Michele Stokes, Author at Sunnyside Neighborhood Association

Berry Delicious

It’s berry season. Here in Oregon, we are fortunate to have a wonderful variety of berries and cherries that are available in the summer to enjoy. They not only come in a beautiful array of colors, but they are delicious and incredibly good for you. Both berries and cherries are often referred to as superfoods. Berries are a low-sugar fruit and they are a great source of flavonoids, which are plant chemicals that can help reduce or inhibit inflammation, reduce risk of cardiovascular disease and some types of cancer. Anthocyanins, one of the compounds in berries, are a great contributor to the reduction in inflammation. One study showed that blueberries could turn off the expression of inflammatory genes. Another study showed that blueberry powder can increase killer t cells and reduce the stiffness in our arteries. Strawberries have been shown to help with pain in osteoarthritis and another study showed that increasing your intake of berries may reduce the rate of cognitive decline as you age and improve memory. Strawberries may also improve cognition in both adults and children. (For links to these studies, view this article on the SNA website at sunnysideportland.org.)

Reading those studies definitely has me sold. When I can, I also like to go out with my family and pick the berries myself. (My little nephew loves to come along.) There are some great farms on Sauvie Island. There are a couple of farms that I love to support in the Canby/Hubbard area, including The Schmid Family Farm (theschmidfamilyfarm.com) and Morning Shade Farm (morningshadefarm.com). If you pick more than you can eat, you can freeze them and use them all year long.

Berries can be used in all kinds of fun and tasty ways. Eating them raw is amazing, of course, but they are also great in smoothies, oatmeal, muffins, pies, salads and even soup. I recently made a yummy Raspberry Gazpacho and a Berry Cobbler. I also love making what is often known as Nice Dream, which is a mix of frozen bananas, frozen berries and plant milk blended to resemble a nice soft serve ice cream. Of course, you can add chocolate, nuts or nut butter, or other ingredients. A mix of blueberry, banana, plant milk and mint is super refreshing.

Below are a couple of great recipes using berries.

Get creative and enjoy the beautiful and nutritious berry.

Berry Brain Food Oat Bowl

1 cup rolled oats (can use less)
1 banana
1 cup (or more) of berries (if frozen microwave for 1 minute)
1 Tablespoon of ground flax seed
1 pinch ground ginger
1 pinch cinnamon
1 cup (or more) of your favorite plant milk
2 Tablespoons of walnuts (optional)

Throw everything together in a big bowl or container. Let sit for at least 15 minutes so the oats can soften. Enjoy!

Tip 1 – You can cook this like oatmeal, but I like to eat the oats raw. They soften quickly. You can also assemble this the night before and leave it in the fridge.

Tip 2 – Walnuts and flaxseeds are great ways to add omega 3 to your diet. However, if you want to lose weight, skip the walnuts. Flaxseeds also add calories, but they are a great source of fiber and healthy nutrients.

Tip 3 – Berries of all kinds are a healthy brain food. They have amazing plant compounds called anthocyanins that are anti-inflammatory and have great antioxidant effects. And they are super yummy! Whenever possible, eat your berries.

Bursting with Berries Cobbler

A wonderful recipe from the Forks Over Knives website.

Getting to Know Your Neighbors

Q&A with Lydia Kiesling

Writer Lydia Kiesling moved to Sunnyside in September 2019 from the Bay Area with her husband and two young daughters. Her articles have appeared in The Atlantic, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Cut, The New York Times Magazine and many other publications. She’s the author of The Golden State, a 2018 novel about early motherhood, set in a fictional town in northern California with an active secessionist movement. Her new novel, Mobility, debuts on August 1st.

Mobility begins in 1998 at the American embassy in Azerbaijan. That’s where bored teenager Bunny Glenn endures a summer with her father, who is posted there as a public information officer with the U.S. Foreign Service. Bunny, who reluctantly learns about oil and geopolitics that summer, is modeled after the character of the same name from Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, one of Kiesling’s main influences for Mobility. The novel follows Bunny into adulthood; she takes back her full name, Elizabeth, and she ends up in Texas working in the oil and gas industry herself. The book is about one woman’s life and her choices when faced with climate change, her trajectory through the prism of her upbringing, the political currents of the time, her class and even her character.

Mobility draws on Kiesling’s own experiences as the daughter of a Foreign Service official in the 1990s. No spoilers, but the Sunnyside neighborhood also makes an appearance in the book!

Where did Bunny emerge from in your imagination?

Lydia: I think everyone who writes a novel has one central image or idea that they are interested in conveying. Mine started out as thinking about my upbringing, which was in the Foreign Service. Then from there, I just started thinking about the larger systems and currents of that moment and when I was a teenager. As I was researching, it really seemed like oil and gas were the story of the time. It was also this pivotal moment when the Cold War was over and the War on Terror was about to begin. That was also very significant for American ideology and ideas. That really inflected my young adulthood. I wanted to write about that.

At an early age, Bunny gains this understanding that democracy is actually capitalism. You can see that throughout the book. Was that your understanding as a young person watching the machinations of the Foreign Service?

Lydia: I was completely oblivious. One thing that I find remarkable is that I did have a lot of exposure to complex situations and adult conversations. I waskind of like, ‘I don’t care about any of that stuff.’ I remember it used to m ake my parents crazy because they would be like: ‘This is important, you have to know about these things.’ My dad is no longer in the Foreign Service; he left to protest the Iraq War. He had his own ‘What am I doing?’ moment. When I think back on that time, I’m so grateful for that upbringing and for those experiences.

It seems to me that you really wanted to write something about climate change, too. So how did you balance that? Not wanting to come off as a polemic, but also giving people a story that is about climate change?

Lydia: It’s sort of a backdoor entrance to the issue of climate change. What I really wanted to talk about at first was oil, because it is incredibly rich. There is this narrative excitement and glee that feels a little perverse around it. Then I just got completely overwhelmed because it is such a huge story, so I had to scale it back. I was fixated on showing how interconnected and massive the systems around fossil fuels are. That’s why Hurricane Harvey is only told in one sentence in the book, and Bunny is not even there when it happens. It’s something that she knows was awful – it’s just a horrible thing that happens that doesn’t seem to affect your life directly. So that’s how Bunny treats a lot of aspects of climate change.

That’s why I jumped the plot into the future. The book was well underway and then we had the heat dome in Portland, and I was like, ‘Well, here we go.’ The feeling of the heat dome, I definitely pressed into the book toward the end.

What attracted you to Sunnyside?

Lydia: When we knew that we were going to move to Portland, we spent a weekend and looked at a lot of different houses and a lot of different neighborhoods. In Sunnyside, it was pretty clear that a lot of the houses were out of our price range, but there was one house we saw that had been sitting on the market for a really long time and the price kept being reduced, and we couldn’t really understand why. The listing pictures did not do it justice and it needed a fair amount of cosmetic work, which must have turned people off. This was incredibly lucky for us. We are fixing it up slowly. As soon as we saw the neighborhood, we thought this was an ideal place for us to live. When we moved here, we didn’t have a car and we didn’t want to have one. And the fact that you could walk to grocery stores and businesses and preschool…. I still can’t believe that we live here. It feels really special to be able to do that.

Did you start writing Mobility when you moved to Portland?

Lydia: I had written about a quarter to a third before we moved here. It got its second wind after we moved and settled in. In the fall of 2019, I started going to Albina Press on Hawthorne and working on it again and really hit my stride. Then the pandemic happened and I took many long breaks from it. In the high Covid times I didn’t write at all. I have two little kids. So I was dealing with that and I was prioritizing freelance writing projects that were short that I knew I would get paid for. When I’m working on a book and the schools are open and I have childcare, I try to spend two hours before noon. I used to go to coffee shops, but now I go to a workspace and I try to put some time in there. But I know from the process of writing this novel that sometimes you can go six months without working on a project and you just have to come back to it when you can.

Are you a cat or a dog person?

Lydia: I’m the proud owner of two cats: Big Ed and Nadine. They are 14 years old. Big Ed has a lot of health problems. But I love my neighborhood so much because I have several people on my block who now know how to inject a cat with insulin and take care of Big Ed when I go away. I love my supportive cat community.

Hear Kiesling in conversation with fellow Portland writer Omar El Akkad at Powell’s on Burnside on August 1st at 7 p.m.

Preventing Prediabetes and Diabetes

Disclaimer: This article is not medical advice. It’s not recommended to make any changes without consulting and being under the watchful guidance of your health care provider. This is especially important if you are diagnosed with a condition and/or on any kind of medication.

According to the CDC, 415 million people worldwide have diabetes as of 2022 and it is predicted that over half a billion people will have diabetes by 2040. If trends don’t change, one in three adults could have diabetes by 2050.

Diabetes and its complications cost the U.S. about $327 billion annually. Around 38% of American adults have prediabetes, which is around 96 million people, and about 5-15 percent of those will progress to diabetes per year. Diabetes doubles the risk of heart disease and stroke, and is the leading cause of blindness, end stage renal disease and amputations. It makes up 17 percent of all deaths for adults 25 or older.

Obesity Is a major risk factor for diabetes. Nearly 70 percent of adults are overweight or obese and around 85 percent of people with diabetes are overweight or obese. Losing weight would significantly lower the risk of diabetes and reduce the social and economical costs.

Now for the uplifting part: you can prevent type 2 diabetes and prediabetes.

Often the conversation about diabetes focuses on high blood sugar, which is definitely important. However, high blood sugar is more of a symptom than a cause. The main cause of diabetes and prediabetes is a condition called insulin resistance. Insulin resistance occurs from an accumulation of excess fat in certain tissues that are not meant to store a lot of fat, specifically the muscle and liver cells.

An accumulation of fat can clog up the cells and turn off the ability to use insulin. Insulin is what opens up the cells to allow the sugar from the blood to enter. As a result, glucose gets stuck in the bloodstream and one gets high blood sugar and all the problems that go along with it.

There are a lot of variables to consider that influence one’s blood glucose. Generally speaking, you should avoid refined carbs (white bread, sweets, sugary drinks) and eat a nutrient-dense diet with lots of complex carbohydrates and healthy fats (monounsaturated fats like those found in avocado, fish, nuts, and olive oil and polyunsaturated fats like those found in tofu, nuts, and seeds). Adding some activity in there will also make a huge difference.

Making a diet or lifestyle change can be powerful—but it’s often hard to do on your own. Fortunately, there is support out there. If you have prediabetes or are at risk for type 2 diabetes, you may qualify for the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), which is covered by both Medicare and Medicaid (as well as some private insurers). The DPP was launched by the CDC after a multi-year study showed that it had great results. A year on the lifestyle program reduced the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 58 percent. Adults over 60 reduced their risk by 71%. For the study group that took Metformin instead, the risk was decreased by 31%.

Weight loss was the predominant predictor for the decreased risk in developing type 2 diabetes. For every 2.2 lbs of weight loss, the diabetes risk decreased by 13 percent. Participants who decreased the most fat intake in the diet showed the greatest decrease in risk for every kilogram of weight loss. There are two major goals for the participants of the program:

1) If weight needs to be lost, losing 5 to 7 percent of the participants’ weight in the first six months, and

2) Working in up to 150 minutes or more per week of moderate-intensity exercise.

Portland has DPP programs and they are often covered by health insurance. Providence’s version, which is excellent, is called PREVENT. OHSU also offers a DPP program. The programs are fun, informative and offer a lot of support.

Getting to Know Your Neighbors

Q&A with Bill Oakley

Bill Oakley has been a professional screenwriter for over 30 years. Most famously, he wrote for The Simpsons with his writing partner Josh Weinstein. The two were set writers for seven years, and eventually showrunners for its seventh and eighth seasons, largely considered to be some of the series’ best years. The duo went on to write for Futurama, then created their own shows with, as Oakley puts it, “various levels of success over the next few years.” Oakley currently resides in Sunnyside and runs a wildly popular social media presence that revolves around niche fast food items. He hosts a tour of his sleeper hit series Mission Hill, screening remastered versions of the show’s single season at theaters across the country.

How long have you lived in the neighborhood, and what brought you to Portland?

Bill: I’ve lived here for more than 14 years, and I’ve been in this house the whole time. We have friends who live near the Belmont Library. They had moved in the ‘90s and were evangelizing Portland. We visited and agreed it was a great place to raise a family, and it wasn’t so far from L.A. that I couldn’t travel down there. It took almost as long to fly to L.A. as it did to drive to Burbank from Santa Monica, and that became less and less necessary as time went on. I began doing more and more work online as we got closer to the pandemic, and now the work doesn’t even ask you to come to L.A. anymore. The last two shows I worked on didn’t even have office space; it was all online.

Do you rent or own this house?

Bill: We’ve been renting it for over 14 years. I owned houses for 16 years in L.A. and I didn’t want to ever own a house again after that.

What do you love about Sunnyside?

Bill: When we were first considering moving to Portland we went on a driving tour of sorts through every neighborhood. It was the perfect neighborhood! You could walk everywhere. There are restaurants and stores and interesting things going on. It was the polar opposite from L.A., where, from our house, it was a mile walk

to get anywhere – with no sidewalks. We found a house near Hawthorne, and when it came up for rent we were like, “That’s the house.”

There have been about four incarnations of this neighborhood since we moved here…. There’s still plenty of interesting things to walk to. I love Sewallcrest Park. I love that I can walk down to Division. I love being able to walk up and down Hawthorne, which I do frequently. I can walk to grocery stores in less than ten minutes. I love going to Zach’s Shack. Quarterworld is terrific. I love Powell’s Books and the Bagdad Theater. There are good food carts, and the best cart pod in easy reach of us now is the Hinterlands on 50th. To sum it up: there’s a great mixture of interesting things and places to eat, all within a short walk. As far as any big American city, it’s relatively safe.

What is one thing you would change about Sunnyside, if you could?

Bill: I would add a few more useful things, like the Postal Annex on Hawthorne I go to literally every day. Some of the useful things that used to be here… a place to pick up a quick sandwich to go, or Noah’s Bagels. I’m not saying national chains—one thing I miss was the Dollar Scholar. I could send the kids over with a few dollars to buy balloons or sodas. It encapsulated the quirkiness of the neighborhood. Missing Link was another place; I would really love to have another store like that. If I could push a button and have one thing, it would be to have Bodega PDX open a spot on Hawthorne. I love the sandwiches and you can pick up whatever you need.

Final question: Are you more of a cat person or a dog person?

Bill: I have four cats. It doesn’t mean I don’t love dogs, I just don’t want to have to walk a dog. The cats are great pets, but while they don’t have quite the same enthusiasm for people as dogs do, they’re fun and have unique personalities. And, you don’t have to walk them. The cats are named Piper Po, Mochi, Scooter, and Kitty Bennet. These are not all my cats, but they all live here, and they’re each bonded to their particular human. I inherited Kitty Bennett, who is now attached to me.

Follow Bill Oakley on Instagram & Twitter (@thatbilloakley) or Facebook to see his reels on the Heinz Remix Machine, Lay’s Mayonnaise flavored chips, and updates on Mission Hill screenings.