Edible Portland Blog

Written by Ellen Jackson
For Summer 2007

“DO YOU KNOW ABOUT RATATOUILLE?” she asks me.

I’m talking to my young niece who lives in New Jersey.

“Mm-hmm. I love it.”

“Me too!” she says with unmistakable enthusiasm.

I’m equal parts pleased, proud, and perplexed. When it comes to food, she’s always been open-minded and adventurous, with a palate more discerning than both her older sister’s and younger brother’s. But I never imagined she’d cozy up to the popular French dish from Provence. When and where had she made its acquaintance?

She hasn’t, exactly. Her ratatouille isn’t a vegetable dish; it’s an animated feature film of the same name. This nine-yearold’s first and only experience with ratatouille is pure pop culture à la Pixar! She gives me a synopsis: Remy, a rat living in the sewers of Paris, realizes his ambition of becoming a great chef by insinuating himself into a famous restaurant kitchen, where—quel surprise!—rats are unwelcome. We always end up here, talking about books and movies. I do what I can to nudge the conversation back to food. Isn’t it my duty as an aunt to encourage her epicurean leanings?

I tell her about the ratatouille I love, the one with tomatoes, peppers, onions, and eggplant. “Ugh. Eggplant might be my least favorite vegetable.” Ironic, since two-thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in her home state of New Jersey. I suspect more of it ends up in the region’s celebrated eggplant parmigiana subs and pizza than in caponata, ratatouille’s Italian sister.

Zoë Bradbury's story, Organic, Local and Everything Else, was a great starting point for discussing just how it is we navigate our modern food system. What questions do we ask ourselves when facing two similar products at the grocery store? Which is local? Organic? Fair trade?

Deborah Kane by comparing Breyers ice cream to Coconut Bliss (which we profiled in the Summer 2007 issue - read that story here). Zoë promised us that she'd have some answers to our questions from Coconut Bliss founders Larry and Luna. This is what Larry says about their purchasing practices:

THE FARM
"All our coconut milk is organic and all of it comes from an 880-acre farm in Chanthaburi, which is one of the only USDA-certified organic producers in Thailand. The milk is canned in 5 gallon tins in a plant owned by the same family in a nearby town (which we also visited). The farm and factory are owned by a Thai family, and their workers are paid a living wage and work under conditions very similar to those that we have observed in farms and plants in the Willamette Valley (except that the coconuts are harvested year-round and migrant workers are not employed).

DISTANCE TRAVELED
"The coconut milk is shipped to us in containers on large cargo ships, and travels around 9,000 miles to get here. While this is a long distance, sea transport uses only 12% of the fuel per pound of goods as trucks. So the coconut milk shipped from Thailand uses less fuel to transport to Oregon than oranges or strawberries trucked from southern California.

Co-founders of Edible Communities, Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian smile from the front page of the Dining & Wine section in today's New York Times. Edible Portland, though wholly owned and published by Ecotrust, is one of 33 "Edible" publications across the country (and now in Canada) originally started by Edible Communities.

How to Eat (and Read) Close to Home
By Marian Burros
August 29, 2007

NO ONE WOULD ever mistake Edible Brooklyn for Edible Atlanta, though both are quarterly food magazines that share a corporate parent and a typeface. But the story titles in the latest issue of the Brooklyn version might flummox Atlantans. There is, for example, “Fresh Kills,” about a live poultry market in Williamsburg, and “Late Night Nosh,” which is self-explanatory, at least in New York City.

TOMATOES IN THE JAR
Written by Harriet Fasenfest
For Fall 2007

IF I COULD ACCOMPLISH one great thing in the world of food preservation, it would be to inspire the wide-scale practice of in-home tomato canning. I know this dream represents a selective calling but, simply stated, tomatoes and home canning are made for each other–both for the reasons I regularly offer on the merits of food preservation, and in consideration and respect of the tomato’s versatility and near-daunting abundance.

Even though local tomatoes make their first appearance at market in early July, it is only a nod to things to come. By August, tomatoes reach their destiny as the bountiful red lovelies of summer burst forth in full vigor and number. A week or two more, and tomatoes become second only to zucchini in the frenzy they produce.

Who has not faced the pleas of an overly ambitious backyard gardener who, in the deepest darkness of winter, misjudged the merits of 30 tomato plants? Who has not returned from the farm stand with more tomatoes than all the world’s bacon and lettuce could justify? Indeed, we have all peered at the priced-to-sell bushel of peak-season tomatoes and thought, if only for a second, “I should can those.”

Have you been to the Oregon State Fair yet? You have until September 3rd to see who won "Best Pie" this year.

THE BEST PEACH PIE IN OREGON
How one woman saves her grandma, pleases her friends and wins a blue ribbon--all in the name of pie
Written by Angela Sanders
For Summer 2007

LAST SUMMER IN THE NOISY Home Arts exhibition hall at the Oregon State Fair, Patricia Dugan made her way past displays of loaves of bread, platters of cookies, and cakes festooned with sugar roses. She stopped in front of a case laden with fruit pies and shouted, “I won!” Patricia’s pie tin, once full of peach pie, was licked clean. A blue ribbon sat in the empty tin.

Patricia, a 33-year-old human resources specialist at Providence Health System, learned to bake pies when she moved from San Francisco to live for a summer with her grandmother in Hamburg, New York, a small town outside of Buffalo. Her grandmother was ill and needed someone to look after her.

Patricia was between jobs and unsure of what she wanted to do with her life. She filled her days in Hamburg playing cribbage with her grandmother, going to sing-alongs with neighborhood octogenarians, and visiting local farm stands.

Patricia wasn’t used to having so much time on her hands, so at one of her stops at a produce stand she bought a bag of Golden Delicious apples and decided to try her hand at baking a pie. Her pies were an immediate hit.

She baked an apple pie for her grandmother’s 89th birthday party, and as one of her grandmother’s friends helped himself to another slice he remarked that it had been years since he’d had such a good crust. Soon her pies were expected at every family gathering. She scoured the produce stands for peaches, sour cherries, and more apples.