June Dinner on 12th Ave.

Well this is a little embarrassing...Is it actually possible that our last post was in October of last year?!? I know we haven't quite kept to the once a month intention when it comes to our dinner gatherings, but we certainly have had more than one or two since last October! I guess after an evening of food, wine, and friends the idea of writing a post about the evening just escapes me.

But after another lovey evening with friends, I'm recommitted to sharing our adventures. And what a wonderful evening it was! We feel very fortunate to have such a great diverse community of friends around us that will take time out of their very busy schedules to share a meal together.

And on the menu tonight we had a simple meal (that's what happens when I'm working until 6:00 and people are coming for dinner at 7:00!) that consisted of:

Aperitif of Prosecco with fresh raspberries (from Mary and Wally's garden-- thank you!)
Spring snap peas (from Stephanie's garden-- thank you!)
Trusty, crusty bread with olive oil and balsamic
Spring salad of edible flowers, strawberries, blue cheese, and candied pecans
Orecchiette with farro, favas, english peas, and pecorino
Lemon curd (ala Julia Child) filled tart with fresh strawberries and cream

Thank you everyone for such a lovely evening.

Michael Pollan Video

If you don't know of Michael Pollan, you should. He's probably the best current writer about the politics and production of the food we eat. When I read his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, I thought "This book should be required reading for all high school students in this country."

I ran across this video today, which I like in two ways. One, it concisely outlines the points that Michael Pollan makes in his book and, second, it illustrates fantastic presentation technique with beautiful slides. Take a look.

Sustainable fish farming: A love story

Check out this fantastic TED talk by Dan Barber, foodie, scholar, and 2009 recipient of the James Beard Award for Outstanding chef.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html


As many of you know, we consider ourselves pescatarians-- we generally stick to a vegetarian diet but also will eat certain seafood, trying to ensure, though, that it is as sustainably harvested as possible. That last part, the finding "sustainably harvested" fish is becoming more and more of a challenge. As society's demand for fish has increased, we have depleted 90% of many of those great fish species we love to eat, tuna, salmon, etc. We have begun to do to oceans what we have done to forests; as Dan Barber points out in this talk, we're essentially clear-cutting our oceans. But in this TED talk, he shows one example of how one fish "farm"/bird sanctuary/water purification system has, not through amazing new technology, but rather by going back to eons old ecological principles, might be giving us some hope, not just for those of us who love our wild salmon, but also for all types of agriculture. It's a fantastic biology lesson wrapped up in a love story. I think you'll enjoy checking it out.

March Dinner on 12th Ave.

Yes, I'm a bit behind on my posts. I'm a bit behind on everything right now. But despite this busy time, we still slowed down enough to enjoy another lovely evening of food and conversation with friends. Here is what was on the menu...

Spring Asparagus Risotto
Wild greens, strawberries, pecan, and smoked blue cheese salad
Trusty, crusty bread with olive oil and balsamic
Individual flourless chocolate tarts with hazelnut mousse.

Spring is here and the garden is starting to show signs of life. The asparagus are creeping their heads out of the ground, the favas and peas are starting to stretch upwards, and our garlic patch is starting to look like a field of young corn stalks. All this means that our Dinner on 12th Ave gatherings will soon benefit from the bounties of our local spring fare. We were able to go about 9 months this past year on serving mainly things either from our garden or from other local small farms. February and March were a bit more of a challenge but things are looking up. So please do consider joining us in the coming months. It's usually pretty darn good food and always fantastic conversation.

Slug sex

Invariably, we have interesting conversations at our these dinners. One topic at our most recent meal was that Richard told us how interesting slug sex was. Fortunately, it was after we had already eaten and so there was no appetite to lose!

As a follow up to that, he sent along some photos for us to appreciate. I've pasted those below. Enjoy.

February Dinner-- Friends, food, and slug sex

What a lovely evening last night at our most recent Dinner on 12th. We know the most interesting people and it's such a privilege to spend time with them. To share a meal with a group of 8 people, many of whom had never met each other, and have a lively conversation ranging from racism to philosophy to slug sex...what a wonderful thing!

In keeping with the simplier theme of the dinners this year, here's what was on the menu for last night's dinner...

Smoked salmon chowder
Valerie's fantastic wheat-free cornbread with honey butter
Crusty french bread with olive oil from a Palestinian Coop brought by Wendy
Wild greens salad with pears, shallots, and hazelnut-crusted goat cheese
Meyer lemon pot de creme with raspberry sauce

Thanks all who joined us and we hope to see many of you next month.

On Gratitude

One of my current personal goals is to express more gratitude and appreciation to those around me. I feel a great deal of gratitude for those who are in my life, but unfortunately, I'm often a bit stingier in my expression of it to others.

While learning to express more appreciation and be more positively reinforcing is a personal goal that's about making my life better and living closer to my values, its also about improving others' lives. I had a recent experience that brought this home to me. As an ACT trainer, I often feel unsure about whether my work makes a difference in the lives of those with whom I work. Totally out of the blue, one of my trainees sent me a me a Native American fetish, which was described on the materials as:

A fetish is an animal carving (usually from Zuni Pueblo and a tradition of all Pueblo People) that reminds us of specific qualities of a particular animal. By respecting that individual animal's "medicine" we may honor that quality in ourselves.

This little rabbit now sits on my desk in my home office and is a reminder that what I do makes a difference during those times that my mind says otherwise.

If you've been invited to come our dinners, its because either Jenna or I (or both) appreciate you and want to deepen our relationship. Are there people in your life you'd want to express appreciation to? What's stopping you from doing it today?

Peace,
Jason

4th Annual Holiday Party

Well it's been a long time since our last "Dinner on 12th". We did quite a bit of traveling this fall which resulted in our having to put of dinner parties on hold. But we're back for the holidays with our annual holiday party. Here's what I'm planning on making for the get-together this weekend...

Crostini of triple cream and fried sage

Goat cheese and Marionberry-pepper jam canapes

Madras spiced cashews

Roasted vegetable and goat cheese wellingtons with red pepper coulis

Crudités with edamamme hummus

Endive “spoons” of mache, pomegranates, gorgonzola and candied pecans

Deviled eggs with crispy capers

Curried winter squash bisque with a trio of condiments (Cranberry-apply chutney, Garlic croutons, or chive sour cream)

Rustic French apple tart

Toffee mascarpone bars

Oatmeal caramelitas

Debbie's amazing caramel brownie bites

Peppermint chocolate cookie truffles

We are really looking forward to sharing the evening with friends. And to those who couldn't make it this year, happy holidays to you all.

Grow your own salads every day with virtually no work

I recently went to a workshop on growing perennial vegetables with a local guy, Norris Thomlinson, who is currently living in his fourth forest garden. He showed us how easy it is to build a perennial vegetable garden that takes very little maintenance and will provide you with a large range of greens for salads any day of the year, with almost no maintenance. While the up front effort is similar to one year of annual vegetable gardening, in all subsequent years, the maintenance effort is really limited. If this sounds interesting to you, Norris teaches free workshops and you can read more about him in the story below that recently came out in the Portland Tribune.

http://www.portlandtribune.com/sustainable/story.php?story_id=124699176452499600

Home carbonation setup

Do you drink carbonated water? We do. We go through about a liter a day. We figure that adds up to maybe $250 a year in carbonated water. Its also a lot of greenhouse gases burned, since each bottle of water travels hundreds, if not thousands of miles to reach our door. So we wanted a better solution. I searched for ways to carbonate our own beverages online, and all of the standard products cost about $.50 per liter, and that's after you pay $100-$200 for the product. Commercial units cost maybe $1500-$2000. All of that seemed like too much and also extraordinarily high for what was essentially putting carbon dioxide in water. So I sought out out a do-it-yourself unit and found that I could make a contraption that would work with only a few hours of work and less than $100 in parts.

Most of the folks who have attended Dinner on 12th have had some of our homemade carbonated water. We use a set up that consists of a 20 lb. CO2 tank, a regulator, some tube, and a plastic fitting. It took about 45 minutes to put together, and another two hours to do all the shopping. The CO2 tank supposedly carbonates about 1000 littres of water, making the price about five cents per liter. Below is a link that will walk you step-by-step through with the purchase, where you can get it, and how to put it together. If you end up doing this, let me know how it works out.

http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Soda-Water-%26-Home-Carbonation---Pays-For-Itsel/

March Dinner on 12th menu

Mushroom dinner: From the simple to the decadent

Is it spring yet?!? Please? I keep hoping to see the first sweet peas or, dare I dream, fresh fava beans at the market. But alas, winter still is hanging on. So, we'll just go with it and work with what we've got. For dinner I'm highlighting our glorious local mushroom, from a simple peasant farro pie from Lucca (Torta Salata di Farro) to a very decadent potato gratin made with an incredible truffle butter I got last week at the opening weekend of the PSU farmer's market. And I still have a few stashes of huckleberries in our freezer from last season, saving them for a day like this when I really need a shot of summer. So, I think I'll bust those out too. Here is the tentative plan - unless of course those favas make an appearance in the next two days, then all bets are off!

Torta Salata di Farro with Mushrooms*
Truffled* Purple Potato* Gratin
Roasted Beet* and Carrots* on a Bed of Arugula*

Lemon Curd* and Huckleberry* Tart

* = locally grown

Video on food politics

Today I saw a rarely reported story about how the food corporations (e.g., Pepsico) influence our national school policy that directs what food is served in school lunch programs. This video is about a scientific conference that the feds convened that was supposed to give input about that policy. As the story shows, a lot of the people who attended were food corporation representatives, not scientists.

Our school lunch programs are about $10 billion a year, so its clear that policies which would improve the health of our kids are not going to be happily received by food corporations, which stand to loose a lot of money if we institute healthier policies. Our corporations are profiting off of poisoning the next generation and almost no one even knows about it.

Asking good questions

I've lately developed an interest in something called permaculture and have begun taking a 6-month class on the topic. Today I was reading the textbook by Bill Mollison where he was talking about the ethical basis of permaculture and I ran across a passage that I really liked and wanted to share.

A basic question that can be asked in two ways is:

"What can I get from this land, or person?" or

"What does this person, or land, have to give if I cooperate with them?"

Of these two approaches, the former leads to war and waste, the later to peace and plenty.

Most conflicts, I find, lay in how such questions are asked, and not in the answers to any question. Or, to put it another way, we are clearly looking for the right questions rather than for answers.

These dinners are largely about community and community is about cooperation. I hope that these dinners allow us a chance to learn more fully what we have to give by sharing in community. Hope to see you soon.

February Dinner on12th Ave.

Winter Tuscan Supper

At this time of the year I often get the travel bug. Maybe it's the long, rainy Portland winter that just keeps stretching on and on, or maybe it's my ancient Gypsy ancestors calling me to the open road, but whatever the case, I'm feeling the need for a change in scenery. However, since the practicalities of life do not lend themselves to gallivanting about the world right now, I've been trying to bring the world to my kitchen lately. So for this Dinner on 12th, I thought I would bring a little Tuscany to our table. Given that we are still trying to use mostly, if not all, local ingredients for these dinners, it's going to be a winter Tuscan meal; so sorry, no fantastic fresh fava beans or tomatoes-- it's rainy and cold in Tuscany right now too. But here is what I am tentatively planning for us on Friday:

Skillet Gnocchi with Chard* and Smokey Beans*
Farro and Borlotti Salad with Shaved Pecorino
Creamed Winter Greens*
Tiramisu

* = locally grown

January Dinner on 12th

Oh it's so much easier to tout the wonders of eating locally when it's August, but January is a little trickier. But we're still going to try for this dinner to have most if not all our ingredients coming from local sources. Given the brisk weather out there, I thought a nice hearty bowl of soup and something chocolaty for desert might be comforting. So, here's the menu I'm tentatively planning on for our next dinner on this Friday:

Ribolitta (Tuscan bean soup)
Potato* and Kale* Galette
Sauteed Forgotten Purple Carrots with Arugala**
Chocolate Hazelnut* Mousse and Chocolate Shortbread Cake

* = locally grown
** = VERY locally grown -- i.e. from our garden

Interested in Solar Power?

Jenna and I just enrolled with this program (www.1bog.org) that helps people band together to buy solar panels and have them installed on their house. Once a group gets together, they are assisted in bargaining with local contractors and sellers to get a deeper discount and helped through the process of figuring out all the red tape. If you are interested in possibly getting solar on your house, read below and consider signing up. Here's what they have to say about what they do:

1 Block Off the Grid (www.1bog.org) brings people together to get solar on their homes at the same time. We negotiate on the groups' behalf and get each person a huge discount from the best installer. We make going solar simpler and more affordable for everyone involved.

What 1BOG does is organize people in a community to go through the process together. The experts from 1BOG have experience in the solar industry and can both negotiate pricing and vet the installers. Plus, since we’re not the ones selling you anything, you can trust that we’re always advocating for your best interests.

1BOG does all this work for you, from translating the tax rebates, to doing the technological research, to finding the right installer; we make the process easier, cheaper, and more comfortable (since everyone knows that everyone else is getting the same deal). During our first campaign in San Francisco, we were able to negotiate up to a 43% discount from retail.

Holiday Open House

Instead of our regular "Dinner on 12th" this month, we had our annual holiday open house last night. Many of our attendees from previous "Dinner on 12ths" were there and others that we hope will be able to join us at our table for future dinners. It was a lovely evening of food and merriment. It's wonderful and inspiring that at such a busy time of the year, people will take time out of their schedules to share some joy with friends. Thank you to all who came. And also, thank you to all who brought food for the Oregon Food Bank and for the Oregon Humane Society. We will be dropping off those donations this week.

Since food is one of the main themes of this blog, I thought I would share the menu for the open house...

Truffled baby potatoes
Smoked salmon and fried caper canapes
Raspberry-red pepper jam bites
Edamame hummus with veggies
Sundried tomato crostada
Curried cashews
Roasted garlic and onion jam bruschetta
Triple cream crostini topped with fried sage
Roasted vegetable and goat cheese empanadas
Tomato and sweet onion chutney canapes
Caramel apple shortbread tart
Gingersnap truffles
Caramel Brownie bombs (Debbie Orlando's incredible secret dessert!)
Coconut and white chocolate cookies
Oatmeal Caramelitas

Happy holidays to all and may this new year bring with it peace and joy for all around the world.

Peace,
Jenna and Jason

November 21, 2008 dinner

The last dinner was great. Jenna stuck with mostly local ingredients, even during a time when the farmer's markets are starting to hibernate for the winter. We had a full house again and a good time. Thanks everyone for being there. I took some pictures of the food and the folks.

I just finished a great book by Barbara Kingsolver called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, where she describes her family's attempt to be "locavores" for a year, in other words to either grow or eat food produced from within a 100 miles of their home. Its a great learning experience and also a great read as Kingsolver is a well-known fiction author, having written The Poinsonwood Bible. I'd highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in local and good food.

A bed of nasturtium leaves was provided by our neighbor Stephanie.

Jenna made a cornucopia out of pizza dough as a way of celebrating the season.

A picture of the spread before everyone sits

down.

Here we are. See the conversation in action!

See ya next time.

Again we have a full table for our second "Dinner on 12th". In keeping with this beautiful season, our menu this month will have an autumn theme. Here is my tentative menu:

Goat cheese croquettes on a bed of nasturtium leaves**
Cornucopia of roasted root vegetables* with maple glaze
Butternut squash* bread pudding with leek cream sauce
Wheat berry salad with pistachios, pomegranates,
and cici beans
Something with pumpkin for dessert

* = locally grown
** = VERY locally grown -- i.e. from our friend/neighbor Stephanie's garden

Post First Dinner on 12th

“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

The first Dinner on 12th was magnificent. Good friends, great conversation, fantastic food -- what more could you want? I am so appreciative for the folks that came by and look forward to having everyone back again, as well as new folks. Come to our next one! Make some new friends, connect with old ones. Don't forget to bring some good stories or maybe a joke or two.

I know this is a bit off topic, but I have another great video that I want to share. You've got to check this one out if you have any interest in psychology. Its a psychology video from the 1950s. Fortunately, I haven't seen a video like this coming from psychology in a while. Check it out and let me know what you think!

-Jason