I got on the eastbound ferry just before sunset yesterday afternoon. The wind, which that morning had sent me flying west on my bicycle, had died down to a stiff breeze. Beneath me the boat rumbled. I sat, brooding and watching the road of wake running back toward a bank of candy-colored clouds, and thinking about choice and necessity and compromise and the beauty of the sunset. I had gone to the islands to buy a truck, and now, after years of bicycles, buses, and borrowed cars, I was driving it home. How do you choose your ethical compromises? What are your hard lines? I think a lot about consumption: the what and why and how much of it. It is not a comfortable compulsion, to imagine the before and after of everything I buy. I mean, it would be nice, at the end of a long, hungry day, to look at a slice of pizza from the place on the corner and see dinner, rather than CAFOs, or the desolation of industrial agriculture in Northern Mexico, or the garbage islands clogging up our ocean gyres. Sometimes I wonder if the deep thought I put into even small acts of consumption is really just a bunch of self-indulgent navel gazing, or, worse yet, an outward facing expression of the same self-martyring impulse that drives our ascetic diet culture. Other times I worry that not buying the slice of pizza, or choosing to ride my bike instead of driving, or any of the other dozens of choices I make in the course of a day, are really just internal greenwashing. Like, how many ethical carrots would I actually need to eat in order to morally balance the savings I put in an unexamined, high-return mutual fund? How many miles would I have to bicycle to make up for the times I travel by air? But looking back at the darkening clouds, I decided that, at least for now, I can live with some imperfection and hypocrisy. Better, I think, to choose eyes open than to give in to paralyzing indecision, or to give up and sink blindly into a culture of endless consumption. Wednesday 1/31 BLUE CORN NIXTAMAL ($8) European bread meets Mesoamerican maize. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 2/7 WINTER GARDEN ($8) A celebration of all the green herbs in the winter garden. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 2/14 CHOCOLATE ($10) A bittersweet black bread, with dark cocoa, dark chocolate chunks, and candied orange peel. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Happy eating!
Sophie Owner | Baker What is the shape of your best day? Mine starts on the dark side of 5 am, when I wake, look at my watch, and decide go back to sleep. Hours later, in the gray gloaming, I wake again, and reach for my book. There is no hurry. Breakfast will wait. When I get up on my best day, I put on water for tea and turn on the oven. I mix eggs, milk, and flour. I melt half a stick of butter in a skillet and pour in the batter. While the pancake rises, I sauté sliced apples in butter. I only burn a few. On my best day, I go back to bed after breakfast. I curl up by the window and read until noon. I finish one book and start another. The clouds thin to pale blue. The sunshine climbs over me till I’m all in light. Later, I go for a long walk. The snow is soft and reaches a few inches shy of my boot tops. I walk along the river, under black cottonwoods and alders, and the occasional ponderosa. The willow thickets are deep red. I listen to the water and watch my feet. There are tracks crisscrossing the snow in all directions. I follow a river otter’s tracks for a while till I come out onto the cobbled riverbank. Then I follow a deer. I see neither otter nor deer, but many birds. The great horned owl is asleep in her cottonwood snag, or at least, I think she’s asleep. She is exactly the same brown-gray as the bark, and I see no hint of yellow eyes. On my best day I make hot chocolate and take my mug and a book out onto the porch to catch the last of the light. I fold a blanket around my legs, like an invalid in one of the old, upright British novels I used to love so well. I read until the light begins to fade. Or maybe I just sit and watch the trees and the whitening sky. It doesn’t matter. This is my day to do with as I please. When darkness folds around the house at the end of my best day, I am inside where it is warm and bright. Tomorrow, perhaps, I will think of obligations, but tonight I am full on stories and sunshine and good food. There is no space left for work or worries. Steam rises from the mug in my hand, smelling of mint and chamomile. I sit back to watch the fire. This is the shape of my best day. Winter Bread Subscription Today is the LAST DAY to sign up! BAKER's CHOICE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription VOLLKORNBROT subscription Wednesday Preorder Wild & Seedy Mountain Rye Vollkornbrot I'll be back on the west side and delivering the first of the Winter Bread Subscription this Wednesday to Birchwood, downtown, and Fairhaven.
Happy eating! Sophie Owner | Baker |
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