Portland Farmers' Market Countdown: One Month to Go!

Today, my dearies, we find ourselves under sunny skies in Portland, just one month from the opening of the Portland Farmers' Market on March 19th. In a few short weeks, my Saturdays will be spent in my favorite place in town, amidst potatoes and greens and farmers in the beating heart of our city. The weekend of March 19th, 20th, and 21st will certainly be a busy one for this gal - I'll be elbow-deep in James Beard mania, hopping around town with my camera and a smile, doing my best to soak in the excitement surrounding the announcement of the James Beard nominees on Monday morning. 2011 is the first year the nominees are being revealed in Beard's hometown, and the weekend leading up to Monday's main event will be packed with events that will undoubtedly leave me hungover and ecstatic. I'm more than stoked. I'm also pretty positive the market's opening day will draw out some national food bigwigs in town for the announcements, but the real celebrities will be the market staff and farmers ringing in the true start of the new year.

Happy 152nd Birthday, Oregon!

On February 14th, 1859, Oregon officially became the 33rd state in the Union. Sure, today may be Valentine's Day, but here's something really worth celebrating: Happy Birthday to the best place in the country. There's a reason this green piece of earth was the end of the road for thousands of weary 19th century pioneers, and it's the same thing that pulls 21st century dreamers to the banks of our rivers and the waves of our shores. The soil is fruitful, there's room for everyone, and we'll be the last place on earth with plenty of fresh water.

Springtime in Portland: Reluctantly Celebrating the Signs of a New Season

Every year, I tell my friends - and neighbors, and strangers, and, most fervently, myself - that this sunshine, this greening, this blossoming of the city of Portland is a trick. I say it's mean, cold-hearted trick known emphatically as Fake Spring, a phenomenon which draws us in year after year, luring us with daffodils and cherry blossoms. I climb up on my Dr. Bronner's soap box and preach the dangers of optimistically starting those raised beds and staring too long from the office window at the brightness outside. This is a specter of a new season. This is a trap. We're coddled with temperatures in the fifties, drawn out to play Frisbee in the streets, and warmed like sleepy lizards by the sun, only to fall heavily back into rain, chill, and frost for a few more months. A truly mean trick. And every year, without fail, I fall for it.

Oblique Coffee Roasters: Confessions of a Portland Latte Drinker

I’m a latte girl. Now, I don’t sugar my coffee, and I can tell when a roast is burnt or simply crappy, but I’m so far outside of the coffee intelligentsia that I’m often intimidated by some of Portland’s “best” coffeehouses. You know the ones – the coffee bars serving up five different single-origin micro-roasts with the über-hip baristas offering six new ways to brew a cup - many of which use equipment you're more likely to find in my sister’s biochemical engineering lab at OHSU than in a neighborhood cafe. I may not be a true coffee connoisseur yet, but I drink a lot of coffee, and spend a lot of time in coffee shops. When you work from home and can go days without seeing a single person you don’t live with, the coffee shop visit becomes a much-needed social opportunity. I’m normally all for jumping into new flavors and experiences, and I love learning about and supporting local artisans of all stripes, but some of Portland’s noteworthy micro-roast spots fail to do the thing I think coffee shops, cafes, and restaurants can do best: create community. Most of my favorite neighborhood coffee shops serve up Stumptown, Ristretto, Portland Roasting, or even imported roasts, providing good food and comfy couches instead of focusing on perfecting their own signature beans. These spots are the kind of cozy rooms you want to spend time in, places to meet your neighbors and friends, a feeling I just don’t get from those ultra-modern roaster meccas. The obvious problem is that many of the latter admittedly often serve up a better latte. I know the only way to develop my palate is try try a bunch of really good cups, but if that means spending more of my time in places that don't make me feel comfortable, it's just not going to happen.

Stuck in Portlandia with a Serious Case of the Januaries

Dispatches from around the Northwest reveal a serious epidemic plaguing the cities of Portland, Seattle, and everywhere in between. Symptoms include whining about the mud in the streets, tiring of biking through drizzle, dreaming of booking last minute flights to the Southern Hemisphere, and writing two mopey blog posts in a row about the winter blues. While the show "Portlandia" is taking off as a humorous look at the unique quality of life in the Rose City, the real Portlandia is elbow-deep in grey days, drizzle, and muddy yards - and its making me want to hibernate for a few months. I like to imagine people in California, Texas, and Florida sitting down to watch the premier on IFC, and all of a sudden the broadcast splits into a double screen - one half showing "Portlandia" and the other half a live-cam feed of people moping in coffee shops and getting splashed by muddy water from buses driving by. Put a bird on THAT and call it art, Carrie Brownstein.

Portland in the Winter: Oregon Greys and Photography Blues

Things always slow down here on LemonBasil in the winter. That used to be due to most of the Portland farmers' markets being on hiatus until the spring, and the plethora of rather unphotogenic brown and greenish-brown things I eat during the colder months. While those things certainly still hold true, the biggest reason I haven't been posting much is that, I'm realizing, much of my photography relies on sunshine. This week I was compiling some of my favorite shots of Portland, her food and drink scene, places I've traveled, and the expressions people I've captured for my new photography website (check it out, let me know what you think!). At the risk of stating the obvious, the vast majority of my top picks were chosen because they show my life at its sunniest - literally. There's just something missing - dynamically - on a cloudy day, and it shows in my photography. So often I'm drawn to colors and strong lines in the shots that I make, and blue skies and dramatic clouds are consistently great sources of both.