Loco Locavores

I met BG, my dancer friend who builds costumes designed for ease of removal, downtown and we headed over to the latest sign of the apocalypse, the Portland Indoor Market.

It's taken a while for all the permits to come through. Why there were any issues is beyond me, but there it was, opening on Saturday, yesterday.

Basically it was the old Choi Institute of Self-defense, a location on Free Street across from the Civic Center.

I'd had a friend who'd taken Thai Boxing lessons there - she missed it when it closed late last Summer. I'd remembered it as an interesting window to walk by while walking on one of Portland's less interesting streets. Lot's of feet flying around, shouts muffled by the thick glass on the street.

Now it was full of tables covered with all sorts of winter produce.

Lot's of carrots, parsnips, free-range meat, cabbages, jars of jam.

Oh, and there was a box of tomatoes. And a goodly number of potatoes.

These last were problematic for BG. She really enjoys potatoes (one of the few dancers I've ever met who has any kind of relationship at all with starchy foods - most avoid them like the plague) and still was conserving a batch given her by her sister some time ago.

In fact, so long ago that she was worried they might not be worth using - hence the fatal attraction of the bags of fingerlings and other tuber-types populating the darker reaches of the room.

The two pounds of beef I purchased are now transformed through the magic of crock-pottery into a rich chili, carrying it's own heat in the fridge. Also have some beets.

Between us BG and I ran into a small phalanx of friends and acquaintances. A lot of time was spent chatting, watching the box of tomatoes empty out.

I must say it was fun, and I'm very glad we'd arrived when we did. As I noted you could watch the really good stuff go away within minutes.

We managed to escape after about 30 minutes, making our way over to Mousse for brekker , my usual Wednesday hangout when the Market is outdoors.

My schedule is such these days that I don't really get to fix a complexicated breakfast - often some fastidiously engineered oatmeal does the trick. Besides which the smoke detector in my new apartment is so sensitive that it's almost impossible to cook my old breakfast of sausage, eggs and rice with out being beeped out. Resetting the damned thing has always led to overcooked eggs - so I've reverted to oatmeal, which has yet to set it off.

So breakfast at Mousse was nice.

By the time we'd returned the piles of local produce were gone, picked clean by locavores. I'm not sure what this means and I admit to mixed feelings about it. A sizeable crowd was still milling about, asking questions and taking notes.

I don't know why I can't give others the credit for dropping by to get some fresh food - though Hannaford's and Shaw's actually have better stuff for less. Maybe it's just the contrived cleverness of it all. Now that everyone knows you have to get there for the limited pickings right at 10 a.m. I suspect it will become much more successful and much less pleasant.

We shall see.