Edible Portland Blog

Did you hear the news that Cory Schreiber, the former chef/owner of Wildwood Restaurant, was recently hired by the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA)? He’s going to help ODA find a way to get more Oregon grown or produced foods into our public schools. Hooray! If he can get the kids eating his Cannellini Beans with Chanterelles (recipe), he’ll be a hero in my book. -Deborah Kane

Photo by Christine Hyatt

WINTER'S BOUNTY IN A BEAN SHELL
By Cory Schreiber
For Winter 2008

This winter, I’ve been cooking a lot of vegetarian meals at home. Not surprisingly, when I reach into my pantry, I go for the shell beans. They excite the winter menu with their endless variety of colors and shapes, adding a textural component to winter soups, salads and ragouts. Shell beans are nutritious (high in protein, iron, B vitamins and fiber), filling and, when cooked with a patient hand, result in a delicious meal.

In my restaurant career, shell beans were rarely “worthy” of the fine dining experience—that is, until Ayers Creek Farm introduced their fresh heirloom shell beans at Wildwood Restaurant. Since then, shell bean dishes have been appearing frequently on fall and winter menus: scarlet runners (a fleshy black-purple bean) added to a hearty salad with chicory, bacon and croutons; cannellini beans simmered slowly in their broth with a bouquet of herbs and root vegetables, to be spiked later with a dollop of parsley pesto; large white corona beans flash-fried and seasoned with coarse sea salt and fresh lemon juice, creating a crispy, blistered shell with a creamy interior—a perfect finger food.

Unlike other foods that often taste better fresh, I admit I can’t taste the difference between dried shell beans and fresh ones. Of course, dried beans do take longer to cook. Differences between the beans themselves include size (the larger the bean, the meatier the texture) and color (the darker or richer the color of the skin, the more pronounced the bean color and its stock will become during the cooking process).

Beans are incredibly versatile, and you can often use them interchangeably, depending on what’s available in your pantry or at the farmers’ market.

I don’t have a membership in any of Portland’s food co-ops so I’ve never really had that “walk in like you own the place” feeling. But Lola Milholland’s story on the vibrant co-op scene and the necessary role they play in our community has inspired me. Sign me up! -Deborah Kane

People's Food Co-op. Photo by Rachael Torchia

WALK IN LIKE YOU OWN THE PLACE
Rediscovering Portland's Cooperative Grocery Stores
By Lola Milholland
For Winter 2008

The last time I visited Food Front Co-op was some six years ago with my mom, when she pulled our car into the parking lot and announced, “A-ha, my old haunt.” In the 1970s, she had been a general manager, stocking bulk bins, boycotting Nicaraguan bananas, and convincing members that the co-op should sell alcohol. When I was a kid, I never considered Food Front to be a real store stocked with groceries, but rather the memorial of an era in my mom’s life.

When I returned from college this June, the glamour and abundance of New Seasons Market blinded me to the co-ops. At New Seasons Market, there is always the promise of a plastic dome filled with bread samples. Often, without bothering to focus my eyes, I marvel at the variety of jams and jellies—pounds of sweet preserves loaded onto the shelves—then I grab chunky peanut butter and run. I get exhausted, running from item to item like a television show contestant. But somehow, I rarely consider other shopping options.

Surprising myself one afternoon while I’m biking around NW Portland, I stop at Food Front Co-op. Near the entrance I linger at the apple and pear display. Who knew that there were so many apple varieties grown in Oregon? Melrose, Senshu, Belle de Boskoop. I grab a basket.

As I’m walking Food Front’s aisles, I notice that I’m actually paying attention to the individual products on the shelves. As though in perfect contrast to the produce section, where I stood in awe of our local bounty, much of it delivered directly from nearby farms to the co-op’s door, the grocery aisles are restrained. Local products—many displayed at eye-level—jump out at me.

Portland has three independent consumer cooperatives: Food Front Cooperative Grocery, People’s Food Co-op, and Alberta Cooperative Grocery.

The small scale of all three allows for personality and direct relationships. A farmer may walk in with a box of freshly picked raspberries, and moments later watch as a customer walks out with a carton of the ripe, dewy berries in hand.

VEGAN – QUALITY – ORGANIC – DELISH

Sweetpea Baking Company – its cookies, cupcakes and cheesecakes long a staple for vegan and non-vegan Portlanders alike – has now opened a café and bakery at 1205 SE Stark (next door to Herbivore Clothing Company and Food Fight! Vegan Grocery).

Recently for breakfast, I munched on a Kettleman bagel slathered with strawberry “cream cheese,” a rich slice of zucchini bread (one of their most popular items), and – my favorite – a monster-sized, gooey cinnamon roll. All vegan, all goodness, and all washed down with a cup of Stumptown coffee. Soon, savory breakfast and lunch items will also be offered.

Owner and master baker Lisa Higgins uses organic ingredients, and she is expanding into gluten-free and wheat-free baked goods.

If wedding bells are in your future, I highly recommend talking to Lisa about baking your wedding cake. My husband and I chose two-tier chocolate for ours, decorated with edible flowers and blueberries. The guests didn’t know it was vegan – and I doubt they would have cared!
-Laura Ford

A BENEFIT FOR BLACK SHEEP CREAMERY

The owners of Black Sheep Creamery, Brad and Meg Gregory, suffered extensive damage to their farmhouse, barn and property due to the storm that hit the Pacific Northwest in December 2007. The Gregory's also lost most of their flock of more than 80 sheep.

In response, Portland area cheese enthusiasts are sponsoring the benefit event, Cheese for a Good Cause. For a suggested donation of $25-50, attendees will enjoy local beer and wine and cheeses from local and international producers.

The cheeses produced by Black Sheep Creamery, located in Adna, Washington, are handmade from the milk of Rideau-Arcott and East Friesian sheep. The award-winning cheeses are available locally at Steve’s Cheese, Foster & Dobbs, Curds & Whey, Market of Choice, and various farmers' markets.

Black Sheep Creamery Benefit
Friday, February 1, 2008
6-9 p.m.

Ecotrust Building
721 NW 9th Ave, 2nd Floor
Portland, OR 97209

All funds raised will go directly to the Black Sheep Creamery Benefit Fund at Bank of America.
Purchase tickets now.

STICKER SHOCK
Organics and healthier foods are more available, but not everyone can afford them. Some Oregonians are looking for solutions.

By Kevin Allman
For Winter 2008

In 2007, Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski and several members of Congress took the “food stamp challenge”: shopping and eating on a $21 per week budget that represented the average American’s food-stamp allotment. Kulongoski and his fellow politicians met with limited success; some managed the challenge, while others ended up cheating by week’s end.

After the experiment, Nancy S. Tivol of Sunnyvale Community Services, a California nonprofit emergency assistance agency, wrote in the San Jose Mercury-News: “Feeling full on $3 a day is one challenge; eating nutritionally is virtually impossible. Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s week’s worth of fruits and vegetables consisted of one tomato, one potato, a head of lettuce, and five bananas.”

Hungry bellies aside, the food-stamp challenge illuminated a more subtle aspect of poverty: the lack of quality food available to the poor. For some, the opportunity to buy fruits, vegetables, and meats without antibiotics, pesticides or growth hormones is nonexistent, even if they’re on the corner market’s shelves. Something as basic as organic kale or a pound of natural ground beef might as well be lobster or caviar.

As Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Ca.) reported in a public diary during her week on the food-stamp challenge: “This is such an unhealthy diet. I am trying to eat the most healthy food I can afford, but I have no problem imagining how someone eating like this could quickly develop diabetes or high cholesterol. And with all these carbs, I can see how easy it would be to gain a fair amount of weight.”

THE PROBLEM
In Portland and across the nation, organic and locally grown foods are more available than ever before, from upscale specialty stores to supermarkets and even retailers such as Wal-Mart. But with social services agencies reporting record demand for their help, the gap between affordability and availability is wider today than it’s ever been. And the products made available by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s commodities program aren’t always the most healthful.

Jessica Chanay knows that struggle firsthand. In the early 1990s, she was a young mother with two children, and her family was on public assistance. Today, she’s a program coordinator for the Oregon Hunger Relief Task Force (503-595-5504), a group that’s “attempting to address the economic disparity in the availability of healthy foods,” according to Chanay.

The task force was created in 1989 by the state legislature to work with state agencies, nonprofit groups, public policy organizations, and federal nutrition programs. One of Chanay’s goals is providing an alternative to what she calls “filler food”—high-calorie meals and snacks that may be cheap but provide little nutritional benefit, such as the “dollar menu” items at fast-food restaurants. Chanay says she understands why overworked people who might be dependent on public transportation may find it easier to buy a 99-cent fast-food burrito or cheeseburger after a long day.

“As a society, we don’t cook as much as we used to, and that particularly impacts people with lower incomes and higher stress,” she says. “But the cost of food is rising rapidly at this point, and the purchasing power of those food dollars has been eroding. We’ve been working hard on the federal Farm Bill, and the food stamp program, that’s really benefited a lot of people. We’re trying to help people with limited resources get access to healthy foods, with programs like farmers’ market vouchers."

Organics and local foods are often pricier than their non-pedigreed equivalents, and for families on public assistance or tight food budgets, the premium for healthier foods can be an unaffordable luxury. But the extent of those price differences can sometimes be shocking, as I found in October 2007 when I visited a Portland supermarket (not an upscale health food store).

There were a few surprises. Only pennies separated the price of conventional canned beans from their organic equivalents, and the produce manager said that he’d stopped stocking non-organic beets because the price differential was negligible.

But for most staple items, the cost of organics was not only higher, but substantially so. The above six items tell the story: The organic alternatives exceed the average recipient’s weekly allotment of food stamps*, but the non-organic varieties consume only 54%.

*The average food stamp recipient in America receives $21/week for groceries.

-Kevin Allman

Read Kevin Allman's story on the affordability of organics and natural foods in the Winter 2008 issue of Edible Portland.

Tips on reducing the damage of conventional fruits and vegetables.

The story "Sticker Shock" describes many of the local programs working to bridge the gap between poverty and nutrition (read the full story here). Even with all these programs, organic and pesticide-free fruits and vegetables are still going to be out of the budget of many Portlanders (organic vs. conventional price comparison). For those people, learning which foods are the most—and least—contaminated can help. Christine Horner, M.D., a Taos-based expert on natural foods, gave us her suggestions.

“You can familiarize yourself with which foods have the highest and lowest content of pesticide residue,” Dr. Horner said. “Celery is considered one of the worst, for instance, but asparagus is great. If you wash and peel your food carefully, you can eliminate as many pesticides as you possibly can. Remember, eating conventionally grown fruits and vegetables are still going to be better than eating processed foods with nearly zero nutritional value.”

In a 2006 study, the Environmental Working Group found that shopping wisely could help consumers reduce the amount of pesticides in their diets by 90%. The organization issued a list of the “Dirty Dozen” fruits and vegetables, which found peaches and apples to be the most pesticide-ridden. Others on the list included sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, imported grapes, spinach, lettuce, and potatoes.

On the “Consistently Clean” list were onions, avocados, corn, pineapples, mango, asparagus, sweet peas, kiwi, bananas, cabbage, broccoli, and papaya—unfortunately, mostly foods grown in warmer climates than the Northwest.

With Portland staples like apples, cherries, potatoes, and greens on the bad list, it’s important to know how to clean and prepare them to eliminate residues if you’re not able to buy organic versions. Washing and peeling is effective with some foods (including peaches and apples), as most of the pesticide does not penetrate the skin; with others, such as squash and potatoes, chemical residue is found throughout.

Dr. Horner suggests going on the Internet for more information on which foods are best, and how to prepare them to make them safer. One place to start is at Earth Easy:

www.eartheasy.com/eat_pesticides_produce.htm

The Environmental Working Group has also made free wallet-sized cards called the “Shoppers’ Guide to Pesticides in Produce.” To download and print a copy:

www.foodnews.org/walletguide.php

-Kevin Allman

Did you know that February 2008 is Portland's first ever Chocolate Month - as proclaimed by Mayor Tom Potter. And this weekend, the World Forestry Center is celebrating chocolate and the cacao tree!

Be prepared to eat lots of chocolate, offered by many of Portland's artisan chocolatiers. There will also be demonstrations on making chocolate and presentations on the history of chocolate.

February 2 & 3, 2008
10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
World Forestry Center
Washington Park
Portland, OR

www.worldforestycenter.org

Proceeds benefit the World Forestry Center's Discovery Museum and education programs.

When the photos for the profile of Carafe’s back of the house first came in, the "opera" cake image was out of context. And then I learned the back story behind the photos and I fell in love with this department (new to Edible Portland). Ivy Manning and her husband Gregor Torrence take us behind the scenes, where we get to watch Pascal Sauton and the gang at Carafe handle a restaurant filled with hungry and hurried opera enthusiasts.

If Ivy's story makes you want to wait for the next opera before visiting Carafe, take note: Portland Opera's Rodelinda opens February 8th.
-Deborah Kane

Photos by Gregor Torrence

BACK OF THE HOUSE
Opera Season at Carafe
By Ivy Manning
For Winter 2008

It’s 5:30 on a Saturday night at Carafe. Through the pick-up window, pantry cook Sarah Bray can see groups of patrons dressed in tuxedos and evening dresses waiting outside the Parisian-style bistro. “Here they come,” she says with a deep breath.

It’s the first night of opera season at Keller Auditorium and chef/owner Pascal Sauton announces in a Parisian accent, “The shit hits the fan at 5:45 and won't stop hitting it until 7:15. Are you ready?”

Carafe’s unique combination of location (it’s nearly the only restaurant close to the auditorium) and French-meets-Pacific Northwest cuisine made with local ingredients brings the sophisticated theater crowd directly to his door, seemingly all at once.

The five twenty-something cooks led by Chef Sauton work in rhythmic prep-work dance—grilling artisan bread slices, whisking béarnaise sauce for the steak frites, braising Cattail Creek Farm’s lamb with rosemary, and 100 other tasks in a kitchen of about 350 square feet.

The electronic ticket machine breaks the silence at precisely 5:50 and orders come scrolling in faster than the cooks can grab them. Sauton calls out orders across the kitchen, “two escargot, one frisée salad with duck egg, one lamb—hold the Hubbard squash,” and a flurry of activity ensues. Soon, the pick-up window is full of bistro fare.

At precisely 7:15, the crowd of theatergoers rises almost as a single entity and exits one of Portland’s best-loved restaurants for the opera.

A four course dinner, each course paired perfectly with a local wine, will be held at Vino Paradiso to benefit p:ear, the organization that builds relationships with homeless and transitional youth through education, art and recreation to create more meaningful and healthier lives.

Each course will incorporate a variety of Oregon pears, their significance presented by a local pear farmer.

Sunday, January 27, 2008
6 - 8:30 p.m.
Vino Paradiso Wine Bar & Bistro
417 NW 10th Ave, Portland

Cost? $100 per person
Reservations? Call 503-295-9536

Ecotrust is a conservation organization committed to strengthening communities and the environment from Alaska to California. Ecotrust works with Native peoples and in the fisheries, forestry, and food sectors to build a regional economy based on social and ecological opportunities.

Ecotrust's Food & Farms program publishes Edible Portland as part of its work to create a vibrant regional food system where sustainability is the underlying value of the mainstream food system. Deborah Kane, Edible Portland publisher and Vice President of Ecotrust's Food & Farms program, describes the program in this video.

This video is thanks to Ecotrust's partnership with a local film company that produces Cooking Up A Story, a show about real people and their special connections to food and sustainable living. Cooking Up A Story’s work is shot unscripted, and the stories are told in the voice of the subject.

Photo courtesy of Oregon Truffle Festival

Beginning January 25, Eugene will host truffle harvesters, chefs, growers, gastronomic aficionados, and truffle hunting dogs at the annual Oregon Truffle Festival. A celebration of the native truffle at its peak of ripeness, the festival recognizes Oregon truffles as one of the world's great delicacies and a national treasure.

There will be plenty to do this weekend in Eugene, as the festival attracts top chefs, vintners and artisan producers from all over the region. Take a closer look at who will be at the Truffle Marketplace on Sunday, January 27.

Contact: 503.296.5929, info@oregontrufflefestival.com

Photo by Bryan Wolf

Deborah Kane implores us to be patient - that better food really is coming to our children's lunchrooms - in her fall Edible Portland story, Back to School: Voting with Your Lunch Money.

It looks as though change really is afoot with Cory Schreiber making himself at home as the new Farm to School Food Coordinator at the Oregon Department of Agriculture. And now, a bill that is going in front of the Oregon Legislature during the 2008 session would create a complimentary farm-to-school and school garden program at the Oregon Department of Education so that Cory has a "partner in crime."

If passed, we’ll be the first state in the nation to secure such specific focus on farm-to-school and school gardens within state government.

On January 22, The Oregonian endorsed this bill. Read on for the editorial.

For more information on the bill, click below.

For more information about Ecotrust's involvement in the bill, click here.

THE OREGONIAN
Multiplication tables
Oregon has farms and food processors aplenty, but schools need help to connect them to kids' lunches
Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Former Wildwood chef Cory Schreiber recently revisited one of his favorite lunch spots, a place he returned to again and again when he was growing up.

It wasn't entirely his choice. But he's nostalgic about it, anyway: Chapman School.

Back then, he loved the sloppy Joes and rolls right out of the oven. "I still remember that smell distinctly," Schreiber says, meaning it as a compliment. On his most recent visit, though, he was fixated on the cherry cobbler, which was so good he asked for seconds.

And that's good news for Oregon. Believe it or not, cherry cobbler figures as a potential headliner in a food revolution rumbling in Portland that soon could be sweeping the state. Parents want their kids to eat more fresh produce, schools want to serve it, and Oregon farmers are eager to sell it. In theory, it shouldn't be more expensive to provide locally grown and processed foods in schools, but the reality is that many school districts are too tiny to do their own food R&D.

Michael Pollan's photo by Alia Malley

Please join Edible Portland for an evening with Michael Pollan, presented by Powell's Books:

Tuesday, February 12 at 7 p.m.
Bagdad Theater
3702 SE Hawthorne, Portland

From the author of the bestselling The Omnivore's Dilemma comes In Defense of Food, a bracing and eloquent manifesto that shows readers how they might start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich their lives and enlarge their sense of what it means to be healthy. Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

"[T]his powerfully argued, thoroughly researched and elegant manifesto cuts straight to the chase," hails Publishers Weekly.

Tickets: $21.95 (Includes admission and a copy of the book)
Available at: Bagdad Theater and Crystal Ballroom box offices, Ticketmaster.com, and all Ticketmaster outlets

It wouldn't be winter on the coast without the Newport Seafood & Wine Festival. Since 1977 the Seafood & Wine Festival has attracted visitors from around the world to the central Oregon coast.

Friday, February 22, 2 - 9 p.m.
Saturday, February 23, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Sunday, February 24, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.

South Beach Marina Parking Lot
2320 OSU Drive, just south of downtown Newport
newportchamber.org/swf/