My dear friend Pat Di Prima is once again accepting the challenge of metamorphosis. She has transformed her italian bakery into a trattoria. If you haven't had the opportunity to visit before I highly recommend you drive all the way to north Portland, where we are not so scary but a growing and progressive neighborhood and enjoy real italian delights. I'd like to tell you a little about Pat's journey so you will fully enjoy your visit.

Her family is from New York and just like any good NY italian her parents frequented their neighborhood bakery. The little pink boxes her father brought home rested comfortably in her memory. She married, moved to the west coast and worked for Tri Met for many years but those little pink boxes would spill their contents all over her consciousness. 
Wanting out of Tri Met she took a baking course at a local cooking school. She bought a beat up building with a great door in a neighborhood full of potential and opened an Italian bakery. An ITALIAN BAKERY, no maple bars! If there is such a thing as a donut-loving neighborhood it  would be north Portland. One of the reasons I love living here. The bakery has survived being off of the beaten path for a long time because of her commitment to excellence. 

But change was inevitable. It kind of pissed her off when people would ask where the donuts are? and she hated being thought of as a coffee shop. And then wah-lah, Pat followed once again her desires and created a trattoria that still is a bakery. The interior has been remodeled and the menu reflects a true Italian environment and eatery.  
Here is a link to her website and menu: 
www.diprimadolci.com/


Lunch, dinner, bread, cookies by the pound, canoli, homemade pasta...actually everything is homemade. If you have been to Italy and crave real Ciabatta bread then you have arrived. Dean, her long time baker and dough guru turns out several daily varieties along with ciabatta and they are all worth trying. 

In that re-model I am repainting the mural over the door to the garden. The tree of bounty is a fictional fruit tree bearing many different kinds of fruit. The challenge in this is to have it seem as if the tree belongs to the many fruits without getting cute. I've decided to choose the following from Pat's list of favorite fruit: pomegranates, pears, lemons, plums, figs, cherries, tomatoes and olives. It seems to me that the leaves are the key ingredient to making this work. I started with the plum tree in my back yard as the base for the fruit to live. I decided to start with the fruit at the tips and not get too carried away with too much fruit and leaves but let each area grow in relationship to the other branches. 

The learning out come on day one is have the right sized ladder. I have to remove the tomatoes because I was about two feet too low. 

I'm using acrylics with a lightfastness of 1, golden gel medium so I have to erase with wall paint.

Thanks for visiting. Now go eat bread.