Portland Fridge - Sam Adams' Midnight Garden
Rumor has it he might run for mayor. But politics aside, check out what Sam Adams has in his fridge - and oh! - that wonderful backyard garden…
THE FRIDGE STARTS IN BACK: CITY COMMISSIONER SAM ADAMS' MIDNIGHT GARDEN
Story and Photos by Jen Marlow
For Fall 2007
It’s 6:27 a.m. in North Portland. Sam Adams is already dressed for the day in a blue button-down dress shirt, pressed slacks and dark-rimmed glasses. He invites me inside and runs to get his electric razor.
I notice empty egg cartons stacked on the porch as I pass through the front door, and then Sam leads me straight to the backyard. We pass by the fire pit, where friends gather on cool evenings for s’mores made with last year’s stale marshmallows, and the hand-built chicken coop, ending up in a mulched garden with several raised beds.
Once in the flower patch Sam gnaws on an edible chrysanthemum flower and mentions offhand that he grows his own horseradish. He gardens at night, the only free time he has available, given his dawn-to-dusk work schedule, earning him the title of Midnight Gardener from his neighbors. The story of this urban procurer’s food life is much richer told by beginning in the garden, rather than the cold storage confines of his fridge:
sam’s garden In my backyard I grow four different kinds of apples, three different kinds of grapes, acorn squash, Atlantic pumpkins for sport, and three different kinds of potatoes: Peruvian, Austrian and fingerlings; strawberries, sweet sugar-snap peas, four different kinds of tomatoes, kiwis, and mustard greens—I love spicy mustard greens; raspberries, celery, dill, cucumbers for pickling, zucchini, and ornamental gourds for my mom.
If I can’t grow my own food, I live my everyday life in support of farmers’ markets, local food growers and local food vendors. On Wednesdays I go to the farmers’ market downtown, two blocks from my office at City Hall, and I go to the farmers’ market at PSU almost every Saturday.
eggs: north portland raised I have three chickens: the “brown chicken,” the “white chicken” and the “speckled chicken”— pretty utilitarian names. The white chicken is the meanest. She hates the brown chicken, so I had to separate them last spring. She lays the white eggs. The speckled chicken lays the light brown eggs, and the brown chicken lays the dark brown eggs. We’re in the midst of figuring out: Can’t we all chickens just get along? So far, the answer is no.
Sam and I return to the house to take a look in his fridge…
frozen eggplant parmesan Apparently I am obsessed with eggplant parmesan, because I have several boxes in my freezer. This one’s from Trader Giotto’s—made in Italy. This is the first year I’ve grown eggplants in my garden, so I’m going to try to make my own eggplant parmesan and freeze it.
There’s no reason that locally produced eggplant parmesan couldn’t be processed on a much bigger scale. There will always be a certain percentage of folks like me who eat microwaved frozen foods and want access to a more local, fresher and healthier product. Value-added production of locally grown food needs to be the next step in the eat-local movement.
local sausages I love apple chicken sausages. Usually when I go to buy them, I’ll think to myself: Do I have ketchup? So I buy some. That’s why I have at least two bottles in here.
horseradish I eat a lot of horseradish. In summertime, I grow horseradish for my sausages. I prepare it by digging up and then grating the roots, and adding vinegar.
gloria’s tamales A woman from Wilsonville, Oregon, makes these tasty tamales and sells them in the deli at New Seasons. I happened to meet her one day in the store when she was dropping them off. I found out that she gets her chicken locally, but not her corn. The more we talked, the more I thought about hooking her up with a local supplier for her cornmeal. These tamales are an example of a convenient and pre-produced food that benefits from local processing.
tartar sauce Beaver Seafood Tartar Sauce with capers and dill, made in Beaverton, Oregon, is a nice local tartar sauce.
addictive cheese Have you ever had this cheese: Tumalo Tomme, handmade with raw goat’s milk in Bend, Oregon? It’s very, very good.
blueberry soy sorbet I’m a big soy guy. Sometimes when I come home late and don’t want to scramble eggs, I will pour soymilk over frozen blueberries. The blueberries will freeze the soymilk right around their skin, creating a yummy soy sorbet with icy blueberries.
ales I usually don’t buy a six-pack of any beer, because I like to shake it up. I’ve got German and Scottish beer, BridgePort Blue Heron and Drop Top Amber Ale by Widmer—made right here in North Portland.
two kinds of cola I drink a fair amount of soda. I love Fresca. I also drink Diet Coke in the morning and throughout the day. At night, I drink Diet Coke without caffeine.
leftovers Here are some leftovers that I just noticed...ooh, they’re old and really nasty...from Roux, an excellent Creole restaurant on Killingsworth that opened about a year and a half ago. The chefs use lots of local ingredients. Also, right up the street is a new Cup and Saucer, which just replaced a convenience store with barred windows and hookers on the corner. We’re so happy! Tell your friends.
sam’s garden (again) My garden is a small part of my larger dream that Portland be as food self-sustainable as possible. One of the biggest challenges is availability of local land for agriculture. In many cases, it’s more profitable to farm Christmas trees and ornamentals than to grow food, so I would like to zone agricultural lands specifically for food production to keep fertile lands in the hands of the farmers who grow our food. The promotion of backyard agriculture is also important. If I can do it, anyone can.
