Molasses? I don’t eat any part of the mole.

Posted on March 12, 2007, by kiliii.
Filed Under Community, Social Event, Portland Region |

Wild FoodsWhen the Wild Foods Potluck first began, noone could have imagined the sheer creativity of those involved. In the six months since it began, Portland has been able to sit down to dinner with wild plants, wild game, garden greens, and dumpster gleans.

I personally might have to say the last Wild Foods Potluck was the biggest (forty people!) and most amazing yet, on a table (well, okay, a piano bench) stocked with:

Now then, the Potlucks are more than dinner, they are a chance for the whole Portland Aboriginal Lifeways community to get together. Sometimes the highlanders from Hood River come down and visit, bearing bear, proferring pears, or carrying curried potatoes. The tradition is a good one, and after and throughout dinner, people make valuable connections and relax in the company of old friends.

Thaddeus and Salmon-Ginger CakesA direct result of the potlucks has been a real connection between food dishes, their wild ingredients, and people.

Here in wild-foodless February, Thaddeus Koster fries some Salmon Ginger Cakes, with fillets from a forty pound Chinook salmon caught by Tony Kimbro last October, cooking in lamb fat from a sheep processed by Shaun Deller and Jessica Palmer last fall, with green onions gleaned by your truly and walnuts from the tree down the street.

Although the Potlucks are certainly about food and people, I believe that their success comes from that fundamental ingredient of the human experience that many of us crave today– connections and true community. We live in a different world today than our foraging ancestors did. Nevertheless, every time a hungry soul takes a small bite of Darren’s raw chocolate or Tom and Julia’s sweet kelp pickles, the whole Chee Siwash community takes one giant leap into living well.

Walnuts and Bruschetta

Comments

2 Responses to “Molasses? I don’t eat any part of the mole.”

  1. Margi Shindler on March 13th, 2007 4:22 pm

    Thanks for the note with the link. Next time there is a potluck, will you give me an invitation - a little in advance as I live west of the city by 45 minutes.

    thanks,
    margi

  2. villainous vendor on October 20th, 2007 4:38 am

    So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’ Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

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