Eating Authors: Adam Rakunas

So there’s this thing, let’s call it “June,” and it’s supposed to be the time when summer begins (I’m writing only for northern hemisphere folks at the moment, sorry). Except… during the last week in May temperatures climbed into the 90’s like, you know, summer. Not surprisingly, June is a little upset with this and it’s anybody’s guess how it will all pan out. As for me, I’ve already turned on the A/C here at home.

As to whether any of this is a problem for Adam Rakunas, this week’s guest here at EATING AUTHORS, I could not say. He lives waaaaay over on the left side of the country in that rainy Pacific Northwest place you keep hearing about. But we do have a couple things in common, as we were both raised and educated in southern California. Yeah, we have that going for us.

Adam also has another thing going his way. His new novel, Like A Boss (the second book in his Windswept series), come out tomorrow from the irascible automatons at Angry Robot Books. Pick up a copy, it might help improve the robots’ mood.

LMS: Welcome, Adam. What the best meal you can remember?

AR: Oh, man. Do I have to choose just one?

I’ve had a lot of really great meals. Some have been fancy, like the five-course tasting menu my wife and I had for our eighth anniversary (highlights: radicchio and parmesan salad, curried cauliflower, and sweatbreads); some have been simple (a Double-Double, Animal Style, in every California road trip I’ve ever taken). There are some I’ll never have again (my grandmother’s cepilinai, my grandfather’s shish kebab). There are some I’ll probably never have (like my imaginary meal at Jiro Ono’s Sukiyabashi Jiro).

But the best? It’s probably one I had last month. My family had recently upended our lives and moved from Southern California to Seattle, and our new house still didn’t have a washing machine. Every weekend, we’d haul our laundry up the hill to the laundromat, throw all the clothes in all the machines, and get something to eat. If we went on a Friday night, it was off to the pub. If it was Saturday morning, we’d go to the Hi-Spot Café.

The Saturday before our new washer and dryer would arrive, we schlepped our laundry up the hill for the last time. We’d been in Seattle for three months, and we were finally feeling settled. We were all in a good mood as we sorted our clothes and chunked quarters into the machines. It was a chilly day, and I felt the need for something substantial. I found it on the menu: biscuits and chorizo gravy.

It was about as perfect a meal as I could want: the biscuits were fluffy, the gravy had just enough oomph from the chorizo, and the whole thing felt right. We still had a lot of work to do on our new house, but, for now, we could take a break from worrying and just enjoy each other’s company. Plus sneak bits of bacon from each other’s plates.

#SFWApro