Posts Tagged ‘Oregon’
Wild, Wild Mushrooms Drag Us Away
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.
Breitenbush Hot Springs: Leave Your Bathing Suit Behind
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:)
Oaxaquenas en Oregon
- 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.
Proud to be a (native) Virginian
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.
Nary a trick-or-treater
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.
Giving in to a flu shot
Those ubiquitous flu shots (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mccord/295079027/sizes/m/#cc_license)
Flu shots weren’t for me, I thought. Why would I want to be injected with the inactive viris, at the risk of getting flu symptoms now, to guard against the uncertainty of getting it down the road. Then there’s thimerosal, the ominous mercury preservative still apparently used in the vaccine.
But then I had the flu bad last winter in Baltimore. We’re talking a 103-degree fever that made my brain swell and throb, a fever that hurt so bad it made me cry. I had to practically crawl to the parking lot after the flu hit me at work. My whole body ached when I coughed.
Still, I wanted to embrace the natural, echinacea-can-keep-me-healthy Oregon lifestyle. I was just going to tough it out this year. But then we heard the flu hits really hard here, particularly in a university town that students, scholars and athletes from around the country and across the globe pass through. Plus, with our health insurance, the $15 shots were free through the Oregon State health center.
Now there’s a slight tingling down my left side where I had the shot and my toes feel achy. My throat is a bit scratchy. Are these symptoms psychosomatic or real? I just better not come down with full-fledged influenza this year.
Did ya’ll get flu shots this year? Do you think the benefits outweigh the risks? You certainly don’t here about the shortage of flu shots like we had in 2004, now that more drug makers have flooded the market.
I voted…exactly a week before Election Day
Oregon State-themed shirt worn by Obama supporters around Corvallis.
Yes, we voted here today and no, I don’t mean by absentee ballot. We registered here in Oregon, the only state that does 100 percent of its voting by mail. Like standardized test takers, we darkened the bubbles next to our candidates on our ballots, sealed them in secrecy envelopes, signed our names and now will drop them at the public library or on Oregon State’s campus by 8 p.m. on election day. If sent by mail, the ballots must be received (not merely postmarked) by the county board of elections by Nov. 4.
Oregon values shared processes and even voting is a communal activity here. Voting parties are not uncommon.
With a host of ballot measures — 12 statewide ones this year — to wade through, people need all the help they can get. It wasn’t hard to decide on the measures concerning bilingual education, state tax policy and building permit exemptions were easier decisions. But I found myself scratching my head on others concerning teacher merit pay, prison sentences for drug offenders and the creation of open state primaries (where the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, would advance to the general election.) The Willamette Week created a helpful cheat-sheet and voter’s guide that demystified the process.
A New Life…Corvallis
Some 3,300 miles later, after laying out $300 for gas and $500 for hotels and B&Bs, we arrived in Corvallis.
We are homeowners now:
Highlights in town so far:
-The views from Mary’s Peak
-The mooing cows and manure smells that greet us every morning from the nearby Oregon State University Dairy department.
-The fact that challah bread is a delicacy here. It was our first purchase at the New Morning Bakery downtown. “Ha-la: a Jewish egg bread,” it said on the label. “I don’t know if you’ve ever tasted it, but it’s really good,” the salesgirl said.
An East Coast Gal Heads Northwest
Why would we leave we a city we love to move to a smaller town 3,000 miles away where we don’t know a soul? Why this move and why this blog? Because moving is both cathartic and frightening, clarifying why you love what you left behind and what you stand to gain from your new home.
Through this blog, I will track our perceptions of the Pacific Northwest through the eyes of gritty East Coast, helping us to embrace but not idealize our new home. As we approach 30 and see more peers settling down, we realize this is a rare move across the country away from our friends and family.
Baltimore has much to teach Oregon and vice-versa. Through this blog, we’ll try to connect these two disparate realms in our mind and life. Baltimore will be in our heart, reminding us of the persistent need to work to heal the world. We will return from this place forever changed.
And in the meantime, we want to enjoy the local microbrews, pinot noirs, coffee and myriad organic farms.
BaltimOregon to Maine 
