Food & Drink

The brilliant white plates were a stark contrast to the colorful food that my fiancée Kristen and I had just placed atop them—food that we had worked hard to acquire and as a result were even more excited to consume.
The rainbow trout we’d caught earlier in the day did not disappoint. It was so good, in fact, that we used a few remaining pieces of grilled garlic bread to mop up what little remained on our plates at the end of the meal. Those last few bites marked the end of a circle of life that started on a local stream and ended in trout three ways—with lemon & dill, smoked paprika and maple, and foil-baked on the grill.

Every year about this time something stops me from my busy life and makes me pause to welcome summer and appreciate just how good we have it here in Bend. Fresh air and clean water, hot days and cool nights.
Sometimes it’s that first margarita of the season that does it, or the first leap into the shockingly cold Deschutes.
This year, I found my “welcome to summer” moment on the sun-drenched patio at Tetherow, which is now just one mile from my front door thanks to a recent move—“stumbling distance” I like to call it.

I’ve always considered myself an adventurous eater. I’m intrigued by any food that may be outside my usual comfort zone, particularly when it’s considered a delicacy by other cultures. When faced with something I consider “challenging” I always try at least a bite or two unless it’s something like larvae or crickets or 1000-year-old bird embryos, ’cause, well, that’s just gross. I’m taking goat off the challenging list, though, and am determined to give it a real chance.
One good reason to do this? Goat is one of the most widely consumed meats in many cultures around the world. In Mexico, India, Greece, Korea, parts of southern Italy and in the Middle East, goat is prepared regularly. Goat has recently been showing up on restaurant menus here in the U.S. in food savvy cities from New York to Los Angeles.

We’ve got our own goat hook up around here through Sand Lily Goat Farm. The farm is located just south of town and owned by Patricia Moore and her partner Cheryl Powers, who named the farm after the sand lilies that pop out of the ground each spring on their 80-acre property.
The two women built the farm from the ground up and now have somewhere between 100 and 200 goats on their at any time. Moore has written a cookbook, too, called “Getting Your Goat the Gourmet Guide.” You can meet her at the June Meet Your Farmer dinner. See our little sider about it on this page.

It had been open several months before I even knew it existed, but suddenly, I was hearing about Elevation, the new student-run restaurant at the Cascade Culinary Institute, several times a week.
In addition to regular culinary courses, the curriculum at the culinary institute includes hands-on front- and back-of-the- house training for students at Elevation. It's a chance for students to experience firsthand what it's like to work every position within a full-service restaurant. Profits from the restaurant cover the food and administration costs, but the gratuities from Elevation – which seats more than 75 people – go entirely into a scholarship fund for students.

Salt, salt, where would we be without it? I mean, other than dead.
Essential for life, salt has played a role in human history that easily outshines petroleum in terms of sheer power factor. Wars have been fought over it. Fortunes have been made from it. Currency has been literally made from it. Historians have speculated that civilization, as we know it, was formed in part because of the quest for salt.
It's the only rock we can eat, and so important that one of the five major tastes – salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami – is named after it. But, when it comes to cooking, people often make mistakes with salt and even foodies are still relying on standard sea salt rather than testing out the plethora of options available today.