Soon after moving to Hood River, OR, a couple of months ago, I took a part-time job working with the Pastry Chef at Knead Bakery. Some of the perks of working at Knead include a constant, heavenly aroma in our workspace, the opportunity to sample everything from new pastries to brownie [...]]]>

Soon after moving to Hood River, OR, a couple of months ago, I took a part-time job working with the Pastry Chef at Knead Bakery. Some of the perks of working at Knead include a constant, heavenly aroma in our workspace, the opportunity to sample everything from new pastries to brownie edges and the really fun crew that works there. Aside from all that, I also have the opportunity to take delicious artisan bread home with me twice a week. I don’t always take it because the resulting increase in my waistline is not necessarily a perk but when I do indulge in some bread, I’m sure to use it wisely. So when I took home this wee little French roll, I knew it needed fixings that would do it justice. That’s where the Beet & Goat brie sandwich came in…

Ingredients

1 very fresh French Roll
1 medium roasted beet, peeled and sliced
1-2 hearty slices of goat brie
dash of vinegar
dash of (really good) salt
1 Tbsp Dijon Mustard
1 Tbsp Delicious Relish (I used my homemade green tomato relish)

Recipe*
*it’s really, very simple

Slice your French Roll in half. Take a teeny little bite to get you excited about how god anything will taste on a fresh, artisan French roll. Lay the goat brie on the bottom half and place the sliced beets on top of the brie. Drizzle the vinegar on top of the beets, followed by the salt. Spread the relish + mustard on the top half of the roll. Place both halves, open-face, in a toaster oven and toast. Take ‘em out, press the two halves together and enjoy!

This is a giant bottle gourd. I came across it while shooting a piece for Farmers Ending Hunger at ‘Another Pumpkin Patch’ by Pearmine Farms in Gervais, OR. At first I thought it was one of those plastic, hollow fruits that some folks use to decorate their homes [...]]]>

This is a giant bottle gourd. I came across it while shooting a piece for Farmers Ending Hunger at ‘Another Pumpkin Patch’ by Pearmine Farms in Gervais, OR. At first I thought it was one of those plastic, hollow fruits that some folks use to decorate their homes (if you have those in your home, make a trip to your local thrift store today and leave them there) but I soon realized this idea was ridiculous as I was surrounded by big, beautiful gourds and pumpkins. I was, after all, at a pumpkin patch. Then I thought, ‘Giant pear.’ No. Obviously. Molly McCargar, a 4th generation farmer at Pearmine, put an end to this strange internal dialogue and told me it’s a bottle gourd. Bottle gourds make great decorations after they’ve dried out and essentially hollowed, which they’ll do on their own if you simply let them be, but the mention of bottle gourds immediately reminded me that I have a much smaller version of one of these meant to hold maté. I picked up said mate gourd while I was living in Cordoba, Argentina for a short time. (For the record – Argentina is a beautiful, magical place.) I wanted to share this photo with you because I don’t think it’s often enough that we celebrate the less common and more curious products of nature. And look at that thing! It’s fabulous.

In order to help you really understand the size of this thing – here is a photo of one of Molly’s lovely daughters holding another of their home-grown gourds…

Each issue of edible Portland ends with a ‘last bite’ – a one-page spread comprised of an inspiring photo and a short caption, recipe, quote etc. In fact, many of the edible Communities publications end this way – in edible Marin & Wine Country it’s [...]]]>

Each issue of edible Portland ends with a ‘last bite’ – a one-page spread comprised of an inspiring photo and a short caption, recipe, quote etc. In fact, many of the edible Communities publications end this way – in edible Marin & Wine Country it’s called the ‘cherry on top,’ which I love. The last bite of the Winter 2010 issue of edible Portland is a photo of an Oregon woman bent over a box of rhubarb in her cellar, surrounded by 800 quarts of home-canned food. The photo was taken by Dorothea Lange in 1939, just before the end of the Great Depression. Whenever I think of canning, this photo pops into my head. It just makes so much sense – when you have a surplus of something, or the ability to create a surplus, preserve it. And I know it’s not the Great Depression but it’s a difficult time and canning does save a lot of money. This year, I have canned strawberry preserves, ketchup, summer squash & onion relish, salsa and pear sauce – all with produce I grew or was given to me. Well, I bought the palette of strawberries on the side of the road on a rainy day on the way home from Silverton this summer. I couldn’t resist. But the point is that I spent very little on the food that now fills my cabinet, ready to be opened and embraced in the deepest throes of winter. I’ve heard people say something like “canned sunshine” or “sunshine in a jar” in reference to preserved summer fruits. And I think that’s accurate.

My grandmother on my father’s side was gone from this world long before I arrived but when I started canning, my dad told me that it was something his mother did every year. I love this idea – it gives me something to hold on to about the grandmother I never knew and something that qualifies my notion that I would have liked her very much. Home preservation was pretty standard with our grandmothers, who were around before the advent of convenience foods, which are made with some very strange ingredients and preserved with even stranger ones. Thanks to the food movement, which is moving no matter the pace, we have begun to return to practices like home preservation (though some impressive people had never left).

Canning has evolved in a wonderful way – it’s now as creative as it is practical and canning recipes have got some serious flair. I just started canning (which always strikes me, by the way, as a strange name to call the action of preserving things in a jar) last year and I’m fully on board. After a very fruitful harvest at my friend’s grandparent’s apple orchard (more on that next week), I got my hands on what I’ll call a basic starter kit for home canning and an apple butter recipe from the internet and I went from there. From the moment I popped that first jar of apple butter open in, oh, I don’t know, December, I was hooked.

Give canning a try. It’s smart and delicious. Start with something simple, like apple butter. Be sure you’ve got the right equipment and follow the directions closely. Ask your more rural friends for tips on canning and/or extra produce. Stop and buy that whole palette of pears on the side of the road. Take them home and make your grandmother proud.

{Recommended books for canning: Put ‘em Up, Canning for a New Generation}

And if you’re already canning – Grandma thinks you’re rad and What are you canning? What did you open from last year that blew your mind? What’s your favorite thing to can? Books you’d recommend?

Yesterday I saw golden leaves on a few trees near the Columbia River… Thing is, I love Fall and I find the colorful approach to the season charming but, oh, how I love summer and hot weather and juicy fruits. So much. So this time of year is always [...]]]>

Yesterday I saw golden leaves on a few trees near the Columbia River… Thing is, I love Fall and I find the colorful approach to the season charming but, oh, how I love summer and hot weather and juicy fruits. So much. So this time of year is always a little bittersweet for me.

When I arrived home at the end of my drive yesterday (where the aforementioned golden leaves were spotted), I found this beautiful, bulbous heirloom tomato* hanging from the vine of one of my giant tomato plants. It’s as if the universe tuned in to my slightly melancholy end-of-summer feelings and gave me this big beauty as a consolation prize. There’s a few more on the vine that are just about ready to turn into plump, juicy gems like this one. It’s been HOT this month and I’ve loved it. And these tomatoes may be my saving grace for the end of this beautiful summer – reminding me that it’s still hot enough outside to ripen some big ol’ tomatoes, there are still a few more barbecues left and the juicy fruits of summer are not yet a memory but a fresh prize still waiting to be won.

*Heirloom tomatoes are an iconic and much talked about item in the conversation about fresh, local food. One of the major points made about them is how expensive they are, which tends to be true – while in a small, farmstand-type grocery in Hood River this weekend, I came across a single tomato with a price tag that read $4.50. I think most of us would agree that is too much for one tomato, no matter how delicious it is.
I would love to see the heirloom tomato move into conversations about the benefit of growing your own food instead. If you make a sincere effort to shop locally and seasonally, I promise you will be surprised at the affordability of much of the produce you’ll find but heirloom tomatoes may not be one of those items. And from my point of view, it’s the perfect opportunity to try growing your own. The start for the tomato plant that grew this very tomato you see above was given to me at the King Farmer’s Market by a lovely young couple that run a propagation house in Portland and recently started cultivating some land  for production. I hate that I cannot remember the name of their business but that’s that. The start would have otherwise cost me about $3.50. With some good soil, a sunny location and plenty of water, this plant has produced 15 tomatoes. Even if just 10 ripen, that’s about $0.35 for each tasty, nutrition-packed tomato. And I can still use the green ones for, say, enchilada sauce or fried green tomatoes.
The moral of this story is that if you pay attention to what the items at your farmer’s market cost, you can make wise decisions about what you want to grow and what you want to continue to buy from local farmers. For example, I grow tomatoes and buy potatoes. And if you do it right, you’ll have fun growing your own food, you’ll save money and you’ll be rewarded with delicious edibles – I would know since I’ll be dipping my tortilla chips in fresh tomato salsa in just a few hours;)

The website for which I have been producing videos for about a year now – food-hub.org – launched a new version of the site yesterday. It’s really quite pretty, but it’s also highly functional for all kinds of people in the food business – so much so that President Obama told my [...]]]>

The website for which I have been producing videos for about a year now – food-hub.org – launched a new version of the site yesterday. It’s really quite pretty, but it’s also highly functional for all kinds of people in the food business – so much so that President Obama told my boss and FoodHub’s Project Director, Deborah Kane, that it was “a great idea” at a Rural Champions of Change meeting at the White House last week!

I created the above video for the new home page and I have a confession to make – when I visited the site last night to see the upgrade in action, I smiled a great big smile when I saw the new, colorful, sexy FoodHub home page with my video right in the middle of it… We had the opportunity to speak to a number of food business professionals for the video and I had the opportunity to blend their comments and ideas together into a short, hopefully inspiring piece on why sourcing local food is important and wonderful and how FoodHub is helping people do it. Enjoy!