BLT (reprise)

Portland, September 10, 2010—

AT OUR AGE WE TAKE almost twelve hours to drive the six hundred miles up to Portland, and much of the way I seem to be a little hungry. Not surprising: the usual piece of toast with honey and two cappuccinos don't go that far. A couple or three prunes, a slice of bread, a chunk of nagelkaas for lunch along the way. A cup of surprisingly good olive-oil gelato and a decent cappuccino to break the trip at Ashland.

Finally we're in Portland, where I make a stiff Martini; then a BLT. Second one in a week, after months, years probably, without any. The others had had BLATs, inserting slices of avocado (not apple, as I'd at first feared) into the mix: but I'm not a revisionist. Well, except for substituting the last, the very last of Monday's aïoli for mayonnaise. (Lindsey, who wastes nothing, had brought along the little container of aïoli, no more than a teaspoonful of it.)

Afterward a nice plum upside-down cake. It's nice to be at Giovanna's house: she's among many other things a baker.

Blanc, then rouge de l'Herault, Domaine Gassac, 2008