Andrew Barton

Three from a tiny indie press we love: NOTHING NEW: Considered Cooking, PSYCHOGASTRONOMY, and THE LONG LOAF: Bread for All Days — from Nickel Dinner / @twoplumpress These are not flashy cookbooks. They don’t shout or chase trends. Instead, they are thoughtful, sensory-driven, and slightly stubborn. In a food media landscape that often feels loud and algorithm-shaped, these feel like counterprogramming. NOTHING NEW is @jesper.sjodahl ’s first book — essays, recipes, field notes, kitchen wisdom — the quiet revolution of cooking with intention. Beans, greens, little toasts, wine. The “before and after” kind of book. Malmö to Copenhagen by way of winter lamplight. PSYCHOGASTRONOMY gathers @thomeagle ’s place-letters, blog fragments, annotations — nine years of thinking about taste, memory, preservation. It reads like salt-cured writing: sensory, searching, deeply felt. THE LONG LOAF (a shop favorite) is @andrewdevriesbarton ’s ode to intuitive, naturally leavened bread. Hand-bound, limited run, printed in Portland. Romantic but practical. Bread as daily ritual. Bread as resistance. Available now in the shop and online. Come take one home and rearrange your kitchen brain a little. #nowservingla #indiebookshop #foodwriting

It’s me, CELERY EVANGELIST! In celebration of my first mention in a major food media publication, where I was accurately dubbed a celery evangelist, I took this selfie in the yard clearing up the winter garden, wearing my celery hat. The mention was in the esteeemed SAVEUR magazine (@saveurmag ), where my book was sidled up next to a bunch of other great books and standing out like raw kale leaf in a tofu scramble because it has no marketing campaign, no big-money-publishing behind it, just me and boxes of books in my basement. Until now, that is, because this post is also to announce that those boxes have been emptied: the entire first print run of FREE FOOD has been *sold out* since, ironically, approximately the day the piece was published, which was almost exactly one year after the first bound copy was in my hands. A new printing is forthcoming (which can be pre-ordered at @twoplumpress ), because I believe in keeping this exploration of cooking and eating as a way to dream of a better world is more relevant than ever! Thank you to Matt Sartwell at Kitchen Arts & Letters (@kalnyc ) for mentioning the book also on the This Is Taste podcast (around minute 51, see last slide), for championing small press food writing, and for thoughtfully placing my books in the hands of many readers, including folks like Shane Mitchell (@shanefarafield ) who ended up being so kind as to share their enjoyment with others on a massive public platform. Grass roots in a wild digital sphere. Photos in the slides of dropping off copies in person at @sundancenaturalfoods , where it all began, and an amusing juxtaposition on Sundance’s shelves to a copy of Saveur sometime in the last year. Anyway, the spirit of the thing is still about listening to folk music with your loved ones while chopping vegetables and tending pots on your stove. Go forth - eat free!

FREE FOOD mixtapes! There is a note on the Recommended Listening page at the back of my book that says digital mixtapes will be forthcoming and suggests visiting the Nickel Dinner page on the Two Plum Press website to find a link. Well, you can click that link there or in my stories today or find them by typing /antiquatedfuturerecords into your search bar and then wow the music will just be instantaneously playing at you ad-free, as close to a real listening experience as you can get in the digital realm these days. I started my year listening to a cozy vinyl compilation of 60s/70s British folk music and was reminded, as I made soup inside from the cold, that I had never shared the existence of these tapes here. ‘Coming Home: nearly forgotten folk of the 60s/70s (lady voices)’ is actually a mixtape I made a handful of physical copies for my friends before I left on a two month trip around Europe when I was in my 20s! The new cover art for sides A and B features the printed pattern from the inside of the original paper liner notes and photographs taken in 2025 by @aria_giselle of her *actual old copy of the tape* which she also did the handwriting for way back then! ‘Autumn Wanderers’ is the male-voiced sequel I had never finished back then, but which I did finish during a snowstorm last winter. There is a forthcoming 3rd mixtape newly created with soundtracking the book in mind, featuring obscure tracks from Eugene musicians and a trippier side overall. I’ll make sure to announce it here when that is available to listen to!

INTRODUCING: Jesper Sjodahl’s first book, ‘Nothing New: Considered Cooking,’ published by me under the Nickel Dinner imprint of Two Plum Press. I am so happy that going rogue and founding this imprint has led to being involved in the creation of culinary books of the style and flavor I want to exist. I met Jesper (@jesper.sjodahl ) and Kathe (@kathekacz ) in real life about a year and a half ago when visiting Sweden. They ran a culinary shop (@speceributik ) and The Long Loaf had been a part of their lives, and as a result customers of theirs from Sweden were interested in the book. I had to meet these sweet people who clearly had the same taste and sensibilities in so many things! They hosted a true “I could have danced all night,” massively memorable evening. The dinner was so thoughtful, so delicious, so considered yet loose and lovely - it really stuck with me (the two pictures I snapped are the last slides here). It is something in this day and age to meet folks on the other side of the world and to feel like we were always meant to know one another, that we’d become real long term friends right there and then. But that’s what happened! Now, we made a book together and on Sunday it will go up for sale! I will write more then and link to the page with more detailed excerpts and stories and so forth - but I can say this is a very thrilling addition to the library of anyone to whom a pot of beans, a green salad, perhaps some little toasts and a bottle of wine (and many likeminded meals) sounds like a feast.

Possibly my favorite recording from ‘WIND SCENE’ is this spoken-word track where I am reading excerpts from Thomas Wolfe’s prose over a reinterpretation of the music for my own song, “October,” from many years ago, which was itself a reinterpretation of another song of mine from many years earlier. Something about coming back again and again to this looping music and to thinking romantically about October as I have grown has been a very lovely experience. The book you see here is an odd editorial situation almost unheard of these days - a posthumous collection of “poetry” compiled and woven together by an editor from Wolfe’s always-poetic prose. In this piece it is almost entirely taken from pieces in ‘Of Time and The River.’ This piece closes the album and the opening song references visiting his gravesite in Asheville, NC - a bookend for a bunch of passed-time and remembering. Now you can listen here in hi-fi and stare at these videos of leaves blowing in the wind.

WIND SCENE // My most recent album of recorded music was finished about a year ago, during a similar flush of golden October we are currently right in the middle of. It was released hastily, by early December, “while it was still Fall,” about one week before FREE FOOD came out. Was that a silly, too-much thing to do? Certainly! But now I can launch a “hey, listen to this music I made!” campaign to my small following like it is new, right at the proper time of year, because hardly anyone has heard it - and that’s kinda fun! So here we are! I have been making music like this since I was about 18, home recorded experiments capturing the more romantic, wide-eyed side of myself. Long before I wrote books, even printed stories in zines, I was putting these song poems out in the world, slipped into folded stolen photocopies and sewn by hand or on cassettes. Still doing it thanks to @antiquatedfuturedistro ! This one contains a song version of my first travelogue book, Autumn Wanderers, a live recording of a song performed at a friend’s wedding (a tiny-scale gig I’ve had a few times, not-unlike @jenslekman ’s new masterpiece of a record and novel), Ravioli Night, and some Thomas Wolfe prose set to a reinterpretation of music from a song I put out ten years ago, October pt. 2! No, it’s not on the big streamers but it actually will be in a week, so I will post some cute videos of leaves blowing in the wind with hi-fi samples of the music then. Check it out, listen in full, buy a tape on Bandcamp at /album/wind-scene but also this is just a PSA to say please go have a poetic moment in the leaves while it is October!

ANNOUNCEMENT: At last, a book launch event for ‘FREE FOOD’ in the place it all began - Eugene, Oregon - at my favorite hometown bookstore, Tsunami Books! (@tsunamibooks ) This event will be different than the previous events in London and Portland - I’ll have made a giant free food salad and some long loaf bread, but this time there will be readings from a few sections of the book and a chance to discuss the book and the spirit of Eugene it aspires to illustrate with the audience, all of whom are likely to *get it* in a way that should be very fun. The room at Tsunami is warm and wooden and has held countless wonderful events. If you’re in Portland and came to the potluck party but were waiting for me to read, Eugene isn’t too far away and I can recommend some places to grab lunch 😉! —— Saturday, October 18th, at 5 pm ——

THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD & IT IS THIS ONE. - Paul Eluard letterpress poster for @motherfoucaultsbooks

NEW BOOK out on @twoplumpress ! Attention bread heads! ‘Homegrain’ is a book celebrating the grain scene of Washington State – from seed scientists to growers to millers to bakers and those who grow and mill or mill and bake or bake and make pottery and other delightful combinations. It was put together by a frequent Two Plum Press reader, Alexandra Garcia (@agbreadjournal ), to benefit the Washington State University Breadlab (@wsu_bread_lab ). The Breadlab is a unique and exciting organization – not what you’d expect any large American University to just have. They are innovating, they are reviving, they are helping the local grain economy with every single class, event, and project they embark on. I distinctly remember when visiting a magical bakery in Copenhagen, Denmark and speaking to a French baker there, he knew about the WSU Breadlab – that was his point of reference for the entire region of the Pacific Northwest. In April of 2025 the funding was cut (paused? Whatever this current hellscape of sea change for the good things in this world is calling the tumult) for a good portion of the Breadlab’s work, and Alex immediately sprang into action – morphing this book she’d already been hoping to make into something with a new, more urgent, vividly clear purpose. I made editorial suggestions, designed the book, and letterpress printed the covers with Alex! The book contains a collection of interviews with bakers, growers, millers, and organizers about the work that they do, punctuated by information about grain varieties and in the case of bakeries, their weekly menus. I see this as being an incredibly handy tool for those in or visiting Washington – a deep dive into the ethos behind these operations and some practical, trip-influencing information to boot. There are also essays (a highlight on rye from a rye scholar and the editor’s visits to some of these operations), some beautiful paintings, some handy recipes, and a couple poems to punctuate the experience at the end. 100% of proceeds donated to the Breadlab! Link in bio!

Here’s to you, pops! My father, Robert Barton, passed away suddenly one month ago today - 4/24/25 - one day after Shakespeare’s death day. As a lifetime Shakespeare scholar, we’re pretty sure he’d be pleased about that. Here are some photos of him being a great dad, “great dad” being a title that meant more to him I think than the PhD, the writing accolades (10 books on theatre arts), and long career acting, teaching, and directing. There are also his senior photos from high school and college, one of him and my mom in in high school (they were married 59 years and have known each other for 66!), and lastly: a mysterious unhinged delight of a family photo. Looking at them I feel a bubbling up of unedited love. Sharing the news with his old friends and colleagues over the last few weeks I have been so moved by how many people have responded with stories of how profoundly his teaching and his warmth as a human being affected their lives. My mother and I will be hosting a Celebration of Life for him at 2:00 pm on Saturday, June 21st at the Gerlinger Alumni Lounge on the University of Oregon Campus in Eugene, a couple days before what would have been his 80th birthday - if there are any former students or old friends who would like to attend! I’ll sign off with some of his favorite Simon & Garfunkel lyrics: Time it was and what a time it was it was / A time of innocence / A time of confidences / Long ago it must be / I have a photograph / preserve your memories / they’re all that’s left you

Hey dudes, gotta reschedule! Some shit went down and I need a minute. You have to wait just one more month for this hippie slam buffet / potluck / cider party! Mark your calendars for June 8th - same time, 1 to 4 pm. This Sunday, you should either go to Mississippi Records’ celebration of life for Michael Hurley or just go to the Place anyway because you probably aren’t drinking enough good cider surrounded by plants.

HAPPY EARTH DAY / PUBLICATION DAY for PSYCHOGASTRONOMY, the new book by Thom Eagle (@thomeagle ), published by the Nickel Dinner imprint of @twoplumpress . I designed and edited the book, which is a collection of pieces Thom originally wrote for inbox and blog consumption. The bulk of the book collects all of Thom’s place-based tinyletters (a platform that no longer exists - so we’ve taken the work full circle and preserved it on bound pages) and the tail end collects pieces of his I read when first finding his writing. As I wrote in the introduction, “A writer’s journey in nine years of notes, with gaps nearly every page to pop a bookmark in and savor the echo. Just as Thom loves to preserve under salt or brine, these pieces now rest in this binding, developing. As you read, or begin to taste, really tune in – and then look around you.” I’ll leave you with a favorite excerpt, and encourage you to follow the link in bio to read more about it and consider picking up a copy. Gela For miles around town all you can see from the train in are endless ranks of polytunnel and netting, empty in the summer’s heat but surrounded by scorched and crawling weeds, while above the beach rise the twin chimneys of the slumbering oil refinery which sprawls beyond, a dark mirror as big as the town itself; this was a fishing village once, and you can still hear them cry out their catch in the dusty streets as fishermen always have. The oil failed, or it never really worked in the first place, and the refinery remains as a monument to nothing. Now your tomatoes come from here, both in this baking heat and from the polytunnels in winter, fat ones, round ones, little cherry tomatoes on the vine, the countryside is swaddled in plastic which even the crawling weeds struggle to break through to ensure the supply of tomatoes never stops. The displays on vans and piles of boxes in the dusty streets tell a different story, though, of sweet round cucumbers halfway to being melons, bunches of creeping tenerumi, blood-spattered mulberries, and those ripe and ribbed tomatoes, all the more delicious for the rot at their heart.