PICNIC

Construction has begun.

I visited the Wealth Underground Farm today. Brooke and Nolan cooked me a huge lunch of fried rice, beans, plantains, spinach, guacamole, and guava juice and then we spent the afternoon tending to the field. I cut grass with a sickle, planted squash starts, and weeded in between the beds.

Yesterday at the Hollywood Farmers Market I bought some very ripe Oregon black truffles. Last year truffles were going for $20 – $40 per ounce at the farmers markets, a really crazy price. This year, possibly due to the economy, though I hope not, the truffle sellers have lowered their prices to something reasonable. Bittersweet farms was selling them for $8 an ounce, and the mushroom stand at the Hollywood market had them for $7 an ounce, or as the guy said, ‘a quarter a gram’. For that price the amount of truffle on my omelette was $3. The other thing that turns people off at these high prices is that they expect the concentration of flavor that they’ve tasted in ‘truffle infused oil’, not realizing that this is a totally synthetic product, akin to a Dorito. Compared to the oils the actual truffle has a fairly low key flavor. It’s also difficult to find ripe truffles as the truffle purveyors have been digging them up willy nilly whenever they can find them, regardless of ripeness. It’s necessary to smell each individual truffle to test.

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.