updated company slogan,
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This is the site for updates and information on the food projects of Justin Lubecki. Despite deciding to stick with the “Friendship Bagel” website domain, Friendship Bagel and bagel production is not currently active. Having a project that constantly changes form and names is difficult to keep track of, perhaps one day it’ll be nameless and represented by just a picture of water. For now, look under Friendship Bagel to find the latest on projects not called Friendship Bagel.
Schedule of “Happenings” Past/ Future
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Contact: fermentpittsburgh@gmail.com
When I fumbled my way through life landing in a place where I was somehow making food for people, the food was never meant to be the goal. The purpose was always the story.
I was full to the brim with a story I had to tell and when I went to tell it, out through my hands fell ground wheat kneaded into little boiled rings which became Friendship Bagel.
After parting from that project- as I felt the story had been told to completion, I continued on my meandering way bumping around and playing with the odd relationship of making food and living a new story. The important part, I learned, was to actually live the story. So what that I began farming the ingredients that give life to me and the people I care about. The work was became an ear to listen to the soil. My footsteps and pumping blood became a pen that wrote the stories, and the forgotten natural world I begged desperately to touch was my collaborator.
In trying to put out more food to express my attempt at living, the challenge presents itself as how? Laced with odd poetry and bizarre ritual, the everyday hungry passerby often just wants a sandwich.
Today’s food world is strange. It is food for entertainment, food for personal recognition, smoke and mirrors of pretend sustainability, food that mostly tastes like hip branding, and these life-giving ingredients reshaped into profit- which will always taste different than food made to nourish. We are overwhelmed by the numbing of our actual connection to life. Weird, right?
I do not want to impress anyone. I do not want to strive to make the best food. My aim is honesty. My aim is to look over and over again, endlessly trying to caramelize my vision until one day I can see, touch, and taste, something that’s actually there.
I don’t believe we strive for sustainability and responsible living because it’s a good idea we agree with. I believe that a deeply often hidden part of us is starving to be home and connected to our home.
The food I make might be just a meal that may go unnoticed as anything more. Therefore if you crave more, you need to know the story. The connection of living is the nourishing part. The eating is merely the digestion of this living.
Bagel reminisce:
In the release of the night’s deep breath, when emptiness fills all space, and a slight pause stills everything before time reaches from all sides to pull in, lifting the sun and starting the day again- in that moment when the fingers of exhalation rest absently like rocks in a drained lake, reaching into these depths to pull out a moment- a collection of interwoven tales drawn from their sources to now, creating a simple life celebrating moment.
Naturally leavened, handmade bagels, and bagel sandwiches.
Fermented, wild-cultured, and foraged bagel spreads.
Just about completely local.
We are currently trying to quietly re-learn how to eat. Hopefully we get excited about sharing our discoveries with a greater audience again. Until then, stay home and cook often, or eat at Bitter Ends Garden and Luncheonette, and please explore the following links for the digital memories:
Possibly too-much background insight
