Moser Good Eats and Good Times: A November to Remember

OMSI Exquisite Creatures Exhibit

November was a month filled with all the things I love: quilting (mostly sewing…there is a difference), cooking, and a trip to Portland. It’s been over a year since I’ve spent serious time in the cabin (aka the Studio) and it’s been much longer than that since I’ve shared that space with Maria or anyone else for that matter. A sharp contrast to the days when we had our quarterly Stix retreats there and I would spend countless hours beforehand preparing for them. Sadly, the cabin has come to feel abandoned, as well as all the projects left half-finished. Having two weeks of uninterrupted time with Maria to work on various UFOs (a quilter’s term for unfinished projects) was inspiring. It brought back so many fond memories. When we weren’t in the Studio, we were in the kitchen canning cranberry sauce, making holiday breads, and testing Thanksgiving recipes. It was a fun couple of weeks and I'm feeling renewed and motivated!

We spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Portland. Our stay was longer than normal due in part to snowy, icy weather conditions that closed the I-5 for a couple of days and kept us from leaving on our usual Monday following a visit. All was good though as it gave us more time to acclimate to Lauren’s new home and the Beaverton area, in general. In fact, we used that Monday when she returned to work to meet her around lunch time and tour the Nike World Headquarters Campus. We’ve talked about it since she joined Nike about four years ago, but never fit it into our schedule. It was quite the experience and one we’ll do again on some future visit. “Campus” is a fitting description of the over 75 buildings on almost 300 acres. Our tour with Lauren was limited to about an hour walk around Lake Nike (manmade), a walk through Prefontaine Hall (home to the famous waffle iron used to create the sole of the first Nike Waffle Trainer) and the Volkswagon van used to sell some of the early Nike tennies, and a visit to the Nike N7 building that includes displays of shoes created in partnership with Pendleton using Native American designs and Pendleton woolens. Pendleton Woolen Mills have always held a special interest to me due in part to the influence of my first 16 years growing up in Arizona and secondly, my interest in textiles. Years ago we visited the original mill in Pendleton, Oregon (opened in 1895) as part of our family vacation. More recently we toured the mill in Washougal, Washington. Verne has carried a Pendleton man bag since before manbags became cool and I have several Pendleton blankets I’ve collected over the past 25 years. Growing up with so much Pendleton has apparently inspired the girls to start their own collections. Pendleton is functional art at its best.

Early days for Nike

I’ve digressed from our visit to the Nike Campus, but all this talk about Pendleton brings to mind a funny story from our recent trip. It begins years ago when Verne and I first started our lives together. It was during the early ‘80s when personal color charts were the rage. I’d had mine done and found what I intuitively knew to be true…I was not a Spring or Summer, but a Winter. I’d grown up often wearing hand-me-downs from my older sister who has very different coloring than me. With her brown hair and blue eyes she always looked great in Spring/Summer colors. On the other hand, I had black hair, green eyes, and very pale skin and looked best in blacks, whites, and primary colors. Verne came to me with a wardrobe of beiges, browns, and other disgusting colors. To make what could be a very long story short, he had his color chart done and was found to also be a Winter. That made it easy for me to shop for him and even easier to donate just about everything in his wardrobe. However, there was one piece of clothing he refused to retire…a Pendleton sweater that he still owns and wears today. It’s no ordinary sweater, though as it happens to be the very collectible sweater that Jeff Bridges wore when he portrayed “the Dude” in The Big Lebowski, one of Verne’s all-time favorite movies. And, of course, one of the girls’ favorites. On Friday after Thanksgiving (Black Friday) we went to one of our favorite Portland restaurants, Thai Peacock, for the girls’ birthdays. Jana and Andy were late because of a “quick” stop by the Pendleton store in downtown Portland. She arrived wearing the Dude sweater! Because of its popularity, Pendleton has remade the sweater and now offers a female version identical to the 1980s sweater that Verne owns. It was too funny for words…so unexpected and such a contrast from her normal upscale, dressy attire!

Jana in her Dude sweater

It only took one Black Friday experience a few years ago to be reminded of how much I dislike the commercialism of the season. Black Friday shopping is one ritual I cannot embrace. I love a bargain, but I’m not willing to join the frenzied crowds at the malls on the busiest shopping day of the year just to save a buck. That said, a little Amazon shopping is always a good thing. No lines and no strangers in my personal space. Or, a little tea tasting/shopping at Stash Tea is good. A few more shoppers than normal, but rather than feeling crowded, it’s more like hanging with kindred spirits. Speaking of tea, we spent Friday afternoon touring the Smith Teamaker manufacturing facility and headquarters. We were first introduced to Smith Tea a few years back when it was served at Thai Peacock. I’m not sure whether it was the Smith tea or the fact that it was properly brewed (since then we’ve learned how to properly brew tea), but Jana and I flipped over it. We shared a pot and couldn’t stop talking about it for the rest of the evening. Not long after that Lauren decided she needed to find “an adult drink”…she didn’t like coffee, tea, or alcohol. Of the three, tea seemed to be the best choice so we went to the Smith tasting room and shared a flight of different teas. She settled on a Jasmine Pearl and has expanded from there. Since that first tea tasting experience she has read a half dozen books on tea, done numerous tea tastings, and has become the family expert on the subject. Steven Smith, who started Smith Teamaker, started out as the owner/teamaker at Tazo Tea (later acquired by Starbucks) and Stash Tea (sold when he retired). He came out of retirement to start Smith Teamaker, which focuses on high-end teas with an emphasis on black teas from the Darjeeling area. They are by far the most excellent teas we drink. A trip to Portland is never complete without a tea tasting at Smith and it’s even more special now that we’ve toured the entire facility and learned more about the company's operations and philosophy.

Our first visit to Smith Teamaker in 2016

Lauren has been a volunteer giving submarine tours at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) for five years now. We love the museum and have attended just about every special exhibit they’ve had over the past five years she’s volunteered. With one exception, they’ve all been outstanding with this most recent exhibit topping the list. It is called Exquisite Creatures and is a stunning exhibit of art using nature (animals, minerals, and plants). All of the art in the exhibit is three dimensional and presented in glass shadow boxes ranging from very small (under 6 inches) to large multi-paneled installations covering an entire wall. Most of the smaller organisms are presented in a geometric composition resembling a mosaic, with many using tiles so small they are difficult to identify without a magnifying glass. At first glance, they look like shimmering beads slightly larger than the head of a pin, rather than tiny, iridescent colored beetles or other insects. My least favorite were the compositions using snakes, although according to the artist, they are “less threatening when focusing on their physical design elements.” Maybe I didn’t focus hard enough.

OMSI Exquisite Creatures Exhibit

Family at OMSI special exhibit

We enjoyed another intersection of art and science on Saturday when we visited the Beckham Estate Vineyard in the Willamette Valley. Little did we know when we set out to wine taste on Black Friday that several of the wineries in that area were holding an open house, one of them being Beckham where Jandy had a particular interest as wine club members. The vineyard is located in the Chehalem Mountains, an area known for its Pinot Noir. What makes the Beckham Estate Vineyard unique is that Andrew Beckham is a potter as well as a winemaker. Andrew bought the property about 15 years ago to build a pottery studio. He encouraged his wife to grow grapes and they now have 14 acres planted to varietals of Pinot Noir. At some point he began making huge (100- to 220-gallon) vessels, called amphorae, in which he ferments and ages his wine. If you know anything about wine making, you know the majority of wine is aged in French oak barrels. Using clay pots is uncommon in wine making, although it dates back centuries and has several advantages, including wines that are finished in about half the time and with greater clarity than wines aged in oak barrels. After touring his winery and tasting his wines, Andrew invited us to see his pottery studio. Being an old potter myself (I took a ceramics class in college and watched the movie Ghost several times, each time imagining I was Demi Moore), I was particularly interested in seeing his studio. His pottery wheel is a standard size, although he throws pots that weigh as much as 650 pounds. Once they are shaped, he adds a beautiful decorative design along with a signature and number. The pot is then moved using an overhead crane to a shelving unit where it dries until it’s ready to be fired in an oversized kiln. Meeting Andrew Beckham and touring his winery and studio was an experience to be remembered! The wine was good, too.