Trip Report: Rogue Valley Oregon

[Genny]

Hi everone! This is my first trip report and my first try at posting pix, so bear with me!

My husband and I flew from Phoenix, Arizona to Medford, Oregon on June 1. Its seriously the longest actual vacation I've taken in 4 years. It was awesome!

The Rogue Valley is in the southern most part of Oregon, a few hours from the coast. It is lush with green rolling hills, farms and ranches. Very rural. Don't let the "Medford International Airport" fool you. It only earned the 'International' title because there are direct flights to and from Canada. There are only 2 gates- both from the same room- leading out onto the tarmac. Pretty podunk.

Our flight was supposed to arrive at 1:30 in the afternoon, but since it didn't leave Phoenix until 4, we were a little late. We arrived around 6 or so. We went to spend some time with my husband's father and his wife. Dad picked us up and took us to dinner at Porter's in Medford.

Porter's is a nice restaurant named in honor of those working porters at the train station. Medford used to be a pretty big train hub in the gold era (If I remember the lore from the menu correctly!).

We stared with Poached shrimp with a black pepper cocktail sauce. It was cooked perfect and the sauce was quite good. I had thir Rogue Valley Blue Cheese and Pear salad. Mmm. Very good. The Rogue Valley Creamery has won international awards for it's blue cheese. What a treat! Dad had the Seafood Chowder. This was by far the best seafood chowder I have ever had. The broth was succulent and flavorful. It tasted like a creamy sea, pleasantly briney with the perfect size bites of clam, scallop and crab. For dinner I had Parmesan Encrusted Steelhead with garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus. OK, I'll admit to a mea culpa here. The original fish on this was supposed to be sea bass. I wanted the local fish though and the way they had it prepared on the menu sounded boring so I asked to have this prepared with the Steelhead instead. The stealhead itself was so freah and perfectly cooked, unfortunately the crust on it was very hard and crunchy and overpowered the fish. I imagine this is better with the bass, but it was terribly crunchy, like kettle chips! The garlic mash and asparagus were both slightly overdone. Could be because of the fish substitute. My husband had the Prime Rib. It was in a word: sublime. Perfectly cooked medium rare, served with raw horseradish and a light au jus. Just lovely. Dessert was awesome! Dad had the cheesecake with raspberry sauce, it was thick and creamy and not to dry and cakey. Lance had Jack Daniel's bread pudding, wow, this tasted like french toast with lots of cinnemon and raisins. MMMMM. And I think mine was the best. I had a pear poached in star anise infused syrup with vanilla bean ice cream. Wow, so fresh and light. The pear was perfect, just tender, not mushy. All in all the meal was a hit.

edit: to add photo

Edited June 22, 2005 by Genny (log)

[Genny]

OK, now that I have the photo thing going...

Dad and Jackie have a gorgeous 8 acre horse ranch in White City, about 30 minutes outside of Medford. They raise pasofino horses (I have about 8 equine siblings), have a garden (more on that later), 5 chickens and 2 kitties: one indoor only (Milo), one outdoor only.

I woke up to fresh squeezed orange juice and fresh baked steel cut oat scones with dried blueberries and cherries.

And Peet's coffee (look familiar?):

After breakfast Jackie and I went out and picked some radishes, strawberries and sweet peas. (Sorry, I seem to have lost those pix!) She has 5 raised garden beds, each with an assortment of herbs, flowers, fruits and vegetables. It is still very early in the season for them and she is a beginning gardner- this is only her second year. Other plantings she has are tomatoes, asparagus, zuccini, melons, thyme, lavendar, rosemary, roses, apple and pear trees. It was so satisfying going out each morning and picking the peas and radishes and strawberries, even if there weren't many to pick!

We also went and collected the eggs from the chicken coop. I was somewhat afraid of the chickens having suffered a horrible chicken attack when I was quite small. I stood back some and let Jackie do the collecting.

Here is Patches:

And here are the eggs we collected! This is a couple days worth.

So with a bunch of fresh eggs and peas, I whipped up some egg salad sandwiches with blanched fresh sweet peas. I thought I was in heaven. The peas popped in your mouth like sweet caviar. We enjoyed these with a 1995 Cabernet Savingion from the California Santa Barbary Valley. This is living right!

These were the freshest eggs I had ever had. Now I'm going to try to find some locally! The only problem was that the eggs did not peel easily. Jackie said this was because the freshness, the older the egg, the more air gets between the membrane and the shell, thus easier to peel. Can anyone confirm this? I ended up cutting the egg shells in half and scooping out the egg.

Dinner was at Sammy's Cowboy Bistro. I made the reservations about 3 weeks in advance. I am sure glad I saw a picture of the restaurant before going, we found it with no problem! There was only 1 light left blinkin on the arrow pointing to the front door:

The 4 of us were seated just inside the front door. This place is SMALL. It is a tiny "house" that has maybe a dozen tables, it is dark, with low ceilings, built in book cases, cow print wall paper and borders, floral curtains circa Little House on the Prairie. So not what you would think. Actually the front door leads to an ante-room about the size of a closet. In the picture you can see there are windows. In the windows are dead plants. They must really not want to encourage any drop-ins of any kind! They couldn't handle them anyway and here is why:

When we were seated we were served a chilled sorrel soup with creme fraich, wasabi and flying fish roe. This was served in an egg cup with a tiny spoon. It was ultra light and refreshing. The soup was a light grean with a swirl of creme fraich and dotted with the roe. This was a hit with the whole table.

An olive bread and olive oil was presented before the appetizers. It was good but nothing to write about really.

For our first course we had:

Garlic custard with a warm stew of onion, fava beans and morel mushrooms. Wow was this good! Unfortunately I didn't order this. I didn't have the best order "mojo" this night. I thought about ordering one after I tasted this though. It was definitely the best first course on the table.

Jackie and Lance had the Greens with Sour Cherry Rogue Blue Cheese, walnuts and walnut vinagrette.

I had a salad with scallops, bitter orange, avocado. It was quite good. The scallops were seared perfectly and the succulent orange and ultra creamy avocado matched very well with the salad.

For dinner Jackie and I each had the Lamb Osso Bucco with shiitaki mushroom reduction sauce and snow peas, green pea and mint ravioli. The lamb was still on the bone but tender and juicy and cooked exactly perfectly. I'd only had veal osso bucco previously so this was a treat. The shiitaki reduction was sublime, it's richness matched and complimented the richness of the lamb. The mint and pea ravioli were a splash of brightness for the palate so the rest of the dish was never too heavy.

Dad had Paella. This was also very good. It had a very spicey sausage made in-house, rabbit, muscles and clams. Sprinkled on top are lovely peppery flower buds. It was very beautiful! It had smoked paprika and saffron, the rice so flavorful! I was full and still picking at the rice!

Lance was the big winner with the main course though, and with all that was said and shown above, you can image it could only be by a slim margine. He had Duck Breast with pumpkin sage ravioli and brocoli rabe cooked with orange. I don't remember the sauce, it may have been a port cherry something. Wow, this was incredible. The duck just melted in your mouth, I've never had such tender duck. Not too fatty either. One word: Wow.

Unfortunately I have no photos of the desserts. My ordering mojo completely failed me here. I had the cheese plate with gorgonzola, dried fruits poached in port with honey and lemon thyme. The cheese just didn't stand up to the fruits. It was a sorry sad slice of weak gorgonzola that just thoroughly got run over by the full-on sweet figs and cherries. Oh well, since everyone shared, I got to have some of the other yummies:

Bittersweet chocolate cake with cherry chocolate mouse and kirsch ice-cream. This was just decadent. The cake was moist and had a nice crumb and the cherries were very pronounced in the mouse.

Buckwheat crepe with bittersweet orange marmalade ice cream and a rhubarb sauce. This worked very well.

Upside down coffee ice cream cone with bittersweet chocolate sauce, toasted hazelnuts and white chocolate sauce. The ice cream had a very strong flavor, more like espresso. This was also fantastic!

As an "after" a small plate of hand made treats was put on the table. There was a cow shaped ultra thin, crisp and buttery cookie, and a few small 1/2 square chocolate treats: candied ginger enrobed in bittersweet chocolate. Now that was GOOD!

OK, it's late here. I'm off to take care of my sick hubby, I'll continue this tomorrow.

I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has about my trip and the photos I've posted so far!

[tamiam]

Thanks for sharing. Even though I live much closer than you do, I have never made it out that way before. Your photos and delicious descriptions make me want to though.

[Genny]

Well, looking through my prior post, you’d never believe I won spelling bees as a child! I guess that is what fatigue will do to a girl!

Continuing on…

Friday was spent day tripping to some of the culinary delights the Rogue Valley has to offer.

Our first stop was the Butte Creek Mill. This is working water mill that was built in 1872. This is where we got the scone mix that was so lovely on Thursday morning (it was my breakfast on Friday too!). http://www.buttecreekmill.com/ They have a great website were you can take a look at their products. They don’t use preservatives so many of their flours and milled products are in a refrigerator case.

The Tourist:

Next we stopped at the Roxy Ann Winery. We were planning to go to wineries on Sunday but since we were driving right by it, we had to stop! They offered a free tasting of their Pinot Gris. It had a nice mouth feel, bold crisp pear flavors but the taste after the swallow stuck onto the sides of my tongue with an acidic bite. Not what I want in a wine. The gal pouring the wine (steward? stewardess??) brought out some cheese to try with the wine. The cheese was from the local favorite Rogue Creamery, Lemon Artichoke Cheddar. I took a bite of cheese and followed with the wine…amazingly it cleaned up after itself completely when paired with the cheese. We decided to bring the boys back on Sunday when we were doing our wine tasting.

As a side note, we discussed this Pinot Gris compared with the one at Paschal Winery (another local) and decided the Paschal was still better. It cleans up after itself with no accompaniment. This is my current favorite wine to cool of on the hot summer day, very crisp and refreshing. Here is the link for them: Paschal Winery

Harry & David is a catalogue company featuring fresh fruits and vegetable as well as baked goods, jams and other culinary treats. It is well known through most of the country, but mostly back east. They are headquartered in Medford Oregon. They make a fantastic Moose Munch which is popcorn drizzled with goodies like chocolate, caramel, tossed with nuts. Delish! We took a tour of their facilities and got some interesting information and free samples. Its all about the samples babe! They are most famous for their pears. The tour drove by one of their groves, it was interesting to learn that they grow their famous pears on small trees about 10’ in size and they “double plant” them. The trees are planted side by side along the row (in pairs!!!) and the root systems actually combine and help sustain each other.

I won’t bore you with all the photos, but here are a few:

50 lb blocks of BUTTUH!

tiny button cookies (sorry blurry!)

red & green cherries for fruitcake: they are just starting to make them for the holidays and they make a few different varieties.

We stopped popped into a little deli that was next to the Harry & David grocery store and shared a yummy turkey avocado melt sandwich for lunch.

Our day was winding down so our last stop was the Rogue Creamery. This is literally blocks off of Jackie’s normal trip route and she had never been so it was a nice find for her as well. Unfortunately I was tired out by now and didn’t take any photos. There wasn’t a whole lot to see really anyway. The small white stucco building is nestled on a “busy” thoroughfare and you have to keep your eyes peeled to find it! I had contacted them prior to my visit to try to get a tour but they said they are not set up for tours and were unable to accommodate my request. Oh well!

The sales shop was 2 rooms. The main room on the left had a couple refrigerators with the cheeses for purchase on the right hand wall and some tables on the back and left walls containing various cheeses to taste, cheese gadgetry and other locally made food stuffs. We tried a chocolate marbled cheddar (eh), a pesto cheddar (good) a pepper marbled cheddar (eh) the lemon artichoke cheddar (yummy), a smoked blue (too smoky for us), their Crater Lake Blue (very good), Oregonzola Blue (good), Oregon Blue Vein (outstanding!), chipotle cheddar (good). In the room to your right was another cheese case, a closet of wines. The cheeses in the cheese case were Italian and French imports.

One of the neat things about the local merchants is that they cross-sell each other’s products. One of the places I had wanted to visit was Gary West Smoked Meats. The Harry & David tour took quite some time from our day though so we were going to miss this one. Luckily the Rogue Creamery also had meats from Gary West to try. I purchased a package of Elk Jerky for us to try. There was also Beef and Buffalo jerky. Also at the creamery were some fantastically beautiful breads made by Applegate Artisan Bakery.

We ended up getting some of the Blue Vein, Lemon Artichoke Cheddar, an Italian cheese that was like a mild Parmesan (sorry folks, I didn’t write the name down!) and 2 loaves of bread, Country French Boule and a whole grain boule with sunflower seeds on top.

Dinner was at the Jacksonville Inn. This is one of the places I will explore more the next trip out. It is a cute old west town with lots of charm. We sat at the very table President Bush had when he dined at the Jacksonville Inn, next to the wine cellar, Dad with his back to the brick wall. Our party also included my SIL, her SO and his son. This was a really fun night, the company was fantastic and that is a great enhancement to any fine meal. No photos of the food here, there was just too much going on.

We started out with a bottle of Moet Chandon. The menu here is extensive. There are 3 pages of salads, appetizers, fish and seafood, carnivorous options plus a page of specials. It takes a while to get through the voluminous offerings. And the selection is both modern and classic. To give you an idea: I started with an Ahi Carpaccio with crispy cold papaya salad and lumpia chips. The ahi was fresh and clean and incredibly tender, it just melted in my mouth. The papaya salad also had sprouts that popped in my mouth, this was very good.

Next was the Escargot with Garlic and Butter. Can I tell you how much I love escargot? I get it about once every 5 years and it is such an occasion to find it on a classic menu. My SIL also ordered this. It came in the classic porcelain dish with the little cups for each individual tender morsel of meat, each filled to the brim with buttuh. They were cooked absolutely perfect! Tender, not chewy at all. Although it may be nitpicky, they were completely unsalted and the garlic could only be found in a few of the cups. I’ve never prepared this but I would assume the assembly would be to scoop a little of the garlic into each of the cups, top it with a snail and fill all the cups with the remaining butter…and the butter should be salted at some point in time…am I wrong here? Well, this definitely brought to mind the discussion on the boards about bringing your own salt. I don’t and didn’t so I was shaking the salt shaker like it was a maraca! Then my SIL did the same :grin: She said she experience the lack of salt on her previous visit as well.

My main course was Wild Pacific Salmon topped with Dungeness crab with Brie and béarnaise sauce. Talk about gilding the lily! This was served with a garlic mash and plump asparagus. The crab was decadent, naturally. I got to the salmon though and it was so overcooked it was inedible. It literally stuck in my throat! I was sitting next to Dad and he tasted it, called the server over and sent it back. My next piece was RAW in the middle. I know, I know, I had just had the RAW ahi, and I like raw salmon too, but not when it is supposed to be cooked! My bad “mojo” again. I ate up this crab too, and the asparagus so that was fine. I felt bad for the kitchen, I figured for a top place like this to screw up twice on the same plate, they must be in the weeds. I just left it alone. Oh, wine with dinner was Groth 1998, Napa Valley Merlot.

Dessert (can you believe it???) I was stuffed for sure. But I have a sweet tooth the size of Texas, it ain’t pretty. Its rare that I turn sweets down. I had a pretty Tiramisu that was built in a martini glass. It was fine, but nothing memorable. Dad had the chocolate mouse cake and it was luscious, I’d definitely recommend it!

My very happy SIL with her beau:

Breakfast the next morning was some of the French boule toasted and served with butter, my homemade rhubarb and cherry jam that I brought up for Dad & Jackie and also sliced tomatoes. I think we had this with the fresh squeezed OJ made into screw drivers.

Lance and I put dinner together for us this evening. Lance grills a mean Cornish Game Hen and I put together buttermilk mashed potatoes and salads. For dessert I made Pavlova with fresh whipped cream and local strawberries macerated in Contreau. MMMMM. This was a big airy dessert that looks bigger than it feels in the tummy. I used the recipe from The Silver Palette cookbook, the Pavlova itself was a wee bit too sweet (for me that is saying something!) but it was good and was all gobbled up- no problem!

Sunday was wine tasting. The Rogue Valley is pretty big so we decided to start out over in Ashland. Ashland is an incredibly cute community, quaint down town that reminds me of Los Gatos, CA. I will definitely want to spend some more time there on my next visit.

Our first stop was at Weisinger's winery. This was an absolutely beautiful winery overlooking rolling hills. They have a nice wood deck and on Sundays there is Jazz on the deck. When we were there a gal was playing a synthesizer at one end. The wines we tasted were all very strong in tannins. They weren’t entirely unpleasant, but too much for our palates.

Our next winery was Ashland Winery. There was road construction and a detour to get to it. Once we found it we weren’t sure we really wanted to go in. There were berry thickets about 14 feet high, the road was dirt and unkempt, awfully bumpy. The vineyard itself appeared to be overrun with weeds and the “house” that had a sign that read “Wine Tasting Room” looked like it had seen better days. We timidly entered and it wasn’t much better indoors. There were signs boasting of awards as recent as 1999. I was skeptical to say the least! We bellied up to the bar and were engaged by Phil Kodak, one of the owners. This turned out to be a fun hour spent well. The winery is 100% organic, vegan even according to Phil. He explained about his varietals and we sipped and chatted away. The ones we purchased were the 1998 Henry VIII Cabernet Sauvignon and the white varietal mix Shakespear’s Love 2001. A very happy find indeed! An item of note, we have opened a bottle of each since returning home, the Shakespear’s Love is still great but the bottle of Cab never really opened up, we are wondering if there could be bottling inconsistencies due to the organic nature of the wines.

Unfortunately the labels are super cheesy. I think they need some marketing help!

Dinner this night was nosh on the cheeses purchased from the Rogue Creamery, the rest of the lovely bread we bought there too, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, peas and Jackie’s homemade double chocolate chocolate chip cookies, a recipe from Cook’s Country magazine. This went perfect with a couple games of Hand and Foot!

Monday was our last day there and jut a day to hang out until we flew out. Nothing special really. Lunch at the airport diner, the burger was pretty OK. Surprising since it was serving a captive audience!

Oh, I almost forgot! Here is a picture of me learning how to interact with my equine siblings. This is Torrie, she is a sweet 3 year old and I am scratching her just right, thus the stupid look of ecstasy on her face. The little one behind me is 6 week old Prince, he became my little buddy. Perhaps Jackie will actually get me on a horse in 5 years or so! That she got me this far is an accomplishment.

A view of the rolling hills through a horses ears. (Not me taking this one!) If you love horses, Mystic is a working ranch and they teach natural horsemanship. PM me if you want contact information.

And although not a great photo, here is sweet Milo kitty. Such a lover!

I sincerely hope you have enjoyed my trip report. I don’t get out much so this was a real treat for me and my hubby.

Let me know if you have any questions about my trip!

[PopsicleToze]

I enjoyed reading about your trip. Nice report! And I totally understand about being scared of chickens -- they can be mean.

Rhonda

[chardan]

Hi,

Thanks for the wonderful pictures and travelogue! I am very please that you had a good adventure in the Rogue Valley!

It was great to read your post. Hope you can visit again!

_Jesse Williamson ;-};

[Genny]

Hi,

Thanks for the wonderful pictures and travelogue! I am very please that you had a good adventure in the Rogue Valley!

It was great to read your post. Hope you can visit again!

_Jesse Williamson ;-};

←

Well thanks much Chardan. I absolutely loved the trip and hope I can get back there in Sept. or Oct. You are so lucky to live in such a beautiful region!

[chardan]

Genny,

Thanks for the kind words!

It's nice here in Fall, too-- so I just know that you're going to enjoy your next visit, too. :>

-J.

[bbqboy]

Here's a Rogue Creamery update- expanding production looks to be in the works, so Genny, you might get your tour eventually.

http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2006/01...ories/01biz.htm

Rogue Creamery has kept to three-day production weeks because of limited cold storage space. That changed on Friday when Gremmels and Bryant closed on a $1.1 million deal that gives them plenty of room to grow.

Rogue Creamery purchased Central Point Cold Storage, a 22,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse on Haskell Street, from Jerry Michael of White City. The creamery has been renting about 20 percent of the 11-year-old building, sharing space with Gary West Meats and Sabroso Co.

"It’s imperative that we have the space to age our world-class cheese in state-of-the-art refrigerated coolers," Gremmels said. "We’ve been there close to three years. We started with one pallet, then two and now we have 2½ refrigeration spaces filled with blue cheeses — 100-plus pallets."

[syrah girl]

We had a very romantic and fine dining experience at Chateaulin in Ashland, Oregon last week. It was rainy and we were seated at the a table in the front of the restaurant. I had the fixed price menu for $35/pp which included two glasses of very nice white wines. The three courses were the butterleaf salad with champagne viniagrette dressing, a very excellent prawn dish and pineapple sorbet with fresh raspberries and strawberries.

As always, the service was outstanding, making this one of my favorite restaurants in Ashland for fine dining in a romantic setting.

[bjones9942]

I can't believe everyone going to the Medford area and missing 'The House Of Mystery'!

Edited February 11, 2006 by bjones9942 (log)

[malarkey]

I can't believe everyone going to the Medford area and missing 'The House Of Mystery'!

←

I love the Oregon Vortex. I've been there several times (lived in the area for awhile). It is the classic tourist attraction and a treat for all hippee types, of which I was one. In fact, we went there once under the influence of a certain natural hallucinogen that seems to grow well in the damp pacific northwest...

I was down there last summer, ate at New Sammy's (which was lovely, but the service was a bit odd) and seriously considered going to the Vortex. I should have. We did stop by the Weasku Inn, and I was very sorry to see that the restaurant is gone.

[Genny]

I can't believe everyone going to the Medford area and missing 'The House Of Mystery'!

←

I love the Oregon Vortex. I've been there several times (lived in the area for awhile). It is the classic tourist attraction and a treat for all hippee types, of which I was one. In fact, we went there once under the influence of a certain natural hallucinogen that seems to grow well in the damp pacific northwest...

I was down there last summer, ate at New Sammy's (which was lovely, but the service was a bit odd) and seriously considered going to the Vortex. I should have. We did stop by the Weasku Inn, and I was very sorry to see that the restaurant is gone.

←

It doesn't appear to have a restaurant! There is something similar to this in Santa Cruz, CA near where I grew up so I've experienced this phenomena before. I'll make sure my FIL knows about this for future visitors though!

I too found the service at Sammy's "interesting" but I thought it fit in with the whole experience of being in a crappy looking shack with cow wallpaper - it was all very un-restaurant-ish coupled with the incredible food.