on leaving and raspberry brown sugar gratin

hello from san francisco.

i'm writing--typing--from a coffee shop that fulfills every west coast hipster coffee house cliché imaginable.

elizabeth and i have been on the road for five days now. we have been stared down by the regulars of a crescent city diner, charged by a sea lion on a dock in battery point harbor, and driven down the 101 through a quarter of an audio recording of jeffrey eugenides' middlesex on tape. the redwoods are beautiful, breathing things.

leaving was a scramble. i managed to piss off several employees of the US postal service with my mountain of boxes and my inability to comprehend their respective shipping prices. our house turned into a hostel during a two week period of overlapping movers-in and movers-out. the fishbowl, our home with four proper bedrooms and two makeshift bedrooms, was suddenly housing 10. economy-size jars of peanut butter got involved, forcing ulysses to make a peanut butter knuckle sandwich. i would be lying if i said that i will not miss that insane, decrepit house, and i would be lying even more if i said that i will not miss the bejeezus out of portland. it is comfortable, cheap, loving, beautiful, bike-friendly, takes composting seriously, and is full of more good food than i could sample in a lifetime. it's summer camp for adults. it's where young people go to retire, and rightly so. but it's time. if i don't pack up and move on to something that will make me newly uncomfortable, i'll get too comfortable. i'll stagnate. being a broke brooklynite is calling my name. how strange that the last three movies we watched in our summer film club were do the right thing, midnight cowboy, and dog day afternoon--movies about the uglier aspects of new york in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

going away and saying goodbye included an enormous gathering at elk rock island, with snacks and swimming and sun, a party in a tiny room at the jupiter hotel during which ulysses took a bath, an idyllic bike ride to powell butte upon which nick and i watched a copper-streaked panoramic sunset, the best game of miniature tanks i have ever played, a final food cart run for breakfast sandwiches and then another final food cart run for salad rolls, an embarrassingly slow but determined installation of a bike rack onto the trunk of elizabeth's car, an enormous cuddle puddle, tequila shots, and a round of clue in which participants at various levels of intoxication experimented with method acting character development. i was colonel mustard, who started out with my normal modes of speech but with significantly more misogyny, and eventually evolved into a persona that i have fondly dubbed "40s cop voice."

cumin & harissa roasted cauliflower

we had a heat wave. i slept in the basement for a few nights, delirious, brain cooking in my skull. a rapid spike in popsicle consumption. this was the first instance in days that i was able to turn the oven on, almost a happy accident given that there happened to be a head of purple cauliflower and a few raggedy carrots kicking around in the crisper drawer with nothing to do.

it's not much, and it's certainly not the kind of sensual summer food you might find on other blogs at this time of year. there are no fattened heirloom tomatoes here, no chunks of glistening barbecued pork, no overflowing strawberry shortcakes. i'm sorry. allow me to point you in the direction of fifty licks, who churns up a saffron coconut lemon sorbet that will stop you dead in your tracks. i think they also sell it at new seasons.

on love and pork

my birthday began as birthdays should: i got to sleep in, was awoken by birthday phone calls, and sat outside in the sun eating chocolate cake, watermelon, and iced tea for breakfast. the stuff of dreams.

jensen and i packed a picnic and made the idyllic bike down the springwater corridor to elk rock island, where we lay out on the rocks in the sun, jumping into the water every time we overheated. he had been in texas for a month, so catching up was in order.

we got home just before dinner time. i had already had my big birthday party the week before, cut short by portland's finest police bureau, so i wanted a more intimate taco time. ben and megan came by, and elizabeth and santi surprised me with the most beautiful cupcakes i've ever laid eyes upon, viral new york cupcakeries and their cutesy beehives of frosting be damned. not only were these beauties rainbow all the way through, but the tie-dye frosting matched my summer uniform dress to a tee, garish butterflies and all.

they were almost too pretty to eat.

it's funny, because the past year of my life has been marked by the conscious decision to regularly cut negative influences out of my life. it's meant losing a lot of friends, some of whom i miss, but i know that i am a better person without those who drain me of emotional energy. and so, here i am, with a small handful of really good ones around me. quality over quantity, embodied. sometimes there is truth in platitudes. certainly there is truth in cupcakes. the proof is in the pudding, or whatever dessert you prefer.

lapsang star anise ice cream with roasted plums

a date has been set, with some wiggle room. between august 20th and august 23rd, elizabeth and i will be packing all our earthly possessions into her toyota, saying goodbye to portland, and driving cross country to seek our fame and fortune in the city that never sleeps.

we will be stopping at the redwood national park, san francisco, bakersfield, LA, newport, the grand canyon, taos. we'll pick up yoseff in marfa, and then go to austin, new orleans, and savannah, among others.

it doesn't quite feel real, knowing that i have a month left in portland. i've lived at the fishbowl for over a year, the longest i've been in any one place since high school. college is over. tomorrow night i'll be co-celebrating my 23rd birthday with jake. 23; an odd number. a few miles too far away from 20 to feel comfortable. we have plans to make the world's biggest pile of guacamole. i'm hoping somebody makes me an ice cream cake.

days not spent working have been spent doing Very Adult Things. house cleaning, mending clothes, filling out medical records release forms, picking up dry-cleaning, going to the bank, the library, the pharmacy, yoga. am i getting old? i've been a pretty consistent homebody for the past few years of my life--as a rule i would almost always prefer to stay in with a movie than go out, so that's nothing new--but it's impossible to feel completely like an Adult in portland, the land of eternal summer camp. never never land.

baked eggs in black bean cinnamon tomato sauce

i now have three plants, all of which i have managed to not kill. wonders never cease.

between bike riding and trips to the river, i've been burning through tubes of SPF 70. it was as if, after a month of sweater weather in june, the 4th of july effectively kicked summer into full gear. we spent it on an abandoned houseboat along the columbia, grilling, jumping off of the docks, having panic attacks about encounters with enormous sturgeon, and scrambling back onto the dock with a pounding heart. the latter two items may have been mostly me.

i've been eating batch after batch of this granola. lunch has been tomato, cheddar, avocado, and mustard sandwiches on dave's killer bread. salad rolls, a few times a week, with lots of lime, jicama, and caramelized tofu sautéed with shiitake and a splash of fish sauce. sugar snap peas, eaten cold and raw, by the pound. lemonade, carrot juice, blue moon. berries, cherries, and for breakfast, sometimes, when i'm feeling decadent, this:

toast, ricotta, honey, balsamic, pea shoots, strawberries, flake salt.

dressing to the nines

elizabeth and i drove up to washington this week to go visit simone, who lives on vashon island in the puget sound. her family's property is secluded, nested in a few acres of forest. they keep a beehive, a berry patch, a library, an enormous produce garden. they make jam.

her father built their entire house, and you can feel it when you walk in. softly glossed woods reign supreme alongside a few cats, who might rub up against your leg or eye you with disdain. the real kicker, in my opinion, is the wrap-around porch overflowing with potted plants, with the dining room table opening up to a back balcony with this view.

i kept wondering how anyone who lives here could possibly get anything done, when all i would want to do is sit outside with a book and a beer all day. for simone, who's only visiting home for a few weeks before coming back to portland for the summer, it's quite simple: "getting things done" in vashon just means having a different list of priorities. weeding, berry-picking, babysitting her younger sister, going for walks.

 

dinner meant a sunset accompanied by a salad with lettuce picked from the garden, mustard vinaigrette, and one of the best avocados i've ever eaten.

black bread ice cream

what uncommons irrefutably does best is our monthly dinner parties, for which there are a dozen lottery-selected diners and a 7 to 14 course menu with drink pairings that we spend days designing and preparing. when we have the advantage of numbers, time on our side, and a controlled environment, that's when we can really shine--assuming, of course, that a forgotten pot of oil doesn't ignite on the stove, necessitating an evacuation of the diners from the table mid-first course while we wait for the fire department to arrive and the meal eventually resumes on an outdoor picnic table, haphazardly and missing a few courses but washed down with plenty of tequila shots to make up for it.

when things like that don't happen, our meals are nothing short of spectacular. occasionally, though, we are asked to cater student events--reed arts week, pop-up snack stands in the library lobby during finals week, or, most recently, a reed centennial alumni reunion. "gastronomy northwest" was an opportunity for reed students and alumni who work in the food industry to schmooze, eat, and drink. many former reed students have gone on to start breweries, vineyards, restaurants, coffee roasters, and meat smoking organizations. perhaps most notably, mark bitterman has opened two terrific salt boutiques called the meadow, and his beautiful book, salted, has gotten a whole lot of critical acclaim. had james beard still been with us, he might have regaled students with stories of growing up in portland at the turn of the century, his culinary travels, and his expulsion from reed for 'homosexual activity,' most notably with a professor. the real joy, though, of witnessing your college's all-ages reunion, is struggling through throngs of stoned 70 year olds reliving their college years--or perhaps their college antics never ended in the first place.

 

so, we were asked to cater the event with 400 servings each of two small hors d'oeuvres courses. our savory offerings were mini banh-mi sliders, stuffed with miso-lager braised pulled pork, or a leek shiitake option for the herbivores. (i can now, by the way, say that i have pulled eighteen pounds of pork with nothing but my own hands and two forks.) both were served on tiny, adorable, lovingly piped choux pastries, with house-pickled carrots, french radishes, and a smear of leek miso butter.

those were inhaled before we even had time to set down the trays that carried them, but our dessert offering seemed to really throw people for a loop. what we dreamed up is a perfect example of the uncommons hive mind: talk of ice cream leads to talk of ice cream infused with interesting things, which leads to talk of ice cream infused with rye bread--something i had been dreaming about since i was doing research for saveur on latvian food last spring and found out about a latvian milk drink infused with rye bread.

spring onion fried rice with radish & ginger

it's not terribly often that i post recipes that are entirely of my own making. it's not that they don't exist--more of my meals are made up on the spot than not. tonight, for example, i used up a couple egg whites that had been moping around in a tupperware jar on my refrigerator shelf after being separated from their yolk friends during a batch of ice cream. they got scrambled with a few dabs of a truly extraordinary rosemary and pink peppercorn chevre that nick and i found at the farmers market, slapped onto a slice of rye toast from a loaf that charlie made, topped with an avocado fan and flaky salt, and doused with secret aardvark.*

photo by jim krewson and giovanni di mola for vice

these meals happen all the time, and they're great, but here's the thing--most of the time i have no idea what i do. i could not tell you ball park measurements to save my life, because there are so many rounds of tasting and adjusting and eating and tweaking and digging-around-in-the-fridge-to-see-what-else-i-can-throw-in as i go. and it's not that i don't want to tell you about these things when they turn out really well, it's just that i'm so afraid of wildly miscalculating times or measurements in hindsight and leading you horribly astray.

i want to believe

elizabeth and i have been watching the x-files recently. i can't speak for later seasons, but the first one is so, so good, sexual tension and all. dana scully is an unsung style icon.

it's so good that i actually notice it sneaking into my dreams, which is funny given my propensity for outrageous horror movies. body horror hardly affects me at all. the x-files, though, gets under my skin.

guys, let's talk about aliens. i took an astronomy class at indiana called 'the search for life in the universe,' and one of our in-class activities was an individual calculation of the drake equation based on what we each felt were reasonable values for each variable. i don't remember what my exact outcome was, but i was unsettled to find it yielded a very small number of potentially detectable extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, not unlike the results drake and his team came up with in the 60s.

that being said, close encounters of the third kind, E.T., alien, and contact were favorite childhood movies. signs scared the twelve-year-old wits out of me and left me sleepless for months after. i'm pumped to illegally torrent fork over $11 to go see prometheus this week.

i want to believe, i think. it seems tremendously narcissistic to assume that ours is the only planet with sentient life. but then i can't help but ask how much the desire to believe in aliens is driven by a fear of being alone, a freak biological accident, not a part of some greater scheme. the same fear that leads us to structure our lives around religion and a higher power. i don't think of myself as a religious person, so does that mean that my desire to accredit the possibility of extraterrestrial life is actually just a misplaced, godless malaise?

here's what i know i can believe in, with conviction: friends who work at the farmers market selling you 'the good shit.' spicy papaya salad. downhill bike rides. pulled pork. making friends in strange places. rye bread. road trips. the transformative power of lipstick. ralph fiennes' coriolanus. craigslist. red hook's summer wit. granita.

granita, for any who may not know, is somewhere in between a sorbet and an italian ice, and you can make it with all sorts of liquids: juice, booze, or in this case, buttermilk and a splash of lemon.

the texture is decidedly crystalline, delicate little icy flakes that melt as soon as they hit your tongue. fluffy, barely there, creamy. the taste, though, is quite similar to that of real-deal frozen yogurt, the tart, barely sweetened kind you might find at pinkberry or any one of its hundred spinoffs. this granita has three ingredients. you do not need an ice cream machine. you do not need to make a custard, temper eggs, chop chocolate, or strain anything. you will need: 1.) a shallow baking dish, and 2.) a fork. that is all.

delaying the inevitable

i can't avoid it any more: i am no longer in college.

my first major project, then, as my part-time job leaves me with lots of free time, has been a serious blog overhaul.

so: welcome to happiness is a pork bun! the name spawns from a beatles song title, a year-long dalliance with eating meat again, and a general uncertainty and excitement about what the future holds. what it is that i'm looking for.

i've been digging up my long-forgotten HTML skills, slowly teaching myself javascript, and brushing up on CSS. i remember why i was such a webdesign nerd in middle school--it's fun, rewarding, frustrating, time consuming. mostly fun. a lot of the coding on this new blog is my own. and so my inner dweeb is forced out of the closet.

and--you may have noticed--i have my first ever proper domain name! i'm a real dot com, a real adult! i'm also boasting bigger images, a cleaner design, an easier RSS subscription, a new font that i've been crushing on (sorts mill goudy), and (what i hope is) more user-friendly navigation. there are still some things under construction, though, so please let me know if you find problems or broken links. the search function may take a few days to be fixed and running.