I’m in London, en route to Zurich, eating a full English breakfast minus the fatty bacon, burnt sausage, watery black tomato, and Heinz beans (i.e., poached eggs on toast).  Cherish your cage-free eggs, mates, because the alternative is tasteless. Worse yet because I’ve spent the last week reading up on Victori

I had so much fun last weekend judging the final round of the Iron Chef Eugene competition at the Bite of Eugene festival at Alton Baker park.  Congratulations to the winner, Chef Gabriel Gil of The Rabbit Bistro!  Gabe gets to go on to compete for Eugene at Bite of Oregon in Portland on August [...]

This weekend is Can-A-Rama, a grass roots educational event to teach canning in kitchens across America created by the collective preservation blog Canning Across America.  Join in!  Those raspberries aren’t going to jam themselves, you know.  And your meatballs are waiting patiently. I did my canning last night at

A vegan friend of mine visited from the Bay Area last weekend.  Up for a challenge, I decided to go undercover as a fellow vegan, vegging out on vegetables, while she was here. The plan was to hit up the plethora of new vegan food carts around town, since I don’t find them particularly appealing [...]

We visited mad scientists at work this weekend at the Lewis-Brown Research farm in Corvallis.  Inspired by last year’s trip, when I sampled new blackberry varieties, I thought I’d see what was now in development.  The cherries were in full, glorious fruit under the special experimental tents, marked by colorfu

When I saw a lug of pristine Eastern Oregon apricots on my way back from Montana, I knew I had to have ‘em.  In short order, they became: Orangette’s version of Zuni’s apricot tart.  I *love* this recipe.  And the crust is excellent for all pies, by the way.  I substituted plain distilled vinegar, bein

What a stupid headline.  With what, a squish?  But that’s all I’ve got today.  So here, take someone else’s offering: This gorgeous, gorgeous shot of Russian peasant girls presenting berries, so gorgeous I’ve been saving it for you since a friend of mine posted a link to the set on Facebook, is fr

Don’t forget to have your pressure canner gauges tested before the season gets underway.  At Lane County Extension, we offer testing for a nominal fee.  Bring in your canner lid only at your earliest convenience, and pick it up after the scheduled testing times.  A trained volunteer tests the gauges en masse on the

I’m sad you missed the Kermit Lynch rosé tasting at Provisions yesterday afternoon.  You are too.  Most of the wines were from Langedoc, and worlds apart from the boxed White Zin your mom used to drink over ice.  They’re also quite different from the cheaper, quaffable, fruit-forward rosés one sees coming o

Triple digits today, maybe.  Water, water, water!  I have a number of volunteer cucurbits of different sizes and varieties.  I may be propagating watery winter Safeway cucumbers; we’ll see! The lettuce has been slow to bolt, but the arugula has gone to hell.  I’m making a Zolfino bean salad with these lovely

Seems I always/only have time + excess produce during the one week of summer that the Oregonian deities deem Let’s Scald the Lily White Flesh of Those Fragile Mud Creatures with Scorching Temperatures after a Year of Rain Week.  So let’s just make it a tradition: I can when the temps hit the 90s.   [...]

We left our heroine in Wallace, Idaho, where she was contemplating buying three milkshakes at once just to see the old Hamilton Beach tri-head mixer do its thing.  Instead, she duded up and rode off into the sunrise to Montana for a long July 4th weekend. We partook in a bison sirloin steak with a [...]

On our road trip to Montana, which has proven uninteresting foodwise but otherwise full of family fun, we stopped for dinner in the small mining town of Wallace, Idaho.  I knew I’d like the place when I saw a big banner advertising their annual huckleberry festival in August, but there’s so much more to like, [

My only small excursion away from Prague in the Czech Republic was a delightful visit to the old town once known throughout Europe as Karlsbad.  Karlovy Vary, still a spa town in Western Bohemia, as it has been for hundreds of years, is unlike anywhere I’ve ever been.  Bright pastel facades, many of them fronting [.

Well, even though I entertained thoughts of not coming back and becoming “Culinaria Praha,” a dour expatriate food critic who writes about gravy from the heart of the Czech Republic, I was graciously escorted out of town.  Traveling home was not fun, and I’m pretty thrashed with jet lag and a head cold. 

The real star of Czech cuisine, if you haven’t guessed already, is the meat.  Every carnivore dish has been absolutely delicious, and I haven’t even been eating at upscale places, so that’s really saying something.  And even though there are many specialties of roasted meat, such as the roast “pork

With Europe enthralled by the World Cup soccer matches, non-sportsfans like me need not fear.  Y’all can sit on cobblestones and listen to the deafening buzzing hum of horns punctuated by the crowd’s roars.*  I’ll be peripatetic and peripheral, scoping out the street food set up to feed the masses. Surpr

Well, my fears about Czech food have been unfounded.  I have plenty of pictures of deliciousness.  Let’s start with preserved foods, shall we? Czechs love smoked meat.  I did not know what to expect when I ordered “pork neck.”  It turned out to be a particularly delicious ham.  And the sauerkraut is e

For those of you who missed it this week, check out my latest Eugene Weekly Chow! article on Oregon strawberries.  I’m still in Prague, but my husband instant-messaged me from Eugene the other day telling me that he had to make a strawberry fruit salad for a party.  So he went out and bought a [...]

Somewhat miraculously, I made it.  I can’t even begin to describe the clusterf@#$ flying internationally this year has turned out to be.  But I made it.  I’m in Prague.  My bag wisely decided to remain in Seattle, though. Some good moments: The flight from PDX to SEA was on the really cool new Q400 “gr

I’m jetting off to Prague.  For a conference.  Suspicious about the food; I’ll just come right out and say it.  I did discover a strawberry “festival” at the Hilton, with hopes that other, less formal strawberry festivals will be happening around the city.  But I still have vivid memories of the

…and the strawberries are ripening slowly, and without much sweetness.  It’s frustrating because I just finished a story on local strawberries, with every intention of adding gorgeous photographs of the crop in full season.  Not this year! But my green caneberries are hopeful, and surely the rain will stop by

When we moved in to Raccoon Tree Acres four years ago, my garden area looked like this: There was a small area fenced off with chicken wire to the left, suggesting someone threw in a few sad plants one year and forgot about them.  The “garden” was dominated by a scraggly, ill-located rhododendron, the view [...

More rain…and I’m out of Sluggo.  Time to buy the industrial sized bag, I’m afraid.  In the short respite of sun yesterday, I managed to prep the cucumber row, weed a few areas, and plant my watermelon, zucchini and patty pan squash (‘Benning’s Green Tint,’ bought on whim at MOC) starts

My lettuce, sprouts, peas, and artichokes are doing well, as much as one can do well with nightly visitors.  But my new pepper bed, about which I’m worried irrespective of the weather, does not need the continued rain.  My ripening strawberries don’t need it, either.  Or my tomatoes.  Or roses. I love my new

I brought these little yumyums to a wonderful barbecue yesterday.  I had added freshly ground black pepper to my trusty, flexible, rustic punition cookie dough, then dolloped some haskapberry jam in between two cookies once they came out of the oven.  The vivid, fruity jam worked really well with the buttery cookie, and t

May your barbecues and remembrances avoid sogginess.  We’ll probably be cooped up indoors.  It’s been raining here almost every day for close to three weeks now, and we’re starting to get a little worried about the warm weather crops.  Lettuce is doing well, though, and I managed to get in my pepper cro

I was so thrilled to pick my first crop of haskap berries yesterday!  Yes, it’s the first berry crop of the season!  Who knew?  And, as I hoped in this post last year when I planted the bushes, the jam is absolutely marvelous.  The berries look like elongated blueberries, but the flavor is much tarter [...]

From the strawberry patch for Lane County locals: order your berry pails from Kiwanis ASAP!  Orders must be postmarked by June 1.  This is a longstanding fundraising campaign by the Emerald Empire Kiwanis Club.  They arrange for local strawberry picking, cleaning, slicing, and delivery to Eugene.  It’s the easiest way

Lest you think it was all Jewish deli on those fine Balimorean shores, I had to post some of our shellfish eatin’.  I don’t think the word “gorge” is too strong to describe what happened in Baltimore last weekend.  In fact (vegetarians and allergists avert your eyes), it was a downright crustacean