The Weekly Eater
Head to the source
in Oregon for some
berry delightsI was going to spare you the details of my Oregon trip, the print equivalent of the post-vacation living-room slide show, but I couldn't stop thinking of blueberries. This was an obsession that required the old binge-purge trick, letting go of one thought before progressing to the next.
Berrying may may have little attraction to those who grew up where the little gems grow as wild as weeds, but I've been intrigued by the sport ever since seeing the Oregonian's annual farm calendar. It presented a world far removed from Honolulu's urban landscape, a world full of peach, cherry and pear trees and strawberry, blackberry and marion berry bushes ripe for the picking.
While others fantasize over tables laden with steak, foie gras and caviar accompanied by flutes of champagne, my desire was to get closer to food's origins. Over the years, I'd proposed to my significant other the idea of farm-hopping, encountering resistance each time.
"What?" he'd say. "You mean you want to pay them for laboring in their field?" (I heard a lot of noes on this trip, including, "No, we are not going to an Ethan Hawke reading.")
Farmers have been equally incredulous. One local corn grower questioned my fitness for farm life. "You? On a farm? Have you ever worked on a farm? Look at your hands! Pffft!"
So what if my hands are un-calloused, my fingers capped by a natural French manicure? I hail from hardy Waipahu plantation stock.
ONCE WE GOT to Portland, we made the usual restaurant tour, revisiting newly minted James Beard Award-winning restaurant Higgins; discovering the intimate, retro Bijou Cafe with its fluffy omelets and handful of daily lunch specials; feasting on a heavy-duty chicken mole (nearly the whole bird) at Esperanza's; and noshing at Southpark on David Machado's tapas, most notably an excellent saffron-infused bourride (fish stew), and almond-stuffed dates wrapped with thin sheets of crisped jamon (ham).
Most of the restaurants offered for dessert a medley of berry compotes, cobblers and crisps, reminding me of my quest.
NADINE KAM / NKAM@STARBULLETIN.COM
The best kind of repast — fruit fresh from the fields at Sauvie Island Farms outside Portland, Ore.
Finally, with our city itinerary nearly exhausted, we went exploring Skyline Drive and found ourselves, by accident, on Sauvie Island. This 24,000-acre oasis is bounded by the Multnomah Channel and the Columbia River, and requires a 10-mile, 20-minute drive from Portland. Half the island is farmland, while the other half is a wildlife preserve home to great blue herons, red foxes, beavers and hawks, and a rest stop for migratory waterfowl. There are also two miles of sandy beaches, including a nude beach, and lakes crisscrossed by kite-surfers.
It was late in the day, so we headed back to the city, one of us amped to return for berries. The next day, in 102-degree weather, we headed to Sauvie Island Farms, which seemed to have the most items available, including Bartlett pears, nectarines, corn, raspberries, strawberries, red-and-black marion berries and Red Haven peaches, noted for the ease with which the skin and pit peel away from the fruit, a must for those who can't deal with the fuzz.
We picked up our blueberry box near the entrance and sped off to the fields, where I focused on the biggest specimens, plucking them one by one, stopping for taste tests every now and then. They were perfectly sweet and plump, though never squishy as you might find in Hawaii's supermarkets. Even the green ones were sweet. We ended up with about eight pounds of blueberries at 75 cents a pound, paying $6 for the privilege of harvesting them.
A greater revelation was the tree-ripened peaches, warmed by the sun. The sweet juice rolled down our arms as we bit into them.
Any purported food lover owes it to himself to drop the fancy linen napkins every now and then and head for the places where fabulous produce originate. It's the most palpable way of recognizing the farmer's presence at the four-star table. In Oregon they seem to make the chefs' jobs easier. Little energy or adornment was required to coax flavor out of the produce.
Back on Oahu, we tried to preserve the memory of the trip by picking up more blueberries at the supermarket, a mere pint for $6. But we were depressed to find many of them flavorless, damaged or moldy. No cook could create magic out of that.
If you go
Check the Oregon newspaper classifieds and home-and-garden editions for "U-pick" listings. Here are a few places to start:
>> Kruger's Farm Market: 17100 NW Sauvie Island Road, open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Sells area produce for those who won't labor. Call 503-621-3489.>> Pumpkin Patch: 16511 NW Gilihan Road, open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily from June to October. Pick your own produce. Call 503-621-3874.
>> Sauvie Island Farms: 19818 NW Sauvie Island Road, open 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays from June to September. Call 503-621-3988.
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Nadine Kam's restaurant reviews run on Thursdays. Reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Bulletin. Star ratings are based on comparisons of similar restaurants:
To recommend a restaurant, write: The Weekly Eater, P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802. Or send e-mail to nkam@starbulletin.com
excellent; very good, exceeds expectations; average; below average.
