Edible Portland Blog

A Food Writer to Remember: The Legendary M.F.K. Fisher

2008-07-02T01:40:13Z

Photo by Christine Alicino A FOOD WRITER TO REMEMBER THE LEGENDARY M.F.K. FISHER Heidi Yorkshire For Summer 2008 July 3, 2008, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of writer M.F.K. Fisher, whose vivid, impeccably detailed memoirs and essays are among the treasures of American letters. Her first book, Serve It Forth, was published in 1937, yet for decades her works were cherished by a relatively small number of readers. W.H. Auden once called Fisher “the best prose writer in America,” but she remained, in her own words, “a secret little cult figure,” largely because much of her writing is about the transcendent pleasures of eating. When much of Fisher’s work first appeared, she was relegated by many to the menial category of food writer. Being female and beautiful didn’t help her get taken seriously, either; a 1942 Newsweek review of one of her books describes her as “a blonde gorgeous enough to eat.” Even so, a staunch group of admirers, including editors at The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, continued to recognize the value of her work. Eventually cuisine was elevated to high art, women’s voices were allowed to be heard, and M.F.K. Fisher was unofficially appointed patron saint of the foodie generation. She became — though she shuddered to hear it — famous. Fisher died in 1992, just shy of her 84th birthday. Appreciation for her work has continued to grow, proving that many readers see the truth of her observation: “There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk.” I discovered Fisher’s work in the early 1970s, thanks to my first mother-in-law, a librarian, who also introduced me to the pleasures of A.J. Liebling and Craig Claiborne, among others. (I’m still grateful to Connie for sharing her love of food and books, though my marriage to her son has been history for close to 30 years.) This profile, which has been updated, came about when my editor at a now-defunct magazine suggested that I ask Fisher for an interview. I was shy about phoning someone I admired so much, but when I finally got up the nerve, the great lady could not have been more cordial. “Sure, honey,” Fisher said, “Come on over!” I showed up at her house on August 15, 1989, accompanied by the man who would become my husband. Though Joe was also a journalist, we had never worked together; still, when he heard who I was going to interview, he refused to be left behind. It was lucky he was there: Fisher, a passionate character even in her eighties, clearly loved men, and flirted like crazy with Joe throughout the interview. I suspect it was a much livelier conversation than we would have had if I’d come alone. KEEP OUT. CROSS FIRE. RIFLE RANGES. The sign was unequivocal, but no one, it seems, kept out. During the last years of M.F.K. Fisher’s life, an increasing number of the reverent and the curious ignored the warning, bouncing down a rutted one-lane road to a little pink-and-white stucco house with a shingled roof. There, they shuffled respectfully into the presence of a reed-thin, gray-haired woman with a crackly voice and piercing wit, recording her words, noting her thoughts, and making her thoroughly uncomfortable with their praise. On the eve of her 82nd birthday, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher had become, much to her surprise, an institution. But the greatest food writer of all was not a food writer at all. Her books are filled with stories, not recipes; her ingredients are people and emotions, not flour and sugar. Food is a metaphor for human passion, and writing about meals a way to illuminate relationships, hopes, and desires. “Her subject matter matters not at all,” said Jack Shoemaker, former editor-in-chief of North Point Press, the Berkeley firm that re-published many of her books during the 1980s. “North Point was interested in her as a literary stylist. She writes exquisitely well, and only secondarily about food.” From 1970, Fisher lived in the Valley of the Moon, a few miles north of the town of Sonoma, on a ranch owned by her friend David Pleydell-Bouverie, an architect who designed and built her house. When I rang her bell, we were ushered into her bedroom office, a long, narrow room with a wood stove at the center of one wall. Red-painted bookshelves, crammed full, lined the alcove around the stove. The shiny black vinyl tile covering the floor imitated Spanish ceramic. Near the door stood a nondescript wooden desk, heaped with papers; at the other end of the room was a hospital-type bed, with two mobiles slowly twisting above it. The brown summer pastures radiated heat, but the room was cool. ]]> M.F.K. Fisher was eating her breakfast — “My two weekly eggs,” she said, “poached.” She sat in a big brown armchair in the center of the room, her back to the arched window that framed the mountains to the east. In a floor-length orange velour robe that zipped up the front and bright red socks — no shoes — she looked jaunty and regal. Her hair was cut short, and her brows penciled into the same skinny arches she wore all her life, though the arch on the right brow was a bit wobbly. There was a dab of jade green eye shadow at the corner of each eye. Her mobility was limited by Parkinson’s disease, fading eyesight, and other age-related infirmities, but Fisher’s mind ranged as far as ever, from recollections of the France and Switzerland of her youth to her rage over pesticide use in the Sonoma Valley. Opinionated and feisty, she was generous with praise for authors she admired, but not above dishing dirt — off the record — about a certain prominent food writer whose pretensions, Fisher believed, exceeded her talent. Perhaps trying to find a comfortable position, she moved constantly as she spoke, reaching an arm straight up in the air, leaning her chin or cheek in her cupped hand, shifting from hip to hip in the big chair. So many friends and admirers crowded her calendar that she invented a two-week “vacation” the previous summer so she’d have an excuse to decline their offers. What she didn’t say was that she never left home, but used the quiet time for work. Though she seemed to love the company, she was ambivalent about the praise. Fisher pointed to a carton overflowing with envelopes given to her at her 80th birthday party in 1988. “See that red box over there?” she asked. “It’s filled with 180 people’s birthday greetings to me, and I have not yet opened them. I wrote them all and said thank you very much, but I’m too scared to open them.” Why? “Because they’re sort of ego trips, all of them, you know. They’re very personal, very embarrassing to me. It’s embarrassing to hear what they think of me, because I know what I think of me.” Which is? “Not very much,” she said. She didn’t seem as if she wanted to be contradicted. “With some people I just feel awed that they see things in me that I don’t see in myself at all,” Fisher continued. “I know they’re mistaken, but now and then I know they’re not mistaken. They see what they see, so therefore it must be me, even if it’s not me. It’s not my fault. I don’t pretend to be anything I’m not.” Everywhere in the room were reminders of her stories. In a niche by the bed stood a line-up of the carved wooden santons, Provençal folk-art figures of saints, that she wrote about in her book on Marseille. A photo panorama leaning against the bookshelves showed the view from the French mountain cabin she described in her story “The Oldest Man.” Propped against the wall was a half-ruined painting that Fisher bought in a junk shop in Zurich in 1936 or so. The painting, which gave Fisher’s book Sister Age its name and is described in the introduction, brought me up short. Fisher said that everything she wrote was “strictly true, every word of it.” Somehow, though, I’d always “believed” her stories the way one “believes” a good work of fiction; I’d never thought that it was possible to write of real things with such pristine clarity. Others have felt the same confusion; Jack Shoemaker of North Point Press said he collected her stories for years under the impression that they were beautifully crafted fiction. M.F.K. Fisher was born Mary Frances Kennedy in Albion, Michigan, on July 3, 1908, the first child of fourth-generation newspaperman Rex Kennedy and his wife Edith. Her father — who had threatened to name her Independencia if she’d been born a day later — purchased the Whittier Daily News in Southern California when she was four and moved the family there. In her memoir, Among Friends, she wrote of a California now lost, of Whittier lush with orchards and climbing vines, and of Laguna Beach when the Pacific Coast Highway petered out along the shoreline cliffs. “I sweated blood over that book,” she said. “I have an unusually good memory, I think. I decided I was going to write it as it was, not as it must have been.” Fisher married three times: to Al Fisher, her companion during student days in Dijon in the early ‘30s; to painter and novelist Dillwyn Parrish, called Chexbres in her books, with whom she spent idyllic years in Switzerland before his suicide; and to publisher Donald Friede, whom she divorced after giving birth to two daughters. “I was astonished when I found I could and should earn my living as a writer. It scared me silly,” she said. “I found out the hard way, by having children and having to support them.” She chose to write memoirs not because she felt a need to tell the world her life, but because “it’s the only thing I know. I realized that I would have to write about myself all the time, because I’m the person I know best.” “It's sort of an odd, exposed feeling, but I never did it to be exposed,” she said. “Some people say you should never write a diary unless you want someone to read it. I’ve never agreed with that. I’ve always kept diaries going, two or three at a time. Different parts of me, you know. I wouldn’t want anyone to read them, but my only way of being me is to write it, I guess. Not for publication, ever.” As we talked, a New York scholar who had just finished a month in Sonoma studying Fisher’s writing came in to say good-bye, and to ask if she’d pose for a snapshot with him. She transferred into her wheelchair and moved into the kitchen/living room. Worn area rugs covered parts of the floor; a lap rug was folded at the foot of a mustard-colored chaise lounge, one of several comfortably dilapidated pieces of upholstered furniture that clustered in the middle of this large room. Hundreds of cookbooks filled the shelves, but near the kitchen were only Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer, and Fisher’s own anthology, The Art of Eating, which includes several recipes. “When I cook I like to consult Julia, Mrs. Rombauer, and Escoffier or Larousse Gastronomique,” Fisher said. “You’ve got the zucchini, so you see what they all do, then you do it your own way.” M.F.K. Fisher liked to cook for herself, but she hadn’t done it for years. She was clearly infuriated by her body’s failings. “I can’t read at all now. It’s very frustrating. My voice shakes, it wobbles, or it goes very high. I’m of an equable nature, usually. But it is very difficult, because I can’t read and I can’t write and I can’t talk and I can’t walk. “I'm fragile, I’m not frail, if you know the difference. Fragile like steel,” she asserted. “I should have died several times, but I haven’t yet. I’m not meant to die yet.” She paused. “I will. I look forward to it actually, because it’s the last great thing I don’t know about. The problem is, I can’t write about it. That is frustrating, because I’d want to know about it and then tell somebody.” What will she leave behind? “The books will be around for a while, probably. You can never tell. I might be forgotten immediately, or there might be a recrudescence, and 50 years from now I would be worth more than I am now.” Like Elvis Presley? “Exactly.” She laughed. On the shaded patio, she selected a giant wicker throne as the best spot for a photo with the young man from New York. Settled, she tilted her chin and eyed the camera with the same composure with which she once posed for Man Ray. She looked at the grove of trees below, by the highway, and said that we should see how beautiful they look in the afternoon light. And she said, “Now that you know the way, you can come back.” More than 20 years as a writer, Heidi Yorkshire has had some exciting opportunities, but none better than the chance in 1989 to meet one of the writers she admired most, M.F.K. Fisher. Based in Portland, she was the wine columnist for The Oregonian and has written two books on wine, Wine Savvy and Simply Wine. She contributed travel and food features to Bon Appetit, Travel & Leisure and many other magazines. Her latest project is organizing a series of seminars for artisan food retailers (www.foodbyhandseminars.com). Go here for a listing of M.F.K. Fisher's body of work.

Portland Fridge - Vancouver Fire Dept. Station 81

2008-07-01T00:42:48Z

Firefighter Adam Gibson. Photos by Leah Harb PORTLAND FRIDGE Vancouver Fire Dept. Station 81 Lucy Fulton For Summer 2008 The Vancouver Fire Department is made up of nine stations spread out across the rapidly growing city. More than 150 firefighters respond to 20,000 emergency calls each year. At Station 81, the A-Shift is comprised of six men who live and work together for 24 hours straight every three days: Jack Anderson, Paul Coolimore, Adam Gibson, Rick Huffman, John Larson, and Jeremy Stuart. When the team is not busy taming flames and answering other types of emergencies, they spend their time at the station house, ready to jump into action as soon as they get their next call. One of their favorite things to do while hanging out at the station house is cook. ADAM: We have a full kitchen. It’s built symmetrically, with two double ovens and two stovetops, one on each side. We’re getting a remodel because the kitchen is not friendly enough. I mean, the kitchen is social, so we want to open it up and put in diner-style flat grills. Still, we use what we have and turn out great meals. Each shift has its own refrigerator. Then we all share a condiment fridge with tons of stuff: mayo, Tabasco, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire. Salsa, definitely. Groceries we buy daily. We know that the ads change on Tuesday nights, so Wednesday morning, first off, we’ll look at what’s on sale. Collectively we say: What do we want for dinner? We haven’t had lasagna in a while so that’s why we chose it for tonight. Plus, John was craving lasagna. You might think Adam would pull out a few commercial frozen lasagnas and stick them in the oven, but you’d be wrong: The whole team comes together to create a fully homemade meal. John and Paul pull out the cutting boards to start chopping onions and slicing coins of zucchini. Jeremy is busy opening cans of tomato sauce. When the prep work is done, John sautés the onions while Paul starts constructing the lasagna in an extra-large casserole dish. It doesn’t take long to realize these guys are pretty serious about food prep. ]]> ADAM: I look forward to breakfast here, especially on the weekends. This morning we had sausage, eggs, homemade biscuits, and — he squints, thinking, and then smiles — tater tots. I love tater tots; they have to be baked just right. Kind of crunchy. You’ve got to cook them at a lower heat for longer. I don’t like them soggy. JEREMY: Rick made the biscuits with a secret ingredient. We had no milk, so he used sour cream instead. They turned out great. ADAM: Jack cans things and makes jams. He puts in a garden every year — he’s the country boy among us… What do you can, Jack? JACK: Tomatoes, green beans, spicy beans with lots of garlic, peaches, plums, pears. Most of it is from my garden — the apples are out of my yard, but the peaches and the plums we buy. ADAM: Last week Jack brought in fresh seafood. He goes clamming. We had Surf & Turf — homemade clam chowder and steaks. JEREMY: The one thing we don’t do is tell our wives what we’re having for dinner. We eat really well here. ADAM: In 16 years of being a professional firefighter, I’ve had maybe three meals that weren’t good. For the things that I cook, I’m harder on myself. My specialty is probably firehouse fajitas. There’s no real recipe. I’ve cooked enough and the guys have all cooked enough that we just make it happen. As Adam slices two extra-long baguettes with a bread knife and slathers the freshly cut pieces with butter, John slips the lasagna into the oven, then turns his attention to making a salad. Cooking at the station is an integral part of these men’s way of life, but given the nature of their work, getting to the actual meal can sometimes prove a little difficult. ADAM: Today we were headed toward the line [at the grocery store], cart full. Call comes in — we need to take it. We have a good relationship with our local Safeway, so the produce guys roll our cart into the cooler. When we come back, they wheel it out, and we go up and pay. It happens regularly. JEREMY: Years ago, we burned the kitchen. A guy was frying fish. They got a call and took off. When they came back, the fire alarm was going off. Now the appliances are wired so that when the bells go off, they kill all of the electrical outlets. The ovens and stovetops all shut off As if it were planned, a message comes in over the intercom. The men lay down their spatulas and knives and rush out the door. ADAM: We’ll be right back. Everything shuts off. Twenty minutes later, the A-Shift returns. ADAM: Medical call. Somebody had chest pain. We have paramedics and can do everything an ambulance can do, except drive you to the hospital. The kitchen comes back to life. Firefighters move in and out of the room as the smell of melting cheese grows stronger. Soon John is pulling the lasagna out of one oven while Adam grabs the garlic bread from another and Jeremy takes the salad out of the fridge. Everyone sits down at the dining table to eat. ADAM: We call dinner Family Time. It’s that one time of the day to sit together. On a normal day, we have lots of other things to do, but we make a point of Family Time. The fire service is built on camaraderie: meals are social; meals are bonding. So many of the world’s problems get solved once you step into the kitchen because you’re close; you’re talking.

JULY - Celebrate Oregon's craft brewing industry - the festivities go on for 31 full days!

2008-06-27T20:59:19Z

It’s official, with a proclamation from Governor Ted Kulongoski, July is Oregon Craft Beer Month. Did you know? Oregon hop farms stretch back over 130 years. Oregon's first brewery, Liberty Brewing, opened in 1852. Portland has more breweries than any other city in the world. And the Oregon Brewers Guild has decided to celebrate this rich history of craft brewing with over 100 events across the state. Where to begin? How about at the official kick-off event at Portland's Horse Brass Pub, which will be featuring 20-25 taps of all Oregon beers including new releases, world premier exclusives, and rare and vintage beers. Tuesday, July 1, 5 p.m. Horse Brass Pub 4520 SE Belmont, Portland, OR 97215 Not in your neighborhood? There are 22 other events to choose from on July 1. Other Oregon Craft Beer Month events to take note of: July 9, 7pm, Beer and Oregon Cheese Pairings with Steve’s Cheese, Hopworks Urban Brewery July 24–27, Oregon Brewers Festival, Waterfront Park July 25–July 26, 12-6pm, Homebrewing Demo by the Oregon Brew Crew, Waterfront Park

First Annual Reader's Survey - RESULTS!

2008-06-25T18:46:17Z

Thank you to everyone who filled out our Annual Reader's Survey! You were generous with your time, and we promise to make the most of every minute you spent. Hearing directly from our readers is invaluable — we will work with new insights and inspiration. What did we learn? You enjoy stories that look at real people within the food system — the farmers, ranchers, cheesemakers, food processors, and community activists — rather than celebrity chefs and the trendiest restaurants. We discovered that many of you want to learn more about Oregon’s oyster harvesting and fishing communities. You appreciate the quality of our advertisements. (Hoorah!) And when we hit it right, our photos and recipes make you hungry for farm-fresh food. Our 1st, 50th, and 500th respondents have received word that we will be treating them to dinner with a sweetie or a pal at Castagna, Nostrana, and Three Square Grill, respectively. We wish them delicious meals. Please stay tuned for more opportunities to give us feedback. Until then, good luck to all of our little tomato plants that are dreaming of the sun — warm, sunny days are here at last!

Portland's New Wave of Educators: Three graduates are growing the seeds of sustainability through education

2008-06-23T19:28:25Z

"If our kids forget how to live with the land, how will we survive? Education about ecology and food security is key." - Cori Longstreet PSU graduate Cori Longstreet. Photos by Gregor Torrence PORTLAND'S NEW WAVE OF EDUCATORS Three Portland graduates are growing the seeds of sustainability through education Ivy Manning For Summer 2008 Thousands come to the Portland State University (PSU) campus every Saturday from April to November for the Portland Farmer’s Market, rejoicing in the diverse agricultural bounty that this area has to offer. As shoppers shuffle towards the dozens of stalls full of local vegetables, cheeses, and seafood, they probably don’t notice the University’s motto — “Let Knowledge Serve the City” — carved in stone in the bridge overhead. But for a growing number of students graduating from PSU, the motto speaks directly to another facet of Portland’s strength as a great food city: education. Students nationwide are coming to Portland State University for its unique programming. Whether enrolled in the School of Community Health, School of Business, School of Urban Studies and Planning, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, or School of Education, among others, students at PSU are studying food. Multiple aspects are covered — from supply chain issues and regional distribution infrastructure for getting food to market to the relationship between food and climate change, diet and health, and gardening as an educational tool. The School of Business boasts a Food Industry Leadership Center, and the Portland Institute of Metropolitan Studies and the Center for Sustainable Processes and Practices both emphasize food-oriented research and education. In fact, the Institute of Metropolitan Studies asks questions such as: Can healthful food be affordable while farmers make a profit? Will we have enough farmers and workers to produce food in the future? Will our land and water supplies support food production and a growing population? Still other PSU students take a hands-on approach to their food education by participating in the student-run Food For Thought Café. The café uses sustainably grown ingredients, including some grown on campus, to serve food-conscious faculty and staff. They reduce waste by using nondisposable plates and silverware, and integrate their planning and management into school curricula. Students’ efforts to establish Food For Thought Café led to the incorporation of local, seasonal and sustainable food goals into PSU’s overall food service contract. Edible Portland caught up with three recent graduates from one program in particular: the Portland International Initiative for Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning (PIIECL), an interdisciplinary master’s degree program in the School of Education. The program addresses the emerging field of sustainability education and focuses on teaching in the community through projects like the Learning Gardens Laboratory, a student-faculty run garden in southeast Portland that works with elementary schools to teach youth everything from the biology of worms to helping the hungry. These three graduates of the PIIECL program have put down roots, literally and theoretically, working in careers that are helping Portland to a brighter, and greener, future. ]]> MARC BOUCHER-COLBERT Rooftop Gardening and Grassroots Teaching “Imagine all this was green, every rooftop with a garden like this one,” Marc Boucher-Colbert says as he scans the Portland skyline from the top of the lipstick-red Rocket Building on East Burnside. “Imagine the amount of food we could grow,” the 30-something farmer says wistfully as he shows me around the rooftop garden he oversees with Erin Alt of Edible Skyline for Rocket, the chic restaurant one story below. He shows off a row of plastic kiddie pools lining the south side of the roof and laughs, “Leather [Chef Leather Storrs of Rocket] calls these ‘veggie day care.’ They’ll harvest pounds of arugula from just one.” Along with the kiddie pools, large steel boxes contain mini greenhouses and compost bins, plumbing tubes ingeniously serve as strawberry planters, and the edges of the building are built with shallow garden plots complete with drainage. All told, the garden is supplying vegetables and herbs for Rocket several months of the year. “In August the kitchen was being outpaced by the garden’s output,” Boucher-Colbert says proudly. “They can harvest sorrel as early as March and they’re up here harvesting as late as November.” It is an unconventional way to grow food, but then again, New Hampshire native Boucher-Colbert loves a challenge. After eight years as the resident farmer of the Urban Bounty Farm (now Zenger Farm) and a volunteer stint in Brazil, Boucher-Colbert came back to Portland looking to combine his love of agriculture and teaching. Through the PIIECL program, he worked with the Open Meadow Alternative School and learned first-hand the obstacles and triumphs of setting up garden-based learning at a school. “Everyone is overworked, especially teachers, so if you ask them to create a program, there’s going to be an initial enthusiasm but it wanes over the semester as people get busy with school or other concerns,” says Boucher-Colbert. “If there is someone there who is responsible for the garden and helps the teachers make it happen, then the synergy starts and it can succeed.” After completing his thesis on starting up garden-based education programs, Boucher-Colbert found a position at Franciscan Montessori Earth School, where he works on sustainability initiatives like capturing rainwater, landscape redesign, growing fresh food for the middle school lunch program, and teaching kids hands-on lessons in the garden. In a recent lesson plan, his students grew wheat, ground it into flour and made grilled flatbreads. “I'm hoping to create habits, interests, and tactile memories so they can really feel where their food comes from, and hopefully the connection will stay with them,” he says cheerfully. JILL KUEHLER Urban Markets and Fieldtrips to the Field “We’re looking to get that initial spark of interest in the kids who come here,” Jill Kuehler says as she tromps past muddy rows of lettuces at Sauvie Island Center, a nonprofit farm education program that partners with Sauvie Island Organics. Kuehler was recently hired as director of a new project that brings kids from primarily North Portland schools to the working farm for fieldtrips. “We hope after their visit to the farm they begin to think about where food comes from and the labor that goes into growing the food we eat.” Kuehler, the daughter of Texans, who both grew up on farms, knows a thing or two about how hard farming can be. “My mother doesn’t understand why I’m going towards farming when she and my dad worked so hard to get away from it,” she says, laughing. “It’s in my blood, I guess.” After getting an undergraduate degree in Health Education, Kuehler volunteered for the Peace Corps and taught in Guatemala. What impacted her the most, she says, was the community garden she helped institute in her assigned village. “Growing a garden has such a positive impact on kids’ health. If they plant, tend, and harvest salad greens, they will eat them. They may not remember what I taught them about brushing their teeth twice a day, but the garden is still there.” After a year working on a farm in Washington, Kuehler sought to combine her background in health education with agriculture. PSU’s PIIECL program was the perfect fit. Kuehler's thesis project focused on Abernethy Elementary, Portland Public School’s only scratch kitchen, where she later found a position as Wellness Coordinator. Kuehler also helped with programming in the on-site Garden of Wonders, where students learn a variety of food-and-agriculture-oriented lessons. In addition to the Sauvie Island Center, Kuehler directs the Lents International Farmer’s Market, a joint project of Zenger Farm and the Lents Food Group that strives to provide healthy food for low-income, ethnically diverse populations in southeast Portland. The market provides vendor space for immigrant farmers and emerging small farms by keeping vendor prices low, and it accepts WIC, food stamps and Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition coupons as well. “We strive to provide fresh, local food that is affordable for lower-income people,” Kuehler says proudly. In the future, Kuehler hopes to expand operations at the Sauvie Island Center, adding a grow-lunch garden, where children would harvest vegetables and make lunch at the farm so they can taste first-hand how good fresh produce can be. Kuehler is also looking at ways of instituting week-long summer camps and cooking classes. “It’s exciting to be part of projects that are new and young. Whether it’s apprenticeship programs on farms or garden-based learning, there are great things happening to positively impact the health of the community in Portland.” CORI LONGSTREET All-Ages Education and Edible Playgrounds “Does anybody know how many hearts a worm has?” Cori Longstreet asks, as she holds a handful of wormy compost out to five rapt children. Guesses come in from “none” to “about 500.” She smiles and patiently explains the workings of the five hearts of worms. The gardening day continues on the 2.7-acre plot of land she shares with ten others on Johnson Creek as the group retrieves still-warm eggs from the chicken coop, throws rocks into the creek, and tastes spindly yellow kale flowers. It’s all in a day’s work for Longstreet. “I grew up on a farm in Idaho where my mom grew our food, so this is coming full circle for me,” she explains. After getting a degree in Sociology and Social Work from the University of Idaho, she landed a job with AmeriCorps at the East Bay Conservation Corps in Oakland, where she earned her teaching credentials instructing ESL (English as a Second Language) students using projects like a seed-to-farmers’ market garden. Soon after, Longstreet went to Portland to visit a friend and landed a job as a teacher for at-risk youth through the Oregon Council for Hispanic Advancement, where a coworker told her about the PIIECL program. Curious, she attended an informational session where former director Pramod Parajuli’s speech made her sit up and take notice. “He talked about how we need to start change within ourselves, then bring the change out to the community. I was a newly single mom and I was nonstop running. I needed change, and the program just felt like home,” she reminisces. Longstreet’s thesis included work on JEAN’s Farm garden education project, now run by Oregon Tilth. “We looked at the meaning of stewardship, not just for our kids’ kids, but seven generations from now. There’s been a huge disconnect from the land. Kids can name 100 logos but can’t name ten native plants. If our kids forget how to live with the land, how will we survive? Education about ecology and food security is key.” Longstreet now teaches as an adjunct educator for PSU’s Capstone Program at the Learning Garden Laboratory, a community-based education program, and is a faculty member at Sunnyside Environmental School, where she teaches Spanish and garden-based education. Her curriculum includes weekly nature walks with first graders, a salad growing project with middle school students, and a hunger-service program where the kids make lunch for a local relief kitchen on a weekly basis. Back at her home on Johnson Creek, Longstreet and her cohabitants are creating a community farm where week-long garden-based summer camps and family-centered activities will be offered. “I love working with families because they can take the experience of gardening home with them. I want to create a place for families to come and play with their kids and take away memories of doing something meaningful. That’s what I’m all about.” Ivy Manning is a cooking instructor and freelance writer. Her work has appeared in Cooking Light, Sunset Magazine and Food & Wine. Her book, The Farm to Table Cookbook: The Art of Eating Locally (Sasquatch, 2008), explores the edible joy of CSA membership and farmers’ markets.

Summer 2008 Edible Notes: Car-Free in Portland

2008-06-18T22:07:02Z

CAR-FREE IN PORTLAND On June 22, join your fellow citizens to celebrate our incredibly walk-able and bike-able city at Portland Sunday Parkways. This 6-mile, car-free temporary park is being created to give people more open space to be active without worrying about oncoming traffic. Bike, skate, jump, or skip your way through the streets to imagine what a city with fewer cars might be like! June 22, 2008, 8am–2pm Route Map here Highlights - including food vendors - here - Kathleen Bauer

Diary of a Young Farmer: Barney and Maude

2008-06-17T22:02:20Z

Zoë Bradbury left her urban job in Portland to start farming on the south coast of Oregon. She's blogging here about her experiences. Below is her eighth entry in Diary of a Young Farmer. BARNEY & MAUDE I’m long overdue in introducing Barney and Maude, the two Belgians who arrived on the farm in April. They are quite the couple: tireless farmworkers and completely inseparable. Barney is the sensitive one — tall, lanky, and pigeon-toed, with a bleach-blond rockstar hairdo. Maude is mouthy and affectionate, with a personality as big as her battering ram physique. She cracks me up on a daily basis. Each of them weighs over a ton, and they have feet the size of dinner plates. Meet my team of draft horses. To be honest, I didn’t really intend to haul home four thousand pounds of Amish-trained horsepower in the first three months of starting my own farm. There was plenty else to tend to, but fate had its way with me. It’s a long story that apparently started 26 years ago when I disappeared from the house as a two-year-old. My mom searched frantically for me, fearing the worst — that I’d fallen down the compost toilet. I hadn’t. Where she finally found me, though, was almost as worried: I was sitting in the dirt corral amidst the hooves of four heavy horses, entranced. She managed to extract me unscathed, but it foreshadowed the lifetime of horse adventures and misadventures that I was destined for. By the time I was five I had two shelves cluttered with dozens of plastic molded horses, and by nine I had a little Arab mare stabled in the barn. I rode her all over the countryside, exploring old logging roads, galloping along the beach, and swimming bareback on her in the river. She was the heart of my childhood. But kids grow up and get jobs and go to college. And childhood mares get old and stay behind in the barn. For me, as it became more and more apparent that I wanted to farm, I found myself reckoning with the reality that despite my love for horses, I wouldn’t have time to ride one — especially in the summer when the weather is good. That's when the idea of draft horses started to tickle my consciousness. I was 16 when I had my first daydream about farming with horses down along the river. Over a decade later, after three years of training with a master teamster, here we are: Maude, Barney and me. Crazy what can happen once you think a thought. ]]> And all the while I’m pushing back against the growing fear that I am crazy. That this is just too much, on top of everything else. That I have bitten off way more than I can chew and the world is waiting for me to fail. And worst of all, that maybe all my ideals about farming aren’t practical after all — like my belief that I can eventually farm without tractors; my insistence on the sensibility and necessity of moving towards a grass-fueled agriculture instead of gas-fueled agriculture; my belief that draftpower is not Luddite but beautifully futuristic. I was sick at the thought of it all, bracing for the body-blow from reality that felt inevitable. One day in the midst of it all — with Barney still limping and a gate newly crushed — I called up Doc Hammill, my mentor who has taught me everything about work horses. I was choking back tears. “I don’t know if I can do it, Doc.” Doc is a wise, wise man. “You’re being tested,” he said. “All of us get tested at some point when we choose horses, and you just happen to be getting your test in the first three weeks of owning them,” he chuckled. Then he put down the phone and I heard him rustling through his bookshelf. He came back on, cleared his throat, and read me one of his favorite quotes from Scottish expeditionist W.H. Murray: Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it." Doc’s phone sermon propped me up and rekindled something. I stopped flinching in fear of that body-blow. I marched up to the barn, looked Barney in the eye, and invited him to be well. The next day he was sound. Within the week, I had my team in harness. Day by day, they are finding their place on the farm, we are finding our rhythm together, and little by little I am investing in the equipment I need to put them to work fully. This week they tilled up the corn patch-to-be and cultivated raspberries for me. We saved a couple gallons of diesel and I could hear the afternoon swallow-song instead of the roar of the tractor. Bliss. There’s no doubt it’s going to be a slow build. I still need all 32 horsepower that my sister’s tractor offers up right now, but in two or three years I’m aiming for a farm that is 100% horsepowered. Crazy what can happen once you think a thought. Read Zoë's story, Putting the Horse Back into Horsepower: Grass-Powered Agriculture, published in the Winter 2008 issue of Edible Portland.

JUNE 18 and JUNE 25 Events: Two Opportunities to Look Deeply at the Value of Local Food Culture

2008-06-16T16:02:34Z

Wed., June 18, 2008, 7:30 p.m. RENEWING AMERICA'S FOOD TRADITIONS Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods: An Evening with Gary Paul Nabhan Powell’s City of Books 1005 W Burnside, Portland Free to the public Ethnobotanist, professor, social activist, and author Gary Paul Nabhan will speak about his book Renewing America’s Food Traditions. Nabhan is a national leader in the movement to reconnect citizens with American food heritage. With eloquence and wisdom, Nabhan brings to light both our tremendous agricultural diversity and the role we can each play to keep it alive with every delicious bite. Wed., June 25, 2008, 6:30 p.m. ONE SOLUTION TO THE FOOD CRISIS: EAT LOCAL! An Evening with Michael Shuman First Unitarian Church 1011 SW 12th, Portland $10 in advance; $12 at the door Sponsored by SBNP; 503-232-2943 Michael Shuman, author of Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age and The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses are Beating the Global Competition, will discuss how communities are increasingly feeding themselves and simultaneously reaping huge economic, environmental and social benefits. As a forerunner to Eat Local Week (July 4–11), the night will kick off with seasonal delicacies along with a presentation by Lisa Sedlar of New Seasons Market.

JUNE 15 - Lents International Farmers Market opens this Sunday!

2008-06-13T16:38:53Z

LENTS INTERNATIONAL FARMERS' MARKET Sundays, June 15 – October 12 9am – 2pm SE 92nd and Foster, Portland 10 new vendors join the Lents International Farmers' Market this season, increasing the market total to 19 vendors. What will you find at the market? All your familiar summer veggies plus produce such as Chinese long beans (here's a great recipe from Epicurious.com), Thai basil (delicious in mojitos and salad rolls), Russian cucumbers (tasty fresh and wonderful pickled) and bitter melon (learn all about this fascinating fruit from the National Bitter Melon Council). You'll also find fresh eggs from chickens raised just blocks away, Armenian and Ukrainian bread and pastries, and tamales. Read Growing New Roots: Immigrant and Refugee Farmers Dig In to learn more about the market.

What is a bean? Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm tells us

2008-06-12T00:24:00Z

WHAT IS A BEAN? In preparing the Summer 2008 “Now in Season” column, Laleña Dolby asked a group of farmers what they would have available for this summer. It was clear that beans would be on the list, but she was not prepared for the specificity of their answers. Confounded, she asked Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm, long known for his great variety and high quality of beans, to explain the difference between string, pole, runner, bush, wax and shell beans. Beans: What we call “beans” belong to the family Fabaceae, with two notable exceptions. Members of the Fabaceae are known colloquially as pulses or legumes. They all bear a fruit that botanists call a “pod.” Most of the beans we eat are in the genus Phaseolus; all of these originated in the Americas. Though it is never that simple when botanical classification is mixed with colloquial terms. Fava beans are actually a vetch, genus Vicia. The “yard-long” or “asparagus” beans are a species of edible podded field pea, genus Vigna. Mung and Adzuki beans are also the genus Vigna. To keep things confusing, most members of the genus Vigna are called “peas.” They are in a different genus from the English or French pea, which is a species of Pisum. These are all “Old World” types, and were brought to the Americas by settlers. Fava beans (left) and adzuki beans There are also coffee and vanilla beans. Coffee is in the family Rubiaceae. Coffee bushes bear fleshy red berries, and inside the berries are two seeds we also call beans. Vanilla beans are the fermented pod of an orchid. String beans: These are traditional varieties that have a “string,” or tough vascular tissue, along the suture of the pod. If you break the bean and a stringy thing dangles forth, it is a string bean. If it breaks cleanly, it is a snap bean. Some beans “snap” when they are young, and develop a string as the pod matures. Others snap until they are too tough to eat. String and snap beans belong to the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) species. Traditionalists believe string beans are the best flavored of the beans, but they are a lot of work because they must be picked very young, or the strings must be removed with a stringer or a paring knife. Common string bean Runner beans: These are perennial bean plants that form a tuber and generally have a climbing habit. They are a separate species, Phaseolus coccineus, from the common green bean (P. vulgaris), which is an annual. The flowers or runners are large and showy, and they are often planted as ornamentals. Lima beans (P. lunatus) and tepary beans (P. acutifolius) are two other species of beans commonly eaten in the U.S. Scarlet runner bean Pole beans: These are climbing beans that can be trained up poles or twine. The beans that climb include: garden beans (snap and string, fresh shell and dry, green and wax), pole limas, and runner beans. Pole beans are sought out because of their exceptional flavor and tenderness. The Willamette Valley grew hundreds of acres of Blue Lake Pole beans; all had to be picked by hand. Today, they have been replaced by bush beans that can be machine harvested. Blue Lake Pole bean Fresh shell beans: These are beans that are harvested when the seed is mature, or nearly so, but not dry. The seed, not the pod, is eaten. Typically, green bean varieties do not make good fresh shell beans. Flageolet, cranberry and cannellini are examples of good fresh shell varieties. They have a tough pod and would not be welcome as green beans. All three are tasty as dry beans. There is also a middle point in the drying referred to as “demi-sec.” Cranberry bean Wax beans: Yellow snap or string beans that probably picked up the name “wax beans” because their color is similar to bee’s wax. Yellow string bean Bush bean: As the name suggests, it is a bean variety that has a bushy habit. They produce beans in a shorter time than pole beans, and the beans tend to be ready about the same time. Bush beans can be harvested by machine. The beans that are bush beans include: garden beans (snap, wax and string, fresh shell and dry, green and wax) and bush limas. The tepary beans do not climb, per se, but have a viney habit, sprawling across the ground.

Edible D.I.Y. - Homemade Ice Cream

2008-06-06T20:04:35Z

Click here for Lola's Blueberry Ice Cream recipe. Photo by Leah Harb HOMEMADE ICE CREAM By Lola Milholland For Summer 2008 As a kid, I became frenetic at the sound of an approaching ice cream truck. I would scrounge for change and then rush into the street to chase after the promise of a Push-up Pop — delicious ice cream in a toilet paper roll. A little more grown up, there’s still nothing in the world I love more than soft-serve ice cream. I’d been reluctant to make ice cream because it seemed like a lot of hassle for something inferior to Haagen-Dazs. But one batch of buttermilk ice cream later, I knew I had been obtuse. Homemade ice cream is easy to make and delicious, plus it offers a number of advantages to the store-bought stuff: I have complete control over the quality of my ingredients, and I can make any flavor I have the power to imagine. ]]> The building blocks of ice cream are water, fat, air, and sugar. The milk and cream provide both fat and water. As the mixture freezes, the water molecules become large ice crystals, which give solidity to the ice cream. By freezing the water quickly while churning the mixture, we create millions of tiny ice crystals, resulting in smooth texture. With tiny ice crystals comes the problem of a fast-melting mess. However, fat acts like a winter coat for the ice crystals, but in reverse: it keeps them cold, encasing each as though in a cooler. The higher the fat-to-water ratio, the slower the ice cream melts and the thicker it feels on our tongues, giving ice cream a creamier texture and richer flavor — to a point; too much fat, and you’re churning what the French call glace au beurre, or “ice butter.” By churning, we also beat in air, which gets trapped as bubbles within the fat. The air increases the insulation of the ice crystals. Sugar dissolved in water lowers its freezing point. At 0°F, packets of concentrated sugar, water, milk fat, and milk proteins remain unfrozen. The millions of forming ice crystals exclude these syrupy packets, which become a thick coating around the crystals. The syrup’s liquidity, along with the air bubbles, makes ice cream softer and allows us to wiggle it in our spoons. We experience bursts of flavor as the syrup hits our taste buds. There are two prominent ice cream styles: custard/French-style and standard/Philadelphia-style. To make custard-style ice cream, you incorporate warm cream into egg yolks and then cook the mixture until it thickens and becomes silken. Because custard ice creams have low water content, the results are often dense and buttery, not especially melty or refreshing. For ease, Philadelphia-style ice cream, which lacks egg yolks, wins out every time. The ideal Philadelphia-style ice cream base for home kitchen machines involves 17% milk fat and 15% sugar. This translates into equal parts whole milk and cream combined with 3/4 cup of sugar per quart. For vanilla ice cream, cook sugar in milk until it dissolves, add split and scraped vanilla bean, and then chill mixture before adding a final pour of cream. You always want your ice cream in its liquid form to be as cold as possible before you pour it into your maker. As for flavors, you can add anything, though remembering the chemistry will ensure success. For example, although it’s tempting to churn plump berries right in, don’t succumb. Whole fruit has a high concentration of water, so it freezes hard and icy without providing much flavor. To get the most berry deliciousness bumping into your taste buds, make a simple syrup by cooking 2 parts sugar in 1 part water until the sugar has dissolved, then add your berries. Cook off some of the liquid while mashing the berries with a fork. Once the berry syrup cools, pour in more cream than milk to account for the additional water. Home ice cream makers are a low-cost, high-pleasure investment. You can purchase a hand-crank machine in a local cookware store or online that will last for years. Although electric ones cost more, they come with the insurance that you’ll never forget to churn your ice cream and then discover it’s frozen hard along the canister walls. Not long ago, eating ice cream was a rarity, a community event that required many hand churners cranking the dasher 40 to 80 times a minute. The community element faded as freezer aisles and manufacturers became omnipresent. But thanks to modern technology, we can now churn ice cream on our countertops and reclaim the industrial era for our own, reinstituting the pleasure of sharing. Yet we can’t replicate the smoothness of a super-premium store-bought hard ice cream in our home freezers. When we freeze ice cream at home, it takes longer for the cold to seep in, which means larger crystals. A day after churning a batch, what’s left in our freezer has become grainy. But who cares?! I eat my ice cream fresh out of the canister. And then I pass my spoon. Lola Milholland works in the Food & Farms program at Ecotrust. She reveres food chemist Harold McGee. She also loves turning her favorite foods into ice cream flavors. For example, Fried Chicken Ice Cream: dasher up a batch of buttermilk ice cream, scoop into bowls, grind on a little black pepper, squeeze in a little lemon, and sprinkle with toasted sugar cookie crumbs (or for the bold, the shakings from your empty plate/bucket of fried chicken). Optional biscuit on the side. Elizabeth Dannen of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry contributed to this story.

Recipe: Blueberry Ice Cream

2008-06-06T16:28:36Z

In the Summer 2008 issue of Edible Portland, Lola Milholland writes: "Homemade ice cream is easy to make and delicious, plus it offers a number of advantages to the store-bought stuff: I have complete control over the quality of my ingredients, and I can make any flavor I have the power to imagine." Lola also emphasizes that the chemistry of making ice cream is important. Read more in Edible D.I.Y. - Homemade Ice Cream. Photos by Leah Harb BLUEBERRY ICE CREAM From Lola Milholland Makes approximately 1 quart 1/2 cup sugar 2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen 3 Tbsp lemon juice 2 cups heavy cream, cold Kosher salt 1. Combine sugar and 1/4 cup water in a large saucepan over low heat. Whisk constantly until the sugar dissolves completely. Add the blueberries, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt. 2. Cook until the berries become tender, and then mash the berries to release their purple juices. Simmer 5–10 minutes. ]]>

Purchasing and Cooking Grass-fed Products: Resources

2008-06-05T18:20:52Z

Read Here's the Beef: One Woman's Quest to Cook a Quarter Cow (Edible Portland, Summer 2008). Watch the video of Abundant Life Farm, an Oregon farm that raises grass-fed animals, here: Raised on Grass: Pasture Fed Animals. Resources for Purchasing and Cooking Grass-fed Products WEBSITES AND CERTIFICATIONS EatWild.com Your source for safe, healthy, natural and nutritious grass-fed beef, lamb, goats, bison, poultry, pork, dairy and other wild edibles. Visit the Directory of Farms for farms listed by state. For retail locations that sell grass-fed meat and dairy products in Oregon, go to Beyond the Farm. American Grassfed Association Protects and promotes true grass-fed producers and products through national communication, education, research and marketing efforts. Website features a grass-fed FAQ, a list of certified AGA producers by state, and recipes. Certified Humane Raised & Handled An inspection, certification and labeling program for meat, poultry, egg and dairy products from animals raised to humane care standards. The program is a voluntary, user-fee based service available to producers, processors and transporters of animals raised for food. Website lists certified producers and retail locations that carry Certified Humane Raised & Handled products by state. BOOKS AND COOKBOOKS Pasture Perfect by Jo Robinson Robinson explores why tens of thousands of people are saying "no" to factory farming, and buying their meats, eggs and dairy products from pasture-based ranchers. Learn why grass-fed meat and dairy products are safer, healthier, and more beneficial for you, the farmers, the animals, and the environment. Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald's Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat by Catherine Friend Friend takes us on a wild ride through her small farm (with several brief detours into life on factory farms), while raising questions such as: What are the differences between factory, conventional, sustainable, and organic farms? What do all those labels — from organic to local to grass-fed and pasture-raised — really mean? If you’re buying products from a small farmer, what are the key questions to ask? The Farmer and The Grill: A Guide to Grilling, Barbecuing, and Spit-Roasting Grass-Fed Meat, and For Saving the Planet, One Bite at a Time by Shannon Hayes Hayes runs a sustainable farm in upstate New York that raises and sells only grass-fed meats. In this cookbook, she offers simple, straightforward recipes and useful tips on grilling, barbecuing, and spit-roasting all cuts of pasture-raised meats.

HERE'S THE BEEF: One Woman's Quest to Cook a Quarter Cow

2008-06-04T21:36:05Z

Like Carman Ranch in the story below, Abundant Life Farm near Dallas, Oregon raises grass-fed animals. Thanks to Edible Portland's partnership with the local film company Cooking Up A Story, you can watch the story of Abundant Life Farm come to life here: Raised On Grass: Pasture Fed Animals. Hereford cattle graze on a ranch in the Wallowa Valley. Photo by David Jensen HERE'S THE BEEF ONE WOMAN'S QUEST TO COOK A QUARTER COW By Abigail Chipley For Summer 2008 In a church parking lot in southeast Portland, my husband and I surveyed the contents of the cooler in front of us: 147 pounds of vacuum-packed frozen cow parts — a quarter-cow to be exact. There were long tubes of ground meat, sinewy-looking hunks of chuck, flat flank steaks, thick-cut rib eyes, large roasts with unfamiliar names like “arm roast,” and piles of meaty soup bones. Along with a handful of other Portlanders, we had just picked up our share of grass-fed beef, delivered direct from a Wallowa, Oregon ranch in a small U-Haul trailer. At home, we loaded the chest freezer in the basement, exchanging dubious glances. How could our family — two light meat eaters and one 26-pound toddler — consume such a bounty? I got out my calculator and did some quick figuring. I kept dividing the numbers until they became less frighteningly large. Finally, I came up with the answer: We would need to eat a mere 2.82 pounds of beef per week to get to the bottom of it within a year. I’d ordered the meat because I was convinced of the nutritional and environmental value of eating grass-fed beef. But the bargain hunter in me also liked the price. At less than $3 per pound, the beef — fattened on nothing but green grass and hay from the Wallowa Mountains of eastern Oregon — was cheaper than supermarket ground beef. Cheaper, by far, than the premium steaks I inevitably succumbed to at expensive butchers and high-class grocery stores. I was ready to accept the challenge. I would cook all 147 pounds of this animal, if I had to make vats of Bolognese sauce and invite the whole neighborhood to dinner. This culinary adventure began last August, when my husband and I discovered a small stand at the Portland Farmer’s Market—it was Carman Ranch, selling Wallowa Valley Grassfed beef. There was no product on hand, merely a young woman with a sign-up sheet. In an uncharacteristically spontaneous move, I agreed to buy a share. I dashed off a deposit for $100, and we left the market. To taste our first grass-fed meat, we would have to wait until fall. ]]> As usual, the federal government has stepped in to try to clarify the issue for consumers. Last fall, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a new rule about meat that can be labeled “grass-fed,” requiring that these animals eat nothing but grass and stored grasses and have access to pasture during the growing season. However, according to the American Grassfed Association, which represents many raisers of grass-fed animals, the definition of “growing season” means that animals could be confined for long periods, and kept off of pasture even when there is grass growing. They could even end up in feedlots, as long as they were consuming hay instead of corn. The new rules also do not restrict the use of antibiotics and hormones in the animals. Carman betrays a certain amount of skepticism when I ask her about the new rule. She says that she will probably eventually jump through the hoops to get an official label, but it isn’t a high priority. Like many small farmers, Carman isn’t eager to pay the USDA’s costly certification fees for the privilege of a label. Carman and her husband are committed to doing things their way. Start to finish, raising a grass-fed cow takes about 18 months. At Carman Ranch, mother cows give birth to about 150 calves each March. Until the snow melts in the spring, the calves — a mix of Herefords and Angus — eat stored hay. Then they spend the rest of the year grazing on a rich diversity of green plants, or what we lay people would call “grass.” After another season to fatten on hay and grass, the cows reach their “finished” weight, usually about 1,500 pounds, and the slaughterhouse comes to them. That is, a local guy comes to the ranch to process the cattle. Anybody who has been to a slaughterhouse, or watched the now infamous video taken by a Humane Society investigator at a California slaughterhouse that caused the largest beef recall in U.S. history (story with link to video here), will appreciate the significance of this. These bovines don’t experience the stress of being corralled and loaded onto trucks or being driven down the slaughterhouse line. And according to Carman, this stress-free life is reflected in the flavor of the meat. The slaughtering process is something I learned about only after signing up for my share. My main reason for seeking out grass-fed beef had more to do with nutrition. I’d read about the benefits of animals raised on grass: The meat is lower in saturated fat and calories, and higher in beneficial fats such as omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, which has recently been much touted for its cancer-fighting properties. A couple of years back, Carman decided to find out for sure how much better her beef was than conventional beef, so she sent it to a lab to analyze the fatty acid profile. Conventional beef has a 30 (or even 50) to 1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. Based on a rib-eye steak, Carman was pleased to find out that her beef had a ratio of 1 to 1, a much healthier ratio according to today’s research. This is not to discount the environmental reasons for eating grass-fed beef. Raising cattle on grass encourages plant biodiversity, improves soil fertility, and eliminates the considerable waste-management problems associated with confinement feeding operations. And in many instances, the ranchers who have made the commitment to raise grass-fed animals are also committed to improving the health of their land. For example, every year Carman works to eliminate invasive species by letting the cattle overgraze them. On the portions of their ranch made up of sensitive native rangelands, they are careful not to let their cattle overgraze. Though it’s slow going, Carman believes that they are making a difference. Strangely, the angle I hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to was the flavor of grass-fed beef. I’d heard and read that this type of meat was harder to cook than the “conventional” corn-fed variety. Since grass-fed meats are lower in fat, they cook differently. Fat helps to insulate the meat, so the leaner the meat, the faster it cooks. Just a few extra minutes can turn your beautiful, pink steak into a gray, tough hockey puck. Even if I managed to cook my steaks to medium-rare perfection, how would they taste? “There are a lot of myths out there; first of all, the idea that fat equals flavor, and second that fat equals tenderness. These things just aren’t true,” says Carman. I’m ashamed to admit that I had fallen prey to both those ideas. I assumed that my steak, even if pink, wouldn’t be as tender as a conventional marbled piece of meat, and that the lack of fat would also mean lack of flavor. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The first steak my husband and I cooked up was a rib eye, which, admittedly, wasn’t as much of a gamble as other cuts. It’s traditionally one of the more marbled of steaks, and though the grass-fed steak looked much leaner, I was pleased to see streaks of white fat in it. To avoid covering the flavor of the meat, I simply rubbed the steak with freshly ground pepper and kosher salt and slapped it on the grill. When it seemed done (I use the finger-prod method), I took it off and let it rest a few minutes to seal in the juices. My husband and I cut into our steaks — cooked to a perfect medium-rare — and looked at each other across the table with delight: We had just bitten into some of the best steak we’d ever had, right off our own grill. It was juicy, had a robustly beefy flavor, and was so tender that we had no problem cutting it with our cheap serrated butter knives. If I had to compare the flavor to corn-fed beef, I would simply call it “beefier.” My two-year-old scarfed it up as fast as I could cut it. Since last fall, I’ve managed to cook my way through most of the cuts in the freezer, including beef short ribs, flank steak, sirloin steak, chuck roasts, rump roast, and tons of ground beef. These are the basics: Use a meat thermometer instead of relying on the timing given in conventional recipes, and cook steaks and burgers medium-rare (130 degrees). It’s also important, as with any type of meat, to know which cooking method works best for which cut. In general, dry heat and quick-cooking techniques, such as pan-frying, broiling, grilling, and stir-frying, work best for more tender cuts of meat. Moist heat and long-cooking methods, including braising, stewing, and crock-pot cooking, are better for the tougher cuts like chuck roast and short ribs. So far, I haven’t had the neighborhood Bolognese party. In fact, I’ve been rather stingy, giving away only a few steaks to close friends and inviting small groups over for dinner. Now I’m worried that my supply of beef won’t last until next fall’s shipment. I’ve nervously pawed through the contents of the freezer, trying to determine how many meals are left. There are a few more steaks to grill this summer, and then all that’s left is tackling the soup bones and the intimidating-looking arm roast. Abigail Chipley is a Portland-based freelance writer and recipe developer. RESOURCES - GRASS-FED ANIMALS RECIPE - SIRLOIN STEAK WITH SPICY PEPPER SAUCE RECIPE - BEST BURGERS

Edible Portland's Summer 2008 Video Feature - Raised on Grass: Pasture Fed Animals

2008-06-04T20:34:51Z

"Here's the Beef: One Woman's Quest to Cook a Quarter Cow" (Edible Portland, Summer 2008) features Wallowa Valley Grass-fed Beef from Carman Ranch. Our featured video this season tells the story of another Oregon farm that raises grass-fed animals, Abundant Life Farm. Scott and Marilyn Jondle raise and sell pasture-raised eggs, chickens, ducklings, turkeys and pork, and grass-fed beef and lamb in Dallas, Oregon. Thanks to a 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, we’re able to bring Edible Portland stories to life in video format. Cooking Up A Story’s work is shot unscripted, and the stories are told in the voice of the subject. Previous videos featured in Edible Portland can be found here.