PICNIC

Emily Scroggs, an anthropology student at Lewis and Clark, interviewed me about my food cart this evening. She’s already talked to the owners of Savor. In Oakland, which is where she’s from, she says that food carts do not really exist.

At Pastaworks today, Dave the butcher was telling me about a dish he had at 3 Doors Down, called ‘the crouton.’ It’s a thick slice of ciabatta sauteed in olive oil, covered with a mushroom/sherry/cream sauce.

After doing some analysis with my espresso machine, measuring out exact amounts of espresso, taking temperature readings of the water, weighing the espresso as it flowed out, I was able to answer, hesitantly, a question Joel put to me. Does the espresso come out quicker or slower at a higher temperature? It comes out slower at a higher temperature, I have observed. His Ethiopian is also very tasty.

I picked up a Japanese on demand water heater today. Installation will be difficult.

My vote for best superbowl commercial? The Doritos in a coffin sketch. Brilliant. The fantasy of lying in a bed of Doritos, watching TV, and pretending to be dead, this goes deep into the matter. The music is the Overture from Rossini’s The Theiving Magpie, and was used in A Clockwork Orange when Alex and his droogs were carousing in their codpieces. The intent? Laughing at death while we cause it?

The stump was finally removed! 18 months of digging, I thought it would never end. Now the question is simply what to do with it. A neighbor of mine asked if I was going to cut it up for firewood. My goodness, no! One idea was to mount it on top of the food cart, such as integrating it into an awning. Or making a bench out of it with the stump on end, so that it becomes the backrest. Or failing every other idea, to simply hang it on the wall in the basement. Any other ideas?

Kate, Riley and I drove up onto the Forest Park ridge looking for Oregon White Truffles. This was only my second successful foray. Along the trail I spotted a small stand of young Doug Fir. There was a thin, even layer of duff which prevented any vegetation from growing. Finding the truffles was as easy as scraping back the duff. In the dim light the white truffles glowed like gold.