ColumnArtisanal ice cream gone wrong.

Salted caramel ice cream. Orange coriander ice cream. Sweet summer corn buttermilk sherbert.

The whole put-anything-you-can-find-and-see-if-it-works-in-ice-cream-trend is tasty at times, edgy at best, but has become so ubiquitous that off-color flavors rarely merit a reaction.

That was until I saw the geoduck ice cream sign.

I was driving home to my parents’ house, a big yellow house nestled somewhere between some trees and a few salt water bays in the Puget Sound. I had taken the backroads to avoid traffic, which entailed driving through a quaint, waterfront town of Allyn. There is a knitting store that we go to in the winter, a burger joint in the summer and a small dock to walk on. A good afternoon excursion on the days when you need to spice up country life.

Windows down, music blaring I slowed down to the required 35 miles per hour and took in the sea salt air of home. I was going slow enough that the sign was hard to miss.

“Geo Duck Ice Cream.” Right below the “Fresh Peach Sunda.” Who needs the “y” anyway?

I’m sorry… what?

I was tired of driving and didn’t have the energy to turn around, but I was so shocked that anyone would ever dare make ice cream out of Washington State’s most treasured/hated shellfish that I made a mental note of the sign, and told myself that before the week was up I would have to return.

For those who aren’t well versed on the geoduck, it’s a shellfish that happens to be the largest bivalve along Puget Sound. In laymen’s terms: it has a three foot-long neck and looks pretty gross. But we kind of have a thing for them up in Washington. A sort of love/hate affair. The Chinese certainly love them, which means they’re good for the economy, and Evergreen State College thinks they’re so great that they’ve even made mascot status.

A Washington native, I had personally never tried one. But this was the summer of “just say yes” policy. It’s a travel policy that I try to stick to, even when travel means returning to my home state. And of course, even when it means tasting geoduck ice cream. Fortunately my good friend Dave had come up for the weekend, and as my regular co-host of dinner parties and lover of all things food related, I knew he had to be up for the challenge.

“I am so glad you wanted to go do this with me,” I said, after parking in Allyn and walking up to the small Olympic Mountain Ice Cream shop.

“I didn’t say I wanted to do this,” he responded.

Right.

It should be noted that when you walk into an ice cream shop featuring geoduck ice cream with two cameras in hand, it’s sort of obvious what you want to order.

“Oh, there’s the cream kind and a sorbet,” I said, wondering why in God’s name you would make two variations of the stuff.

“Well, the cream based one is a stronger one. A really strong geoduck taste with butter. That’s what we recommend for people that really like geoduck.” said the young woman working behind the ice cream counter. I tried hard not to visibly shudder. “The other one has a really good lime taste and is a little lighter because it’s a sorbet,” she continued. “You really should test both.”

And that was how Dave and I came to be standing with test spoons of geoduck ice cream and sorbet.

A normal person would of course try the samples, pat themselves on the back, kindly say “that was interesting, but I think I am good,” and continue on their merry way. Not in my case. I was just off a week of picking backyard blackberries, muddling them with basil simple syrup and baking almond, cardamom, red currant scones for breakfast. I had to switch things up. You can only go the mason jar and sea salt route for so long.

“Well, we have to get a full scoop… it is what we came here to do,” I looked at Dave somehow trying to coax some encouragement from him.

“Ok, fine, a cup,” he said.

$2.71 later and we had ourselves a styrofoam (I know, I know) cup of lime geoduck sorbet. The things you do for a culinary experience.

If you’re wondering what geoduck sorbet tastes like, it’s simple: a delightful, zesty dose of sweet lemon, lime flavor, followed by a really weird infusion of chewy geoduck, which really just tastes like a bad clam. No really, it’s sorbet with small pieces of geoduck in it. As Dave put it after we both agreed that despite our hatred of food waste, we simply couldn’t finish the thing, “I only had one meal, I really should have been able to eat more of that.”

Appropriate solution to geoduck sorbet? Big Bubba’s Burgers of course, an institution in the town of Allyn. As we walked, I spit out a piece of geoduck that had lodged itself in my teeth. Traveling is a funny thing, causing even the most devoted kale and quinoa addict to  order a sorbet and then opt to follow up with the “Western,” a burger with barbecue sauce, fried onions and pepperjack. Dave added bacon. We got a small order of fries.

We walked down to the water and took in the salt air.

“Geoduck sorbet followed by this? I am totally going to puke later,” I said.

“Yeah, but at least you’ll have a column,” he responded.

And a renewed sense of why I don’t like shellfish in my ice cream, or sorbet for that matter, but a reminder of why I love coming home. It’s real. Not upscale. Not serving a new crazy dish because that’s what they read on about on a food blog. Just sort of off-the-wall local food that’s worth eating at least once in life, because it gives you a sense of the place. The kind of thing that we’re all somehow looking for, right?

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

The post Foodie Underground: Would You Like a Scoop of Geoduck Ice Cream? appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnA book about oysters teaches the real meaning of farm-to-table.

A month ago, a good friend put a copy of Shucked into my hands and said, “You have to read this.”

I looked at the cover. A watercolor painting of an oyster and a fork paired with the title of Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm was intriguing.

“It’s about a woman food writer that decides to trade her city life for working on an oyster farm.”

While I have never expressed the specific interest in working on an oyster farm, I saw where she was coming from. Having grown up in the country, I have my personal organic farm and vineyard dreams, the kind of place where you can get your hands dirty and find a new appreciation for the food and drink that ends up in front of you every evening. A personal narrative about what farm-to-table really means was therefore right up my alley. What I didn’t realize before diving into the pages of Shucked was how much I would fall in love with oysters in the process.

Odd as it might seem to fall in love with a food via a book, author Erin Byers Murray opened up an entirely new world to me, one that involved saltwater, hard work, rain boots and oyster recipes.

A few months ago, I had scribbled in my worn Moleskine notebook that finds itself along on most food adventures, “Oysters are the new bread.” It was a comment induced by a weekend of overindulgence of seafood, but working my way through Shucked, I again realized that oysters were everywhere.

My brain full of words like bivalve and oyster farm, my eyes and ears sought out any mention of the seafood. Byers Murray’s descriptive personal narrative and informative approach to describing life at Island Creek Oysters made me feel like I too was working on an oyster farm, or at least had an intimate understanding of the industry and the food she and so many others were working hard to harvest.

Which is how I ended up at The Walrus and The Carpenter.

The oyster bar in Ballard, just north of downtown Seattle, Washington, had been recommended by two food enthusiasts: a food photographer that worked with a friend of mine, and a charismatic wine connoisseur at McCarthy & Schiering Wine Merchants, who on a chance encounter with their Saturday afternoon wine tasting, had launched into a long conversation on wine, food and beyond. “So, are you a food writer?” he asked. (Is it that obvious?) A mere nod got me a list of eight places to visit, all scribbled on the back of his business card. The Walrus and The Carpenter had a star next to it and the name of a server we were supposed to track down.

After a two hour wait, which no one at the oyster bar seemed to mind, we were seated on stools at the bar, watching as a man with a bright red beard that went all the way down to his collar line pulled oysters from various buckets full of ice and shucked quicker than I can type. A menu full of local seafood, the “least” local of the oysters coming from British Columbia, only a few hours north, our server pointed us in the right direction of some of the stronger tasting oysters. Always trust your server. Soon we were in the midst of shells from Effingham and Dabob Bay, and I had a newfound love for this bivalve shellfish.

I am not alone in oyster love, however. As it turns out, they really are everywhere.

“[Oysters are] actually making a comeback – they were this hugely popular a century ago but then oyster populations around the country were depleted or completely wiped out by over consumption, pollution, and other factors. But there’s been a real effort to rebuild wild stocks around the country along with a huge rise in popularity of oyster farming on both coasts. Essentially, there are more oysters on the market than there have been in decades and restauranteurs are finding them to be a popular menu addition. I’ve been to a few sports bars that now boast raw bar menus – it’s pretty incredible to see one food product cross over so many different tastes and styles,” says Byers Murray.

Oysters aren’t just a fancy delicious component of a dinner party, they’re also a key part of our ecosystem. When I asked Byers Murray what she thought the single most impressive thing about an oyster is, she responded with, “oysters can filter up to 40 gallons of water a day – imagine what that can do help clean up our waterways.”

Oysters may have struck such a personal chord because they play the key role in my home state’s economy. According to Geoff Menzies, Manager of the Drayton Harbor Community Oyster Farm, a project by the Puget Sound Restoration Fund to “engage community members in the actual act of growing oysters and getting muddy,” Washington State is actually the leading producer of farmed bivalve shellfish in the U.S., producing 61 million pounds of oysters in 2011 which accounts for $58 million. Menzies cites Rowan Jacobsen’s book A Geography of Oysters when he says, “No city is as oyster-mad as Seattle.” It’s like I was born to fall in love with them.

Looking at the efforts in the Pacific Northwest and the East Coast, it is clear that there is a significant effort to rebuild wild stocks, which is good for both the environment and our health. Oysters are low in saturated fat, contain Omega 3 fatty acids, and as Menzies points out, are “especially good sources of high-quality protein, minerals: Iron, zinc and copper, and Vitamin B12.”

Oysters also have a positive communal effect. “When a community is located next to a bay which supports commercial  oyster harvest, they benefit from all of the efforts of that business or nonprofit to restore and to keep marine waters clean. Oyster farmers need clean marine water in order to survive. Everybody benefits. They often lead the charge to reduce bacterial contamination from livestock farms and septic systems, which are often the leading sources of pollution that close shellfish beds,” says Menzies.

Take a step back, and oysters are a good reminder of all of the elements of the food system that are essential to keeping us and our communities alive. Byers Murray says that if there is one lesson she can take away from Island Creek it’s “that there is an enormous amount of human effort and energy that goes into our food supply and we should do everything we can to appreciate and support that effort.”

Ensuring that we are well educated about that supply chain is the game changer when it comes to food politics. “I think we need more transparency in the food system overall. The media has really picked up its game in terms of reporting what’s happening behind the curtain at some of these massive food producers. But so much more can be done at a more basic level, such as in our education system, to bring awareness to what we’re eating and where it comes from,” says Byers Murray.

Keeping all of this in mind, I savored my oysters at The Walrus and The Carpenter, with a new appreciation of what, for so long in my mind, had just been another shellfish. But as is clear with good food, everything we eat has a story. Nothing on our plates can be paired with the word “just.”

A place of production, people to produce it, a system for getting it to a restaurant or a store and lastly the people that prepare it for us, or the preparation that happens in our very own kitchens; that entire system happens with every single thing that we eat. Every. Single. Time. Discovering that story is part of enjoying and appreciating what we’re eating, and putting us on a path to better food and food system.
Erin Byer’s Murray Drink and Oyster Preparation Recommendations

• Drink: It depends on the oyster but for an East Coast oyster like an Island Creek, I’d go with an ice cold Pilsner or a glass of mineral-ly white wine.
• Preparation: One of my favorite methods is throwing them on the grill until they pop open. You quickly pull the tops off, then add a pat of butter and a dash of Mexican hot sauce, like Cholula. Let the butter melt just slightly and serve.

Want to win a copy of Shucked?! We’re giving one away! To enter to win, leave a comment below telling us why you’re committed to local food. 

Image: samantha celera, The Walrus and the Carpenter, Geoff Menzies, Anna Brones

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VideoReminding us of the necessity, and resilience, of our planet’s rivers.

Rivers are an integral part of ecosystems and cultures around the world. Unfortunately, many of them are blocked from flowing freely, subject to the demands of power companies. Despite the challenges, there are successes.

Last fall I sat and watched the Condit Dam on the White Salmon river come down, albeit via live streaming. For years people have talked about this dam coming out, and friends and colleagues have been seeped in the process that it took to make that dream become a reality. Out of town on dam explosion day, I kept a window open on my computer screen and watched as an iconic dam was blown to pieces.

The White Salmon wasn’t the only dam to come down in the Pacific Northwest last year. A month earlier, the largest river restoration in history began on the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington.

American Rivers, a national organization that works to protect and restore rivers across the United States called 2011 the “Year of the River,” marking these two historic events and the removal of 1,000 dams across the country. American Rivers, American Whitewater and the Hydropower Reform Coalition released a short film today that illustrates the remarkable dam removals on the Elwha and White Salmon rivers. The seven-minute film premiered at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival in January and is the final installment in the “Year of the River” series by filmmaker Andy Maser.

This film is a good reminder of the power and resilience of nature, and how we all have a connection to the very rivers that run through our backyards.

Year of the River from Andy Maser on Vimeo.

American Rivers and Patagonia are prompting people to help to restore more of America’s rivers by removing 100 dams in 2012. You can take action here.

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It should be no surprise to us in this burgeoning age of conscious consumerism that we would want more than just the same old sustainable tale. In fact, as consumers seek to have more storied clothing in 2011, forward-thinking designers are realizing that the more story a garment can weave within, the more appealing it is to buy. This requires not only a tremendous amount of serious thought towards the actual clothing design,  but a knowledge of story and where to draw from.

Take for instance the Awamaki Lab fashion design residency. The lab is giving young designers the opportunity to develop capsule collections in partnership with the Awamaki and its association of indigenous Quechua women weavers.  Study designer Tara St James has been a mentor for the lab and for its inaugural season, Awamaki Lab and St James worked with designer Nieli Vallin, who studied design in Paris at the Chambre Syndical de la Couture. Brought together by the program’s director, Annie Millican, BlackBook reports “The three American fashion devotees will work with the vivid textiles and simple draping of the lliqllas (yik-ee-yaahs) – traditional woolen shawls worn by the Andean women and children – that characterize Quechuan clothing.”

Poncho by the Nielli Vallin/Awamaki/St James Collaboration

Tara says of the collaboration on her The Square Project blog:

“This is an unparalleled opportunity for selected designer participants to develop a capsule collection in the serene environment of Ollantaytambo, Peru. Through the process, designers hone their artistic skills and lend a modern perspective to Awamaki’s range of products. This will improve the organization’s marketability and help to stimulate economic growth in the isolated, rural communities where Awamaki works.”

Domestic economic growth – which we we hope to see flourish more – especially with Native Americans, is with the iconic label Pendleton and three young designers: Nathaniel Crissman, Rachel Turk and John Blasioli. Crissman and Turk, the designers behind the label Church and State worked with menswear designer Blasioli and Pendleton to domestically manufacture the entire line with all domestic wool.

Having been a family owned business for more than 140 years based in the Pacific Northwest (Pendleton, Oregon), the company has always incorporated Native American patterns into their 100 percent virgin wool, reflecting ancient designs and legends. Stay tuned for fall ’11 to see breathtaking ponchos, open back dresses and Native American inspired cardigan sweaters for men and women from the collaboration.

My prediction? Storied clothing in addition to sustainable fabrics is the next wave of conscious fashion where we consumers can be more invested in what we buy from a historical standpoint, designers can learn more ancient trades utilizing their design muse, and with that demand, poor economic sectors will see growth teaching trades they’ve always known. We’re in for an exciting time.

Top Image by Owyn Ruck of Textile Arts Center

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Living in the Northwest, salmon is close to my home – and heart. That’s because the salmon restoration issue in the Northwest isn’t just about conservation. Like many other environmental issues, it’s also about jobs and the economy.

In fact, salmon fishing brings tens of millions of dollars into the regional economy each year, representing thousands of jobs. But because of salmon declines in the Columbia and Snake Rivers over the past three decades, over 25,000 jobs have been lost.

Just how much salmon decline are we talking about? During the time of the Lewis & Clark expedition up to 16 million salmon returned each year. Nowadays, that number is in the range of fewer than ten thousand fish. Salmon and steelhead are both endangered species but according to scientists, salmon runs would be restored by dam removal.

Dam removal is a contentious issue, and for the last 15 years a national coalition of conservation organizations, commercial and sportsfishing associations, businesses and river groups have been in litigation against the federal government to ensure protection for the endangered fish. Dam removal is part of the protection advocated for by the plaintiffs and regional fisheries biologists.

Last Monday, I went to the Portland Courthouse with Save Our Wild Salmon to listen to the latest in this process.

U.S. District Court Judge James Redden declared that he wants to end this 15 year ordeal, and that a working plan is in sight. But conservationists and scientists are less confident. The science supporting the plan, called a biological option or “biop,” runs counter to the advice of many experts from the Forest Service, Department of Fish and Wildlife and the American Fisheries Society’s top scientists.

“We scientists believed the President when he said he would protect science and strengthen the ESA, but secretary Locke and Dr. Lubchenco have seemingly allowed political pressure to circumvent a decision based on sound science,” said Bill Shake, retired Assistant Regional Director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Judge Redden has asked lawyers to supply written briefs next month to help him arrive at a final decision.

Photo credit: pfly

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