bicycle bliss

M and I spent the day on 2 wheels (well, 4 between the two of us). We biked first to the the downtown Portland farmer's market, where we collected fixings for tonight's grilled salmon dinner. After a slow meander among the produce, the masterful floral bouquets, the funky jams and harvested wild mushrooms, we rolled up to the Willamette waterfront to enjoy a moment of the chaos that is the Portland Rose Festival. Too cheap to shell out $5 to get into the fair, we turned north to the Saturday Art Market where we wandered some more, and eventually settled in with a pair of ice cold, hopped-up IPA's to watch a great blues band for free. All of Portland was out today it seemed, smiling, cheery and grateful for a little sunshine.

We just returned home, sweaty and sunburned and anxious to prepare some of the amazing bounty we brought with us in our bike baskets: baby new potatoes, sprouted seed bread, skinny asparagus, and a colorful mesclun salad mix. Some fresh salmon should round the whole nicely.

At the farmers market we met a fellow working the booth for Misty Mountain Mushrooms, a wholesaler located outside of Yamhill and just around the bend from our 10 acre bit of paradise. We got to talking about Yamhill living and he ended up selling us on a little basket of what he called "sea beans," harvested on the Oregon coast. I poked around on the web (strangely enough, I found the info on another Misty Mountain Mushroom company website based out of BC, Canada: http://www.mistymt.com/index.shtml) and found that these "sea beans," properly called Salicornia Tips, are a delicacy long favored by the British royal family and are typically available for only a short time each summer. The internet has precious little information on this strange plant that tastes just like sea salt. It also goes by the names sea asparagus, pickle-plant, and glasswort. The fellow from Misty Mountain suggested that we simply lay the bizarre, nubby beans over top of salmon on the grill, along with lemon and garlic, close the grill lid and let her rip. I will be curious as to how it turns out.

And now I must get to chopping and mincing and marinating and mixing. But first, a bottle of pinot gris is in order...