Here in Oregon in the middle of winter, eating local/seasonal is heavy on root vegetables and other things that store well, like potatoes and onions and cabbages. But in California, they’re right in the middle of citrus season, so as soon as I saw the trees I started plotting to acquire some oranges of my own.

We made two fresh produce stops, and a third one for olives.

First was California Fruit Depot, in Edison. It’s right next door to an orange grove-turned-RV park (free oranges if you stay there?). Lots of samples, but they primarily sell oranges, and dates which the employee said are grown to the south of there, in Indio. We bought a bag of Minneola tangelos and two kinds of dates.

Our second stop, on the way back through from Vegas toward Bakersfield, was at Murray Family Farms. They grow a bunch of different things, and the farm store and grounds are nicely set up for visitors, with a small petting zoo and picnic area. We bought Meyer lemons, pistachios, avocados (we hit the tail end of their Zutano crop), and a couple of satsuma oranges. I’ve been snacking on the bag of pistachios all week—it seemed like a splurge at the time, but now I’m wishing we’d bought more, because when this runs out I will be sad.

Our last stop, heading back up I-5 in the rain, was at the Olive Pit in Corning. This is another place with great samples; there’s a couple dozen types of olives and olive oils to try. Corning is apparently “Olive City”, complete with an annual Olive Festival. So if you like olives, this is a good place to stop.

Our route took us through a number of different growing areas, from rice to olives to citrus to rangeland. I really enjoyed being able to stop at even just a few places to taste things, and close the gap between “food that comes from somewhere” and “food that comes from a plant I can see right there”. If you have a little extra time on your own drive, I hope you’ll do the same, whether in California or some other part of the world.

I made a couple of meals recently using frozen broccoli and cauliflower that I thought were worth sharing.

First up, ravioli with cauliflower, hazelnuts, and raisins.

You’ll need:
* cheese ravioli (either from your favorite recipe or a prepared package)
* frozen cauliflower
* hazelnuts (I use Freddy Guys)
* raisins (if you want them plump, pre-soak in water or broth)
* butter
* salt and pepper
* grated Parmesan cheese

Cook the ravioli according to recipe or package instructions, drain, and set aside.

Melt a few tablespoons of butter in a saucepan on medium heat. Add the frozen cauliflower (a cup or two depending on how many servings of ravioli you’re making) and defrost and cook in the butter. When the cauliflower is cooked, add a handful of raisins and hazelnuts, and finally the ravioli to rewarm, and you’re ready to go. Dish onto plates, salt and pepper to taste, and top with the Parmesan.

For the broccoli cheddar soup, the ingredients are:

* butter, 4 tbsp.
* a medium-sized shallot, chopped
* flour, 4 tbsp.
* broth, about 2 cups (I used a combination of mushroom and chicken, but a vegetable broth would work too)
* frozen broccoli (maybe a cup? I have to admit, I don’t measure this sort of thing, I just eyeball it)
* cream or milk (just a splash, if you have it)
* cheddar cheese
* salt, pepper
* dill (chopped if it’s fresh)

Melt the butter in a saucepan on medium heat. When it’s melted, add the shallot, and saute until translucent. Slowly add the flour, stirring as you go, until it forms a paste. Then pour in small amounts of broth, bringing the consistency to sort of a gravy, thinning it gradually until the full amount has been added (doing it this way prevents lumps). When the broth is heated, add the broccoli and cook. (At this point, we pulled the cooked broccoli out and chopped it into smaller pieces, but those of you with microwaves could use that to defrost it first and save the mess).

Once the broccoli is cooked and the soup is thickening, it’s time to add a splash of cream (or milk), grated cheddar (I grate it directly into the soup, stirring occasionally to see if it looks cheddary enough yet), then salt, pepper, and dill to finish. This is good with biscuits or slices of baguette.

These two recipes highlight the main way I work with frozen veggies: by putting them directly into a soup or sauce. It’s very convenient, and if the pieces are too big (as with the broccoli) I can pull them out once cooked, chop, and add back to the dish. Frozen peas are perfect this way, since they’re small and cook fast (one of my favorites is mac & cheese & peas, with the peas cooked in the cheese sauce). It’s a little more exciting than just steaming them, and helps hide any loss of flavor from the freezer.

In the last few months, Portland’s food cart scene has been getting an increasing amount of media attention. I don’t really want to duplicate that: I think Food Carts Portland is doing a great job of documenting what carts are out there. Instead, I’m looking to make a sort of fanzine about what we like about our carts, and street food around the world. What makes this fun? Why are you at Whiffies at 1am three times a week? What surprises you (in good and bad ways)?

To that end, I’m looking for photos, essays, pirate maps, and other documents about street food experiences. You can find more details about the format and what I’ll be doing on the website, and the link to submit.

You’ll need:
1. A crockpot / slow cooker / whatever they’re calling it these days. You could try this in a dutch oven, too.
2. A coffee cake recipe.
3. Fruit topping for the recipe (I used raspberries).
4. Parchment paper.
5. (optional) 100+ degree weather.

Mix up the coffee cake batter (preferably with an electric mixer—you don’t want to exert yourself in this weather). Line the crockpot with parchment. Pour in the batter, and spread evenly. Pour the fruit on top. Put the lid on the pot. Turn to ‘high’.

Feel free to set the cooker up as far from where you’ll be sitting as possible. It doesn’t give off a lot of heat, but there’s no reason not to move it out of the kitchen, even as far as the porch if you have shade and an outlet there.

Check back in 2 hours. The cake is done when it passes the toothpick test. Mine took 2.5 hours, but I turned the cooker down to low for the last 20 minutes because I was worried about overcooking the outside. I also tried propping the lid to vent a little at the end; it’s supposed to help brown the top.

There you have it, coffee cake in a heat wave.

Yogurt cheese is just yogurt with the whey drained out. I put a funnel in a pint glass, line it with a coffee filter, and fill the funnel with yogurt (plain, unflavored—I buy Strauss’ whole milk yogurt in a big tub). Then I leave the contraption in the fridge for at least a few hours. The longer it drains, the thicker the result. When it’s ready, save the whey for the naan.

I used to think flatbreads were tricky, but here’s my method now: use a solid rolling pin, and a cast iron frying pan. The rolling pin is easier to handle than a tortilla press, and the cast iron pan ensures that the bread cooks evenly and quickly.

Naan recipe courtesy of my brother Peter, who helped out after I lost the bookmark for the one I’d been using.

Mix together:
1/2 cup warm water
1 tbsp. sugar
1 scant tbsp. yeast

Let the yeast proof about five minutes.

Then add:
2 2/3 cups flour
1/2 cup whey or buttermilk *
1 tsp salt

*To make this dairy-free, use water with a teaspoon of vinegar. The acid weakens the gluten bonds, which improves the texture and makes it easier to roll out.

Knead together until smooth, then let proof for about an hour, or until doubled.

Once it’s risen, squish the dough back into a ball. Cut it into 8 pieces. Heat the frying pan on medium, and grease with a little butter.

Flour your work surface and the rolling pin. Roll each piece of dough out flat, and fry until browned on both sides. I usually can tell it’s time to flip the bread because air pockets are forming on top. And that’s it. The whole thing goes pretty fast, and then you have a stack of naan, ready to eat.

The yogurt cheese and naan make a pretty good snack or meal on their own, but you could add olives, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, either on the side or rolled into a sandwich. Everything will store in the fridge for a few days, if needed. Reheat the naan in the frying pan, or wrapped in foil in the oven.

I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with the surplus of applesauce I made last fall. And the half-gallon of blueberries in the freezer, left over from last summer. All the conference prep has had me cooking less. But now that’s over, at least for a little while.

This is adapted from Two Vegan Sisters.

1/3 c. oil
3/4 c. sugar
1 1/2 c. applesauce
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/3 c. blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Preheat oven to 350F.

Mix oil and sugar together in a bowl (or your stand mixer, if you have one). Add the applesauce and vanilla, and stir. Add all of the dry ingredients at once and stir until smooth. Add the blueberries. Ta-da, cake batter.

Line a 12-cup muffin pan with papers, and fill the cups evenly. Bake at 350F for 25-30 min. or until a toothpick can be removed without goop stuck to it.

Add your favorite frosting (in my case, a highly improvised chocolate one—if you’re brave enough to work with out a recipe, I used 3/4 stick of butter, a splash of cream, and unmeasured amounts of powdered sugar and cocoa powder. it could’ve used more cream or milk).

Enjoy.

Fruit-topped coffee cake recipes seem so basic, but for some reason my cookbook collection is heavier on the nut and brown sugar sort. So I improvised. Here’s the resulting recipe, heavily modified from the sour cream coffee cake in the King Arthur 200th Anniversary Cookbook.

Ingredients:
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 1/4 cup brown sugar
* 6 tbsp butter
* 1 egg
* 3/4 cup sour cream
* 1 tsp vanilla
* 1 1/2 cups flour
* 1 tsp each baking soda, baking powder, salt
* 1 15oz. can blackberries (I used Oregon Fruit blackberries in syrup.)

Preheat oven to 350F.

Cream both kinds of sugar together with the butter, then stir in the egg, sour cream, and vanilla, one at a time. Combine dry ingredients, then add to the butter mixture. Stir until it looks like a thick cake batter.

Grease a 9″ square baking dish, spoon the batter into it in an even layer, then pour the blackberries with their syrup over the top. Bake for about an hour. Enjoy.

If you haven’t signed up yet, I strongly encourage you to go to the Superstruct site and create a profile. It’s only been up for a day, but already there’s tons of activity. Then, I hope you’ll go to the Urban Food Producers’ Coop page and join that as well.

One of the things I’ve been trying to figure out is how we give people in urban areas (that being the concentration of world populations) access to healthy, local, sustainable foods. To everyone, not just fanatics like me who can spend the extra time. I think one of the central steps has to involve connecting urban food producers together, and creating a lightweight, flexible distribution system. Even if the producer is just someone with extra tomatoes from their backyard, or surplus eggs from their chickens in midsummer, or an overgrown apple tree. I hope that this can draw in larger producers near urban areas as well. We still have a number of small farms within city limits and just outside.

Also, can we do more than just subsist? How about food community that really thrives? I love the local food specialties I’ve encountered while traveling abroad, but in the US travel food is often about trying to avoid the overprocessed, unvarying junk found from one chain restaurant after another.

I’d like to see this build upon existing resources like local grocery stores, farmers markets, and CSAs; also, a balance between just-in-time connective technologies and face-to-face community-building like market days. I know we have the interest and ability in Portland to make it happen. But what about other areas? What’s needed to nurture these structures elsewhere?

A related topic I want to get people thinking about is subsistence foods for our specific climates and land resources. I think knowing what we can grow and produce to live on where we are is an important (and largely forgotten) piece of knowledge. I’d love to see input from people outside the PNW, and especially outside the US. What foods would work for your community?

This is what I know about sourdough bread.

You can buy sourdough starter, but I made mine from scratch. You mix together flour (unbleached organic, or whole wheat, or even rye) and water, cover with something breathable like cheesecloth, and let it sit till it bubbles. I added a splash of cultured buttermilk to mine as well, which gives it lactobacilus cultures for a jump-start. Whole grapes are another effective addition (that dull white coating is yeast). It’s ready when it has a layer of foamy bubbles on top.

The starter needs to be fed each time before you use it, but it can sit dormant in the fridge (or other cold place) indefinitely between feedings. If it seems a little weak after a long period of inactivity, use some to make pancakes and feed it again. But I neglected mine all summer and it was just fine when I finally reactivated it. For feeding I mix in a cup of flour, and enough water to make it pourable. If you measure, the added ingredients should be equal amounts of flour and water by weight.

My basic bread recipe is 1 cup active starter, 2 cups flour, .5 cups water, and a heaping teaspoon of salt. I mix and knead it in a kitchenaid stand mixer, but you can do it all by hand if that’s what you have. The dough is sufficiently kneaded when it’s smooth and pliable, like soft modeling clay or skin. Let rise until it doubles in size (2+ hours), form into a loaf, proof for another hour or two, and bake at 450F for approx. 25 minutes. For handformed (no pan) loaves, I usually slash the top with a knife before baking so it doesn’t explode out the side.

That’s all. After this it’s just practice, and practice, and more practice. Even the mistakes will be edible. If the dough doesn’t rise, turn it into pizza instead.

Other recipes:
Sourdough biscuits: Cut 1/2 stick butter (4 tbsp) into 1.5 cups flour + 1tsp salt. Add 1 cup starter and a splash of cream. Mix. Bake @ 450 for 12 min.
Sesame wheat crackers: 1 cup sourdough starter, 2 cups whole wheat flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tbsp sesame seeds, 1/4 cup oil. Split into 3rds to roll thin and cut into squares. Bake @ 300, 15 minutes on each side.

If you want a reference book, Classic Sourdoughs by Ed Wood is very thorough. The author is a pathologist who has collected sourdough cultures from around the world, and he gives detailed explanations of how and why sourdough works, including using grains other than wheat.

Take two pork chops (we got ours from Deck Family Farm) and cook over medium heat in a large cast iron frying pan, turning every few minutes, until done. We just eyeballed it, and they came out fine.

Move the pork chops to a plate, and add chopped green onions and mushrooms to the pan. Pour in a couple splashes of red wine. Let that cook down, then turn the heat to low, and add cream and crumbled bits of Rogue Smokey Blue cheese.

Pour the sauce over the pork chops, add a couple of baked potatoes slathered with butter, and serve.