Stir Crazy Days

This is my default outfit for the last week.  I told you I wasn't going to show it, but it's become so part of my every day life that it just didn't seem right to hold out on you any longer.  Though the mannish snow pants were strategically cropped from the picture.  Anyway, I've got another snow day from work tomorrow.  The freeway is closed.  My grandma in Wilsonville had to cancel her holiday travel plans to my mom's house, leaving both of them vastly disappointed.  My own trip (romantic getaway to Vancouver followed by a couple days visiting my sister Claire in Seattle),  scheduled for Wednesday, is starting to look dicey.  This weather is starting to be a bit of a bummer, my friends.  I keep telling myself it's really not that bad, but then when I think of Adam driving on the freeway at five o'clock tomorrow morning and I break into a cold sweat, I realize that I have been slightly kidding myself.

And to top it all off, we've been stuffing our gullets with carbs galore.  It must be that cold-phobic, nesting instinct kicking in full force because my meals have consisted of a multitude of flour- and lipid-based products; today alone we had pancakes, cheese and crackers, spaghetti, and cookies.  So by the time dinner rolled around, it was definitely time for something decent. 

Enter the vegetarian's friend, Seitan.  For those of you who have never heard of it, it's a form of wheat gluten that, like tofu, complements the flavors of whatever you cook it with.  Unlike tofu, it has a slightly tougher, chewier texture and in the words of Adam, "Mmm!  It takes like chicken!"  Sorta looks like it too:
After sauteing it with some onions, shallots, and garlic for a few minutes in olive and sesame oils, I added chopped kale and purple cabbage.  Pretty colors:
I popped a lid on the pan for 5 or 10 minutes so the veggies would steam themselves, and then stirred in a sauce consisting of the seitan's juices (reserved), some cornstarch dissolved in water, soy sauce, fish sauce, chili flakes, and pepper.  Served over rice with a splash of sesame seeds on top, it really turned into a "chicken" stir fry to write home about.  If the local postal service weren't shut down, that is.
P.S. I started a new infusion today.  I had all these lemons that I was going to bring to a meeting for work (as garnishes for sparkling water) but it was cancelled because of the weather.  Luckily I had a bit of vodka left and luckily I didn't know what the hell else to do with the lemons, and so in a few days I'll have a zinger of an alcoholic beverage to enjoy in front of the woodstove.  I added some sugar too, to see if I can make it taste like Limoncello.

Sipping Pretty

One of the great things about living in a small town is taking trips to the big city.  Last night I went to a French short film festival at the Portland Art Museum and then went out for a late-night artichoke and arugula dip at an old favorite, The Sapphire Hotel.  I was practically overdosing on culture after such a prolonged stretch without it.  Don't get me wrong: I love my orchards and countryside bike rides and killer farmer's markets.  It's just nice to get gussied up and stay out past 9pm every once in a while.

Last week, for example, I made the trip out to Portland and engaged in a nice, close examination of the fine art of cocktails.  And no better place to do research than at the Nuevo Latino-inspired Andina restaurant in the Pearl district.  And though Raina and I munched on Yucca croquettes dipped in three different kinds of salsa, and shrimp-salad-stuffed avocado halves, the snacks were really just there to accessorize the true purpose of our visit.  Mine, a cocktail I now daydream about at the end of a long workday at the rural community college, is called the Sacsayhuaman (sound it out).  It consists of habanero-infused vodka, passion-fruit
puree, cane sugar, a sugar rim, and a cilantro leaf garnish.  It's darn near perfect: spicy, sweet, tropical.  It's hard not to suck it down and order two more.

And here's Raina's: the Atardecer Porteno.  To quote from the menu, because I couldn't top this description: "pink quava nectar shaken with honey infused vodka and lime juice topped with a float of ruby port and a spritz of lime zest, served up with an anise sugar rim."  Whoa.  As you can see it looks like a sunset, which reminds me of the exact time of day I'd like it to be when I'm sitting on a cafe terrace in Rio de Janeiro, sipping on this very drink and happily regarding the Atlantic.

Eat Here Now

Neenie took me to a great lunch today at Meriwether's in NW Portland.  The patio was gorgeous, with fuschias and hydrangeas and very ornate birdhouses decorating the borders, and the food was delicious.  We shared a fantastic beet salad to start, then had shrimp and chicken salad sandwiches, respectively.  Though I was full, I couldn't resist a fruit tart for dessert.  After all, it's summer in Oregon.  Local fruit is worth its weight in gold these days.

But the greatest part about Meriwether's is that they have their own farm up on Skyline Blvd. right here in Portland.  They grow much of the produce used in the restaurant, and it was apparent!  Sliced heirloom tomatoes on a restaurant sandwich are a rarity to be savored.  According to their website, they are establishing a flock of laying ducks too.

They've also got a CSA program, which stands for Community-Supported Agriculture.  The way it works is that a farm will sell a certain number of subscriptions to local consumers for a set price at the beginning of the season.  Then, every week, the subscriber can pick up a box of whatever that farm has recently harvested-- usually a variety of produce corresponding to that farm's geographical climate and time of year.

There's an easy way to find the CSA's in your area at LocalHarvest.org, an amazing website dedicated to local and organic food (farm's, farmer's markets, restaurants, community gardens, CSA's...).  I just did a search and found a farm coop in Hood River named, creatively, Hood River Organic, and I'm thinking of joining.  These things aren't cheap of course, and can cost between three and five hundred dollars up front.  It'll take some calculations to figure out if it's worth it.  Of course, I can't compare out-of-season produce trucked in from far away to local, chemical-free food by price alone.  It's obvious which would win out (which makes me nervous about how the person with whom I share a bank account will respond to my proposition about this).  But if you're looking for reasons to join a CSA, Hood River Organic's got a pretty compelling list of them here (scroll down).

If any of you, faithful readers, have a story to share or advice on local agriculture, please do share.  Any CSA subscribers?  Do you like it?  Would you do it again?  

Hip Cake

I have observed lately that cupcakes are outrageously popular here in fair Portland.  I feel I am qualified to make this claim for three reasons: I am a great lover of baked goods and pay careful attention when they're around; I am a frequenter of coffee shops, partly because they are great venues for sweets; and as of recently, I'm planning my wedding, and I've been surprised, as I trawl the internet for cake ideas, by how many bashful brides choose cupcakes over a large single cake.

There is one coffee shop-- Crema, on the corner of SE 28th and Ankeny-- that specializes in cupcakes, and I wanted to shine the spot on them for a moment.  For one, their flavors of cupcake are quite innovative.  Pictured is a Lemon Rosemary, but I've also witnessed flavors like Mexican Chocolate, and Red Velvet with Cream Cheese frosting.  And for another thing, they pile the frosting on to precarious heights.  To excessive heights, even.  If the frosting weren't of such high quality and didn't bear being eaten plain with a spoon after the cake part is gone, I might not be posting this here today.

If you should find yourself in Southeast Portland hankering after sugar, now you know where you need to go.

The Coldest Summer I Ever Spent

There are rumors that it's going to get up to eighty degrees this weekend here in Portland, and I'll believe it when I see it.  The past weeks don't bode well, that's for sure.  Here it is, mid-June, and the other night I had to turn on the heater!  Rain, fog, and wind like you would not believe are blustering over our town, and I am sick to death of it.  The weather page in our local paper at least is having a sense of humor about it.  One of their headlines on Tuesday read, "Merry Christmas!  At least that's what it felt like in La Grande."  

I was getting a bit worried for my vegetable garden-- is it getting enough sun?  Too much water?  Too cold?  So I decided to do a little investigative reporting, and I called up Terry at Kasch's Nursery on Tacoma St. to see what she had to say.  A short, blond woman with a deep, husky voice, Adam and I have seen her the last two springs that we visited Kasch's to pick up our tomato starts and flower seeds.  She's always charging around, watering plants and just generally getting stuff done.

I was hoping she would answer the phone, and she did.  The hook I was looking for didn't really pan out, though.  Apparently, plants are doing just fine in this weather.  For the most part, at least.  Terri told me genially that some people who started planting their spring veggie plots really early had to come back and replace some of their plants.  But for those of us who procrastinated till late May, or early June (or haven't even really started yet), there should be no problem.

I could see the truth of her words in my own plot, but I had just been chalking that up to the compost bin that Adam made last winter and which we positioned right in the corner of the plot so it would, we hoped, leach nutrients to its green, growing neighbors.  We've got tomatoes, corn, beans, lettuce, basil, cilantro, an eggplant, and a zucchini going strong, and the only thing that didn't seem to take was the okra (which, truth be told, was just fine by me).

Well, I guess I don't need to worry about waking up one wet morning to a plot full of dead veggies.  I suppose the little guys don't mind the rain nearly as much as I do. 

Lucky In Limbo

Thanks to a co-worker who inspired me to keep a tighter grasp on my finances (and subsequently install the bafflingly complex computer program Quicken, which as yet lies unused on my computer desktop), I suggested to Adam that we do some meal planning and go for a hefty grocery trip to the affordably priced Trader Joe's.  And while I do have lots of laudatory remarks about Trader Joe's abundant and inexpensive offerings (exemplified, of course, by its three-dollar bottles of wine), it the store's neighbor I would like to talk about today, Limbo Produce (SE 39th near Steele).

I thought we'd check it out first-- stock up on fruits and veggies, and then hit up TJ's for our dry and canned (or wine-bottled) goods.  And what an idea that turned out to be!  Like your typical produce-only market, little attention is devoted to architecture or decoration, but when you have sweeping mountains of melons and tomatoes, box after box of potatoes (red, fingerling, russet), and of course, since it is June in Oregon, tiers and tiers of blue-, rasp-, and strawberries to bring tears to the eye-- then interior ambience is of little importance.  Happily the plentiful produce was local and largely organic, and happiest of all... it is DIRT CHEAP.  99-cent avocados!  Dollar-a-basket strawberries!  (Recall, those were three-fifty at the farmer's market.)  Cherries for two dollars a pound!  (At New Season's they cost literally four times as much.)  Big boxes of already-washed spinach for a buck!

We stocked and stocked, and walked away with a thirty-eight dollar boatload-sized bounty, and I've been popping cherries in my mouth like jelly beans ever since.  (I also made a lasagna last night for dinner layered with zucchini and spinach, courtesy of Limbo.)

Perhaps these well-kept secret permanent markets are an even better answer to the conundrum of over-priced, over-bland supermarket produce than farmer's markets.  As much as I love my local FM, it's really expensive.  I've noticed too, that the products at the FM are becoming more and more processed.  Not like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese-processed, but more and more ready-made stuff is being sold, and is pushing out all the raw basics.  For example, instead of a bunch of spinach, vendors now have spinach tarts and spinach tortillas and spinach facial moisturizer.  They are often homemade and delicious and I'm sure very moisturizing, but the prices are also of course jacked up.

Limbo's fruits and veggies are just that: whole, ripe, just pulled from the earth, and ready for me to have my way with them.  So when I want to take a gander at my neighbors on a summer's afternoon, or if I'm in the mood to plunk down some money for some artisanal goat cheese and homemade ice cream sandwiches, I'll head to my local FM.  When I want my fruits and veggies untouched and inexpensive, I'll head on down to Limbo, the produce heaven. 

Holy Empanada!

O, mi Pambiche.  Portland's best Cuban restaurant, and possibly one of its best restaurants in any genre, fed us dinner tonight.  At about 73 degrees, it was a real scorcher in P-town today, and, biking home from work Adam and I had the lightning bolt of inspiration to heighten the sense of summer and visit the vivid green, purple and yellow building that houses Pambiche.  During the nine months of the year that it's miserable outside, the two long rows of tables lining the sidewalks lie frustratingly empty, cutting the capacity of the restaurant to a mere fraction of what it could be in the warm weather.  The reason I say frustrating is that the turnout for fantastic Cuban food remains unvaryingly high throughout the year, causing the wait for one of the five or so tables inside to stretch, at times, to an hour and a half.  But this evening, the colorful picnic tables were abuzz with scantily clad and sufficiently hip Portlanders, who, like us, thought some empanadas and sangria were pretty much essential on a Saturday like this.  With more places to sit, we sat easily.

Sangria.  Two options, white or red.  I chose white because I had just biked from the Pearl and needed refreshment, as well as intoxicant, and didn't figure red wine would be as cooling.  I chose well.  My strapping Cubano server brought a full pint glass of something that looked like lemonade, only bedecked with such equatorial produce as a large sprig of mint, a lime, and a sugar cane stalk.  I grunted and started chomping on my sugar cane with rather less than ladylike formality, and then slurped down a fruity, wine-y, tropical vacation in a glass that, upon closed eyes, brought forth visions of silly-blue seas and white rocky beaches with an unclothed Javier Bardem sprawled...

Ok, ahem, so we orded the Puerro Empanada-- I guess you could describe it as the Latin version of a calzone, only deep fried for that extra buttery flakiness.  The Puerro was filled with a creamy, heavenly leek and cheese mixture and came adorned with a juicy beet salad (and these guys aren't afraid to mix beet greens with the ruby roots-- a wise move, in my view) and four thick-sliced, deep-fried plantains.  And then we got the Pescado con Coco-- a piece of white fish (that I felt could have been bigger, but maybe I'm thinking from the American perspective, where one serving of  restaurant food here could feed a developing country's family for a week) that was stewed in this creamy coconut sauce, flavored with peppers, onions, herbs and spices.  Mio Dio, it was near perfect.  Black beans and rice on the side.  At $7.75 for the Empanada, and $9.50 for the fish, it was a sweet, sweet deal.

I've been there three times now, and haven't yet ordered dessert, though I swear I will next time.  They have one of those cases filled with such things that make you press your nose against the glass in wonder.  Individual-sized pineapple-upside-down cakes with toasted coconut siding, three-tiered Tres Leches cakes, enormous chocolate rectangles named Aleman (presumably, after their resemblance to German chocolate cake), and other treats too ornate and amazing to recall right now.

There will probably almost always be a wait at Pambiche, and they deserve it.  But if you time your visit wisely, you don't need to do time for your plantains.  Just head out around five on a warm afternoon-- the rush is an hour or so away, and all the tables are open and turnover is high.  That sangria is meant to be drunk outside anyway.