Blogs, like good food, bring like-minded folks together. Just nine months into our Oregon adventure, I’ve now befriended fellow foodies, in the flesh, who I first met through
Culinate, the virtual Portland-based food news and social networking site. That’s where I discovered
Our Home Works, a local eating/gardening blog run by software developer Amy McCann (and board member of the
Willamette Food & Farm Coalition) and her landscape architect (jealous!) husband, Matt Scheibe. My second new blogger friend is Jennifer B. Levin, an English PhD. who writes food columns for the
Eugene Weekly and blogs at
Culinaria Eugenius. After trading posts for several months, we all finally met in person last Saturday night!
Though of course I already felt like I knew them. Amy and Matt kindly had us over to their renovated Eugene home. There, we indulged on grilled baby back ribs (marinated with homemade smokey peach and Hoisin sauces), cornbread, bay shrimp-topped deviled eggs, kale bruschetta, grilled chicken with cilantro jalapeno pesto and a baby potato salad. It was a feast. Amy and Matt were the consummate hosts, ensuring that our glasses never went empty. We drank ginger-cilantro lemon-drop cocktails, crisp and addicting rhubarb sodas and lots of local beer.I had such a good time, I forget to photograph the spread of food! I also made a potchka for dessert: a custardy “Coconut-Cardamom Rice Pudding with Rhubarb” (minus the kumquats). It was a yummy, South Asian-inflected, sweet/tart concoction but probably not worth the effort.
Amy and Jennifer are also master gardeners and their knowledge puts us to shame. Amy and Matt’s 1/3-acre lot is perfectly landscaped, with fava beans as a cover crop, a row of blueberry plants, fig and cherry trees and now chickens. My new blogger friends are also food preservers. Amy’s garage shelf full of pickled cucumbers and dilly beans, canned tomato sauces and strawberry-rhubarb jams inspired me. Hopefully I’ll be there soon.
We’re already talking about our next meet-up. They’re intrigued to try
The Woodsman, the logger bar/authentic Thai restaurant in Philomath that is now about our favorite restaurant in town:)
rhubarb rice pudding
Chickens in the backyard of Our Home Works
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BaltimOregon to Maine 
Thanks Laura! You are too sweet! It was a really fun time and I can’t wait for all of us to get back together.
Amy
May 12, 2009 at 8:18 am
I’m up for The Woodsman! 🙂 Amy’s garden looks great, doesn’t it?
Eugenia
May 14, 2009 at 6:37 am
[…] whipped up my experiment — Ethiopian Greens Bruschetta — as a two-bite appetizer for a recent barbecue with a group of local foodies hosted by Amy and Matt from Our Home Works. The feedback was […]
it’s not easy being greens: ethiopian bruschetta « Culinaria Eugenius
May 16, 2009 at 9:35 am