The Homegrown Dinner Party

In case you didn't know, I rented a garden plot in Adams Garden in northwest Portland a few months ago. I think these community gardens are a great idea--and a great deal. Being a white-collar city person having a romanticized, idealized image of farming--a tan earned by work under the sun, dirt under the fingernails, aching muscles due to actual productive exertion rather than the various human hamster wheels at the gym, being self-sufficient--can get frustrating when living in a gardenless apartment. July's issue of Gourmet magazine even has an article about the U.S.'s version of agriturismo ("Weed it and Reap"). Here is a quote from it that summarizes my feelings about farming perfectly: "With the white-collar urbanite's false nostalgia for manual labor, I was eager to get my hands dirty." Renting a community garden plot is the perfect solution to satisfy these fantasies. Just look under "City of Portland" in the phone book, and you'll find the phone number for community gardens. The rental fee is only $45/year, plus an additional $10 deposit the first year. It's a steal.

I've planted quite a bit: lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes, cauliflower, arugula, mint, parsley, basil, lavender, strawberries, radishes, beans, peas, squash, zucchini--you get the idea. A lot of it isn't ready yet, but I have lettuce coming out my ears.

So one night last week, I got together with my friends Alex and Bruno, and we all drove out to my garden. A great deal of weeding got done, Bruno threw a slug into an adjacent plot even though I told him to just kill it, and we picked a bunch of stuff to make dinner with. That was the exciting part.

We picked lettuce and radishes for salad, and used my arugula and parsley for a pasta dish. Honestly, the pasta wasn't so great (that was my fault), but it was a lot of fun. The salad was good, though. Alex was in charge of that.

All three of us were busy in my tiny kitchen, Alex studiously rinsing the potentially slug-infested lettuce, Bruno mashing butter and garlic for the garlic

bread, and I was blending away the ill-fated arugula-based pasta sauce. Really, the main problem was lack of salt. If not for that, it would actually have been pretty good. So happy and satisfied with our endeavors, we ate:

Oh yeah, and for dessert we had store-bought creme brulees, but garnished them with strawberries from my garden.

I think this conversation that night pretty much sums everything up:

Alex: It's nice to eat things you've grown.

Laura: Yeah.

Bruno: Like boogers.

And there you have it.