Tomorrow Ecotrust welcomes Portland's first Fermentation Festival. If you don’t know where Ecotrust is, it’s more than likely that you’ll be able to track it down by smell as home picklers, preserves, and brewers trade ideas and cultures for kimchi, kosher style dills, kefir and everything in between. Of course the stars of the fermentation fest will be the enormous collection of microbial life that does all the important work. Playing second fiddle, author Sandor “Sandorkraut” Ellix Katz author of Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods will be on hand to discuss the wonders of, well, live-culture food. If you’ve ever wanted to make a sourdough, or ferment tofu, Ecotrust [721 NW 9th] will be your favorite place between 6pm and 8pm tomorrow.

Those crazy kids at Travel Oregon have come up with (or have started using) a term I was heretofore unfamiliar with: “cuisinternship”. WTF, you say? It’s actually a catchy term to describe what you could win through their new Oregon Bounty contest. The prize is an expense paid, five day, six night apprenticeship with one of seven Oregon food or drink specialists. Ever wanted to rub elbows with Gabe Rucker while glaring out Le Pigeon’s windows at over-wrought foie gras protesters? This is your chance! Maybe you’ve always wanted to help round up a herd of steak-on-the-hoof with an Eastern Oregon rancher. It can happen, pardner! But these are two of the possibilities. Learn the basics of cheese making, chocolatiering, brewing, wine making, or distilling… The choice is yours.

All that’s asked is that you make a three minute video detailing why you should win, and create a tweet-worthy 140 character explanation to go along with it. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky. Enter the contest here.

While we’re talking about learning how to do stuff, you should really check out this great piece from the Food Dude over at Portland Food and Drink. After a few summer-soaked memories of Texas, he provides his grandmother's recipe for mayonnaise and a step by step pictorial guide.