Archive for November, 2010

NEW OREGON INTERVIEW SERIES FOOD NIGHT

NOISwebbanner Naomi Pomeroy HOST NORA ROBERTSON WITH GREG HIGGINS, MATT LOUNSBERRY AND NAOMI POMEROY

The New Oregon Interview Series brought three prominent Portland food artisans together for an evening of intimate conversation. Higgin’s Restaurant chef/owner Greg Higgins, Stumptown director Matt Lounsbury and Beast chef/owner Naomi Pomeroy sat down to discuss their work and how our food culture is evolving on October 26th at Urban Grind East. Previously launching family supper, ripe catering, clarklewis and Gotham Tavern, Pomeroy opened the doors to Beast in 2007 and quickly garnered awards as one of Bon Appetit’s 2008 top six female chefs, Food and Wine Magazine’s 2009 top ten chefs in America and a James Beard Award for Best Chef semi-finalist for the Northwest.. As operations director for Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Lounsberry oversees markets in Portland, Seattle and New York and direct trade with growers on three continents. After stints in Alsace, Burgundy and Sun Valley, Greg Higgins was executive chef at the Heathman Hotel for almost a decade before he opened the influential Higgins’ Restaurant, appearing on Martha Steward and PBS’ New American Cuisine and receiving the James Beard Foundation 2002-2003 Best Chef Award for the Northwest.

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Portrait at Drowning Rat, 2008

I keep about 5000 messages in my email box going back about two years because I am lazy, and every once in a while I get the urge to go through the really old ones.  It’s like looking at old letters.  I found this portrait Steve Fritz took of me at a Drowning Rat two years ago when I was just getting over my divorce.  My friend Tiffany Lee Brown has been organizing these events just east of Eugene for a lot of years.  Drowning Rat is kind of an Oregonian answer to Burning Man.  It’s rainforest instead of desert, and a moss rat that gets thrown in the river instead of burned, and it’s really small and private.  The deal with the rat is it’s a way to let go of things.  I have a whole sequence of photos I’ll write up some time about what I did that weekend to get rid of my wedding dress.  My wedding dress sort of haunted me after my divorce. I had had it preserved in a vacuum-sealed box with a plastic display window.  I didn’t know what to do with it.  So finally I gave part of it to Tiffany for her wedding dress she was having designed, the good part with the nice beading and heavy silk, and destroyed the rest.  Above is me when I’ve gotten dressed up for the party as a kind of Gilligan’s Island Ginger type girl and am totally relieved somehow by my throwing the ashes of my dress in the river.  It meant a lot to me, that dress, at the time.  It’s weird but these ritualistic things that I usually am put off by do actually work sometimes.  Below is me having my way with the dress, getting rid of it for better or for worse.

The Body Show Benefit: B. Frayn Masters

Need some advice on how to groom “down there”?  Check out some fresh ideas in this illustration from “The Pubic Zone.”  Back Fence producer and one half of all-girl comedy duo Eastland Academy, B. Frayn writes for Girls Gone Wild magazine under the name of Cherry Daniels, a 22-year-old co-ed.  See if she gets up to similar shenanigans at Wednesday’s The Body Show Benefit.  Someday Lounge, door at 7PM, 7:30-9:30PM, $5-15 donation.

The Body Show Benefit: Raffle Prizes and More

I was really excited to pick up the raffle donations on Saturday: a big pink salt block and six-jar starter salt kit from The Meadow, two antique pitcher filled with fresh free-range duck eggs from Pistils Nursery, a $20 gift certificate from female-friendly sex toy boutique Shebop, and five David Delamare prints from Bad Monkey Productions as well as their erotic cabaret card set.  Raffle tickets will be sold at a dollar each, proceeds going to benefit post-production costs of the film.

And for the winner of the Voodoo Doughnut contest, a $25 gift certificate from Blackbird Wines and a trophy!