Our friend Pete gave us the beautiful foraged mushrooms that made this chanterelle brussels sprout risotto so special. He also regularly gifts us with his homebrew. We're so lucky.

Our friends keep us very well fed and this regular installment aptly titled Friend Food is a chronicle of the edibles and potables that they are so kind as to give us. It goes both ways of course. I love to give friends homemade food and drink and the things I most often gift include all sorts of pickles and vegetable ferments (kimchi, kraut, spicy garlic dills, pickled beets etc.), hot sauces, salsas, mustards, and if you’ve been very good some homemade fruit wine.

Maybe you’ll get an idea here for something to cook and give to friends and family this holiday season. Please leave a comment if you’re making something good as a holiday gift this year that you’d like to share…

Our very good friend and neighbor Alison baked us this lovely lemon meringue pie for Thanksgiving this year. I really miss this pie. So good

Our friend Pete also gave us a bottle of liquid gold -- his homemade dandelion wine.

Better late than never with these awesome smoked pork ribs that our friend Dave made in his smoker late this summer. He fabricated the smoker ground-up and for the time being it's at our house. Again, lucky.

Picked the last of this year's plums from our neighbor Alison's trees and turned them all -- along with other fruits -- into wine that's fermenting in the utility room.

Our friends Vern and Sandy migrate between Rainbow County in San Diego and Lopez Island every year. This year on their way south from Lopez they visited us and left us with these tasty gifts -- canned Dungeness and homemade salal/blackberry/apple jelly. Mmmm.

Friend Food Pt. 3
Friend Food Pt. 1
Friend Food Pt. 2

Second issue of Lucky Peach hot off the presses!

Have you read this magazine? This second issue just arrived in my mailbox and I love it. The moment I heard that McSweeney’s was coming out with a food magazine I got a subscription. After the first two issues I can’t recommend Lucky Peach enough. I’m not the only one that loves it. This is the kind of food/drink magazine I’ve been dreaming of for a long time.

In Lucky Peach you won’t find page after page of fussy kitchen and food shots that require stylists and production teams and you won’t have to page through seemingly endless glossy ads until you get to the meat of the matter. There are paintings of past-its-prime blue cheese, recipe corrections composed in comics, how-to photos for killing and cleaning fish, and stickers! (The mock fruit stickers — you know these kinds of stickers but funny — are between page 112 and 113 in the second issue.) There’s cursing. There’s a haiku about corn with miso butter and bacon. There are honest and original stories with strong voices that you haven’t heard before that make you laugh, think and feel and want to cook and eat. It’s real, raw and it’s ripe for the picking. Go get yourself a Lucky Peach.

LUCKY PEACH
Subscribe!

I'll write sweet nothings and send you some books.

Food Lover’s Guide to Portland

1 signed copy media mail (2-7 days) cont. U.S. shipping incl. $17.95 2 signed copies media mail (2-7 days) cont. U.S. shipping incl. $34.00 3 signed copies media mail (2-7 days) cont. U.S. shipping incl. $50.00 1 signed copy priority mail (2-3 days) U.S. shipping incl. $20.00 2 signed copies priority mail (2-3 days) U.S. shipping incl. $36.00 3 signed copies priority mail (2-3 days) U.S. shipping incl. $55.00

Custom message with signature?

Even though my book is available from all sorts of great sellers including Powell’s Books, New Seasons Market, Elephants Delicatessen, In Good Taste, Elliott Bay Book Company, Mirador Community Store, Alma Chocolate, Kenny & Zuke’s, House Spirits and Reading Frenzy I get more requests than usual around the holidays for signed copies. To remedy the situation I’ve added this magic little PayPal button above for folks who want signed copies of Food Lover’s Guide to Portland. You don’t need a PayPal account to buy books this way but you do need a credit card.

I think my book is a nice gift on its own (yes, a little biased) but I think it’s even better with a tasty treat or two from one of the many food and drink folks featured in it. I’m going to post 100 local pairings for the book between now and the end of December on Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing. For now, Food Lover’s Guide to Portland pairs nicely with…

Pickled herring and house-cured salame from Edelweiss Sausage & Delicatessen
A bottle of Eau de Vie of Douglas Fir or Pear-in-the-bottle brandy from Clear Creek Distillery
A Spella Caffe gift certificate
An Urban Cheesecraft DIY cheesemaking kit
Another local food book or two from Powell’s
Farmstead cheeses and charcuterie from Cheese Bar
Smoked seafood from Newman’s Fish Company in City Market
Custom Kinder eggs or chardons from Pix Patisserie

Shipping

I’m taking care of the shipping on continental U.S. orders via media mail and there are discounts for multiple book orders. Media mail takes a few days to a week but you can also spring for priority mail for a bit more $. If you want even quicker shipping, more than three books, books to multiple addresses, or a chicken in a zebra costume please just drop me a line and we’ll figure it out.

From my shelf to yours...

Spicy MoonBrine Pickles really made this ham sandwich. Freaky good.

I’m kind a pickle freak although I’m particular. I’m not so into bread & butter or other sweet pickles. I like the salty, sour and spicy pickles the best — namely fresh garlic, spicy, dills and crock-fermented dills. Just made some of the former, in fact, and can see them on the kitchen counter from where I’m typing at the kitchen table — my studio is too hot today.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I came home to a lovely package on my front porch — two tasty jars of MoonBrine Pickles courtesy of the pickler himself — Stew Golomb — a former elementary school teacher from Boston who moved to Portland a little more than a year ago. Thanks Stew!

I love them. We’ve eaten most of them as is but have added some to sandwiches too. They’re tasty fermented pickles with a little vinegar added for good measure. By the way, some of my favorite local pickles are Picklopolis Pickles. Picklopolis’ Mr. Briney Barber is a very good friend of mine so I don’t want to let a pickle post go without a shout-out. He knows how much I love him.

I recently got to ask Stew some questions via email about MoonBrine Pickles and here’s what he had to say — sometimes abbreviated…

Can you give me a short/sweet explanation of your process. Fermented and then vinegar added?

MoonBrine Pickles are 100% fermented (lacto-fermented). The cucumbers/vegetables start in a pail of brine, consisting of water, salt and a small amount of (gluten free) distilled vinegar. The pails sit at room temperature for a couple weeks until the vegetables are fully fermented. The pickles are then packed and refrigerated in quarts for retail and pail for restaurants.

You have a pickle tasting room/space?

I do have a little shop. I roll my pickle bar out of my kitchen and sell right there in the basement of the Ford Building at 2505 SE 11th Ave. in Portland. People seem really into discovering it. I call it the MoonBrine Shop N’ Snacketeria.

There you’ll find quart glass jars of our fermented MoonBrine Super Dill, Pretty Hot All Natural Pickles, MoonBrine Sour Mash (Relish) and our MoonBrine Brine, a magical product all on its own. Rotating offerings of deliciousness also include half-sour cucumber pickles, pickled green tomatoes, pickled cauliflower, pickled carrots, pickled cabbage and whatever else comes off the farm and lands in the brine.

MoonBrine Snacketeria hours: Monday – Thursday 11am-3:30pm. Off-hours by appointment if you email email Stew at info@MoonBrine.com.

Where can folks purchase MoonBrine Pickles? Can you give me a price list of various types if bought direct?

Currently, in Portland the pickles are available at the shop – all quarts are $5.
Folks can also buy the pickles at KnowThyFood.com which is a food buying club in town. Ford Food & Drink and Detour Cafe use the pickles on some of their plates and in their Bloody Marys. More stores and restaurants are on the horizon and there are five stores and two restaurants in Boston currently carrying the pickles.

MoonBrine Pickles
www.moonbrine.com

Further evidence of my pickle obsession -- me and friends at Kenny & Zuke's Pickle Throwdown earlier this summer.

Spring chick at Urban Farm Store.

Sometimes stories get cut and sometimes just portions of stories go RIP. A major national story about Portland food that I worked on last year left out Southeast Belmont Street’s Urban Farm Store so I thought I’d finally post something about this sweet little open-since-2009 shop owned by husband-and-wife-duo Hannah and Robert Litt.

Urban Farm Store has a lot going for it. On my last visit I purchase a bale of straw, pantry moth traps and compostable dog waste bags. Yes, it’s a diverse shop where you’ll find everything from animal feed and beekeeping supplies to edible plants for the garden and DIY food and brewing supplies. (And if you don’t have a copy of my book they carry it. Wink, wink.) Anyway, maybe you’ve been and maybe you haven’t — either way here are some photos that sum up this urban homestead shop…

All sorts of bulk feed, fertilizers and mulch to choose from at Urban Farm Store...

This is the largest supply of Urban Cheesecraft kits I've seen in town...

A lot of gardening and DIY books in the front.

Get some tasty local honey!

Urban Farm Store owners Hannah and Robert Litt with their shop kitties.

Urban Farm Store
2100 SE Belmont St.
Portland, Oregon 97214
www.urbanfarmstore.com
503.234.7733