Archive for the ‘Portfolio’ Category
Dirtbag Gourmet: Cooking for Your Date in the Great Outdoors
It’s good when editors let you pitch the kind of articles that make you laugh. Which is why I am excited about my most recent post on the very respectable outdoor online magazine Adventure Journal, where I took a stab at the topic of food and love in the backcountry. It started as a conversation between friends on how to impress a date on a hike (“make your own trail mix!”) and resulted in this article:
If you can’t cook a decent meal in the backcountry, you’re destined for romantic failure. A way to anyone’s heart is often through his or her stomach, especially if you’re on the tail end of a grueling day outside. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Yeah, that will refuel the person you’re crushing on, but a homemade olive hummus wrap with sea salt? That might be the extra touch you need to turn adventure partner into your partner.
25 Things You Wish You Had Overheard a Foodie Saying
“All I had to bring was this jar of homemade pickled carrots.”
“Oh the popcorn? Yeah, it’s the truffle oil that does it.”
“It was Sunday. So I got the pan-fried trout.”
These are all direct quotes that I overhead, or caught myself saying, in the last week. If you spend any time around food lovers, or are simply food obsessed yourself, and you will pick up on some humorous things. Absurd even. If ferment, infuse or are co-op are part of your vocabulary, you know what I am talking about. But don’t you just wish that the foodie world would take it to the next level? Here’s what you wish you had overheard.
Plate & Pitchfork: Changing Perspectives on Food with Local Farm Dinners
Originally published here.
An organic dinner of farm raised ingredients. A table full of jovial guests and local wine. A summer night to appreciate good food and where it comes from. There’s a lot of talk about farm-to-table, and most of us living in high paced atmospheres have a tendency to romanticize pastoral images of happy cows and organic tomato plants. “If only I could be a farmer,” we think, forgetting the hardships that go into devoting a life to agricultural production. But part of having a better appreciation for what we eat, means having a better connection to where it comes from, and at the simplest level, that means eating there.
That’s the idea behind Plate & Pitchfork, an Oregon based business that helps people have a better of understanding of food and where it comes from, by serving it to them in the same place that it’s sourced. Hosting farm dinners, Plate & Pitchfork founder Erika Polmar puts consumers and purveyors together, in the ultimate farm-to-table experience.
Are You Part of a Food Trend or Part of a Movement?
This is the latest installment of my Foodie Underground column.
“I just had a Portland moment and only you will appreciate,” my friend said, calling from Tuscon in the middle of a Sunday.
“Ok, what?”
“Well, so we walked into this cute coffee shop and the first thing I thought to myself ‘I wonder where they roast their beans?'” she paused. “Who am I?”
At first thought I saw nothing wrong with this situation. Good coffee shops tend to sell good coffee, and if they’re really good, they’re probably running a coffee roasting operation in the back. Nothing weird there.
But at second thought, I realized what she meant. Most people, even those in coffee-centric cities, are probably more concerned with what coffee drink they’re going to buy than where the beans were roasted. We’re in the minority.
The Beauty of Eating Outdoors
Mediocre wine is excellent if you have a view, coffee is exponentially more delicious when brewed after a night in a tent, and trail mix can compete with the fanciest hors d’oeuvre when you’re in the middle of a hike. It’s simple: food always tastes better outdoors.
I was thinking of this in the process of drinking a mug of wine, overlooking a horizon of red rock formations last week. Dirtbags, sunsets and merlot do go hand in hand after all.
Why Are We Obsessed With Food Porn?
When four different people, who don’t know each other, all send you the link to the same article, an article that poses the question “are your friends bombarding you with food porn?” you know you have a problem.
Been inundated with food photography lately? You are not alone.
As I sat down to the first impromptu backyard dinner of the season last night, the hostess stopped everyone from putting any food on their plates so that we could get a picture of the table first. I had my phone out (of course), because that tablecloth color went so well with the salad. Click. And that grilled asparagus… so green. Click. But for the sake of maintaining my sanity and living in the moment, I did not Instagram. You have to draw the line somewhere.
Quick Fixes to Pretending You’re a Foodie
The scene is starting to feel familiar. You’re eating a dessert out of a mason jar and you have spent the last 15 minutes listening to a conversation about the merits of mezcal in cocktails. “I just really can’t stand the taste. Put a drink in front of me and I can definitely tell you if it has it in it or not,” you overhear, and you internally swear for not having a good comeback.
A comeback that was just a little more…in-the-know.
Two Years of Writing a Food Column
Today marks two years of writing my Foodie Underground column. How I have managed to produce a column every single Monday for 104 weeks is beyond me, but somehow it’s still going. Hence the celebratory post and birthday torte recipe. Enjoy!
What Does Good Food Mean To You?
It has happened again. You’re surrounded by smoke-infused drinks in mason jars and salads with shaved fennel, all paired with a group of friends that can’t stop raving about the local biodynamic wine they serve at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that you’re all so lucky to have discovered before the rest of the city does. You’re in foodie central and there’s no escape. Fortunately the beet and goat cheese salad is delicious. “Can I have another one of those cocktails with the cardamom bitters?” you ask the waiter, fully embracing a semi-cliche role that feels like it’s straight out of a Portlandia episode.
Thoughts on Empowering, Inspiring and Advocating for the Women Around Us
Only in my early 20s did I learn the global importance of International Women’s Day with streets full of women around the world coming together in solidarity. This day is about empowerment and equal rights.
The 2012 theme is “connecting girls, inspiring futures,” which has gotten me thinking about all of the inspiring connections that surround us every day. In my everyday I come into contact with female colleagues and friends, all that are passionate about what they do. They are writers, filmmakers, doctors, lawyers, humanitarians and vagabonds, and every single thing in between.
What does it mean to be a woman? A lot of things.
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