On Friday Audrey and I went on a whirlwind bike tour that ended up being 22 miles roundtrip for me, from SE to N to St Johns. First, a heavy metal salad competition. What is a heavy metal salad? Audrey called our friend Simms, of the band Metal Shakespeare Company, to ask. His response: something with maggots. I happened to have fancy-schmancy food magazine Donna Hay right in front of me with a recipe for white bean salad. For presentation, I hollowed out a red cabbage head, and voila, Maggoty Head Bean Salad.
The kicker was that it was warm. Other entries ranged from a tempe salad in the shape of a pentagram with blinking red bike lights underneath to a breakfast salad which–hold onto your panties–consisted of waffles cut along the squares, breakfast link pieces, and egg pieces (frittata like) mixed with maple syrup and butter. I ate like three pounds of that. At least three dissenters went the metal/punk route:
No word yet on whether we won the category “most metal.”
From there, we rode just over 6 miles up to St Johns to her friend Brent’s house, where a backyard sing-a-long was happening around the firepit. This was extra good because he’s in the band Menomena and other musical people were there, so they could do all the songs on two guitars, a drum set, and keyboards all set up around the fire. Audrey performed Warren G’s regulators, we sang Talking Heads and Phil Collins, and Portland love filled the air. Summers here cannot be topped.
Tags: ideas about fun, ideas about happiness, ideas about music
Br00tal head!
Last night I dreamed up what my Heavy Metal salad recipe would have been:
Pour one box of Chex Mix into bowl.
Add sliced hot dogs and grated cheddar cheese.
Eat with fists.