Kitchen

At Mirador, we believe that the physical nourishes the spiritual (and vice versa !) so that eating food prepared by faceless corporations from produce grown by heartless corporations is not only bad for your body, but your soul. Preparing and making your own food can and should be a spiritually nourishing experience, not a chore.

Baking
Bread has been called the Staff of Life and there are few pleasures that compare with baking and eating your own bread and other baked goods from whole grains, especially when you grind the flour yourself. There are a lot of different whole grains available that you will never find in commercial breads (but can buy at People's Food Co-op, Food Front or New Seasons). Using these grains, you can create a multitude of healthful, delicious, and unique breads. We carry several varieties of grain mills, both electric and hand. We don't carry bread machines here, as they are so readily available elsewhere, but we do carry a hand dough-mixer that reduces the time needed to make bread dough the old-fashioned way. You can easily make four loaves (or more!) of bread -- from grain to fresh-from-the-oven loaves in three hours! Yum! We also carry loaf pans, muffins tins, cookie sheets, bread knives, baking stones and peels for hearth breads, and many good books about baking whole-grain breads.

Canning/Preserving
Eating food that you canned or otherwise preserved during the growing season runs a close second to eating homemade baked goods. Whether you are fortunate enough to grow your own produce or can buy larger quantities from a local farmer's market, storing up food for the coming cold season somehow connects us to the primal act of survival. What can beat the feeling you have when you make your own spaghetti sauce from tomatoes that you grew and canned yourself, or some raspberry jam from those raspberries you picked every day for a month?

Mirador carries a wide variety of canning supplies, many of which are hard to find elsewhere. We have pressure and waterbath canners, canning jars (in sizes from 4 ounce to half gallon) and lids (including just lids, lids with rings, and hard-to-find plastic storage lids in both wide-mouth and regular sizes), and everything else you might need for canning including: tongs, wide-mouth funnels, jar lifters, lid sterilizers, magnetic lid wands, bubble-freers, jelly strainers, skimmers, long-handled cooking spoons, cheesecloth, thermometers, and more. We also carry a steam juicer that makes processing your grapes into juice a simple task (and also doubles as a vegetable steamer!). If you are new to canning or want to do a one-time project, you can even rent out a steam juicer or a hand-cranked juicer/strainer (see Gadgets below) for a day or two.

When it comes to preserving, dehydrating is considered one of the most healthful methods there is. Almost every kind of fruit and vegetable can be dried, and the result takes up less space than canning and requires no electricity (unlike freezing). We carry several sizes of food dehydrators that can also be used to make yogurt or raise bread-- we also make tempeh in ours.

Gadgets
We also carry a lot of low-tech gadgets to assist you in baking and preparing fruits and vegetables for preserving or just for dinner. We have apple peeler/corer/slicers which make short work of apples for pies or preserving, a hand cranked juicer/strainer that can whip out applesauce or pumpkin much faster and more easily than a food mill (which we also carry, for smaller jobs). We have green bean frenchers, cherry and olive pitters, pineapple peeler/corers, avocado mashers, and spice grinders.

Inspired by Asian kitchens, we have a slicer/grater called a mandoline (which I can personally attest is great), a spiral slicer (which creates neat spaghetti-like strands from vegetables), and a Japanese style of mortar and pestle called a suribachi. Finally there are the everyday items like can openers, garlic presses, measuring cups, colanders, and lots, lots more.

Sprouting
Everybody knows that sprouts are healthful, but few know that there are many other sprouts besides alfalfa and mung bean. Radish, clover, lentil, pea, broccoli (recently in the news for its remarkable health-giving properties) even wheat and other grains are all easy to sprout at home. Watching a handfull of seeds turn into a jar or bag full of vibrant sprouts that you can add to your salads and other food is a simple but awesome process. Mirador carries sprouting equipment, including sprout trays, sprouting bags, and various screens that fit over wide-mouth mason jars.

Cookbooks
Mirador carries a large selection of cookbooks in many categories; many of which you will not find in other stores. We specialize in vegan, vegetarian, raw, special diets (diabetes, wheat and gluten free, etc), whole-grain baking, healthful cooking for parents/kids, soyfoods and others. We are comitted to providing difficult to find information about alternative ways of nourishing the body,so we have best-sellers like Moosewood and Horn of the Moon, as well lesser-known titles like The Vegan Sourcebook and The Raw Gourmet.
 


Mirador offers a discount to members of various groups. For details, click here.

Map and Directions to Mirador

2106 SE Divison Street
Portland, Oregon 97202
503.231.5175
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