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The NEW Portland potluck
by Leslie Cole, The Oregonian
Tuesday August 19, 2008, 12:01 AM
Neighbors carve out time for leisure and friendship, gathering for weekly feasts prepared by a vegan chef
Eric Loebel and Ruby Gates (at far left) organized a group of neighbors for a very Portland potluck. The group kicks in cash and gathers once a week for a vegan feast prepared by Ivy Entrekin (center). The neighbors savor the free time for socializing as much as they do the food.
Her mission: cook a mess of food for a bunch of families, and make it meatless, wheat- and dairy-free, and lip-smacking good.
Recipes included with this story: Southern "Dolmas" With Brown Rice Dates and Pecans, Savory Blueberry Sauce, Corn on the Cob With Ivy's Zippy Mustard-Lime Glaze, Southern-Style Peach Cobbler, Coconut Whipped Cream
The families, some with young kids, some single or empty nesters, visit a different house each week, showing up with their appetites at 6 p.m. each Tuesday.
Kids are welcome. Entrekin, a blonde from Alabama with her favorite vegetables tattooed on her forearms, shops and cooks. And instead of chicken wings and seven-layer dip, these folks -- who mostly aren't vegan or even vegetarian -- fill their plates with the likes of quinoa, tahini and beets, and go back happily for more.
The price of this postmodern potluck meal: $25 a household or $15 an individual, plus grocery costs.
"It's crazy and it's fun," says Nicole Cordan, 41, who works full time on salmon-restoration issues in Portland and joins the group each week with her partner, Jeffrey Michael, and 3-year-old, Sophia. They spend less than they would at a restaurant, Cordan says, and no one scowls at their energetic daughter. Plus, unlike a true potluck, she actually can sit down and relax. "The kids run around, and we get to sit and talk about our lives and share things."
In the hours beforehand, Entrekin, who moved to Portland from Atlanta and who loves okra fritters and "good Southern grit cakes," has whipped up the likes of roasted cauliflower and garlic in pita pockets with lemon tahini. A side dish might be fresh snow peas with maple-sage-pecan "butter" (Earth Balance margarine), or local corn roasted in the husk with an olive oil-mustard-cumin glaze. For dessert, there's ginger-mint fruit salad with toasted coconut, or chocolate pudding with fresh raspberries.
"People just dive into the food," says Ruby Gates. "It's like an implosion moment."
The Block Dinners started in June, when Gates and her husband, Eric Loebel, were looking for a way to offer more hours to Entrekin, the private chef they hired last year to cook for their family a few times a week. They asked friends on the block if they wanted to pitch in for a weekly group dinner, and five households signed up.
They pay monthly, show up as often as they can, and each week finds anywhere from 10 to 20 friends, family and guests joining in at the table. Entrekin cooks each week in the Gates-Loebel kitchen, and the five families take turns hosting the dinner at their table.
For a time, some of them silently wondered if they'd enjoy their vegan dinner as much as the company.
"I thought the food would be plain, that I'd be hungry 20 minutes later," says Eric Shriner, a 41-year-old landscape architect who comes each week with his wife and two young children.
Others admit to suppressing an eye roll when Entrekin, in her soft Southern drawl, describes what she'll be serving. They say they expect something edible but a bit dull.
But they've learned to hold their tongues -- and get in line early to fill their plates.
"Every time," says Shriner's wife, Deborah Kane, "I'm blown away."
She says she was floored by the flavors in Entrekin's Southern-style dolmas (a brown rice/date/pecan mixture wrapped in steamed collard greens), served with a savory blueberry sauce. Others go weak-kneed remembering a salad of Entrekin's: backyard greens tossed with honey-roasted potatoes, baked tofu, toasted hazelnuts and creamy apricot-tahini dressing.
Cordan still craves an almost-vegan brown rice and roasted beet risotto, garnished with arugula, nasturtium blossoms and bits of creamy chevre. "It was so good, and so ridiculously beautiful. In truth, I'm not a big beet person. I've been known to say, 'I hate beets.'"
So what's Entrekin's secret?
Partly good genes (born and raised in northeast Alabama, she comes from an extended family of great home cooks), and great ingredients: peak-season produce from farmers markets or the backyard gardens on the block. It's also the chef's intuition for combining them.
"A lot of times," says Entrekin, who waits tables at Vita Cafe along with her private-chef work, "it's just going through what I have (as ingredients) and thinking about what sounds good at the time."
With no formal training, Entrekin, who studied fashion design in Atlanta, dreams up dishes such as like gently steamed carrots tossed with an apricot glaze, toasted cashews, fresh mint and (optional for true vegans) goat cheese.
After going vegan 10 years ago for health reasons, her cooking style has evolved, she says. The main lesson she's learned through the years is to avoid anything heavily processed, such as the vegan cream cheese she used to put in everything. "Now, I figure out how to make things (creamy) with lemon juice and tahini instead."
Entrekin makes her own nut butters and bumps up flavors by roasting. She has learned to love grains and cooks a wide variety of them. She keeps a few key cookbooks close at hand for inspiration (see box), and talks food all the time with her culinary-school-grad brother and like-minded friends.
She also draws on the diversity of flavors, textures and colors in the plant world, always looking for balance. "I really like to mix sweet and savory," Entrekin, 33, says. "And I like to do something raw or lightly cooked" as a palate cleanser.
No dish is ever too far from her Southern roots, though.
Her grandma used to brush mustard on sweet corn and grill it, she says, so mustard becomes the base of the olive oil-cumin-lime marinade she drizzles on the first local corn she sees at the market.
A conversation with her brother in North Carolina about deep-dish peach cobbler inspired her to make a vegan version, made with spelt flour, unrefined organic sugar and served with dollops of whipped coconut cream.
Back on 57th Avenue on a balmy summer night, Entrekin has once again pulled off the trick of making vegan meals that feel like Southern-style comfort food. The friends lounge on Gates and Loebel's deck this week, finishing up ears of corn and quinoa salad with creamy lemon sauce, chickpeas and cilantro.
After cobbler is served, Owen Kane, 4, asks his neighbor Kathy Lovrien, who makes him pancakes most weekends, to play hide and seek. Entrekin, who stays for the meal, chats with the adults lounging on benches before packing up and heading home.
Glenda Stewart, who lives next door, says these block dinners "are the highlight of my week." She's single and doesn't cook, but tonight she learned not just what quinoa is, but that she likes it.
Along with that, everyone here has squeezed something precious from their few free hours at the end of the day: They've slowed down, talked and listened.
"The pressure you feel to get stuff on the table in a reasonable time so the kids can eat is gone," Cordan says, "and the majority of cleanup is gone. Those are two pieces of time that allow you to sip your wine and hear your friends or your sweetie or your child tell you what they did that day. Those are nice moments."
Leslie Cole: 503-294-4069; lesliecole@news.oregonian.com
RELATED STORIES:
Cooking smart, cooking vegan
Make your own nut butters: With a Vitamix, you can make hazelnut, almond and pecan butters.
Try different milks: Hazelnut milk is delicious in puddings and custards; coconut milk can be thickened by refrigerating and then whipped like cream.
Turn to tahini: Mix with a little lemon juice and add to dressings or sauces for creaminess. Entrekin likes Joyva and Maranatha brands for their delicious roasted flavor.
Keep it real: Instead of using processed, nondairy (aka fake) cheese on pizza or Mexican food, substitute a creamy sauce or crumbled marinated tofu.
Pay as much attention to how food looks as how it tastes: Edible flowers, beautiful color combinations and nice serving dishes help cue your taste buds that they're in for a treat.
Balance flavors and textures: Serve dishes that combine sharp, salty and sweet, and crunchy and creamy.
-- Leslie Cole
Books for (vegan) cooks
Here are a few places from which vegan chef Ivy Entrekin draws inspiration:
"Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way," by Lorna Sass. A passport to the wide world of grains.
"Vegan Fusion World Cuisine," by Mark Reinfeld and Bo Rinaldi. Visually stunning, with recipes from the folks behind Blossoming Lotus cafes in Portland and Kauai.
"The Gift of Southern Cooking," by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock. With savvy substitutions, Entrekin uses it to create vegan versions of her favorite foods.
"The Joy of Cooking," by Irma S. Rombauer. A classic with much wisdom for anyone who cooks, regardless of their dietary preferences.
The old family recipe box: Mom and Grandma's creamed corn, sweet potato casserole, vegetable salads, Jiffy Pies and Southern grit cakes survived their vegan makeovers just fine, Entrekin says.
Other vegan cookbooks of note, from FOODday:
"Veganomicon," by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. A "full-service" cookbook with helpful techniques as well as appealing recipes.
"The New Vegan Cookbook," by Lorna Sass. Not so new anymore (it came out in 2001) but a nice collection of recipes with appetizing photos.
"The Millennium Cookbook: Extraordinary Vegetarian Cuisine," by Eric Tucker and John Westerdahl, dessert recipes by Sascha Weiss. Though the subtitle says "vegetarian," these recipes from the renowned San Francisco restaurant are vegan. Many are on the complex -- and elegant -- side, making them better for special occasions than ordinary weeknights.
"The Artful Vegan: Fresh Flavors From the Millennium Restaurant," by Eric Tucker and Bruce Enloe, dessert recipes by Amy Pearce. In the same vein as Millennium's earlier book -- gourmet, upscale, dramatic food.
-- Leslie Cole
I was so excited to see the cobbler recipe since it was labeled "wheat free" in the headnote. Unfortunately it contains spelt flour, which is in fact wheat. Sure, some people can tolerate spelt a little better than other species of wheat, but for those of us who really can't eat wheat, spelt is off limits.
I think by definition this event can't be considered a potluck. Seems more like a dinner party with hired help. The idle rich...
What a relief that these people can afford to pay someone to come into their homes and serve them. Being that they are too stupid (or too lazy) to cook for themselves I'd hate to see them starve.
Would this be newsworthy if it was a bunch of dudes ordering pizza for a football game?
Why are some elitists making the news about some fancy dinner party?
I agree this isn't a potluck. And the hipper-than-thou attitude of the upper middle class people in this story is rather annoying. But the party guests are actually paying money to go to dinner each week. So really, this is an amateur restaurant operating out of someone's home. Is that legal? Aren't there zoning laws and health codes to consider for that type of thing?
At worst, this is an illegal restaurant that needs to be investigated by the health department and the IRS. At best, this is a loony leftist housewife running a racket out of her home.
Regardless, the Oregonian needs to find something better to write about.
"A very Portland potluck". How stupid. What a waste of readers time.
Thank you for a very good article. I always enjoy reading about different ways of incorporating healthful eating in ones life style. I am vegetarian but I am still learning as I am also a insulin dependent diabetic.
When preparing flavorful healthful foods one can never have too many recipes.
Even my husband, a confirmed carnivore, is amazed how good the meatless dishes taste. I have not jumped on the vegan bandwagon but admire those who have.
There are a couple of points to make for all those upset about the oregonians article.
It is in the FOODday section since some of these media police didn't bother to check. What are they supposed to write about in the food section? The war in Iraq? The economy?
Plus the criticism of what people choose to do with their money is rediculous. If you have money but choose not to spend it on good dining good for you. If you don't have money I'll bet you want some. It's ironic that most people want to be wealthy (not that the people in the story are) but are bitter and resentful of people who are.
Here's an idea. Get an education, get a good job, work hard like those people do and you can have money too. Then decide for yourself that your not going to waste it on special food.
When I was in high school working at Baskin-Robbins in Beaverton I had to pay to go get my Food Handlers Card from the health department. There was a test I had to study for, and the money for the fees and test came out of my own pocket. Not to mention the regular inspections by the Health Department that would visit the shop and test our equipment and procedures.
Does this woman charging money to run a restaurant out of private homes have the appropriate documentation and permits to do such a thing?
I've contacted the Health Department about this shady restaurant "potluck" operation and they are looking into it. The gentleman I spoke with even had yesterdays Oregonian still on his desk and knew exactly what I was talking about. The Oregon Health Department, Office of Foodborne Illness Prevention can be reached at (971) 673-0451
Being a vegan, I really appreciated the article and the recipes. And the community aspect of bringing families together to share food is something I miss now that I do not live in Portland.
I think the negative comments stem from the fact these people are not eating meat or dairy. Again, being a vegan I get all kinds of amazing reactions and comments from people who can't comprehend living on a plant-based diet. And I think most of the reactions stem from insecurities...my plate of food makes people think about what they are eating and how it was produced. In this day and age of factory farming, most people do not want to "meet their meat".
Thanks for the great story!
Hi,I'm Martha Holmberg, the editor of FOODday. Wow, who knew that a story about a neighborhood dinner could be so exciting! So many of these comments are not the type a FOODday story usually provokes, but all the better--let's widen the conversation.
I'm not going to jump onto the snarky bandwagon, though it looks like a lot of fun, but I do want to clarify a couple of issues about the story:
First, no one is running a restaurant in their home. The hosts do not charge and keep the money for the meals -- the chef is paid for the time she spends cooking, in addition to the groceries she bought.
I also want to do the math on these meals, just so people are clear about what's taking place. As an example, a family of 4 people would pay $25 plus their share of groceries, which for a meal like this (with no meat, fish or cheese, which are expensive) might average $5 per person, at most. So 4 people get a nice dinner for $45,or $11.25 per person. That may be more than some people can pay for a meal, but compared to taking the family to even a modest restaurant, that's quite inexpensive.
So please continue to share your views on anything in FOODday, and feel free to email me directly, too (marthaholmberg@news.oregonian.com).
It is remarkably surprising how much fury a story about neighbors getting together for some cruelty-free food can muster in some people...(calling the health dept??!) Please. Thankfully, I do believe that the silent majority in Portland would agree that this is great community building. Not only are we talking about neighbors talking to neighbors...(Who does that anymore?) and people eating together, but we're talking about no one suffering or being slaughtered in the process. I can't see what could possibly be objectionable about this To vent anger toward a woman who is a waitress by daytime and someone who follows her dreams of a food career on her own time with ethics in mind hardly seems to merit such wrath. I do agree with someone else here who said the anger must come from those who see their own choices as questionable on the face of what these people choose to eat.
Bravo MightyAlweg, way to spend your time and effort pissing on something so unscrupulous as this young waitress trying to make a living out of her passion for cooking. So it's not a potluck; I fail to see what's so exorbitant or pretentious about paying someone $25 to shop and cook healthy food for your family while being able to relax and enjoy your neighbors' company once a week. I hear there's a bake sale nearby with rice krispie bars prepared in an non-sanctioned kitchen, might want to get on that one.
I've been keeping an eye on some lemonade stands in my neighborhood. They change the staff around a lot, so it makes them harder to track.
"It is remarkably surprising how much fury a story about neighbors getting together for some cruelty-free food can muster in some people...(calling the health dept??!) Please."
Exactly. Who cares what other people eat or how they choose to prepare it, except perhaps militant vegans... who I've always found very easy to disregard? I wouldn't throw one of these "potlucks" (yes, that was a poor choice of words), but why would I get up in arms if someone else did? It's their money, their place, their taste buds, and it doesn't affect me at all. Meh. I'll take my 15 bucks and go eat what I like in a restaurant, which sounds like a much better deal to me. If someone wants to do it another way, I couldn't possibly care less and I really don't understand why any else would.
Sounds like jealousy to me.
I called the health department\n to complain also, after I read the previous post. The gentleman I spoke with told me that this entire operation is under investigation.
And Martha Holmberg you are next on my list as I fully intend on calling your boss to complain about you and your attitude. Being editor of foodDay is not a badge to be worn proudly, it is a mark of shame.
I don't agree that the negative reaction from this article stems from any insecurities around eating eat. It's a response to the irritating self-importance vegans display in their incessant bragging about their dietary choices.
Nobody cares that you don't eat meat, nor does anybody consider it a positive trait.
Now Go away.
I agree- You don't seem me running around bragging about the Red Baron pizza I had last night do you?
I'm a vegan and I'm not going anywhere. We vegans are sick and tired of being discrminated against due to our choice of living a healthy lifestyle.
Not to throw fuel on this fire, but:
"Others go weak-kneed remembering a salad of Entrekin's: backyard greens tossed with honey-roasted potatoes, baked tofu, toasted hazelnuts and creamy apricot-tahini dressing."
Honey is a by-product of bees and true vegans don't eat products of bees.
I sadly know this after a convo with my boyfriend a few days ago, when we discussed if one of us were to turn vegan if that would be grounds for breaking up. We both decided that we could not live without cheese or eggs (or freaking delicious lamb gyros, for that matter).
Stories like these come about when there is nothing better to write about. And the whole NEW Portland angle, which is bullshit!
I know Ms. Entrekin from waiting tables with her in Atlanta. She is a kind hearted and talented person who deserves this opportunity. Shame on all of you who are making a big deal out of something so small and resultantly stomping on a hardworking young woman's dreams. I had considered moving to Portland because I believe it embraced a liberal spirit, a health oriented attitude and consciousness with community in mind. Clearly, your town is as susceptable to intolerance as our southern city. How truly sad. I have one comment for all you haters: Get a life.
I loved the food section this week, especially the Southern-vegan cook's excellent recipes. The story reflects a segment of Portland dining; other weeks, other segments of Portland dining are covered. It's nowhere near as high-falutin' as stories in, say, Sunset or the Martha Stewart magazine. Tastes differ. No one is forcing me to eat pork chops or mussels or -- the horror -- sausage, and I suspect no one is forcing the angry readers to eat Brussels sprouts or beets or honey. Don't like lima beans? Don't eat them. Surely there's something better to complain about than a group of neighbors having dinner together.
Called the health Department? You are a pathetic human with no life. This hard working young woman is following her dreams and you want to disrupt that? Why? Daddy didn't give you enough attention as a child? Your a failure in life? Or just an a..h...? Which ever it may be, your type disgust me! By the way, congratulation's on your promotion to assistant manager @ Baskin Robbins. Your Mom must be proud. If you would like to further this conversation, please email me @ electricswann@gmail.com. Loser!
Ivy is promoting organic, seasonal, local, healthy food while bringing people together to enjoy it?!? Someone please stop this so called indie Portland fairy godmother before she gets out of hand!
So much anger over people making a choice to have a meal together. My my. I find a couple of things that made me wince -- the casual sexism of referring to Entrekin as "a blonde from Alabama" (would a male chef be referred to by hair color?) and the equally casual use of the word "crazy" as a synonym for fun. But I don't travel through life waiting to be offended by those who make different choices than I do. Eating together is good. Building community in neighborhoods is good. Finding a way to make a few dollars in this tough economy -- again, it's good. Choosing anger as a response to a FOODday story that doesn't meet your every definition of what is right? ... well, now, that does seem a bit extreme.
PDXworkerbee- Your comments are not only uncalled for, but compeletely innapropiate. The fact of the matter is this is a Health Department issue, and as such a matter of public safety. as far as calling soembody a "blond from alabama" What is your problem with that? I think if you had an ounce of intelligence you would keep your opinions to yourself.
Thsi is in resposne to Idealist30's comment: STAY WHERE YOU ARe. we don't want you here. Native Oregonians are sick and tired of the rest of the country's rejects making their way to our state and trying to ruin our way of life. VEGANS, HIPPIES, YUPPIES, and illegal immigrants stay away.
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