Carl Alviani

The Missoula Floods are one of those things I’d never heard of before moving to Portland, but once here their influence starts showing up everywhere. Beyond the fact that I live on an ancient bar of sediment deposited by the floods in the lee side of an even more ancient volcano, there’s the whole Columbia Gorge, carved by the floods, and the whole Willamette Valley, full of rich Eastern Washington topsoil deposited by the floods, which now nurture the phenomenal produce and wine that make living here such a joy.

Click for the full size, animated version.

Anyway, the source of all these floods–without going into too much detail–was a massive lake repeatedly formed by an ice dam, on the site of modern-day Lake Pend Oreille, in northern Idaho. I visited there over the holidays to gawk in geology nerd fashion, and have some pics to post in a bit. In the meantime, here’s an animation from the Geology department at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, of what the dam might’ve looked like as it failed. I can’t stop watching it.

Still from the original ad, via the CDC Tobacco Free Facebook page.

I’m not generally a fan of PSAs. The language tends to be heavy-handed and preachy, and often the concepts seem entirely detached from the reality of the intended audience. “Just Say No” is the obvious one here, but the phenomenon is widespread — even the most clever, memorable ads seem better at being clever and memorable than at making the viewer actually want to stop littering, stay off drugs, or whatever.

So I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when I stumbled across what I think is a very effective 30 second TV spot. It started with predictable imagery (X-rays, surgery, etc.) but ended with a tagline that I’ve been pondering ever since: “Every cigarette makes you sick.”

To begin with, it’s specific. There are lots of forms of tobacco out there, and they’re all bad for you to some degree. Likewise, smoking tobacco does a lot more than just make you sick; it forms addiction, and eventually kills you. But this statement wisely lets go of the broad, all-encompassing warning, and chooses vividness over scope. If you smoke, it’s easier to dismiss a warning about “tobacco products” than one about the exact items that sit, tantalizingly, 20 to a box in your shirt pocket.

Even more important, “every cigarette makes you sick” focuses on the here and now: if every cigarette makes you sick, then this one will, implying that you can do something to avoid sickness today, rather than contemplate the more dire long-term consequences. The human tendency to value immediate effects over long-term ones is well documented, which is why satisfying a craving in the next five minutes can often feel more pressing than avoiding death in the distant future.

Perhaps you’ll disagree, but these five words seem more likely to actually make someone not smoke a cigarette than anything I’ve seen.

As a writer who occasionally comes up with taglines, I couldn’t help but imagine what this statement could have been, if it’d been subject to a few rounds of “rational” editorial review:

The copywriter bursts into the meeting with a Post-It note in his hand. “I think I’ve got really good one here,” he exclaims to the rest of the project team. “It takes on the problem of immediacy we keep talking about, and it’s got some great sticking power. Here, what do you think of this?” He slaps the Post-It up on the wall, and reads it aloud.

“Every…cigarette…makes you sick.” He pronounces the words carefully, with extra emphasis on the first two, then a tiny pause, and a matter-of-fact resolution, trying with all his heart to sound like the no-bullshit MD who’s finally leveling with you about your habits.

“Yeah, that’s pretty good,” answers one colleague, “But…hmmm…I mean, we need to make sure we’re not limiting ourselves to just cigarettes. I mean, what if someone’s a cigar smoker? Couldn’t they just kind of opt themselves out of it?”

“I like it too,” chimes in another. “But tobacco products”–and here she glances meaningfully at the first colleague–“aren’t just, like, the common cold. I feel this would have a lot more impact if we were clear about their full effect. You know, talking about how they shorten your life, they create secondhand smoke, they cause cancer. Cancer is a pretty scary concept. I think you need to find a way to incorporate that into the statement.”

“We need to make sure we’re not being discouraging, you know,” suggests a third. “I mean, there’s been a lot of research showing that smoking has a cumulative effect, and that you can actually undo a lot of the damage by quitting. We don’t want people to read this and throw up their hands and say ‘it’s too late now, I might as well just keep smoking.’ Can you make the tagline reflect that?”

“But…” the copywriter starts, then pauses, and exhales a tiny puff of exasperation. “It’s powerful this way! People will pay attention to it!”

“Look, it’s really close. We all really like it,” replies the first colleague. “But I think it needs just a little bit more work. You’re a great writer, I’m sure there’s a way you can incorporate our feedback and keep it sharp and punchy. That’s what we pay you for!”

“Um….uh-huh,” the copywriter manages to meekly reply.

END RESULT: “Using too many tobacco products eventually contributes to sickness, cancer and death.”

Done and done.

If you’re interested, the original video (which, other than the tagline, is pretty standard PSA fare) is viewable at the CDC Tobacco Free Facebook page.

Let’s ease back into this with something familiar, that I know everyone likes: more pictures of food. Or in this case, pictures of things that are going to eventually be food.

The truth is, it’s hard for me to think too hard about food in February or March. The grocery stores are still full, the restaurants and carts are serving, and I’m cooking as often as ever, but it’s not quite the same as walking down the street and seeing food sticking out of the ground, which is a not uncommon occurrence in Portland. In the right season, anyway. A friend of mine was heavily influenced to move here during one particular visit from New York as we were walking down a residential sidewalk and he abruptly stopped and exclaimed, “Wait, is that rosemary?!”

“Yeah. And that’s mint, that’s sage, that’s parsley and that’s thyme. And that bed back there is fennel and leeks.”

“And people just grow that stuff out here by the sidewalk?”

There are plenty of things I miss about New York, but the quality of the edible gardens is not one of them.

I still have those sorts of realizations myself pretty frequently — tiny epiphanies that the world is benevolent enough to have devised biological entities that can craft scraps of air and soil and carbon and nitrogen and water into something as delicious as a beet or a peach or a leaf of bitter lettuce. And that I can watch it happen.

Anyway, that’s what today’s (this month’s, this year’s) photos are of: new things growing in my house. Not even edible mostly, just reminders that it’s that time of year, when, entirely without effort or intention on my part, things decide to start growing again.

These are seedlings of Pimientos de Padron, which I’m hoping to grow a bunch of myself and spare the $7 or whatever it costs for a bowl of them at Toro Bravo. It’s still in the 40s outside, but I set the pot on my radiator and tell the seedlings they’re in Spain. So far, it works.

And this is Tropical Houseplant That Lives In My Bathroom. It doesn’t do much: no growing, no shrinking, no drooping, no decaying. Except that all the sudden, with no prompting or special treats, it’s making two new leaves. Weird, right?

A little forlorn at the Hollywood Market today, despite a partial sunbreak and a better than average band in the music tent. It’s the last market day until 2011, so in addition to the diminished abundance in nearly everyone’s stall, there were also a lot of sighs and promises to “see you in March.” That’s how seasons work, I suppose: you don’t get excited about something opening unless you first watch it close.

For all that, not a bad haul, and I didn’t even touch on the root vegetables or squashes this time around. Clockwise from the top: more Brussels sprouts (these were everywhere, stacked like Martian Christmas trees in half the stalls), Russian kale, leeks, yellow onions, levain batard from Fleur de Lis (A little cheat on this, since I actually walked to their bakery five blocks from the market, after finishing my produce shopping. But they used to have a stall, so I figure it still fits in the Market Haul category), artichokes, Italian frying peppers (not sure what you do with those, but I’m up for a challenge), parsley.

In light of the upcoming season of overindulgence, I think dinner this Tuesday’s going to be vegetables exclusively.

The harvest season slowly winds down. From November 6, the last great Haul of the year, I suspect: leeks, squashes, kale, carrots, beets, bread, garlic, cheese, chorizo, an intimidating stalk of Brussels sprouts, and a bag of some of the best salad greens I have ever eaten. Also, a rare indulgence in a $10 bottle of cider, justified by my current “learning about cider” status and wanting to see what all the fuss was about single origin pressings. The bottle shown here is from Salem-based Wandering Aengus, and it’s made from crab apples (no kidding). Complicated and delicious, and worth at least 2/3 of what I spent on it.

Now contrast that with the Haul from just a week later (yesterday): small heads of butter lettuce at 3 for $5, radishes (perpetually available), some smallish Yukon Golds, apples, pears, escarole for braising along with meats and roots, and a bag of bacon ends.

True, I could’ve grabbed some more beets, but I’ve got plenty left over from last week through the magic of pickling. And the cheese and meat lasts longer when the weather gets cloudy and life gets more sedentary. But I specifically asked for those salad greens, and they were already out, along with plenty of other things. Captured By Porches and Fleur de Lis, my reliable sources for beer and bread, are long gone, along with about a third of the vegetable vendors.

It’s easy to say how good it is to see the seasons change when it’s light until 9 and the market’s full of strawberries, but times like these make me wonder what I was thinking. Maybe I’ll just crawl into my kitchen with a bottle of bourbon and a side of pork and call you in May. Happy winter everyone.

A little more dirt on the produce this time around, and with good reason. Jeanne and I missed the Hollywood Market on the 16th, because we had driven 300 miles east for the weekend, to visit some friends of hers in Joseph.

Joseph is a preposterously lovely town at the southern end of the Wallowa Valley, at about 4000 feet of elevation, and perhaps 40 miles from where the Snake River grinds through Hell’s Canyon. When you sit on the front porch with your coffee in the morning and look east, the distant mountains you see are the Seven Devils, in Idaho; the much closer ones to the west and south are the Wallowas, home to Oregon’s largest wilderness area, and, judging by the photos, alpine landscapes that evoke the Sierra Nevada more than the Cascades. I like that I live in a state with enough diversity to reliably surprise you on every new trip.

What To Do in Joseph and neighboring Enterprise on a crisp fall weekend:

1. Visit the Terminal Gravity Brewery, twice in 48 hours, because there are seven offerings on tap that they don’t bottle, each strong enough to limit your consumption to three glasses per visit, if you’re sensible.
2. Hike up Hurricane Creek, because it gets high and wild very quickly, and the trailhead’s just outside of town.
3. Go to the cider pressing, because it’s a much bigger deal than it sounds — 200 or more people by my estimates, a band, a hay bale maze for the kids, a massive potluck anchored by slabs of pork emerging from an ominous black smoker at regular intervals, and all the cider you care to take home (we put ours in a donated Carlo Rossi bottle) . I shot some movies of this, which I may take the initiative to post someday soon, but no promises.

The lamest Portland summer ever yields a belated run of summer produce. If a shopping bag full of tomatoes, eggplants, peaches and peppers looks weird to you in September, you’re not the only one.

Most of what’s here should be familiar so I won’t go into details, except to point out that yes, I’m now completely addicted to those bizarre-looking fluted giganto-zucchini, and the peppers were presented as Ancho but look identical to the Poblanos at the next stall over. Serves me right for not growing up in New Mexico.

Unpardonable lapses on these. My only excuses are a number of personal events that interfered with Saturday marketing, and a lost charger for a dead camera battery. One of these photos was actually shot with an iPhone (guess which).

The unintended benefit, though, is getting to see a fast-forward progression of the season’s offerings over the course of the summer. First we have the haul from June 26:

Lots of classic indicators of early summer here: snap peas, garlic whips, porcini mushrooms, asparagus and strawberries of the particularly fragile and incredibly delicious ‘Hood’ variety. The latter are identifiable by their diminutive stature and the wet spot on the pint container where one of them’s gone squishy from the bike ride home.

Now contrast that with last weekend, August 21:

Peaches and tomatoes! And huge piles of each at several stalls. It’s almost as if Oregon is apologizing to us for running out of strawberries. That white orb-thing hiding behind the basil is a tiny orange-fleshed honeydew melon, which was nice but a little disappointing. Best leave those to hotter dryer places, and we’ll stick with the berries and stone fruits.

It doesn’t show up that well, but the fluted thing resting on top of the purple artichoke is a variety of zucchini that my friend Tobias at one of the market stalls (he’s also an industrial designer — cool, right?) recommended so emphatically I had little choice. It was fantastic. Whatever this variety’s called, it’s uglier than a normal zucchini, gets way bigger without getting woody, and tastes twice as good. On the other hand, he also recommended that strange dark green jutting out above it, which is apparently an ancient predecessor to broccolini or something. It tasted like twigs.

It honestly does my heart good to see the progress of time in my shopping basket, especially when one joy gets displaced by another in this way.

On the other hand, ask me again in February after I’ve filled my tote bag with parsnips and rain for the ninth consecutive weekend and maybe I’ll have something different to say.

Bit of a redundant haul photo this time, I’m afraid: bread, fish, beer and strawberries as per usual, with the addition of an astonishingly good 12 dollar pinot noir from a small winery that sells exclusively through farmers market stalls. I owe that discovery to a co-shopper who prefers wine to beer, lucky me. The conversation with the winemaker was extra interesting–wine, along with just about everything else, owes more of its price to the distribution and marketing than the actual making, so a 12 dollar bottle like this would probably run closer to 30 if he were to actually jump through all the hoops needed to get it on a supermarket shelf. Also available through the internet for a few dollars more, if you’re interested.

Clockwise from left: strawberries, lacinato kale, beer, romaine lettuce, beets, green garlic, black cod, carrots (topped), torpedo radishes. Center: Fleur de Lis demi baguette

Slightly less ambitious haul this week, partly reflecting a busy week that left less time for cooking. It’s not all bad–every evening spent not cooking was spent elsewhere in good company–but that’s meager consolation for the stack of magnificent collards slowly wilting in my fridge.

A few new and notable things in the basket this week. Black Cod from Linda Brand, which sadly ran out before I could score any last week. Enlightening tidbit from the conversation with the stall guy: black cod is a mostly Pac NW thing, and enjoys nowhere near the notoriety it ought to considering that it’s likely the world’s most delicious fish.