On Saturday, Jen and I went to an event called Plate & Pitchfork together with our friends Ben and Maria. What's Plate & Pitchfork? It's very much a Portland thing. A bunch of Portlanders (7,000 over the course of this summer) come together on one of our local farms (literally in the midst of berry fields in our case), where one gets served gourmet meals by the area's top chefs all made with local ingredients and accompanied by a number of different wines from one of our resident vineyards. In our case, the host was the Smith Berry Barn, our chefs were from Nick's Italian Cafe and the Dundee Bistro and the produce came from the Gaining Ground Farm. Wine was supplied by The Eyrie Vineyards. A few thoughts. 1. The Berries were excellent. The dessert dish was "Triple Crown Blackberries in Vincotto with Absinthe Zabaglione." I don't know what Zabaglione is but this dessert made me forget chocolate cake. 2. We got to meet some really interesting people. Interesting in a good way. 3. They didn't quite serve enough wine or food. I would have expected there to be plenty of both. 4. You can volunteer at these events, which seems like a fun way to spend, eat and drink on a Saturday evening. 5. At some point during the dinner, a cat jumped on the table next to ours. I probably still wouldn't bring Otto to one of these things. [gallery=5]