Eighth Annual Portland Fermentation Festival -- TICKETS ON SALE!

The Portland Fermentation Festival aka Stinkfest is less than a month away! I'm pasting the press release that I just sent out here below. Please have a gander and save the date! Want to participate as an exhibitor or do a demo this year?! Info. on how to do so below.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Eighth Annual Portland Fermentation Festival Thursday, October 26th 6-9:30pm Ecotrust’s Billy Frank Jr. Conference Center Rooftop food and drink sales and music 721 NW 9th Ave. Portland, OR All ages, open to the public, $10 advance, $12 cash at door Children 12 and younger attend for free www.portlandfermentationfestival.comTickets on sale! We are now less than a month away from the EIGHTH annual Portland Fermentation Festival! Please join us on the evening of Thursday, October 26th at Ecotrust for Portland's annual, open-to-the-public, all-ages celebration of fermented food and drink lovingly referred to as Stinkfest. Bring kimchi, try kimchi. Bring miso, try miso. Come out for Portland's fermented food and drink skill sharing, recipe sharing and tasting event of the year. Taste and share live, fermented food and drinks made by professionals and home fermentation enthusiasts at the annual event that brought out more than 400 attendees in 2016.

Talk to fellow fermenters, exchange cultures and recipes, get advice from local food fermentation enthusiasts, attend fermentation demo's and sample everything from sour pickles, miso and natto, to cheeses, hard cider and kombucha.

2017 highlights:

Nat West of Reverend Nat's Hard Cider will be making and sampling Hawaiian okolehao at this year's festival! For festivals past Nat has made chicha, kumiss, Angel of Death (LAMB-steeped cider!) and other gutsy ferments. We always really, really look forward to the wild (in more ways than one) ferments that Nat experiments with and brings to the festival. Love it.

Imperfect Produce recently launched in Portland and they'll be joining the Stinkfest festivities this year in order to talk up what they're doing, hand out some of their Imperfect Produce and give fest attendees recipes to ferment their produce with.

Some of the fermented treats already on the roster to be sampled in the main festival hall from amateur and professional fermenters include Korean makgeolli, fermented mustards and ketchups, adaptogenic herbal kimchi, Wanpaku Natto from Heidi Nestler, Soma Kombucha and Elixirs, Eva's Herbucha, Squirrel and Crow Tempeh, Claudia Lucero of Urban Cheesecraft's vegan fermented cheeses and much, much more.

On the beautiful Ecotrust rooftop (with its lovely open hearth to cozy up to and pretty strung lights) we'll have food and drink for sale. Reverend Nat's Hard Cider will be pouring delicious hard cider and Cinder BBQ (at Bushwhacker Cider every Thursday) will serve tasty sandwiches. DJ Jimbo will make his annual pickled playlist for the fest so you can sip on cider, eat a 'cue sandwich and listen to sweet and salty Jimbo tunes under the stars. We have surprisingly *never* had a rainy Portland Fermentation Festival. Strange but true.

Festival demo's will take place throughout the night. Please check our social media closer to the date for details.

Admission for the 6pm or 7:30pm Thursday festival tastings and fermentation demos is $10.

Online tickets are on sale! A limited number of tickets will be available at the door the night of the festival and will be $12/cash only.

If you or your business has a ferment that you'd like to sample and/or demo at this year's festival please visit our website for info. on how to apply to be a part.

Festival coverage:

KGW

Photos from last year's festival Food Lover's Guide to Portland

Cooking Up a Story

KBOO Food Show

Portland Monthly

Willamette Week

Portland Mercury

OPB

Facebook Portland Fermentation Festival Twitter @PDXFermentFest Website www.portlandfermentationfestival.com

Pre-order Food Lover's Guide to Portland Tique Box

I had so much fun putting together this Food Lover's Guide to Portland Tique Box with Tique founders Inger McDowell and Paige Buckner when they reached out to me several weeks ago. The mission of their business is very similar to the mission of my book -- celebrate talented and passionate local artisans, oftentimes lesser known ones.

There are all sorts of fantastic Portland foods/drinks/crafts/art that these ladies have put together into pretty boxes for subscriptions (I have a year-long subscription and just got my first box!) or for individual purchase. For my Food Lover's Guide to Portland box I wanted to include treats made by folks who I love and admire that just about anyone will use and enjoy (in other words -- accessible) which is why I included easy to love salt, hot sauce, peanut butter, honey, chocolate, candy and cheese. That said, these are all elevated, unique and, of course, delicious renditions of these classics. Go Portland!

This box makes a fantastic gift for locals and folks afar and you can pre-order it now for $45 here to ship by Priority Mail on Dec. 15th -- just in time for the holidays. Here's what you get:

So many tasty treats in this Tique Box!

Meeting of the minds -- Paige (left) and Inger at our initial Food Lover's PDX Tique Box meeting at Breken Kitchen.

Inger (left) and Paige with their Tique Boxes.

My November Tique Box -- delivered to my doorstep! Love it.

Purchase the Food Lover's Guide to Portland Tique Box at www.tiquebox.com $45, ships via Priority Mail on Dec. 15th

MoonBrine Pickles

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.

Yummmmmmm!

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.

Linda Chaplik's Oh, Goodness! Brownies

I'm sorry for the silent treatment the past couple weeks. We've been through some hard times with our family and I couldn't think about this, or anything beyond that, for a spell. I'm back now and here's to good times ahead. This is a post I put together awhile back. It's still very much pre-expiration date though. Nothing stinky...

I wrote about the Food Innovation Center's Time to Market Showcase several weeks ago for Willamette Week and then followed that up with a Willamette Week blog post about the event. Now I'm following up my follow-up with even more here about participant Linda Chaplik's super tasty gluten-free brownies.

Linda is a former corporate training manager turned food entrepreneur here in Portland and her gluten-free brownies (for the record, I have no problem whatsoever with gluten) are fantastic. In upcoming weeks Linda is working on securing a commercial kitchen and getting cafe accounts so keep your eyes peeled for her Oh, Goodness! brownies. I'll keep you posted here.

Linda's gluten-free brownies are freakishly good. If you see them for sale somewhere buy them. All.

Linda Chaplik and her friend Peggy Flynn at the Food Innovation Center's Time to Market Showcase in December.

Where Fine Books Are Sold

Now that my book has been out for more than a month I figure it's about time I post a list of spots where you can actually buy it. It's available in many more places locally and nationally than I've included below because most bookstores and a lot of shops go through book distributors and I don't have that info.

What I do have is a list of spots that Sasquatch Books has sold directly to as of this week and it's pretty impressive. So, if you don't have a copy of the book or want to get one for someone here are some of the places in Portland and beyond that you can do that.

P.S. If you want to purchase copies for retail please call Sasquatch Books at 800.775.0817.

In Portland:

Powell's BooksNew Seasons MarketIn Good TasteAAA Travel Store Downtown Portland CosctoBarnes & NobleInk & PeatAnnie Bloom's BooksBroadway BooksUrban Farm StoreMcMenamins' EdgefieldElephants DelicatessenPresents of MindButterscotchStella's on 21stMartinotti's Cafe & DeliPortland State Bookstore

Beyond:

Third Street Books (McMinnville) Omnivore Books on Food (San Francisco) Queen Anne Books (Seattle) University Bookstore ( UW Seattle) Waucoma Bookstore (Hood River) Pear Delicatessen & Shoppe (Seattle) Elliott Bay Book Company (Seattle) Ketchum Kitchens (Ketchum, Idaho)

White Pine Products: Kinda Nutty

A couple years ago I wrote a story about locally grown horseradish (wasabi grows in the Pacific Northwest too by the way) and for that I interviewed the Krizos in the Klamath Basin. It was a really interesting story to research and then I didn't talk with the Krizos for a couple years.

A few weeks ago I got to see the working cover design for my bookFood Lover's Guide to Portland. I love it and I should because I took all of the cover photos except one -- the one of the Krizos' harvest truck.

So I got to check in with them about this agricultural shot of their truck filled to the brim with horseradish. They gave the green light and that opened up the dialogue. A couple weeks later I heard from their son -- Ira Krizo -- who lives in town and runs a thriving local, wholesale food business -- White Pine Products. Ira provided the recipe to go with that seasonal horseradish story in 2007 -- horseradish crusted filet mignon with a blue cheese cream sauce.

In 2007 Ira's all-natural (some organic) White Pine Products -- granolas, candied nuts, pancake mixes, and more -- were only in a few stores. Since then WPP has grown and diversified. You can now find White Pine Products in local Whole Foods Markets, Market of Choice stores, and other food and drink shops around town.

The past few weeks I've been lucky enough to sample several White Pine Products and here are a few of the tasty treats I've enjoyed as a result...

Caramalized onion, feta, white wine and spinach spaghetti topped with candied pecans.

Butter lettuce, bacon, egg, and maple spice hazelnut salad with a miso lime vinaigrette.

As you can see from the photo below there's a lot more to White Pine Products than spiced nuts (Although WPP's are so fresh and perfectly spiced they takes spiced nuts to a whole new level.) I'll let you know how the pancake mixes, granola and muesli are next time...

White Pine Products line-up.

White Pine Products 503.794.4083 www.whitepine.usWPP online store

Nossa Familia Coffee -- Stop by the North Portland Cafe

Augusto Carvalho Dias Carneiro co-owner of Nossa Familia Coffee -- which was founded in 2006 and is the only family-traded coffee in Portland -- grew up in Rio de Janeiro but spent holidays on his family's farm eight hours west of Brazil's capital. According to Augusto that's where most of his childhood memories are. Some of the fondest include early morning horseback rides with his grandpa and his grandpa's friends through the coffee fields.

These days Augusto who's lived in Portland since 1996 still likes to ride around his family's sixth generation Brazilian farm. He just has different transportation now -- his bicycle. Augusto is a cycle enthusiast and has made a couple trips to the farm with fellow mountain biking friends. (The last time I saw Augusto he was setting up a coffee booth at a cycle event at the Washington County Fairplex in Hillsboro the same weekend as the Home Orchard Society's All About Fruit Show.) Of course anytime Augusto returns home now -- usually once or twice a year -- there's plenty of work to be done.

Although Nossa doesn't roast its own bean (another Portland roasting company roasts for them) Augusto hopes to in the near future. Nossa currently imports about five percent of the farm's Brazilian coffee -- about 80,000 pounds a year -- so there's plenty of room for growth in more ways than one.

In the summer of 2009 Nossa Familia opened a café at the non-profit Ethos Music Center on North Killingsworth that serves Nossa Familia Coffee, tea and snacks. In addition to the café you can find Nossa Familia Coffee at all New Seasons Markets, People's Food Co-op, Food Front Cooperative Grocery, the Hollywood and Lents Farmers Markets and other locations around town.

Nossa Familia Cafe at Ethos 2 North Killingsworth St. www.familyroast.com Hours: Monday-Friday 8am-6pm Saturday 10am-3pm

Ristretto Style: Spella Caffe

There are a lot of great Portland food and drink carts and Spella Caffé, open since fall of 2006, is one of the best. The reason: Andrea Spella. Andrea is part Italian and part Polish and drinks about 10 to 15 shots of espresso a day. He claims it helps him sleep and adds with a smile, "I guess I'm just wired differently."

I guess so. In the past few weeks I've been so nervous about my impending book due date that I've sadly had to cut out my afternoon cup of coffee. In the past couple years I've looked forward to my afternoon cup almost as much as my morning cup but when your heart is aflutter with nerves too much coffee just adds to the stress. Anyway, 10-to-15-shots-a-day Andrea obviously doesn't feel my pain. I met with him in late April and learned all about why he loves coffee and why we Portlanders love his coffee.

Spella Caffe's signature classic Italian roast coffee is roasted in small 11 pound batches and pulled ristretto style with an old school piston machine as opposed to a modern pressurized pump espresso machine. There's no walking away from the machine or even talking much with customers while a Spella espresso is in full swing. The end result is a nicely extracted cup of coffee with a beautiful crema.

In addition to expertly prepared coffee the cart serves from-scratch chai, hand shaken iced drinks (Andrea doesn't like blenders), small batch Stella Gelato made in Eugene, and all sorts of tasty baked goods -- authentic biscotti, quickbreads and cookies -- prepared by a loyal customer and librarian at downtown's Central Library.

Over the years Spella Caffe has acquired quite a following so it's rare to step up to the window without at least a short wait. Two of Andrea's favorite regulars are Little Red Bike Café owners Evan Dohrmann and Ali Jepson who rode their tandem bike to the cart for a celebratory shot of espresso minutes after they were married (for the third time) at the Multnomah County Circuit Court in 2008.

Spella Cafe 901 SW Alder St. 503.421.9723 www.spellacaffe.com Mon.-Fri. 9am-4pm.