Potato-Fennel Stew with Mixed Feelings...I mean beans...and Tofu

This recipe comes from The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook by Diana Shaw.

Ingredients:
olive oil
1 onion (chopped)
1 large fennel bulb
1/4 c. parsley (fresh, minced)
2 tbsp. rosemary (fresh, minced)
2 tsp. whole fennel seeds
2 tablespoons balsamic
1 red bell pepper and 1 yellow (roasted)
1 lb. fresh tomatoes (or can, peeled and chopped)
1 lb. firm tofu
1 c. cooked cannellini beans
1 c. black runner beans
Large pinch powered saffron
2 c. vegetable broth
2 c. tiny new potatoes (or 2 big russets, cubed)
Salt and Pepper
1 bottle of cheap red wine
bitterness

Step One: Slice bell peppers in half and remove undesirables.

Broil in the oven for up to 10 minutes (until the skin is blackened and bubbly) while you chop your vegetables.



This is also a good time to heat up your broth. I boiled two cups of water on the back burner with a salt-free vegan veggie buillion cube.

Step Two: Open your bottle of cheap red wine. I chose the Two Vines by Columbia Crest, but don't be ashamed to go "three buck" on this one. Continue chopping vegetables. There are a lot of them. Don't forget to mince your herbs.










Step Three: Heat your oil. When it's hot, add the onion, fennel, leek, parsley, rosemary and fennel seeds. Saute for about 10 minutes.
Check your email. Find out that the man you went on a date with is seeing someone else. Add bitterness.

Step Four: Pour yourself a hearty glass of your red wine (don't be shy!) and turn on the Epoxies. (If you don't have this, substitute Sleater-Kinney, the Gossip or other girl punk).


Step Five: Don't forget about your bell peppers! Remove from oven. They should look like shriveled, lifeless, abused little hearts. Drop them in a brown paper bag and place them in the freezer. (Won't be needing those for awhile!)

Step Six: Add the balsamic vinegar when the vegetables are soft. Pour yourself another glass of wine.




Step Seven: When the bell peppers have cooled remove from freezer and peel off the battered skin. Slice however you want, who even cares. Throw them in the pot with the tomatoes and cook until everything simmers down.






Step Eight: Reread the email. So he ended up meeting someone right before he met you, but he still thinks you're AWESOME. That means something, right? Down your wine and put on the shiny tank top you bought on sale at Urban Outfitters one spring when you thought your arms would be sexy and tan by summer, but have never worn.

Turn up the music, pour yourself another glass and dance around for a bit while the tomatoes cook.

Step Nine: Stir in the tofu and beans. The recipe calls for both black beans and canellini beans, but I only used canellini. That's a shit ton of beans and this soup already has a lot of protein. Be nice to the tofu. It says it's firm on the outside, but it actually crumbles easily. (More wine).

Step 10: Here the recipe calls for dissolving the saffron into the broth. Fuck that! Saffron is expensive! Pour the broth into the pot along with the poor man's potatoes. You are going to be alone for the rest of your life. Better start saving now!

Simmer for about 50 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked through, the stew has thickened and you can't remember who that dude was anyway.

This is just to say

This week's episode of This American Life was about apologies that aren't really apologies. In the second act, they reference the William Carlos Williams poem "This is just to say." Regular contributors to the show then wrote their own versions of the poem. Not everyone kept with the theme of insincere apology, but they produced some really good poems. They inspired me to do the same.


This is just to say

Now that I
think of it,
the salmon
in the freezer
was yours.

What I was
remembering
was every other
time I have
bought salmon

and done
everything else
over and over
and over again.

Forgive me,
I had salmon
for dinner
that night.


This is just to say

I put my heart in that burrito;
I probably should have told you.

I saw it drip down your chin
when you took the first bite.

You swept it away with the back of your hand.
You didn’t know what you doing.


This is just to say

I dove into the water
to rescue the jar
of miracle bait.

The man at the store
assured you a catch.
You were so hopeful.

I watched the rippling place
where the jar disappeared
for too long before jumping in.

The jar had fallen for meters
before I made the promise
to never disappoint you again.

Your one arm pulled me out
and I never told you why I jumped.

I’m not sure we were doing
thinking we could fish.

My new singer songwriter/sad bastard of choice is...

...Tractor Operator. Here's a recent blog I wrote about him. (I don't know if the links in this are going to work. I've starting copying and pasting from the site again so they are easier to read.)
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This past Monday, instead of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, I headed down to Valentine’s to see some bands. The bar at Valentine’s can easily make you forget the world around you, even if you are just a block away from Kells, where drunk people dressed in green are spilling beer in the streets. In fact, the bar at Valentine's is my favorite bar for this and other reasons.

The bar at Valentine’s is small and intimate, with a low ceiling. It seats only five people around a solid, natural wood counter — the kind that’s still got the bark, but is varnished like the wood furniture in someone’s grandfather’s den. The interior of Valentine’s is dimly illuminated by red and amber lighting. It's small enough to remind me of stepping into hip little bars in Europe, but large enough to spare me the awkwardness of squeezing between tiny tables.

The door to Valentine’s, nestled in the alley across from Berbati’s and the Shanghai Tunnel, is almost undetectable, and I sat at the bar watching people walk by unaware of the world I was in. All of these attributes make Valentine’s the perfect venue to enjoy a folk-rock show, which is what I did on Monday.

I went to see Tractor Operator, my latest favorite singer-songwriter. Tractor Operator is the project of Eric Jensen, a man with a voice that sounds like part Lou Reed and part Doug Martsche (Built to Spill, Tree People). These similarities are most apparent in the song “Over and Over,” one of my favorites.

Another personal favorite is the song “Cave,” which tells the story of digging through a couch for coins to get into a show. In addition to this completely sympathetic little dramatization, I like this song for its chorus: “All your children will live in caves.” In the context of the song, which is sung in a tone that is both apathetic and desperate at the same time, I don’t know what this means. The listener doesn’t need to understand every lyric to appreciate Tractor Operator, however. Most of the enjoyment comes from the benign and pleasant guitar.

I heard the bartender (probably the manager) say that she had deliberately booked a mellow show in order to divert crazy drunk overflow from neighboring bars. This plan’s successful execution made her my new favorite bartender in my new favorite bar. Sabertooth opened for Tractor Operator, as did a really awesome guy with a mustache wearing a leather fringe cowboy jacket. I’ve been unable to research (or remember) what his name was, but it would be worth finding out who this country-singing cowboy was.

Tractor Operator has several shows coming up: 3/26, 4/11 and 4/25. Times and locations are available on their MySpace.

Introducing Suite101

As of today at 4:55 Canadian time (Canadian time:US time as Canadian $:US$), I officially became a contributing writer for the site Suite101.com. I will be writing 10 articles every three months for the site--about pretty much whatever I want. Stay tuned.

Five tips to enjoying the Portland Farmers Market

Below is my latest event post about the Portland Farmers Market for livepdx.com.
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The crowd will form slowly in the early hours this Saturday at PSU’s South Park Blocks. Starting around 8:00 in the morning, the most dedicated of produce buyers will get an early start browsing the selection of local produce, baked goods and other Portland delicacies available on this opening day of the Portland Farmers Market.

At 8:30am, the market’s official opening time, more punctual market patrons will arrive. These early visitors will execute an in-and-out style of shopping. They will be heading out with bags of fresh tomatos and ripe berries before most of Portland is even out of bed.

By 10:00 or 10:30, traffic into the market will pick up. The first wave of strollers will arrive, followed by whole families from the suburbs and tourists. By 11:00am the market will be packed with people enjoying live music and wandering aimlessly from tent to tent.

The densely packed area between SW Harrison and Montgomery Streets will become home to a merry and confused sort of chaos. Between the hours of noon and 2:30pm, closing time, the hung over crowd and other market slackers will show up.

As a veteran member of this latter category of market visitor, the slackers, I know what it’s like to arrive when the market is in full swing. The bright sunshine, masses of people and shiny fruits can be a bit overwhelming even to the most rested and hydrated of patrons.

To alleviate market-induced anxiety and provide for more pleasurable produce perusing, I’ve compiled the following lists of important tips to keep in mind when braving the Portland Farmers Market:

1. Have a plan and stick to it. Have a route in mind as you enter the market. Try to make it around the entire perimeter before traveling down the diagonal crossings of the market. You might want to consider doing a preliminary loop just to check out the wares. Then do a second lap when you know what your choices are and start making purchases. If you’re with a group, plan where and when to meet if you get separated. Try to avoid spending too much time on a cell phone shouting, “I’m by the sausage booth!”

2. Don’t overly rationalize your purchases. You might not know whether or not you will end up using the entire bunch of basil that you’ve been pondering for over two minutes. Ignore that guilty voice inside your head that’s saying, “You know you’re too lazy to try to make your own pesto. You don’t even know where the blade to your Cuisinart is.” The opportunity to cook with fresh basil far outweighs the cost of buying it. Besides, there are people behind you that want to get their hands on those herbs.

3. Stay calm and be polite. Even after the second and third times the same stroller transporting a yelling child with a painted face runs into the back of your ankle, just smile when the frazzled mother or father pushing it says, “Excuse me.” If things get too frustrating, look up. It helps to take your eyes off the hoards of people around you and glance up into the newly sprouted branches and blue (if you’re lucky) sky above. Just try not to run into anything.

4. Bring cash (in small bills if possible). For those not carrying cash, market tokens are available for purchase by debit or credit card at the information booth. This is not a bad remedy, but the benefits of having cash can increase your enjoyment factor. Having dollars in smaller denominations allows you to step right up, grab your vegetable of choice and pay in exact change. You wont have to worry about calculating exactly which tokens to use where or making sure you use them all up. Plus, you will be making the vendors’ lives easier as well.

5. Buy yourself a goodie to enjoy while walking. The farmers market is a great place to buy ingredients for a home cooked, locally grown meal. But you should also reward yourself for making it downtown in spite of the headache, bike ride, weather, homework, etc. (If the Pine State Biscuit booth isn’t sold out yet, stop what you’re doing and buy one of these amazing treats.)

For more advice, head to the Portland Farmers Market website.

No news is good news, fake news is better.

Here is a link to my first official fake news article about gentrification in a North Portland nature preserve. (photo used without the express written consent of the Portland Sentinel)

Recent Post Roundup

Here are links to some posts that I've published in recent weeks:

1. This posting is about a recent trend of turning houses into all-ages venues . I would like to turn this into a longer article eventually. There is a lot more to say about these types of performance spaces.

2. This next one is a preview of an Improv show that I went to at the Someday Lounge. The last act, Icarus, was really good.

3. One day I hope to actually go to Live Wire, but until then I'll just write about it.