the newspaper is dead, long live the newspaper.

Since taking over as the Communications Director for PICA, I've spent a lot of time considering the future of journalism and the prospects of print. Until recently, print media was our sole venue for advertising and editorial coverage, but that fact has changed rapidly. Where it gets tricky is that print hasn't yet been wholly eclipsed by digital technologies; rather, the two mediums have to coexist in a tenuous shared existence. They're not so much neighbors as reluctant co-owners of the same house, each waiting for the other to sell off their share. In considering the merits of each, I have to admit that I've fallen on both sides of the debate equally often.

I've often lamented the snarky tone and ADD brevity of the web, but I've also scorned the resistance of mainstream printed media to intelligently and unflinchingly re-assess their ailing industry. I'm speaking in broad strokes here, but where one medium has written itself into irrelevance by reporting staid news to an ever-shrinking audience (newspapers), the other medium has established an overly-democratic overabundance of shallow content (the internet). If you stop and look at the two outlets, then you come to realize that both in fact suffer from a similar flaw: a lack of well-considered news.

Now, that's not to say that you can't find good writing in both. Old standards like the New York Times continue to support incisive editorial writing and good columnists, and some blogs and websites offer analysis and reporting to rival the best of the traditional media. But part of the appeal (and shortcoming) of the internet is the openness; anyone can post their own take on the news without the oversight of fact checkers or editors. Sometimes this works, and sometimes this devolves into self-indulgence.

The issue (in my mind) is that as the internet has courted the market share traditionally held by newspapers, those papers have frantically tried to ape the qualities of the web - namely short, quick stories with little shelf life and a casual tone. Very infrequently has the internet tried to mimic newspapers. And why should they? They seem to be doing just fine as they are. But this begs the question: if the internet focuses mainly on up-to-the-second news and personal opinion - and newspapers try to follow this lead - then who is left to cover long-lead stories and in-depth investigative reporting? I have a hard time seeing the internet stepping up to fill this role.

I've spoken a few times with people about whether or not blogging encourages sloppy writing. The counterargument runs that the text is what matters, the rest is just container. To them, you could write a novel on a stack of post-it notes. But I think if you set out to write on post-it notes, you'd simply end up jotting down reminders. Humans suffer from a bias of "functional fixedness" - we're not, as a species, particularly good at imagining new uses for old tools. Once something works for a particular problem, what's the sense in shaking things up? There are many great writers throughout the span of the internet, but most people have trouble seeing the point in using the tool for anything other than gossip, banter, and infotainment. And even those who do see the point will have trouble finding any way to generate an income to fund good writing, good reporting, and investment in a news story.

But these are just musings. I don't have any answers about just how exactly newspapers will continue, or whether the internet will assume the many abandoned posts of traditional journalism. I think there is a great potential in both forms and have an unabashed love of each (for different reasons). But lingering on print for a moment, I have some hope for the future thanks to inspiring experiments like the McSweeney's Panorama.



I received a copy in the mail back in December and just finished reading it (all of it) last week. I can honestly say that I've never read that much of any single newspaper. I read the cover, the op-eds, the Book Review, the sports section, the arts coverage, the Sunday Magazine, the comics, and the food section. And I read a whole lot more that wouldn't easily fit into any previous newspaper I've ever seen.

But it wasn't a real newspaper; it was a one-off conceit of a literary magazine, an attractive daydream of what a newspaper could be. This is not to fault McSweeney's, just to acknowledge that the medium hasn't yet been revived. In truth, McSweeney's was probably the best possible outfit to attempt a project of this scope (320 pages! 150 contributors!). They have a breathless enthusiasm apparent in all of their ventures. Their approach is certainly infectious.

As I paged through each section on my first time looking at the paper, I kept interrupting A to exclaim at whatever new spread I held up in wonder. The whole experience felt like revisiting a childhood tradition. Lingering over a newspaper is one of those experiences that we sadly reserve today for those rare, lazy Sunday mornings. In reality, the experience of delving headlong into a newspaper should happen much more frequently.

The diversity of subjects is amazing. In the course of reading The Panorama, I read about DVD cover art, the environmental impact of Mendocino County marijuana operations, the 49ers, the Bay Bridge, lamb butchering, an out-of-print novel by an Irish author, and the reasons behind choosing public education for your child. Say what you will about the glories of the internet, but it strikes me that newspapers were the original form of rhizomatic learning, weaving an ever-deepening web of relationships, new leads, and wide-ranging (but interconnected) ideas.

Oh, and the design. What design! A large part of the pleasure of skimming the Panorama is sensory - 15 x 22" broadsheet pages with full-color, full-spread images. There are simply some things the internet (or, more accurately, a computer screen) can't approximate, and that is exactly the strength of McSweeney's newspaper gambit: to highlight the unique strengths of printed media. In-depth, lengthy stories; gorgeous design; immersive imagery. It would be a shame to lose these things to text-heavy, design-ignorant websites, but they already happen to be rare in newspapers. Perhaps this will serve as a wake-up call for newspapermen to embrace the limitations (and glories) of their medium.

I have a real fetish for printed objects: books, magazines, journals, daily and weekly newspapers. Let's hope The Panorama wasn't a last hurrah, but a rallying cry for creative explorations of the form.

bitte orca

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Dirty Projectors brought it to the Aladdin last night. Stylish folks with mind-blowing melodies and some crazy guitar work. We'll put that show in a small pantheon of epic concerts. Who else would be in there? Early Modest Mouse. Elliot Smith. The Magnetic Fields. Antony & The Johnsons. The Flaming Lips.

They're killer live and plugged in.
They're just as good acoustic.

There's a little Talking Heads, a little B-52s, a little Zeppelin in there. A little something else, too.
Humming and drumming my fingers on the desk all day.

First show in a while that we didn't want to end. The bastards kept us up past our bedtime. And we liked it.

- - - -

A MAN OF FEW WORDS: Dave Longstreth is big on musical chops. No time for stage banter. That's alright by our standards. Keep it short and simple and focus on the damn music. Our kind of man.

- - - -

FILE UNDER: ROCK OPERA'S NOT DEAD
An animated opera about a fictional Don Henley? Not a joke. Not even an exaggeration. Here's a taste.

- - - -

PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS? I guess there are a few folks who'd like to work with the Projectors. Björk. David Byrne. Big names.

- - - -

REQUIRED VIEWING: The Projectors on Jimmy Fallon.



- - - -

HOCKETING: That's what you call that sound? 13th century monastic chorale music. Split melodies. Reminds me of singing Row Your Boat in rounds. Whatever the case - it is some crazy shit. The man himself explains it here.

- - - -

IMITATION IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF FLATTERY:
This post finds us in a DDC kind of mood. Good schtick. Good designers. Check 'em out.

- - - -
ON THE PLAYER:

01. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
02. Dirty Projectors - Knotty Pine
03. Dirty Projectors - Mount Wittenberg Orca

big ups

High fives to Navarre, one of the most deserving restaurants to ever receive the Oregonian's nod for 2009 Restaurant of the Year. When I think about the best meals I've ever eaten in Portland, Navarre pops up again-and-again. They're a slow-burn kind of place - the sort that sneaks up on you as a dawning realization that you're part of something really unique. And I think they like it that way: they're a little under-the-radar, definitely not-for-everyone, and very much an idiosyncratic reflection of very specific seasonal moments. The O writes:

"You come here to eat food from a serious chef who cooks like a Frenchman in a cabin, pickling and preserving, butchering meat, turning it into sausage and pâté, whipping up pies and jams and making it all work with the fresh supplies at hand."

John Taboada has created a restaurant that responds to local farms, roving cultural cues, and personal whims. Whenever I visit the restaurant, I always think of my cooking teacher who liked to tell stories of Taboada navigating the French markets and returning with the very best-of-the-season produce and an old French housewife's recommendation for cooking it. His place is intimate and entirely inviting. Whether we were enjoying brown butter razor clams or a slab of gateau d'epices, the food has always made us swoon.

All of the acclaim is well-warranted. The only downside is now we'll have even longer waits.

sons & daughters

The last time we visited New York, we had wanted to stop into a small cafe and grocer called Marlow & Sons, but never made it. I guess it proved more difficult than we thought to squeeze in five or six meals each day. Now that we're headed back at the end of May, it's at the top of our list. Scrappy, bearded, and a little old-fashioned, this place totally embodies the great things happening right now in the Brooklyn food scene (just recently written up in the New York Times).

I was just talking with a friend who used to live in Brooklyn and her opinion was that the food producers were the only thing keeping Williamsburg honest. I think that's probably a pretty fair call - the brewers and picklers and chocolate makers are all crafting something really genuine, right in the middle of a lot of artificiality and gentrification. And they're forging a community that feels different from anywhere else I can think of.

With all of the farm-love and artisan processes, you could have replaced "Brooklyn" with "Portland" and left the rest of the New York Times article pretty much the same (sometimes it feels like we live in the 6th Borough). Still, I can't help but feel like Portland, for all of its raw ingredients, could really use to step up its game. And Marlow & Sons is a perfect example of how strong our food shops could be.

I first came across the restaurant through the snarky, foul-mouthed blog run by their butcher, Tom Mylan. Marlow & Sons is connected to two other places - Diner and Bonita - which realized that, together, they could get better-quality, farm-direct meat and have more control over cuts by breaking their animals down in-house. So Mylan apprenticed himself to some upstate butchers and learned the trade. That was enough to get me interested in what they were doing.

From there, I found out about Mylan's role in the UnFancy Food Show, which acts as an antidote to the bloated annual Fancy Food trade show. Instead of featuring high-dollar booths hawking goji berry power bars, the UnFancy party invited a slew of local artisans to share their handmade foods. Among the participants was The Diner Journal, a food lit-mag published by the Marlow & Sons owners. Sort of like a low-budget Gastronomica, the Journal approaches food from a very different direction than your standard 15-minute-meals-and-travel-porn food magazine. In the last issue, one of their editors painstakingly detailed every step and utensil involved in one of Elizabeth David's famously terse recipes. A ten-page essay written on a single paragraph of instructions - the sort of writing that gets you thinking about food.

As for the restaurant itself, Saveur just featured Marlow & Sons in their latest issue, with some great pictures of the oyster-bar/grocery store. Based on our experience this week with the chocolate caramel tart recipe, there is no way we'll miss them this trip. But when we finally visit, we'll also have to make a detour up the street to visit their newest venture.

After beginning a butchering program, it was only a matter of time until the owners would go and start up an old-school meat shop. Now open for business, Marlow & Daughters was just featured in a nice little video from Coolhunting. And that video is what kicked off this post, making this the most circuitous lead-in ever to a 3-minute clip. Watching it made me want to carve a steer, but then I remembered the remaining 1/4 hog we have in our chest freezer and thought better of it.



(Coolhunting regularly posts fantastic video profiles - just take a look at this feature on another "UnFancy" Brooklyn-based kitchen business: knives from Cut Brooklyn)

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.

why an English mansion would be better than Portland in a blizzard

As the snow whips past the windows outside, we're just thankful for the internet. As long as the power holds out, we'll still have entertainment:

Seriously, though - who dreamed this collaboration up?

Thanks to Monitor Mix.

chef crush

I love Dan Barber and I don't care who knows it. Maybe I identify with something about his geeky demeanor, but I swear, the guy could put dirt on a plate and I'd probably think it was clever cooking. A, loving wife that she is, is indulgent (and I have a hunch she finds him pretty cool, too). I think it probably all started with this story about a girl he once dated:



Or maybe it began with seeing him at Slow Food Nation when he recounted his visit to a Spanish farmer who raises "natural" foie gras geese without the use of gauvage (watch this video of the same speech at a different conference).

Then again, my fascination could have stemmed from this review of a dinner at his restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, which claimed the breathtakingly fresh courses made it the "most important Restaurant in America."

Actually, it could just be his dedication to forging a new relationship between farmers and chefs. As the Creative Director for the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Barber helps guide the educational efforts on the working farm that supplies the majority of produce to his two restaurants. Not only that, but one of his restaurants is directly on the farm, allowing his chefs to pick their own greens and work directly with the animal husbands. The Blue Hill website features video profiles of some of their providers and the story of Barber's efforts to restore his family's farm.

And he's an keen thinker and polished writer, to boot.

Cooking is just about the most macho thing I do. In spite of being a pretty slight, geeky guy, I'm still drawn to the knives and heat and swagger of the kitchen. That's not to say I'm running six flame burners at home every night, just that kitchen manliness is one of the few places I'll throw down and jump at the chance to consult on grilling or carve something with a big knife. (Truth be told, I've got some chef crushes on the ladies, too.)

Still, I'm probably not kidding anyone with my kitchen posturing. And I think that is what attracts me to Barber's cooking - there is an intellect behind his efforts and something very gentle about what he's doing with food. At the Stone Barns Restaurant, there are two menu choices: five-course or more courses. In place of a list of dishes, they offer a chart of what is in season, from which the chefs will create the nightly meals. The results, from what I've seen and read, are really stunning, like this salad of a hazelnut-crusted poached egg with matsutake mushrooms, pistachios and garden gazpacho:


For a sense of the kinds of simple, clear flavors Barber coaxes out of his ingredients, just have a look at this fennel soup from New York Magazine. Now we only need to figure out how to get up the Hudson Valley the next time we visit New York...

catchy.

Thanks to two friends of ours who turned us on to Lykke Li, we caught her show at the Doug Fir last night. Let me just say, the Swedes know how to do cultural dissonance right. Her stage presence is like a spastic hip hop back-up dancer dressed like Stevie Nicks singing electro soul through a bullhorn. Because her music is bouncing around in my head today, I thought I'd post this video of one of her songs. This take sounds just like her awesome live version and it's just a little bit spooky for Halloween:



Breaking it up – alternative live video. Filmed by: Christian Haag from Lykke Li on Vimeo.

food therapy

Just before Christmas, my mom and I flew down to Albuquerque to spend a few days with my grandfather surrounding the one-year anniversary of my grandmother's death. This trip was a homecoming, but to a home that is different without Granny B around. I was born in Albuquerque and spent much of my childhood at my grandparents' home, so when I stepped off of the airplane and into the house, I was struck with how similar it felt...and how different. The house smells the same and my grandmother's imprint is felt almost everywhere as her crafts and thrift store finds - including a stuffed duck that quacks at eerily random times - are scattered around every room. Walking in, I expected to see her wander out of her craft room and greet my mom and I with her distinct southern accent (ever-strong, though she hadn't lived in the South since her early twenties). The craft room had been turned into a guest room and the southern accent was sadly absent.

After the initial shock of seeing the house without 2/3 of its former inhabitants (my grandparents' long-time dog, Bernie, also passed away this year), I began honoring my grandmother in a way that, for me, seemed fitting. While I don't believe she would have considered herself a chef, my grandma's food has had a profound effect on my life. I can trace much of my early love of food to her hand - boiled peanuts at her dining room table, fried fresh-caught catfish for breakfast, her famous Velveeta macaroni and cheese (I know, I know, but I stand by this one), pimento cheese sandwiches, and garden fresh tomatoes eaten like apples with salt (come on, this makes up for the mac & cheese, right?). She even taught me great life skills like how to peel grapes before eating them (not one I've kept up, but I'm sure this will be very useful when preparing those gooey "eyes" on Halloween) and how to store gravy for later use (Ice trays! I swear, she could have marketed this one).

The first day we were in Albuquerque, I spent a few hours pouring over her many cookbooks, searching for a few remnants of her to take home to my kitchen. I chose a South Carolina cookbook with check-marked recipes and page numbers of favorites on the front cover, a book of New Mexican cooking, and a few handwritten recipes (she didn't write down many, but I managed to find a few scraps of paper here and there). Then, of course, I ate. Lunch one day was BLT's, a sandwich I had countless times at her home. The day of the anniversary we ate posole, cooked with pork she had purchased just before her death (frozen!) and earmarked specifically for this purpose. I know this probably seems a little strange and maybe, to some, morbid, but it felt truly right to turn this meat into soup - a way of following her wishes, I suppose.

While silently toasting my grandmother with foods that reminded me of her, I felt periods of sadness. But, writing this post I can't find myself feeling anything but joy. I am so grateful that I lived near her as a child and that I saw so much of her as I grew older. And, I am eagerly looking forward to trying out some of the recipes that she cherished, as if in some small way to get closer to my memory of her.

***

Of course, I could not have returned to New Mexico without sampling the quintessential meal, at least once. A bowl of green (chile, that is), warm, fresh flour tortillas and a sopaipilla for dessert. This is the New Mexico that I long for and that I cannot quite re-create, no matter how many "hatch" style chilis I buy at the Portland farmer's market. It's comfort food at its finest, despite the fact that the green chili burns the tip of your tongue and everywhere else as it makes its warming trek through your body. In New Mexico, I find satisfaction in the ever-present burn. The distinct spiciness of a bowl of green brings me back to a womb-like state of calm and delight the way that chicken and dumplings or mashed potatoes may transport a more northerly American (though, of course, I do not deny these foods their virtues).

I had my bowl of green at Cervantes, a family favorite blocks from my grandfathers' house. The video below is already my favorite video of all time - instructions for all who may wish to properly eat a sopapilla. Isn't my granddad amazing? Notice the elegant camera shakes as I can't help but laugh...


How to eat a sopapilla from stumptownpanda on Vimeo.

I stumbled onto jars of Cervantes hot green chile sauce at a grocery store in Albuquerque and cradled my own jar home with me. P and I tried our hands at making a bowl of green a few nights ago and, while it was delicious, it did not totally measure up to the original. Not quite spicy enough, not quite rich enough. I am starting to check our calendar for dates to return to the Land of Enchantment. Besides, P has never been and who am I to deny him this unparalleled satisfaction? I think my grandmother would agree with me there.

PS. We've enabled open commenting for everyone (even without blogger registration) - thanks Leenie for letting us know! Now don't rush all-at-once to put in your two cents.

262

The number of cookies and chocolates we made this weekend? The number of times that A played "Cheer Me Up, Thank You" by New Buffalo? I think it might have been both. Needless to say, it was a frantic productive weekend. Amidst a slew of busy weeks and A's trip to New Mexico, we figured out that we had about four and a half hours in fifteen-minute blocks of free time spread between three days last weekend in which to accomplish all of our holiday gift-making. That, and A decided she would squeeze in recording a song for a friend's year-end compilation.



It actually worked. And what do we have to show for it?

50 Shortbread
65 White-Chocolate-Dipped Cocoa Candy Cane Cookies
75 Buckwheat Cocoa Nib Cookies
62 Dark Chocolate Mendiants with Figs, Candied Orange Peel and Marcona Almonds
7 Bottles of Limoncello
1 New Buffalo Cover

I'm not sure whether or not I want to share this recipe - sometimes it is nice to wield the power, to have something for which other people depend on you - but these buckwheat cookies are just so good that I feel like I need to spread their gospel. We came across the recipe on Orangette, who found them in Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert. True, their name sounds deceptively wholesome, but when you bite into them, they are nutty and toasty and rich. Addictively so. Medrich's approach to desserts - simple preparations that have the concentrated flavors of their ingredients - has bumped her cookbook up on the next-to-own list. Try the recipe and you'll be in line for her cookbook, too. The cookies were good, but next year we'll be making hand-crafted ponies for all of our friends and family.

The other great weekend accomplishment was A's first go at recording. Yeah, this may have opened up whole new avenues for inane reels of her giggling to herself as she makes funny sounds, but who am I to deny her of her fun? A's friend at infiniteregress.org started up a year-end project to get folks to record cover versions of their favorite songs from 2007 for a compilation CD. With limited time, no instruments and zero knowledge of the recording equipment, A put together a really beautiful, lilting a capella take on "Cheer Me Up Thank You." While you're there, you should listen to Day 1, when A's brother Brandon (B) posted a great version of a Menomena song and Day 7, when Tim, who runs the site, performed a fantastic cover of "Saltbreakers." Seriously, my wife is good at what she does, isn't she?

Now, on the subject of music, can we all just agree on how great this song is?



Just another stock "band-in-the-recording-studio" video, right? And then come the kittens and unicorns and balloons! And rainbows! Its like a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper exploded out of their amps; Los Campesinos! are literally overpowered by their own twee-ness. They just moved up my list to be the '08 album release I am most looking forward to. Or the only album release that I know of. Either one. But how can you not love a band who puts out songs like this and who all take Campesinos! as their last name? I feel like I missed out on something - everyone seems to be forming these new family-like groups by recasting themselves with a new last name and here, A and I got hitched and kept our names. It seems sort of cult-ish, but I think they are all too hip to be creepy. Adopting collective surnames is the new black.

so long, and thanks for all the poutine

When we awoke on Sunday, we both knew what had to be done. We would return to Au Pied in order to sample the remaining 30-odd dishes we had missed on our first visit. P would spend the rest of the morning practicing his French and psyching himself up to call the restaurant and make a reservation. A would spend her day dreaming up possible appetizer-entree combinations to make the most out of one last trip.

To make room for the meal that lay ahead, we set out to the base of Mont Royal to finally begin our hike to the top. Though it wasn't the peak of fall foliage, the colors were crisp and striking to people coming from the evergreen Northwest. The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect behind Central Park, and it showcased his highly natural style. A lake at the top of the hill provides a space for paddle boats in the summer and ice skating in the winter. Just a pretty view for us. Despite the balmy morning, which made for a stunning view from the hilltop, we ended up huddling under the single umbrella we were lucky to have brought with us.

By the time we were finished trekking up and down the park, we realized that it was well past lunch time and, quite possibly, the longest we had gone without food on the entire trip. We ran (we did not walk) to the other side of town and made it into Euro-Deli Batory minutes before they locked their doors. Your basic neighborhood Polish go-to store (doesn't every neighborhood have one?), Euro-Deli was packed with Polish toiletries, Polish food and Polish DVDs. A had been craving borscht for what seemed like years, because of P's cruel moratorium, so she knew exactly what she was getting. P had a soft spot for Pierogis, likely a result of his Polish (and Ukranian) heritage. The Borscht was excellent - a strong, earthy beet flavor countered by a generous dollop of sour cream - and P happily "helped" A with her meal. The Pierogis were plentiful and delicious with yet more sour cream on the side. On our way out, we grabbed a poppyseed kolachi and then wandered up to Marche Jean Talon. We grabbed a few bottles of ice cider (Quebec's wine industry has recently been receiving recognition, but their ice cider has long been praised) and said good-bye to Olive et Epices.

We walked back towards our B & B and ended up at Chocolat de Chloe, one of the cutest chocolatiers we had ever seen. Chloe infuses all her own ganaches with fresh herbs, fruits and spices. As we salivated over her wares, laboring over how much chocolate we could fit into our suitcases, Chloe herself was busy decorating sugar skulls for Dia de los Muertos. We finally decided on a bag of drinking chocolate fish, a bag of caramel tablets (like a decadent Caramello), and Caramel au Vanille et Buerre Sale (the most incredible caramel sauce made with salted butter, so it has a distinct salty flavor to compliment the buttery sweetness).

When we'd returned from Chloe's, P mustered it up in himself to call and make a reservation at Au Pied. Excitement led him to make it for incredibly early in the evening. So we shortly left for the restaurant in broad daylight, hoping that we wouldn't be the overeager first ones to the restaurant on our second trip in four days. One thing P had done correctly was to specify a place at the bar when he'd called. It had been recommended that we sit at Au Pied's bar for the full experience of the open kitchen, and it was wise that we did. It isn't easy to understand just how much foie gras this restaurant goes through until you see it for yourself. In between placing the final touches on various dishes, the sous chef would absent-mindedly lob lobes of foie gras into a pan to melt for sauces or chop off thick slabs as toppings. The chefs themselves all wore mechanic's button-up shirts with embroidered name tags above the pocket - no chef's whites in sight. In keeping with the rag-tag pirate crew demeanor of the chefs, P got to sit in a bar stool that had a stag's rack in place of a seat back.

But seriously, we didn't return to Au Pied for dinner theater. P went straight for the house beer, brewed by St. Ambroise and A had a glass of the local hard cider. We had staked out the menu through our cookbook and already knew what we would order. A got the poutine au foie gras, which had been our prime reason to return. After all of the other poutines we had sampled, how could we pass up one this decadent? Not only were the fries perfectly crisp and golden with a clear potato flavor, but they top the whole thing with a slab of foie gras. But that, friends, is not enough. In addition to the ubiquitous poutine sauce (brown gravy), Au Pied smothers the entire pile in melted foie gras. For balance, they have a parsley garnish. P could see the tears running down A's face. Or maybe it was perspiration. IT WAS THAT GOOD.

P threw caution to the wind and ordered the canard en conserve:

Duck in a can from stumptownpanda on Vimeo.

The chefs separate the fat from the meat on a duck magret and stuff foie gras in the middle. They then place the stuffed breast in a can with buttery cabbage and demi-glace. After sealing the can, they boil it to order, slap a label on it and bring it to the table with a plate of crusty bread and celeriac puree. They pull out a can opener and, well, the rest is pretty self explanatory from our video (sorry for the orientation - we were excited). Watching them open the can with such grace and finesse was something to behold - you could tell you were in the presence of truly masterful waiters.

What better way to end a rich meal than with a dish even richer than the main courses? There was no question as to which dessert we were ordering. Last time, we had been distracted by the romance of the maple tart for two (we were on our honeymoon, after all), but this time, we went for the true Quebecois classic: pouding chomeur. If anyone has ever tried the British standby, sticky toffee pudding, you have a sense for what this Quebecois dessert is all about. Sugar, butter, and sugary-butter sauce. Au Pied's version was borrowed from a Montreal cafe, "Soup Soupe," and they are lucky to have the recipe. It was like eating butter and maple syrup cooked together and baked to a molten heat. We were enjoying ourselves so much that we didn't even feel the painful burns. Luckily, we now have the recipe, so our scars may never fully heal.

This meal may sound less decadent than our first - there were, indeed, fewer courses - but pound for pound the dishes were richer and even more satisfying. We left Au Pied du Cochon (for the second time) feeling stuffed and euphoric, our cholesterol levels glad to finally bid Montreal adieu.

Ta Da!

portland fauna.

Before we get too far, you probably shouldn't consider this to be anything at all like a primer on Portlanders. Just like this blog offers our highly selective take on what makes our Puddletown great, this is just our view of the folks we run into regularly around town. Look at it more as a heads-up for what to expect, a way to fit in with the locals. Or it could be a cautionary tale. Depending on your point of view.

Everyone in town has a project - most have more than one. Geeking out about your favorite obscure subject is de rigeur, as is indie craftiness. Projects lead to collaborations (because anywhere you go, you are bound to see at least three people you know from somewhere). Collaborations lead to grand schemes. Grand schemes lead to booze. Booze leads to food. That's pretty much the trifecta of local interest - discipline-defying projects, food, booze. And there is pretty much a festival for each of them. The best combine all three. That's why we headed out to the annual Adult Soapbox Derby (not adult like strip clubs - though in Portland, its not a bad idea to ask first.) Art cars careening down Mt. Tabor past throngs of jeering, drinking Portlanders. Some crash, others collapse mid-course, and some lazily roll down the hill (because they are shaped like taquerias).

But walking around, it is pretty easy to feel that Portland has embraced its stereotypes enthusiastically (while still maintaining a standoffish distance of aloof irony and too-cool apathy). Bikes, tattoos, beer, babies, dogs, hipsters (and a heady dose of d.i.y.-daredevil recklessness). Hell, in my mind, there are much worse stereotypes.


PDX Adult Soapbox Derby '07 from stumptownpanda and Vimeo.