Happy Labor Day, Columbus Day, All Saints’ Day, Veterans, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Epiphany from Bunny Bread Surprise.

I have been absent but I went on a small mission this week and I thought of you.

East to 82nd Avenue, where I once lived in a tiny trailer with a tiny dog who would jump out of the tiny window when I wasn’t home. So much demolition and construction has occurred in the past 12 years that I can no longer tell where my trailer once stood. I can only look around wistfully and think, “somewhere over there.” But never mind the past, this is a post about the future, and lobsters, and things being smoothed.

I’d never had a lobster roll before. I’ve had lobster and bread and butter but never assembled the way they do in Maine with large cockroaches-of-the-sea freshly plucked from local waters. So I corrected that:

This food cart imports lobster from Maine three times a week! Take that sustainable eating! They are located in the Cartlandia pod just off the Springwater Bike Trail, which is very ecologically sustainable so everything evens out. There will be a bit of a line so place an order at the window and they will give you a number:

Fourteen dollars and 5 minutes later you are rewarded for your efforts, which are very few, you have done absolutely nothing to deserve such finery.

Three times in my Portland tenure I’ve happened upon a meal that nearly brought me to tears. The first two involved pizza (duh) the third is this lobster roll. It’s just a simple hot dog bun loaded with hunks of the finest, freshest lobster you can get on the West Coast. Every bite tastes deeply of the saline sea. Not in the same way oysters do, this lobster tastes a bit more…ancestral. The sandwich is decked with clarified butter and comes with a side of chips, coleslaw, lemon wedges. Pairs dead-on with a cold lemonade. It all works together to pull at the old rusty heartstrings, strumming them hard, rubbing those rough craggy edges.

Here’s to the bright untouched future. Happy New Year.

I have one of those new friends where entire conversations consist of “WHY are you so awesome?!” It reminds me that there is nothing better than friends, nothing finer than well humoured people who laugh at you and with you. Friends who scream at you and remain funny. I’m into it.

A few weeks ago after eating trout,  oysters, and ham while dying of laughter we went to the market next door and the man behind the counter pulled a serious Hard Sell and I walked out with a $6.50 bag of pasta and a $7.00  JAR OF TOMATO SAUCE.

Trofie is a handmade pasta and the package suggests boiling 5 liters  of water slowly, adding a pinch of salt and then stirring with a wooden spoon. I decided to follow these instructions:

I boiled the pasta to just over 12 minutes. Diced up a garlic clove and let it sweat over low heat, threw the pasta in there, added about two tablespoons of ricotta, and then added the astronomically priced pasta sauce.

Garlic and I have an interesting relationship because I know I  love garlic and food tastes  great to me if there is garlic involved but that is  the limit of my ability to explain the appeal.  My vocabulary dulls when I try to describe the textural and olfactory properties of garlic flavors and I would not pass a blind taste test involving this wondrous Allium Sativum. Actually, many things I am extremely fond of transcend my description of their appeal so garlic fits right in.

I enjoyed this meal with a really cheap glass of Chardonnay to even the playing field. My dinner soundtrack included side A of a current favorite record and this pasta was well worth the sticker shock, especially considering it fed me for four meals.

Next Up: Penultimate Pimento Cocktails

Last night I watched ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi‘ and as a result I’m not thinking about food so much, mostly I am thinking of lineage, passion, work, wisdom, and art. Buried in these lessons that Jiro embodies so effortlessly there is a tale and cry for sustainability; so we can enjoy sushi and those who create it far into the future. If we act wisely we should still be able to source fish, sunshine, and four season weather even after we have the last name of Jetson and fly a Hovercraft to work.

A friend and I dined at Bamboo Sushi recently, they are well-known for their staunch commitment to sustainability. They even made a beautiful little movie about the process, complete with miniature nigiri.

Creamy, sea flavor, golden texture, in the top 5  of my favorite foods. I didn’t try uni until I was nearly 30, that’s 29 lost years. Sustainable seafood is not cheap, and it shouldn’t be, being careful and thoughtful takes time – as does the pursuit of art and the never-ending goal of creative perfection.