Last weekend I picked up some strawberries at my local farmers' market (McCarren Park in Brooklyn, New York), but they weren't nearly as beautiful as the ones Lelo picked on Sauvie Island outside of Portland, Oregon. Read more about her day of strawberry picking on her blog, Lelo in Nopo.
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Sometimes, it takes being away from my hometown farmers market for a week or two to really appreciate the turn in season.
I spent last week in Portland and visited the PSU Farmers Market, one of my favorite markets in the country. The PSU market was full of piles of porcini mushrooms, rhubarb and berries. The market vibe in Portland is like no other—a combination of completely relaxed mixed with a serious foodie vibe. I browsed through the market eating a Sol Pops paleta: cucumber, chile and lime-flavored.
Returning to San Francisco this week, I noticed that our market had switched from spring into early summer. Gone are most signs of spring, replaced with an abundance of early summer fruit.
I was most excited to find figs at the market. The figs were available from Knoll Farms, a farm in Brentwood that is about 60 miles from the market.
Want doughnuts topped with bacon or frosted and dipped in Cap'n Crunch? Then make your way to Voodoo Doughnut in Portland, Oregon. Anthony Bourdain visits the famed doughnut shop to to try their unconventional "non-conformist doughnuts" ("I kind of wish I was drunk before eating this," he says about the chocolate and peanut butter doughnut), and learn about their failed doughnut flavors, including Jägermeister and NyQuil. Watch the video, after the jump.
Everyone knows you can torture your kids by substituting apple slices for fries in a Happy Meal, but what about the important part of the kid's meal: the toy?
Burgerville is an unusual burger chain found only in Oregon and Southwest Washington. They use sustainably raised beef and Northwest fruit. The fish and chips is made with fresh Alaskan halibut. You can put Rogue Creamery's awesome Smokey Blue cheese on your burger or salad.
Recently, my daughter, Iris, got the kid's meal at Burgerville (plain burger and fries), and the toy was a plastic cup, a small trowel, and a packet of zinnia seeds. Iris loved planting the zinnias on our balcony. The other seeds in the series are sunflowers, forget-me-nots, and baby snapdragons. Collect all four! Dirt not included. (The regional chain has since moved on to a bird-watching toy series now that growing season has come to an end.)
Every year Food & Wine throws a huge party honoring the Best New Chefs its editors have just named in the magazine. This year the event was held at Aspen Meadows, part of the Aspen Institute. The setting was magical. Mountains sprouted out of every window you looked out of, with streams and rivers placed ever so perfectly between them. The event was held in a space with three levels. My favorite on the first level was April Bloomfield's pork cheeks. Bloomfield is the chef partner at the Spotted Pig in New York City. But I had a feeling I would find something even better higher up, so I huffed and puffed my way to the third floor (the altitude was killing me).
Photographs by Adam Kuban
I didn't know when the entreaties and pleading began, though I had an idea. I also didn't know how, exactly, Serious Eats founding overlord Ed Levine was going to manage bringing back to life a pizza shipped cross-country on dry ice. (Serious pizza eaters know the crust is at its best for only a minute or two out of the oven.) I do know that about two months after joining the Serious Eats crew, I received the following email:
So... Ed is calling me begging for a pizza. If I send one, are you going to eat some, since you are now a part of Team Serious Eats?
Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen's Nationwide Food Section Roundup for today is all Super Bowl Sunday, featuring Washington D.C., Indiana, Oregon and Wisconsin. The Oregon eats are pretty fancy!
Pableaux Johnson wrote rapturously about cherries and other fruit in the Hood River Valley in Oregon, and though I've never been there, his story had me thinking about a roadtrip.
The folks at Chefshop have been sending me many reminders about the fantastic cherries they will start shipping from Batch Family Farm in eastern Washington. I know you can get cherries at your local market starting right about now, but the Batch cherries are something special. I've had the Lapins, which are juicy and huge, with a deep cherry flavor. This year Chefshop is also selling BFF Sweetheart cherries, which are a new strain of sweet cherries first grown in British Columbia. These are picked right after the Lapins, in mid to late July.
These cherries are expensive (about 17 bucks a pound with shipping), but worth every penny.
Meg Hourihan wrote a lovely, lyrical post about successfully creating a dish without using a cookbook that any self-taught cook (like me) can relate to.
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