House Concerts: De Temps Antans and Lisa Ornstein with Dan Compton (12/10 & 12/17)

It wasn't until I arrived at Abbie's house that I realized her house concerts are the perfect community meal event.  About two years ago, one of Brett's fiddle classmates had our friend Matias build a stage for her living room and began hosting traditional music concerts occasionally.  She now hosts concerts every couple months and they are preceded by a potluck dinner. 

This month's concert featured De Temps Antans, a group from Quebec specializing in Old Timey music.  They were like a comedy routine to watch - it was by far the most entertaining and fun concert I've been to in a long time!  I think everyone bought both CDs in an effort to bring the spirit home with them, but what we really needed was a live recording to capture their energy and humor.  Or we need them to move out here.

The potluck was a great lead-in.  Abbie and family had prepared a zippy Thai dish that was delicious and everyone else filled in around that with good cheeses, homemade bread, salads and cookies.  Any pot luck is well worth it to me when people bring homemade foods and the house concert guests came through with shining colors.

One week after the concert at Abbie's we attended a concert at Scott Killops' house by Brett's fiddle teacher, Dan Compton, and the outstanding Québécoise-turned-Portlander fiddle player, Lisa Ornstein.  Dan pointed out she was a real Portlander now because her footboard (the piece of wood traditional musicians stomp on with their feet for percussion) was made of bamboo.  Lisa and Dan were in some ways the opposite of De Temps Antan.  Their music was technically outstanding - their finger work floored me at times - and their introductions to the music were very educational.  Their performance style was much straighter and more serious than De Temps Antan.

Scott's house was a beautiful, large place on Mt. Tabor - the views from his neighborhood must be priceless.  There was less focus on the potluck side of things for this concert - in fact I wanted to invite the Club, but I couldn't figure out if there would be a dinner or not, a critical criteria for the PDX Community Dinner Club.  It turned out that there was a snacky dinner and some tasty homemade cookies.  The star dish of the evening was a traditional Quebec dish called a Tourtière.  Lisa made it herself using her family recipe.  It's a seasoned meat pie - she used pork and beef seasoned with rosemary and a long list of other spices.

For the next potluck house concert I'll make sure to send out a notice to the club so more of us can attend.  It's a great way to share a meal and spend an evening!

Reedwood Friends Concert and Dessert (12/12/10)

You'd think a holiday gathering at a Quaker church would be the antithesis of yesterday's distillery events, but the amount of sugar held in the dozens of dessert platters weighing down the banquet table was probably as intoxicating as any of the teaspoon-size samples of spirits yesterday. 

The event started in the church with a bell ringing performance that set the holiday tone, followed by piano, trumpet and choir performances interspirsed with short prayers and bible readings.  It was a relaxing way to spend an hour. 

Then everyone filed down to the community room and the 25 foot table laden with confections.  Whoa.  Given the number of people I saw in the church I thought there was no way all this stuff would be eaten, but the crowd (probably especially the dozens of kids) took care of almost everything.  My favorites were the peanut butter rice crispy treats with chocolate on top and a pumpkin bread that was still warm. 

Several church members brought items from home to decorate the tables, which warmed the otherwise standard church event room aesthetic.

I was thankful that they didn't have newcomers introduce themselves.  Everyone was friendly to us, but didn't make a fuss over not having seen us before.  They seem to host a lot of community events, so maybe they are used to new faces, or maybe it was mostly newcomers. 

My mental image of Quakers is a very white one, so I enjoyed the diversity I saw at the event - Latin American and Japanese families, and our tablemate mentioned her Kenyan friends there.

Overall, a 10 out of 10 ooey, gooey chocolately treats for an event that in every way lived up to what was advertised and didn't include any religious pushiness.

House Spirits Booze Bazaar & New Deal Distillery Season's Eatings (12/11/10)

The *extremely* rainy bike ride over to House Spirits definitely had my spirits down, so the toasty interior was a welcome respite in itself.  The cheese, chocolate, relish, coffee and, of course, spirits tastings were a big bonus. 

The event was held in the warehouse-like distillery and alcohol purchases could be made in the more refined salesroom next door.  Dave B, my cheesemaking partner in crime, Brett and I all walked away with the Acquavit - delicious! 

Brett and Dave B at House Spirits showing off their loot - Olympic Provisions meat, JP Cigars, and Jacobs Creamery blue cheese - we had yet to purchase bottles of Acquavit and White Dog.

It was tough to pull ourselves away, but Brett and I finally made it over to New Deal where we met up with Matthew and Windy for a similar, but even larger event.  This one had a more community feel to it since they allowed kids and had a wider variety of vendors offering generous samples of their wares - baked goods, cheese, beer, rum, sauces, chocolate, and most of New Deal's line of spirits.  In the more finished space next door they had an experienced bartender making half-size mixed drinks.  The hot toddy with their No. 3 gin, palm sugar, licorice root and lemon and hot water was outstandingly delicious.  There was even a place to sit and enjoy our drink and some conversation.  Very nice.

Matthew, Windy and Brett enjoying hot toddies at New Deal

Overall, it was well worth the bike ride in the driving rain.  While these events don't exactly fit into the meal theme, they were full of community and lots of good conversation - I especially enjoyed the multiple opportunities to chat with the owners of many of the small businesses sampling their goods at each place.  It's amazing to have such a collection of food crafting experts in our city!

Portland Blind Cafe 2 (12/3/10)

While we milled around in the lit waiting area of Tabor Space, Paul, Jana, Brett and I could only find one of the five other people who would be joining us at Table 11.  As the host led us, conga-line-style, to the basement dining room we caught a quick glimpse of our other tablemates.  The host then handed our conga line off to Steve, our blind server, who led us through a twisting tunnel that ended in a pitch black room.  Even after our eyes adjusted we couldn't see an inkling of light. 

Super cool!!

Despite having only glanced at our tablemates before dinner, we were now in a ropes-course-like challenge to collaboratively serve ourselves from the containers of unknown contents covering our table.  Lucky for us vegetarians everything on the menu was vegan, peanut free and gluten free.  Despite all that, the food was delicious (though not particularly filling).  From what we could taste, the first course was a stuffed chard leaf, then there was a spinach and asian pear salad with tempeh and polenta with a mushroom sauce.  Dessert was a super rich and delicious dark chocolate mousse.

It was a testament to either our team work or our hunger that when the lights came up at the end of dinner there was only a single spinach leaf clinging to one serving bowl - every other scrap had been consumed.  I couldn't even scrape more from my mousse cup, though I tried.

Blind Cafe 2: If only you could see our sparkling conversation and the inappropriate gestures that my tablemate is making.

I thought it would be challenging to have a conversation in such a crowded place with tables of people nearby, but I hardly heard the other tables and had a great conversation with my immediate neighbors.  One of the interesting things about being in the dark is that I felt like I could disappear when I wanted to - if I didn't feel like contributing to the conversation at the moment it was completely comfortable to be quiet and listen in or itch my armpit or kiss my neighbor (luckily it was my husband). 

The entertainment portion of the evening consisted of spoken word poetry by our waiter, Steve, followed by a compelling speech by another of the blind waitstaff who shared a bit about his experience of becoming blind and a tiny bit of his experiences as a blind person.  Finally we were treated to a guitar and cello concert by the One Eye Glass Open band, led by the head organizer of the dinner. 

After the entertainment and dessert the staff lit candles and we were able to see our environment for the first time.  It was interesting to compare our mental images with actuality.

The experience plus the quality of food was worth the $35 price tag, though we would have like a more generous helping of it - I think everyone at our table was not quite full by the end. 

I give it 9.5 out of 10 quinoa-stuffed chard rolls.  It was a phenomenal experience that I highly, highly recommend should there be a Blind Cafe 3!

http://www.portlandblindcafe.com/PortlandBlindCafe/Portland_Blind_Cafe.html