Hello everyone!
This week won’t be as heady or heavy as my previous posts have been. “It can’t rain all the time,” after all. Besides that, some version of whatever had Emily laid up for the last week or so has moved on to me. I don’t want to skip another week though, so instead I’m gonna pump myself full of DayQuil, chug broth, step back from the shitshow the world is being, and tell you about a project I’ve been working on and how you can get involved!
The idea came simply and quietly at the usual time- when I was working on something entirely different.
One of our customers asked if we made any Handpies that could meet their lower-than-usual price point. They loved our pies- as did their customers- but the rising costs of ingredients meant that for a lot of our flavors they would have to charge more than they thought their customers would tolerate.
So rather than cut off the pies completely, they asked my owner- who in turn asked me- if we had any recipes that would 1. Be delicious, 2. Be popular with customers at a cafe, and 3. Wouldn’t use too much of our more expensive ingredients so they could be sold at the desired low point.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but economics and desperation make fantastic midwives. As I went through our recipe books, checked with suppliers to see what ingredients cost what, and started spitballing ideas on our whiteboard (“Pineapple is cheap right now… a pineapple pie? What’s more expensive right now, berries or nuts? What can one person make quickly to reduce labor?”) three ideas from my past and present slammed into each other.
The father of invention had shown up, and it’s name was “Why Not?”
There are precious few Jewish delis in Portland. That’s not surprising, as we only make up about .7% of the population. There ARE, however, at least five or six bagel makers in the city.
Everyone has an opinion about whose bagels are the best- the best price, the best flavor, the best texture, the closest to the “New York City” ideal.
They are all right, they are also all wrong, they are going to argue about it, and that is possibly the most Jewish thing I’ve seen in this city outside of actually going to a synagogue.
Good morning, friends and neighbors!
In the last few months, I’ve developed a new tradition. After my therapy appointments, I wander down the street to my old cafe. There, my friend Madeline is usually on the espresso machine. She makes me my favorite coffee drink (a cafe con miel, essentially a latte with honey and cinnamon syrup,) then I sit down to write… something.
Usually it’s the start of that weeks blog entry, as now, or continuing work on the next book. Recently I’ve also started posting more casual, narrative foodwriting through Medium.
Regardless, it’s a block of time each week that I have set aside to be creative. Routine and Practice are vital if you want to make anything worth making.
“What I’m gonna write about today” though… that’s always a bit dodgy. As you can see, sometimes I just start with “whatever is right in front of me.”
Good evening, friends and neighbors!
I’m gonna get sappy for a second and tell you about my first date with my wife.
We knew we wanted to go out for dinner and a movie, and were tossing around ideas for local restaurants. We settled on a decent Italian place in the area, but the conversation first went like this:
Me: “Well, there’s a bunch of places near the theater. Fridays, Applebees…”
Emily: “Ugh, no. Let’s go to this place instead.”
Me: “Oh thank God.”
According to Emily, that was the moment she knew we would work out in one way or another- she loved food, she loved eating good food, and wanted someone she could nerd out about it with.
Three years into being married, and that’s still one of our favorite indulgences- going to restaurants and being nerds.
The Black Hat Baker 