It’s official: Feta is Greek. (So is Macedonia, FYI. And some parts of Turkey, and Cyprus, but let’s not get into that.) No more Danish knockoffs. Full details here.

Whoa. Dude.

Everywhere I turn recently, it seems that something cool is happening in Portland, Ore. Tasty coffee. Cool bands. Cool people–including the owner of Queen’s Hideaway, a brilliant little lo-fi resto in Greenpoint. Hip online CD stores. Countless magazine stories fawning over the hipster city’s delights. And now there’s this: Extramsg.com: Culinary Blog and Portland Food Guide. It’s got the Mexico connection too.

Coolest of all, of course, is our friend and Sunday-night-dinner guest par excellence, Portland native Dapper Dan. He sent me the link in the first place–all part of a subtle propaganda campaign for a DD-guided Oregon excursion. I think it’s working. Wait for me, Portland, city of morels and renegade winemakers!

Where does Peter find these things? I suspect he might’ve been looking for Japanese fixed-gear-bike porn or something but found this instead. (Speaking of fixed-gear bike porn: gender parity in porn ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Those guys are good sports, though.)

This is genius! British guy biking all over North and South America, eating as he goes. You can email him tips, and he’ll change his itinerary and check it out. Oh, and it’s all for a good cause of some sort.

I initially read about him on the Rough Guides site, here, which has a funny description of biking around NYC for those who’ve never done it before.

Karl finally compiled his 8,000 photos from our summer trip. The key image, of me in the teeter-tottery, baby-size baptismal font, is here.

Peter and I were just in Amsterdam for a wedding of our friends Ta-MAR-a (not TAM-ara, Queen of Astoria) and John, and we were walking toward the church. Peter’s 4-year-old nephew, Finn, tugged on Saskia’s arm. “Mom,” he asked, “is Tamara going to get in the big bucket?”

I didn’t realize my baptism (which was clearly explained to Finn as being only for the sake of my getting married) had such an effect on the little tyke. Must’ve been the highlight of his summer vacation, as well as mine.

Man, just about the time I was penning my NM guidebook and adding a great big shout-out to Gwyneth Doland, food editor at Albuquerque’s actually-really-good alterna-weekly, it turns out she was getting fired! Who would’ve guessed that the column that made me laugh hardest most recently — the one that began “I think buying bottled water is completely retarded. (Well, not retarded because using retarded in that context is totally gay.)”–would be her last? That girl can turn a mean phrase, and she loves bacon. (I believe “allbaconallthetime” is her email handle. Am I stalking her? Why, nooooo.)

But like she needs my props–she already singlehandedly ran La Cocinita, a great print mag about NM food, and now she’s writing a column called “Total Pig” for the Santa Fe Reporter*. Here’s hoping she somehow gets Chuck Klosterman-ed into the national limelight, assuming she wants that. Because if I got paid to eat enchiladas and know everybody’s back-of-house business with 300 days of sun a year, I might be pretty happy… Oh wait–but then I wouldn’t be in Astoria, so maybe not.

*Click on the cached version of the page if you search for the columns in Google.

AV, who supplied the great photos of the lamb being gutted for Eid in Morocco, is back in Moorish lands and maintaining a blog. Who am I to judge, but I suspect it might be one of those grad-school dissertation-procrastination tools. Anyway, expect good food tidbits and attention to detail: Here’s the link.

What else? Arrest warrant has been filed for one Christopher Dunivan, the little psychopath who made off with my laptop and, more important, emails and addresses from the past five years. Anyone I’ve emailed in the last two months, I’ve got your details–but anyone prior to that, please get in touch. (Linda Jeng, are you still in Paris?)

Burning Man was fun; solar cooking was underwhelming. More details and photos in a bit.

And _it happened again_: Peter and I are sitting in the Frenchie bistro here in Astoria, eyeing his plate of duck. We collectively agree that it’s wiser _not_ to stuff ourselves, and instead take the duck home as leftovers. The waitress clears our plates, Peter says, “We’ll take that home, please,” and then there’s that way-too-long interlude. Why, why didn’t I learn my lesson from Spice Market?

Back to Amsterdam tonight, followed by a spell in Geneva, to visit Chris, Juan and wee Estela (the charmer who was so entranced by the belly dancer at our wedding). I’m sure she’ll have no memory of who I am, but maybe she’ll have some new dance moves…

If anyone wants to know my official stance on travel writing (as well as where to get all dreamy with your sweetheart in Cancun), here’s a little interview I did with a congenial travel writer named Norm Goldman to promote my new book, Cancun & Cozumel Directions. As an incentive to read, there’s a small tidbit of personal news at the end.

It’s a closed-loop system–all the links in the interview point people right back here, so those readers are coming here, only to read this link. (I swear, there are much more interesting things in the archive–try April and August 2004 for behind-the-scenes reports on the research that went into the Cancun book.)

One of these days, I will have a proper web site, but until then, let’s just continue to pretend that I do no work at all.