Muffin’s Meals
Filed Under Devour, Vancouver | Leave a Comment
Local chef Muffin Batiste has started the new venture Muffin’s Meals. There are several entrees and salads to choose from each week, which Muffin prepares and delivers — you cook or microwave the dinner and unwrap the salad. The menus feature a variety of meats and vegetarian options, and frankly, look delicious.
The meals will cost you about what you’d pay in a restaurant — but quantity deals are available.
Also, Muffin is rocking Valentine’s Day for $35 a person. One of the lover’s eve dinners, for example, is mustard crusted rack of lamb with Kalamata olive risotto and seasonal vegetables. All entrees are served with artisan bread, sweet butter, chocolate mousse and cookies.
J.
PS- I’ve had Muffin’s food, and it is delish. So email her at lesouschef@msn.com for full details on menus, prices and availability.
Discuss food garden options at county/city parks
Filed Under A Green Life, Clark County, Devour | Leave a Comment
Sounds delicious-
J.
Northwest Shirts opens retail space
Filed Under Craft, News, Vancouver | Leave a Comment
Maker of iconic Northwest-and-other themed t-shirts Chris Stevens is celebrating the grand opening of his new retail store and printshop at 807 Grand Blvd. in Vancouver on Dec. 5. Northwest Shirts will be open from 11-6 on Saturday for shopping and free coffee from local roasters Paper Tiger and in the evening from 7-10 for beers and music.
Help Chris end shirtlessness (and support other local artists and crafters, too!)-
J.
Get some culture
Filed Under Craft, Vancouver | Leave a Comment
11.27.09 Students from the Digital Technology and Culture program at WSUV are staging a tribute to the late Northwest poet and author Richard Brautigan on Friday, Dec. 4. The evening of poetry, performance and digital art will be held at 7 p.m. in the Administration building’s Tower Room (110). DTC professor John Barber is a leading Brautigan scholar and is working with the Clark County Historical Museum to make Vancouver the center of Brautigan research in the United States.
Go here for more and directions.
It all sounds just crazy enough to be fantastic-
J.
Love Lincoln’s Gallery
Filed Under Craft, Vancouver | Leave a Comment
If you haven’t been to Lincoln’s Gallery yet, go. there. now. Just what downtown needs, it is a mellow spot with creations from Reid Trevarthan, and, this month, longboards from Kevin Bay and Ken Hann of Selfless Creations. Located at 106/108 W. 9th St., the gallery fronts div., a clothing and design shop (which was closed when I was there, so sorry if I am a little uninformed about it). The place is owned by the men of Vancouver alt-folk band Lincoln’s Beard. The band plays on Frist Friday, so go check it out then. As for me, the minute I walked in, I just wanted to grab a coffee and hang out on the gallery’s couch for the afternoon. Try that. See how it goes.
J.
Linking to stories
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Hi all. I’m Kris the web admin here. I’ve noticed that it may have been difficult to link to specific posts. This is because we have two domains–one domain is pointing to the other. I also had domain masking on but I have realized that it created linking challenges so now masking is off. My apologies for any inconvenience.
Please feel free to link away!
Celebrate Fall Harvest with Vancouver Food Co-op
Filed Under A Green Life, Devour, News, Vancouver | Leave a Comment
The Vancouver Food Co-op is celebrating the Fall Harvest on Saturday, Oct. 3 from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Vancouver Marketplace on Columbia and Evergreen. The event will be catered by Woody’s Tacos, featuring appetizers and desserts made from ingredients grown by local farms (and you can bet when the VFC is doing it, that’s LOCAL farms, not the tri-state area).
The Co-op will be unveiling its new logo, designed by Vancouver’s Tribe2 Graphic Design and Creative Services, the same folks responsible for the Turtle Place mural, and talking about store opening plans. Bluegrass band The Grey Sky Boys will play.
The event is FREE, so don’t miss it. My only regret is posting this so late!
J.
Annually the Vancouver Business Journal scours the community in search of up to 40 individuals under the age of 40 who have distinguished themselves through their accomplishments either professionally or through volunteer and philanthropic means.
Who do you know who has:
- Demonstrated an ability to lead a group of co-workers to successful completion of a team project?
- Started or maintained a successful business or other venture in Southwest Washington?
- Exceeded your expectations as an employee or co-worker?
- Gone out of their way to share their talents with local not-for-profits?
Certainly someone you know has achieved greatness in our community – wouldn’t you be proud to see them recognized for their accomplishments?
Nominations are due end of day Friday October 2, 2009.
Click on the link below NOW to nominate your friend, colleague, customer, or the non-profit board member you serve with. You know them and there is still time to nominate them.
Recognize tomorrow’s leaders TODAY!
View previous honorees
Gardening for life
Filed Under Featured North Bank magazine stories, Home + Garden | Leave a Comment
Urban Farm School teaches people how to love their gardens
Submitted photo
STORY BY JESSICA SWANSON
Kendra Pearce and Toree Hiebert met in 2000. As soon as Kendra saw freshly canned foods stacked floor to ceiling in Toree’s house, she knew they were kindred spirits.
Both women moved to large acreages with their families, Toree to La Center and Kendra to Amboy and were farming and gardening for pleasure and food; pretty soon they had partnered up on a little Community Supported Agriculture operation, where they sold small shares of food they were growing. Eventually the two moved back toward the city, Toree to Vancouver and Kendra to downtown Ridgefield, where they continued to raise vegetables and ornamentals.
“We couldn’t give it up,” said Toree. “We had to do what we could in the
space we had.”
Toree worked as an elementary school teacher, while Kendra did environmental education for the Naturally Beautiful Backyards Program at Clark County.
“One day, I approached her and said ‘I had an epiphany,’” said Toree. “I was trying to find a way to bring everything together. I’m a teacher. I’m a mom who likes to grow good food for my kinds. I’m a farm girl at heart.”
Submitted photo
That epiphany is now known as Urban Farm School.
Complementing each other’s styles and interests, the two women have formed a company that capitalizes, if unintentionally, on a back-to-the-land trend among Americans that appears particularly strong in Southwest Washington. UFS offers more than 40 different hands-on workshops throughout the year, including classes on canning, extending the garden harvest, freezing and drying, different kinds of composting, basic garden design, seed saving and converting grass to food production. The classes are nearly all full in the summer and popular year round.
In addition, the women teach a series of family-oriented classes, lead local field trips and organize springtime and harvest sales and
seed exchanges.
Toree offers in-home garden consultations, mainly in the spring. She also offers ongoing tutorials, which begin with a one-hour consultation for $50 and continue weekly at $25 for a half-hour. Toree’s service bridges the gap between self-teaching and hiring a landscape designer, which can be much more costly. That said, the two are thinking about pursuing a landscape design certification for Toree to continue to add value to the company.
Kendra handles the organization’s outreach, including its website and blog, marketing and administration. For her, it is full-time work from her 100-year-old home and small urban lot in Ridgefield. In her spare time, Kendra cultivates an ever-expanding food garden and has started dabbling in ornamentals, with Toree’s encouragement.
Urban Farm School’s “GardenforLife” parties are a particularly innovative offering. GardenforLife parties are privately commissioned garden parties hosted at a home or other place of the client’s choosing. Kendra and Toree offer activities and teaching on a theme. Friends, family or colleagues are invited to learn a new skill over the space of two hours. Some party themes include Fabulous Fruits, Container Gardening, Healthy Soil, Healthy Food, Preservation Basics and From Lawn to Food: Starting your Vegetable Garden. Hosts are also welcome to come up with their own ideas. Each party costs $200 for a two-hour session that includes instruction, educational materials, door prizes and a host gift, and is limited to 15 guests.
“It’s like a Pampered Chef party without all the crap,” joked Kendra. Instead, she said, it’s about learning a skill with family and friends, “and keeping it for a lifetime.”
Kendra and Toree are passionate about creating a connection between food production and consumption. Too often, they hear kids saying food “comes from the store.” But they don’t bring their politics into the classroom. Kendra said their typical student is a mom who wants to get the most out of a little garden to feed her family, someone who says, “I want to do this, but I don’t know where to start.”
“We see that often this stuff builds community,” said Toree, who watches her students sharing ideas and stories after class. Some of these casual relationships turn into friendships.
Kendra has seen it at work in her own life.
“No one (in my neighborhood) talked to me until I put in the garden,” said Kendra. “Now, I know all my neighbors.”
Urban Farm School recently began offering brown bag lunches and intends to reach out to corporations and other organizations interested in bringing these kinds of skills to their employees. Each of the women is working on building a community garden in a different part of the county, and a dream of theirs is for Urban Farm School to have its own location, with a demonstration garden, classrooms and community space.
Students often wonder where the “school” is, said Toree, “as if they picture a little old one-room schoolhouse.”
She smiles as she says it, as if she can picture it too.
CHEF PROFILE
Filed Under Devour, Featured North Bank magazine stories | 1 Comment
Aaron Baumhackl,
Solstice Wood Fire Café
story + photo By Charity Thompson
Leave it to Aaron Baumhackl to make a sausage-cherry pizza a best-seller.
As chef and co-owner of Solstice Wood Fire Café in Bingen, Aaron specializes in wood-fired pizzas with unique local toppings, such as the cafe favorite with cherries, chorizo sausage, goat cheese and rosemary.
Aaron got his start in restaurants at age 15 in California, first at a Spanish tapas restaurant and later riding the first wave of the California-style pizza trend.
“It drew me in because I like to eat and I like to create,” he said of the industry. “I like to see results fast.”
Along with that background, Solstice’s creative pizzas come from a playful approach among kitchen staff.
Solstice Wood Fire Cafe
415 W. Steuben St. (Highway 14), Bingen
www.solsticewoodfirecafe.com
509-493-4006
“In the kitchen, everybody has a voice,” he said. “We’ll come up with a dish, plate it and see what other color combinations can go in there to make it (reflect) the season.”
Aaron’s menus change with the seasons. This fall’s menu includes a pizza with local butternut squash, leeks, bacon and blue cheese. He’ll also dish up Siragusa pear salad and pizza, huckleberry crisp and huckleberry pizza with prosciutto, mascarpone and arugula.
He keeps an eye on the local farm scene with his wife and co-owner, Suzanne Wright Baumhackl.
“Literally, we’re surrounded by farms,” Aaron said. “We see a tractor go by with eggplant and say, ‘Eggplant’s in season – what should we do?’”
Solstice has two plots at Bingen’s community garden – one for its kitchen and one for the local food bank.
Its menu also includes foods less common in rural areas, such as sautéed kale and quinoa chowder.
“We’re trying to keep it simple,” he said, “and let the food speak for itself in flavor and nutrients.”
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