With 73 entries in just five days, the response to our last minute food haiku was great! There were so many good ones to choose from it took quite a while to narrow down the top choices. Unfortunately only one prize is available, but first I want to give honorable mentions to the runners-up:
By psp2pdx
pea shoots and favas
bounty at my fingertips
who’s green with envy?
By Rachel
cooking in a space
barely enough to turn ’round
still fills me with joy
By FrediaLighthouse
I reach down and pluck
white arugula flowers
peppery beauty
The winner of the pair of tickets to the 2013 Taste of the Nation is Giraffington McGoo for:
Trout caught fresh from stream,
dirt clinging to chantrelle feet,
we stoke the campfire.
Thanks again to Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation at McMenamin’s Crystal Hotel & Ballroom. Join them on Tuesday May 7th for
an evening with Oregon’s Best Chefs, Winemakers, Brewers & Distillers as they come together to end childhood hunger.
Each ticket purchased helps support Share Our Strength’s efforts in eliminating childhood hunger as well as our local beneficiaries. In the wake of staggering reports that nearly half of all children in the U.S. will be on food stamps at the some point in their life, there is no time to waste. The time to act is now.
Eric Blair says
‘Chantrelle’ is spelled incorrectly. It’s ‘chanterelle’, and three syllables, last time I checked. Poetic license?
Food Dude says
Yup! It worked for us.
Cookie says
Three syllables in English “chan-te-relle”, but only in two in French “chante-relle”. No poetic license required.
giraffington mcpotatohead says
i’m not too shocked that some spelling mistakes & other typos made their way in… i was combining my haiku writing with a project i do called “two minute poem of the day,” in which, predictably, you have 120 seconds to write a poem. not a lot of time for revision!
syllable-wise: i grew up in Oregon and went to the original Eugene restaurant named Chanterelle, etc., and danged if we didn’t all pronounce ’em “shant-RELL.” we’re so Fronch around here!
giraffington mcpotatohead says
and oh! thank you so much for picking my haiku and sending me to this event. my friend Yvette and i had a riotously good time. best of show was Aviary, a local/very-pdx ceviche ish thing that made the loud ballroom disappear around us as we ate— yeah, like an ad for an allegedly decadent yogurt cup or the moment where the lovers see each other across the dance floor in a movie. Yvette says Paley’s rabbit rillette with pistachio was amazing, but damn it, i have developed a tree allergy and couldn’t try it.
i’ve read about Salt & Straw but hadn’t tried it. very satisfying salt caramel ice cream, and a wonderful light chocolate ice cream that tasted like the world’s finest malted but had no malt in it. cool. Broder’s cracker & salmon was welcome, and of course their abelskiver too… Lardo’s parsley green mix stuff was awesome! pork not entirely perfect, but delicious enough… cannot remember who brought the tenderized raw salmon bits but they were supernice.
overall, i was surprised by how many offerings were over-the-top, especially in the VIP area. a beautiful little piece of tenderloin doesn’t need to be part of an empanada and dripped with several competing, zesty sauces/salsas/whatever they were calling them. i felt that way about a number of things i tasted. octopus, beef, ceviche, etc. somewhere underneath all those clever, catering-company-esque presentations, the main ingredient of each dish was probably well sourced and lovely, but how would we know?
that aspect seemed really un-portland to me, but i’ve been off the food scene here for a few years (not because i wanted to stop eating out; just a combination of tight budget, family medical tragedy, and having a baby). so maybe this is the thing now.
that’s part of what made Aviary stand out. sure, it was a ceviche. it was saucy. it had a lot of different things in it. but unlike the others, it was perfect, each element balanced, nice tang and mild bitter of radish… i used to live in Astoria half-time, and this tasted like what i would’ve gleaned out of the fishmarket and Sunday Market and my garden, i mean, if i’d been an excellent chef instead of just me.
the event overall was festive and charming and social. Yvette and i met all kinds of lovely people. we were fueled by many tastes o’ Moet et Chandon, local winemakers, mini-urbane blenders & winemakers (we enjoyed a Seven Bridges blend and were quite taken with the sprightly young 2012 whole cluster pinot noir from Willamette Valley vineyards) … a whole lotta brews, including the new Tender Loving Empire NW Pale Ale from Fort George, charged with hops, wild sunny fruity notes … a faux-local distillery (whiskey from Indiana “perfected” in Oregon… what does this mean, “perfected”? anyway, Big Bottom, as it’s called, was acceptable up, and quite tasty mixed into the very nice whiskey sours we downed just seconds before the open bar closed).
next thing i remember, we were outside bumming smokes and comparing tattoos with people who were new transplants to our town. great fun.