If you aren't in the Portland area or visiting anytime soon you can buy Steven Smith Tea online here.

This is my last installment for the Oregon mint story. This section was going to be a sidebar for the print version…

Peppermint isn’t the only mint…

Sure, peppermint takes the cake in Oregon, but spearmint is a close second in terms of in-state cultivation. Two main differences between the mints are that peppermint plants are taller with bigger leaves, and peppermint has a stronger flavor and aroma than the sweeter, lighter tasting and smelling spearmint.

Steven Smith of Steven Smith Teamaker, a boutique tea company specializing in full leaf, small batch tea with a retail shop on Northwest Thurman, has been working with the same local spearmint growers since the mid-1970s — Don, Monty and Marvin Mills of Mills Mint Farm in Stanfield, Oregon in Northeastern Oregon. The Mills family was amongst the first in Oregon to cultivate spearmint and peppermint.

In the mid-70s Smith was a co-owner of Stash Tea before it was sold in 1993 to Yamamotoyama in Japan. At that time Smith and the other Stash owners and employees purchased field run mint (unprocessed mint directly from the farm) from the Mills family and cleaned it in what is now !Oba! Restaurante but which was then Stash Tea headquarters. They used the mint for their tea and also sold mint to Lipton Tea and Celestial Seasonings.

Says Smith, “We cleaned mint there and stored some of it across the street in the Maddox Transfer building before they called the area the Pearl district – I think it should have been named the Mint District for the way it smelled back then.”

After selling Stash in the early 1990s Smith started Tazo Tea in his home kitchen which he sold to Starbucks in 1999 and continued to work for until 2006. In late 2009, Smith opened his newest tea endeavor — Steven Smith Teamaker — in the brick building next to the former Carlyle Restaurant on Northwest Thurman Street.

All of Smith’s spearmint to this day comes from Mills Mint Farm which cultivates 400 acres of spearmint annually with minimal inputs thanks to regular crop rotation (corn, wheat and peas) and intensive hand weeding. If you’d like to try Mills’ local leaves they are blended in Smith’s Fez tea — a combination of Mao Feng China green tea, Oregon spearmint and Australian lemon myrtle leaves.

When asked why Smith still works with Mills Mint Farm he answers succinctly, “Flavor, appearance, aroma, overall approach to business, and long standing relationship.”

Who can argue with that?

Steven Smith Teamaker
1626 NW Thurman St.
Portland, OR
503.719.8752
www.smithtea.com

Read Pt. 1 Oregon Mint
Read Pt. 2 Oregon Mint
Read Pt. 3 Oregon Mint

This is the proposal that our agent sent out to seal the deal...

I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to announce that McSweeney’s is going to publish the Toro Bravo Cookbook and it’s due out in fall 2013! First of all, we’ve been putting in the hours working on this book for awhile now and from day one chef-owner John Gorham and the entire Toro family has been adamant about getting the Toro Bravo story out there in its entirety with no compromises. Every last sweaty, dirty, salty and spicy detail that fuels the brave bull. I’m so happy and grateful to be a part. Working with John and Renee and their entire Toro staff on this has been so much fun and such an honor.

To give you an idea of what this book is going to be like — there will be 100 or so Toro recipes along with essays on everything from Toro’s unique take on service, to the restaurant’s playful take on advertising and John’s travels throughout Spain. The book will celebrate the beauty of wild, loud and deeply social Spanish tapas cuisine and the culture and beauty of wild, loud and deeply social Toro Bravo.

Toro Bravo family member and food photographer, David Lanthan Reamer, is doing the book’s photography and my boyfriend, Tyler Adams, owner of Grizzly Tattoo is doing the illustrations. Our agent, Kim Witherspoon, is a force to be reckoned with and we’re so happy to be signed with her.

I don’t know if you love McSweeney’s like I do but I can tell you that they are one of my favorite publishing houses and they were our top choice for publishing the Toro Bravo Cookbook. Have you seen the first cookbook that they published in 2011? Have you read their new quarterly food magazine Lucky Peach? I’ve been reading the incredible books and publications that they’ve put out since the late ’90s and I’ve never been disappointed. I’m a big fan of McSweeney’s and here are just a few of the many reasons why:

1. I’m wearing my gold and black striped pirate socks as I type this. Yep, the ones that I bought at 826 Valencia several years ago — the non-profit arm of McSweeney’s that does such good work with kids and literary arts. The same year that I got my pirate socks we went to a McSweeney’s play that Denis Johnson (who writes regularly for McSweeney’s) wrote just down the street from 826.

2. One year my mom got me the best Christmas present ever — the McSweeney’s trio of a year’s subscription to Wolphin, The Believer Magazine AND McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. Great year. You can still order this here.

3. I have two copies of old Might Magazines on my desk that my friend Michelle gave me to read. I didn’t bring them on the plane with me recently because I thought they might get damaged.

4. Whenever McSweeney’s is at Wordstock — and they usually are — I spend a very long time at their booth handling their books. I buy inappropriate books for friends’ children there along with many other bound paper things.

5. When I see a McSweeney’s book, magazine, or publication I have to pick it up. In an age of ever increasing digital media and ebooks McSweeney’s remains focused on the book as an object. I have never seen such beautiful books in all my life as the ones that they publish. And now, the Toro Bravo Cookbook is going to be one! Fuck yeah! Go Team Gorham!

More soon…

Toro Bravo — www.torobravopdx.com
McSweeney’s — www.mcsweeneys.net
InkWell Management — www.inkwellmanagement.com
David Lanthan Reamer — www.dlreamer.com
Tyler Adams — www.grizzlytattoo.com

Butler Farms peppermint oil packs a punch.

Peppermint oil distillation takes place immediately after mint harvest at Butler Farms. The diesel powered boiler is the heart of the operation. It creates the steam that travels through the manifold and stainless steel lines into the just harvested mint hay tubs. The mint oil is extracted by the steam and channeled through stainless pipes to the condenser. As the steam cools in the condenser it liquefies and collects in the receding cans. Then by virtue of the fact that oil is lighter than water the oil naturally separates and is poured off into barrels.

For every acre of peppermint that the Butlers cultivate, they process roughly 90 to 100 pounds of peppermint oil, which translates to 40,000 pounds of peppermint oil a year. It takes a mere pound of the extremely potent oil to flavor 55,000 sticks of gum.

There are currently 21,000 acres devoted to mint oil production in Oregon grown by 150 farms, according to Bryan Ostlund of the Oregon Mint Commission. Nearly 70 percent of all peppermint grown in-state, in fact, is distilled into peppermint oil. That’s a lot of gum.

Tim Butler with a tiny jar of the mint oil that his farm produces and distills...

Of course, it doesn’t all become an ingredient in gum. Flavor houses purchase Butler Farms’ peppermint oil from a handler, and in turn sell it to oral care, candy and medical companies such as Colgate, Wrigley, Procter & Gamble and Pfizer.

Ostlund says that the recent history of Oregon mint oil production isn’t entirely rosy. Due to rapid changes in the retail business in the 1990s, “the pressure was on, and still is on, to cheapen products,” he notes. According to Ostlund, many of the older flavor house dependent companies continue to value high quality oil, especially with their older products particularly food and candy products. But, he adds, “Companies with new products coming into production, generally are not putting as high of a priority on quality ingredients. That’s usually when cheaper and inferior foreign mint oil comes into the equation. Essentially, companies are dumbing down their ingredients.”

Where Butler farms peppermint turns into peppermint oil.

The Willamette Valley has the highest flavor profile quality of peppermint oil in state. It is exceptionally bright and distinct with a nice level of menthofuran (a potent component of mint oil) which is why companies such as Atkinson Candy Company in Lufkin, Texas use it almost exclusively. Other Oregon mint production regions generally produce mint that doesn’t stand alone and requires blending.

Peppermint oil from India, China and South America is often significantly cheaper than domestic peppermint oil but that is of inferior quality. Says Butler, “It all comes down to the consumer. The consumer tells the Wrigleys and Wal-Marts and Costcos what they want; and the superstores tell the flavor houses what they want. Sure they want quality but they also want it cheap. That’s the way it is with all agricultural commodities.”

Despite this sort of cost-cutting and disregard for quality Butler Farms has no plans to slow down its mint oil production. And why should they? According to Bruce Pokarney, director of communication for Oregon Department of Agriculture, Oregon is the second leading US producer of peppermint and peppermint is ranked #15 of all Oregon commodities in value. Tim Butler is proud to cultivate such an important Oregon commodity. If in upcoming years we as a state can find a way to market Oregon-grown mint oil as a stand alone ingredient these numbers and percentages will likely grow. Maybe we’ll even become the number one peppermint producer in the country.

Stay tuned for the last installment of this story.
Read Pt. 1 Oregon Mint
Read Pt. 2 Oregon Mint

My first and favorite thing that I've cooked in a slow cooker. Posole makes me happy.

I started making posole a couple years ago when I bought my first slow cooker and now when the cold sets in I always get a craving for it. It’s a deeply warming soup with a good amount of spice, slow cooked pork and hominy but there’s also the fresh aspect — similar to pho — of adding raw ingredients before/while eating it.

We just got back from a vacation to my hometown Cincinnati where we ate and cooked a lot of good food so I think I’ll post about that soon. For now, here’s what we’ve been enjoying at home this winter in Portland. Hope you’ve been eating and drinking well too…

Some of my favorite posole fixings...

Breakfast doesn't get much better than this -- sunny side up over chanterelle risotto.

Late night snack -- cheddar/paprika/onion cheese breads and Fuji apple.

Brussels sprout bacon and miso butter spaghetti with toasted hazelnuts and pecorino. Will be repeating.

The last of the sweet Nantes carrot harvest from the backyard...

And the Belize-style hot sauce that I made with a lot of them. One of my favorites.

Caramelized onion and jalapeno spaghetti with hazelnuts and a lime radish salad.

Yard Fresh Pt. 17
Yard Fresh Pt. 16
Yard Fresh Pt. 15
Yard Fresh Pt. 14
Yard Fresh Pt. 13
Yard Fresh Pt. 12
Yard Fresh Pt. 11
Yard Fresh Pt. 10
Yard Fresh Pt. 9
Yard Fresh Pt. 8
Yard Fresh Pt. 7
Yard Fresh Pt. 6
Yard Fresh Pt. 5
Yard Fresh Pt. 4
Yard Fresh Pt. 3
Yard Fresh Pt. 2
Yard Fresh Pt. 1

Here's some hot chocolate for you and me. I hope you like it...

It’s been quite a year and it kind of feels like the last several weeks of it tried to cram in as much activity and excitement as possible before the ball dropped. When you read this I’ll most likely still be visiting family in Cincinnati, eating Cincinnati chili, going to my favorite pen shop. Don’t make fun of me. So, I don’t have much more for you this week than the virtual cup of homemade hot chocolate above. It’s delicious though and I think that you have an active enough imagination to pull off pretending to drink it with me. I hope you can. Nice underwear by the way.

Butler Farms in Stayton, Oregon in December 2010.

Although peppermint grows easily in Oregon it has its problems, like most crops, when cultivated on a large scale. Butler Farms wages a continuous battle with pests–everything from spider mites, cutworm, crane fly and nemotodes to symphylans, mint rust and verticillium wilt. One year, they lost 25 percent of their peppermint crop to mint rust. Mint rust, a fungus that blisters and destroys mint leaves, took Butler Farms from profitable to breakeven in one short week.

In other words, says Butler, “You don’t just throw it out there and hope for the best, because there wouldn’t be much.”

In the Willamette Valley, peppermint is perennial. It awakens from its winter dormancy in late January to early February. At that point, Tim Butler goes out into his fields with a winter herbicide spray to keep the weeds at bay.

By the first of March, the peppermint shoots are visible and growing quickly but Butler’s first fertilizer and fungicide applications don’t happen until several weeks later in mid-April. Butler then crosses his fingers, hoping that insecticide application isn’t necessary.

Throughout the year the Butlers monitor their fields with integrated pest management. An agronomy professional scouts the farm testing for nemotodes and other detrimental insects. Depending on the results, some fields get insecticide application while others don’t.

From April on, the peppermint is hungry and thirsty as it grows at breakneck speed. In the summer it’s irrigated with roughly an inch to an inch and a half of water weekly and fertilized heavily as well.

Early-to-mid-August at Butler Farms means peppermint harvest. They swath it, put it in rows, chop it, and pick it up with a harvester (similar to alfalfa, clover and corn harvest). From the field the mint goes into eight- to nine-ton mint hay tubs which are taken to the mint still by truck.

Stay tuned for the next two installments of this story.

Stay tuned for the next two installments of this story.
Read Pt. 1 Oregon Mint
Read Pt. 3 Oregon Mint

Edible Portland sent this lovely card out to folks for the holidays.

So even though I’m pretty stinking busy right now working on the Toro Bravo Cookbook as well as being an editor and publicist for Hawthorne Books I’m still freelance food writing. I love covering our local food culture.

I wrote a story about Oregon mint for Edible Portland a while back and due to space constraints it didn’t make it as planned into this winter’s issue of magazine that just published. Despite getting nixed something cool happened to my story. See that card above? Mary Kate McDevitt took my story — followed up on some of the facts and figures — and made it into a beautiful holiday card for Edible Portland that I and probably many of you recently received in the mail. Literary transubstantiation!

Since I interviewed a lot of great people for my mint story I thought it would be a shame to not get it out there so with Edible Portland’s permission I’m posting it for you here in several installments and with a fair few photos. Hope you enjoy it!

Here’s the first installment…

There’s an old poster of Reba McIntyre push-pinned to the bulletin board of Tim Butler’s small fluorescent-lit farm office in Stayton, Oregon. Just below sit two small, mustard-sized jars of oil–peppermint oil. Like most oil, it doesn’t look like much: It is pretty clear with a faint straw hue. But when Butler opens a jar, a minty aroma immediately fills the room. The smell is intoxicating.

Butler Farms in Stayton, Oregon — just south of Salem — is a little less than a decade shy of becoming a century farm. Tim Butler’s maternal grandparents purchased the farm and its then 160 acres in 1918. Butler’s mom grew up on the farm; Tim, now 61 years old, grew up on the farm with his siblings; and Tim’s children, who are all adults now, grew up here. These days Butler, two of his brothers and a nephew run 2,100-acre Butler Farms. Tim’s wife, Joanie, is the farm bookkeeper.

Peppermint is integral to Butler Farms. They cultivate 400-plus acres of it annually, in addition to various vegetable crops, and every last bit is distilled on premises into peppermint oil. They began growing peppermint in 1995 after learning of a neighbor’s success.

“That’s typical of farmers,” says Butler. “You watch what your neighbor’s doing. If he’s successful at it you think, ‘Well I can do that too.’”

The Butlers are not alone in Oregon mint cultivation. The state is second in the nation in terms of peppermint cultivation (a very close second to Washington) and has seven main cultivation regions: the Willamatte Valley, Klamath Basin (including Susanville, Northern California and Tulelake), Madras, Hermiston, Ontario, Klatskanie and La Grande. The Madras and Hermiston areas focus primarily on peppermint leaf production while the Willamette Valley specializes almost entirely on peppermint oil production…

Stay tuned for the next three installments of this story.
Read Pt. 2 Oregon Mint
Read Pt. 3 Oregon Mint

Young Winemakers of Oregon this Saturday...

Please consider checking out the second Young Winemakers of Oregon event this Saturday, December 17th from 5-8 pm at Red Slate Wine Co. (also known as Ambonnay Champagne Bar; next to Olympic Provisions) in Southeast Portland. It costs $10 to taste the nine wines featured and that fee is waived if you buy six or more bottles. Here are the details pretty much straight from the source…

Taste wines from these winemakers:

Division Winemaking Company- It started as an “itch” when Tom enrolled in an entry level sommelier course and when Kate visited her family home in the Loire Valley in central France. It has now evolved into a winery on Divison Street in Southeast Portland, the site of Tom and Kate’s first home together.

God King Slave Wines – At 24 and 27 years old, Christine Collier & Chris Jiron, have released their inaugural wine, a Syrah-Tempranillo blend from the Rogue Valley. Their mission is to “Create like a God. Command like a King. Work like a Slave.”

Brigadoon Wine Company- Having caught the winemaking bug at an early age, Matt Shown has been working in the vineyards since he was 8 years old. Matt will be showcasing the Pinot Noirs and Pinot Blanc his family is committed to making.

Saturday, December 17th
5-8pm
Red Slate Wine Co./Ambonnay Champagne Bar next door to Southeast’s Olympic Provisions
www.redslatewine.com
Portland, Oregon
$10 tasting fee for tastes of nine wines (waived with a 6 bottle purchase)
Facebook event page

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
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