One of the handful of newish fresh-pressed juice companies now operating around town, Portland Juice Press has set up shop out of Firebrand Sports on NW 14th and Glisan (which we reported as opening last year). Operating 8 am to 6 pm Monday through Thursday and 9 am to 5 pm Friday through Sunday, juices pressed and bottled fresh every morning will be available at their little kiosk in the full range of nutritious flavors with Sanskrit names like the Mantra (red bell pepper, carrot, apple, broccoli, and cayenne pepper) and the the Karma (ginger, lemon, and raw honey). Using a hydraulic pressure extraction system, the juicers claim that their methods reduce oxidation and yield more live enzymes. This is Portland Juice Press' second outpost to their storefront on SE 12th and Powell, and the company also plans to open in a few weeks in SE Division's D-Street Village, still under construction. Stop by for a vitamin boost or just for a lavender lemonade, which is freaking delicious.

• Portland Juice Press

Camas Davis's Meat Collectives Across America has successfully met its Kickstarter goal of $25,000, and she has just announced a list of further services she can offer if they keep up the momentum and reach $30,000. Davis, founder of the Portland Meat Collective, is a champion of educated and responsible meat consumption, and her fascinating, hands-on classes powerfully inform the way students regard and relate to the meat they eat (and the meat they don't). Her Kickstarter aims to help start more programs of its sort in different areas, and take her message of informed consumerism (as well as education in butchery and meat production) to other cities.

Read more about the project here.

With attendance levels at the PSU farmer's market nearing those of a papal funeral, we are happy to report the annual appearance of the rest of the bunch. Portland Farmers Market, your liaison between the farmer and the table, has just sent word of the following openings, as well as a few things you may not have known about the markets. (Like how you can use an Oregon Trail card to buy fresh, organic produce—look for the details.)

Here is the link to their press release page, but here is the PDF itself.

New market openings:

May

Portland Farmers Market at Shemanski Park in the South Park Blocks between SW Salmon & Main from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, May 1
Buckman Portland Farmers Market at SE Salmon & 20th from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 2
King Portland Farmers Market at NE 7th & Wygant from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 5

June

Northwest Portland Farmers Market at NW 19th & Everett from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 6
Kenton Portland Farmers Market at N. McClellan & Denver from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, June 7
Portland Farmers Market at Pioneer Courthouse Square at SW 6th & Morrison from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, June 17

Like chopsticks... but wish they were on steroids? Then you should buy TRONGS—the revolutionary new eating utensil that makes forks and spoons look like something a stupid person would use. WATCH THE VIDEO!!

And yes... THEY'RE REAL. Buy them today (just $9.95 for four), and give me two of them.

• Lydia Reissmuller, Juicer, COO

Former Central (PDX) and PDT (NYC) bartender Lydia Reissmuller has joined the Kickstarter bandwagon—her venture, Well Co. Juice, is hoping to supply Portlanders with fresh, cold-pressed juice via a system of conveniently-located "filling stations" and refillable dairy-style bottles. I watched the video—cold-pressed juice is apparently different from typical juice in that the enzymes don't get all thrashed up, so you had better get a bunch of these and gruzzle them right down the minute they open. But first, watch their video and consider whether or not this project is worth your support.

Lydia's recipes show a sophisticated palate at work, treating flavors as critically as the nutrients that create them. She gave us a few of their initial blends, which include: "Move Like A Butterfly" (Rhubarb, Strawberry, Apple, Sorrel), "Under the Orchard" (Pear, Burdock, Ginger, Rosemary), and "Lean n Green" (Kale, Celery, Watercress, Parsley, Green Apple, Meyer Lemon, Mint).

As far as potential pricing, she writes, "The juice will be sold initially through a simple website for delivery twice a week, in 16oz glass bottles from Stanpac, the same that dairies use, and effectively keep the juice cold. 5 types of juice and 2 seedmilks will be sold in bundles of 4 ($45) 8 ($55) or 12 ($80). The site will give info on each juice, including a recommended order to drink them if you're doing a cleanse."

Her goal is to establish bottle filling stations in each of the city's quadrants within the first year.

The greatest news* story of this or any other day:

PDXers, did you know @koifusionpdx accepts the free #chalupa coupons from the #blazers games!?!
— Forktown Food Tours (@forktown) April 16, 2013

“@iraleventhal: @koifusionpdx do you really accept the free chalupa coupons from the blazers games!?!” Yes we do!!
— KOi Fusion (@KOifusionpdx) April 16, 2013

I'm pretty sure I still have a stash of those somewhere from like, 2008. (Brandon Roy won me a few chalupas.) I wonder if they'll still take 'em.... I tweeted at KOIFusion to ask what they exchange the coupons for, though I'm pretty sure it's tacos.

*well.. "news to me"

• Goldy
• Thinnings from my second sowing of radishes alongside an early harvest from my first.

I like radishes just fine and all that, but their real attraction is how fast they grow. While it's not exactly instant gratification, few vegetables go from seed to table quite as fast as radishes. Even faster if you eat the thinnings.

And that's what I had with my dinner last night: A spicy salad of radish starts and baby arugula (also a fast grower—that's why the French call it "roquette").

What are you eating from your garden?

• Image Courtesy of Yelp

Franks-A-Lot, located in the parking lot of the Whole Foods at 28th and E. Burnside, is celebrating their 20th anniversary with a hot dog giveaway. On Monday, April 15th, from 2-3 PM, the chef-owner Margo Childs will hand over one free hot dog per person (no add-ons), no purchase required. Margo has been on the premises since 1993, and took ownership of the stand in 1996, so come join us in the queue and celebrate the staying power of this unflappably charming woman.

• Amazon

This article from Jezebel came out well after April 1st, and the Amazon links are real, so I have to suspect this is genuine. I can't decide if this is in the "the less said about it, the better" or "the more said about it, the better" camps. I'll just lay it at your feet and let it inspire the wealth of puns, wisecracks, and cleverly-named imaginary cocktails that are just begging to flow forth from this thing like so much... anyhow. I can easily see the energy put into this bringing the nation, and the Internet, to its knees.

If you're so inspired, why not fill the comments with article-inspired drink names? I'll seed the round: Miltini. The Revenge of Dr. Monkey Gland. Downtown Jim's Abracadabra Floater. The Shamed Matador. Go.

• Do they make house calls.

The Cafe2U press release I got this morning struck me at first as kind of sad. It touted a coffee delivery service for Portland, "A mobile expresso [sic] van [...] bringing gourmet coffee to customers who can't get to a local coffee shop." First off, "expresso." Cut that shit out, all of you. Second, who can't get to good coffee in Portland? Manacled prisoners? Even those with their ankles in bear traps can usually drag themselves half a block to a Stumptown or creaky, shabby-chic boutique cafe with fair trade beans and ambitiously priced "outsider art" on the walls. But then I considered the underserved 10,000+ workforce on Swan island, the cart pods that lack a dedicated caffeine vendor (of which there are surprisingly several), even the small but desperate band of souls that sits endlessly in my mechanic's waiting room, with access to nothing but hot swill that seems to have been brewed with Sharpie nibs.

Can this business fly here? Do you need them in your area? Do you *want* franchised coffee in your parking lot?

• Zero intellectual calories!

Eater Book Club has done a thorough job of culling the gems from Gwyneth Paltrow's latest celebrity cookbook, It's All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great (Grand Central Life & Style, $32.00). As of this writing, it ranks as #28 out of the roughly two million books Amazon sells, just behind A Smiling Dog Hugging a Smiling Cat and Dr. Phil's Glossary of Why You Are Rad and No One Should Have Hit You.

While I do not own—and am never going to buy—this book, it is clear to me that based on their thorough inspection readers will likely find such heavy-hitting recipes as Recycled Baby Smiles with Hug Butter, Gavin Rossdale's Favorite Peeled Apple, Farm Noises Played Across a Cambric Duvet, and Vegenaise Bowel Paste With Elimination-Style Soyrutti. Click on over to the source for your lunchtime dose of yellow bile.

• Image courtesy of Yelp.

The team from Killer Burger, who did a neat little trick called perfecting the hamburger, have just opened the Southwestern restaurant Hatch. To pump some red-hot razzmatazz into their baby's nativity tableau, they are offering "Free Dinner with the owners and management of Killer Burger and Hatch." You heard that right—the opportunity you've always wanted, but been too timid to ask for. What's that thing called, where it's Christmas? Christmas? This is like that.*

To get the full details on how to enter the drawing, go scroll around on their Facebook page here.

* I jest out of respect. I'd actually really like to sit down and chat with the people who engineered the near-perfect hamburger restaurant. (I say near-perfect because that "rock" music they play in their dining rooms is, as our Spanish friends would say, "más corny.")

• A PICTURE OF SOME PIZZA.

PQ Monthly has the story: After the Facebook page of Lonesome's Pizza filled up with comments from folks offended that the menu called breadsticks "tranny sticks," the weirdo-pizza joint—known for silly menu names and packaging local art with each pizza—offered a sincere apology and promised to change the name to “some other sophomoric, hopefully inoffensive name,” according to the PQ piece.

Lonesome's gets a thumbs up on this one. The idea of kowtowing to sanctimonious activists clearly rankles them—as it rankles a lot of people who have lived in this town for more than 5 minutes—but they were able to get past that knee-jerk reaction to recognize that their jokey name had misfired, and to make a sincere, thoughtful apology.

I think transgender issues still trip a lot of well-meaning people up, and getting called out never feels good, even when you deserve it. (I got yelled at for saying "transgendered" recently. Whoops!) But what it boils down to is: Do you want to get defensive about your right to make a dumb joke, or do you want to not be an asshole? Lonesome's came down on the side of "not be an asshole," and props to 'em for that.

• These are the latest chips.

This world is a perpetual gauntlet of opportunities, if only we can recognize them for what they are. Last Friday, malnourished and foul-tempered, I wandered the aisles of the Oak Grove Fred Meyer—cursing the walls, the air, and my fellow man—looking for the Chase Bank mini-branch within. Like a dove on an olive branch from heaven, a representative of the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo appeared and handed me four free bags of chips with exciting new flavors (one of which was recently the subject of a Blogtown poll). I could not pay for them, no, they were free. I immediately went out to the safety of my car and ate all of them. My findings:

Sriracha flavored potato chips
These do not have the distinctive flavor of Sriracha, the ubiquitous Thai-inspired chili sauce. They are a generic sort of spicy, and lack even the unpleasant aftertaste of laboratory muck-fuddlery.

Chicken & Waffles flavored potato chips
I had recently received word by telephone that a friend found these pleasant, so I was optimistic. The initial taste of salt and vanilla had me thinking they might taste good with milk, as in a breakfast cereal, but in an instant the idea became as foul as the softening paste in my mouth. These had as much to do with fried chicken and golden batter as bouillon sniffed off a horse's ass in summertime.

Doritos JACKED Ranch Dipped Hot Wings
These are not hot wings. They are oversized dark red corn chips that you can't easily fit in your mouth, and are reminiscent of Doritos nacho cheese chips, but with a thicker napalming of flavor chemicals. I can't say that they're an improvement on the original, mostly because they are nasty and leave a particularly hard-to-remove residue on your fingers (I washed mine off with some Coke in the parking lot of a nearby Burger King).

Cheesy Garlic Bread flavored potato chips
These were not as good as plain potato chips.

There you have it. If you must foray into the always-disappointing realm of test-marketed potato chips, it is best to settle for the Cheesy Garlic Bread variety. Perhaps next season we'll see something on the order of the game-changing Cool Ranch Dorito, but this Spring, it's strictly an amateur hour of false starts and also-rans.