Portland Fermentation Festival 2011 -- This Thursday!

This Thursday night is the Third Annual Portland Fermentation Festival and we really hope that you're either participating as an exhibitor or volunteer or planning on attending to sample all of the awesome homemade food ferments that will be available! It's going to be delicious and so much fun. It always is...

Here's some coverage that we've gotten already for this year's event: Portland Tribune storyPortland Farmers Market video

And just so you know, even if you aren't signed up as an exhibitor please feel free to bring any homemade food ferments, cultures, recipes, info. etc. to share with others on the fly. This event is very unique in that it's a no sale/no buy, skill-sharing night. (Check out last year's Portland Fermentation Festival.) In other words, you pay your $5 to get in and then it's all about interacting, trying tasty things and hopefully learning enough to make them yourself. It really is unique and we're proud that Portland Fermentation Festival so accessible and fun for all ages without any corporate ties.

Come out and see for yourself -- find out what's stinkiest and tastiest this year! See you Thursday I hope.

Third Annual Portland Fermentation Festival Open to the public, all agesWhen: Thursday, October 20th 6-8pm Where:Ecotrust's Billy Frank Jr. Conference Center on the second floor, 721 NW 9th Ave., #200, Portland, OR What: Sample and learn about all sorts of food and drink ferments Cost: $5 at the door info@portlandfermentationfestival.comTwitter @PDXFermentFest Facebook Portland Fermentation Festival

Portland Fermentation Festival 2011

A couple weeks ago I got to talk with Dave Adamshick at the NorthwestPortland Farmers Market about all things Portland Fermentation Festival. It would have been more fun if festival co-organizers David Barber and George Winborn could have been a part too but they were there in briny spirit. Here's a short video that Dave made from our conversation...

We're in countdown mode now for this year's third annual Portland Fermentation Festival on Thurdsay, October 20th from 6-8pm at Ecotrust! We're still accepting applications from folks who want to sample their homemade fermented food and drink. Here's the entry form. And we're also looking for more volunteers to help set up and break down and work the door. If you'd like to volunteer please send us an email at info at portland fermentation festival dot com. Also, if you want to help spread the word please print out some of these posters and put them up around town. See you at the Portland Fermentation Festival in a few short weeks!

Third Annual Portland Fermentation Festival Open to the public, all agesWhen: Thursday, October 20th 6-8pm Where:Ecotrust's Billy Frank Jr. Conference Center on the second floor, 721 NW 9th Ave., #200, Portland, OR What: Sample and learn about all sorts of food and drink ferments Cost: $5 at the door info@portlandfermentationfestival.comTwitter @PDXFermentFest Facebook Portland Fermentation Festival

Friend Food Pt. 3

I love putting these posts together because it always reminds me how much I have to be grateful for. In recent weeks we've been gifted all kinds of super tasty foods including these Mexican mouse melons that I guarantee are the cutest food I've eaten all summer.

Hope you've been eating/drinking/living well. What's been on your plate?

My neighbor Alison and I did a weekend morning berry exchange earlier this summer. She left a bowl of just-picked raspberries on my front porch before I woke up and I picked blueberries and left them on her porch mid-morning.

Alison also gave us some of her homemade vegan strawberry ice cream made with almond milk that was amazing.

And then there was the vegan tomato corn soup that my friend Michelle made from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's and Terry Hope Romero's cookbook Veganomicon that I couldn't have shared if I wanted to.

Made these sour cherries that I picked with friends from a neighborhood tree into cherry wine that's bubbling away in the utility room and will be ready to drink in several months.

Our next-door neighbors Michael and Mulysa gave us this enormous bowl filled with all different lettuces from their backyard. So good.

Our friend Mount has been supplying us with his incredible coffee ever since Tyler built a coffee dispenser for his roastery. Delicious.

Our neighbor Butch gave us this side of Chinook straight off the boat. He and his family go fishing most weekends in the summer and early fall and we always get a lot of the catch. I'll show you what me made with it in upcoming posts.

Friend Food Pt. 1Friend Food Pt. 2

MoonBrine Pickles

I'm kind a pickle freak although I'm particular. I'm not so into bread & butter or other sweet pickles. I like the salty, sour and spicy pickles the best -- namely fresh garlic, spicy, dills and crock-fermented dills. Just made some of the former, in fact, and can see them on the kitchen counter from where I'm typing at the kitchen table -- my studio is too hot today.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I came home to a lovely package on my front porch -- two tasty jars of MoonBrine Pickles courtesy of the pickler himself -- Stew Golomb -- a former elementary school teacher from Boston who moved to Portland a little more than a year ago. Thanks Stew!

I love them. We've eaten most of them as is but have added some to sandwiches too. They're tasty fermented pickles with a little vinegar added for good measure. By the way, some of my favorite local pickles are Picklopolis Pickles. Picklopolis' Mr. Briney Barber is a very good friend of mine so I don't want to let a pickle post go without a shout-out. He knows how much I love him.

Yummmmmmm!

I recently got to ask Stew some questions via email about MoonBrine Pickles and here's what he had to say -- sometimes abbreviated...

Can you give me a short/sweet explanation of your process. Fermented and then vinegar added?

MoonBrine Pickles are 100% fermented (lacto-fermented). The cucumbers/vegetables start in a pail of brine, consisting of water, salt and a small amount of (gluten free) distilled vinegar. The pails sit at room temperature for a couple weeks until the vegetables are fully fermented. The pickles are then packed and refrigerated in quarts for retail and pail for restaurants.

You have a pickle tasting room/space?

I do have a little shop. I roll my pickle bar out of my kitchen and sell right there in the basement of the Ford Building at 2505 SE 11th Ave. in Portland. People seem really into discovering it. I call it the MoonBrine Shop N' Snacketeria.

There you'll find quart glass jars of our fermented MoonBrine Super Dill, Pretty Hot All Natural Pickles, MoonBrine Sour Mash (Relish) and our MoonBrine Brine, a magical product all on its own. Rotating offerings of deliciousness also include half-sour cucumber pickles, pickled green tomatoes, pickled cauliflower, pickled carrots, pickled cabbage and whatever else comes off the farm and lands in the brine.

MoonBrine Snacketeria hours: Monday – Thursday 11am-3:30pm. Off-hours by appointment if you email email Stew at info@MoonBrine.com.

Where can folks purchase MoonBrine Pickles? Can you give me a price list of various types if bought direct?

Currently, in Portland the pickles are available at the shop - all quarts are $5. Folks can also buy the pickles at KnowThyFood.com which is a food buying club in town. Ford Food & Drink and Detour Cafe use the pickles on some of their plates and in their Bloody Marys. More stores and restaurants are on the horizon and there are five stores and two restaurants in Boston currently carrying the pickles.

MoonBrine Pickles www.moonbrine.com

Further evidence of my pickle obsession -- me and friends at Kenny & Zuke's Pickle Throwdown earlier this summer.

Portland's Urban Farm Store

Sometimes stories get cut and sometimes just portions of stories go RIP. A major national story about Portland food that I worked on last year left out Southeast Belmont Street's Urban Farm Store so I thought I'd finally post something about this sweet little open-since-2009 shop owned by husband-and-wife-duo Hannah and Robert Litt.

Urban Farm Store has a lot going for it. On my last visit I purchase a bale of straw, pantry moth traps and compostable dog waste bags. Yes, it's a diverse shop where you'll find everything from animal feed and beekeeping supplies to edible plants for the garden and DIY food and brewing supplies. (And if you don't have a copy of my book they carry it. Wink, wink.) Anyway, maybe you've been and maybe you haven't -- either way here are some photos that sum up this urban homestead shop...

All sorts of bulk feed, fertilizers and mulch to choose from at Urban Farm Store...

This is the largest supply of Urban Cheesecraft kits I've seen in town...

A lot of gardening and DIY books in the front.

Get some tasty local honey!

Urban Farm Store owners Hannah and Robert Litt with their shop kitties.

Urban Farm Store 2100 SE Belmont St. Portland, Oregon 97214 www.urbanfarmstore.com 503.234.7733

Homemade Fermented Food and Drink

Ever since I bought a copy of Sandor Ellix Katz's Wild Fermentation shortly after moving to Portland I've been a food fermentation freak.

I love everything about home food fermentation. I love the DIY aspect of crafting foods that I love such as sauerkraut, wine, and miso. I love the time and patience involved in creating these foods and drinks -- most ferments I make take anywhere from a few days to a year. I love the full flavor of food ferments -- from pungent and sour to salty and spicy to sweet and effervescent. I love that fermented foods and drinks are inherently good for me because of the live micro-nutrients they contain. I love that I'm carrying on food traditions born well before refrigeration, artificial preservatives, and pasteurization. The list goes on and on.

In January 2009, I got to travel to Nashville to meet one of my heroes -- Sandor Ellix Katz -- and interview him for The Sun Magazine. In October of 2009, we got him to come out for the inaugural Portland Fermentation Festival that David Barber, George Winborn and I organized and continue to organize every year. The date is still TBD for this year's and I'll let you know soon when/where it will be.

For now, I've got a bunch of home food and drink ferments that I've been checking on, bottling and eating up lately to share with you here. This weekend I started a sour cherry wine with fruit collected from a neighbor's tree. I'll post about that soon.

I've got two batches of miso going right now that I started in November -- soybean miso and red bean miso. Here's what they're looking like now after several months of fermenting...

I scraped the salt off the top of this red bean miso and it's looking pretty and already tasting DELICIOUS. Going to be patient though and let it ferment until fall. At least.

The soybean miso is looking and tasting great too. Did the same and scraped off the salt and mold, repacked with a nice layer of sea salt, covered and put back in the utility room till fall.

Yes, you have to be very generous with the salt so you don't get too much mold.

This year's three gallons of Brooks plum wine has finished fermenting and is now bottled. It's so good. It's tart and off-dry and tastes like a perfect plum. The alcoholic kind.

These petals and more went into this year's gallon of dandelion wine. We bottled last year's and it's delicious as always, a little more flowery this year too which is nice.

If you've never done any home food/drink fermentation I recommend starting with saurkraut or kimchi. They're both quick and easy ferments that pack a lot of flavor. I can't recommend Sandor Ellix Katz's book Wild Fermentation enough. I use it all the time. Happy fermenting! Let me know what you make.

Preserving with Friends DVD

I'm so happy that I got an advance copy of Harriet Fasenfest's DVD Preserving with Friends (190 minutes, watch the trailer here) but I do have one gripe -- I wish it had been available when I started my journey into the wide world of food and drink preservation. My hand holders were books -- Sandor Ellix Katz's Wild Fermentation and Linda Ziedrich's The Joy of Pickling. So I'm very pleased to now own Preserving with Friends, which features both Ziedrich AND Katz, along with host Harriet Fasenfest (author of A Householder's Guide to the Universe) and another guest who I haven't had the pleasure of meeting -- Marge Braker.

The DVD takes you through demos of everything from homemade jam/jelly/preserve making, home pickling (with Linda Ziedrich), home fermenting sauerkrauts and kimchi (with Sandor Ellix Katz) and home food dehydration and more (with Marge Braker). It's really nice to be able to watch, listen and learn the techniques from seasoned home food preservers.

I do a lot of home food and drink preservation -- everything from homemade fruit wines, hard cider, and miso, to sauerkraut, beef jerky and kimchi -- and I can tell you from experience that this video is invaluable if you're just setting off into this territory. It'll save you a lot of grief and give you loads of great ideas.

Purchase Preserving with Friends directly online as well as in Portland at Mirador Community Store. Check out clips from the video here as well as over at the Facebook page.

Preserving with Friends DVD $24.95 Purchase directly