The fall season brings with it wonderful things…recipes that have gathered dust during the summer months, hot homemade soups to warm our hearts, and the holidays bring out our giving spirit, leading many to a fair amount of charity work. The season also brings the temptations of going off our diets, the permission to partake in gluttony, and the guilt of doing so – Add to that family and you have a crazy formula for disaster or glee.

What we discovered when investigating this subject was a surprise. As a community, we use food as a fundraiser, a friend to comfort us when we feel lonely or stressed, and a vehicle for building community. Our relationship with food is complex at times; a good portion of us have issues with self-esteem and body image. Food is used in some many ways in our community, it is amazing what we do with it, even with the unhealthy aspects.

Basic Rights Oregon (BRO), Our House, Cascade AIDS Project (CAP,) and many other non-profits have wielded the power of food to make change in our state a reality. BRO raises a good portion of its funds with two food events: Bites for Rights and its annual Dinner and Auction. Our House has an annual dinner series that has the culinary arts community as the center piece. Dinner at My House for Our House is celebrating another successful year with 66 dinners! CAP does the same with their annual evening of Art and Auction. Thousands upon thousands of dollars raised every year…Food is pretty powerful isn’t it?

Here, you’ll see how important food is in our LGBTIQ community, what role it plays in building the community’s strength, some not so great facts, and we uncover a few resources for you and
your families.

Buy Local & Consciously

On of the major reasons Just Out newspaper has survived for the past 27 years is because of our community’s commitment to buying local and supporting ally and LGBTIQ owned businesses. We have shown great strength in numbers with our buying power and it has helped Just Out, the hundreds of businesses that support it, and members of Portland Area Business Association (PABA,) our LGBTIQ chamber of commerce.
This community commitment is evident with local farmers and locally produced products. You see this at work when you go to a farmers market in Portland. We dare you to go through a farmers market without seeing at least two LGBTIQ couples. We have always had the Buy Local in our shopping DNA. The practice supports many ecosystems, but the main one is money circulating through our community.

For the swath of the higher earning members of our community, Whole Foods and New Seasons is a luxury the rest of the community does not have available. Both stores are a luxury a lot of us can’t afford, the economy making it even more unattainable. Have you seen their prices? Buying organic is already expensive, these stores make it even more so.

Where do you go if these two are supposedly the only alternative? Simple: Coop grocery stores. Some of us haven’t even given this option a chance, thinking they are for straight-up hippies, with their patchouli wafting through the isles. This perception is changing, and we may have the economy to thank for it. Coop grocery stores began in the 60’s and have continued with their same values and mission for years. The Coop grocery stores of today are thriving and getting bigger in Oregon. Best of all? They are community owned!
Like choosing a credit union rather than a commercial bank, coop grocery stores are owned and run by its members. Membership is open to anyone. The commitment to organic and local products makes coops a perfect choice and substitute for the New Seasons and Whole Foods options. You can count on all the groceries you buy have already been through a selection process that specifies: Fair labor practices, organic, and sustainable production practices, and direct from the farm choices when available.
Coops are built and created by the community, many of them started with members own money to get them off the ground. From the start, they are guided by the voices and concerns of the members and their community. Being community centric, they offer more than just groceries. Many offer cooking classes (especially to low income families,) neighborhood clean-up events, and farm tours. How often do you get to see where your produce actually comes from?

Check out our resources page to find the Coop store in your neighborhood.

Share The Abundance

Gardeners know the drill come harvest time…you can only eat so many tomatoes, and your friends an neighbors can only take so much. You don’t want to start going out at night and leaving your excess produce on a stranger’s porch. Those of us who do garden, the bounty can get overwhelming, even if the abundance was unintended. What do you do with all of this left over produce?

There are alternatives, one of the best is to donate your produce to the Oregon Food Bank (OFB). The food bank has a Harvest-Share program where low income families can come to a farmers market-like set up to shop for fresh produce at no charge. The OFB gathers and salvages a good amount of produce from local farmers and wholesale produce companies.

Another opportunity is the Portland Yard Share program or the Growing Gardens organization. With Portland Yard Share, the main function is to share your yard with neighbors, if you have plenty of room for a garden. This program is also helpful if you do have room for a garden, but have either neglected it or you just haven’t had the time to get it going. Their website allows you to post a listing to offer up your yard space, and you can find a garden space to help with. The main mission of this organization is to make it possible for the community to access healthy, local, and organic food. Many people in our communities would love to garden but don’t have the room, this is an almost instant solution! (www.yardsharing.org/where.html)

Growing Gardens is a non-profit that works to build organic, raised-bed vegetable gardens in back yards, front yards, and balconies. The group supports low-income families up to three years with seed, plants, classes, and mentors. One of their most admirable traits is their mission to grow the next generation of healthy veggie eaters, teaching children to garden and respect the environment. Growing Gardens also accepts left over produce, but do check with them to be sure they can accept what you have.

Our Relationship with Food

(This issue opened up a massive vat of interest and complexity. We are setting aside an issue to tackle this discussion in full and hopefully have some solutions, ideas and suggestions on the topic.)

Food is an instrumental part of our survival. We either have it or don’t. Except for the portion of us that grow some of our food, we get most of our food from a store. Unless you get your produce from a number of coop grocery stores, choose local only choices at Whole Foods or New Seasons, you get produce shipped from outside of the state or country. Most of the time, we can get anything we want, no matter the time of year. This abundance does not always work in our favor.

Our relationship with food has dramatically changed over generations. Necessity has been overridden with social pressures and emotional reactions. Food is used to comfort us when in need, not just for hunger. Hollywood, the fashion industry and the LGBTIQ community itself have created a homogenized, unrealistic picture of what beauty is, and we fall for it. We choose food to fill voids in our lives, or reject it to attain the perfect body.

Hundreds of studies show that gay men and women have a higher risk of an eating disorder than their heterosexuals. Not surprising when you take into account all of the psychological issues we have to deal with: fear of being outed, having a total distrust and therefore disdain for the opposite sex, traumatizing parental upbringing, being shunned or severed from family, HIV/AIDS, alcohol and drugs.

For gay men, Matthew Brooks, a Seattle therapist, states, “Many people believe, probably correctly, that the grossly idealized images so pervasive in [gay] culture are partly responsible for the skewed, compromised self-esteem that many gay men have. While there is truth to this idea, it’s more likely the case that eating disorders develop when there are many factors at work over time, including family pressures, shame, and mixed messages about food, appearance, and weight. This all leads to bewilderment about one’s sexuality as well as those impossible standards from mass culture.”

Gay men live in an image focused community, where most ads, mainstream movies and T.V. shows reinforce what gay male ideal beauty is. Gay men are more image conscious and most of the time go to the gym frequently, and get the full manicure treatment (waxing, manicures and botox.) Even so, gay men are more prone to eating disorders than straight men or women overall.

For gay men who are overweight you have “The Bears” and so called “Chub Clubs,” (overweight bisexual or gay men and the slim men that are attracted to them,) “Chubby Chasers” and the like. More times than not, overweight gay men get a pass.
This is where men differ from women in society: even in our own community we carry the fat double standard. Gay men get a pass for being overweight, lesbians don’t. Lesbians only get a pass within the their community…it seems our community in tandem with society doesn’t care if your gay. Just being a woman means you shouldn’t be 200 pounds or more.

Lesbians are fortunate in one sense. Women find that their physical form isn’t a big deal amongst their own like-minded sisters. Coming out can be a huge relief, and the shackles of a male dominated society to be thin are thrown aside. Can this go too far? Obesity is higher in lesbians than in straight women. So much higher that many studies have been done to try and figure out why.

As stated earlier, we intend to tackle this issue in a future edition of id Magazine. The body image catastrophe we have in the community is a subject so complex and daunting, we decided to assign an entire issue on the subject. If you have any views on the subject, do feel free to contact us to give your opinion.

Building Community

The Oregon LGBTIQ populace has used food as a way to foster new friendships and build community. There are a number of groups that meet monthly, a gathering of like-minded people, with either an interest in cooking or intended as a social networking function.
Most of these groups are started by a small group of people, feeling a need in the community to come together. The catch here is that they crop up out of genuine community building and strengthening social circles. Rarely are they formed for political agendas or social causes. These groups are a true beauty of Oregon’s LGBTIQ community and its history. Some have been around for decades, others a few years old. Finding them can be a challenge for someone moving into the state, so we’ve hunted them down for you.

Cook Boys event…David Lefitz at far right of Go Outside Landscaping

In Portland, Cook Boys, has been getting together over good food for a number of years. As it was told to id Magazine’s Christian Messer, “Cook Boys started out as a very competitive, serious cooks gathering,” a member recalled. Over the years, it has grown and been relaxed. It now is a large potluck dinner, usually hosted by a member at their home. Every month a theme is picked, whether it be, “Your Grandma’s Kitchen” to “Hawaiian Luau.” Any Oregon gay men are welcome, and most newcomers just show up at the designated host home with a dish appropriate to the theme.

Soy Boys

Soy Boys is a vegan group that was spun off of the Cook Boys model. They can be reached at veggieguys@aol.com

Lavender Womyn Potlucks and More

Lavender Womyn is a lesbian social group created in 2003 with the first chapter in Salem, Oregon. Since then they have had added chapters throughout Oregon and Washington; even chapters in New Hampshire and Kentucky. For Oregon, there are chapters in Salem, Portland, Eugene, Corvallis-Albany, Grants Pass, Tillamook and Yamhill County. If you’d like to start your own chapter, the group encourages it and an e-mail is all you’ll need to start, at salem@lavenderwomyn.com

The group started out as an idea over dinner, a potluck was planned, and the guests expected were about six total. However, the creators extended the invitation out to more Womyn they knew. Before they knew it, the house was filled with lesbians and children, a smashing hit!

They continued the potlucks gatherings every month, for four months. It was then decided to give the group an official name, “Wild Lavender Women” won the vote. After taking in some considerations about “Wild” being in the name and the misinterpretations that may create, the name was then changed to “Lavender Woymen.”

Since then, this network has done amazing things for its members, even if that is just a friend to talk to or a shoulder to cry on. If you go their website and read the testimonials, you’ll get a taste of how extraordinary this spontaneously formed network is and why you should check it out.

To expand the network further, they have a personals section and database. As it says on their site, “This is another way of connecting singles, couples and families. You can search the database for friendships, relationships, and find singles, couples or families of similar interests. You can create you own profile, upload photos, chat, IM, blog, and much more. We have reached over a thousand members, and have members from other countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, and more!!”

http://www.lavenderwomyn.com/chapters.html

The Adventure Group

Founded in 1986, The Adventure Group has a long history of planning kayaking, skiing, hiking and numerous other outdoor activities for the Portland, Oregon LGBTIQ community. There are minimal annual membership dues to pay for the group to continue running. Dues are affordable, and they can guarantee they are less than your gym membership!

The food part comes in at The Adventure Group’s monthly potluck, meet at Hobo’s if you’re a hockey fan in November, and a Holiday party in December. All of these events are members or member guests only. One interesting event they host is the PDeXchange, where they host an extravaganza of events for the weekend and invite members of fellow LGBTIQ adventure groups in the Northwest to come and participate. The Adventure Group members open their homes to provide lodging for their out of town guests.

Mix and Make Your Own

We’ve heard from you, the community, about other groups or gatherings, but to be honest, there is no true place to go for all of this information. If you have a group that has food at its center as a means to socially gather, we’d love to add you to our list. In the future there will be a single website that can serve as a portal or one-stop-shop for all community social groups.

Many of you have T.V. show viewing parties, “Sex and The City” and “Queer As Folk” were some mentioned to us in conversation. Others we’ve heard of involve any number of aspects that shape the LGBTIQ community. Why not start a group yourself? Your life and social circle could expand beyond anything you imagined.

Is There Community Hunger?

In our research and our experience, we found the Oregon Food Bank (OFB) does a great job feeding the hungry in the state of Oregon. Even as terrific as the OFB is, there are times when it cannot always match the demand and is put under a lot of strain. In our community, if we are to “look after our own,” where is our LGBTIQ community food bank?

Is it not a good idea? Would you have to prove you were LGBTIQ? Would it be abused? Surely there are many, many lesbian mothers with children who are having a rough time in this economy. One could also bet there are hundreds of LGBTIQ members who’ve been laid off or worse, fired. Where do these people, our people, go other than the Oregon Food Bank?

We do have here in Portland Esther’s Pantry and Todd’s Closet, but these are specifically for those living with HIV/AIDS. Fortunately we as a community came together in that time of need, when our friends and family were dying and had no resource of clothing and food. Many of those affected had no income because their illness kept them from working.

With or without the current economy, there must be a need in our community for something like this. The Oregon Food Bank served 897,000 people in 2008/2009. If we use the 10% formula*, then last year alone, there were 89,700 LGBTIQ residents using the Oregon Food Bank (purely a guesstimate.) Why have we not done anything about it? Are we too exhausted by all the other things that we do for our numerous non-profits? Have we assumed that most LGBTIQ Oregonians are more likely to have adequate income or can rely on friends and family during unemployment? Has it even been tried, and if so, why hasn’t it worked? We searched high and low and found nothing.

One thing is certain: the OFB is completely LGBTIQ friendly and doesn’t stand for discrimination. This may be why the OFB has always had a great relationship with our community. Many of us volunteer individually or as a team. Every year around Pride, a LGBTIQ volunteer day is set aside for all of the community to come and participate. There are numerous tasks to be done, packing bulk dry goods into containers for a family of four, making buttons for the Waterfront Jazz festival, and other important tasks to complete.

Volunteering isn’t the only option. You could hold your own food drive! These are called independent food drives and anyone can do it. The OFB website has a Food and Fund Drive Kit for anyone download. This is great option for companies or any groups that have plenty of people to make it a success. However, they encourage everyone to do so…no matter how small or large your group or donation is. During the summer and fall months, if you have a garden and have a ton of tomatoes or any usable produce, you can drop them off at the food bank or at a number of nurseries. (See our online resource page for locations)

*The unscientific formula that 10% of the population is LGBTIQ

Since the year 2001, Portland has been in love Mother’s Bistro. The food is amazing and best of all, it serves the most pleasurable food of all…Comfort food. Full disclosure? I am a bit biased. This restaurant has been a brunch favorite since it opened. Years later, just when you thought owner Lisa Schroder couldn’t step it up a notch, Schroder and her partner Rob Sample opened Mama Mia’s Tratatoria in the same building, on the opposite corner of the block. Mother’s Bistro is at 212 SW Stark Street, Mama Mia’s at 439 SW 2nd Ave.

I sat down with Schroder at Mother’s to discuss the history of the restaurants and her support of the LGBTIQ community.

id Magazine: Tell me how this all came to be, Mother’s and Mama Mia’s.

Lisa Schroder: Back in 1992 I was working for Weight Watchers International, in marketing, trying to get people to buy things they didn’t necessarily need…and I was simultaneously doing catering on the side. So I’d leave work and I read about food and think about food, and I would prepare food for others, but my family went without because I was so busy working and doing this other stuff. And I realized, well, we can do take out food – I could get Thai, Chinese, Mexican and pizza, but when it came to the kind of food that I would make my family if I had the time…there was no place to get it.

I also realized that there were a lot of restaurants around the country called Mother’s, but none of them served the kind of food mothers would make if they had the time. So back in 1992 I had the epiphany that the world needed a place to serve mother food.

Everything I did for eight years after that was getting me ready to open this place.
So, friends at the time said, “Oh you can just open Mother’s right now,” and I said, “No I need to have the credentials, I need to have the education behind me, so I enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America…then people said, “Oh now you can, you know everything,” and I said, “No I don’t know everything.” I said, “I need to work in Four Star restaurants and learn their way to run things and I can apply it to the mother food I want to serve, and that what I did.

And then…No, I still didn’t think I knew enough, so I went to Europe and cooked in Europe for a little while. And…No, I still didn’t feel like I knew enough, so I felt like I had to be a chef at a restaurant, before I’m actually the chef of my own restaurant. So I paid my dues for eight long years before opening Mother’s after having the idea.

That is a long journey and worth it! How did Mamma Mia’s come into the picture?

Well, I had been living in Portland for, a guess about five years and I couldn’t get Chicken Parmesan, or spaghetti and meatballs or homemade mozzarella to save my life! And I just wanted to eat that kind of food and I tried all the places around town. Some of it was o.k. but the sauces were tired and had probably sat for hours…and it wasn’t the kind of food I had when I grew up in Philly and New York.

I decided if I want to get the kind of food I want to eat, I have to make it myself. I started looking for a location, and then got a call from a landlord of Elephant and Castle…well I got a call from a real estate agent of the landlord and he said, “Are you looking for another location,” and I said, “Wow, ironically I am.” I said, “Why do you ask?” He said, “Well, we’re looking for a tenant like you, so I figured I might as well call you.” And I thought about it and the rest is history.

How are the Mothers selected each month, to feature on the menu?

It varies, I’ll give you an example. Well…sometimes I’ll look for a particular mother, so if it’s March, I’ll ask everyone I know who’s Irish if they have an Irish mother so I can have a Irish mother for St. Patrick’s Day or for May I’ll try and find a Mexican mother so I can have a Cinco De Mayo mother, then the whole month will be that.

Other times they’ll fall from the sky. There was one month where I was working with someone from New Orleans and as we were approaching getting the dishes…he was representing this woman and she was a friend of the family, and thought she’d be a good mother and as we’re part way into the discussions, he says, “What does she get paid?”

And I said, “Uh…nothing, I buy you a meal, her and the family a meal and that’s the payback.” “Oh, well, if she’s not gonna get paid and your not going to fly her out here, etc,” he said. So that fell through.

I didn’t know what I was going to do for my next mother and that very day in the mail was a cookbook…the woman’s daughter had read about me in USA Today, she knew her mother had a cookbook, she told her mother to send it to me. The daughter was in Saudi Arabia, the mother was in Texas…and lo and behold I got this great cookbook that I used for that month. In fact one of the dishes that we ran that month has become a staple on our menu…Faye’s Chicken Salad.

Really? What a great story!

Yeah…October we had Nancy Hammeran who was brought to me by a friend. People in my dinning room say, “Oh I love your food and oh by the way, I wrote a cookbook (or) here it is,” they’ll say…O.K., she’ll probably be my next mother. Usually if they make it easier on me, it makes it easier to happen.

Some mothers, people send them to me…they come to me in many different ways.

And people can nominate a mother?

Absolutely! Always looking for new mothers.

You know, in doing these interviews with other restaurant owners, one of them said, “I always tell people, if you want to see a well oiled and run machine, go to Mother’s and have brunch or lunch.”

They’re amazing. You know, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum, I mean it takes a lot of vigilance. I’m in the window tasting the food everyday and if it’s not me, it’s somebody who’s been trained by me:I’m in the dining room making sure the guests are getting their water filled, and they are happy…It’s a lot of hard work, but this is my dining room, and the people here are my guests, so I want to take care of them as if they were in…my dining room.

And your energy is present in both places, you can feel it.

I do have amazing people who get it. Like you know, people who work for me either get it or they don’t. The people who get it stay, they’re happy, they make our guests happy and I’m happy. And the people that don’t get it, well they don’t last and they’re not here to talk about it.

Rob Sample (Schroder's partner) and Lisa Schroder

Well…(laughs) First one question might be, well, maybe I wasn’t mothered enough…so I’ve got to mother the world, but that goes very deep. It is a…I feel that there’s a real gap in the culinary world for the two things that I serve. Motherly Italian food and home cooking from mother’s around the world.

In both my restaurants I feel I fill a void in the culinary community in Portland, but as far as Mother’s is concerned, in the world. There’s not many restaurants that serve mother food from around the world, each month showing the cuisine of a different mother. So I feel driven to do it because nobody’s doing it and the world needs it and I know I need it.

With the Italian food, Portlanders were used to Sylvia’s (closed now) as the restaurant to go to for great Italian. Yet, when I went there my food was o.k., and one of the gals in my party was totally miffed at the manicotti…she said it was horrible. My entree wouldn’t be comparable to what I’ve had at Mama Mia’s.

I think sometimes we get a bad rap because people equate that kind of food with bad food, because it did get tired over the years. They’ve been in the business for a long time, they forgot how to make things fresh and delicious.

So I take the culinary techniques I learned in cooking school and the four star restaurants and apply it to mother food and mother Italian food, so it’s that but it’s better. Our sauce doesn’t sit on a burner all day long. No! It’s heated when you order it. We use the best tomatoes we can buy, the best ground beef we can buy, the best pork. It’s all those flavors but kicked up a notch with quality ingredients and love. We put love in everything we do.

And it shows.

Thank you! It matters to me, every guest matters to me. If I call to my staff, “Run this food! Run this food!” it’s because I’ve got food that hot and I don’t want it to get a second colder. Because food should be enjoyed hot.

Why am I driven to do that? I guess I’m driven to do things a well as I possibly can. That applies to the way it’s cooked, the way it’s served, the way it’s cleared, and how you’re greeted at the door. I tell my staff, “Your the first face somebody sees, show them happiness and joy and the rest of their experience here can only get better.

Is it the same here as it is at Mama Mia’s? Everything is made fresh?

Yes…we make everything fresh, nothing is pre-made, nothing comes from a can. I have bakeries call me and say, “Hey, do you want to buy our stuff wholesale?” Well, no, we’ll make it ourselves. We do make the bread on the tables at Mother’s, but we do buy the bread for our sandwiches because, quite frankly, Pearl Bakery makes the best baguettes as far as I’m concerned, so that what I serve at Mamma Mia.

I don’t have the kind of ovens to make the kind of French and Italian breads that these bakeries can. We make our own manicotti shells, we make our own ravioli – stuffing each one, our own pierogi here, and the gnocchi.

The garlic bread you serve is pure heaven!

Thank you – I tested all the breads in town and all the different ratios of butter…glad you like it.

Why do you think people gravitate towards comfort food?

You know it’s funny, when I had the idea back in 1992, everybody was talking about comfort food and I thought, “Oh my God, I have this idea, but I have to pay my dues first, I’m not ready to open today.” As the years went on and on and I opened up Mother’s, and 9/11 happened the year after and everybody was going back to the warm and comfort and the feeling of home. I think that…when I first had for Mother’s I felt that the world needed a place that served mother food because…there were two reason.

One, no one else did it, but number two, people stopped cooking at home. There was a time when people would go to a restaurant or something other than home cooking. You wouldn’t go out to a restaurant to order meatloaf, because your mother made it every Monday. But now…mothers don’t make anything anymore. Mother’s has to exists to give the world those kinds of foods that people want to eat again, because it’s from what they remember in their youth…or it’s something they never had because their mothers never cooked.

I’ll 70 year old men say, “Oh my God, I just tasted this biscuit and it was like I’m standing right next to my mother!” So it brings back memories, but it also gives memories for the future.

I think there’s a shift happening. Where we are going back to things like one on one communication, comfort food…it’s almost…Not a backlash to technology.

Right! You’re right. Whether it’s the knitting craze or the Do-It-Yourself craze. But also people going back to cooking at home for a few reasons…they have less disposable income to use on things like eating out, and there is more of a desire of being home with the family, understanding what’s important. Maybe acquiring goods is not as important as spending time with the ones that you love. In the hearth and in the home is a great way to do it.

The plan was always to write the book…for example in the soup chapter there’s a recipe that serves 10-12. The expectation is that you make that extra soup so you can have quart containers in your freezer and have two meals out of one, using the same heat. You know we have to conserve energy, so what’s better than a pot of soup that you use the same energy to make enough for 14 as you would for four. The book was written with left-overs in mind.

Let’s talk about the book…are they all of your recipes or is it a mix of the mothers featured?

It’s called “Mother’s Best” and that’s what it is, it’s a synthesis of the best recipes and the best dishes we’ve served here at Mother’s Bistro and Bar, Mamma Mia Trattoria and the mothers we’ve featured over the years.

It’s written in the voice of a mother teaching her adult child how to cook. There’s a lot of information there that you can read or not. If you want to know why I tell you to use a tall cylindrical pot to make your chicken stock, the answer is there. There’s also “Love Notes” – again, do you want to know why I’m telling you to do it? There it is…do you want to be just like a robot, you don’t have to read the notes. There’s lots of hand-holding, explanation, kind of the philosophy – you know the “Teach a man to fish he eats for his lifetime, give a man a fish…whadda ya got? One meal.” So that philosophy is throughout the book, with lots of reasons and wherefores.

There’s one other thing in the book that no one else has. Pull three cookbooks off your shelf, see how many of those books give you salt and pepper measurements. Usually, they say, ‘Salt and Pepper to taste’ and in “Mother’s Best” we give you salt and pepper measurements so you get an idea of what it should taste like.

I say, “Try a couple of recipes with my quantities and if it’s not to your liking, change it!,” but if you follow it you’ll know how something should taste. (the manager brings over the copy of the book) Oh…here’s the book if you want to look at it, this one’s in black and white, but it’ll be full color.

Wow…and how long did it take you to do this?

Eight years…I started in 2001. You know, the proposals, the first talks about it…it was always in the master plan. Concerted effort of actual writing, probably a year and a half.

This is amazing…

You see there…there’s the “Love Notes” – like why do you use beef-chuck. I’ll give you an example of hand-holding. (Flipping through the book) “Heat the oven to 350º and arrange the beef in a single layer on the baking sheet. This is a great tool for spreading out the ingredients to be seasoned and to hold cooked meat while browning.”
See…so that’s why you want to use your baking sheet instead of a plate. Or…you know…Brown the pieces on all sides, using tongs to turn them. Transfer them back to the baking sheet when they finish browning and add more meat to the pot as room allows. It’s ok to use the baking sheet that had the raw meat, because the meat will be full cook later.

These tips are great and for good reason. There’s a story about a woman who baked the family holiday ham, every year she’d always cut the ends off. Her daughter asked why she did it and her mother said it was just what her mother always did. So they call her mother, and she said, “Well, because my pan was too small.” Had nothing to do with the taste or prep.

See? That’s why I explain these things.

In closing…I know most people don’t taught what they do for causes and non-profits…but I know you do a lot for the LGBTIQ community. I know you were the honorary chair for the Our House Dinner series in 2007 and before, and the annual dinner you host at Mama Mia’s for Our House.

I was the chair for two years…I been very involved in Basic Rights Oregon, since it the “No on 9” campaign. When I opened Mother’s in 2001, it was “No on 9” and then 36, and so on. I feel it’s a human rights issue. To me, all people are equal and deserve equal rights. I can’t sit idly by while there’s a segment of the population that can’t live life the way they want to. It’s just not ethical for me to not do something about it.

I fight for human rights and freedom, and women and children causes. I’m a survivor of domestic violence, so I help the Bradley Angle House as much as I can. I believe in human rights so I’m there with Basic Rights Oregon.

So Basic Rights Oregon and Our House. I just happen to be a major fan of drag, so I’ve been a judge a Le Femme Magnifique last year, and then a judge at the Drag Races (the local version of RuPaul’s Drag Race) and I was once a supporter of what once was, “The D Word” at Red Cap Garage, but it’s gone bye-bye. We have a drag hostess for our Cabaret Karaoke, last Thursdays of every month.

Cascade Aids Project, I donated food at their Art Auction, although I didn’t this year. usually when I’m asked, I’ll say yes, particularly…my cause célèbre is Basic Rights and the LGBTIQ community.

Mother’s Best is now available on Amazon.com and at Powell’s City of Books.

Mother’s Bistro 503. 464.1122 • 212 SW Stark
Mama Mia’s Tratettoria 503. 295.6464 • 439 SW 2nd Ave.

Since the year 2001, Portland has been in love Mother’s Bistro. The food is amazing and best of all, it serves the most pleasurable food of all…Comfort food. Full disclosure? I am a bit biased. This restaurant has been a brunch favorite since it opened. Years later, just when you thought owner Lisa Schroder couldn’t step it up a notch, Schroder and her partner Rob Sample opened Mama Mia’s Tratatoria in the same building, on the opposite corner of the block. Mother’s Bistro is at 212 SW Stark Street, Mama Mia’s at 439 SW 2nd Ave.

I sat down with Schroder at Mother’s to discuss the history of the restaurants and her support of the LGBTIQ community.

id Magazine: Tell me how this all came to be, Mother’s and Mama Mia’s.

Lisa Schroder: Back in 1992 I was working for Weight Watchers International, in marketing, trying to get people to buy things they didn’t necessarily need…and I was simultaneously doing catering on the side. So I’d leave work and I read about food and think about food, and I would prepare food for others, but my family went without because I was so busy working and doing this other stuff. And I realized, well, we can do take out food – I could get Thai, Chinese, Mexican and pizza, but when it came to the kind of food that I would make my family if I had the time…there was no place to get it.

I also realized that there were a lot of restaurants around the country called Mother’s, but none of them served the kind of food mothers would make if they had the time. So back in 1992 I had the epiphany that the world needed a place to serve mother food.

Everything I did for eight years after that was getting me ready to open this place.
So, friends at the time said, “Oh you can just open Mother’s right now,” and I said, “No I need to have the credentials, I need to have the education behind me, so I enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America…then people said, “Oh now you can, you know everything,” and I said, “No I don’t know everything.” I said, “I need to work in Four Star restaurants and learn their way to run things and I can apply it to the mother food I want to serve, and that what I did.

And then…No, I still didn’t think I knew enough, so I went to Europe and cooked in Europe for a little while. And…No, I still didn’t feel like I knew enough, so I felt like I had to be a chef at a restaurant, before I’m actually the chef of my own restaurant. So I paid my dues for eight long years before opening Mother’s after having the idea.

That is a long journey and worth it! How did Mamma Mia’s come into the picture?

Well, I had been living in Portland for, a guess about five years and I couldn’t get Chicken Parmesan, or spaghetti and meatballs or homemade mozzarella to save my life! And I just wanted to eat that kind of food and I tried all the places around town. Some of it was o.k. but the sauces were tired and had probably sat for hours…and it wasn’t the kind of food I had when I grew up in Philly and New York.

I decided if I want to get the kind of food I want to eat, I have to make it myself. I started looking for a location, and then got a call from a landlord of Elephant and Castle…well I got a call from a real estate agent of the landlord and he said, “Are you looking for another location,” and I said, “Wow, ironically I am.” I said, “Why do you ask?” He said, “Well, we’re looking for a tenant like you, so I figured I might as well call you.” And I thought about it and the rest is history.

How are the Mothers selected each month, to feature on the menu?

It varies, I’ll give you an example. Well…sometimes I’ll look for a particular mother, so if it’s March, I’ll ask everyone I know who’s Irish if they have an Irish mother so I can have a Irish mother for St. Patrick’s Day or for May I’ll try and find a Mexican mother so I can have a Cinco De Mayo mother, then the whole month will be that.

Other times they’ll fall from the sky. There was one month where I was working with someone from New Orleans and as we were approaching getting the dishes…he was representing this woman and she was a friend of the family, and thought she’d be a good mother and as we’re part way into the discussions, he says, “What does she get paid?”

And I said, “Uh…nothing, I buy you a meal, her and the family a meal and that’s the payback.” “Oh, well, if she’s not gonna get paid and your not going to fly her out here, etc,” he said. So that fell through.

I didn’t know what I was going to do for my next mother and that very day in the mail was a cookbook…the woman’s daughter had read about me in USA Today, she knew her mother had a cookbook, she told her mother to send it to me. The daughter was in Saudi Arabia, the mother was in Texas…and lo and behold I got this great cookbook that I used for that month. In fact one of the dishes that we ran that month has become a staple on our menu…Faye’s Chicken Salad.

Really? What a great story!

Yeah…October we had Nancy Hammeran who was brought to me by a friend. People in my dinning room say, “Oh I love your food and oh by the way, I wrote a cookbook (or) here it is,” they’ll say…O.K., she’ll probably be my next mother. Usually if they make it easier on me, it makes it easier to happen.

Some mothers, people send them to me…they come to me in many different ways.

And people can nominate a mother?

Absolutely! Always looking for new mothers.

You know, in doing these interviews with other restaurant owners, one of them said, “I always tell people, if you want to see a well oiled and run machine, go to Mother’s and have brunch or lunch.”

They’re amazing. You know, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum, I mean it takes a lot of vigilance. I’m in the window tasting the food everyday and if it’s not me, it’s somebody who’s been trained by me:I’m in the dining room making sure the guests are getting their water filled, and they are happy…It’s a lot of hard work, but this is my dining room, and the people here are my guests, so I want to take care of them as if they were in…my dining room.

And your energy is present in both places, you can feel it.

I do have amazing people who get it. Like you know, people who work for me either get it or they don’t. The people who get it stay, they’re happy, they make our guests happy and I’m happy. And the people that don’t get it, well they don’t last and they’re not here to talk about it.

Rob Sample (Schroder's partner) and Lisa Schroder

Well…(laughs) First one question might be, well, maybe I wasn’t mothered enough…so I’ve got to mother the world, but that goes very deep. It is a…I feel that there’s a real gap in the culinary world for the two things that I serve. Motherly Italian food and home cooking from mother’s around the world.

In both my restaurants I feel I fill a void in the culinary community in Portland, but as far as Mother’s is concerned, in the world. There’s not many restaurants that serve mother food from around the world, each month showing the cuisine of a different mother. So I feel driven to do it because nobody’s doing it and the world needs it and I know I need it.

With the Italian food, Portlanders were used to Sylvia’s (closed now) as the restaurant to go to for great Italian. Yet, when I went there my food was o.k., and one of the gals in my party was totally miffed at the manicotti…she said it was horrible. My entree wouldn’t be comparable to what I’ve had at Mama Mia’s.

I think sometimes we get a bad rap because people equate that kind of food with bad food, because it did get tired over the years. They’ve been in the business for a long time, they forgot how to make things fresh and delicious.

So I take the culinary techniques I learned in cooking school and the four star restaurants and apply it to mother food and mother Italian food, so it’s that but it’s better. Our sauce doesn’t sit on a burner all day long. No! It’s heated when you order it. We use the best tomatoes we can buy, the best ground beef we can buy, the best pork. It’s all those flavors but kicked up a notch with quality ingredients and love. We put love in everything we do.

And it shows.

Thank you! It matters to me, every guest matters to me. If I call to my staff, “Run this food! Run this food!” it’s because I’ve got food that hot and I don’t want it to get a second colder. Because food should be enjoyed hot.

Why am I driven to do that? I guess I’m driven to do things a well as I possibly can. That applies to the way it’s cooked, the way it’s served, the way it’s cleared, and how you’re greeted at the door. I tell my staff, “Your the first face somebody sees, show them happiness and joy and the rest of their experience here can only get better.

Is it the same here as it is at Mama Mia’s? Everything is made fresh?

Yes…we make everything fresh, nothing is pre-made, nothing comes from a can. I have bakeries call me and say, “Hey, do you want to buy our stuff wholesale?” Well, no, we’ll make it ourselves. We do make the bread on the tables at Mother’s, but we do buy the bread for our sandwiches because, quite frankly, Pearl Bakery makes the best baguettes as far as I’m concerned, so that what I serve at Mamma Mia.

I don’t have the kind of ovens to make the kind of French and Italian breads that these bakeries can. We make our own manicotti shells, we make our own ravioli – stuffing each one, our own pierogi here, and the gnocchi.

The garlic bread you serve is pure heaven!

Thank you – I tested all the breads in town and all the different ratios of butter…glad you like it.

Why do you think people gravitate towards comfort food?

You know it’s funny, when I had the idea back in 1992, everybody was talking about comfort food and I thought, “Oh my God, I have this idea, but I have to pay my dues first, I’m not ready to open today.” As the years went on and on and I opened up Mother’s, and 9/11 happened the year after and everybody was going back to the warm and comfort and the feeling of home. I think that…when I first had for Mother’s I felt that the world needed a place that served mother food because…there were two reason.

One, no one else did it, but number two, people stopped cooking at home. There was a time when people would go to a restaurant or something other than home cooking. You wouldn’t go out to a restaurant to order meatloaf, because your mother made it every Monday. But now…mothers don’t make anything anymore. Mother’s has to exists to give the world those kinds of foods that people want to eat again, because it’s from what they remember in their youth…or it’s something they never had because their mothers never cooked.

I’ll 70 year old men say, “Oh my God, I just tasted this biscuit and it was like I’m standing right next to my mother!” So it brings back memories, but it also gives memories for the future.

I think there’s a shift happening. Where we are going back to things like one on one communication, comfort food…it’s almost…Not a backlash to technology.

Right! You’re right. Whether it’s the knitting craze or the Do-It-Yourself craze. But also people going back to cooking at home for a few reasons…they have less disposable income to use on things like eating out, and there is more of a desire of being home with the family, understanding what’s important. Maybe acquiring goods is not as important as spending time with the ones that you love. In the hearth and in the home is a great way to do it.

The plan was always to write the book…for example in the soup chapter there’s a recipe that serves 10-12. The expectation is that you make that extra soup so you can have quart containers in your freezer and have two meals out of one, using the same heat. You know we have to conserve energy, so what’s better than a pot of soup that you use the same energy to make enough for 14 as you would for four. The book was written with left-overs in mind.

Let’s talk about the book…are they all of your recipes or is it a mix of the mothers featured?

It’s called “Mother’s Best” and that’s what it is, it’s a synthesis of the best recipes and the best dishes we’ve served here at Mother’s Bistro and Bar, Mamma Mia Trattoria and the mothers we’ve featured over the years.

It’s written in the voice of a mother teaching her adult child how to cook. There’s a lot of information there that you can read or not. If you want to know why I tell you to use a tall cylindrical pot to make your chicken stock, the answer is there. There’s also “Love Notes” – again, do you want to know why I’m telling you to do it? There it is…do you want to be just like a robot, you don’t have to read the notes. There’s lots of hand-holding, explanation, kind of the philosophy – you know the “Teach a man to fish he eats for his lifetime, give a man a fish…whadda ya got? One meal.” So that philosophy is throughout the book, with lots of reasons and wherefores.

There’s one other thing in the book that no one else has. Pull three cookbooks off your shelf, see how many of those books give you salt and pepper measurements. Usually, they say, ‘Salt and Pepper to taste’ and in “Mother’s Best” we give you salt and pepper measurements so you get an idea of what it should taste like.

I say, “Try a couple of recipes with my quantities and if it’s not to your liking, change it!,” but if you follow it you’ll know how something should taste. (the manager brings over the copy of the book) Oh…here’s the book if you want to look at it, this one’s in black and white, but it’ll be full color.

Wow…and how long did it take you to do this?

Eight years…I started in 2001. You know, the proposals, the first talks about it…it was always in the master plan. Concerted effort of actual writing, probably a year and a half.

This is amazing…

You see there…there’s the “Love Notes” – like why do you use beef-chuck. I’ll give you an example of hand-holding. (Flipping through the book) “Heat the oven to 350º and arrange the beef in a single layer on the baking sheet. This is a great tool for spreading out the ingredients to be seasoned and to hold cooked meat while browning.”
See…so that’s why you want to use your baking sheet instead of a plate. Or…you know…Brown the pieces on all sides, using tongs to turn them. Transfer them back to the baking sheet when they finish browning and add more meat to the pot as room allows. It’s ok to use the baking sheet that had the raw meat, because the meat will be full cook later.

These tips are great and for good reason. There’s a story about a woman who baked the family holiday ham, every year she’d always cut the ends off. Her daughter asked why she did it and her mother said it was just what her mother always did. So they call her mother, and she said, “Well, because my pan was too small.” Had nothing to do with the taste or prep.

See? That’s why I explain these things.

In closing…I know most people don’t taught what they do for causes and non-profits…but I know you do a lot for the LGBTIQ community. I know you were the honorary chair for the Our House Dinner series in 2007 and before, and the annual dinner you host at Mama Mia’s for Our House.

I was the chair for two years…I been very involved in Basic Rights Oregon, since it the “No on 9” campaign. When I opened Mother’s in 2001, it was “No on 9” and then 36, and so on. I feel it’s a human rights issue. To me, all people are equal and deserve equal rights. I can’t sit idly by while there’s a segment of the population that can’t live life the way they want to. It’s just not ethical for me to not do something about it.

I fight for human rights and freedom, and women and children causes. I’m a survivor of domestic violence, so I help the Bradley Angle House as much as I can. I believe in human rights so I’m there with Basic Rights Oregon.

So Basic Rights Oregon and Our House. I just happen to be a major fan of drag, so I’ve been a judge a Le Femme Magnifique last year, and then a judge at the Drag Races (the local version of RuPaul’s Drag Race) and I was once a supporter of what once was, “The D Word” at Red Cap Garage, but it’s gone bye-bye. We have a drag hostess for our Cabaret Karaoke, last Thursdays of every month.

Cascade Aids Project, I donated food at their Art Auction, although I didn’t this year. usually when I’m asked, I’ll say yes, particularly…my cause célèbre is Basic Rights and the LGBTIQ community.

Mother’s Best is now available on Amazon.com and at Powell’s City of Books.

Mother’s Bistro 503. 464.1122 • 212 SW Stark
Mama Mia’s Tratettoria 503. 295.6464 • 439 SW 2nd Ave.

id Magazine: How did you decide to pursue a career in the restaurant business?

Sean Concannon: It was a decision in 9th grade…It was that or horticulture. I new I would never get sick of eating food, and my mother wasn’t exactly a very good cook. She was a nutritional cook, but wasn’t a very good one. So it was taking destiny into my own hands for one, but the other side is I just new I’d never get sick of food…I could see get sick of having plants all my life.

You were an Executive Chef for the Performing Arts Center (PAC)?

I was. That was the first position I had when I moved here five years ago. I did that for one full season of the theater. They opened the Art Bar, it was under construction when I applied for the job, they just didn’t have a chef in place. I was fortunate enough to get the position…and it was a lot of fun! Throwing parties for the arts is fun, you know…everyone’s already going out for a good time, and their anticipation level wasn’t as critical or scrutinizing. We had three venues.

West Cafe…is the menu here rotational, seasonal or does it stay the same?

It’s actually seasonal and it’s really pretty much two seasons, that is what we’ve experienced with the Oregon palette. It migrates from the rainy season and the sunny season. That’s what we have morphed into. We originally started thinking we were going to do four seasons, but there’s only three in essence…so that’s kind of where it ended up.

I noticed that you specify on your menu, nutritional foods, fresh…do you you use local venders and the farmers markets?

We do use local vendors…Sheridan Produce is one of the companies and they actually support the Sauvie’s Island farmers and local vendors as much as they can. They’re from the 1920’s so they have that deep Portland connection, they keep Portland alive and support local businesses. It is nice to go through them, for me to go to the farmers market would be difficult to negotiate a fair price…it would put us in a bracket that we couldn’t afford to sell for under $20… I think there will come a point when the economy gets better, and they have product to offer they’ll come around and offer to restaurants, but when they’re at the market, they can’t offer it on two tiers.

How would you describe your food here…I know it’s fresh and nutritional, but how would classify it?

We’re thinking in about year five, we’ll launch a contest where someone can come up with our tag line, exactly what it is. Simply Inspired…is what we have at this point. people ask me what kind of food I serve…it’s fresh, we don’t fry anything, it doesn’t have a title that’s catchy for the American mentality to understand. It’s American Cuisine…it’s probably more along the lines of a Mediterranean diet…In that you’re eating more fresh vegetables and less carbohydrates and less protein, not the gargantuan portions, but ample portions that, you know, sustain us. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

I can’t pigeon-hole it…and nobody else can! I say to people, “Sit down, have some and tell me what you think,” and they’re like, “I don’t know what to tell you…” Mostly it’s whenever the vegetables are growing is what comes on the menu…I think we migrate-eat that way, you know…When the dark days come around, yeah, we hunker down and eat more meat, and creamy things…so I just try to go with that, but keep it healthy.
We do have that back philosophy, “Feed ‘Em Don’t Fatten ‘Em.”

Do you make everything fresh here? Or do you use vendors mostly?

We do…we have a bakeress lady who does nine tenths of our baking, then we sub-contract things out that are specialty items and that’s the on premises thing we bring in. They’re all done for us, so it’s not like I’m going to Safeway or Costco. Yes, it’s all fresh ingredients, homemade.

I noticed you have live music here…you host events like that here too?

We do have live jazz on Saturdays…it’s primarily because of our location is not a destination, people aren’t just traveling by and what have you…so in order to fill that void, because the construction stopped (he points) this was supposed to be a condo building right across the street…there was supposed to be more dynamic in the area, and there will be down the road. We thought, well, let’s put a little life in the place on Saturday nights, because the neighbors that here will join us all week long…but they go out on the weekend to the Pearl or the East side because that is their specialty. In order to bring folks into the neighborhood we launched that program.

We have a lovely line up on our blog…generally each Saturday is assigned to a different artist so there’s a regularity for people who enjoy certain artists, they know it’s like the first Saturday of the month for that artist. We now have a male vocalist, it started out with a female vocalist with accompanist, so it’s ambient, not the show blaring throughout…we’re into the ambiance, so it’s more background, you can talk over it if you want.

I also saw wine tastings?

Yes, every third Tuesday we do a wine tasting. It’s $35 per person, it is five small plates paired with five samples of wines…it’s a steal! I think it’s a price we can all live with to have an evening out with our friends, encumber you with all this information…it’s just to make you familiar with wines perhaps you’ve never tried before, we do give some tasting notice to remember them by…and we have a great following with that. It’s just one of those things that builds community, because we’re a neighborhood.

What drives your passion for the food you serve and the hospitality you provide our customers?

Well…I think to start…I think by nature we all have within us these enate characteristics…some of us are caregivers and some of us are providers or you may be a doer, and I do think that the gene I got from my grandmother, who was really the cook in the family…she was always a generous soul. She enjoyed entertaining, and it just comes natural to me…I grew up in a large family with eight children, so I was kind of used to all of that activity around me…that controlled chaos. Food to me…it’s a celebration, it’s more than just a means to sustain ourselves and our health. there’s lots of ways you can finesse it and love it to the table and it shows…and you can feel that in restaurants you go to, if the chef’s having a bad day…it’s just an average meal in front of you, but then another day it’s spectacular.

The reason is that someone paid more attention to it and care for it.Dinner is the last thing I do…so if I sit down to the dinner table, then the rest of the day is mine…sometimes that’s ten o’clock at night because the restaurant still needs to be run, but that meal is important to me, that I can have the rest of the day to myself…and that it’s the conclusion of my day.

Has the economy affected your business?

I think it’s affected all of the restaurant industry. I think what we’ve noticed is those that are less hands-on and management heavy have taken a bigger hit because labor is the single most expensive thing in the restaurant as far as costs. Doug and I are very hands-on, and we became even more hands-on…but I have to say, it’s been our best year. Because we have minded our P’s and Q’s, the bottom line has been creeping up. It has been certainly rewarding, knowing that we’ve been surfing through this era, but also that our efforts aren’t in vain…it’s not just keeping it level, it has actually increased.

I think Portland is a slower town to accept new businesses or change routines…so like on the east coast, they say if your restaurant makes it in the first year you’re golden. But I think it’s a two year qualifier out here because people don’t change their habits readily and venture out to new venues and appreciate them on the same level. They peek in here and there, but they go back to their other habits…which loyalty goes a long way. That’s just my observation, the growth is slower here.

I don’t know the ratio per capita in Portland, but there are so many restaurants in Portland, you couldn’t eat at all of them in your lifetime…someone I talked to said they had never been here, and finally came to have dinner and were delighted.

That’s good to hear! That’s always nice to hear. We’ve had an incredibly loyal following since day one…even when it was slower in that first year, we were reassured that we were on the right track…just the compliment of returns and sharing it with their friends, but also getting to know them and hearing their honest opinion. It’s been nice in that slow growth that we have been able to get to know our guests and appreciate them as individuals as opposed to a cluster of people.

I know you’re a PABA (Portland Area Business Association) member, and you are hosting an Our House dinner in their dinner series?

Yes, we were going to launch it in the summer, but it’s kind of a progressive thing. Michelle’s Pianos just down the street, we were going to start with a concert there and still will, but we’re turning it into more of a Christmas concert, seasonal. We moved it to December and we’ll do a 45 minute piano concert and have appetizers and wine down there…then bring the group back here and sit down for dinner and desert.

That sounds great!

Yes! It was Darcy White’s brainchild…she’s a customer who came up with it and when I heard it, I jumped on it because I thought it would be a fun thing to do. Our House is an incredible organization. If people don’t know what it is, they should go to the web site or tour the facility.

West Cafe 503. 227.8189 • 1201 SW Jefferson St

id Magazine: What made you pursue a career in the restaurant business?

Michael Cox: I have always been in the restaurant business, my parents owned a restaurant supply business. They helped me get my first job as a dishwasher in their friends restaurant when I was 13…child labor you know (we laugh)
We didn’t care about child labor back in Colorado…so I have have just always been in the restaurant business…you know, it’s one of those things that it is kind of addictive. There’s the front of the house, so there’s the immediate gratification and cash, and I got tired of working for other people…had this vision one day and…here we are.

You describe the menu “eclectic American with Northwest flair”?

I would say more like Northwest fair with a European flair…for one thing we have changed chef’s over the years and have evolved, but we are definately heavy-handed in Italian and French influences…but you know, it’s the American way, a melting pot you know…American food by nature is sort of a fusion. In the old days we would have called it Continental Cuisine, right?

Does the menu rotate or is it seasonal?

We do seasonal changes, but the menu doesn’t exactly rotate…some things don’t change, somethings do change…some things are seasonal, others are not…

Do you have a signature dish?

Definately the baked Ziti Pasta, which has been on our menu for years and years, and our Chapino.

What is Chapino, for the newbie?

It’s a seafood stew, like the italian version of bolognese. It’s a brothy, tomato, mildly spicey stew with clams, mussels, shrimp and fish…whatever you have. Oh, our pork shoulder…it’s oil poached, which sounds odd, but it’s amazing and definatly a comfort food.

What’s oil poached?

It’s actually slow poached in a thing of oil, for hours and hours and hours…then it’s pressed…it’s not low calorie by the way. It just falls apart, it’s amazing.

I’ll have to try the Ziti dish next time I’m here…

That’s on the Happy Hour menu too. It’s different at Happy Hour, it’s vegetarian, on the dinner menu it comes with scallops, but you can have it without. Almost all of our…wherever possible, we have vegetarian options with most of our dishes if they are not automatically vegetarian…like the Cavatappi pasta with Itlaian sausage, you can have it without the sausage and the Risotto with Scallops, you can have it without the scallops. We do try to be vegetarian friendly, we also like to have some vegan items on our menu. As a matter of fact, our breakfast menu has an entire section of vegan choices.

How has business been?

Business has been interesting…you know we have one of the top ten patios back there, so that has been a huge draw in patio weather. In the days when it was summertime and I only had the dining room, I opened that big patio, summertime business was a lot different, much less…so with the patio, we do really well. We have the Recession Buster Menu, which is $10 entrees, and has been a good pull to bring people in.

We have a happy hour…people are looking to save money, so you have to have that range…so we have some spendy items on our menu, but we have options available that people can afford.

The Recession Buster menu is available all the time?

Well, for dinner. You know breakfast and lunch is a whole different thing, We’re kind of like a schizophrenic restaurant (I laugh) we’re open for breakfast and lunch and that’s like one restaurant, and then dinner is another restaurant.

What is “The Red Velvet Lounge” part of the restaurant?

“The Red Velvet Lounge” – actually I’m beginning to get rid of the “The Red Velvet Lounge” part over time, I’m going to have a new sign that will say, Wild Abandon Restaurant and Lounge. “The Red Velvet Lounge” was something I did years ago to give people…to try and do away with this concept that Wild Abandon was this really facy expensive restaurant where you only went for special occasions. That’s how “The Red Velvet Lounge” was born. Obviously there is no separate space, they are a symbiotic thing. “The Red Velvet Lounge” and Wild Abandon occupied the same space, so you’d kind of decide what your doing, and that was the side you’re at.

Originally their was a curtain, a red velvet curtain…and the booths. They both showed up at the same time. So, beyond the curtain was the lounge, and before the curtain was the restaurant. That was the original concept, and then of course we never intended to sit people on one side of the curtain or the other, it was just sort of a gimmick. So people could, just come in and have cocktails and an appetizer. Then we came up with a burger on the menu and the Happy Hour, that was the whole reason for the “The Red Velvet Lounge.”

So it is too many words, a little confusing to people, so I’m going to get rid of “The Red Velvet Lounge” and just restaurant and lounge. Simple.

Do you feel like you have dimenished the fancy restaurant concept?

Yes, pretty much.

Do you make everything form scratch or do you have vendors?

We do…our mainstay bread is focaccia, we make that here. We do buy some bread form Grand Central bakery…that would be the only thing we don’t make from scratch. All of our desserts, our ice cream, our sorbe.

For your support of the LGBTIQ community, I know you do an Our House dinner?

I do…every year for my anniversary I do an Our House dinner. We give at least 50% of the proceeds for the entire night to Our House. There have been times where I’ve done more.

I noticed the great paintings here…Is the artwork on the walls here on a rotational basis?

Yes…except that one (he points to a very large 60’s era mosaic piece) all the others change about every six weeks. That one was given to me by a customer on her way out of town, she moved to Canada. It was made by her father in 1965. He was a dentist…I always tell people it’s made out of human teeth. (I laugh) She said, “You have to have it, it belongs here in the restaurant,” and my house was built in 1965, so I had it there. I heard she was coming back to town for a party, so I had to bring it back down here so I wouldn’t get busted!

In closing…What drives your passion for making great food, and the hospitality you provide here?

What drives me…I don’t know. Maybe I should see a therapist to find out! (I laugh)

For example, is it bringing people together, building community? Creating and providing an experience maybe?

Definately…that…and of course having, as simple as having my own job and creating a life for myself. Something I can be in control of and love to do. I suppose the thing that is most satisfying to me, is to look out over the dining room when there’s customers and seeing people sharing a bottle of wine, having a good time…the music is Ella Fitzgerald in the background, the candles are lit, and the lights are low…looking out over that and watching that happen and getting the satisfaction that I created that.

Wild Abandon 503.232.4458 2411 SE Belmont

By Nikki Jardin

Grocery Gardening Planting, Preparing and Preserving Fresh Food is a new book by Portland author Jean Ann Van Krevelen that evolved from a collaborative process amongst its four authors and the community of people that Krevelen regularly communicates with through a variety of blogs and social networking.

Krevelen keeps current on five blogging sites as well as being continually active on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. All of the sites revolve around Krevelen’s love of all things foodie. Gardening is a central passion, but so is exploring the harvest of the Portland area and sharing recipes with her real-time friends and the virtual community she has created nationally.

We recently caught up with her in New York City, attending a conference on social media. Dashing on her way to lunch, we were able to talk for a few moments about the new book, the need for community and her desire to share practical information about food with people.

id Magazine: Congratulations on the new book, how is that coming along?

Jean Ann Krevelen: It’s going great and heading into the copy-editing phase right now. We do have a preview of the book up online for people to check out.

How did the idea of this type of gardening book come about? Why did you feel the need to create another gardening book?

You know, a lot of this book is based on collaboration from the community, and I’ve always felt that the goal of gardening is to be in collaboration with nature, so we really wanted to reflect that. Nobody has time to be completely self-sufficient, nor should they be really. We need community to help provide a collaborative aspect of ideas that are actionable.

In what way?

Well, people aren’t going to grow these giant gardens, this great ‘ideal’ achievement. That’s not what this book is about. It’s about how you can grow food, sure. But it’s also about how you can store it and, if you can’t grow it tells you how you can buy it. It gives you information on what foods may be more prone to pesticide residue. It helps you to make better decisions in the stores. It’s practical and it was designed that way. Who wants a gardening book that’s not practical?

How did you and your fellow authors determine what to include?

The book itself was created by what people dictated to me. It’s interesting, I’ve learned more about what other people want to know from me, what they want to hear about. I answer these kinds of (gardening and foodie) questions on Twitter and on Facebook. The work I do is really much more follower driven than anything else.

You are all over the Internet. How do you keep up with it all?

(Laughs) What’s funny is that I didn’t really know about social media, but it’s an ever-evolving process and I wanted to explore it more. The more I did I thought, ‘this is groovy,’ but it also seems to me very logical.

There is definitely increasing social awareness around food right now, do you think given that these major food corporations are going to have to change what they’re doing?

Well, we live in a bubble in Portland certainly, but there is a ground swell nationally and this movement is gaining support on how we view our food. But, let’s be honest, we surrendered control of our food a long time ago and it’s going to take time. I think of it in terms of how we look at cars. We aren’t going from gasoline to alternative fuels overnight. Bigger food corporations are going to take longer to make those changes but the difference is that people can take action now. Simple action, and that’s empowering to people.

For more information about Jean Ann Van Krevelen’s new book or to catch up on one of her food blogs, check out the following websites:

Grocery Gardening (book)
Follow Jean Ann on Twitter
Gardener to Farmer Blog
Portland Foodie Blog

Food is powerful currency. It has been as such since biblical times. For the importance of even the smallest of meals can feed a nation of people. Cultures and families are bound in their heritage thru the simplest of ingredients. Filling the bellies of those present in the ultimate expression of love. “Food is a great way to connect with people,” states baker and owner of little t american baker in SE Portland, Tim Healea. “When you share a passion for food, there’s an instant connection.”

Mr. Healea has been a resident of Portland for a dozen years liking life and the food scene available. “There are so many great places, but I tend to favor neighborhood restaurants like Tanuki, Biwa, and Toro Bravo,” he shares. Tim received his training from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City picking up baking as a profession, even though he admits not completing a baking and pastry program. Despite not having this formal classroom education skills were learned out in the field by interning and then becoming the head baker at Pearl Bakery. Travels to Germany, Austria, and Australia have also increased his exposure to taste, skills, and equipment. Also, attached to Heale’s resume is the 2002 World Cup of Baking competition in Paris for the U.S. team, which included a year of training from some of the top artisan bakers at the time around the country in preparation. Now, his talents in the field are in such demand that he travels to Japan for several weeks in the year teaching baking seminars with 9,000 students in attendance.

Now Tim Healea is focused on growing and developing his business little t american baker located at 2600 SE Division. Being back home in Portland reconnects him to the inspiration for his baking. “I started to develop a passion for food when living in New York City feeling little overwhelmed by the urban lifestyle. I really felt a desire to have a normal home life, so I started cooking,” Tim explains. Having his shop in Southeast Portland was ideal. “The neighborhood is fun, electric, and the residents really support local businesses. So I thought it was a good fit for a new artisan bakery. (Additionally) I think one of the great things about Portland food scene is that it’s very accessible. Meaning there’s a lot of good, affordable food here.” Heale certain does fit this model expected of our pallets and wallets. “We try to be as fresh as possible,” Tim adds, “So we do not start baking until a couple of hours before we open. There is nothing like having a sandwich made on bread that’s only out of the oven for less than an hour.”

The new fall menu at little t american baker introduces a new vegetarian sandwich of red and yellow roasted beets, Cypress Grove goat fromage blanc, house made pickled onions, organic greens, lightly dressed with their very own champagne vinaigrette, all on top of their very own seven grain carrot roll. Fall also brings new pastries to our case, including a nice plum frangipane tart, a gravenstein apple morning puff and a classic pear Danish. Also, they have started making the gibassier, a sweet bread from Provence with candied orange, orange flower water, anise and extra virgin olive oil. It’s Tim’s recipe from the 2002 World Cup of Baking.

Not only does Portland have many wonderful places to eat, some of them owned and operated by members of our GLBT community, but the Culinary Institute has many students identifying as queer. For any student of the culinary arts—classroom or home kitchen—Mr. Healea provides these morsels of advice. “Get hands-on experience in the industry. There is no substitute for learning in the real world and being comfortable in a professional kitchen. Being humble and learning in every situation is a huge asset. Even I fail at making things all the time, but now know how to make adjustments so that over several attempts the product is exactly the way I want it.” As a result of trial and error lessons in cooking or baking are gain. “People do not realize how complicated the wheat grain is (for baking) and how many varieties there are of what, each one best for specific purposes,” he shares.

Let us then all over Oregon continue to learn about the culinary arts be it at any level or specialty of flavor filling the air with wonderful smells. Cook well for yourself, the family, and even your friends. As food has been associated to the expression of love, let our meals expand such expression and definition in gay culture.

I was referred to Sarah Pool by a colleague, Chuck Arbuckle of Chuck Arbuckle Interiors at a networking function. He and I discussed the magazine and the stories we were working on. He instantly asked if I knew Sarah Pool. No, I had not met her, but when I did, I found she was so full of information, I wanted to include it all. Sarah’s business is Grow Me Organics where she specializes in backyard gardening for her clients. As you’ll see, we had plenty to cover, on sustainability, all the way through to California banning rain barrels.

id Magazine: How did you arrive at opening your own business?

Sara Pool: Well I have a background in landscaping and vegetable gardening and so it was really just the encouragement of my friends, who after a while, continually saw me working for other people just to kind of go out of my element, to become a bit more of a consultant. The backyard gardening thing, I had the idea that ironically other people were going in that direction, so it just kind of happened all at once.

Do most landscaping companies do that kind of service?
I specialize in backyard vegetable gardening, and I kind of had the idea of coming in and being a consultant, doing edible backyard gardens. But, since I have a background in landscaping, then that kind of helped the component of the consulting business. At the time, I did some research, and found another company here in Portland who had been doing something like that for a couple of years.

I noticed that you have a large array of services available…what are, for the newbies, what are native landscapes?

I advise my clients to go with native plants. Native plants support the native environment, both with the animals, the flora culture…and it’s a little more of a mimicry of what Mother Nature is really doing out there – as opposed to a humanistic approach, instead of going just ornamental. For example, certain bee balms, if they’re double flowered or peonies, sometimes that is an exchange of pollen. So if you go with a native type of plant, you actually are more able to sustain more of the wildlife, bee, and insect population.

Using plants that are native to this part of the country?

Especially in the Pacific Northwest. A lot of them are really important…like Milkweed; for example. Milkweed is the only plant that the Monarch butterfly will lay its larvae. All up and down the West coast we’ve pretty much taken most of that out with our highway construction. So there’s a movement to repopulate certain areas with Milkweed to flourish a certain insect. There are certain criteria that are needed in order to maintain more of a balance approach to nature.

That certainly makes sense; do you know of a group that is dedicated to taking out ivy?

Yes, there are a couple of groups in Washington and here in Oregon that really go out there and try to get rid of the English Ivy.

English Ivy…yes, that’s right! We’ve heard about a renegade group that goes out in all black clothing to attack the English ivy…

That’s interesting, because I have been going to the Green Team meetings with the Office of Sustainability, and they have been talking a lot about this idea of Guerilla Gardening and public use and private land, and how that is all shifting now, at least here in Portland, how our government is going to start approaching that so people have more access land like that in order to do garden projects.

Would that include more community gardens?

Yes! The City of Portland in their Climate Action Plan for 2009, I think is wanting 1,300 more community garden plots by the year 2012…so they really establish community gardens, eco-roofs…they want to extend the forest canopy over Portland, and just a really aggressive plan for reducing CO2 emissions.

Tell me about rain barrels…what are they?

Well, another issue with gardening is irrigation, but water usage is…if we could reuse water like grey water systems, rain barrels, or other collection devices, we could have a lot more access to water…without the chlorination and all the processing that needs to go into fresh water making. Rain barrels are really easy to put into a garden, and most of my clients are do-it-yourselfers, so I usually tell them the cheapest way to go, whatever water collection system works for them. It’s just a gravity system that basically plugs into your gutters, and it collects in one barrel. You can use it instead of using the City of Portland’s water or the reservoir water.

It’s illegal in California, so it’s kind of a rare treat for us.

Really? Wonder why that is?

I’m not sure why, but I’m sure it probably has to do with the health and sanitation. Recycling of rain water is somehow not permitted…especially on farms and in drought state it does sound ridiculous (we both laugh)

What are permaculture yards?

Permaculture is again, mixing nature…that includes everything like animals. Having urban chickens or ducks. Again with natives, so native bee and bird population. You know, just before talking with you, I was just watching a hummingbird and it was feeding out of a native plant, so it is really a way to bring in and already support what’s already going on. I think gardens thrive better when we act more as facilitators rather than controllers. So we need all of those animals, insects, birds, and worms…we need all of that, that’s what keeps a garden more pest or disease free.

Of all the services you offer, what would be your favorite area?

Definitely the edible vegetable gardening. I do maintaining of existing gardens, and can come in and help out with orchards, trimming an orchard tree, pruning trees. The food production has been the most important aspect for me. It’s the most fascinating to me, all the different varieties of everything so there’s different options to put food in and around your house.

Is there one service that is in more demand than others?

It’s funny, because when I usually come into do a vegetable garden or landscape consultation, people usually point out all sorts of things in their yard that they have questions about…so I think the consulting has been the most in demand because people are really interested in doing things and they want to know how to do things, but they’re not really sure what this bug is or why this plant doesn’t like being here. I think the quest for knowledge really.

Do you see the recession and the economy shifting people’s interests into the do-it-yourself gardening and that type of thing, like growing your own food? Rather than say, going to New Seasons etc?

I would say that is true for a certain percentage of the population. Because we have milk prices going up, and tomato prices are going up and yet our income isn’t going up. I think that part of the population is turning to gardening as a way of sustaining ourselves. Then with people where money is not an issue, saving money is attractive, but I think they think it’s important to teach their kids that, in order to have a certain respect for our planet in the future.

On your website, you list “weekly harvesting delivered to your door” – what does that entail?

The backyard gardening, beside the consulting, the other part of what I do is, people have backyard spaces. I come in once a week and plant new seeds, check and make sure everything is getting irrigated, check for any bugs. I do maintenance, and I come in and harvest the food and get it ready and put it at your door. Sometimes people have too many tomatoes or zucchini. Often times my clients are able to have a yard sharing they are able to have food that they didn’t necessarily grow, but they have a greater variety. That’s the other part of what I do.

Most of my clients don’t know how to grow food, but have the space to do it, or they just don’t have the time. It is really time-consuming, so I run that for them.

You mentioned yard sharing…If I have too many tomatoes or too much zucchini or squash, what would you recommend if I don’t have friends or family to take it off my hands?

First of all, the food bank is always accepting donations. You can drop it off at places like, I think Pistils Nursery and they deliver every day to the food bank. The other thing you can do is contact someone like me, or contact…gosh there’s so many places. I’ve always wanted people to have the opportunity to share with their neighborhood. I know there’s PortlandYardShare.com, and so there are many different forums that do that and have yard sharing.

What produce is available to grow year-round?

There are lots of ways you can extend your growing season. There are garden hoop houses, which are mini versions of a (at right, Pool doing what she does best, in the garden) greenhouse. A lot vegetables are really cold-hardy. So if you were to plant, say, arugula, Swiss chard, or any of your mustard greens, those can all be harvested throughout the winter, especially if they’re under a little hoop house. Other than that, you can keep things in the ground for a long time, for example, if you were to plant radishes or potatoes, rather than harvesting them and keeping them in your refrigerator, you can just leave them in the ground and take them as needed.

In October or November, I usually plant things like fava beans and garlic. Those will ripen in June, but they’ll survive the winter. During the winter I’ll always do mustard greens, just to keep greens going…then I’ll usually plant late harvests, so that I can harvest out of my yard the entire winter too.

Things like radishes, like small root vegetables do well. Certain kinds of beets are meant for really cold hardy, so if you were to plant them now, they’re a little bit smaller, but they’re really sweet…and you plant those and harvest the greens and the beet. Much of it is kind of knowing variety…there’s a purple broccoli you can plant and it’s ready in March. Snow peas, if you plant those, you’ll be harvesting through November…and shallots.

What about kale? I’ve never attempted to eat it, but you can grow it in the winter, correct?

Yes! I grow a TON of kale!

Do you grow it in the winter?

Yes…it’s great! You can make kale salad, kale soup…It’s really high in iron and all those good vitamins…and it is so winter hardy! Oh…it’s so good…I think it going to save the world! You know what I mean? (We both laugh)

People aren’t a huge fan of kale, because kale is a little bit of a thicker texture. You do, I think have to look into how to prepare it and you like it the best. I think it’s just great in all kinds of soup; I use the heck out of it.

I’m going to have to try that sometime…

Yes…and there’s like a Russian variety of kale…they are all really hardy, but it grows really big…there’s an Italian kale that grows pretty big…but it may not taste as well…there’s just so many different varieties of kale and a lot of those greens. It really has to do with catering to each persons cooking style. That’s what makes food and planting and gardening really fun…I think it really hinges on how you want to prepare food.

Can anyone do this kind of gardening? Or is it dependent on the space you have? I know it’s ideal to have a ten by ten-foot plot. If someone had, say, a concrete yard, could they do raised flower beds?

Sure…and I do condos, or patios who want to grow their own herbs. You can grow your own herbs and really off set a ton in terms of driving and the money you spend at the grocery store. As long as you have enough light, you can grow anything in any space.
I think that that’s really changing too…people are really starting to learn about different vertical methods. I mean, some people are planting things in Coke bottles and stringing them up from their windows and they grow right into their window. You know if you cut the bottom off of a Coke bottle and poke a hole through the lid, fill it with soil…people are taking rain gutters and taking them and putting them up against their house or apartment or whatever space they have and filling it with dirt and planting strawberries or whatever kind of thing that they can grow.

Really? Wow…

Oh yes, people are going all out to put food in any space. One of things I’m doing with a friend is setting up an aquaponics situation…which is where you have fish that produce ammonia, it turns into nitrogen, and that water is circulated through to the plants through a hydroponics system…so the plants grow using the water from the fish, and they filter out the waste product from the water and they recycle it back into the fish. S o it’s a closed loop system.

Nice! Is that close to…I know there is a way to grow plants without soil, is this close to that?

Yes, that’s hydroponics…the aqua comes from the aqua culture, so it’s the harvesting of edible fish…so if you were to take…there’s some different models…but there is a way to grow both your meat and plants without soil, completely circulating their own nutrients around.

Wow…that’s crazy…but great!

We’re going to start out with goldfish and see how it goes. But you know, in the future there’ll be all these different methods and ways of thinking of how we grow foods in our apartments or houses.

And the sky’s the limit! So let’s say I didn’t plant a fall or winter crop, do you have any suggestions of where to buy produce?

Yes, Coops and things like that…farmer’s markets shut down in the winter, although there is one farmers market that operates year-round. I like to think of it this way…we didn’t evolve to see gardening as a hobby or agriculture as a hobby…it was a necessity. When you think about it,…I plant things like buckwheat in my yard for a cover crop in the summer, and I can use that grain if I want to. If you plant fava beans and garlic right now, you’ll be eating out of your garden by June. So there’s really no time to not plant in my book… (we laugh)

There are other things too like Jerusalem artichokes or oca (pronounced oak-ah), those are tubors that were precursors to potatoes. I like to plant a lot of perennials, like the artichoke or oca, you can harvest those all the time. So you can plant those right now and they may not be ready for you, but they’ll be ready for you soon enough. You can always play catch up, that’s the way I like to think of it.

The Coops usually do have fresh local produce then?

Yes…even New Seasons, Whole Foods…the coops, they are really good about harvesting locally.

But…the other things is it is a little ridiculous to expect a really beautiful ripe red tomato any time other than tomato season. We have to start thinking about how we…about being soiled brats with our food.

Right…Like, “It’s December…but I want a ripe tomato! Why can’t I have a ripe tomato?”

Yes…exactly…”I want a Caprese Salad! Why not?” (laughter…)
Well you know…until we start approaching things like indoor growing…again that becomes an issue because you’re spending electricity on things like lighting, or with the aquaponics…like the exchange for electricity with but until we get that all figured out and we start growing indoors, if we want tomatoes.

One thing I’m doing too is that I have rabbits at my house, and their body temperature runs at 110 degrees…so I build a little miniature greenhouse or hoop house over them and I can extend my seeds really a lot longer because the vegetables have heat and light.
Staring to use animals in that way…or even compost. If you run a hot compost, you can close that off and use that heat. Certainly, you can’t have tomatoes, but you could have all sorts of vegetables at that point if we’re not dealing with any cold.

I don’t have any clients that have rabbits right now, but I do think those kinds of uses will become important too.

It’s interesting that we are…in so many ways…there is a shifting occurring in our society. With all the technology we have, with all the convenience we have, it’s like the pendulum is beginning to shift the other way…we are going back to one-on-one communication, spending more time with family and friends, sharing a home cooked meal together, having that in-person interaction, and growing our own food. It’s great that it’s actually happening.

Yes, it’s true…like you said, it goes back to the economy and the environment, I think that we were at a crossroad. I think it’s really making us rethink who we are.

Now if only we could close down a bunch of McDonalds, we’d be making progress…

Actually, you know…years ago they came up with a plastic alternative to made from the casing of shrimp shells…and the reason nobody wanted it was because they couldn’t get rid of the pink color. It’s like, I think at this point in our evolution, deciding something is valueless because of its color is pretty silly when it’s completely biodegradable and it’s a by-product. I don’t know…I think we’ve been so silly and careless for so long.

Far too long…you know I get shocked when I get my left-overs to go from a restaurant and they give me a Styrofoam or plastic container. In doing the research for this magazine and other stories we’ve worked on, I know you can buy biodegradable plates, to go boxes, and even silverware…and it isn’t all that expensive.

I think there’s a law in Portland, where you’re not allowed to use Styrofoam. There’s a place you can call to report abuses like that.

No kidding?

Yes…It really makes us progressive, but it also makes us…I didn’t know that until last week. There’s not manpower to go out and enforce that…I think until we start making those phone calls more and more…nobody’s going out and picketing those restaurants.

On a different note, would you suggest getting a chicken?

Chickens are not for everyone. They are really neat…but they are livestock, so they are susceptible to the same kind of sickness that your cat or dog would be. It’s a bit more maintenance, if you’re not willing to make that commitment…I wouldn’t suggest it.
Chickens are great though! I think they’re amazing. They eat a ton of slug eggs, they produce eggs; you can keep them in a small area. They are relatively quiet, but…usually they have a giant celebration whenever somebody lays an egg which is pretty funny…

(We laugh)

Even the girls. They’re really smart…which my rabbits are sweet, but not exactly…intelligent? Whereas I think, chickens and birds must be smart overall. They’re like garden companions. They like gardening with people; they claw at the dirt. I worked at a garden nursery…Buffalo Gardens, and she had chickens…I got to work with chickens every single day and it was just…they were just my friends!

(We laugh again) That is pretty cool…

Yes…and they slow down your pace of life too…you can’t go to fast or step on them or spook them out…there’s something about holding your animal too that kind of slows down the rest of the world and to have that kind of attitude with your landscape where they’re helping you out.

My rabbits, I use their fertilizer almost exclusively. That’s really good for my business…I feed them the weeds I pull out of people’s yards. They’re instant composters. Chickens eat weeds and stuff like that too, they’re not as easy because they want to eat little sprouts and they eat protein too…for instance they eat the slug eggs. It’s a little harder to have them…but it really depends on your lifestyle.

For chickens, they’re instant composters, but you have to compost it first…but then you have a nice hot compost going. They do take work, you have to clean out their pen, make sure they have water, let them in and out at night that when they roost.

And in the winter?

Well you have your chicken coop, which is enclosed and people like to insulate then for the winter. Chickens are pretty hardy in the winter; they still like to go out into their run even in the wintertime.

Most chickens and rabbits are pretty hardy in the winter…it’s the summertime when it’s really the big one for poultry; the heat is what will kill them really fast.

Pests…a never ending battle. You suggest Neem Oil? Is that straight Neem Oil or is that mixed with something?

There a couple of different varieties you can get on the market. I use Dyna-Grow Neem oil and it’s actually 100% Neem oil, so it’s concentrated…I have mixed a tablespoon and a half per gallon, then you add a little bit of a dish soap to use as a demulsifier so it actually holds to the plant. It’s amazing because there’s a tree in India called a Neem tree and it has these nuts…the nuts it shed, that’s where the oil comes from. It’s used in cosmetics, mouthwash, and anti-fungicide.

Soft belly insects like aphids? It harms them, but it doesn’t harm bees. It’s kind of one of these miraculous things that nature provides, and it works as a leaf conditioner. It’s an amazing product as far as I’m concerned.

It helps with spider-mites which I find impossible. It’s put into Slug-O which are little pellets that slugs ingest, so I’ll look for Neem products or to Neem products because they’re so great…this one thing can be used in so many ways.

Is a compost pile or bin hard to upkeep?

It depends on the one you have…if you have the one from Metro, the black plastic one? Those are a little more difficult because it’s hard to turn, to turn the compost, and they fill really quickly.

Depending on the space, so for example…if there were a ledge where you could have a bakashi compost, which is something that would be perfect for apartments and condos. If you have a lot of land and you’re not good at maintaining your compost, which most people are not…you could do direct-to-trench composting. So the homeowner can dig out a hole, fill it with organic compost, layer it with dirt from that hole, and then rotate and find another spot. Within about four months, that is all composted dirt.

Compost, again is one of those things that it depends on the people’s likes and their lifestyle. There is a solution for everybody if they’re willing to invest a little bit of time.

I know Rose City Mortgage, when they had an office, they had a worm compost bin in their office.

I’ve heard of schools who use the bakashi method where they actually compost meat scraps and things like that. Kitchens, home kitchens are staring to put in things like that or worm bins. It’s kind of amazing how many businesses and schools are doing it. You can compost almost anywhere…I think the city is going to put in roadside composting.

Awesome!

Yes, so pretty soon you can take the recycled decomposable bags that they provide…right now they do this for restaurants. So soon all restaurants and residents will be able to compost food waste through the city.

That’s great to hear!

Yes, Seattle does it right now. They launched their program,
last week.

Find Sarah Pool’s company Grow Me Organics here

The fall season brings with it wonderful things…recipes that have gathered dust during the summer months, hot homemade soups to warm our hearts, and the holidays bring out our giving spirit, leading many to a fair amount of charity work. The season also brings the temptations of going off our diets, the permission to partake in gluttony, and the guilt of doing so – Add to that family and you have a crazy formula for disaster or glee.

What we discovered when investigating this subject was a surprise. As a community, we use food as a fundraiser, a friend to comfort us when we feel lonely or stressed, and a vehicle for building community. Our relationship with food is complex at times; a good portion of us have issues with self-esteem and body image. Food is used in some many ways in our community, it is amazing what we do with it, even with the unhealthy aspects.

Basic Rights Oregon (BRO), Our House, Cascade AIDS Project (CAP,) and many other non-profits have wielded the power of food to make change in our state a reality. BRO raises a good portion of its funds with two food events: Bites for Rights and its annual Dinner and Auction. Our House has an annual dinner series that has the culinary arts community as the center piece. Dinner at My House for Our House is celebrating another successful year with 66 dinners! CAP does the same with their annual evening of Art and Auction. Thousands upon thousands of dollars raised every year…Food is pretty powerful isn’t it?

Here, you’ll see how important food is in our LGBTIQ community, what role it plays in building the community’s strength, some not so great facts, and we uncover a few resources for you and
your families.

Buy Local & Consciously

On of the major reasons Just Out newspaper has survived for the past 27 years is because of our community’s commitment to buying local and supporting ally and LGBTIQ owned businesses. We have shown great strength in numbers with our buying power and it has helped Just Out, the hundreds of businesses that support it, and members of Portland Area Business Association (PABA,) our LGBTIQ chamber of commerce.

This community commitment is evident with local farmers and locally produced products. You see this at work when you go to a farmers market in Portland. We dare you to go through a farmers market without seeing at least two LGBTIQ couples. We have always had the Buy Local in our shopping DNA. The practice supports many ecosystems, but the main one is money circulating through our community.

For the swath of the higher earning members of our community, Whole Foods and New Seasons is a luxury the rest of the community does not have available. Both stores are a luxury a lot of us can’t afford, the economy making it even more unattainable. Have you seen their prices? Buying organic is already expensive, these stores make it even more so.

Where do you go if these two are supposedly the only alternative? Simple: Coop grocery stores. Some of us haven’t even given this option a chance, thinking they are for straight-up hippies, with their patchouli wafting through the isles. This perception is changing, and we may have the economy to thank for it. Coop grocery stores began in the 60’s and have continued with their same values and mission for years. The Coop grocery stores of today are thriving and getting bigger in Oregon. Best of all? They are community owned!
Like choosing a credit union rather than a commercial bank, coop grocery stores are owned and run by its members. Membership is open to anyone. The commitment to organic and local products makes coops a perfect choice and substitute for the New Seasons and Whole Foods options. You can count on all the groceries you buy have already been through a selection process that specifies: Fair labor practices, organic, and sustainable production practices, and direct from the farm choices when available.
Coops are built and created by the community, many of them started with members own money to get them off the ground. From the start, they are guided by the voices and concerns of the members and their community. Being community centric, they offer more than just groceries. Many offer cooking classes (especially to low income families,) neighborhood clean-up events, and farm tours. How often do you get to see where your produce actually comes from?

Check out our resources page to find the Coop store in your neighborhood.

Share The Abundance

Gardeners know the drill come harvest time…you can only eat so many tomatoes, and your friends an neighbors can only take so much. You don’t want to start going out at night and leaving your excess produce on a stranger’s porch. Those of us who do garden, the bounty can get overwhelming, even if the abundance was unintended. What do you do with all of this left over produce?

There are alternatives, one of the best is to donate your produce to the Oregon Food Bank (OFB). The food bank has a Harvest-Share program where low income families can come to a farmers market-like set up to shop for fresh produce at no charge. The OFB gathers and salvages a good amount of produce from local farmers and wholesale produce companies.

Another opportunity is the Portland Yard Share program or the Growing Gardens organization. With Portland Yard Share, the main function is to share your yard with neighbors, if you have plenty of room for a garden. This program is also helpful if you do have room for a garden, but have either neglected it or you just haven’t had the time to get it going. Their website allows you to post a listing to offer up your yard space, and you can find a garden space to help with. The main mission of this organization is to make it possible for the community to access healthy, local, and organic food. Many people in our communities would love to garden but don’t have the room, this is an almost instant solution! (www.yardsharing.org/where.html)

Growing Gardens is a non-profit that works to build organic, raised-bed vegetable gardens in back yards, front yards, and balconies. The group supports low-income families up to three years with seed, plants, classes, and mentors. One of their most admirable traits is their mission to grow the next generation of healthy veggie eaters, teaching children to garden and respect the environment. Growing Gardens also accepts left over produce, but do check with them to be sure they can accept what you have.

Our Relationship with Food

(This issue opened up a massive vat of interest and complexity. We are setting aside an issue to tackle this discussion in full and hopefully have some solutions, ideas and suggestions on the topic.)

Food is an instrumental part of our survival. We either have it or don’t. Except for the portion of us that grow some of our food, we get most of our food from a store. Unless you get your produce from a number of coop grocery stores, choose local only choices at Whole Foods or New Seasons, you get produce shipped from outside of the state or country. Most of the time, we can get anything we want, no matter the time of year. This abundance does not always work in our favor.

Our relationship with food has dramatically changed over generations. Necessity has been overridden with social pressures and emotional reactions. Food is used to comfort us when in need, not just for hunger. Hollywood, the fashion industry and the LGBTIQ community itself have created a homogenized, unrealistic picture of what beauty is, and we fall for it. We choose food to fill voids in our lives, or reject it to attain the perfect body.

Hundreds of studies show that gay men and women have a higher risk of an eating disorder than their heterosexuals. Not surprising when you take into account all of the psychological issues we have to deal with: fear of being outed, having a total distrust and therefore disdain for the opposite sex, traumatizing parental upbringing, being shunned or severed from family, HIV/AIDS, alcohol and drugs.

For gay men, Matthew Brooks, a Seattle therapist, states, “Many people believe, probably correctly, that the grossly idealized images so pervasive in [gay] culture are partly responsible for the skewed, compromised self-esteem that many gay men have. While there is truth to this idea, it’s more likely the case that eating disorders develop when there are many factors at work over time, including family pressures, shame, and mixed messages about food, appearance, and weight. This all leads to bewilderment about one’s sexuality as well as those impossible standards from mass culture.”

Gay men live in an image focused community, where most ads, mainstream movies and T.V. shows reinforce what gay male ideal beauty is. Gay men are more image conscious and most of the time go to the gym frequently, and get the full manicure treatment (waxing, manicures and botox.) Even so, gay men are more prone to eating disorders than straight men or women overall.

For gay men who are overweight you have “The Bears” and so called “Chub Clubs,” (overweight bisexual or gay men and the slim men that are attracted to them,) “Chubby Chasers” and the like. More times than not, overweight gay men get a pass.
This is where men differ from women in society: even in our own community we carry the fat double standard. Gay men get a pass for being overweight, lesbians don’t. Lesbians only get a pass within the their community…it seems our community in tandem with society doesn’t care if your gay. Just being a woman means you shouldn’t be 200 pounds or more.

Lesbians are fortunate in one sense. Women find that their physical form isn’t a big deal amongst their own like-minded sisters. Coming out can be a huge relief, and the shackles of a male dominated society to be thin are thrown aside. Can this go too far? Obesity is higher in lesbians than in straight women. So much higher that many studies have been done to try and figure out why.

As stated earlier, we intend to tackle this issue in a future edition of id Magazine. The body image catastrophe we have in the community is a subject so complex and daunting, we decided to assign an entire issue on the subject. If you have any views on the subject, do feel free to contact us to give your opinion.

Building Community

The Oregon LGBTIQ populace has used food as a way to foster new friendships and build community. There are a number of groups that meet monthly, a gathering of like-minded people, with either an interest in cooking or intended as a social networking function.
Most of these groups are started by a small group of people, feeling a need in the community to come together. The catch here is that they crop up out of genuine community building and strengthening social circles. Rarely are they formed for political agendas or social causes. These groups are a true beauty of Oregon’s LGBTIQ community and its history. Some have been around for decades, others a few years old. Finding them can be a challenge for someone moving into the state, so we’ve hunted them down for you.

Cook Boys event…David Lefitz at far right of Go Outside Landscaping

In Portland, Cook Boys, has been getting together over good food for a number of years. As it was told to id Magazine’s Christian Messer, “Cook Boys started out as a very competitive, serious cooks gathering,” a member recalled. Over the years, it has grown and been relaxed. It now is a large potluck dinner, usually hosted by a member at their home. Every month a theme is picked, whether it be, “Your Grandma’s Kitchen” to “Hawaiian Luau.” Any Oregon gay men are welcome, and most newcomers just show up at the designated host home with a dish appropriate to the theme.

Soy Boys

Soy Boys is a vegan group that was spun off of the Cook Boys model. They can be reached at veggieguys@aol.com

Lavender Womyn Potlucks and More

Lavender Womyn is a lesbian social group created in 2003 with the first chapter in Salem, Oregon. Since then they have had added chapters throughout Oregon and Washington; even chapters in New Hampshire and Kentucky. For Oregon, there are chapters in Salem, Portland, Eugene, Corvallis-Albany, Grants Pass, Tillamook and Yamhill County. If you’d like to start your own chapter, the group encourages it and an e-mail is all you’ll need to start, at salem@lavenderwomyn.com

The group started out as an idea over dinner, a potluck was planned, and the guests expected were about six total. However, the creators extended the invitation out to more Womyn they knew. Before they knew it, the house was filled with lesbians and children, a smashing hit!

They continued the potlucks gatherings every month, for four months. It was then decided to give the group an official name, “Wild Lavender Women” won the vote. After taking in some considerations about “Wild” being in the name and the misinterpretations that may create, the name was then changed to “Lavender Woymen.”

Since then, this network has done amazing things for its members, even if that is just a friend to talk to or a shoulder to cry on. If you go their website and read the testimonials, you’ll get a taste of how extraordinary this spontaneously formed network is and why you should check it out.

To expand the network further, they have a personals section and database. As it says on their site, “This is another way of connecting singles, couples and families. You can search the database for friendships, relationships, and find singles, couples or families of similar interests. You can create you own profile, upload photos, chat, IM, blog, and much more. We have reached over a thousand members, and have members from other countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, and more!!”

http://www.lavenderwomyn.com/chapters.html

Adventure Group Member Evan Boone

Founded in 1986, The Adventure Group has a long history of planning kayaking, skiing, hiking and numerous other outdoor activities for the Portland, Oregon LGBTIQ community. There are minimal annual membership dues to pay for the group to continue running. Dues are affordable, and they can guarantee they are less than your gym membership!

The food part comes in at The Adventure Group’s monthly potluck, meet at Hobo’s if you’re a hockey fan in November, and a Holiday party in December. All of these events are members or member guests only. One interesting event they host is the PDeXchange, where they host an extravaganza of events for the weekend and invite members of fellow LGBTIQ adventure groups in the Northwest to come and participate. The Adventure Group members open their homes to provide lodging for their out of town guests.

Mix and Make Your Own

We’ve heard from you, the community, about other groups or gatherings, but to be honest, there is no true place to go for all of this information. If you have a group that has food at its center as a means to socially gather, we’d love to add you to our list. In the future there will be a single website that can serve as a portal or one-stop-shop for all community social groups.

Many of you have T.V. show viewing parties, “Sex and The City” and “Queer As Folk” were some mentioned to us in conversation. Others we’ve heard of involve any number of aspects that shape the LGBTIQ community. Why not start a group yourself? Your life and social circle could expand beyond anything you imagined.

Is There Community Hunger?

In our research and our experience, we found the Oregon Food Bank (OFB) does a great job feeding the hungry in the state of Oregon. Even as terrific as the OFB is, there are times when it cannot always match the demand and is put under a lot of strain. In our community, if we are to “look after our own,” where is our LGBTIQ community food bank?

Is it not a good idea? Would you have to prove you were LGBTIQ? Would it be abused? Surely there are many, many lesbian mothers with children who are having a rough time in this economy. One could also bet there are hundreds of LGBTIQ members who’ve been laid off or worse, fired. Where do these people, our people, go other than the Oregon Food Bank?

We do have here in Portland Esther’s Pantry and Todd’s Closet, but these are specifically for those living with HIV/AIDS. Fortunately we as a community came together in that time of need, when our friends and family were dying and had no resource of clothing and food. Many of those affected had no income because their illness kept them from working.

With or without the current economy, there must be a need in our community for something like this. The Oregon Food Bank served 897,000 people in 2008/2009. If we use the 10% formula*, then last year alone, there were 89,700 LGBTIQ residents using the Oregon Food Bank (purely a guesstimate.) Why have we not done anything about it? Are we too exhausted by all the other things that we do for our numerous non-profits? Have we assumed that most LGBTIQ Oregonians are more likely to have adequate income or can rely on friends and family during unemployment? Has it even been tried, and if so, why hasn’t it worked? We searched high and low and found nothing.

One thing is certain: the OFB is completely LGBTIQ friendly and doesn’t stand for discrimination. This may be why the OFB has always had a great relationship with our community. Many of us volunteer individually or as a team. Every year around Pride, a LGBTIQ volunteer day is set aside for all of the community to come and participate. There are numerous tasks to be done, packing bulk dry goods into containers for a family of four, making buttons for the Waterfront Jazz festival, and other important tasks to complete.

Volunteering isn’t the only option. You could hold your own food drive! These are called independent food drives and anyone can do it. The OFB website has a Food and Fund Drive Kit for anyone download. This is great option for companies or any groups that have plenty of people to make it a success. However, they encourage everyone to do so…no matter how small or large your group or donation is. During the summer and fall months, if you have a garden and have a ton of tomatoes or any usable produce, you can drop them off at the food bank or at a number of nurseries. (See our online resource page for locations)

*The unscientific formula that 10% of the population is LGBTIQ

The fall season brings with it wonderful things…recipes that have gathered dust during the summer months, hot homemade soups to warm our hearts, and the holidays bring out our giving spirit, leading many to a fair amount of charity work. The season also brings the temptations of going off our diets, the permission to partake in gluttony, and the guilt of doing so – Add to that family and you have a crazy formula for disaster or glee.

What we discovered when investigating this subject was a surprise. As a community, we use food as a fundraiser, a friend to comfort us when we feel lonely or stressed, and a vehicle for building community. Our relationship with food is complex at times; a good portion of us have issues with self-esteem and body image. Food is used in some many ways in our community, it is amazing what we do with it, even with the unhealthy aspects.

Basic Rights Oregon (BRO), Our House, Cascade AIDS Project (CAP,) and many other non-profits have wielded the power of food to make change in our state a reality. BRO raises a good portion of its funds with two food events: Bites for Rights and its annual Dinner and Auction. Our House has an annual dinner series that has the culinary arts community as the center piece. Dinner at My House for Our House is celebrating another successful year with 66 dinners! CAP does the same with their annual evening of Art and Auction. Thousands upon thousands of dollars raised every year…Food is pretty powerful isn’t it?

Here, you’ll see how important food is in our LGBTIQ community, what role it plays in building the community’s strength, some not so great facts, and we uncover a few resources for you and
your families.

Buy Local & Consciously

On of the major reasons Just Out newspaper has survived for the past 27 years is because of our community’s commitment to buying local and supporting ally and LGBTIQ owned businesses. We have shown great strength in numbers with our buying power and it has helped Just Out, the hundreds of businesses that support it, and members of Portland Area Business Association (PABA,) our LGBTIQ chamber of commerce.

This community commitment is evident with local farmers and locally produced products. You see this at work when you go to a farmers market in Portland. We dare you to go through a farmers market without seeing at least two LGBTIQ couples. We have always had the Buy Local in our shopping DNA. The practice supports many ecosystems, but the main one is money circulating through our community.

For the swath of the higher earning members of our community, Whole Foods and New Seasons is a luxury the rest of the community does not have available. Both stores are a luxury a lot of us can’t afford, the economy making it even more unattainable. Have you seen their prices? Buying organic is already expensive, these stores make it even more so.

Where do you go if these two are supposedly the only alternative? Simple: Coop grocery stores. Some of us haven’t even given this option a chance, thinking they are for straight-up hippies, with their patchouli wafting through the isles. This perception is changing, and we may have the economy to thank for it. Coop grocery stores began in the 60’s and have continued with their same values and mission for years. The Coop grocery stores of today are thriving and getting bigger in Oregon. Best of all? They are community owned!
Like choosing a credit union rather than a commercial bank, coop grocery stores are owned and run by its members. Membership is open to anyone. The commitment to organic and local products makes coops a perfect choice and substitute for the New Seasons and Whole Foods options. You can count on all the groceries you buy have already been through a selection process that specifies: Fair labor practices, organic, and sustainable production practices, and direct from the farm choices when available.
Coops are built and created by the community, many of them started with members own money to get them off the ground. From the start, they are guided by the voices and concerns of the members and their community. Being community centric, they offer more than just groceries. Many offer cooking classes (especially to low income families,) neighborhood clean-up events, and farm tours. How often do you get to see where your produce actually comes from?

Check out our resources page to find the Coop store in your neighborhood.

Share The Abundance

Gardeners know the drill come harvest time…you can only eat so many tomatoes, and your friends an neighbors can only take so much. You don’t want to start going out at night and leaving your excess produce on a stranger’s porch. Those of us who do garden, the bounty can get overwhelming, even if the abundance was unintended. What do you do with all of this left over produce?

There are alternatives, one of the best is to donate your produce to the Oregon Food Bank (OFB). The food bank has a Harvest-Share program where low income families can come to a farmers market-like set up to shop for fresh produce at no charge. The OFB gathers and salvages a good amount of produce from local farmers and wholesale produce companies.

Another opportunity is the Portland Yard Share program or the Growing Gardens organization. With Portland Yard Share, the main function is to share your yard with neighbors, if you have plenty of room for a garden. This program is also helpful if you do have room for a garden, but have either neglected it or you just haven’t had the time to get it going. Their website allows you to post a listing to offer up your yard space, and you can find a garden space to help with. The main mission of this organization is to make it possible for the community to access healthy, local, and organic food. Many people in our communities would love to garden but don’t have the room, this is an almost instant solution! (www.yardsharing.org/where.html)

Growing Gardens is a non-profit that works to build organic, raised-bed vegetable gardens in back yards, front yards, and balconies. The group supports low-income families up to three years with seed, plants, classes, and mentors. One of their most admirable traits is their mission to grow the next generation of healthy veggie eaters, teaching children to garden and respect the environment. Growing Gardens also accepts left over produce, but do check with them to be sure they can accept what you have.

Our Relationship with Food

(This issue opened up a massive vat of interest and complexity. We are setting aside an issue to tackle this discussion in full and hopefully have some solutions, ideas and suggestions on the topic.)

Food is an instrumental part of our survival. We either have it or don’t. Except for the portion of us that grow some of our food, we get most of our food from a store. Unless you get your produce from a number of coop grocery stores, choose local only choices at Whole Foods or New Seasons, you get produce shipped from outside of the state or country. Most of the time, we can get anything we want, no matter the time of year. This abundance does not always work in our favor.

Our relationship with food has dramatically changed over generations. Necessity has been overridden with social pressures and emotional reactions. Food is used to comfort us when in need, not just for hunger. Hollywood, the fashion industry and the LGBTIQ community itself have created a homogenized, unrealistic picture of what beauty is, and we fall for it. We choose food to fill voids in our lives, or reject it to attain the perfect body.

Hundreds of studies show that gay men and women have a higher risk of an eating disorder than their heterosexuals. Not surprising when you take into account all of the psychological issues we have to deal with: fear of being outed, having a total distrust and therefore disdain for the opposite sex, traumatizing parental upbringing, being shunned or severed from family, HIV/AIDS, alcohol and drugs.

For gay men, Matthew Brooks, a Seattle therapist, states, “Many people believe, probably correctly, that the grossly idealized images so pervasive in [gay] culture are partly responsible for the skewed, compromised self-esteem that many gay men have. While there is truth to this idea, it’s more likely the case that eating disorders develop when there are many factors at work over time, including family pressures, shame, and mixed messages about food, appearance, and weight. This all leads to bewilderment about one’s sexuality as well as those impossible standards from mass culture.”

Gay men live in an image focused community, where most ads, mainstream movies and T.V. shows reinforce what gay male ideal beauty is. Gay men are more image conscious and most of the time go to the gym frequently, and get the full manicure treatment (waxing, manicures and botox.) Even so, gay men are more prone to eating disorders than straight men or women overall.

For gay men who are overweight you have “The Bears” and so called “Chub Clubs,” (overweight bisexual or gay men and the slim men that are attracted to them,) “Chubby Chasers” and the like. More times than not, overweight gay men get a pass.
This is where men differ from women in society: even in our own community we carry the fat double standard. Gay men get a pass for being overweight, lesbians don’t. Lesbians only get a pass within the their community…it seems our community in tandem with society doesn’t care if your gay. Just being a woman means you shouldn’t be 200 pounds or more.

Lesbians are fortunate in one sense. Women find that their physical form isn’t a big deal amongst their own like-minded sisters. Coming out can be a huge relief, and the shackles of a male dominated society to be thin are thrown aside. Can this go too far? Obesity is higher in lesbians than in straight women. So much higher that many studies have been done to try and figure out why.

As stated earlier, we intend to tackle this issue in a future edition of id Magazine. The body image catastrophe we have in the community is a subject so complex and daunting, we decided to assign an entire issue on the subject. If you have any views on the subject, do feel free to contact us to give your opinion.

Building Community

The Oregon LGBTIQ populace has used food as a way to foster new friendships and build community. There are a number of groups that meet monthly, a gathering of like-minded people, with either an interest in cooking or intended as a social networking function.
Most of these groups are started by a small group of people, feeling a need in the community to come together. The catch here is that they crop up out of genuine community building and strengthening social circles. Rarely are they formed for political agendas or social causes. These groups are a true beauty of Oregon’s LGBTIQ community and its history. Some have been around for decades, others a few years old. Finding them can be a challenge for someone moving into the state, so we’ve hunted them down for you.

Cook Boys event…David Lefitz at far right of Go Outside Landscaping

In Portland, Cook Boys, has been getting together over good food for a number of years. As it was told to id Magazine’s Christian Messer, “Cook Boys started out as a very competitive, serious cooks gathering,” a member recalled. Over the years, it has grown and been relaxed. It now is a large potluck dinner, usually hosted by a member at their home. Every month a theme is picked, whether it be, “Your Grandma’s Kitchen” to “Hawaiian Luau.” Any Oregon gay men are welcome, and most newcomers just show up at the designated host home with a dish appropriate to the theme.

Soy Boys

Soy Boys is a vegan group that was spun off of the Cook Boys model. They can be reached at veggieguys@aol.com

Lavender Womyn Potlucks and More

Lavender Womyn is a lesbian social group created in 2003 with the first chapter in Salem, Oregon. Since then they have had added chapters throughout Oregon and Washington; even chapters in New Hampshire and Kentucky. For Oregon, there are chapters in Salem, Portland, Eugene, Corvallis-Albany, Grants Pass, Tillamook and Yamhill County. If you’d like to start your own chapter, the group encourages it and an e-mail is all you’ll need to start, at salem@lavenderwomyn.com

The group started out as an idea over dinner, a potluck was planned, and the guests expected were about six total. However, the creators extended the invitation out to more Womyn they knew. Before they knew it, the house was filled with lesbians and children, a smashing hit!

They continued the potlucks gatherings every month, for four months. It was then decided to give the group an official name, “Wild Lavender Women” won the vote. After taking in some considerations about “Wild” being in the name and the misinterpretations that may create, the name was then changed to “Lavender Woymen.”

Since then, this network has done amazing things for its members, even if that is just a friend to talk to or a shoulder to cry on. If you go their website and read the testimonials, you’ll get a taste of how extraordinary this spontaneously formed network is and why you should check it out.

To expand the network further, they have a personals section and database. As it says on their site, “This is another way of connecting singles, couples and families. You can search the database for friendships, relationships, and find singles, couples or families of similar interests. You can create you own profile, upload photos, chat, IM, blog, and much more. We have reached over a thousand members, and have members from other countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, and more!!”

http://www.lavenderwomyn.com/chapters.html

Adventure Group Member Evan Boone

Founded in 1986, The Adventure Group has a long history of planning kayaking, skiing, hiking and numerous other outdoor activities for the Portland, Oregon LGBTIQ community. There are minimal annual membership dues to pay for the group to continue running. Dues are affordable, and they can guarantee they are less than your gym membership!

The food part comes in at The Adventure Group’s monthly potluck, meet at Hobo’s if you’re a hockey fan in November, and a Holiday party in December. All of these events are members or member guests only. One interesting event they host is the PDeXchange, where they host an extravaganza of events for the weekend and invite members of fellow LGBTIQ adventure groups in the Northwest to come and participate. The Adventure Group members open their homes to provide lodging for their out of town guests.

Mix and Make Your Own

We’ve heard from you, the community, about other groups or gatherings, but to be honest, there is no true place to go for all of this information. If you have a group that has food at its center as a means to socially gather, we’d love to add you to our list. In the future there will be a single website that can serve as a portal or one-stop-shop for all community social groups.

Many of you have T.V. show viewing parties, “Sex and The City” and “Queer As Folk” were some mentioned to us in conversation. Others we’ve heard of involve any number of aspects that shape the LGBTIQ community. Why not start a group yourself? Your life and social circle could expand beyond anything you imagined.

Is There Community Hunger?

In our research and our experience, we found the Oregon Food Bank (OFB) does a great job feeding the hungry in the state of Oregon. Even as terrific as the OFB is, there are times when it cannot always match the demand and is put under a lot of strain. In our community, if we are to “look after our own,” where is our LGBTIQ community food bank?

Is it not a good idea? Would you have to prove you were LGBTIQ? Would it be abused? Surely there are many, many lesbian mothers with children who are having a rough time in this economy. One could also bet there are hundreds of LGBTIQ members who’ve been laid off or worse, fired. Where do these people, our people, go other than the Oregon Food Bank?

We do have here in Portland Esther’s Pantry and Todd’s Closet, but these are specifically for those living with HIV/AIDS. Fortunately we as a community came together in that time of need, when our friends and family were dying and had no resource of clothing and food. Many of those affected had no income because their illness kept them from working.

With or without the current economy, there must be a need in our community for something like this. The Oregon Food Bank served 897,000 people in 2008/2009. If we use the 10% formula*, then last year alone, there were 89,700 LGBTIQ residents using the Oregon Food Bank (purely a guesstimate.) Why have we not done anything about it? Are we too exhausted by all the other things that we do for our numerous non-profits? Have we assumed that most LGBTIQ Oregonians are more likely to have adequate income or can rely on friends and family during unemployment? Has it even been tried, and if so, why hasn’t it worked? We searched high and low and found nothing.

One thing is certain: the OFB is completely LGBTIQ friendly and doesn’t stand for discrimination. This may be why the OFB has always had a great relationship with our community. Many of us volunteer individually or as a team. Every year around Pride, a LGBTIQ volunteer day is set aside for all of the community to come and participate. There are numerous tasks to be done, packing bulk dry goods into containers for a family of four, making buttons for the Waterfront Jazz festival, and other important tasks to complete.

Volunteering isn’t the only option. You could hold your own food drive! These are called independent food drives and anyone can do it. The OFB website has a Food and Fund Drive Kit for anyone download. This is great option for companies or any groups that have plenty of people to make it a success. However, they encourage everyone to do so…no matter how small or large your group or donation is. During the summer and fall months, if you have a garden and have a ton of tomatoes or any usable produce, you can drop them off at the food bank or at a number of nurseries. (See our online resource page for locations)

*The unscientific formula that 10% of the population is LGBTIQ