Salt and Straw- Portland, OR

Full disclosure- we are not ice cream people; we like it but who doesn't?  However, we do not bend over backward to attend ice cream parlors or make it a part of our daily, weekly or even monthly lives.  There are exceptions such as Bassett's or Franklin Fountain in Philadelphia.  On our travels to Portland, Oregon, we specifically marked the very popular ice cream shop Salt and Straw.  This is not completely traditional ice cream flavors such as vanilla, chocolate or strawberry.  Instead, you have gin spiced blackberry jam with chocolate chips, Stumptown Coffee & Burnside Bourbon, and an occasional ice cream derived from bone marrow.  During our (first) visit to Salt and Straw bone marrow was not on the menu, but it is berry season in the Pacific Northwest.  We opted for a "flight" of ice cream and sampled 4 flavors.  Traditional cups or house-made waffle cones are also available.  Our flavors were honey lavender, Portland Creamery's goat cheese with marionberry & habanero, Arbequina olive oil, and pear with blue cheese.  

We disagreed only slightly on our favorites. The top two for both of us were the honey lavender and pear with blue cheese. Lavender is a popular crop around here and the honey in the ice cream is made from local honey apiary, Bee Local. Both flavors were well balanced, with lavender being a little more prominent but not in your face. The pear and blue cheese was not a smooth ice cream but rather had chunks of both in it. The pear was intensely sweet but the blue cheese was a good balance for this.

Foreground - background:  Honey Lavender, Olive Oil, Pear & Blue Cheese, Goat Cheese with Marionberry & Habanero

We both listed the olive oil and the goat cheese ice creams as less favored. That doesn't mean we disliked them, we just didn't like them as much as the others. The olive oil was pretty strong flavored, which is nice if you like the oil and cream combo. The goat cheese was prominent in that scoop with the marionberry and habanero being sadly more mild that expected with only a little sweetness and spice to it at the end. As it was the only limited edition ice cream we tried, I think we were hoping for a little more from this one. 

The beauty of Salt and Straw is not only the out-of-the-box thinking for ice cream flavors but the passion and focus to utilize local provisions and businesses as the backbone of their ingredients.  When browsing inside the parlor there is a shelf dedicated to the purveyors of the ice cream ingredients with their specific products (i.e. the olive oil and Bee Local Honey) for the consumer to purchase. While this symbiotic relationship between small businesses is not unique should be praised and admired.  It is, after all, the first time we've seen this when it pertains to ice cream.

A Little Blurb About Us

Sometimes this blog seems so impersonal because all we ever write about is food we eat at other places. We never actually talk about foot we make ourselves. This needs to change. After we get back from our trip to the Pacific Northwest (currently on the plane there!) we will start working on writing about our own dishes and meals. We have no intention of turning into a recipe blog, but rather writing about dishes that we make and what we like and don't like about cooking and food. 

We tend to try to do more dishes from scratch in a farm to table fashion, locally sourcing our veggies from either our garden (very local) or from our crop share (Jack’s Farms Pay-as-you-go crop share-link at the bottom of the page). We try to locally source the meat as best we can and have some favorites. We try to be creative with new things but have some standard dishes that we do on a consistent basis. Ethnic dishes from both our backgrounds tend to be the most interesting to make, mainly because we are both the most critical of these. 

I (Cassie) have also taken up canning and pickling with Rob helping with this occasionally. I love doing it as much of it comes from our garden or our crop share and is completely fresh. And its nice to be able to make your own tomato sauce, jellies, peppers, and pickles that will last a whole year. 

So more on these things in the future. Will likely bunch things together in categories. Excited to try something new!

A couple stops at Pike Place Market:

In a corridor off the main street in Pike Place Market lies Oriental Mart, a family-run Filipino lunch stand that whips up homemade traditional fare including salmon tip soup.  Salmon tips are usually discarded and rarely available for public purchase.  The tips include the meat and anatomy around the gills and pectoral fin and includes some more fatty (and therefore tastier and very tender) pink salmon meat.  Served in a sour lemon grass broth with a tamarind and tomato base, the consumption process may take some patience and dissection but the pay-off is well worth the effort.

A block away from the main hub of Pike Place Market is Seattle Coffee Works.  We knew that Seattle folk take their coffee very seriously but SCW takes their coffee making to a new scientific level.  Enter the vacuum pot, a device that utilizes vacuum filtration to make your pot of coffee.  The result is a light-bodied, mellow, and drinkable cup (or carafe) of coffee.  The barista refers to it as "coffee tea" which is entirely accurate. Once this coffee is served it is meant to cool which unlocks some of the natural flavors of the coffee; in our case, mild berry, dark cocoa powder and a slight metallic (in a good way) aftertaste.

Some treats from the Pacific Northwest:

Smoked salmon, brie, roasted garlic and guest

Washington is littered with espresso kiosks

Grilled salmon BLT, Alaskan rockfish tacos at Pike Brewing Co.

Daily Dozen Donuts in Pike Place Market with the conveyor which produces the fresh fried delectables.