BaltimOregon

Three Grain Salad Primavera with Lemon Vinaigrette

This is a hearty, nutty, soul-satisfying salad from my sister-in-law, Julia. She picked it up while attending a holistic culinary school in San Francisco. The best part: you can use up those remainders of random grains stashed in the back of the cupboard. I used soft white wheatberries from Stalford Farm here in Oregon (the same source of my locally-grown chickpeas), black wild rice and an Israeli couscous/quinoa blend. This is a recipe that’s hard to screw up, thankfully. I also didn’t have flax seed oil so just doubled the olive oil in the dressing. Dan threw in some grape tomatoes (which he purchased against my will. I’m trying to abstain from eating tomatoes outside the local season. Winter tomatoes or those from Mexico just don’t compare.)

Here’s the recipe for you to enjoy (feel free to half the portion, but it keeps well in the fridge for the week):

Three Grain Salad Primavera with Lemon Vinaigrette
(serves 16)

Grain salad options (you will need 1 cup of three of these grains):
spelt
quinoa
wheatberries
wild rice
bulglur
barley
Israeli couscous
Choose three of these or other favorite grains — you will want to end up with 7 cups
cooked product total

Vegetables for salad:
1/2 red pepper, chopped
1/2 yellow pepper, chopped
1/2 orange pepper, chopped (NOTE- i used 3 whole peppers- just eyeball it)
1/2 pound green beans or snow peas, slivered
1 small red onion, chopped
1/2 bunch scallions, chopped
1/2 bunch italian parsley, chopped
1/2 bunch fresh mint, finely chopped

Dressing ingredients:
1/2 cup lemon juice
4 teasponns dijon mustard
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup other vegetable oil like flax seed oil or safflower
2 tbsp warm water
2 teaspoons lemon zest, finely chopped

Choose three grains and cook 1 cup of each separately. Set them aside to cool while
preparing the vegetables and the dressing.  As the vegetables and herb s are chopped, put
them into a large mixing bowl.

Combine all of the dressing ingredients except water and lemon zest, and whisk together
or put in a blender or small food processor.  Cover and blend.  Add warm water and blend
until smooth while the machine is running.  Taste, adjust as needed, and then add the
lemon zest.  (Dressing will keep in fridge for up to 2 weeks).

Measure out 7 cups of the combination of cooled grains.  Add to the vegetables in the
mixing bowl and toss to combine.  Add 1/2 cup of the dressing and toss to coat the grains
and vegetables lightly.  Taste and adjust if more dressing is needed.  Serve chilled or
at room temperature.

Christmas trip to the Oregon Coast.

I’m feeling somewhat guilty about enjoying the dungeness crab we ate on the recent trip to Newport and Waldport. Looks like commercial fisherman in California, but also Washington and Oregon are struggling to stay afloat given “an unusually weak Dungeness crab harvest.” As if the collapse of their Pacific chinook salmon livelihood wasn’t enough.

But an Oregon Public Radio story suggests the situation may not be as bad in Oregon, which appears to have at least an average harvest. Seems too early to tell.

Wish I hadn’t fallen in love with with the sweet, succulent taste of fresh Dungeness crab. To make matters worse, apparently “harvesting Dungeness crabs in the Pacific Northwest is the most dangerous fishing job in the country” (scroll down in article).

Can we really ethically continue to eat these crustaceans if harvesting them puts crabbers life in jeopardy? And are they being overfished?

Dungeness Crabs/Flickr Creative Commons/By bbum http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbum/105061191/ )

The start of the festival of lights nicely coincided with the winter solstice today, the darkest day of the year, especially here in Oregon, which has been usually cold, snowy and grey.

This half-Jew and her ambivalent Jewish husband were pleasantly surprised by the eclectic latke party and potluck the Beit Am Mid-Willamette Valley Jewish Community organized tonight. In a way it’s nice to have only one Jewish space in town, where those of all persuasions and degrees of unaffiliation are welcome.

We met a German-born economics professor emeritas, who migrated to Israel then studied at Berkeley and landed at Oregon State, where he retired in 1991. He had some colorful things to say about department politics and the writer and former OSU prof Bernard Malamud, who features Corvallis in his excellent novel A New Life. And we chatted with a young Israeli couple (guy is a resource economist) whose secular sensibilities reminded me just how out of touch American Jews can be with Israeli culture. Funny, the guy reminded us so much of Damiano, the Italian roommate of our Israeli friend Yoni back in Baltimore. Ah, Baltimore friends, we miss you:)

Oregon requires tire chains on some snowy mountain passes (Photo by gio9019/Flickr Creative Commons/http://www.flickr.com/photos/gio9019/2179219234/ )

No, the third try wasn’t the charm. It took me four stops at auto shops today to find a place that had special cable chains to fit the low-clearance tires of our Honda Civic. Les Schwab, the tire king here, didn’t carry them and the Honda dealer and Auto Zone were out. Finally Napa Auto Parts came to the rescue.

We’re still trying to wrap our heads around Oregon’s zany chains law. Basically the state requires you to carry chains in your trunk, because when adverse weather hits (especially in the mountainous regions), the highway signs can change and require you to put them on. Luckily, if we don’t use the $30 chains, we can return them after April 1. But what a pain.

For such a laid-back, marijuana-friendly state, Oregon sure has a lot of rules and regulations. Getting our driver’s license and registering our car here is also a pain. We have to take an extensive driver’s ed test to switch our license over and you have to pay to transfer the title to Oregon. Man, moving is expensive. It’s enough to make you want to sell your car. At least we plan to stay a one-car family.

Well, we’ve had our first couple inches of snow this season. And it’s incredibly cold for the generally more mild Pacific Northwest: the weather here won’t get above 31 degrees this week….ouch!

But I love the way snow slows everything down. I got out of going to Portland for two meetings today. There was a calm to the vacant streets and powdered landscape. But I shouldn’t have ventured out on a bike. Amen for my helmet when I hit that patch of ice!

We’re still trying to wrap our heads around Oregon’s snow chains law. You are technically required to carry chains while highway driving in the winter months. In very bad weather, ODOT signs can require you to put them on.

I’ll pick some up before we drive through the Coastal Range next week. Then apparently a lot of folks end up returning them unused to the local tire center in the spring.

One of the three yellow chanterelles I found on our hike today up Mary's Peak just outside of Corvallis.

 My trip foraging for wild mushroomsin October has been one of the more memorable experiences I’ve had thus far in Oregon. So it’s no surprise my parents have gone ga-ga for the state’s champion champignons during their visit here.

For my birthday, we had a marvelous mushroom dinner at the Joel Palmer Housenear McMinnville, a meal that even included mushrooms for dessert in the form of truffle ice cream (I prefer to save the precious fungus for savory recipes!)

 Dad has worked his magic in our Corvallis kitchen, whipping up a spectacular Cream of Wild Mushroom Soup and a chanterelle pasta (made with local spinach fettuccine). Can’t wait to see what he’ll do with the three chanterelles I stumbled upon while hiking Mary’s Peak today.

Now the ‘rents are scheming up ways to smuggle mushrooms back to Virginia with them. Those precious chanterelles, for example, go for as low as $9 a pound here but can fetch as much as $20 to $30 a pound back East. And that’s only on the rare occasions when fresh ones are even available. Ah, a good reminder that life is good here in the fertile (and did I say wet!) Pacific Northwest.

Look But Don't Touch: Mom and Dad marvel over abundant but expensive matsutake mushrooms at the Saturday Farmers' Market in Portland.

Photo of Breitenbush Hot Springs/Flickr Creative Commons/sparkle glowplug http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparkleglowplug/1213590569/

We found the perfect place to shock us out of our stuffed-turkey coma. Breitenbush Hot Springs, a hippyish rustic retreat 60 miles east of Salem, tucked away in the Cascade Mountains. During our one-night stay, we soaked in natural hot springs (that lacked that unpleasant sulfur smell), ate all-you-can eat vegetarian meals, did yoga and had Thai massages and hiked part of the Columbia Gorge trail.

Being there with the parents made the clothing-optional hot springs awkward, so we split up into bathing groups:) It’s just not the kind of place you feel comfortable wearing a bathing suit. And there’s nothing like hot spring water against your bare skin. It was especially surreal and spiritual to have the springs to ourselves last night in the pitch black dark, the rushing rapids of the Breitenbush River the only sounds we could hear.

It’s was also a needed detox after the Thanksgiving holiday — no meat, no caffeine, no alcohol for that 24-hour period. Of course Dan and my dad had to sneak coffee in, but they’re beyond addicted.

Now Breitenbush is on the top of my list for anyone who comes to visit in Oregon. But it’s not for everyone:)

Juices at Oaxaca market (by Michael R. Swigart/Flickr/Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/swigart/1387537986/)

Open-air market in Oaxaca (by nunavut/Flickr/Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/snowcat/455315605/)

Last night I learned that among Oregon’s predominantly Mexican farm workers, some 70 percent hail from the indigenous state of Oaxaca, the one state we’ve visited in Mexico. Half of those Oacaquenas speak languages other than Spanish, like Zapotec. That makes organizing the workers to stand up for their rights quite the logistical challenge, said Ramon Ramirez, president of PCUN, Oregon’s only farmworkers union, during this talk sponsored by Slow Food Portland and Ecotrust (scroll down).

Sure, organic labels ensure an absence of pesticides but they don’t reveal labor conditions under which the produce was grown: whether the farmworkers were paid legal wages, for overtime and under safe conditions. The movement is just now starting to push for fair trade or union-approved agricultural products in the U.S. We will have to pay more for this. But what about the indigent farmworkers, who then ironically can’t afford to purchase the wholesome produce they themselves help grow? And what about the small farmers who often barely make minimum wage themselves and live in fear that an immigration raid will shut their livelihood down.

You can read more about these weighty issues that the food community is just now starting to wrestle with, even here in oh-so-progressive Portland. See “Hand Picked, Row by Row, Day After Day” in the  Summer 2008 issue of Edible Portland.

(http://signs.cafepress.com/item/virginia-for-obama-yard-sign/278458762)

Virginia going Democrat for president is big election day news. The former capital of the Confederacy relinquishes its ghosts to cast a vote for social change.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/04/AR2008110404110.html

Maryland, of course went overwhelmingly for Obama, and approved slot machine gambling and early-voting. Those were hot issues while I was at The Baltimore Sun.

And in Oregon, Obama surely won but the Gordon Smith-Jeff Merkley Senate race was too close to call. This seat is essential for the Democrats to gain the coveted 60 seats, so much so that Obama taped a TV endorsement for Merkley. This Democratic activist Steve Novick had an aggressive plan to take on the incumbent Republican Smith. The WW  launched his campaign, his policy proposals got favorable coverage from the mainstream media and popular bloggers, but then he lost to Merkley in the primary. I heard him speak on political reporting at a recent journalism conference.

 What’s the point of owning a house when you don’t get a single trick-or-treater? We were prepared with a bowl full of gummy bear packets and organic, corn syrup-free Oregon-approved lollipops. I propped several kinds of pumpkins up on our front stoop (we didn’t carve them…hoping to make pie with them instead).

But not a soul came by. Perhaps we’re too much of an outlier, too close to the smelly Oregon State dairy farm. Or perhaps the kids had their fill treat-or-treating earlier in the day at businesses downtown.

Growing up in Richmond, our long driveway scared trick-or-treaters away. And they didn’t bother us at our apartment in Baltimore. I guess they won’t here either.