OSU Extension Service Spring Events & Classes

In 2008 I took the organic version of the Master Gardener program here in Portland -- the Organic Gardening Certification Program -- and got so much out of it. Ever since then I've been on the OSU Extension Service mailing list and so from time to time get the scoop on cool classes and events. The latest newsy email has all sorts of local edible gardening and farming things in it that I'm sharing with you here. Today is the first official day of spring after all!

Straight from the source...

OSU Extension Service, in partnership with Multnomah County, is proud to announce open registration for a new educational program in 2011: The Beginning Urban Farming Apprenticeship (BUFA) program provides in-depth and comprehensive training in urban farming and sustainable farming methods. Through formal classes, hands-on training, field-trips, online learning, and supervised apprenticeships, BUFA prepares students to produce and market fresh vegetables, fruits, grains, cut flowers, and other value-added products using organic methods. Participants will also learn the knowledge and skills needed to design, install, and manage farm and landscape infrastructure in urban and peri-urban settings. BUFA program begins on April 6, 2011. For program dates, more information, and to sign up, see: www.multco.us/sustainability/bufa.

Online, for-credit HORTICULTURE 260 Organic Farming and Gardening through OSU Ecampus will be conducted summer 2011. Visit the OSU website for more info.

FREE Metro natural gardening workshops in partnership with OSU Extension Service. Natural gardening workshops on a wide-range of natural gardening topics throughout the gardening season. See www.oregonmetro.gov/garden for a schedule of workshops.

OSU Extension Service Master Gardener training: January – March 2012 in three locations in the Portland metro region for a comprehensive, introduction to horticulture class and volunteer program. www.metromastergardeners.org Registration opens October 2011.

Clackamas Community College Horticulture Department and Portland Community College Landscape Technology both offer AA degrees and a wide range of practical classes in horticultural science and more.

Urban Growth Bounty 2011 class series produced by City of Portland on a wide range of gardening topics.

OSU Extension Service will not be offering the Organic Gardening Certificate Program (OGCP) in 2011 to make best use of limited staff resources.

Yard Fresh Pt. 10

I love these Yard Fresh installments because no matter what the season is we're always cooking/eating well in Portland. It's a testament to this city, our garden, our kitchen and all of the productive and delicious surrounding farm land.

Speaking of delicious homemade food -- I'm really looking forward to a package that's due to arrive by mail any day now that contains Harriet Fasenfest and Zach Powers' DVD Preserving with Friends. I'll be sure to post more about it here in upcoming weeks since I've been looking forward to checking it out for months. Looks like it's due to arrive in stores in the next couple weeks. Yahoo!

What's something delicious that you've cooked lately? I'd love to hear about it here...

I made this pizza with spicy Italian sausage, ribboned kale, castelvetrano olives and lots of minced garlic and serrano.

And my boyfriend made this one with pepperoni, olives, garlic and serrano.

A simple dinner of sauteed kale with a little pickle juice and cheesy rice.

Roasted beet, anchovy, almond salad with miso Meyer lemon dressing.

Chicken curry with beets and beet greens over basmati.

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Happy Anniversary Blog: Two years and counting

It's been two years since I started this blog as a sort of companion piece to my book Food Lover's Guide to Portland. Since the beginning I've aimed to keep my posts short and sweet and informative for Portland food folks and visitors. I hope it's been helpful. This time last year I celebrated one year of blogging with a sort of year-in-review. It was a nice way to take stock so I'm doing it again for the two-year marker. Thanks for stopping by now and again. Thanks for chiming in now and again. Thanks to each and every one of you out there who celebrate our local food scene in Portland and beyond. Here are some blog highlights from the past year...

I started off February 2010 with our semi-annual Cincinnati chili feed. Can't beat Gartner's dogs, spicy Cincy chili and finely grated Tillamook cheddar...

Sometimes 3-ways are sloppy. Cincinnati chili 3-ways that is...

Portland International Film Festival followed shortly after. PIFF is my favorite local film fest and we always do PIFF + Pizza. Was going to giveaway some tickets here for this year's now in its final week but unfortunately got too busy. Go to PIFF while you still can!

Cheese followed by egg...

I won an Excalibur Food Dehydrator and made my first batch of spicy beef jerky late March. It was amazing and I've made it many times since...

Thin sliced tri-tip ready to marinate and dry...

In May I had my first interview in The Sun Magazine with one of my favorite people -- Sandor Ellix Katz...

I never thought this day would come...

Several weeks later I had a kick-ass book launch party for Food Lover's Guide to Portland the day it came out -- July 1st, 2010...

The best celebration I could have hoped for. So much fun.

At the end of summer my boyfriend and I went on a magical 10-day sailing trip around the San Juan Islands and I blogged about our DIY galley cooking in three installments...

We have a stainless grill too but most of what we cooked on the boat happened here.

In the fall we put together a filled-to-the-gills second annual Portland Fermentation Festival at Ecotrust...

Biwa's rocking kimchi with big chunks of daikon and lots of fire.

Late December I got to press hard cider with our friend Nat and he gave me a carboy of the stuff to take home and ferment myself...

Nat sorting through one of the last Newtown Pippin apple bins.

And just in time for the new year I made miso for the first time. In a month or so I'll be checking on it...

After mashing the soybeans you mix that with the koji...

THANKS FOR ANOTHER GREAT YEAR!

Eat, drink and be hairy!

Homemade Red Bean Miso

Earlier this winter I made a big batch of traditional soybean miso for the first time. It's still sitting pretty and I'll check on it this spring and most likely scoop it out next winter. I made a second batch of miso a few days after the soybean miso with red beans because I had some leftover koji and didn't want it to go to waste. If you don't know what koji is read this.

I don't need to make my own miso since there's really good local Jorinji Miso but every year I like to try a new ferment or two and this year happens to be paved with miso. Do you like miso? How do you cook with it?

Homemade red bean miso up close...

Red bean miso salted and ready for the wait...

Read about my homemade soybean miso.

Yard Fresh Pt. 9

I want to share what I've been cooking lately because in upcoming weeks we're planning to do some work on our kitchen (not a complete overhaul but drywall, paint and lighting are all in the mix) and that means I won't be able to cook as much at home. Don't feel sorry for me though because this is some of the tasty stuff I've been happily eating lately...

Racked homemade dandelion and plum wines.

Beet green and artichoke heart curry with rice.

Belize-style cooked carrot, onion, garlic, lime hot sauce with my friend Craig's cayennes.

Newman's Fish smoked trout scramble with cream cheese and cilantro.

Sweet and salty pickled beets.

Pickled beet and pastrami sandwich with cream cheese and whole grain mustard on Marsee English muffin loaf.

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Oregon Tilth's Urban Growth Bounty Classes

Spring will be here before you know it and Oregon Tilth has a great line up of spring Urban Growth Bounty classes in partnership with the City of Portland that center around organic food gardening techniques from February through April.

Registration just opened up so visit the Tilth website to enroll. Individual classes are $35, three for $90 or four for $120. Here's some info. about the February classes below from the press release. Also, keep in mind that registration is about to open for Oregon Tilth's March Comprehensive Organic Gardener Program. Dig in!

Visit the Oregon Tilth website for more information.

Plan your Garden Tilth Toolshed Series: Class 1 Wednesday February 2, 2011 6-8pm

Spring is right around the corner and what will you grow, how much should you plant and what varieties will perform best? Learn practical planning techniques for selecting seeds, optimizing space, increasing harvests, and rotating crops. Maximize your bounty by applying new spacesaving strategies in your home garden. Participants receive free seeds and a “Tilth Garden Planning Packet” full of useful planning tools and worksheets that can be used at home! Faubion School, 3039 NE Rosa Parks Way

Garden Fresh Greens Year Round Tilth Cornucopia Series: Class 1 Wednesday, February 9, 2011 6-8pm

With a little planning and added frost protection, it’s easy to grow a variety of fresh greens all year round. Join us for this fun class and learn how to grow your own salad and stir fry mixes, and discover new varieties of tasty hardy greens. Crop timing, season extension, organic pest and disease management and soil fertility will be covered. Attend this class and take home a salad mix to get greens growing in your own garden! Faubion School, 3039 NE Rosa Parks Way

Plan Your Garden Wednesday, February 16, 2011 6-8pm

Spring is right around the corner and what will you grow? How much will you plant and what varieties will perform best? Attend this class to learn practical planning techniques for selecting seeds, optimizing space, increasing harvests and rotating crops. Maximize your bounty by applying new space‐saving strategies at home. Participants receive free seeds and a “Tilth Garden Planning Packet” full of useful planning tools and worksheets for home! Luscher Farm in Lake Oswego, OR

Growing Tomatoes and other Summer Fruits from Seed Tilth Cornucopia Series: Class 2 Wednesday, February 23, 2011 6-8pm

Do you enjoy eating homegrown tomatoes, peppers and eggplant? Attend this class to learn practical techniques for indoor seed propagation so you can grow all your favorite summer fruits from seed to harvest. Pruning and vertical gardening for vining crops will be covered. You’ll also discover methods for extending your growing season to encourage an earlier and more productive harvest for your heat‐loving crops. Participants will take home newly sown tomatoes and peppers! Faubion School, 3039 NE Rosa Parks Way

Oregon Tilth www.tilth.org

Homemade Dim Sum

We had a home on the range, quiet Christmas this year. It was just my boyfriend and I so we decided to cook up two of our favorite things -- seafood and dim sum. For supplies we went to Uwajimaya in Beaverton. We filled the cart with shao mai ingredients, two Dungeness crabs (live when we chose them but killed and eviscerated before handed over the counter), a couple pounds of prawns, nice sake, Kirin Ichiban, and more.

On Christmas Eve for dinner we started with Dungeness in drawn butter mixed with a generous squeeze of lime. One of my favorite things in the world to eat. Then we set to making our traditional shao mai, skins and all, from the cookbook below. The next day we used the same techniques but changed the filling to mostly shrimp with lots of serrano, ginger and shitakes. Awesome.

I've had Mai Leung's book for years and finally got around to using it. I love potstickers and have pretty much used the same Florence Lin recipe, and variations of it of course, for years. I've finally taken a bite out of this book now and I'm looking forward to trying other recipes. I love Leung's stories peppered throughout. The illustrations are pretty great too. Here's what we made. Happy New Year!

This is what we filled the shrimp/serrano/ginger shao mai with...

Our instructor...

Nice illustrations...

We also made these classic shao mai -- skins and all.

And steamed them up.

Uwajimaya 10500 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy. Beaverton, Oregon 503.643.4512 www.uwajimaya.com

Hard Cider Pressing with Nat

In early December I got to help out a friend with the last cider press of the apple season. Our friend Nat West has been crafting his own cider and hard cider for a few years now from gleaned, traded and orchard picked local apples and this year was the biggest. He thinks his total apple haul this year clocks in at about 5,800 pounds, which translates to roughly 500 gallons of cider.

This year's apples included a mix of Newtown Pippins, Lady, Jonagold, Kingston Black, Yarlington Mill, Brown's Apple, Hereford Redstreak plus about 1,000 pounds of mixed varieties gleaned from various local spots. I helped out with the last of the Newtown Pippins -- about 250-300 pounds.

The agreement was (and is with a lot of Nat's friends) that in exchange for helping out for a shift of apple milling and pressing I'd get to take home a carboy of that day's cider. I thought that sounded great and I was really happy to get to work with and learn more about Nat's awesome set-up.

Basically, Nat mills his apples with a retrofitted garbage disposal and presses them with a hydraulic press in his garage. Apples are stored and rinsed in bins and buckets in the driveway and once the juice is pressed it's kept in 55-gallon drums in the basement during fermentation and then stored largely in kegs. Nat lets his cider go anywhere from six to eight months.

Nat doesn't sell his cider he just drinks it and trades with it. Really good stuff. Here are some photos...

Nat rinsing the apples before I put them through the apple mill aka retrofitted garbage disposal in the garage.

I filled bucket after bucket with apple pumace shown here. It oxidizes pretty quickly while in queue for the press.

Nat's awesome hydraulic cider press.

Hard cider fermenting in the basement in 55-gallon food grade barrel.

Most of Nat's cider goes directly into kegs but he bottles some for friends.

Read about my cherry wine here.

Ready about my plum wine here.

Read about my dandelion wine here.

Vij's Cookbook

My boyfriend and I went to Vij's Restaurant in Vancouver, B.C. for the first time several years ago and we've been dreaming of going back ever since. We remember just about everything we ate there that night including the wild boar curry and the lamb popsickles in fenugreek cream curry. Now we can do our best to recreate both at home thanks to Vij's cookbook.

We've been cooking our way through Vij's Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine the past several weeks (I hear that Vij's at Home is good too) cooking everything from ground beef curry and Vikram's mom's chicken curry to warm fennel salad and garam masala roasted almonds. Our house smells great and we feel so loved by this book and its recipes. If you're a fan of Indian food too I highly recommend it. (And if you need a last minute gift for someone who loves to cook, consider this book.) Here's some of what we've made so far...

This ground beef curry and warm fennel salad was the first meal we made from the book. It was so good we made it again the next week

The leftovers became this awesome breakfast the next morning.

Vikram's mom's chicken curry recipe is delicious.

The beef short ribs in a cinnamon red wine curry is one of our favorites so far.

That made an awesome leftover breakfast the next morning too.

It might be a little tricky sourcing the mango powder (aka amchur powder) for these garam masala roasted almonds but it's worth the hunt. If you're in Portland Fiji Emporium on North Interstate is a great spot for East Indian ingredients.

Other ingredients that I picked up at Fiji Emporium...

Had to get some of these because they're as pretty as they are tasty.

Fiji Emporiumwww.fijiemporium.com 7814 North Interstate Ave. Portland, Oregon

Vij's Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisinewww.vijs.ca

Yard Fresh Pt. 8

There's been a lot to report here on the blog lately so posts like this tend to get put on the back-burner. Even though I made most of these foods weeks-to-months ago I still hope you find something here to inspire you or at the very least just make you hungry. I promise that the next Yard Fresh installment won't be so delayed and will actually reflect the season. Happy eating!

One more thing, if you want to purchase signed copies of my book you can get them straight from the source with shipping included here.

Roasted chicken with sauteed chanterelles, annaheims and zuke and rice.

Lamb kibbe stuffed zukes topped with a thickened warm yogurt sauce.

And breakfast with leftover kibbe and corn tortillas. Kibbe migas sounds like a funny combo but it was delicious.

Lemon cuke, grape tomato and French feta salad with oregano, mint and vinaigrette.

Since we didn't get many, we cherished the tomatoes we got this year -- simple and unadorned.

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