The week ahead is unique, chaotic and difficult to envision.

For one, my wife’s birthday is Tuesday and we are going out to eat at a new restaurant called Ping. I first read about it in Edible Portland, a seasonal publication devoted to local foods – restaurants, farms, CSAs, seasonal recipes, etc. I think it’s a rather fantastic publication and it is available in cities across the country (for free no less). And of course each city’s publication revolves around local food in that area. When we lived in Minneapolis we enjoyed it as well. Edible Portland is an excellent source for those interested in finding a CSA in the Portland area or tapping into the enormous local food movement here.

Anyways, in a past issue they wrote an article on a new restaurant called Ping. Since I’m not one to review restaurants and there are plenty of other sites devoted to that, I will not say much more of the place other than I look forward to eating there next week. Eating out always throws off the menu planning even though it also serves as such a pleasure to avoid dirty dishes and heating up the already hot kitchen.

The next night we are attending an “art and food opening” at our friends super-cool vintage photo and book store, Ampersand.     Each month during the summer he has an art opening. This one is right up my alley. In conjunction with Slow Food Portland he is bringing in the artist, Mark Menjivar, whom is unknown to me but his work looks awesome. As far as I understand he traveled America taking photos of people’s refrigerators to capture the essence of American food culture in the home. The art show includes a potluck and Q&A with the artist. The Slow Food influence suggests that any food brought to the potluck contain locally sourced and seasonal ingredients. At the moment I am thinking of bringing a blackberry and peach cobbler.

One other wrench in the system occurs on Friday night with our first “cuisines of the world” potluck. Borrowing a friend’s idea, I am coordinating the first of (hopefully) many potlucks in which the host chooses a cuisine from anywhere in the world and everyone prepares a dish from that culture. I am really excited about this because a) I love potlucks b) I love learning how to cook in other cultural cuisines and c) each month we will get to experience a new world of food. Although not particularly esoteric, we chose Vietnamese. We both love Vietnamese food and since I am gluten-free this type of food is especially fitting. I have chosen to prepare a noodle dish with fish, herbs and mushrooms and my lady has chosen a beef roll with dipping sauce. After the event I intend on posting some photos of the food and commenting on the overall experience.

Aside from all of this action, I am planning on some meals. To keep things simple and cheap I am thinking we will cook,

• Beans, rice and broccoli
• Vegetable stir-fry with miso
• Braised lamb shanks with polenta and greens

The last dish may sound “fancy” but we have the shanks from our last shipment of meat. I have polenta in the cupboard and greens are plentiful this time of year. All in all, I think this will cover our budgets and stomachs. Just in case, I think any leftover cash will go towards other make-shift meals.

So that’s the “vision” for next week. I look forward to posting on the Vietnamese potluck and maybe getting a photo of the lamb too. We leave this afternoon for a weekend of hunting the chanterelle mushroom (very very excited)!

Related posts:

1. Cuisines of the World potluck – Vietnam
2. Kale, how I love thee (weekly menu 5)
3. Seasonal and then some (weekly menu 4)
4. Seasonality saves cost (weekly menu 7)
5. Edible Portland, Spring 2010

Tags: cooking, CSA, Food Politics, peaches, seasonal eating, wild mushrooms