Desperately Seeking Salem

It seems wildly popular these days to hone in on particular ingredients and shun them from the household.

“Oh, we don’t eat meat” may have been where it started, but the attitude has quickly progressed to:

“Gluten is the devil.”

“Corn syrup kills.”

“Soy dare not cross this threshold.”

We have no such rules at this house, so I wasn’t entirely blown away when an adorable young Czech student from Willamette, Jan Taborsky, offered to drop off a loaf of gluten-free bread he was developing with his American sweetheart.

A little about Jan, and only because he’s so cute. He first visited Salem as a highs-chooler and fell in love with this place. IN LOVE! So much so that he decided to come back to the States and get his MBA at Willamette.

Well, they must be teaching those kids something in our dear Willamette Bubble, since Jan has been politely courting this website for a few weeks now, dropping off gluten-free bread for me to try.

He hasn’t exactly asked for a review, just for feedback on the bread, which has no nuts, no soy, no cane sugar, and remarkably, no gluten.

Jan and his lucky lady Lacy have been making the bread into the wee hours of the morning — testing it, tasting it, sending it around, sometimes selling it to gluten-free nuts at the Salem Saturday Market. It’s one of those striking entrepreneurial love stories you love to read about. They fell in love over celiac disease, clinging to each other and banning gluten from their lives.

Well, maybe not. But they do both have celiac disease, and from this limitation was born their business idea, which Jan is pursuing as part of his MBA Business Ventures class.

You gotta give them credit for doing what I’ve been suggesting to people every day — reach out to those bloggers!

But how is the bread?

Well, the first one Jan showed up with was thick as a brick. And just as heavy. It had the consistency of mealy cornbread.

“You have to toast it to make it good,” someone told me later that week about gluten-free bread.

I like toast as much as the next girl, but what’s the point of calling it bread then?

The next one was a little better, but I got it fresh from the market. It lasted a few days before it began to get moldy and I chucked it in the garbage.

Then I got a knock on my door earlier this week. It was the adorable Jan, carrying bread. (I don’t know about you, but I expect all of my Europeans to have a loaf slung over their shoulders).

It was but a third of a loaf, still warm.

It was so delicious that I ate the whole thing myself, alternating Nutella, butter, jam, almond butter, peanut butter and Tilamook cheddar for the rest of the afternoon. (In case you haven’t noticed, this is also a Goldilocks story).

Didn’t anyone ever say that gluten-free bread isn’t healthy if you eat all of it in one sitting?

Jan and Lucy are selling this latest, best incarnation of their bread at the Salem Saturday Market, and as of November 6, it will be on sale at Life Source.

A toast to them.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m sick as a dog I strap my baby in a stroller and wander deliriously through downtown Salem.

I get it in my head that I need to drop $25 on hardback literary fiction RIGHT NOW and I set about looking for a copy of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Good Squad, hailed in numerous reviews as the best rock novel ever written.

(No dice).

Then I spend the whole afternoon poking around Salem stores as my temperature rockets to 102 degrees and discover some secret slices of Salem that I was often too harried, too distracted, or too busy, to notice.

Discovery number one: Downtown Grocery.

New to you? No. It’s been around since early May, when it opened to much small-town state capital fanfare — read: a few blog posts, a Statesman Journal article, and a rush of murmur that heralded it as the Thing Downtown Has Been Missing.

I don’t know about that.

What I do know is that the Downtown Grocery carries some awesome middle-eastern and European products and offers the kind of other-world-in-your-own-backyard shopping experience that I haven’t really had since I was living on Mt. Pleasant Street in the El Salvadorean district of our nation’s capital.

If you are one of those people that can’t recognize a cardamom seed pod by its face, then you are in luck. The staff at Downtown Grocery can help you sort your spices in a way that is oh-so-satisfying for the home cook with a curious streak.

I’ve heard from friends who are obssessed with the store’s sandwich counter — and its gooey, layered baklava — but have yet to hear from anyone who goes out of their way to buy some of the other packaged, processed stuff that lines the aisles.

Unless you’re talking about fava beans.

If you read this blog, you know that I’ve become wildly enamored of these little green guys after first working with them in California last year and then discovering at my produce paradise at E.Z. Orchards.

Sadly, favas don’t last forevah.

But now I have something akin to that in the canned broad beans (you cheeky Brits!) available for purchase at downtown grocery. No, they don’t have that fresh, green, plucked from the Matrix snap that fresh favas have. But creamed together with some tahini, olive oil, garlic and lemon, it makes a nice hummus.

Don’t forget that you still need to remove the fava bean from the pod before blending!

This one’s for you, Amber. Now you can eat your favas without thinking about Anthony Hopkins.

UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who has been supporting DSS’s advertisers this month. We have raised $75 so far to help feed hungry kids. And the month’s not yet over!

Maybe you’ve heard of them.

Perchance you have made a joke about eating them with a nice Chianti and your victim’s liver.

But it is likely you’ve never come across them in your neighborhood grocery store in Salem — until last week, when you stopped by E.Z. Orchards for a  mixed berry shortcake the size of a 6-year-old’s head and happened upon them, hanging out conspicuously with the green beans and the potatoes.

They are fava beans and they are going to break you.

Favas are all about process. They are not the stuff of 30-minute meals — they are laborious, delicious, buttery little beasts that come wrapped in pods that look like Frankenstein’s fingers, all gnarly knuckles and spindly fingernails.

Buy enough of them and you could spend the better part of an afternoon shelling, blanching, shelling, cooking and eating.

Here is a great tutorial on how to handle your favas.

When you open the seed pod you will find as many as half a dozen, or as few as one, glorious alien seed sacks.

You will remove the seeds and blanch them in boiling water for a minute. Then you remove the meaty part of the seed from the alien-looking casing. Think of this as freeing all those little Neos from the Matrix.

My husband has likened the fava to the lima bean, but that does the fava a disservice. They are buttery kernels, slightly nutty, smooth like a good pinot. I sauteed these favas with half an onion and some fennel, added some fresh dill and half a cup of chicken stock. We ate them with couscous.

Is it worth all that time and effort?

I would just as easily ask you if it is worth it to wait for a wine to ripen. Or a novel to be written. Or a John Cage song to be performed.

I like seeing the hours pile up on the plate.