Food Talk!

In the spirit of my recent promise for 'more frequent posts with more pictures' I submit the following news. Bear in mind that the 'more pictures' part is only possible by using the not-extensive-enough 46 North Farm image archives, so these pictures don't necessarily go with what's being said, but there are lots of them! Enjoy!

This coming Monday, December 6th at 9:30 am is the premier of the new program Food Talk on KMUN Astoria 91.9 FM. It's all about the local food world on the North Coast, with myself and Kristin Albrecht as your charming hosts. The program will be once a month, on the first Monday of the month. If you're not in the area you can stream KMUN online, and if you miss the show you can listen to a podcast on their website, we are told.

(Your Food Talk hosts shown enjoying locally made box lunches from Bread and Ocean in Manzanita on the North Coast Land Conservancy-Lower Nehalem Community Trust 'Riding the Coastal Edge' train ride last year)

This week we're talking to John and Patricia Edwards of Linda Brand Crab from Ilwaco, WA, and Bob Neroni of EVOO Cooking School in Cannon Beach, all about Dungeness Crab and the upcoming commercial crab season.

(I don't have any pictures of crab, so enjoy a picture of Squeaky the Cat looking Crabby.)

I'll tell you now, the show has been pre-recorded, and probably will be for some time. It was basically madness for Kristin and me to commit to anything new in our schedules with the kind of work-volunteer-home life (hah!) combination overload we both suffer from. We made it through our first recording with not too many mishaps, thanks to our great guests and patient engineer.

This month, I learn a lot about commercial crab fishing from John and Patricia, only make one major gaffe (I think) and Bob shares some very tempting ideas for how to prepare crab. Kristin stays cool, shares a unique use for sake, and we remember to do our station identification break. Yeah!

Please be kind when you listen, it's our very first show and there are a few awkward pauses of the "I thought you were going to ask a question now!" sort. We'll get better, I promise.

This was such a great opportunity, and it is going to be both fun and fascinating to connect with people in the North Coast local food world. We'll be talking with producers- farmers, fishermen, dairy folks, foragers, and hunters, and also to consumers- chefs, bakers, cheesemakers, brewers, small artisan food producers and just generally people who love good food that comes from our region. As our snappy catchphrase says, "Fresh conversations about local food on the North Coast!"

(Above are several of the folks that we will no doubt be talking to in the coming months, shown enjoying the Slow Food potluck that 46 North Farm hosted in our almost finished greenhouse this past May. Oh, and I realize that fourth from the left is Bob Neroni of EVOO Cooking School, so I did have a picture of one of our guests after all!)

Kristin's patient husband Mark (seventh from the left in the black vest) is bravely taking on engineering responsibilities, although we are both committed to learn how to run the sound board ourselves. We are only driving him slightly crazy as we figure out this radio thing.

One of my very favourite parts of our show is our fabulous theme song. When the idea of doing the show came up, we talked about what music we would play as the intro and exit for the show. Most shows choose a song or piece of music that they like, that represents their show to them.

Well, when a farm has had semi- resident musicians around for many months (and very talented ones at that) and when you're sitting at the Fort George with some of them one night, drinking lots of good beer and laughing about the crazy idea of doing a radio show about local food, there is a good chance that you might leave the pub with a promise of a theme song jingle for your show in your back pocket to go with your lovely Oatmeal Pale Ale buzz.

(In addition to being musically talented, the band is now highly skilled at old-school-bus-turned-tour-bus techniques such as trying to get the spare wheel hoisted into place.)

Kati and Luke came through for us with the best theme song we could have asked for. They tell me that the title was Packy's suggestion, and given that we were drinking a lot of beer, and Packy was involved, I'm somehow not surprised. Someday I think they should write words for the whole song, right now it is just a loop of the hook-y bit. It's called 'Stick it in Your Face'.

"Stick it in your face, 'cause it comes from the place you're living in."

I almost passed out from laughing so hard the first time I heard it, and it has a tendency to get stuck in my head whenever I think about it. I love that it makes me smile each time I hear it.

Home Made Ice Cream Tangent Begins here:

Luke and Kati are big local food fans themselves. They are talented cooks (Kati makes a mean pizza, with impressive ariel dough spinning), mushroom foragers and all around good people to have near a kitchen. We shared some fine food experiences over the past summer, such as the evening of homemade ice-cream and pie. Although it looks like they are practicing their best Huck Finn method of getting Israel to do all the work, I assure you they both took their turns at the crank.

As did my niece Julia, visiting from San Francisco. Go Julia!

The finished product was well worth the wait, accompanying some amazing homemade pie baked by my brother-in-law Andy, involving peaches and berries from the Cannon Beach Farmers Market. It was phenomenal. We use a great ice cream recipe that doesn't involve raw eggs, just lots and LOTS of cream and sugar. Yum.

End Homemade Ice Cream Tangent. Until next summer.....

Hope you like Food Talk, if you get to hear it. I think next month we'll be talking about the idea of growing wild rice on the coast, which should be interesting. I always like the idea of using wild rice, but I very rarely do. Maybe if it was a locally grown crop, I'd take more of a look at it.

We'll find out.

Sadly, this picture was taken back in early October, when we still had a beautiful batch of basil thriving in the greenhouse. It's all well dead by now, except for what went into our basil vinegar, and what we froze. I just wanted to remember what all that fresh basil looked like.

Sigh.