Real quick . . .

So I just wanted to add, that the Saucisson Sec was awesome!  It was really garlic-ey, and the chunks of fat were literally melt-in-your-mouth good!  The squash and bacon were awesome too!  I also have been working on my photography skills.  Taking a self portrait is pretty tricky.  But I wanted to include a photo of my rockin new Portland freak beard!  Just call me Grizzly Adams!

Yeah, that's right, enjoy!

NW Farmer's Market

So I thought I'd check out the local farmer's market.  The closest one is pretty small, a tiny fraction of the main Portland Farmer's Market.  I have to get over there one of these days.  I was pretty impressed with the NW market.  It had better selection and prices than the Charleston, SC market!  I found some neat things!

Here are some Lemon Cucumbers, that I recently read about.  They don't taste like lemon, but they are delicious!  You can cook em, and they're great in salads, but I just ate one like an apple, but you can eat the whole thing!  mmm!

Maybe next week . . .  I wish I had brought more cash!

There is a local Portland Charcutiere there who had some amazing Spanish dried salamis, a great Greek salami made with orange zest (which was awesome!).  The meat was so flavorful!  I wanted some salami that was simpler and let the real meat shine so I got some French style Saucisson Sec, which is just simple garlic and cracked black pepper, sometimes a bit of wine.  As it turns out, Olympic Provisions also cures their own bacon!  So I got some of that too!  This brings me naturally to the white and yellow Pattie Pan Squash pictured here which will be sauteed with aforementioned bacon, shallots and garlic that I also picked up.  Pattie Pan Squash is really tasty and you don't have to peel it, so more delicious, nutritious AND easier to eat!

And of course lots of varieties of apples, nectarines and peaches.  There were so many kinds of apples, many I've never heard of.  I recently have been eating local Gravenstein apples, which look . . . I don't know, oddly shaped (at least the ones I've been seeing).  When I saw them I said to myself, "a ha!  These apples looks so weird, they couldn't have been genetically engineered!  And they have a deeper color green than a granny smith.  They are a bit more tangy, and have a real "zest" to them.  I swear there is a subtle cilantro-like herbaceous flavor that is really refreshing.  I was just reading an article the other day that stated the average grocery store apple is 14 months old when you buy it!!  It's really true the apples here from the area and Hood River Oregon, as well as Wenatchee, WA are so fresh and delicious you'd think you've never really eaten an apple before.  Such different apple flavor than I've ever had before!

  I ended up getting these Macintosh apples that had an out-of-sight deep green, red/maroon color.  It was incredibly difficult to get an accurate photo.  I ended up turning on all the lights in my house and opening the blinds and using a flash while screwing around with the f-stops just to try to get a combination that accurately represented the apple's color.

I think it's funny how much we take the simplest food items for granted.  I recently watched The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan (brilliant foodie, many will remember from the film Food Inc.) which (in part) discussed monoculture and the complete destruction of our apple, potato and corn crops and how the main varieties we have today may be general varieties of only really a very small handful of strains.  The original apple came from Kazakhstan, where there are literally thousands of varieties.  Many have been brought to America and are being kept and preserved in an effort to ensure against worldwide crop failure that many fear in monocultures (like the great potato famine in Ireland), and also to hold on to the larger variety of apple characteristics that are being bred out by large corporations (cue nefarious, sinister plot music).  The vast majority of Potatoes available today are Russets, thanks to large fast food joints who want the same reliable potato that make identical shoestring fries.  Growing such a small variety of potatoes makes the entire worldwide crop susceptible to disease and famine and specially adapted parasites.  As the spoilage organisms become more and more advanced and adapted to our pesticides, our global crops are in a more and more perilous situation; the risks posed by monoculture and the industrial food system are great; our reliance on petrol based fertilizers and pesticides once our greatest achievement, may actually be our undoing.  Many fear a global potato catastrophe.  We should also be worried about the ancestral potato and corn of Mexico which is being bred out by genetically engineered industrial crops.  Spread by wind, the interbreeding of scientific Frankenstein crops and our ancestral heritage crops is eliminating our biodiversity and contributing to this modern threat. 

I didn't realize that buying an apple today, would get me to think so much!  Maybe you'll think a bit more the next time you buy produce too!  I guess now the only proper way to conclude, is that I ate one of those apples . . . it was good.  Bring on the bacon!

Some more old stuff

So I finally hooked my phone up to my computer to get my camera phone photos.  Don't ask me why I can't email them to myself, it never works.  But I finally got some stuff off my phone and here it goes:

Here is a hilarious photo from when Charlie was like a year old.  I accidentally sprayed him in the eyes with some leave-in-conditioner and his face swelled up really badly.  I just think this is a funny picture, you can't really tell how badly he swelled up, but it was bad!

Here is a REALLY old photo from Artisan bread class.  You have "three-day" baguettes (meaning the Poolish was fermented one day, and te whole dough was fermented another two days and then shaped, proofed and baked . . . it's pretty hardcore bread head stuff), pain D'epi (wheat stalk bread), Challah, a Hungarian bread wreath and my "art showpiece" which was a pig trying to fly/ jumping off a fence and falling into it's trough which has a loaf of wonder bread in it and in the corner is Charlotte the spider who has woven a message saying "pigs can't fly!"  The sentiment was that I'd eat wonder bread when pigs fly . . .   the entire piece, was made from pate morte (dead dough), sugar and dyed with coffee, beet powder, spices and so forth, so that technically the entire thing was edible.

  

And here are some recent photos . . .  it has been berry season here in Portland!  I can't beleive the incredible bounty the Willamette river valley has to offer.  I've never seen such berries or tasted berries this incredible!  Just a few weeks ago we started getting fresh Marionberries from our farmers.  They were sooo huge!  They were like 3 times the size of a normal blackberry!  And incredible flavor!  People at work were laughing at me because I was so enthusiastic about them, but that's part of my job, inform staff and get them excited about what's good, so they in turn can get our customers excited.  Most of my co-workers are from here or have forgotten how lucky they are to have such amazing fruit!  It's the little details that make the difference and the flavor is entirely different from what you'd buy in the grocery store.  And it was pretty exciting we just ceased having fresh bluberries.  I'm telling you, we've all had a blueberry muffin, but it's totally different when you have just picked that morning blueberries in a sour cream, brown-butter batter!  This is why I moved here . . . I don't just make muffins . . . I make the best blueberry muffin I can.  It was pretty exciting talking to the farmer too!  He told me all about this years blueberry crop and how and why it is the latest blueberry crop in 30 years and he educated me on the difference between all of the raspberries too!  Wow!  Here's a neat factoid, (we're starting to get fresh peaches) did you know that the seed from a peach sometimes sprouts a nectarine tree?  And a Nectarine seed sometimes sprouts a peach tree?  Weird huh?  I really need to take my camera to work more.  Here are some old photos of some Frangipane Tarts made with fresh raspberries.  Mmmm, flakey pie dough with almond paste filling, powdered sugar, golden and red raspberries . . . so delicious!  And in one photo, you can see our fresh rhubarb hand pies ( flaky puff pastry filled with rhubarb and garnished with lemon icing).

 

Anywhoo, that's all for now!  Are you hungry?

This is Good Bread

Now that I have a soapbox to stand on . . . here is an awesome video of the current Coupe du Monde de Boulangerie (the World Cup of Baking) competitor in the category of Artisan Bread.  This is what good bread is about and what I aspire to do someday.

Old photos I meant to share

Ecola State Park

Multnomah Falls

Columbia River Gorge

Hey Gang!  Here are a couple of photos from my recent vacation . . . I know Dad wanted to see some of these, and Mom doesn't have access to these yet.  Thanks Mom and Mike for coming!  I had tons of fun and I can't believe all that we saw!

Astoria from the Astor Column

Haystack Rock and the Needles

Columbia River Estuary as seen from the Astor Column

Silver Star Mountain

So, yesterday I hiked up to Silver Star Mountain in WA, again.  It was a beautiful day as opposed to last week where I was besieged by clouds at the summit.  I got my camera out to take a photo of sturgeon rock (a really neat rock wall formation) and despite the fact that I brought new batteries, I neglected to put the memory card back in my camera . . . so no photos!  But it's okay, when I got to the top it was so hazy I could barely see Mt. Hood.  I couldn't see Mt. St. Helens at all (despite the fact that it is exactly 37 miles north), but I was able to see beautiful Mt. Rainer, which is astounding when you think that Seattle is a 4 hour drive away!  It was 93 degrees yesterday . . . and I ended up drinking a gallon and a half of water and I figured out that I burned about 2,200 calories!  I was able to see the Columbia river gorge from the summit, which was pretty incredible.  Good fun!

New Blog!!

Wow!  A new blog for everyone to read!  How exciting!  Welcome to The Good, The Bad, and the Pug Fugly!  Hopefully, I can write about all of the cool things I've found here in Oregon and Washington.  I hope to have neat updates on area hikes, great new restaurants, good bread and I'm sure a post or two about Charlie the Pug!  Welcome and thanks for reading!