Last week I boarded a bus with 30 professionals, grad students and other food politic wonks to explore the pieceses of an ever-increasing sustainable food system here in Oregon. Coined “The Oregon Sustainability Experience,” the week-long adventure drove us all over, visiting multiple participants and benefactors to the evolving sustainable food systems across Oregon. From Portland to Hillsboro to Monmouth to Corvallis to Philomath to Tangent to Junction City to Salem to Brooks to Woodburn and then back to Portland, we invested 40+ hours to investigation, analysis, reflection and immense discussion on the various topics that be.

Over the next several weeks and maybe months, I will post entries on each of our visits. We dined with plant breeders, toured small, medium and large organic farms, geared up in white gowns to see processing facilities, and of course ventured among heritage breed pigs and chickens, and at one point blew our minds in an dialogue with migrant farm workers. Suffice to say, we ran the gambit on sustainable agriculture in the Northwest.

You will be happy to know that I also took loads of pictures! I know that this blog lacks the creative efforts of my photo-friendly eye, and so I intend on showing the reader some of the sites we saw on our trip. Aside from the informative lens of who, what, where, when and how, I look forward to divulging some of the why questions that rang deep inside throughout this experience. Some of the thoughts that still linger in my brain include:

• Do we want to sustain a global food system, or move towards a sustainable localized food system?
• Is ’sustainability’ an inherently liberal issue?
• The battle between local and organic in the context of sustainability
• Peak oil, climate change and the future of sustainable trends
• Sustainability – a class concern?

With so much to share, I’m still weighing the idea of posting regularly on this trip, i.e. several times a week or once every couple weeks, etc. At the same time, with so much to say and the desire to write more often, I can see posting many entries in the near future. As I mentioned a moment ago, beyond a news report, I really aim to engage some of the deeper issues I uncovered during the week-long conference.

For all my previous posts on food politics and eating seasonally and teaching food literacy, I think the theme of sustainability loomed in the background. Here is an opportunity to go that much deeper into an increasingly important issue.

Related posts:

1. Good Man Eats Takes a Break
2. Local Food Movement Gains Serious Support
3. The Urban Farming Revolution

"Local Food" on a whole new level.

Wow. Does it get better than this?!

For those of us that lack the resources to spend the summer in Bristol Bay, Alaska, here’s an awesome opportunity to reap some of the benefits. I introduce to you, Iliamna Fish Co.’s wild salmon CSA.

(For those of you who don’t know the term, CSA refers to Community Supported Agriculture. The CSA model enables anyone to purchase a share of the farm’s, or in this case fisherman/woman’s catch. The upfront cost provides the member with a set amount of product over a set period of time. For example, a $600 CSA share from a produce farm could provide a weekly box of fresh produce for 6 months. All of a sudden, a week’s worth of local, seasonal and organic produce is in your household for at the cost of $25 a week! That’s a pretty awesome deal, especially come late July and August when the bounty is exploding at the seams. Now, transfer this image of summer’s bounty to the possibility of wild sockeye salmon.)

Iliamna Fish Co. is a small company devoted to catching wild sockeye salmon using the most sustainable methods for the scale of their catch. Unlike industrial fisheries that net tons of fish at the cost of harming other fish species and habitats, Iliamna fishes in shallow water with short nets. Their labor-intensive model ensures a .3% by-catch rate. To explain,

This three-tenths of a percentage by-catch (calculated from our total salmon catch) consists of only starry flounder (platichthys stellatus), an incredibly hardy bottom feeder. There are, literally, no other fish to be caught in shallow water with set net-sized gillnets. Per boat, a 0.3% by-catch is approximately 80 flounders per season, 98% of which we return, alive, to the ocean. (text taken from site.)

Certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, the fish you purchase are knowingly caught and slaughtered employing sustainable methods. The size of the company ensures transparency and as they explain on the site, supporting the workers and the local economy is as important as supporting sustainable fishing.

If I’ve got your attention now and you are as excited as I am about this find, you’ll be even more enthralled by the costs and benefits. One share is 22 pounds and you receive it in the form of 12 individually, vacuum-sealed and flash-frozen filets, weighing in at 1.85 pounds each. Each filet can comfortably feed 5-6 people. The share cost is $198, which amounts to $9 a pound. To compare, New Seasons sells wild sockeye filets that were also frozen at sea for $13 a pound.

My only worry about all this is that I share this opportunity with other Portlanders and then miss out on the chance to get a share. Honestly, this is too good to pass up. Eating wild salmon is a true luxury, and to know where my money is going and what it is supporting makes it far more meaningful to purchase.

So here you have it folks, a sustainbly-caught, wild salmon CSA for the good people of Portland!

Related posts:

1. The Case Against Farmed Salmon
2. Urban farming – a world of possibility
3. The Grass-Fed Manifesto (Part I)

In the neighborhood, down the street or across town? Maybe the nearby countryside fits the bill or the afternoon cruise to the mountainous or oceanic regions? Once we determine the meaning of the term, then we can talk about the owner of locality. For example, does the farmer determine her blueberries to be local or does the family at the farmers market? Clearly, both the consumer and producer have a stake in the word and its ambiguous meanings. That being the case, who are we to trust?

After the apocalypse we may find ourselves in a world of genuine transparency. Until peak oil arrives and the overly cheap costs of production and distribution cease to exist, we must continue to challenge the barriers between producer and consumer. This takes the best form when we wear both hats, i.e. growing food in our yards, community gardens and apartment balconies. The link between the making of a good and the consumption of that good will hopefully grow smaller in time. This is to say that the process of making, transporting, packaging, distributing and selling will one day shrink in steps.

To further this potential I am happy to share with you an excellent new resource for food buyers in the state of Oregon. If you own a grocery store or a neighborhood bodega, a boutique restaurant or a local food chain, here is the coolest tool for your business. I introduce to you, Food Hub.

The good people of EcoTrust have brought the food-conscience citizens of Oregon an awesome way to source local food. In this context, local means regional. The website (membership required) provides a craigslist-like formula for buyers and sellers to communicate their needs. For all of us consumers that ask and ask for more local food, this is a great suggestion for the establishment that responds dumbfounded or even frustrated at the request.

There is some bad news though. The goal of the project is to connect producers and sellers, not individuals. Aside from the farmers market and sites like Eat Wild, there is no food hub for households and individuals. For a place like Portland, where large swaths of the population seek local foods, this is clearly a resource in demand. Not all farmer’s markets are equal, therefore it is of greater desire to centralize the local food sources available to people like you and me. Though I’m sure there are some foodie types out there working on a project like this (at least I hope so.)

Withe Spring upon us and the excitement for more sun, more warmth and the fresh foods of the coming seasons, I am eager to source local (Oregon is the line for me) food. In my attempt to write more on local food sources in Portland, consider this the beginning of something meaningful and practical for Good Man Eats!

Related posts:

1. Urban Foraging
2. Immersed in the Northwest (weekly menu 8)
3. “The Portland Meat Collective” (or) The Grass-Fed Manifesto (part 4)

As our collective food-conscious develops, and we consider, even question the origins of our food, it is only a matter of time before farmed salmon pays its dues. With the release of the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc., Americans are coalescing around the importance of ‘real food.’ Whether health, economic or environmental concerns lead the way, people from all parts of town are wanting better quality whole foods. The focus of the food movement is seemingly fixated on the production and distribution of fruits and vegetables. Though undercurrent issues occasionally come to the fray, and these include dairy, meat and fish.

In the past I have written extensively on the importance of pastured animals over grain-fed cows, chickens, lambs, etc. (See here, here and here.) It is only a matter of time before large swaths of carnivorous Americans want grass-fed meat to feed their family. And this liberation from CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operation) must include both mammals and fish. Be it marketing or general ignorance, most people do not acknowledge or understand the catastrophic implications of farmed fish.

The video above is an excellent documentary on the practice and consequence of farmed salmon. Just like the cows and chickens of middle America, large quantities of fish are crammed into small spaces. These oceanic CAFOs also utilize the fattening qualities of grain on fish. Like their mammalian brethren, salmon are not supposed to eat grain. Depending on the age, wild salmon’s dietary choices range from other small fish to plankton to kelp. The hype over Omega-3s and healthy fish oil is directly related to the sustenance of wild fish, specifically plants. Just like grass-fed cows, wild salmon also have high levels of Omega 3s, 6s and healthy fats.

But, just like industrial meat production, farmed salmon is disastrous for the environment. Along the coasts of countries around the world, habitats that once streamed with abundant sea life are now desolate. The farming of salmon not only effects the portion of sea that the farm inhabits, but also endangers the rivers and streams where wild salmon spawn and feed. Again, like industrial cattle or pigs, farmed salmon consume excessive amounts of antibiotics because the proximity of so many fish will inevitably breed disease. At the same time, nature’s way of constraining overpopulation brings sea lice to the farm.

A juvenile salmon with sea lice.

According to Watershed-Watch,

Sea lice are small ocean parasites that feed on the skin of fish. Lice normally do not harm adult salmon; however, small numbers of lice may kill juvenile salmon. Scientists agree that the pink salmon collapse in the Broughton Archipelago in 2002 is likely related to sea lice from salmon farms. From an expected 3.6 million salmon, only 147,000 spawning fish returned.

Unsurprisingly, the proliferation of sea lice among farmed salmon spreads to the lives of those that are wild. It is no coincidence that many of the farms are located along the same routes taken by smolts (juvenile salmon) on their way to the ocean to mature. When the wild fish swim near  or through the farmed populations, many of them receive sea lice. It is mentioned in the video that the size of these oceanic parasites are equivalent to 40 pound bugs eating away on a human body. As you might expect, the lice are killing large numbers of farmed salmon and infecting more populations of wild salmon.

In the context of climate change or any macro environmental concerns, these issue have severe implications. Indigenous communities that have thrived on salmon for generations will be greatly affected. Bears and eagles will lose one of their main forms of food. When one piece of the ecosystem is broken, it is only a matter of time before many more factors are disabled.

Without serious regulation and/or the dismantling of fish farming, it is very possible that salmon populations will become so damaged that extinction is a real possibility.

Related posts:

1. Wild Salmon CSA
2. The Grass-Fed Manifesto (Part I)
3. The Grass-Fed Manifesto (part 3)

Last week, while volunteering at the Alberta Coop and cleaning out the various ‘free boxes’ at the store, I came upon a large pile of magazines. At first I did not know these pages belonged to well-known publications. I soon found out that the covers were intentionally removed even though the magazines were perfectly fine. (The reasons for this are a completely different matter.) Among the various options was a cookbook – a “holiday special” for this particular publication.

It was only moments before beginning this post that I bothered to note the magazine’s name. The lovely pictures and wonderful meal ideas sucked me in before I cared to know who wrote what. Well, it turns out that Sunset magazine, a monthly publication devoted to “West coast living” was responsible for this awesome find. Aside from the great recipe suggestions, the simple fact that I got this for free is good enough for me. I’m the kinda guy who will take random cookbooks for the sake of undiscovered ideas only to learn that such cookbooks are soon-to-be trash. Lucky for me, this particular find will not end up in the recycling bin. Instead, I’ll use it regularly next week to feed ourselves and entertain new culinary possibilities.

Suffice to say, I’m very excited about this week’s menu. It’s got flare and flavor, both of which a home cook needs once in awhile. So here’s what I got for the next set of meals:

• Pan-fried trout with cornbread and kale (from Sunset)
• Coconut-braised beef with rice and vegetables (thank you Mark Bittman)
• Jalapeno-ginger butternut squash soup (from Sunset)
• Nutted brown rice pilaf with sauteed greens and roasted sweet potatoes (from Sunset)
• Braised white cabbage and roasted acorn squash (thank you Jamie Oliver)
• Butternut squash gnocchi and swiss chard (from Sunset)

It’s hard not to agree that this menu looks rather fabulous. I’m also happy to provide links to all of the recipes so that those interested can explore these new culinary venues too. If this isn’t one of the best meal plans yet, I don’t know what else could be. And of course the best part is finding this magazine – a real savior in my search for new ideas on the same old ingredients.

Related posts:

1. Sorry for the Delay (weekly menu 17)
2. Seasonality saves cost (weekly menu 7)
3. Between the Holidays (weekly menu 14)

News flash: Jared Goodman, the writer behind the ever-popular Good Man Eats food blog, is to become the ‘food publisher’ for Green Posting – an online resource for sustainable (green) businesses across Portland, OR.

Here’s the plan:

As ‘food publisher,’ I will write a monthly column for GreenPosting.org. The topics will range from 100-mile food choices to interviews with local “green” businesses, from reports on food events in Portland to extended articles on my meal planning and shopping experiences. I will have complete content control over my articles, which is rather awesome I think. The postings will be a bit shorter than some of the epic posts on this site, in this case length will go between 350-700 words. Overall, I believe this is an excellent opportunity to develop my writing skills, explore and engage the food scene in Portland, network and gain readership (for my blog), and begin this unexpected “career” in food.

I never, ever thought my life would take this direction.

But damn, does it feel good.

(Keep posted for a link to my first article later this month.)

Related posts:

1. New Voices on Good Man Eats
2. A Shout-out (to myself)
3. Food in the News

This menu, unlike previous ones, was written more by my wife than myself. Last week’s meals were dominated by winter’s root vegetables. Now, we both love the celeriac, parsnips, turnips and even rutabagas, but when these crops are all pureed with thyme day in and day out, the experience goes a little dry (especially for my wife.) And so, with a fire under her bum, I had her participate in the planning process.

Here is what she came up with:

• Polenta pizza with pesto, caramelized onions, sausage, mozzarella, roasted garlic and some winter greens
• Beef Stew over rice
• Corn soup with acorn squash and sausage
• Wild rice with butternut squash, leeks and corn
• Oven-roasted Dungeness crab

First off, let me say that 3 weeks into my elimination diet the frustrations have already peaked! It is rather challenging to cook and eat without vinegar (no salad dressing), tomatoes, tofu, beans and eggs, let alone the dozen or so other items on my allergy list. This dietary obstacle will only make me stronger and smarter (as a meal planner) but seeing this through can sometimes be really difficult. Lucky for me, my wife is supportive and helps me see around my usual food ideas.

Take for example the polenta pizza. You make polenta and pour it in a rimmed baking sheet. After it cools in the fridge for some time, you add the toppings and bake it for 20 minutes – voila! Wheat-free and yeast-free pizza. And honestly, it’s tasty and a great substitute when bread is not an option or you want something a tad healthier.

Another bonus to the week is our selection of frozen food items, which includes corn soup and kernels. The wild rice dish is especially delicious and we discovered it last year while living in Minneapolis. Back in Minnesota we did the 100-mile diet and I learned all about wild rice. The best part was that of all the things we ate, it’s indigenous to the region and available via an Indian reservation that participates in harvesting the traditional ways. Thus, eating wild rice was an experience in truly eating local.

Now, on a completely different note, the dungeness crab dish is local to our Portland, OR locale. This dish evolves out of one of my new year’s resolutions, specifically to prepare my wife and I a “fancy meal” once a month. This recipe is loved by a friend of mine and I think it’s time we try it too!

Overall, this week will be great. I love the variety in foods and flavors, even though there are overlaps in some of the ingredients. And since we rarely eat fish in our home, the crab night will be a real treat.

Next time, I promise to have this posted on a Friday. Have a great weekend and keep on cooking!

Related posts:

1. Eating Seasonal Blues (weekly menu 21)
2. A simple menu (weekly menu 2)
3. A clouded vision (weekly menu 3)

Finally, we found ourselves some chanterelle mushrooms!

I am thrilled to report the success we had this afternoon, trekking through the woods, the ferns and the deep, soft humus. If the saying “three times a charm” means anything, then I suppose today it came through. A month ago we looked and found no chanterelles, but a gorgeous chicken of the woods. The second time we ventured – no chanterelles – but we did find some lobster mushrooms. Today, after a little more internet research, I found us the perfect place to find Cantharellus cibarius. Between the two of us we found roughly 5 pounds of mushrooms. And like a ‘good’ mushroom forager, I cannot share the “secret spot.”

When I wrote the menu for this week’s meals I wanted to eat 100% NW cuisine. Today’s successful foraging will help along with this goal. Though I must admit, tonight we deviated from the plan. Because we found so many mushrooms and were too tired to prepare any sort of massive feast, we used some leftover ingredients in the kitchen to make ourselves a spontaneous meal of our own devising.

We began with the iron skillet – placed over a medium-high heat with a whopping 3 tablespoons of butter. Once that had melted and the bubbles fizzled out a bit, we threw in about 2 tablespoons of sliced shallots.

Shallots and butter are two main ingredients to a good cream sauce.

The shallots cooked for 2-3 minutes. I knew that they should not cook till browned as that would suggest too high a heat. Instead we cooked them till soft and then threw in 1 pound of chopped up mushrooms.

The chanterelles were cut into 1 inch slices.

It is important to note that chanterelles are not cultivated in a structured environment, i.e. you can’t grow them in the garden; you have to find them in the woods. That said, chanterelles are dirty mushrooms. They are covered in pine needles, dirt and maybe insects of varying type. If you purchase this type of mushroom and it’s looking rather spotless, you may want to find out how that was done. Even grocery store chanterelles should have a little dirt on them. We like to see this earthly matter as proof of wild food. Unlike portabellos or crimini mushrooms that sometimes look like they are grown in uniform conditions, these beauties come in all shapes and sizes. Though as you may notice, older chanterelles have a trumpet shape. I also learned today that a great way to identify real chanterelles vs. false ones is smell. A real one smells like apricots!

Notice the different ways the mushroom's top curls.

Another important characteristic of the chanterelle is the gill structure, aka the lamellae. Underneath the curling top lies a series of blunt ridges that look like gills. Unlike other mushrooms, on a chanterelle these ridges stretch from the top to the stem. As far as I understand, these “gills,” the common golden color (though they do appear in other shades), and the trumpet-like lid are common characteristics for most folks to identify the exact mushroom. For those mushrooms we picked that did not perfectly fit our identification needs, they were tossed out with the collected insects and stray pieces of dirt.

Anyways, back to the cooking!

So, the chopped mushrooms were added to the butter and shallots and cooked for 5-7 minutes. We wanted chanterelles soft and chewable for our salivating palates. After enough minutes passed, we poured about 3/4 cup of cream into the pan. Salt and pepper was also added. The mushrooms and sauce cooked for a couple more minutes. All the while, the pasta was drained and some parsley was minced.

Chanterelles, cream, shallots, butter, salt and pepper.

I suppose this meal is one of the more classic means of preparing wild mushrooms.  If you look online for recipes, you will often see butter and cream with wild mushrooms. Looking at our menu for the week, I think this is a good meal to continue our regional cuisine experience. (Last night we had some locally sourced lamb chops with fresh vegetables.)

The final dish was composed of pasta, piled in the middle of a bowl, covered with the chanterelles and cream sauce, some minced parsley and a little bit of finely grated parmesan cheese. Damn, do we eat like royalty!

Viola!

Related posts:

1. Foraging (part 1)
2. The Dark Side of the Organic Food Movement
3. Cuisines of the World potluck – Vietnam

From a political and economic perspective, the local food movement is also about sustainability and local food economies. As an economy of scale, the food movement could be regional or within a neighborhood in a city. The vegetable grower at the farmer’s market is an excellent example. You go to the market and you meet the person or family that planted the seed, that watered the plant and harvested the crop for sale at the market. There are no “middle men,” processing facilities or delivery trucks from the other side of the country. There is the consumer and the producer, standing eye to eye and creating a very real monetary exchange.

To move beyond the farmer’s market, the local food movement also invigorates people to learn foraging methods. In this way, instead of an economy we return to the ‘old ways’ of food procurement: hunting and gathering. At this point in time I do not think one is better than the other – foraging and farmer’s markets. Both are opportunities to reestablish a sense of self in a place, again both urban or rural.

For this week’s menu I want to participate in both means of local food production. Tomorrow we will return to the woods to hunt mushrooms; and Sunday we will return to the market to buy produce. To assist me with this strictly local meal plan, I went to the library and found the perfect book: The Pacific Northwest by Jean Galton and published by Williams-Sonoma. Of the seven meals I planned, 4 are from this cookbook and the other 3 I put together. Next week’s menu is the following (asterisks are next to recipes from the book):

• lamb chops with parsnip puree and roasted broccoli
• poached chicken with delicata squash and chanterelle mushrooms
• red lentil soup with walla walla marmalade *
• chicken, blue cheese and arugula salad *
• polenta with mushrooms and hazelnuts *
• macaroni and cheese with onions and kale with buttered bread crumbs *
• potato and fennel gratin with roasted broccoli *

I have to admit, I am really really excited about these meals. The recipes are fairly easy and the ingredient list is not that bad – everything can be purchased at the farmer’s market. This ‘project’ got me thinking about regional meals, and if any of my readers live in other parts of the country, maybe you could share some meals you have made that reflect your sense of place.

Related posts:

1. The Urban Farming Revolution
2. Does eating seasonally equal eating “American?” (weekly menu 6)
3. The 100-Mile Diet vs. World Hunger (part 3)