Are you down with OPB?

No, not Oregon Public Broadcasting, though they are alright, too. Other peoples' blogs. I'm reading Kevin and Vana's regularly. Jen's is a sweet adventure blog, she was just recently kicking it on the beach in Costa Rica. Stefan and Bernie did a great job of documenting their round-the-world trip in 2007; their blog is dead, but it's a good read. Our feerless leader Dar has written some pretty funny stuff while on sabbatical in the land of Oz. 

Update: Laurel has one, documenting her research in Guatemala. Amy in Mexico. Anyone else? 

The food co-op has a blog, where you can see member specials and whatnot.

Storycorps

Storycorps is one of my favorite NPR features, I could probably link to it ever week. It consists of oral history interviews, generally with older people who have done some living. I missed this one last friday cause was surfing, finally listened to it just now. This one is about racism in America.

Sri Lankan Egg Curry

Sri Lankan egg curry is a great dish. First time I made it was when we did an indian dinner with Anu, an SDSU/UCSB joint program student. She found the recipe for me. What makes it Sri Lankan is the use of fennel in the spice mix. It's your basic south Indian curry otherwise. Made it for BenandLisa et al. this weekend. 

You're supposed to food process the onions/garlic/ginger before you cook them, but I didn't feel like it. Sauteed 'em a bit, and then used a stick blender.  

Here it is blended, with tomatoes and coconut milk. Kinda thin.

Cooked the sauce down for maybe an hour. Colour/flavor got more interesting.

Sri Lankan Egg Curry recipe:

spice mix:

1t fennel

1t cumin

1t corriander

1t fenugreek

curry sauce:

1t mustard seeds

black pepper

2 onions

garlic

1" piece of ginger

~20 curry leaves

~1T chili powders (made it reasonably hot)

a chipotle

26 oz can tomatoes

stock

turmeric

14 oz can coconut milk

salt

23 hardboiled eggs

toast the seeds in a cast iron skillet on low heat for 5-10 min. 

cool. 

grind in a coffee grinder reserved for indian spices.

heat mustard seeds with oil in a covered pot, med/high heat.

let them explode a bit.

add onions/garlic/ginger/curry leaves, saute 5-10 min.

add chili powders, curry powder, grind some pepper

deglaze with chipotle, tomatoes, stick blender it

add coconut milk, turmeric, stock/bouillon cube, some salt

(I rinsed the cans with water and added that to the pot along with some super cooked down stock).

cook it down till the colour gets better and it tastes good.

have a friend peel a bunch of hard boiled eggs (cooked 20 min).

quarter them lengthwise, add to pot, stir lightly, cover

let it sit for 20 min or so for flavour to mingle.

served it with 2c brown 2c white post-apartheid south africa rice.

served 7 adults, with leftovers of curry, not rice.  

Nixtamal

I got some frozen nixtamal at albertsons a while ago, and have been playing around with it. I'm beginning to think it is a cursed ingredient as both times I've managed to scorch the pot -- maybe it's bad karma cause nixtamal is usually used to make menudo (tripe, gross) or pozole (pork, no thanks). But anyway, I've basically used it as an extra ingredient in traditional-ish chili recipes. In theory I like the frozen kind better than the canned kind, seems like cooking it in decent stock is way better than them cooking it in some random liquid. 

The pics are nixtamal chili with some other native grains added to thicken it: wild rice, red quinoa, amaranth. This particular batch I took over to Traves' as thanks for letting me watch the Blazers game that night. They killed the Suns, the highlight being this little flurry. 

100Cookbooks

The 'list' feature in blogspot is really annoying, it took me forever to enter in and organize my cookbooks. I think they are all there, down the side of the blog, now. In some semblance of order, but no ranking is implied. At some point I'll probably do specific recommendations beyond the name dropping I already do....

Jason Segel on Fresh Air

Haven't been feeding the blog what with spring break and all, will get to the back log soon. But, heard this this morning on Fresh Air Weekend. Great, funny, long interview. James Franco, one of his Freaks and Geeks co-stars, also was interviewed by Terry Gross somewhat recently. Both interviews are highly, highly recommended.

Death Valley Trip

Sara, R/S/L, me. We left sunday morning. Weather was a bit iffy, it rained in SB that morning, and with the front passing it was forecast to be windy in the desert. C'est la vie, damn the torpedoes, onwards and upwards....

Took the back way around LA, 126-5-14. Sweet. Snow in the San Gabriels. Mojave (the town) was windy as heck. The windmills on the ridges with snowy Tehachapis in the background made a nice scene. We passed alot of flowers, in retrospect we should have stopped, cause they were better in the Mojave area than the DV area. We were planning on camping at the Trona Pinnacles, where episodes of Star Trek, etc, were filmed, that night. But it was blowing about 60 mph, and the dry lake bed in the area caused that whole valley to be a dust bowl. So we ventured on into the park via Wildrose Rd. The campground was at 4200 feet, and snowy Telescope Peak was not that far away. It got cold. Calzone for dinner. Yummy. The highlight of the day was that I only fell down/got blown over once by the wind. Though I also only got out of the car once....

Next day. Left my hot pink nalgene bottle on the roof overnight, it was frozen/slushy in the morning. Slow morning getting warmed up. Hot chocolate. Sara brought a cornucopia of breakfast items. Mmm, lingonberry preserves. Moved on down the line to Stovepipe Wells. Went below sea level starting there. R/S/L branched off to go to Vegas for the AAG conference. Death Valley was dusty, but not as bad as Trona. I shot pictures of flowers with various cameras. Sara took it all in. It's past my bedtime and I am writing poorly. We ended up driving the famous part of the park at dusk. It was nice. Quiet. Less people. Saw a coyote. Camped on the dirt road that goes south from Ashford Mill. Shot some star trails, we'll see how they turn out when the slide film gets developed. Lots of shooting stars. A UFO, too -- someone's campfire a ways further down the road. Guess that makes it an IFO.

Next day.  Turned out we camped in a pretty nice area. Early morning light is always good, and it led to lots of shadows on the mountains. Drove out thru Shoshone, Baker, etc. The road was pretty most of the way to Baker. I15 was kinda meh. No surprise. Funniest thing this day was there was a butterfly migration going on, and they were committing seppuku on our windshield. Sara isn't big on death, so when a couple got stuck on the wipers she ran them, flicking them off, so she wasn't reminded of the havoc we were causing. So. Lots of driving, some beautiful country. A nice trip.

I had 2 Nikkormat bodies, and used 3 lenses: a 300, 200, and 20. Also a olympus 750uz digi and an olympus 1030sw digi. The 750 is nice cause you can shoot it manually even though it's a relatively cheap digi camera. As of right now you can see the photos from the 750 here. I had to write a program in IDL to automatically remove a glitch in the photos from the 1030, which took a little while, but they are up now. 

This guy has some really bitchin' images -- he stitched together frames to make 180 to 360 degree panoramas. In 2005, the year Death Valley was a lake, due to el niño rain

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I'd been across the country 11 times in a car as a kid, though the last time was in 1993. Of course there have been about 20 road trips in Baja since then, but the American west has largely eluded me. Because it's been a while, I like watching road movies: Two-lane Blacktop, Vanishing Point, Electra Glide in Blue, Smokey and the Bandit, the Great Smokey Roadblock, Every Which Way But Loose/Any Which Way You Can, Wristcutters, the Go-Getter, Into the Wild. I also recommend Gerry, a supremely slow movie, filmed in Death Valley.

Miracle Fruit I

We drugged ourselves, a dollar a pop, last night. Sara, Keely/Traves, Tammy, me. There's a lot of info out there on the interweb already, but I'll throw in my 2 cents. The tabs lasted about 1/2 hour for us. We were eating bread between tastings to provide a buffer of neutral food in the stomach, but it seemed like the bread hastened the demise of the effect, so I'd recommend eating normal food before, rather than during. We didn't go that crazy with food items, mostly we were doing a demo run for a larger party in the future. Anyways.

We had alot of citrus, which I zested, cause that's what I do. I'm drying the orange and lemon zest for cooking, and put the lime zest in with some gin to make limecello. 

Blood oranges, navel oranges, lemons, limes were all really sweet. Pears in lemon juice were a so so item, the pears were already good, and not enough lemon juice bonded to the cut surfaces to make a differenfce. I've been eating a gallon of yogurt a week for about 5 years, so I'm very familiar with the taste, it was pretty different, in a weird way. Kombucha from the co-op became much more drinkable. Pickled cocktail onions were very odd; the flavour was essentially totally masked, just the crunchy texture was left. Salsa became very, very sweet. Goat cheese became more cheesecake-like; I think everyone who tries miracle fruit has the same observation. Chocolate stout was changed a bit, but not that much. Vinegars still smelled nasty, but were drinkable; but just because you can, doesn't mean you should... The one thing I wouldn't really recommend is sorbet. I had made coconut milk/banana/lime sorbet, that was slightly sour, but basically pretty good. It was sweeter on miracle fruit, but you couldn't really eat anything else after, it became sour in comparison, so definitely save sorbet for the very end. 'Twas fun.

Ideas for next time: salt and vinegar potato chips, strawberries, ______

Music we can't listen to anymore

OnionAV has a thing where they all answer a question posed by a reader. The jist is that it's a pretty damn cool website, and they are trying to break down the walls between deliver and receiver of pop-culture ephemera. This week's one is interesting, and there's a TAL mention.

Paris, Texas

Great movie, great writeup of it in the OnionAV. Namechecking Two-lane Blacktop is always good, too. Highly recommended.

Victory Garden Revisited

Heard about the new organic garden at the White House on NPR, it's a blurb at the end of this uplifting story. Here's a longer NYT article about it. Sweet. Also Barack doesn't like beets, but is pro-arugula, sweeter.

Sweet Lou Rocking the Pasta Machine

The Blazers lost in overtime to the Cleveland Lebrons, but otherwise a pretty nice evening. Sweet Lou is a really good kid. 

Staub Dutch Oven

Saw this onsale (slightly) at the food network site today. It's the Coq au Vin version of their dutch oven. Beautiful.

WIldflowers I

While digging for the butterfly pic I found some cool old images. Also, going to the desert this weekend to see flowers. These are California Poppies in Ellwood.

I'm a social butterfly

Wrong Side of History, This American Life episode 376, contains one of the funniest stories I've ever heard: Adam Davidson, the money wizard dude tried to convince his cousin who had dropped out of college that he was making a bad choice. Also, there's a unicorn mention later in the show. The last story isn't funny, but is interesting -- it's about race relations in Chicago in the early 80s.

Cash/Onion II

This time they focus on his early career. Essential.

4

The Zeppelin album that Stairway is on. My birthday. And now, the ranking of UCSB in a top surf colleges in america list. 

But apparently not an available floor in this elevator, thanks for the pic Sophia.

No Bad News

At the end of this story, they played the riff from the Patty Griffin song 'No bad news.' So I finally got my Patty mention on the blog. Actually I think you only get the music if you go to the NPR website and listen to the 17 March 'All things considered' in entirety, but whatever.

phD Comics: Sustainability

The world probably IS coming to an end. And I feel fine. Or something. Photo courtesy of Kailen, used without permission.

Check out the 3/13/2009 one.

Nice find, Tammy.

Don't Mess with Wisconsin

NPR, how much do I love thee?

Reconnect with your Inner Tortoise

Give a listen to http://www.wpr.org/BOOK/, the 'Facing Time' episode. Sara found this.

The bit about the 10,000 year clock was cool. Also a mention of the slow food movement, 2nd mention of it in the blog today....

The dude around the 41 minute mark was funny, he seemed apologetic about being 'slow.' I could beat him in a slowness competition. Easy. 

Miracle Fruit Background Research

Mike found this story on the web. We're going to do it soon, I just ordered 60 tabs from this guy.

The jist is miracle fuit (terrible, terrible name) messes with the sour flavor receptors on your tongue, making sour things sweet.

Update: I'm Googling "miracle fruit" yogurt, because I have a ton of it, as per usual. This search is pulling up some good stuff.

this is a nice post, with a Harold McGee mention :)

Dang it if the OnionAV didn't try miracle fruit a while back, dunno how I missed it.

Another reaction. From a physics nerd.

A little youtube action. This is EPIC!!!!! Cute couple. Alas, they didn't try the beer, but still, best thing I've seen on youtube since this -- a little Bright Eyes 'Landlocked Blues' cover action.

Updates:
Party 1
Party 2

Alice Waters on 60 Minutes

The last tv I watched this weekend, and for the foreseeable future, was a piece on Alice Waters. I'm glad she exists, though I think she is famous more for her restaurant than her writing, and I don't like restaurants... There are other vegetarian cooks I like more, Mollie Katzen and Edward Espe Brown, and for the slow-food stuff I stick with the Euros: Julia, Jamie O, Patricia Wells, Claudia Roden et al. But anyway, the interview was a bit odd, Lesley Stahl seemed very much to be a square who is divorced from food preparation, and was it really necessary for Alice to cook an egg in a big spoon over an open fire? I mean, you can argue for real ingredients without arguing that everyone has to use crazy techniques. Anyway, Gawker has a nice piece on it, too.

Update: Julia and Patricia are both American, of course, but they are writing about Europe.... plus the slow food organization is head quartered in Italy.

Cat Sitting, Day 2 / Night 3

Ahhh, tv, how much do I love you? Actually, there's alot of filler on the food network nowadays. But being able to watch the college basketball tourneys was sweet, though 'Cuse finally lost. Also watched 3:10 to Yuma, which Keely had via netflix. Kinda meh. Some plot holes. Nala seemed to like it quite a bit, though.

First 2 nights I brought food, cooked tonight. Keely had some black rice from Thailand, made sort of a pilaf with rice, a little bit of pine nuts, some red sauce, a sausage. Pretty good. Yes.

Ryan et al. came over to watch some basketball. Sweet Lou had never played with a cat before. They did a really nice job of tiring eachother out. 

Food Network

Having access to cable tv for the first time since 2002 -> Food Network viewing. For starters, this video about chicken cacciatore is entertaining. 

Saturday morning with the Brits: Jamie O and Nigella. His current show/book seems to be pretty good. The carpaccio with french beans he made looked really good, will have to give that a whirl. Cooking cranberry beans with summer savory was a good trick, too. The one funny thing about him, he has a cookware deal with t-fal, so everything is non-stick. I hate non-stick. He uses metal utensils with 'em, too, which is pretty silly. That said, I own 6 of his cookbooks, and they are all interesting. I like him.

Nigella is just ridiculous. Her voice, plus she is flirting with the camera the whole time. She doesn't focus on technique at all, just ingredients, which I quibble with, but her obvious love for food is contagious. She made british-style indian food in this episode, quasi-authentic, but whatever, it looked tasty. Might try the north indian chicken curry, and the pomegranate raita.

Saturday evening, Iron Chef America marathon -- 3 episodes with different cheeses being the secret ingredient. A little lame of a secret ingredient but c'est la vie. Mario Batali, godfather of this blog, knocked his out of the park. In the third one Bobby Flay was destroyed. I don't understand why people are combining seafood and cheese; it happened at least once in each episode, it's against the rules. Episode 4 had a variety of tuna. Morimoto scored 59/60. Really, really beautiful stuff. The challenger did well, too. The pic is of tuna tartare which he added to his restaurant's menu after the show.

Rogue in Newport, OR has a deal with Morimoto, they brew 3 beers with his name on them. This guy looks good.

Disappointments? Seemed like every dude who didn't have a beard had a soul patch, so guess soul patches are in style/overdone, now. No mention of organic food at all. A ton of advertising of lame processed food/a ton of lame advertising. Typing this whilest listening to commercial-free NPR.... All-clad was everywhere. All-clad is alright, I have a few pieces, and it is made in America, but I don't like monopolies, plus there is better stuff out there. On the flip-side I was happy to see a Staub Piece mixed in with the also good Le Creuset.  Also, Nigella used stainless steel lined copper.  

Photos from Newport

Dylan cherried up my laptop, and in the process of copying files from the old, nearly dead, harddrive I found some pics that my dad sent me a couple of years ago that are nice.

The view from the upstairs deck: the bay, the Newport Bay Bridge (a 1930s WPA project), and the ocean in the background. They are at elevation, so get snow at the coast.

Koinobori and the cat guarding the front entry way.

Found this wrought iron sculpture during the move out period in IV a couple of years ago. It's cool, and simple. I think it looks better hanging, but my dad has a tendency to hit his head on things, so it might be dangerous....

Koinobori

Koinobori (carp kites/windsocks) are from Japan, and are traditionally flown on Children's Day, May 5. My dad got one in Hawaii way back when, and I had it in my bedroom as a kid. Sushi Deli in San Diego had a huge one on their wall. I have one in my IV place. They are beautiful. Here are a few images: