musical interlude

When I get overwhelmed with too many projects, I tend to go silent. I don't mean that I stop talking (as I'm sure A can attest), but rather that I'll start to forget about listening to music. When my mind is racing with ideas, music just adds one more level of buzzing noise to my thoughts. This is pretty much the opposite from A, who can go through life listening to one song while singing another out loud (she probably has two or three more tunes running through her head at the same time). But this never lasts very long - inevitably, I'll end up stumbling on some track or music video and soon I've spent an entire afternoon scanning Myspace and Youtube for new songs. Here's what got me out of my last funk:


Great percussion from The Dodos.


Get ecstatic with Ponytail.


And keep the trip going with Animal Collective.



Marcel Dzama drawings come to life for Department of Eagles.



More animation from Neko Case.


Then finish up real cute with Thao with the Get Down Stay Down

cue the waterworks

I cried when I watched this trailer, I'm crying as I write this post, and when I finally see this movie, I will bawl the whole fucking time.

growing on me

Head out on any Sunday morning, into any neighborhood in Portland, and tell me what you notice. I can guarantee you three things:

1. Bikes
2. Lines
3. Breakfast

That's all you'll see, and it paints a pretty clear picture of the town I live in. Portlanders ride their bikes to places where they can stand in ridiculously-long lines and wait for a brunch table to open up. And then they write about, as shown by the recent features in Portland Monthly and MIX magazine, which penned big, sloppy-kiss, love letters to the first meal of the day. Breakfast is everywhere, and not just on the weekends. We have two friends who both work in morning spots who tell us that the crowds show up all week long. Call it a hangover cure, call it a ritual, call it a social scene, but one thing is clear: Portland *hearts* breakfast.

Now, as for A and me? Not so much.

Anyone who's known us long enough has probably held witness to our breakfast rant. Blah to scrambles, blah to hash, blah to french toast and pancakes and waffles. Basically, I feel like when I go out for breakfast, I get a mediocre, under-flavored dish with a high mark-up and some burned coffee. And there's always too much food, which I inevitably eat every bite of. Plus, I'm a sucker for a lame special and brunch menus are rife with featured dishes. So when I want sweet, I'll fall for savory, and when I hunger for something savory, I'll be tricked into ordering a sweet dish. This means that I almost always end up ordering some tarted-up, whipped cream-covered french toast and giving myself a bellyache. Yeah, you could probably say a lot of my breakfast issues are probably of my own creation.

So breakfast just never really did it for me. But a few months ago, I was totally surprised by an issue of Saveur devoted to breakfasts around the world. Here were some meals I could get behind. A Singaporean vegetable curry. Sheep's milk cheese with honey and olives from the Mediterranean. Miso and quick, cabbage pickles in Japan. A beer and pretzel mid-morning snack from Germany. By the time I'd finished reading the issue, I was ready for a second breakfast.

Since that issue, A and I have found ourselves going out to more and more breakfasts, and we've gradually been inviting our friends out for brunch more often, too. In a way, I feel like we've started to become - dare I say it - brunch connoisseurs. So, as recent converts, you can take our advice for what it's worth, but we thought we'd share a few of the places we've recently been digging, and a few we're soon to try...

Broder
This Swedish place has a routine close to what we'd eat at home on an ideal morning, making it our favorite breakfast in town. Their bords bring together a poached egg, granola, cheese, cured meat and fish, jam and toast for a simple, attractive meal. But that doesn't mean you should overlook the delicious aebleskiver pancakes and the smoked trout pytt i panna (hash). Plus, the space is so effortlessly chic and Scandinavian that you leave determined to redecorate your home kitchen.


Little Red Bike Cafe
Run by a young couple who used to man a farmer's market stand, the adorableness of this tiny cafe is only rivaled by their cute-as-punch (if sometimes a little sappy) blog. With good, bike-delivered coffee, a list of egg sandwiches named for biking lingo, and a bike-thru service window, it's pretty damn Portland. Their house-made ice creams aren't to be missed - the last time we ordered a salted caramel milkshake I awkwardly told the owners how delicious it was three or four times.


Tastebud
Whether we're just grabbing some of his wood-fired, Montreal-style bagels at the farmer's market, or we're sitting down in his Southeast cafe, we really love Mark Doxstader's approach to the morning. His formula's simple: things taste good from a wood oven. Things like baked beans, bagel sandwiches, and roasted potatoes, that is.


Screen Door
This place falls at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the other breakfast spots we've been enjoying. It's probably the most traditional brunch-style place of the lot, and the portions are definitely anything but modest (it is Southern, after all). Still, anywhere that has breakfast corndogs on their menu wins a place in my heart (and a return visit to order some). If you're going to do waffles and benedicts and other breakfast chestnuts, this place does them right.


NEXT ON THE LIST

HA & VL
Jellied pork blood, spicy tripe, soothing chicken pho, and hot, Vietnamese coffee. Early in the morning, you ask? Well, when they sell out of the favorites by 9:30 am, you better believe it.

Navarre
With their rustic and farm-fresh European small plates, this is one of our hands-down favorite restaurants in town. We just found out they do a late brunch on weekends, and I don't even think they change their menu for the mornings. Sounds perfect.

Pambiche
Cuban sweet breads, plantains, empanadas and beans prove that other countries really understand how to begin the day. No need for Mrs. Butterworth when you can douse everything in banana ketchup.

Beast
Prix-fixe four-course brunch menu? It feels so decadent. And it probably will be, given chef Naomi Pomeroy's magic way with pork. I'm imaging bacon pastries, poached eggs, and a cream-laden dessert. I'm also imagining myself making reservations very soon.

With only two mornings each weekend, we've got a lot of eating to do. But this list doesn't even mention Simpatica, Pine State, Moxie, Flavourspot, Wong's King, Little T Bakery, or cold, leftover pizza from Dove Vivi. I guess that A and I need to fess up to the fact they we may just happen to enjoy breakfast.

you might think twice before eating that vegetable

Blueberry Danish, 2006

While googling DIY scratch-and-sniff (it's a long story), I came across a series of completely enthralling photos by Kathryn Parker Almanas. Among the hospital photos and the pictures from her trip to the Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence (I've been, and it's awesome), she's done a lot of work staging medical dissections and "studies" of everyday foods.

Anatomia di Pane VIII, 2008

Even though I'm a fairly squeamish person, I am totally enamored of taxidermy. Whether it is a hunter's trophy or a natural history diorama, it is all about theatrics. For every codified taxonomy of species, there is a kitten tea party; it's equal parts science and fiction, and I love it. I even just enjoy the basic aesthetic of taxidermy, with it's wooden plaques, glass display cases and pseudo-scientific instruments.

Breakfast I, 2006

So while I covet all of the beakers and trays in Almanas' photos, what I really latch onto about the images are her compositions. She does a fantastic job of quoting 17th century Dutch still lives, with their low, slanting light and that same entwined artifice of sterility and decay. Or that famous Rembrandt painting of the anatomy lesson. The photos are partially reserved and objective in the prim manner of early medical science, but there's also a real fetish made of out of the repulsive and gratuitous. The way she lingers over the graphic details gives her photos a violent, forensic quality, like the evidence of a hastily cleaned-up attack. Her site has a few truly grotesque pictures of berry-stained bread dough, or dark fruits in a stainless steel sink, but this one really got me when I first saw it:

Swiss Chard, 2006

When I noticed the red-juice stains on the asceptic trays, my stomach did a turn. They look so animal.
And they're just vegetables.