Catherine Schön and Bob New at the mobile farmer’s market

Most farmers markets and grocery stores in Portland are located primarily in higher income neighborhoods. For low income residents, fresh produce can be hard to find and expensive.

The Oregonian ran a piece in 2008 claiming that Portland’s low-income neighborhoods are [this] city’s ‘food deserts’ and highlighed the Cully neighborhood as one of these spots. And if you’ve ever been to the intersection of NE Cully and Killingsworth, you know this to be true.

On Saturday, our own General Manager Catherine Schön, Hollywood Farmer’s Market staff member Bob New, and Amy Columbo, board member for the Hollywood Farmer’s Market, did their part to change this by setting up a mobile farmers market at the corner of NE Cully and Killingsworth.

Click here to see Fox 12′s video coverage.

A few months ago, The New York Times ran a story that said demand is proving their is a need a for fresh produce in low-income areas. Let’s hope that the same is true for this new mobile market.

FOODday Article

We were very excited and honored this week to be included in the FOODday section of the Oregonian called “Ripe for the Baking.” Our savory tomato pie has seemed to take on a life of it’s own these days, and it keeps popping up in the most unexpected places.

Here is an excerpt from the write up:

“The natural companions of baked tomatoes are olive oil, cheese and herbs — and, when we’re feeling indulgent — pastry. To start, we picked something as simple as tomatoes slow-roasted in an extravagant cup of olive oil, served as a luxurious side dish or to top pasta or bread.

Then you can move on to our two gratins, one made with ricotta and Parmigiano-Reggiano, the other with two kinds of summer squash, plus cheese and thyme.

And for a lazy weekend, you can’t do better than Sassafras Catering’s Southern Tomato Pie, which won last year’s Portland Pie-Off contest and is sold by Sassafras at the Montavilla Farmers Market.”

A hearty thank you to Katherine Miller for including us in this section.

Last year’s crowning glory, the Southern Tomato Pie

Here at Sassafras, we think about pie constantly. We eat, sleep and breathe it. And to tell you the truth, we just can’t get enough of it. But, we know our pies, and we are ready to venture out and taste what the rest of Portland has to offer.

This is where you come in – want to know your pie. Do you make it with fruit? Vegetables? Meat? Cheese? Shortening or butter crust? Top crust or not? We want to know!

Make your favorite pie(s) and bring it to the Portland Pie Off this Sunday, August 16th, and show us what you’ve got. Oh, and just so you know, we were the winner last year, and we are honored to be a judge this year.

This is your chance to become a pie champion. To be the pie queen or king of Portland. And to take our crown!

Pie not your thing? Well come anyway – once the judging has finished, all of the pies will be available to the public for eating. Yum!

Who else is talking about the pie-off?

-The Portland Pie Commission
-Betsy at OurPDX
-The Mercury’s Blogtown
-PDX Food Press
-LeLo in NoPo
-On Upcoming
-Gary Walter

Rainier cherries at the Montavilla Farmers Market

I never knew there was a difference between the florescent-colored red maraschino cherries that you find in cocktails and a real bourbon-soaked cherry until I was at The Country Cat with my friend Joanne a few years back. She insisted on ordering a Manhattan with “real” cherries, and that I taste one of them right when the drink was delivered. They were amazingly good, and strong.

That experience reminded me of another, when a friend from West Virginia (we were living in Bend at the time) pulled a mason jar out of the top of her closet. The jar had a liquid in it the color of dark grape juice. When I asked her what was in it, she said, “moonshine. With plums.” Scared as I was, I tasted it – and it was very good. From what I can recall, it tasted like a fruity wine, and we finished the whole jar that evening (with friends, of course).

Getting to the point: I want to start putting up some fruit with liquor as the preservative. There are all kinds of ways to preserve the incredible fruits and vegetables coming out of our farmers markets these days, yet I think liquor should be one method that gets more attention.

This weekend I bought a whole bunch of cherries. They were $3.75/lb for both Bing and Rainier, so I got about 3 pounds. I asked the vendor how best to preserve them – do they freeze? how long do they last? what can I do to keep them?  His answer: eat them. Eat them all, and then you’ll get your fill of cherries for the season. They just don’t keep well frozen.

I wasn’t happy with his answer, so I’m gonna mix these babies with bourbon and keep them for weeks to come, like Maker’s Mark does. Here is my recipe:

Bourbon-Soaked Cherries

Yields 6 jars

Equipment and ingredients
1 canning kettle with rack
6 mason jars with new lids and rings
5 pints of cherries with stems removed (any fresh variety will work)
750 ml of your favorite Bourbon

1. Fill canning kettle with water and bring to a boil

2. Turn jars upside down and immerse them on the kettle’s rack

3. Pull jars out of the hot-water bath (use tongs or a dish towel) and fill with cleaned, unpitted  cherries

4. Pack each jar to the rim with cherries, leaving a 1/2 inch of space at the top

5. Pour whiskey into each jar, also to the rim, leaving some space at the top

6. Place canning jar lids over jar openings and screw rings tightly around lids

7. Allow jars to cool by setting them on a dry towel away from drafts. (cold air can crack the jars)

8. Once the jars reach room temperature, store in a dark, cool place for at least a few months. They will keep for years to come!

Serve in a Manhattan, over pound cake with whipped cream, or with a grilled pork tenderloin. Yum!

Food Biz Startup

Food Innovation Center collaborators

FOOD INNOVATION CENTER SHOWCASE
Sassafras would like to invite everyone to a very special free event tomorrow night (Tuesday 7/29) at the Food Innovation Center. This is the culmination of a 12-week entrepreneur workshop Sassafras has been participating in as part of the Getting Your Recipe to Market program:

“Time-to-Market: A Showcase of Local Foods is an opportunity for the public to meet and support local food business entrepreneurs in their first steps to bring their commercial ready product to the retail market. This twice a year mini-trade show is a showcase of products developed by food entrepreneurs enrolled in the Getting Your Recipe to Market workshop, and is presented by the Portland Community College, Small Business Development Center; the Oregon State University, Food Innovation Center Experiment Station; and the locally-owned New Seasons Market.”

Tomorrow’s event is a great way to sample innovative (and tasty) new local food products and meet some of Portland’s newest food entrepreneurs. In addition, New Seasons will choose one winning entrepreneur’s products for as a new product for sale at New Seasons Market stores.

As part of the workshop, Sassafras developed and is pleased to announce the debut of Sassafras Kitchen – a retail line of our signature tomato pies, sunchoke relish and other delightful Southern foods. That’s right, if New Seasons chooses us, you’ll soon be able to buy Sassafras Kitchen foods at New Seasons Market stores.

It’s going to be an exciting night. Hope to see you there!

Time-to-Market: A Showcase of Local Foods
6:00 – 9:00 p.m., Tuesday, June 30, 2009,
Food Innovation Center (1207 NW Naito Parkway, Portland, OR)
For more information contact John Henry Wells at 503-407-6959.

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OUR RECIPE CONTEST WINNERS!
Thanks to all who participated in our first ever Sassafras Recipe Contest. We received some terrific submissions. Who knew you all were such passionate and talented cooks?

The Sassafras Team got together and a chose Deane Tibbets for her wonderful Dot’s Cornbread Dressing recipe. In addition, we so inspired by Michael Arnovitz’s submission of a Hummingbird Cake recipe that we are awarding him as runner up with a free jar of sunchoke relish. We’ll post both recipes here later this week, but in the meantime you can check out the winning recipes and the other recipe contest submittals here.

Thanks everyone! See you tomorrow night!

MONTAVILLA MARKET THANKS!

First off, thanks to everyone who helped spread the word, and came from near and far to visit Sassafras at the 2009 Montavilla Farmers Market opening last Sunday, June 21st. The weather went from warm and sunny to a bit brisk and gray, then back to warm and sunny again. Ah, that’s Oregon in June for you. Still, we were happy to see many familiar faces and meet so many new people. Check out some of our photos of the market.

Feel free to come on by this Sunday, June 28th from 10am to 2pm. We’ll be there!

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE SOUTHERN RECIPE?
It’s a Sassafras contest! As many of you know, Sassafras is all about Southern food. We’re talking things like our signature tomato pie, based on an old family recipe; black eyed pea salad; pimento cheese; and jalapeno cornbread or our one-of-a kind sunchoke relish. It’s pure homegrown comfort food that stirs the soul. Yet if there’s one thing we’ve learned during our time here in Portland, you don’t need to be Southern to love Southern food.

So, send us a link on Twitter (@SassafrasPDX) to your favorite Southern recipe by Saturday, June 27th at 11:59 PM, comment on this post below, or email us your recipe to info@sassafrascatering.com. The Sassafras team will pick out a favorite on Sunday, June 28th. Bonus points if you have a personal story about the recipe and/or let others know about the contest.

The winner gets a Montavilla Farmers Market treat of four tomato pies, two jars of our sunchoke relish and up to four cups of our bottomless iced tea. That’s a $40.00 value in Sassafras food. We’ll also feature your recipe and story on our website.

Can’t wait to see what y’all come up with!

Roasted Asparagus
Photo courtesy of Jasmine Photography

Asparagus officinalis is officially in season.

Directions for preparing asparagus to be “most agreeable to the palate” are even found in De re coquinaria, Apicius’s third century AD book thought to be the oldest surviving cookbook.

Asparagus is thought to have been introduced into French cuisine by 18th century Louis the XIV. Successfully cultivated in the United States, Mexico, Peru, France, Spain and other Mediterranean countries, today it is included in a wide variety of recipes.

Asparagus is often featured in risottos, pasta sauces, frittatas and quiches, soups, stews, stir fries and can even be pickled. In my opinion, it is best simply steamed and topped with melting pasture butter – higher fat content butter made from milk from cows in the spring when they first start enjoying the luscious pastures.

When preparing, make sure to snap off the woody ends and steam or boil only briefly. Its harvesting season locally is short before the plant branches out into tall stems with feathery foliage resembling a dill like fern.

Interesting facts about asparagus include it being a part of the Liliacea (or Lily) family. It also contains a high level of inulin, which is important in supporting the growth of the friendly bacteria found in our digestive systems.

The bottom line, however, is the taste and versatility of asparagus that make it an essential addition to any cook’s spring table.

Check the Portland Farmer’s Market Seasonal Calendar to find out what’s in season at any given time.

Catherine enjoying the sun

Filling eggshells

Success with seeding!

For the last few weekends, we’ve had a preview to warm, sunny summer days spent outdoors and gardens. I reinforced the raised beds, added soil and manure and turned soil to create additional planting space.

I planted several varietals of exotic beans, including Yin Yang beans. I planted spinaches, lettuces, green onions, rainbow chard, carrots and Walla Walla onions. The only ornamental plants this year will be two varieties of sunflowers.

I also started some seeds indoors: melons and squashes, leeks, tomatoes, eggplant and pumpkin. I planted these in bigger containers as well as eggshells. The eggshells are an experiment that several people are trying this year.

I also planted herbs in smaller containers: oregano, cilantro, several kinds of basil, thyme, dill and mint. The parsley from last year that I grew from seed is doing quite well, and amazingly enough, so is the sage. Iʼll keep you posted on seedling progress, outdoor transplanting time and overall success of my little garden.

Alixer the Cow, with Friends

Sassafras Catering attended the monthly InFARMation (and Beer!) meeting on April 14th at Roots Organic Brewing organized by Friends of Family Farmers.

With donations of dairy products from Organic Valley, including aged Vermont cheddar and Pasture Butter, Sassafras presented a cheese plate that featured Sunchoke Relish and Hot Pepper Jelly.

As per usual, Sassafras served the cheese and fruit plate with assorted breads from Little T American Bakery.

Dairyman Jon Bansen of Double J Jersey Farm spoke about his grandparents being organic dairy farmers but never having called it that. This is part of what helped him make the switch from conventional to organic – if they could do it, why not he.

Jon enthusiastically spoke about the importance of symbiotic relationships between the microbes in the soil and the grass, the cow and the microbes in her stomach, and the cow and the human. He also acknowledged the advantages of being part of the Organic Valley Co-op, such as set pricing and distribution and sales logistics.

Jon Banson not only runs a profitable business but works to educate people about his practices. He has the values, courage and understanding to farm organically and even names all of his cows, which he thinks is a factor in caring for them.

After all, happy cows are the bottom line.

Rose colored potatoes from Persephone Farm

We recently took a field trip to Persephone Farm in Lebanon to speak with Jeff Falen and Elanor O’Brien about farming in Oregon, running an environmentally and socially responsible business and of course produce availability for small businesses and local customers alike.

Jeff started Persephone in 1985, and his partner Elanor came to the farm as an intern shortly after and never left. They focus on organically farmed produce and also keep a flock of chickens for fresh eggs. Jeff says he’s pleased with the farm’s success and his business expanding yearly.

During the off-season, Elanor is in charge of working on crop plans and ordering seeds, and currently they are starting plants (onions, parsley) in their greenhouse. They store cabbage, onions, beets, and potatoes over the winter in a walk-in refrigerator and continue to sell them throughout the year.

Persephone has a presence at local farmers markets: Portland State University and Hollywood Farmers Markets on Saturday and Salem Farmers Market on Saturday and Wednesday.

During the off-season, Jeff and his staff stay busy with various projects such as working on a loft space for workers to live in as well as spend time together socially. They’re experimenting with hay-bale insulation for this space. Their tractor has also recently been converted to being battery-powered, part of an on-going effort to reduce fossil fuel consumption on the farm. They have been using solar panels to generate a portion of their electricity for years and sell any excess back to the power company.

We enjoyed meeting both Jeff and Elanor, and look forward to using some of their beautiful produce for our events this summer.