• Zella Hazelnuts out of Bend, OR was sampling delicious dry roasted hazelnuts made by generations of hazelnut growers. An interesting tidbit: The farmers switched from calling the nuts filberts to hazelnuts when they realized that no one knew what filberts were. (Here’s what the Oregon Hazelnut Marketing Board has to say about that.)
• Zorba’s Chocolates out of Ashland, OR uses raw, unroasted cacao beans in their chocolate making to be as close to “fresh off the tree” as possible. Their chocolate was intense dark, and the espresso and plain ganache  truffles struck me as delicious.
• Aside from local favorite Rogue Creamery, some interesting “new to me” cheese makers I look forward to exploring more in the future included Tumalo Farms from Bend; La Mariposa cows milk cheese made by an Argentinian transplant in Albany, OR; Portland Creamery; Briar Rose Creamery from Dundee, OR.
• I also had a wonderful locally made lavender jelly from L’Islandoux made by a delightful French woman.
• And to top it all of, fantastically fluffy marshmallows from Marshmallow Heaven from Rogue River.

See who else was there — a long list of fabulous food worth pursuing next year!

~Robin

Amy’s Kitchen, Sensory Manager

Are you a Foodie with a passion for creating great tasting meals? Do you have a background as a chef in a restaurant where you developed an appreciation for food prepared the right way?

We are looking for candidates with the above qualities to help us bring the same sensibility into our production environment. We prepare frozen organic meals on two shifts, Monday through Friday, in a new production facility near Medford , Oregon . We are looking for someone to work with our production and quality staff to ensure that each meal that we produce is of the highest quality. The successful applicant will enjoy working with people in a production environment to help generate a focus on the sensory qualities of the food we prepare. These positions are designed to provide a communications and training bridge between our kitchen and the production lines to ensure that we never drift from our goal to make perfect meals every time.

If interested please email a resume to orjobs@amyskitchen.net or visit our website at www.amyskitchen.com

Picking where to have coffee in Portland can be stressful: So many good choices and you never know if there’s somewhere just a little better a block away. After seeing the scene at Tin Shed, which had shades of 18th St. hipsteresque, I turned back and headed to randomness.

There it was, a shelf full of large freshly baked muffins in the most diverse flavors I’d ever seen:
-Raspberry coconut bran (my choice – yum);
-bacon cornmeal cheddar made with Beeler Bacon and Tillamook cheddar (how local can you get);
-cinnamon rhubarb which my muffin-pusher declared her favorite; a -gluten free lemon poppyseed which I’d go back for if I weren’t having lunch in an hour
-and blueberry for the traditionalist

Serving Stumptown coffee, free wifi, and lots of light this could become a serious hangout if I didn’t have so many other cafes to experience!

1800 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR 97211

A Cheesy Day at Rogue Creamery

It’s worth a visit to Rogue Creamery to taste a variety of cheeses that may be hard to find elsewhere. We reveled in the 2010 World Cheese Awards Silver Medal winning Caveman Blue – sublimely creamy, just blue enough – and the very impudent tongue stinging Brutal Blue, a unique blue cheese experience as far as American blues are concerned.

The new-ish Rogue Creamery tasting room is awesome with artisan food from all over as well as local, including a local bread made with Rogue cheddar cheese as well as lots of beers and Gary West beef jerky.

For road trips, the bags of cheese curds – pesto, jalapeno, chipotle – are a perfect finger food.

If you’re summer roadtripping to / from Portland, Central Point is an easy pit stop off I5!

Lillie Belle Farms Chocolate Factory and Shop

It’s a happy coincidence that the companies whose cheese and chocolate combines into the Smokey Blue chocolate truffle share a parking lot.

You can stumble from Rogue Creamery over to Lillie Belle, optionally stopping at the wine tasting room in the back of the lot, cheese company whose Smoky Blue marries with a Lillie Belle chocolate truffle where you can see some of the most creatively flavored and pretty chocolates being made as well ataste and buy.

Many of the berries for fillings are grown in Jeff’s garden nearby. But perhaps more importantly Jeff explained the liquor flavors use only top shelf spirits, at the insistence of one of the chocolate makers. (Don Julio tequila and Maker’s Mark, for example)

Unfortunately we arrived too late (in life) for their absinthe marshmallow smores made with home made anise seed graham crackers – a concoction that needs a repeat performance.

Do cherry cordials remind you of a drugstore? Not these. Check out how fresh  bing cherries are soaked and soaked and soaked in a thick mixture of rum infused with vanilla beans. (Warning watching this may be intoxicating.)

I gallantly tasted a freshly dipped cherry cordial: a thick chocolate shell encases the very pure bing cherry and rum filling. For the full story, see how they coat the molds with chocolate, then shake it out to make the shell…let it harden, fill it up, and then cap off the bottom. Each cordial (and any of their wrapped candy) is individually wrapped by hand, rock music blaring in the background all the while. Artisans with attitude!

You’ll find lots of samples – spicy, bacony, nutty. All like nothing you’ve ever had…and I’ve been around the chocolate block.