Oregon Home Grown Chef

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Home Grown Chef: Cheese

How 1859’s Home Grown Chef developed ‘Thor’s Special Smoked’ chèvre. 

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Home Grown Chef: Buffalo

A century and a half after they were hunted to near extinction, the American buffalo has made a comeback.

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Home Grown Chef: Braised Buffalo

Tim Eckard from The Heathman Restaurant & Bar in Portland shares his favorite way to cook bison. 

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Home Grown Chef: Pears

One of my favorite things to eat is a ripe Bartlett pear—so ripe that I can barely hold it. So ripe that when I bite into it, I barely feel the skin yield to my teeth and the juice runs down my chin. So ripe that the flavor resembles a sweet perfume.

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Home Grown Chef: Blueberry Pickles

I COULD SAY MY earliest memory of blueberries was picking them on a sultry August day beside a cool stream at my grandparents’ farm, and that I put more in my mouth than in the bucket, and there almost weren’t enough for grandma’s pie that night. In fact, my earliest memories of blueberries were the TV commercials about the stains they caused on dentures.

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Home Grown Chef: Herb Burgers

I was raised by a man for whom a perfectly grilled burger was, and still is, almost next to holiness. He follows a strict 80-percent-meat-to-20-percent-fat rule. To serve him a low-fat burger is practically a cardinal sin. 

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Home Grown Chef: Oysters

written by Carrie Cook Minns I was coerced into slurping down my first oyster during my teenage years. My friend and I huddled on the far end of her deck, avoiding the adult revelers at her family’s barbeque. The adults weren’t going to let us escape that easily, and taunted, “Oh, come on. You can’t grow up in the Northwest and not have slurped down an oyster.” There was even chanting, “Do it! Do it!” And so I did. Not an instant convert, I never contemplated eating another oyster until my sister married an oyster lover. For his first Thanksgiving with our family, my brother-in-law brought a corn and oyster soufflé. Their family vacations (even their honeymoon) always seemed to take place near bodies of water with fresh oysters. This past summer, they returned from vacation with stories of the hundreds of oysters they had harvested and how my 9-year-old…