The Oregon Garden Resort has opened 45 minutes southeast of Portland in Silverton, Oregon.

The new 103-room Craftsman-style hotel is located adjacent to the Oregon Garden and guests of the resort enjoy complimentary access to its 80 acres, with its 20 themed gardens, including a Children’s Garden, Pet-Friendly Garden, Rediscovery Forest, Recycled Water Wetlands and more. The Silverton Market Garden is also one of the gardens and, each August, September and October donates its produce to the Silverton Area Community Aid Food Bank. 

A larger garden, located on the property behind Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ambassadors for the Environment center, offers an extensive selection of fruits and vegetables. Both gardens are organic and the vision of Executive Sous Chef Marc McDowell, who will be offering insights and some recipes for us in a future post.

In the meantime, here's a summer cocktail that's a great use for all the mint we have growing in our gardens (whether or not they have a fabulous view) plus summer grapefruit and lime. Enjoy!

1oz cane sugar
Juice from ½ lime
6-8 fresh mint leaves from our garden
Slice of grapefruit
Muddle all the above
Add ice
1 ½ oz Finlandia Grapefruit Vodka
Top with soda water
Garnish with lime

There’s something about summer and growing tomatoes. Maybe it’s because they really only grow in the summer or because they taste so much better (so much better) than anything available in the stores, but there’s something really satisfying about a summer tomato you’ve grown yourself.

There are those, of course, who take their tomato growing to the extremes, such as the guy chronicled in the Los Angeles Times last year who grew something like 10,000 tomatoes in his San Fernando Valley yard. It was in reading that article that I discovered Tomatomania – no, not this particular gentleman’s mania for tomatoes, but the Tomatomania seedling sales, listed at www.tomatomania.com.