So, I plotted out a thorough Facestuffer Guide to a fun, winey diney weekend in Jacksonville ($3, buy here in my new store!), and although the guide lists my top 6 tasting rooms, I also put together a broader Citysearch Guide to the Applegate’s best wineries–Grapes, Gliders and Grass Pants: Best Sips on the Applegate Valley Wine Trail.

Happy trails!

It was a valiant PPS team effort as usual. For our picnic’s leggy centerpiece, the indefatigable Marnie took on the pivotal task of crab fetching—toting 11 crabs from Newman’s fish market on NW 21st Avenue to her home stove, where she steam-warmed them, then in true Portland style, schlepped the entire pot from her apartment to the park on foot, braving some good-natured heckling en route.

The rest of us brought an assortment of crudités and salads—Lila’s simple, perfect pile of butter lettuce tossed with homemade Green Goddess dressing (click here to get Lila’s recipe on the PPS website), Brenda’s elegant celery root rémoulade, and and this quintessential spring arrangement of shaved asparagus and Parmigiano-Reggiano courtesy of Lucy.

And everyone brought butter. Michelle supplied a portable stove and we kept a pan of it melting continuously. Because it’s not a proper crab feed without at least a pound of butter per person.

Andrea made fresh pretzels, whetting our appetite for her newly-released cookbook, Pretzel Making at Home, and baguettes appeared out of the woodwork—I was especially enamored with the SunStone Artisan Bakery epi loaf I’d gotten that morning at the Ashland farmers market, then raced back home to Portland with just in time to plunk it on the picnic table. (I was down there visiting family, btw, I didn’t go all the way to Ashland for an epi, picnic club hasn’t gotten that out of hand…yet)

After an intense photography session,

We all assembled plates that looked something like this:

We sat around a picnic table overlooking Wallace’s dog park and the lush grassy grounds of stately Chapman School, a deviation from our normal picnic blanket dining arrangement, but eating crab sort of requires a table.

Besides, we were worried that our butter buckets might fall over on the picnic blanket, and we already had to retire one blanket because Marnie threw deviled eggs all over it at our Easter meetup, and then danced on them, and it never recovered.

Thanks to a heavy NYT overlay on the picnic table, cleanup was a snap, and we were on to dessert.

Dessert—let’s talk about dessert. PPS member Kristen Murray, one of the finest pastry chefs in the known universe, could not attend this particular gathering, but in her place, she sent a proxy of 11 caramel mousse trifles with chocolate banana jam and graham petites, presented as so:

Not to be smug or anything, but clearly we are the luckiest picnickers in Portland.

Night fell, the moon rose bright and full in the clear sky, and the PPS rosé spring began to dry up, so we packed up our crab shells and baguette crumbs and licked-clean mousse pots and scattered to our various corners of the city, leaving a trail of butter in our wake.

When asked how they felt about getting crabs with the Portland Picnic Society, Lila, Andrea, and the Moon responded as such:

]]> http://underthetablewithjen.com/blog/the-portland-picnic-society-got-crabs/feed/ 0 http://underthetablewithjen.com/blog/portland-picnic-society-in-sunset-magazine/ http://underthetablewithjen.com/blog/portland-picnic-society-in-sunset-magazine/#comments Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:04:23 +0000 admin http://underthetablewithjen.com/?p=20575 Last September, my fellow Portland Picnic Society members and I partook in a picnic photo shoot for Sunset Magazine. It was so grueling—seven long hours of a perfect late summer day spent languishing in St. Johns’ Cathedral Park, doing this, mostly,

And sometimes this.

Terrible, yes, I know. Actually, I just found an old tweet that sums it up pretty well.

In all seriousness, I was a little too worried about my lemon cream pots’ whipped cream quenelles melting to fully enjoy the moment, but now that the article, written by the marvelous Marnie Hanel, is out and the entire affair is right there in full, delicious color, it does remind me that we had an awfully good time. I’m wearing a Woodblock chocolate bar on my leg, which is irrefutable proof.

You can read the article in the May issue of Sunset magazine, you can see more Portland Picnic Society escapades on our website, and if you simply can’t wait another second before digging your wicker basket out from under the basement dirty laundry pile, flying out the door in a sundress (or rolled up chinos, whatever) and heading for the nearest park, here’s a helpful guide I made for Citysearch–Sack Lunches & Soggy Heinies: Picnic-Friendly Portland Parks.

Visit my new Wordcake store! >>

But if I have learned one thing in this life, it’s that when one has an impossible dream, one just needs to email Mette Hornung Rankin of the Bureau of Betterment, brilliant designer, illustrator, and the other half of Portland’s 100 Best Places To Stuff Your Faces. And then, approximately 10 minutes later, you have this:

And just like that, your dream LIVES!

Behold, the brand-new Croissant iPhone Case, covered in Mette’s hand-illustrated croissants. We are now selling it in our extremely fun brand new Wordcake store, along with the Signature Facestuffer iPhone Case, which looks like this:

This first run is pretty limited, I just made 10 of each to test the waters, so scoop one up now if you like them.

The store also carries my brand-new line of Facestuffer Guides—easily digestible gastro guides and getaways for the food-savvy traveler. I’ve been working on this project for a long time, so it’s very exciting to finally see it come to some sort of fruition.

I’m writing guides based on my Portland eating experiences, and I’m also writing guides inspired by my frequent food travels. “Weekenders” and “Day Trippers” are pretty self-explanatory—weekend and day trips stuffed with edible itineraries and tips, with a sprinkling of the destination’s attractions/culture/shopping added in for good measure, and plenty of helpful website, menu and map links.

And although I’m still working on them, I’ll also have a collection of Quickies–good for a few hours of hot ‘n heavy food fun, and Eat Sheets–interesting Best Of compilations centered around a pertinent theme. Coming soon!

Right now, there are five guides in the store—for Portland, I’ve made downtown and Northwest “Day Tripper Deluxe” guides, which are excellent for both tourists who need an insider’s scoop on those neighborhood’s best dining destinations and locals who want a super comprehensive restaurants/markets/bars/sweet treats/happy hour library for when they’re seeking sustenance but are having a brain toot about where to go. The guides are printable so you can keep them on you, or they download to your iBooks PDF library, where they live peacefully alongside your My Berlin Kitchen and Yes, Chef downloads until you need them.

Since I’ve been spending a fair amount of time in Southern Oregon now that I have family there, I’ve also made a “Weekender” guide for charming Jacksonville: gateway to the Applegate Valley Wine Trail, a wine lover’s dream village, and my favorite small town in Oregon.

While you’re down there, I’ve also compiled a Day Tripper tour of the seven wineries that make up the lesser known but beautiful Upper Rogue Wine Trail.

And then there’s the guide made possible by my jam-packed trip to vortex land this past fall—the Sedona Weekender. Sedona isn’t exactly a prime dining destination, but it IS one of the most exquisite spots ever for a relaxing, sun-soaked retreat, and since you gotta eat while you’re there, I found you the best spots.

I’ve got loads more guides in the work, some sensible, some a bit more quirky, all delicious, so stay tuned. And if you too share my dream of owning an iPhone case covered in dancing croissants, well, here you go.