I recently hosted a Thai cooking class/Blazers playoff party at my place. No one had the foresight to bring a proper Thai dessert but someone did bring the makings for a mostly non-traditional Christian holiday dish: Peep S'mores.

If I had been told about Peep S'mores as a kid I would probably have Type 15 diabetes right now. I had no idea S'mores could be improved upon but, fortunately, some brilliant entrepreneur came up with the concept at some point and was kind enough to notify the world via a series of fairly unsettling You Tube videos.

We didn't have a campfire on hand so we made do with a microwave which, all things considered, is preferable, given what happens to Peeps when exposed to the magic of dielectric heating. We also didn't have enough Hershy's bars, which meant a chocolate bunny had to be sacrificed. Sorry, $1.99 "Sunny Bunny."

So what do Peep S'mores taste like? I wish I had jotted down everyone's descriptions. I'm sure someone said "childhood obesity" but I'd have to go with "the most insanely sugary thing on the planet (overlooking Fruity Pebbles covered in Pixie Sticks)."

Labels: fun with food

Let me tell you about a series of recurring dreams that I've been having. About chickens. No, seriously, chickens. Feel free to play armchair Freud and explain them to me if you're feeling up to the task.

The dreams started around five years ago and I have one every few months. I still remember the first of these, which I wrote about here on the blog. In it I had just purchased a house in McMinnville with a large coup and decided to consult a neighbor about the logistics of raising hens. After being chased off his property, I drove to a nightmarish Petco-type superstore devoted entirely to chickens.

The more recent of these dreams involve me building a chicken coop and being nagged by neighbors for eggs. The most recent dream consisted entirely of an argument with a friend over whether or not it would be safe to set up the coop under the large apple tree that dominates my front yard.

Where are these dreams coming from? Well, raising "urban chickens" has become a popular fad around Portland in recent years. There's a house near my place with chickens that escape every so often and can occasionally be found blocking traffic. I can think of no less than three households in the area with coops.

So I found myself talking about these dreams over dinner at Gustav's Pub last week and the discussion led to three of us killing part of an otherwise dull afternoon at Livingscape Nursery's "Chicken Fest!" last Saturday. If I were serious about buying an urban chicken or three what sort of financial and time investment would I be looking at? Also: what's the best name for a hen that lives in a hipster metropolis like Portland?

I was considering Clucky Brewster.

First up, a professionally-built coop with all the bells and whistles can run between $600 and $1,000 while a homemade coop can be constructed for as little as $60. Among the other things we learned at Chicken Fest:

Urban chickens require a significant amount of care and their enclosures need to be cleaned every few days.

Urban chickens can comfortably live in small spaces but in order to lead happy, healthy lives the more room, the merrier the hen.

Different-colored chickens produce different colored eggs.

Why are frozen cornish game hens so tiny? Because they come from tiny cornish game hens. It's a fact!

The average cosmopolitan hen can produce up to 360 eggs a year, just like her country counterparts.

There are almost as many chicken accessories out there as there are for dogs. Chicken combs, chicken vitamins and even a special spray to keep neighborhood predators from attacking the birds.

Unlike cats, it's considered kosher to eat a chicken when they start gettin' all fat and lazy.

6-day old baby chicks? Adorable? 3-week old chicks? Not so adorable. They're the gawky, pimply-faced teens of the chicken world.

While I have plenty of space for a coop, the logistics of running one would prevent me from ever going through with this and I didn't do so hot when I helped a friend babysit some hens a few summers back. I've heard some nasty stories from a colleague who grew up on a farm with chickens (they're dirty, they peck everything to death, they poop all over the place, etc). My neighborhood is filled with cats, raccoons and Lewis & Clark undergrads. Plus, there's a state park three blocks from my door that's no doubt filled with plenty of bored coyotes that would love to get their paws on a chicken, especially a irony-lovin', Session Lager-swillin' hipster bird with a name like Clucky Brewster.

Maybe I should get a pig instead.

Labels: chickens, fun with food

I apologize in advance to Another Portland Blog's nonexistent vegetarian readership for the following post.

The Portland Farmers Market opened for the season on Saturday and, along with roughly 65% of everyone else living in the city, I went down there in search of locally-produced consumables. Instead of the organic fruits and vegetables that filled most of the booths I was looking for something else. Something that doesn't grow on trees or bushes. Something that was once covered in fur and probably went "moo" or "snarf" or "blargh" or.....

.....ok, what kind of a sound does a yak make?

I was on a hunt for yak meat (and flowers because it was my mom's birthday. I went with tulips. Hi, Mom).

I asked someone at the information booth and they gave me a funny look, as if to say, "Son, you wouldn't know what to do with yak meat if it was all they sold at your friendly, neighborhood Fred Meyer." He finally shrugged and told me to go ask the "buffalo guys."

Yes, the Portland Farmers Market has "buffalo guys." I had to roam through over a hundred booths before I found the one operated by the Pine Mountain Ranch. They deal primarily in buffalo products. I waited patiently in line behind someone who seemed downright crestfallen to learn that they were not only all sold out of buffalo liver but buffalo hearts and tongues as well.

I may have been tempted to buy a buffalo heart if they'd had any in stock but I settled on what I'd come to the market for: authentic ground yak meat. I told one of the guys working the booth that I was planning to use it in spaghetti sauce and he told me I'd be better off using Italian yak sausage. I went with that instead.

Yak meat doesn't come cheap. I paid $10.94 for a single pound. I tossed it in a pan on Sunday night and it was fairly difficult to work with. It's sort of dry and doesn't mash-up as easily as regular beef. But to answer the question that I'm sure is on your mind: what does it taste like? The flavor falls somewhere between buffalo and venison. Like most semi-exotic meats, it's got a bit of that whole "gamey" thing going on.

Once I tossed the meat into a pot with a batch of sauteed vegetables and a few jars of Newman's Vodka Spaghetti Sauce I couldn't taste much of a difference between yak and plain, old, boring ground beef. Honestly, I feel like I wasted the stuff. I should have made yak burgers instead.

Now just one question remains: what would buffalo heart spaghetti taste like? To the farmer's market!

Labels: fun with food, weird

I woke up on Monday, as I often do on Mondays, and noticed an odd smell in my kitchen. A quick search later, I discovered that I had absently-mildly left a bowl of spaghetti sauce in my microwave the night before. Now most normal people would have immediately tossed it out but I hesitated. You see, I put a lot of effort into this sauce. And a lot of organic vegetables from New Seasons. I had planned to make multiple meals out of the contents of that bowl and I wasn't about to just toss it out without first consulting the internet. Surely, there was no way that nasty germs and fungi could have infiltrated both a closed microwave and the Saran Wrap covering the bowl.

Now you might be surprised to learn that there isn't a lot of information out there about this particular dilemma. A Google search didn't turn up much so I turned to Twitter. Four of my online colleagues told me to eat it and, presumably, didn't do so because they wanted me to puke my brains out. One theorized that the tomatoes in the sauce would have essentially pickled the meat and anything else with the potential to go bad. Another told me to make sure I heated it to a certain temperature first.

I tossed the sauce in the freezer, took a chance on it a few nights later and again the following night. So far, I'm not dead and I'm pretty sure I've successfully ducked botulism. My thanks goes out to all those Twitter folks and Paul Newman, RIP, who's stellar spaghetti sauce recipe no doubt prevented me from spending twelve consecutive hours in the bathroom.

Labels: fun with food