B
Tuesday, August 11, 2020
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Soups Aren’t Solely For Winter
NUTRITION:
IT’S ALL GOOD
ANN BLOOM
Eating
healthy
at college
One of my fondest memories of
college is the care packages my mom
would send me from time to time. They
usually contained cookies, a new blouse
or skirt, a note from her and my dad,
some hot chocolate or a coffee mug. Not
big things by any means, but enough
to remind me I was remembered and
loved, which was important for some-
one away from home for the fi rst time
and more than 350 miles away from
everything familiar.
I was on the dorm’s meal plan so I
didn’t have to worry about what I was
going to eat; the university made that
decision for me. Dorm food was just
that — food. It fed our bodies, but not
our souls. I was fortunate in that, when
I moved off campus, I already knew
how to cook, which made me popular
with my housemates. I could feed our
bodies and our souls, with warm nutri-
tious meals. And, no, we didn’t subsist
on Top Ramen.
See Healthy/Page 2B
BETWEEN
THE ROWS
WENDY SCHMIDT
Flowers
can flavor
food, too
Hillary Levin/St. Louis Post-Dispatch-TNS
Cherry soup is a great and tasty way to cool off during summer weather.
C HILL O UT W ITH
S OUPS OF S UMMER
Lightly Spiced Tomato Soup — was delightful.
The tomato juice serves as the base, its flavor
This is the best time of the year for people who mellowed and deepened with sauteed onions and
cook. Also, for people who eat.
vegetable stock (or water, but use the vegetable
The fields are laden with produce. Vegetables stock if you have it). Still, it is the light spices that
and fruit hang heavy from every leafy branch.
make the soup come alive.
Goodness is fresh and abundant.
With a nod to the Indian subcontinent, the
And with the sun blazing down on us like a
soup is embellished with cumin, turmeric,
broiler, the key is to enjoy all of this wonderful
cardamom and cloves, plus a pinch of cayenne
produce and cool down at the same time.
for extra heat.
That is where chilled summertime soups come
And if that much heat is too hot for you,
into play. Refreshing and crisp and just a little
especially in the summer, you can cool it off
unusual, cold soups make the best of what sum- with a spoonful or two of tangy yogurt.
mer has to offer.
As easy as the tomato soup was to make,
To get some relief from the heat, I made five
I next made one that was even faster and
summertime soups. Each took full advantage of easier. Curried Avocado Soup does not even
the harvest: avocados from the tree, carrots from need to be cooked at all, yet it boasts a big
the ground, tomatoes from the ...
fl avor.
OK, to be honest, the tomatoes came from a
All it needs are avocados blended with veg-
can in the form of tomato juice. I got so caught
etable stock, with curry powder, heavy cream
up in the idea of chilled soups that I forgot I was and salt and pepper mixed in. Chill it and you
supposed to be using fresh ingredients. But the
have a surprisingly good dish.
can was newly purchased, so that’s something.
Surprising, because who would have
Besides, it has onion in it, and the onion was
thought avocados and curry powder would go
fresh.
well together? It’s like hot and cold, night and
Though it was less straight-off-the-vine than it day, black and white. That’s why you need
might have been, the tomato soup — or actually the cream. It melds, it blends, it softens and
By Daniel Neman
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
As an accent of color in a salad or
sandwich, many people add fl owers.
This is one way to get multiple uses
from your landscape. Many people pur-
posefully choose edible fl owers they like
over others that can’t be eaten when
they plan their landscape.
When you eat fl owers, heed the fol-
lowing cautions:
1. If you have hayfever, consider
skipping edible fl owers. The risk of a re-
action to the pollen is too great. You can
still decorate food with most fl owers,
but remove them before eating the food.
See Flowers/Page 3B
tempers and it makes everything better.
If the Curried Avocado Soup was the easiest
to make, Chilled Stilton and Pear Soup was the
most involved. Of course, the results were also
the creamiest, richest and, if you are looking to
impress your guests, the most impressive.
Pears and Stilton cheese are one of those
all-time classic combinations. The smooth and
rich — yet pungent — blue cheese harmonizes
brilliantly with the mild sweetness and the
unique, softly granular texture of a pear.
But how do you transport that heavenly
pairing to a soup?
You cheat a little, is how.
You begin with a base of chicken stock
cooked with celery, onion and leeks in it, which
you then thicken and enrich with a roux. Next,
you dump in a whole lot of grated Monterey
Jack cheese and then stir in some half-and-
half.
It tastes even better than it sounds, and we
haven’t even gotten to the pears and Stilton
yet. That’s because you use them almost as a
garnish, diced into small pieces and fl oating on
top.
See Soup/Page 2B
Revisiting one of La Grande’s more ghostly corners
By Ginny Mammen
The corners of Greenwood
Street seemed to be popular places
for the wall dogs to have painted
their signs. The previously men-
tioned building at 1501 Madison
had two, possibly three signs
layered on top of each other. Just
one block over is 1501 Jefferson
(Pacifi c Fruit and Produce Co.)
with multiple ghost signs on three
sides of the building.
The offi cial name on the Na-
tional Register of Historic Places
comes from pre 1925 when Pacifi c
Fruit occupied the building. This
rather ornate brick building was
constructed in the early 1900s by
one of the entrepreneurs written
about in an earlier article, W.H.
Bohnenkamp. Its proximity to the
railroad made it a perfect distri-
bution house for produce. One of
its earliest occupants was Oregon
Produce Co. in 1904.
In 1925 Ryan Fruit Co. pur-
chased the Pacifi c Fruit Company
branches in both Baker and La
Grande and moved into the build-
Photo by Ashley O’Toole
The building at 1501 Jefferson has multiple ghost signs.
A ghost sign from the period when the building housed Baker Dis-
tributing, an outlet for Pioneer and Pabst Blue Ribbon beers.
ing. Over the years it housed a vari-
ety of businesses. By 1935 it was the
home of Valley Beverage Co. offering
a selection of beverages including
Heidelberg beer. Twelve years later
this address was listed as the home
of Portland-Pendleton Motor Trans-
port Co. which advertised “shipping
for this building was to be on the
horizon.
Globe Furniture celebrated its
grand opening in La Grande on
June 3, 1946, and sometime in the
early 1950s purchased the building
at 1501 Jefferson to be used as a
warehouse. Although the building
Photo by Ashley O’Toole
everything, whether large or small,
such as brooms to Baker, pipes to
Portland, utensils to Union, etc.”
Around 1948 it was the location
of Baker Distributing Co. serving
as the outlet for Pioneer and Pabst
Blue Ribbon beers. It wouldn’t be
long before a whole new future
shows graceful windows and an at-
tractive inviting facade, the interior
has always served rather drab
utilitarian purposes.
One thing about ghost signs is
that they are very elusive.
See Ghostly/Page 2B