these are April drippings

A few things I worked on that are floating around the Internet:

Freunde von Freunden: James Tucker & Risa Culbertson
An interview with my friends James Tucker & Risa Culbertson, who are letterpress printers in the Heath Ceramics building, right around the corner from me. The story was shot by Mark Wickens, and I hosted the conversation. We had quite the San Francisco day: starting off at Pier 39 in James' fishing boat, eating lunch at Swan Oyster Depot, and then traveling south to the Mission to James and Risa's studio. We also toured the Heath Ceramics building and saw all the amazing artist studios in there!

18 Reasons Website
18 Reasons Blog: Butcher, Baker, & Candlestick Maker
I've had an ongoing relationship with 18 Reasons, a food-oriented non-profit organization whose mission is to "empower our community confidence and creativity to buy, cook, and eat good food every day." For almost a year now, I've taken photographs for them: at their classes, events, and community meals. They recently launched their new website, and a lot of my photographs are featured on the website.

I also wrote a little blog post for them recapping a community meal they hosted at the Heath Ceramics building--a beautiful dinner that brought together local artisans and makers, called Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker. I highly recommend checking out the 18 Reasons space & taking a class there, especially if you like cooking and food.


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I went to Portland last weekend, and here are some pictures & places I enjoyed:

We stayed in a particularly charming (3-story) AirBnb with a particularly un-charming cat. There were a total of seven of us in the house and enough beds for us to all sleep comfortably--we each paid $40 for the stay--such a good deal!

A map drawn by my friend Pili, the morning we arrived.

We stopped for juice here. I have no idea what this place is called, but it smelled like a juice bar.

 Table of Contents -- feels more like a well-curated space for objects, than a store that supports reasonable commerce.

Ned Ludd -- A charming restaurant with a lot of wood and kitschy objects. Great for long, group dinners. Food was delicious, felt very Portlandia. I had a seafood stew & roasted carrots. The entire table shared amazing flatbread with olive oil & sea salt, a charcuterie platter, and a gooey skillet chocolate chip cookie.

Sunday brunch at Meriwethers.

I can't resist a dutch baby if it's on the menu. The pancake house near my house growing up served dutch babies, and that memory (and taste!) has been implanted in my heart. We ordered one for the table to share.

Greens, beans, olives, capers, raisins, anchovies, and lots of oil -- grilled focaccia to sop it up. I didn't imagine this dish to come out looking like this at all, but it was delicious--very mediterranean.

Noun -- This is the best tagline ever. 

Stumptown Coffee -- This is the best vase ever.

It was a rainy Sunday afternoon so we spent a few hours at an arcade... playing DDR--which was such a throwback (and a great workout).

 Before we left for the airport, we got donuts at Blue Star Donuts, which is not a big name like Voodoo donuts--and perhaps not as delicious either--but dulce de leche & cointreau creme brulee donuts didn't sound too bad for a rainy Sunday afternoon. And we didn't have to wait in an hour-long line either!

Other places of note:
Powells Books -- did not disappoint. Lives up to the hype. A paradise, refuge, and other-world for book-lovers. Powell's overwhelming nature is to its advantage, but I also liked the taxonomy of books, the curated shelves, the compartmentalization of its literature.

Maurice -- A self-described "pastry and luncheonette" that was charming and European: a French menu, earthy baked goods (a barely sweet rosemary scone; butter cookies composed mainly of butter, little sugar), intriguing dishes that seem practically medieval in America (Goat Bisteeya, Duck Fat & Prune Rissole, Polenta Clafouti with Chicken Confit). I am very much drawn to the grotesque of old-world foods.

Canoe -- "Simple, beautiful, functional objects." A design store with European, Japanese, and American objects--some things were impractically priced, but if you treat design stores as museums for ordinary things, then you'll be quite pleased by the marriage of function + aesthetics of the objects in this store.

Palace --  My favorite shop that we visited. I am always impressed by the excellent curation of old and new, and also the ability to organize those curated objects into a fluid and seamless arrangement. Palace had a great selection of facial and body products, alongside vintage clothes (great color palettes), ceramic spoons (Shino Takeda!), delightfully strange textiles, etc.

Grain & Gristle -- We had Saturday brunch here. Great vibes (I am getting a sense that Portland excels in "vibes"). Particularly memorable were the buckwheat crepes with ricotta, marmalade, and pistachios.

Wolf's Apothecary -- Though "apothecary" has been usurped in ways that do not fit the original meaning of the word, I am still a sucker for places that dispense elixirs / remedies / herbs / spices, the way I'm a sucker for various interpretations for how the full moon affects me (don't try to talk science with me). This place makes their own teas / salves / lotions / soaps / candles with locally wild-harvested plant infusions and botanical essences. In conclusion, I am a sucker.


Portland, I will be back.

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I leave you with this:

“…To reserve a part of your life for taking care of yourself has indeed become a radical thing to do because it effectively means you are taking yourself out of circulation. You deliberately hold back resources, free time and potentials that could be used productively. Still, you can never be sure whether the free time you gain is not just the time you need to restore your energies to be fit to perform again on the next day so that you never escape the cycle of compulsive activity.” 
—Jan Verwoert

this is the desert playa

*The flatness of the desert plays a trick on the mind's eyes, and now I know that's how the concept of "mirage" came to be. If you look far enough across the plains of the desert, you'll see what looks like water in the distance. A body of water, it seems, will be found if you just keep walking towards it. But it must be the sun, or the sand, or both, because what it really is, for miles and miles and miles out, is just desert. Hot, untouched desert.





*At dusk everyday, as the sun begins to set, losing its strength, and people retreat back to their camps to prepare for the night, I leave our camp and ride out to the playa on my bike. Here, on the sparse field of nothing, on the cracked white canvas that will be trodden and touched and mowed down for a week, I am exhilarated by space and expanse and the mountains that surround me on all sides. I imagine I am in a large crater. This city we've built, the things that we carry out to the desert: both the tools that we'll need to survive and the stresses that make it difficult to survive, will soon be swept away by the dust and the wind. Here in the desert, there is freedom if you'll take it. I feel this freedom most palpably during these bike rides at dusk, when I'm by myself, pedaling as slowly as I want or as quickly as I can, just taking in it all, taking pleasure in the movement of gliding across the desert, without cars, without roads, without a sense of urgency. Only the sun tells time here in the desert, and minutes and seconds do not exist. Only moments.

this is my grandfather's love of food

*When I think of my grandfather, I think of his square jawline and his tanned skin, the hearty laugh and underbite that earned him the nickname “Bulldog,” his obscenely early bed time and his love for golf, which is the reason he still wakes up at 4 am every day without fail, even at 82 years old. I see him in the white tank top that he wears when he’s at home reading on the couch; most of all, I see him happily feasting at our large family dinners, where most of his energy is spent encouraging everyone else to eat more, as Asian elders tend to do to the ones they love.

*Of course, I really only see my grandfather once every few years, when I visit Taipei, where he lives. His trips to California are less frequent than they once were, though his stamina is still impressive for his age. The last time he was here, my mother complained that he relentlessly tried to polish off everyone else’s meals at The Cheesecake Factory, even as he was clutching his own stomach in pain. Despite being told that Cheesecake Factory portions are inhumanly large and that it was okay not to finish all the food on the table, my grandfather couldn’t help it; he grew up in Taiwan when it was under Japanese rule and has since maintained a wartime mentality toward food, despite eating very well, regularly.

*If this wartime mentality of scarcity is the reason why my grandfather feels instinctively compelled to finish every morsel of food, I’m sure that this mentality is also the reason he eats with such gusto and joy. In part, at least. I do believe that my grandfather, like me, has a genetically predisposed fanaticism towards food, which is mere sustenance for everyone else who doesn’t. But then again, whereas I’ve always had the luxury of being picky about what I eat, there was a time in my grandfather’s life—for much of it actuall—when food was merely sustenance because it had to be. There was no choosing what to eat because eating was a matter of survival. My grandfather was the fourteenth of sixteen siblings (eight boys, eight girls, all from the same mother and father!), and in a family with so many mouths to feed, abundance was a pipe dream. Now that food is no longer scarce, he treats every meal as feast, never allowing eating to be solely the breaking of a fast.

*One of my favorite foods is the sweet potato, a food my grandfather refuses to eat. The Japanese sweet potato, yaki-imo, was a wartime staple that he ate as a child; it is a food that reminds him of dearth and poverty, so he doesn’t eat it anymore.

*When I visited Taiwan as a child, he’d take me out—just me and him—and we’d go eat pig’s feet, his favorite dish, which had been stewed for hours in a sweet, dark soy sauce. The pig’s feet were mostly collagen, tender, chewy, and fatty skin, with just a little meat around the bone. It was never in a fancy place, and the pig’s feet would be served on a scratched up platter, with no garnish, just sauce.

He always reminisces about this when he sees me. It’s something to talk about, a good memory we have together, but I also think it reminds him of why he took me to go eat pig’s feet in the first place: because that ten year old girl ate as voraciously and as joyously as he did. Rare are ten year olds who will happily devour porcine trotters as I did.

*In June, I spend a few days at my grandparents’ house in Taipei. I speak Mandarin decently, but not fluently enough to have the kinds of intimate conversations I’ve always wanted to have with my grandparents. So it is as it was twelve years ago, when our most intimate gestures are communicated with food. “What do you want to eat?” is the first question I’m asked when I arrive in Taiwan. The first night we have Japanese food, and I’m barraged with literal boatloads of sashimi.

*On one of my final days in Taiwan, my grandfather takes me out for a special trip to the coast of Taiwan. First we drive to what my mother insists is a phoenix farm. “Mom, a phoenix is a mythical animal. They don’t exist.” We argue about this for the entire car ride, and later I find out that what we’re actually seeing is crested arguses. After the crested arguses, we go to an orchid farm, and I can tell that my grandfather is trying to impress me by showing me the most wondrous things that Taiwan has to offer (exotic birds! exotic plants!). But despite the novelty of crested arguses and orchids, something about this morning feels forced; I feel like a foreign ambassador touring another country.

*After the two farms, we finally arrive at a department store in a small, dusty town, and we ride the elevator to the top, to an empty restaurant owned by my grandfather’s friend. I can sense that he is feeling more comfortable and more at ease. We sit down to eat, and plates of food begin to arrive. Local specialties abound: wild plants I’ve never heard of, fish that are native to the Taiwan coast, shark jowls, marinated pork kidneys, eels, fried buns. Most of the food is stewed, salty, and oily, strongly flavored so that white rice is absolutely necessary. I see my grandfather in his element, carefully monitoring the flow of food to the table and the distribution of it among everyone around it. This is a responsibility he takes seriously, making sure everyone is happily eating and well-fed, if not overly fed, by the end of the meal.

*I sit at the table, simultaneously intrigued by all the delicacies and overwhelmed by both the novelty and variety. I see my grandfather shooting me glances every time my plate is empty, and he spins the lazy susan in my direction repeatedly, urging me to eat more.

*“I used to take her to eat pig’s feet,” he says proudly to his friend, as he eats another slice of pork kidney. It’s a simple, anecdotal statement, really—but what he means to say is that we’re close; he means that we understand each other.Most of all, he’s telling his friend that by eating and sharing food together, those pig’s feet especially, we’re also inextricably bound, through famine and feast, through scarcity and abundance.