Turn your weeds into wine -- dandelion wine! I'll be talking all things fermented at this years Yard, Garden & Patio Show on Saturday, February 18th at the Oregon Convention Center.

My good friend Karen Schwartz of Calendula Garden Design is involved yet again in a big way in this year’s Yard, Garden & Patio Show at the Oregon Convention Center February 17-19. She and her friend Carol Senna of Melingo Studio Landscape Design are the coordinators/organizers of the Incredible Edible Garden which includes espaliered fruit trees, a preserving station, dining area, stacked stone beds and much more. Here’s the scoop straight from the YGP website:

You are in for a very special treat. This year’s Incredible Edible Garden is being transformed by garden designers Karen Schwartz and Carol Senna into a lovely French jardin potager. The goal of the potager, an ornamental vegetable or kitchen garden, is to make the function of providing food aesthetically pleasing. Plants and garden structures are chosen as much for their functionality as for their color and form to offer year round interest.

Raised beds, charming wattle fencing, tucked away dining spaces and creative, edible screening options will be on display. We hope you’ll be enticed into the growing garden-to-table movement. Experts will be on hand to provide bed preparation, planting, plant selection, preserving and other food and gardening-related tips and information. Even if food gardening isn’t in your future, you’ll be inspired by the design elements the garden offers. We’re very excited for you to see it.

It’s a very elaborate and time consuming project and I can’t wait to walk through Karen and Carol’s Garden along with the other several other life-sized gardens fully decked out and on display for the show. General all ages admission to the show is $10 and you can purchase tickets in advance or at the door.

Here’s a little more info. from the website:

Enjoy daily performances by Ahmed Hassan host of DIY Network’s Yard Crashers, the spectacular 7 Gardens of the World, Outdoor Cooking Classes, and fun for all ages. Experience our Garden to Table – Incredible Edible Garden, Free Garden Seminars & Demonstrations, the Remarkable Green Market and more.

I’m really happy that Karen invited me and many other local folks to attend for hour to two hour slots to answer edible gardening questions. The programming that I’m involved in is called Meet the Experts! and you can check out the schedule here. I’ll be hanging out and answering questions about new harvest extension techniques and food and drink fermentation from 2-3pm on Saturday, February 18th at the Incredible Edible Garden. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, I’d call myself an enthusiast but there are folks participating in Meet the Experts! who are indeed experts who you might be interested in checking out including Vern Nelson, Linda Ziedrich and many others.

Please stop by and say hello. Hope to see you there!

This weekend!

Portland’s 2012 Yard, Garden & Patio Show
February 17-19, 2012 at the Oregon Convention Center
www.ygpshow.com
Tickets are $10 all ages and available at the door. Or you can…
Buy tickets in advance

From left to right: Kelly Clarke, Charles Heying and I on a panel about food and craft at last year's 2010 Wordstock. Looking forward to being on a panel this year too -- Saturday's Every Book is a Start-up.

I look forward to Wordstock every year. In fact, I wrote about just that recently. Jeff Baker, book editor for The Oregonian, asked me to write 150 words on what Wordstock means to me and I did along with Nancy Rommelmann, David Biespiel, Justin Hocking and many others for last Friday’s A&E cover story. (If you can find the story online please let me know. I have a hard copy but would love to link to it here…)

This year I’ll be speaking on a panel on Saturday at 2pm on the Wordstock Community Stage titled — Every Book is a Start-up with Jen Stevenson and Kelley Roy moderated by Todd Sattersten. The focus of the panel: “Learn from author-preneurs who found unconventional methods to launching their books about Portland’s food scene.”

Throughout Saturday and Sunday I’ll also be tabling at the Hawthorne Books table at the Book Fair. I’ve been an editor at Hawthorne since summer of 2009 and always look forward to Wordstock because a lot of our authors come and visit and sign books so we get to catch up and I also get to meet all sorts of folks while tabling, paneling, attending readings and wandering the fluorescent lit convention center halls. This is one of the few events worth braving that kind of lighting for. I hope to see you this coming weekend! Counting the days…

Wordstock
www.wordstock.com
October 8-9

Second serving of Paul Gerald's Breakfast in Bridgetown!

It’s taken me far too long to post about Paul Gerald’s second edition of Breakfast in Bridgetown. (So long, in fact, that there’s even a nifty new iPhone app. available for all of you iphony folks. No insult intended, well only a minor insult, with the “phony” part.) I think I’ll liken the lack of a blog post about Paul’s newest edition to not giving enough appreciation to what’s in your backyard. Except in this case backyard is substituted with writing studio.

Paul and I share a writing studio in Northwest Portland these days and maybe because I get to see him so often and ask him all sorts of breakfasty questions on a regular basis I haven’t appreciated the fact that you all do not enjoy the same privileges.

Breakfast in Bridgetown 2.0 is bigger, better and full of all sorts of great PDX breakfast suggestions ranging from new food cart and ethnic eats sections (thanks to Brett Burmeister and Nick Zukin for those) to the tried and true 100+ restaurant reviews — some that you know about and frequent and others that you don’t. It’s a great book and if you don’t have it already I highly recommend it.

Paul has been on the airwaves talking with Laura McCandlish on her KBOO Food Show lately if you want to hear his up-to-the-minute thoughts on local breakfast foodstuffs. They recently chatted about New Orleans cajun breakfast/brunch and where to find it in Portland.

I first met Paul when he invited me onto his RIP radio show. Check out recordings of all of Paul’s past Breakfast in Bridgetown radio shows — interviews with John Gorham, Nick Zukin, David Machado and others — over at his website.

Paul Gerald talking to guests at Breakfast in Bridgetown's 2nd edition release party in December at Cafe Nell.

Last week's Mangia, Mangia! PBSCA food event at Elephants Delicatessen with (lef to right) Cathy Whims of Nostrana, Andrea Spella of Spella Caffe, Pat DiPrima of DiPrima Bakery, me moderating and Darryl Joannides of Cork Bottle Shop.

Maybe you read this blog every week, every once in awhile, or maybe this is your first time here. Regardless thank you for being here now, perhaps often, and thank you for caring about Portland food and food culture.

Ever since my book Food Lover’s Guide to Portland came out — about six months ago now — I’ve been overwhelmed by all the personal and professional support you all have given me by reading my blog, coming to my book events, buying my book and helping to spread the word about this delicious city. I feel loved and want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for contributing in small, big and mysterious ways.

Right now I’m back to my gig as editor at Hawthorne Books, I’m working on various freelance and fiction projects AND I’m working on a big, beautiful, new book proposal. Yep, that’s right. I can’t tell you much more about it at the moment beyond that it’s a very exciting collaboration, it’s Portland-based and I can’t wait to get out of proposal land and back into writing-a-book-land again. I’ll be sure to keep you posted. I think you’re going to like this one.

Due to this and other projects I’ll be posting one-to-two blog posts a week rather than the always two a week in order to stay sane. As always, if you want a signed copy of my book you can get that from me or you can also buy from my favorite bookstore in the world. And if you own or work at a business that wants to carry my book please call 800.775.0817 and you’ll get a sweet wholesale deal. Below is a list of some recent reviews that make me smile. Thanks for all of your support!

Latest coverage:

Pacific Northwest Cheese Project
Neighborhood Notes
JustOut
Music To My Mouth
Broadway Books
Vassar Quarterly

Darryl Joannides owner of Cork: A Bottle Shop will talk about Italy to Portland wines at Mangia, Mangia!

A few months back Jesse Locker of the Portland Bologna Sister City Association (PBSCA) asked me to be a part of PBSCA’s January Know Bo event at Elephants Delicatessen. I was honored and now here it is mid-January and the event is tomorrow night.

I’ll be hosting the Mangia, Mangia! panel for PBSCA’s monthly Know Bo tomorrow night at Elephants on NW 22nd Ave. from 6-8pm. The event is free and open to the public. There will be minimal food/drink samples but plenty for purchase to eat/drink during from Elephants Delicatessen. I’m the event moderator so I’ll strive to sound smarter than I am about Italian food while asking local experts about everything from red sauce to Italian ristretto style espresso.

Joining me on this Italian food folk panel will be folks featured in my book Food Lover’s Guide to Portland — Cathy Whims of Nostrana, Andrea Spella of Spella Caffe, Patricia DiPrima LeConche of DiPrima Dolci Bakery and Darryl Joannides of Cork: A Bottle Shop. I’m really looking forward to it. The more the merrier. Come on out and mangia, mangia with us.

Andrea Spella will talk all things Italia coffee at Mangia, Mangia! Tuesday night.

Portland Bologna Sister City Association (PBSCA) January Know Bo Mangia, Mangia!:
A food panel about Portland/Italian food hosted by me
@ Elephants Delicatessen
115 NW 22nd Ave., Portland
Tuesday, January 11th 6-8pm
Free and open to the public
www.elephantsdeli.com
Facebook Mangia, Mangia! event page