A few years ago I read an interview with Les Claypool, bassist and lead singer for Primus and a man known for performing many virtuosic feats on the electric bass. At one point the interviewer asked whether he used alternate tunings, and he said no, that maybe when he felt like he’d mastered the standard tuning, then he might try another one.

This is kind of how I feel about flavored breads. I feel that bread bakers should master yeast, flour, water, and salt before thinking about things like cheese, prosciutto, nuts, or dried fruit, which are often used to add flavor to an unnecessarily bland product. And my own preference is for plain bread.

That said, I was back at the Columbia City Bakery today (I’m working on a review of a nearby restaurant), and the walnut levain was calling out to me. Nobody could accuse the CCB of failing to master the bread basics; indeed, at this point I’m convinced they’re the best bakery in town (maybe tied with Dahlia, though). The walnut just looked like a beautiful loaf.

It tasted like one, too. When I got home, after a hearty lunch, I tore a corner off the loaf and ate it. Then I tore off a little more, and suddenly half the loaf was gone. There’s no better definition of great bread, I think, than bread that makes you snack on it compulsively like Doritos.

I always seem to give extra props when I enjoy a work of art in a category I usually dislike. For example, I feel the same way about flavored beers as about flavored breads, but I absolutely adore Unibroue’s Ephemere series, their annual fruit blend, especially the apple. (They’ve also done pear, currant, and cranberry.)

To bring it back around to music, I’ve always been a big fan of short songs. Many of my favorite songs are under three minutes, and when a song goes beyond four minutes, I reach for the remote. (Please read this as an indictment of my attention span, not of any particular song.) But when a long song does wow me, it tends to really blow me away.

This could just be circular reasoning. But I think I’ll grab the rest of that walnut loaf, pour a glass, of Ephemere, and listen to a mixtape of The Loud Family’s “Sister Sleep” (8:25), The Fiery Furnaces’ Chief Inspector Blancheflower (8:58), The Good Life’s Inmates (9:39), and to keep things old school, Elton John’s Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding (11:09).

And hey, by the time those songs are over, it’ll be, like, Thursday or something, and I can go get more bread.

The River Cottage Meat Book
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
543 pages, $50

Look at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Actually, first just say “Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.” Now look at him, absconding with that rib roast. No doubt about it, _The River Cottage Meat Book_ is sure to be a lighthearted romp through meaty pastures.

As if. The RCMB has plenty of recipes, but they’re entirely beside the point. This is a polemic. Fearnley-Whittingstall, his jovial hairstyle notwithstanding, wants you to think about your meat. Is it as humanely raised as it is delicious?

You can probably already intuit the substance of Fearnley-Whittingstall’s oversized pamphlet, but he has issued his wonderfully illustrated and readable proclamation at an exciting time to be a meat-eater.

It’s an exciting time because until a few years ago, the only people I heard talking about the ethics of meat didn’t eat any themselves. Nothing will send you to McDonald’s faster than a lecture about factory farms from a vegetarian.

Nowadays, the most eloquent voices for meat reform are people like Fearnley-Whittingstall, Bill Niman of Niman Ranch, and Michael Pollan, whose landmark New York Times Magazine article, “An Animal’s Place,” began like this:

> The first time I opened Peter Singer’s “Animal Liberation,” I was dining alone at the Palm, trying to enjoy a rib-eye steak cooked medium-rare.

What these folks, other than Peter Singer, have in common is that they love eating meat. Fearnley-Whittingstall waxes eloquent about eating all parts of the pig, the cow, and the sheep with as much fervor as a PETA member haranguing you not to eat any such parts. And he is brutally unsentimental about it: there is a series of photos showing the slaughter of one of his cows.

The most interesting fact I learned from the Meat Book is that 70 percent of meat in Britain is sold in supermarkets. Fearnley-Whittingstall grumbles about this, but it made me wonder what percentage of American meat is sold in supermarkets. It has to be more than 90 percent, don’t you think? I guess the grass-fed beef is always greener on the other side.

Since reading this book and Peter Kaminsky’s Pig Perfect, I’ve been trying to buy better meat. I haven’t made an amazing amount of progress, for the obvious and inexcusable reasons of expense and convenience. But my lard is organic. We often buy breakfast sausages at the farmers market during market season. Sometimes I buy meat at Whole Foods; their beef is from Oregon Country Beef, and their chickens are organic. I’m not sure about the provenance of their pork, but that’s where I got my pork roast from for Christmas dinner.

The farmers market season starts in late May, so I’m going to make it a project to buy as much of our meat as possible from the ranchers there. The prices can be shocking, but leave it to Jamie Oliver to smack up my Wal-Mart mindset:

> Very rarely does anyone go into a garage, phone store, or shoe shop and ask for “the cheapest, most rubbish one.” So why do we walk into supermarkets and support those companies that are producing cheap products? (from the intro to Jamie’s Dinners)

Besides, our favorite cuts of meat (shoulders and ribs) are among the cheapest to begin with. The only other drawback of buying from the market is that all the meat is frozen. I’m not worried about the quality, but it does take a bit of the spontaneity out of the purchase. At the same time, it means I can plan ahead for the week if I can clear some freezer space.

Here are a couple of remaining Vancouver photos I wanted to post.

First, on West Broadway in Kitsilano, Iris spotted these enormous carrots:

You’ll be relieved to know that the signs that says “Local baby sweet carrots” is not referring to this basket.

Second, while walking around on Granville Island we spotted this cement mixer:

Outside the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, this is the most festive truck ever.

Our salt box cracked. It was a Click Clack brand rectangular plastic box with a blue lid, and it served us well for many years. But you can’t get sentimental about your salt boxes or grease jars or utensil crocks. Actually, you can–I’m so sentimental about my grease jar, which was a present from Laurie and is shaped like an ear of corn, that I don’t keep grease in it.

In a cosmic coincidence (not that cosmic, since we made do with the cracked box for weeks), the same issue of Fine Cooking that gave us paprika potatoes and Asian-glazed short ribs also spotlighted a charming little salt box from Crate and Barrel. It looks like this:

The little dot embedded in the rim of the bowl is a magnet. There’s a matching magnet in the lid, so when you swing it mostly shut, it pops into place. Time will tell whether this salt box is as durable as a Click Clack, but we’re enjoying it so far. I showed it to Iris, and she wanted to taste the salt. Then she wanted to taste it again. I’m really curious how much salt she would have eaten if we’d just let her go to town. I’ve started calling her Salty Sam, which along with her mastery of the word “arrrr” should transition her smoothly into her nautical career.

Do you have a salt box? The single most important thing I’ve ever done to improve my cooking is to switch from table salt to kosher and keep the salt box close at hand. Kosher salt doesn’t taste any different from table salt (people who think it does are the same kind of people who buy $500 audio cables, and if you have a list these people’s names and addresses, please send it to me), but it’s much easier to pick up with your fingers and therefore more likely to be used throughout the preparation of the meal rather than added in a lump. Plus, if you get into the habit of sprinkling salt by hand, you’ll look like a Food Network personality without having to pick up any annoying signature exclamations.

I like Diamond Crystal brand kosher salt best, but Morton is fine too. And you don’t have to spend $15 on an admittedly smoove-looking salt box; a Gladware container would work fine, too, as long as you’re careful not to melt it.

I’m at the Columbia City Bakery, which has only been open for a couple of months but is already rightly considered one of the best in town. They’d been selling at the farmers market before that. The bakery itself is a bright space on Columbia City’s main drag, across from Geraldine’s Counter, which has one of Seattle’s best burgers.

I intended to stop in for a little free wi-fi and a cookie, and I’m availing myself of both those amenities, but I couldn’t leave without a loaf of bread. Today it’s the crusty *pain de campagne*. They’re making baguettes in the back, flouring up the couches just like I used to do before Iris, when I spent some time baking bread. We recently made an order from [King Arthur](http://www.bakerscatalogue.com/), which sells the best parchment paper you can buy, and I threw in a bag of their high-gluten flour. Iris and I will make bagels and pizza with it.

When I first walked into the Columbia City Bakery, I took a look at the bread display and knew immediately that they made great bread. This is not because I’m a bread expert. It’s because there’s something unique about bread: good bread always looks good, and bad bread always looks bad.

It’s easy to burn some grill marks into a so-so steak and make it look prime, but somehow bread doesn’t work that way. Unlike any other food I can think of, you can size up a loaf of bread the same way you size up a mate: a good loaf just looks special, and it’s not due to one particular feature that can be taken in isolation. Being able to see good gluten formation in the slash is important, as is color (darker is better, up to a point), but those qualities alone don’t tell the whole story.

Probably there’s an exception to the rule somewhere, a loaf that looks like Poilâne and tastes like poop, but I don’t want to hear about it.