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Pacific NW Snapshots: Portland Market Peppers + Morels

September 8th, 2008 · 4 Comments

In my previous wrap-up of our vacation, I mentioned the fabulous North Portland coffee shop Random Order where we had locally-roasted espresso and pies featuring locally-grown ingredients. I have a few more food highlights to share from our trip to the Pacific Northwest, where everything is big and bold, from the mountains to the coffee, the produce and the rain!

We spent a rainy morning at the midweek Portland Farmers Market downtown. Located just a few blocks from my old alma mater, this relatively small market was still a total sensory overload. So much variety and unique items, such as the Picklopolis stand, fresh Columbia River salmon and one of my favorites, Rogue River Creamery cheeses. We only bought a few things for dinner that evening as we were headed to the Coast the next day, so settled on some glorious baby artichokes, padron peppers and morels.

We were also blown away by Hot Lips’ local berry sodas. The label even specifies the farm where the berries were grown. How’s that for knowing where your food comes from?! Hot Lips is a local pizza joint where my classmates and I, after turning in all the soda cans we could round up (Oregon’s refundable cans, the husband couldn’t understand why we had to save all our cans), would fork over our change for delicious pizza. Now they make this awesome soda and in addition to the flavors at market – blackberry, blueberry, marionberry, strawberry, each with just a touch of real cane sugar and carbonated water – they serve a black raspberry from the tap. Sadly, we didn’t make it into the store to try that one.

We also bought some fresh tamales, mine was artichoke and peppers, and devoured them right there in the rain, while the toddler made his way through a pint of blackberries.

That night, we simply steamed the artichokes, sauteed the morels in butter, and fried up the peppers according to the instructions provided by the vendor. Each was remarkably fresh and flavorful and a great compliment to my Dad’s spaghetti.

I’ll post a weekly Pacific NW feature for the rest of the month, so check back every Monday! And on tap for the remainder of this week, a special series on Preserving the Tastes of Summer.

Tags: at market · away from home · recipes

4 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Lelo // Sep 8, 2008 at 3:37 pm

    Oh how fantastic. Yeah for padron peppers and for the Hot Lips soda! We had padrons for the first time recently: aren’t they delish? As for the Hot Lips soda: finally a soda that’s local and not made with high fructose corn syrup. Amazing, isn’t it? There was a great story in the local paper a few months back about the making of that soda, the machinery, and how it’s a man’s passion to figure it all out through determination.

    I keep meaning to tell you how much I’m enjoying the book I won on your blog: I’m going to mention it in a post this week. Thank you for that!

  • 2 Jean Ann // Sep 9, 2008 at 9:15 am

    Hi there! Just wanted to show my support for your blog by giving you an award! Hop over to my site to see it!

  • 3 foodietots
    Twitter: foodietots
    // Sep 9, 2008 at 10:19 pm

    @ Lelo – Yeah, the padrons were so tasty. Though I felt a little gipped we didn’t seem to get a hot one. [For those who aren’t familiar with these little treats, they have some genetic mutation that makes about one in every dozen hot, while the rest are mild. Or so I was told. 🙂 ] And yes, HFCS-free soda was such a treat. I’ll have to look up that article!

    @ Jean Ann – Why thank you so much! How sweet of you.

  • 4 FoodieTots.com » Blog Archive » America’s Next Farmers Market Star? // Aug 6, 2009 at 12:40 am

    […] to name their favorite child. Sure, there are markets I adore (see: Oregon travelogues ‘08 and ‘09) that truly have it all — wide array of organic-certified products, cooking […]