized that words like "mahalo" and "wiki wiki" were incredibly fun to repeat. Even (especially) when they made no sense.

A: Would you like to rent a personal entertainment device for the long flight?
P: mele kalikimaka
A: You don't even know what you're saying
P: mahalo

At least it kept him entertained for the flight.

P -
I'll admit it: I was embarrassed to be headed to Hawaii for the holidays. It felt like the polar (tropical?) opposite of our standard vacations - no grimy city streets; no crumby weather; no urban culture; no long, meandering walks through questionable neighborhoods to find a food cart. I'm not really a "sit-on-the-beach-and-relax" kind of guy. It makes me tense. And seriously, what would we eat? Teriyaki bento?

So, I was surprised at how quickly I embraced the warmth that met us when we got off the plane. It probably had something to do with the sub-arctic weather Portland had gotten over the holidays. Immediately upon landing, I knew Hawaii was completely different from anywhere I'd ever been. The airport corridors were open to the outside weather. Alien-looking plants grew over everything. Vibrant-green, serrated cliffs rose up from the coastal shores. I started to feel as though I could manage a Hawaiian vacation. And we found lunch, which greatly put me at ease.


A month ago, I'd read an article about how Hawaiians were skeptical of their native son, Obama, until they witnessed him tuck into a big plate lunch at a local drive-in. To prove that a skinny, pale Oregonian was ready for the islands, I knew I'd need to try some. Conveniently, L & L Drive Inn was just a few blocks away from our first rental in Kailua. Essentially fast food with a local flavor, L & L offers the building blocks of a standard "plate lunch": protein, two scoops of white rice, and one scoop of macaroni salad. Within seconds of walking in the door, everyone in our entire group had clumsily decided to order the same thing. When our seven cartons of the "Hawaiian Special" were ready, we opened them up and dug in to the lau lau (pork steamed in a taro leaf) and a bastardized version of the luau-favorite kalua pork. Sure, it was probably seasoned with liquid smoke, but I'm not going to lie and tell you I didn't enjoy every mashed-together bite of the macaroni, pork and rice. On our way out, I noticed Spam musubi on the menu, but A held me back from stuffing myself with what is essentially processed meat sushi.

A-
Not that we didn't have Spam later during our trip. To be honest, putting this stuff in writing is making me feel a little ill and more than a little ashamed. But, we were just trying to get closer to our soon-to-be president.

Oddly enough, we were very close to the Obamas during our stay. My father was born in Kailua and the first part of our trip was a family reunion - a homecoming for my grandparents and their children. I had heard, as I'm sure everyone had (come on, who didn't see that picture of our shirtless president elect?) that the Obamas were staying in Kailua. Oahu being an island, and Kailua a small piece of the island, our rental was well under a mile from the Obamas' vacation getaway. I won't pretend that we saw them, but we did see some friendly looking secret service in Hawaiian shirts at one end of the beach we frequented. I wanted to scream, "Obama!!! Shriek!!" but P restrained me. Probably for the best - I would bet the secret service agents were still fairly nimble in flip-flops.

The morning after our arrival, plate lunch still heavy in our bellies, we were greeted with the sweet, slightly greasy smell of malasadas. The malasada is a Portuguese confection - a custardy, craggy donut covered with sugar that is a bit like a dense beignet. You may remember that neither P nor I have a strong love for donuts. These donuts, like those from Donut Plant in NYC, are the exception to the rule. Actually, I think I've come to the realization that I do like donuts - I just don't like crap.


Lest you think we ate only junk food in Hawaii, we did manage to enjoy two very traditional dishes, courtesy of my Hawaiian cousins. Alongside the pizza that had been ordered for our family reunion lunch, one of my cousins had contributed a few tubs of poke - marinated cubes of raw fish, like nigiri doused in tasty sauce - and a few bags of poi, or taro root paste. As a rule, my mainland relatives are not particularly adventurous eaters, but a few of us hovered expectantly over the tubs until they were graciously opened for our tasting pleasure. After running through the line of tubs - poke squid, wasabi tuna, and tuna with limu seaweed - and then trying each once again, it was onto the poi. Having never been to Hawaii, P was a poi neophyte. I have a bit of a soft spot for the slightly sour, purple concoction, but many are put off by its paste-like consistency. P certainly did not turn up his nose, but he admits that it is not something he would run back to try it again. I am holding out for a taste of poi with sugar and cream, as my cousins described. Seriously, how few foods are not better for the addition of those two ingredients?

P-
Despite how we're recounting our trip, it actually didn't revolve around food nearly so much as our typical vacation. Hawaii has a very funny food culture that sort of mashes-up Asian food with American fast food grub. There is a lot of gravy, pork, and rice. Not that any of that is bad, but it didn't give us much to go on. Still, we tried our damnedest to strong arm A's family into indulging our every hunger. For the most part, they gladly went along.

As we left Kailua, we detoured to Island Snow for a cone of shave ice at the Obamas' go-to shop. For a sense of how Obama-crazed the islands are, Island Snow, which doubles as a surf shop, had already reprinted their t-shirts with the 'O' in their name replaced by Obama's election logo.
More patbingsoo than sno-cone, Hawaiian shave ice can come with a scoop of ice cream, adzuki bean topping (sweetened beans found in Asian pastries) and a "sno-cap" drizzle of sweetened condensed-milk. I split mine half-and-half between coconut and lilikoi (passionfruit) and opted for the beans and sno-cap, creating a sugary, brain-freeze of a snack. So good.

After a brief hike up to a lighthouse on the Eastern-most point of O'ahu, we piled back into rental cars with A's family and drove to Honolulu to catch our flight to the big island. Before departing, we took a side trip for a late-afternoon lunch at a Filipino restaurant named Elena's. This place was much more in sync with our usual traveling style: a no-decor, florescent-lit storefront in the light-industrial/strip-mall fringes of the city. Their bathroom policy was stated as, "RESTROOMS IN NEARBY BUS TERMINAL." Classy. But really good. We don't have much experience with Filipino food, but we recently read an article about the cuisine that described it as "the comfort food of Asia," which made it sound worth trying. Owing to a wide range of European influences, Filipino food isn't nearly so spicy or pungent as that of its neighbors and much more reliant on stews and braises.


Enraptured by all of the unfamiliar dishes, we overloaded our table with a little of everything: pinakbet, pork adobo, crispy pork chicharon, banana lumpia, arroz caldo, and a house-special soup called sari-sari. The lumpia, which were little more than apple bananas wrapped in a deep-fried, egg roll wrapper, caused A and I to reconsider our aversion to the fruit. Especially when we dipped them in the ubiquitous seasoned vinegar that accompanied our meals. Even though the arroz caldo I ordered came out too hot to eat (not that I didn't try), I'd wager that it was one of the standouts of the table. A rice porridge of chicken, scallions, and loads of ginger, it was utterly satisfying. I've heard that it's a bad idea to eat mounds of food, particularly greasy food, right before a flight. Fiddlesticks. It worked for us. After all, leftover rice porridge wouldn't have fit in a 3 oz. container for our flight to the Big Island.

walk to eat, eat to walk (bloated memories of san francisco)

When we weren't tied up with Slow Food events, A and I busied ourselves with our own food events. Our first night in town, following a long afternoon of panels, we pursued a tip for a local pub run by Dave McLean, the brewer who oversaw the beer component of Slow Food Nation. Magnolia looks like the product of an old Dead Head who unwittingly became editor for McSweeney's. Their menus are a slick mash-up of Victorian hierarchy typography with hidden Grateful Dead lyrics and wacked-out contemporary watercolors printed on an LSD blotter grid. Along with some existential cartoons about a man explaining the reality of a bone to his dog, the website gives a pretty good sense of what I'm talking about. Top this design-conscious psychedelia with a rehabbed vintage bar and some great farm-to-table food, and you've got a solid restaurant. We had wild board head cheese, Louisiana boudin sausage with garlicky grilled eggplant and an amazing goat cheese praline cake. And the beer wasn't bad, either. I went for an "Out with the Old Ale," a beer aged in bourbon barrels with a strong, sweet kick that knocked me out. After one or two those, it was hard to find the bus out of the Haight.


Not to be discouraged by a busy day of events on Saturday, we rounded up a few of our friends from the Portland Slow Food chapter and marched them down to the Mission in search of Tartine. It was a classic P & A vacation activity - walking an unspecified (long) distance to taste something, then turning in the other direction and walking elsewhere to eat some more. From a block away, we recognized the bakery by the line out the door. Luckily, once we tasted their offerings, the walk and the wait were all worthwhile. Theirs was the single most custardy bread pudding I've ever tasted - bathed in a tangy sauce of raspberries and peaches. The standout, though, was the orange-scented and caramelly morning bun. While standing in line, we spied back into the kitchen, getting a sense of what makes these pastries so damn good. Hint: it might have something to do with the cubic feet of butter stacked on the counters.


After a round of mid-day Slow Food activities (visits to the garden, market, and street food bazaars), we took a walk down to the water through Chinatown and North Beach. Along the way, A fell prey to the shrewdest lemonade stand racket I've ever seen - those kids set up shop halfway up the steep incline to Coit Tower!

That evening, after a predictably bleak (though really strong) Slow Food film festival, we met back up with two of our friends to try Farmer Brown, a farm-to-table soul food that focuses on sourcing their ingredients from black farmers around the Bay Area. A and I shared some crispy catfish with candied yams and a tangy bean salad. The table favorite, though, was anything that we could douse with the addictive jalapeno-honey sauce - particularly their sweet little cornbread muffins.


Early Sunday morning, we left our hotel to check out Liguria Bakery in North Beach, on a tip from the owners of Pastaworks. We'd scoped it out the day before and noticed their hours: from 8 until they run out product, never later than 2 pm. Now what baked good could inspire such morning devotion to sell out each day? Focaccia. Amazing focaccia. That's right: they make one product and they do it well. The women running the shop were cranky, deliberate, and totally impatient with us trying to decide between the six flavors they offered. The scene was so very Italian. We took a slab of the plain and a slab of the garlic out to the nearby park for a simple breakfast. While A was pretty taken by the elderly Chinese women doing calisthenics in the park, I was pretty taken by the incredibly chewy loaf with its wonderfully sweet garlic topping. A little focaccia, a little coffee and I was ready to check out the Taste pavilions at Slow Food Nation.

On Sunday evening, after we leveled out from the caffeine and booze-induced stupor of Taste, we felt like it was time for one last meal in town. Where better to go after a weekend of Slow Food than Zuni Cafe? We are huge fans of chef Judy Rodgers' cookbook - I can't think of many other chefs who write so eloquently as to sound as though they are in the kitchen alongside you. It is filled with wonderful insights into method and preparation - every time I open the book, I feel like I learn a new, eminently practical technique. The dishes featured in the book make up a cuisine of brilliant, simple flavors that are coaxed to reach their height. The restaurant is even more impressive.


The food at Zuni is always an incredibly simple demonstration of the tastes of a few ingredients. We had two simple starters: a mix of grilled peppers with ripe cherry tomatoes and a fritto misto of onion, lemon and agretti. A and I then shared a bowl of corn soup that perfectly captured that late-season sweetness; there are few better things you can do with corn than a simple soup. Our friends shared a bowl of polenta with mascarpone, an incredibly basic dish that is cooked so well that it becomes decadently smooth and savory. I think I'm going to need to brush up on Judy Rodger's explanation of polenta cookery. Out of the main courses, I think that my squab may have captured the most attention for its beautiful juxtaposition of tastes - zante grapes, grilled polenta, and fennel gave a nice balance to the roasted bird. To finish, A and I ordered a Sicilian sweet bun stuffed with almond and sour cherry granitas and fresh nectarines. It was a perfectly refreshing end to a full weekend of over-eating.

walk to eat, eat to walk (fond memories of slow food nation)

That pithy little axiom has definitely become our vacation M.O. If we were to start a travel agency, it'd likely be emblazoned on our brochures. Then again, if A and I were to start a travel agency, I don't think we'd find too many customers eager for a grueling schedule of zig-zagging back-and-forth across a city in search of something to eat. Maybe we need a different business plan.

Still, it suits us just fine (even if it runs a little contrary to most people's idea of "relaxation") and for our recent trip to San Francisco, we found a few kindred spirits (or at least good sports) to drag along with us. We'd gone down to the Bay Area to document Slow Food Nation, the first national celebration of American food culture, but managed to fit in a few side meals explorations as well.

I won't delve too much into the details of Slow Food Nation here - for that, you can see A's post on the Slow Food Portland blog - but I will mention a few of our favorite moments from the event:

As soon as we got into the city, we dove right into the fracas. We checked out a panel on "re-localizing" food, which was a bit of a let-down, given how familiar all the discussion was. I did come away with a great story about sustainable foie-gras, which I'm planning on writing about later. The second panel definitely upped the ante with a staggering raft of stories about brutal American farm labor conditions. A did a really good job of capturing that panel on the Slow Food Portland site.


The weekend was packed with Slow Food events - a congress for leaders, a networking day for activists, a marketplace, a victory garden, a tasting hall, and a street food bazaar. Most of it centered on the front lawn of City Hall, where we explored the large farmer's market of growers who were showcasing just one item. Everyone was over-the-top generous with their products, and we took full advantage of that. We tasted handfuls of heirloom apples, blenheim apricot jam, and some really amazing goat's milk caramel. One stand was selling pawpaw, one of the oldest native fruits in America. It tasted very tropical, somewhere between a guava and an avocado with huge, glossy black seeds. I don't think it fairly deserves the name "Ozark banana."


This seriously was the weekend of a hundred hams: domestic prosciutto, salame picante, mortadella, Kentucky country ham, Tennesee country ham, country ham with sweet corn relish, country ham with lard biscuits and raspberry jam. People are seriously obsessive about their country ham, but I suppose it makes sense to be so irrational over such a buttery, salty delight. We did manage to taste some non-pork foods as well; from the street food vendors, we tried doha papdi chaat (yogurt, chickpeas, tamarind and fried crisps), huaraches con chorizo (admittedly pig-inflected), and A got her free-range, grass fed hot dog, which may have been her weekend highlight.

On Sunday, we had tickets to Taste, a pier filled with themed food pavilions serving samples of artisanal American foods from around the country. It was delicious, but horrible for my poor buffet etiquette. When I end up in a scenario that involves both food and "lines," I get a cruel, game-day mentality of win-at-all-costs. It is no longer about enjoyment, only quantity. We ate a god-awful amount of food and certainly got our tickets-worth, but ended up with a weirdly-queasy buzz because of my neuroses-driven choices.


The whole experience was based on a system of points for tastes - you received 20 upon entry that you could trade for food samples, ranging in cost from 1 to 3 points. I was panicked. "We won't be able to try everything!" I pleaded to A. Then I noticed that the two pavilions that should have had the strictest limits, in fact had the least: coffee and spirits. The sustainable coffee booth was all-you-can-drink, so we quickly had a three-coffee cupping, followed by four half-shot macchiatos from different US baristas. Smart. The spirits pavilion, too, was a low-ticket, all-you-can-drink booth. I made sure that A and I got our fill. We sipped on estate tequila, a Bloody Mary that reversed my hatred of tomato juice, a few gin cocktails, and a taster of absinthe. We were well on our way. You can imagine what a great base all of that caffeine and booze made for the rest of the samples.


In truth, we got to try an unbelievable amount of products. From the pickles pavilion, we had some sublime sweet-corn relish on top of, you guessed it, country ham. We also tried green-tomato chutney, four types of classic cucumber pickles and had our pictures taken in a pickle barrel. The honey and preserves pavilion was similarly great, with some amazing bites like an apricot and green almond preserve and lavender-honey cupcakes. Oregon producers (like our beloved Ayer's Creek) were featured front-and-center, alongside delicious-sounding recipes, including one for Sweet Potato and Sour Cherry butter that I need to make next year.


It was particularly cool that a lot of the booths showcased the process of making their featured foods - in the chocolate pavilion, we tried four single-origin dark chocolates, but we also had a tasting of four phases of the chocolate refining process. Luckily, we could head back to the spirits pavilion to wash the flavor of those middle steps of chocolate-making out of our mouth. From the ice cream booth, we had six types of ice cream (including sorbets, gelato, and yogurts), but the fig ice stands out the most for how pure the flavor of the fruit was. We had stuffed Indian naan from the bread pavilion, mortadella ham with sauerkraut from the charcuterie vendors, and five kinds of aged, raw milk cheeses. But lest you think we didn't get our fill, we also had three cured hams, four sustainable seafood dishes and a buffalo and red-bean chili. All this, and we didn't even finish using up our points! Chalk that one up to efficient and liberal use of the spirits pavilion.

As much as we did attend, we didn't spend our entire weekend in Slow Food events. After all, we were in San Francisco, which has some pretty good food of its own. Next post up, I'll share some of the other (still food-related) things we did in town...

gingerblaze of glory

A few weeks ago, my co-worker, Nancy, stopped by my desk with a flier in hand. A local art school, PNCA, was hosting a gingerbread contest (Rip City Gingerblaze 2007) and a team from Ecotrust planned to enter. Would I be interested in joining the team? Faster than you can say gingerhaus, I had agreed and even threw P's services into the deal. (I like to think that in speaking his vows to me, P intimated his cheerful willingness to go along with any hair-brained scheme I managed to hatch or get us into.)

It was another week before team Ecotrust had its first formal meeting, during which we accomplished roughly the following:
-We would make the Natural Capital Center.
-We would build it out of gingerbread.
-Some of us had gingerbread recipes that *might* work.
-We would need candy.
Beaming from what we imagined to be a thoroughly successful meeting, we all proceeded to tuck the idea into cozy corners way (way) in the back of our minds. Mine slept soundly there, snugly sandwiched between "learning guitar" and "writing a food-based memoir," until it was rudely awakened by Nancy's panic-stricken voice. The contest was a week away. We had not even begun planning (much less building) in earnest and Ecotrust's very reputation was at stake.

Meeting number two was frantically arranged, at which we accomplished the following (in summary):
-We would make the building in a 2:1 rectangular shape.
-Some of us would make gingerbread over the course of the week.
-We would gather to assemble the Natural Capital Center on Saturday, exactly one day before the deadline.
-We would need candy.

When Saturday arrived in dreary drizzle (this was the day the clouds let loose, signaling the most intense three days of rain I have yet to experience in Portland) I hoped for the rain to turn to a blizzard into which I simply could not venture. Unfortunately the weather, though irritating and more than a little wet, was not enough to justify playing hooky. I dragged myself to our gingerbread construction site and prepared myself for disaster - crumbling gingerbread, garish candy designs, total disorganization, even a food fight or two. I would have been happy leaving the event still on speaking terms with all of my co-workers.

In 7 1/2 hours, I was amazed by the transformation. Like the gingerbread, I was covered in many-colored frosting, seeds, wheat grass, licorice and bits of seaweed; but, believe me, I looked far worse than my architectural counterpart. Furthermore, we merry workers were laughing and joking, not arguing over the sour straws and jellied eyes. Towards the end of the evening, I declared without hesitation that this was, in fact, the best thing that I had ever done. Better than graduating college. Better than getting a job at Ecotrust in the first place. Better than our wedding? P inquired. Maybe. This pronouncement may have been induced by the thin layer of candy dust in the air, or perhaps it was pure exhaustion. Whatever the cause, there was something magical about that afternoon of construction and creative energy. I only pray that the magic holds on just a little longer and cements that gingerbread in place through to the end of the competition.

a very bloggy thanksgiving

Did you seriously think we would let Turkey Day pass without a mention on the good ol' blog?
Of course you didn't. And of course we wouldn't.

Thanksgiving commands a very important place in my year. Forgive the apocryphal origins and bad pilgrim celebration stories. Ignore the football and the sometimes-awkward family and the fact that we usually end up wolfing-down our meals. And while it's true that for many families, Thanksgiving is more likely to come from cans and boxes than farmer's market stalls, it is still one of the few (only?) American holidays devoted to food. No matter whether that food is fresh or packaged, nearly everyone that I talk with has strong memories (usually fond) of the holiday primarily because of the central place that food takes in all the festivities. Food makes memories stronger.

One day in the year that we get off of work and focus on food. Maybe everyone doesn't have a gourmet feast, but as a victory for eating, I'll take what I can get.

A and I rarely make the same meal twice. The same holds true for Thanksgiving. A part of me always wants to revive old meals and continue traditions, but part of me is so curious about new tastes. So we strike a balance. We do some dishes from family recipes, we create some from memory and we make a few new ones from recipes that we've culled over the past few lead-up months.

Personally, I find it fascinating how much technology and culture have intertwined over the course of even my life (A finds it slightly less interesting when I wax philosophical on this subject). I never would have expected that so much of our family's meal would come from the internet and yet, last Thursday, we were cooking a recipe from A's grandmother alongside new favorites we'd found online. Luddism is far from my mindset, hell, we bought our pie from a blog, but there is a part of me that wants for the marginalia of old handwritten recipes. Maybe I'll scrawl the web recipes onto index cards and spill some leftover gravy on them to make them look well-loved. Or maybe I'll just start looking for new recipes for next year.

So, with links when appropriate, here was the P & A 2007 Thanksgiving:

Mesclun salad with dates, goat cheese & molasses-garam masala vinaigrette
(with adjustments to the recipe's dressing)
________

Cider-glazed carrots
________

Brussels sprouts with Renee's chipotle-glazed nuts
________

Coconut curried uchiki kuri squash (from Viridian Farms)
________

Calmyrna fig and walnut dressing
________

Mushroom & Fennel Bread Pudding
________

Granny B's Velveeta Mac & Cheese (we're not all highbrow around here)
________

Mashed potatoes from memory
________

Mushroom Country Gravy
________

Bacon-Wrapped Turkey with Pear Cider Gravy
________

Cranberry Sauce with Orange Bitters & Harlequin
________

Buttermilk Pie with Cardamom and Nutmeg from The Acorn
________

Marty's Sweet Potato Pie

The standouts were definitely the bread pudding, which was a great (richer) take on traditional stuffing and the turkey gravy, which was worth all of the extra effort of pureeing roasted pears and cooking down the turkey-bacon drippings with hard cider. This was A's first time helping to cook the majority (read: all) of Thanksgiving. Perhaps I got us in over both of our heads, but we managed to get through it with only minor gravy scalds on our legs. The end count: 13 dishes for 8 people.

photos!

This is just a brief interruption in our travel stories, but we wanted to let you know that our amazing photographer, Josh Kaffer, has posted pictures from our wedding online! So take a look at how great you all looked that night - he should be posting more soon from other parts of the weekend. So here is your chance to finally get a nice, big portrait of us printed out on canvas (with soft focus) to hang over your fireplace. Go see the photos!

portland fauna.

Before we get too far, you probably shouldn't consider this to be anything at all like a primer on Portlanders. Just like this blog offers our highly selective take on what makes our Puddletown great, this is just our view of the folks we run into regularly around town. Look at it more as a heads-up for what to expect, a way to fit in with the locals. Or it could be a cautionary tale. Depending on your point of view.

Everyone in town has a project - most have more than one. Geeking out about your favorite obscure subject is de rigeur, as is indie craftiness. Projects lead to collaborations (because anywhere you go, you are bound to see at least three people you know from somewhere). Collaborations lead to grand schemes. Grand schemes lead to booze. Booze leads to food. That's pretty much the trifecta of local interest - discipline-defying projects, food, booze. And there is pretty much a festival for each of them. The best combine all three. That's why we headed out to the annual Adult Soapbox Derby (not adult like strip clubs - though in Portland, its not a bad idea to ask first.) Art cars careening down Mt. Tabor past throngs of jeering, drinking Portlanders. Some crash, others collapse mid-course, and some lazily roll down the hill (because they are shaped like taquerias).

But walking around, it is pretty easy to feel that Portland has embraced its stereotypes enthusiastically (while still maintaining a standoffish distance of aloof irony and too-cool apathy). Bikes, tattoos, beer, babies, dogs, hipsters (and a heady dose of d.i.y.-daredevil recklessness). Hell, in my mind, there are much worse stereotypes.


PDX Adult Soapbox Derby '07 from stumptownpanda and Vimeo.

nightmarket.