PICNIC

Chris and I spent two days this weekend camping and hiking around Cummins Creek. It was a wet and misty wonderland. We hiked in on the Cummins ridge trail then returned by hoofing it down the very steep ravine, into the creek bed. We made slow progress as the vegetation was thick.

For coffee we brought along a new Brazilian Serra Negra, which Joel had roasted. It’s a very light coffee and was refreshing mid hike. For dinner the first night I made sauteed potatoes with shallots and garlic, and a steak grilled over the campfire. Lunch and breakfast consisted of ryvita crackers, salami, carrots, and apples. Dinner on the second night was sauteed apples, garlic, and shallots with cous cous.

Joel uses a cargo bike built by Human Powered Machines to deliver his coffee. The cargo bed had recently broken and since we were driving through Eugene we dropped the bike off at the manufacturer to be fixed. On the return trip when we picked up the bike we got a tour of the shop by Jan. Afterwards he turns to me and asks, ‘are you the guy starting the food cart?’ I say yes, and he leads me and Chris into another room where he has set out a loaf of bread, baked by him just hours before. It was excellent bread and a great snack, especially with liberal amounts of butter. It was struan bread, made with leftover wild rice and barley.

Before picking up the cargo bike at the agreed upon hour we watched The Green Zone and then had lunch at the Hideaway Bakery. They make very tasty potato donuts. They also have an amazing wood fired oven that can hold 45 loaves of bread. What you don’t see in the photo is that the oven is about 12 feet deep.

I’ve been meeting Elle at Lovejoy Bakers every once in a while since they opened several months ago. They have decent bread and good sandwiches. Elle has buttery grilled cheese. I had a cilantro, cabbage, mayonaise, tender stewed beef sandwich on a chibatta bun.

I bought two small house loaves from Little T today. The crust is really exceptional on this bread. Instead of being scored the bread tears up into little islands on the top. I’ve never seen anything like it. These little islands can be broken off and eaten like little chips. Kate thought they tasted like really good, crispy french fries. Chris thought possibly more like total cereal, I tasted a cornflake note.

My dad just mailed me this bread. It was baked in Lithuania, sent through a distributor in Beverly Hills, and wound up at my door this morning. Fortunately longevity is one of the virtues of this kind of bread. The crust has suffered somewhat and has the feel of fondant but the crumb is still rich and flavorful. I ate this bread all the time when I was growing up as my father is a Lithuanian refugee and there are certain traditions he likes to keep. Indeed, Wikipedia mentions that ‘èmigrés from Lithuania will often mention their native rye bread as the food that they miss the most.’ For instance, before dinner he loves eating slices of this bread with edam cheese and Kalnapilis beer.

Both loaves are 65% rye and also contain some caraway seeds and rye malt.