Miracle Fruit II

So we did it again. Keely, Kyle, me, Michael, Mike, Sara. The spread was bigger this time, although I was drunk off of the peach-pit-cello and a Black Butte Porter, which affected the effect it had on me. But everyone else seemed happy. The other funny thing was I had Le Loup playing, and periodically someone would bump into the stereo, and we restarted it, playing it on a loop, so to speak.
We tried the following things, with Keely's ranking from 1 (low) to 3 (high) in parenthesis: strawberries(2), lemons(3), limes(3), grapefruit(2), raspberries(1), rhubarb(3), apples(1), mystery cherries from the garden(1); 3 kombuchas {Hibiscus(3), Guava(2), #7(2)}, wine, tea, chelada(1), Valentina hot sauce(3); salt-n-vinegar potato chips(3), dark chocolate(1), umeboshi(2), pickled mushrooms(1), pickled veggies(2), pickled onions(3), olives(3), jelly beans(2).
Chocolate & raspberries were particularly disappointing to me. Best stuff was lemons, limes, rhubarb, strawberries, salt-n-vinegar chips.

The drug deal.

MF 1
MF Research

Update: To make up for thursday night I did it again last night, solo & sober. Had a good 30 minutes of eating leftover citrus and sharp cheddar cheese, it started to fade, but kept going reasonably well for another hour. Was drinking cheap wine just because I could. Also yogurt and strawberries, even though I wasn't really hungry, because it's interesting what miracle fruit does to yogurt. Good Times.

How Low Can You Go?

No, not an obscure Hot to Trot reference (how low can you go, Indio Oats?), but an NPR series from late April about making family dinners for under 10$. The first entry is a chickpea stew that sounded pretty good to me. 2nd was Ming Tsai doing chicken-and-corn fried rice. 3rd was alot of stuff: gnocchi, skate, and cream of asparagus soup. He did the gnocchi with baked potatoes, which was interesting, and a good idea. The 4th entry has gluten, dairy, and swine, so I won't be making it for Clare any time soon...

In a similar vein, Slate has a nice article on what things are better to make and what are better to buy. It covers bagels, cream cheese, yogurt, jam, crackers, and granola. Her granola recipe was from Alton Brown, so you know she is an edumacated cook. Good find, Eliza.

Update: they ran a listener recipe, a lentil dish, by an american living in Pichilemu, Chile, one of the great surf towns of the world.

Roberto Begnini/OnionAV

Wonderful interview. He IS good in the Jarmusch movies.

Hot Rod

This is a pretty funny movie, and a pretty good article about it. BUT, there's also video of a Natalie Portman SNL skit in the write up, and THAT is golden.

ManU vs. Barcelona

Played soccer for 7 years as a kid. Watch european club soccer obsessively when I have cable tv, and the world cup, too. But haven't followed things much lately. Though the world cup in SA next year will be fun. Anyway. ManU are basically the NY Yankees of soccer, but I still like them for some reason. I think it was the mythology of Beckham, how he was so good at such a young age. Having the flamboyant french keeper, Fabien Barthez, helped, too.

ManU had a couple of scoring opportunities in the first 10 minutes, and then Barcelona scored out of nowhere, and the rest of the first half was largely possession soccer, kinda meh. Nothing really quotable either. It's sad. Though Thierry Henry plays for Barcelona now, so there is hope for some excitement.

2nd half, better soccer:
"All he had to do was blow on it and we did have put it in the net" {Messi of Barcelona missed a cross}
Xavi of Barcelona hit the post
Messi got a beautiful goal off of a header of a Xavi cross: "he did it with style"
Lots of opportunities each way.
Ronaldo with a cheap shot on Puyol, yellow card
"Time is certainly not on their side, and the way they have played hasn't helped, either"
Barcelona is playing beautiful soccer, they aren't sitting on their lead
Barcelona wins 2-nill. Barcelona is good.
"as we speak, Rome is burning, it has been set ablaze by the Catalan conquerors"

BTW, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a good movie.

Hank Williams/OnionAV

Yet another interesting read in the Nashville or bust series. He probably should have been the first entry... The story associated with "Your Cheatin' Heart" is interesting. The songs are great, no surprise, but I learned quite a bit, too. Good read.

The King of Kong

This is a documentary about the quest to have the highest score in Donkey Kong. It's been out for a while, finally got around to watching it, instant viewer style on netflix. The 1st of 5 OnionAV articles about it, the review, provides a general overview without giving any spoilers { II, III, IV, V }. You might surmise that 5 mentions in onionav for one silly movie about Donkey Kong means that it actually isn't that silly, and you would be correct. It's no Cool Hand Luke, but it is interesting.

Note: I wrote this post on 25 May 2009, Geek Pride Day.

Sunday Dinner

Fried ricotta with a pepper from the garden, really really cooked down red sauce, and post-apartheid South Africa rice w/ black quinoa, too. Natural lighting, so a decent, non-yellow, picture.

All the Real Girls

This is the 2nd movie by David Gordon Green, his first was George Washington, which I loved. All... has a pretty simple plot, boy meets girl, etc. but the execution is great. I don't know if it's the film stock he uses or filters or what, but the colours in his movies are very cool and distinctive. There are also some interesting insert shots of natural scenes and decayed southern towns. It's a very honest, un-Hollywood depiction of life in small town America. And aside from that, one of the great indie actresses, Zooey Deschanel, is the female lead, and she is wonderful. 

The commentary track is one of the best I've heard. They explained how the actors dealt with certain situations: one guy stayed up for 2 days and got drunk to do a scene where he had to look all haggard, one guy who had quit drinking in real life got super drunk to do a scene in a bar, Zooey got her haircut instead of wearing a wig when her character got her haircut. In writing that last sentence, I realize those things might sound trivial, but actors never actually do those things, it is always fake. Acting as it were. The movie was written by the director and the male lead. They had written the female lead, but they cast Zooey because she had all sorts of ideas for the part. So the movie felt very real, the guys wrote the guy parts and she did the girl part. Finally, there was just a ton of name checking of influences, and hearing the list made me realize why I like the movie so much: Sigur Ros; Neil Young; Werner Hertzog; Thunderbolt and Lightfoot; Dutch Harbor, Alaska; the Last Picture Show; Time Bandits; and Quick Change, specifically the "crying on the inside" clown bit. Highly Recommended.   

Diners, Drive-Ins, Dives/Food Network

I'm catsitting once again, which means two things: weekend internet access, and food network. Watched 'Diners, Drive-Ins, Dives' just now for the first time. Really enjoyed the episode featuring a french place in Sacramento and a basque place in Boise, Idaho. There's a basque chicken recipe in Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells that my dad made pretty often when I was young. Mmmm, might have to do something basque-style soon.

John Doe + Sadies/Fresh Air

I really enjoyed this interview with John Doe and a couple of the Sadies. But I'm also using it as an excuse to plug the Sadies. I learned about them because they have a great relationship with Neko Case. Their live album {In Concert, Vol. 1} is wonderful; first disc is just them, second disc is them plus singers they have worked with, including Neko.

TAL, Little Saigon

This week's TAL began with a bit about Little Saigon in Orange County, CA, which got me thinking of the Little Saigon Cookbook by Ann Le. It's a wonderful cookbook, vietnamese food obviously. I've only made one dish out of it, 'crisy coconut and turmeric crepes' with a salad platter, fish sauce/lime juice dipping sauce, and I think some wild salmon. Wonderful. The book is well written, not americanized, but it is approachable.  

Int'l Beard and Mustache Comp

Nice story about the 2009 version, which is in Anchorage. Ryan competed in the 2004 in Berlin.

Ice Cream & Sorbet

Green & Black's organic chocolate ice cream plus homemade blood orange sorbet. Pretty damn tasty. Pretty, too.

Peter Matthiessen

Heard on Writer's Almanac that today is Peter Matthiessen's birthday. He's a wonderful writer. There isn't an allmusic/allmovie/imdb for books, I don't think, but there is wikipedia. Everything I've read I've enjoyed, although looking at the list, I need to read more. Anyway, these are all great:

• At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965) {missionaries in the amazon}
• Killing Mister Watson (1990) {trilogy about life in the everglades}
  
• Lost Man's River (1997)
• Bone by Bone (1999)

• Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution (1969)
• The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972) {travel through africa}
  
• The Snow Leopard (1978) {travel through the himalaya}
  
• In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983)
  
• Indian Country (1984)

Wake the Family Dinner from it's Coma

This is a really good video of a talk about eating real food, by NYT food writer Mark Bittman. He's a good speaker, funny, good info. There are other interesting looking vids on the site, too.

"There is no good reason for eating as much meat as we do, and I say this as a man who has eaten his share of corned beef in his life."

Jesusita from Space

Great, huge images. From the ALI sensor, which I hadn't heard of before, not sure why. More info on it.

Brick/OnionAV

Brick is one of the best movies I've seen. Totally blew me away, like Donnie Darko did. Both movies involve high school aged characters, but aren't teen movies at all. All of the dialogue in Brick comes from 50s era noir fiction. It's jarring, but awesome. The onionav new cult canon article does a good job of representing the movie.

Good Tori Interview

Filled with lots of Tori-speak. Good find, Scott.

Tell 'em Tiny Montgomery Said Hello

Cool story about bootlegging/dylan/shakespeare on npr this morning. {well, mostly shakespeare, but I was stoked to hear a snippet of TIny Montgomery whilest biking this morning}.

Ramin Bahrani/OnionAV

The 2nd good interview on onionav today. His movies sound interesting.

Charles Grodin/OnionAV

An interesting read. Not sure what I think of it, but it's interesting.

New Tori, Streaming

It is out today. Give a listen.

'give' and 'strong black vine' are sweet. as all of the reviewers have said, it's freaking long, and you hear interesting things here and there.

Charles Napier/OnionAV Random Roles

Oftentimes the Random Roles feature on OnionAV is very good. Well, the one today with Charles Napier is unbelievable. Very highly recommended. Roger will love it.

One Big Cabbage

The offending cabbage in the kitchen. The cast iron dutch oven to the right of it is a 4Q one, so you can tell how massive the thing was.

I was given a huge cabbage a couple of weeks ago. Lou walked in with it, bigger than his head, I scrambled for a camera but it was too heavy for him to hold it comfortably, so missed the shot. We finally used it last night, did cabbage rolls. The recipe is in a lot of different cookbooks, Moosewood, MtAoFC2, Molto Italiano. I loosely followed the Molto Italiano version. It took alot of time, we ate at about 9. It felt like some of Julie's posts in her Julie/Julia blog, a really long slog in the kitchen, with good, but not great results. I really liked the leftover boiled cabbage leaves, sweet and tender and tasty. Made 2 fillings. The potato/ricotta/sausage one was good, but needed more potato and ricotta. Potato and cabbage seems like a natural pairing, probably read about it in Dr. Zhivago or something, but it seemed like all of the recipes I read involved alot of meat. The other one was a buffalo meatball type of mixture. But I didn't have enough buffalo so bulked it up with egg and poha (pressed rice). Not too exciting. More meat and/or more aggresive seasoning would have helped.

Stuffed Cabbage Leaves recipe:

discard the first few outer leaves of a cabbage.
make filling(s)
saute garlic in a stove top/oven safe dish (le crueset)
add red sauce, warm
remove, rinse 14 leaves
put in boiling water, in batches, for about 8 min.
put in cold water
cut off the thick, lower part of the stem, about 4"
lay out flat
put a dollop of stuffing on, and roll up, burrito-style
put in the baking dish, add some wine
375 1hr covered
That whole process took 4 hours.

The kitchen mess after the dish went in the oven.

The final result.

Collard Stems & Beet Greens

So this is basically the polar opposite of the Dandelion Green post. Happy food discoveries. I got a bunch of collard greens at the farmer's market last weekend and used the greens in a jungle curry-like thing. Was going to chuck the stems in the worm bin, but figured I'd better see if they were eaten by people, and they are. So did a simple saute of garlic, chopped collard stems, and beet greens, with a little red sauce. Quite nice. I dig beet greens, alot of people don't eat think they are edible, so my guy at the farmer's market saves the beet tops for me. The best thing, when you cook them in cream they turn the cream pink. It's a cool, simple sauce.

FYI, I have been chucking carrot tops into the wormbin, but it looks like that isn't necessary, either. Frugality....

Old San Marcos/Painted Cave/154

Keely/Traves/me went on a little drive yesterday to sample live fuel moisture (LFM) in the front range. I noted in one of the Jesusita posts that LFM is very high right now down in the Santa Monica Mountains where LA county fire samples it, but we went to check it here. The veg looked really happy, it's really amazing that it burned -- but when it's windy anything is possible.

From lower Painted Cave Rd., burn scar center-right, but lots of happy veg, too.

Fire line on E Camino Cielo

Big Scar coming down the 154

Right up to the road, it crossed in one place

Interesting islands of unburned veg, I think that's the high LFM signal

Guest Post -- Candied Pecans

As thanks for doing the big vanilla order ScottO sent me some candied pecans that he made, and they are pretty darn tasty, so I asked him to write a blurb on them:

With spring undeniably at the door, the last nut batch(es) of this season rolled out. As expected, my response to a tricky economy is calorie rich, dense foods. Nuts are part of the rites of winter, at least in my house. I started on the stove top, caramelizing sugar then adding in nuts and dried fruit. Moved on to oven only; likely just laziness. The last batch were pecans soaked in maple syrup with cinnamon, cayenne, cardamom and coco. I was distracted with spring frolicking ways, and forgot to give this batch the final dusting of cayenne and coco. Still, they were mailworthy.

Running, Tarahumara Style

There was a really interesting story on Bob Edwards Weekend this sunday about the Tarahumara Indian style of running. They run crazy distances without stopping, like 150 miles. Clare and Jen, this is for you guys...

I can't post a direct link to the show but go here and click on the first Saturday May 16 9:22 pm post. It's the 'author Christopher McDougall' story.

Here's a brief blurb on the story.

Friday Love

Not sure if I'll get the Steve Earle covering Townes album, but I do really like this pic.

Had a great science meeting, fly on the wall style, with a bunch of UCSB professors about the Jesusita/Tea/Gap fires and potential projects.

Right now I've got a massive amount of vanilla stinking up the lab.

And some dude on half.com listed Veronica Mars season I,II; BSG I,II,III; and Firefly. All for a good price, and with combined shipping I save money. Are you kidding me? Bought them all. I shotgunned them with netflix, now I can savor them.

Finally, Sara got the Mex botany fellowship, so she has money to do Baja trips. In the Toyota Tundra that her lab owns. She studies fog/lichen, in central baja.

And Terry Gilliam is going to start the Don Quixote movie soon. Lost in La Mancha is epic, eh?

A good friday.

Organic Vanilla Beans

Two posts on chocolate & zucchini got me excited about buying vanilla beans. Ordered a pound of Tahitian and a pound of Bourbon vanilla beans from an outfit in Colorado who has plantations in Papua New Guinea. I'm splitting the order with friends, if you read this and I forgot to ask you, you aren't my friend. Errr. I mean, if you want some let me know.

Reading about vanilla is kinda interesting, Bourbon/Tahitian are used for different things.

"infinite rewatch value" / the cult abides

It goes without saying that this is the funniest movie ever made, so an article praising it is shooting fish in a barrel, OnionAV style. The comments are better than the article, which is already pretty good.

the Coen Brothers/OnionAV

Nice article with a ton of info. And trailers.

Jesusita/Tea/Gap Ephemera

Thursday night, from Stearn's Wharf, from UCSB Geography

A map of the 96 homes burned/heavily damaged.

* We have met the enemy and it is us
* The chaparral is not our enemy
* Living with fire

Tea Fire 13 Nov 2008

Gap Fire 3 July 2008
timeline, photos

Fire on the Mountain was played at the end of Prairie Home Companion on 9 May 2009.

Here's a pic I took during the period when IV was covered in smoke & ash during the Gap Fire. The colours are pretty sweet. There are more on my picasa page.

Long Way Round/Long Way Down

Long Way Round is a motorcycle trip by Ewan Mcgregor and Charley Boorman, from London, through Asia and North America, to New York. I had heard about it a while ago, but it was languishing in my netflix queue, until their next trip, Long Way Down, from Europe to Capetown, came out. Except Long Way Round isn't available anymore from netflix, so I bought the boxed set. There's a website for the trips, too.

Only 1.5 episodes in, and it's riveting. I'm only able to tear myself away cause there are strawberries at the farmer's market. Well, I shotgunned the series last night. Got about 6 hours of sleep. I don't want to provide any spoilers, so I'll keep this brief. One great line by Ewan, "whatever happened to 3rd/4th/5th gear?" Baja is very much like that, you can be in 4 low for a week, easily, in the central part. And, Clare, yes, Ewan gets naked.

Also, they ran in to trouble with rivers in flood stage, which reminded me of the Costa Rica trip with James. It was a surf trip without surf, so we drove to the end of the Osa Penninsula, a really big rainforest national park. Checking out monkeys and what not. Going in was awesome, but it rained 15" at night, going out less so. Alot of road clearing, some road building. We had a gung-ho moment at first where we went charging across a flood plain, taking a few risks, thinking we made it out, until we came across a 6' deep river, called Agua Buena. Even if your spanish is terrible you can probably figure that one out. So we waited. And found a hatching turtle nest. Well, in Siberia they had an awfully similar experience, except the water there is 2 degrees C and they were on motorcycles.... You have to watch this dvd set!

When we went to SA we flew into Jo'burg, got a few extra camping items (stove, pots, plates, bowls, etc) and headed over to Kruger National Park. The huge Mercedes Unimogs were remarkably common, people would buy them in Europe and go on a trip down Africa, Cairo to Capetown. Well, that's not really safe anymore cause of the Sudan, so now the thing is Morocco to Capetown, but regardless, driving through Africa is a neat thing to think about. Alaska to Tierra del Fuego might happen too, who knows. Roadtrips....

Anyway, Ewan and Charley rode motorcycles through Europe and Africa. It is as interesting as Long Way Round, but quite different, because many people have done the trip before them, in fact they meet people on the road doing the same trip, but without support vehicles, so they aren't trailblazing, but it's still good tv. In Europe, the city of Siena in Italy was beautiful, and now I am even more jealous of Clare's trip there with her family. Gorgeous cathedral. Ewan and Charley happened to be there during an Alfa Romeo club gathering, so it was even more impressive seeing all of the classic cars in the beautiful old city. They ferried from Sicily to Tunisia, and drove through Libya to Egypt. Highlights have been the roman ruins in N. Africa and visiting the set of the house of Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle -- where no one recognized Ewan. Pretty funny. Alas, they lost the VE-25 tent from the first show, love that tent. They have MSR tents w/ mucho mosquito netting, probably a wise choice, though suboptimal in the Libyan sand storm. Oh. Ewan gets naked in this one, too.

Sudan was surprisingly mellow. Ethiopia was way greener than I expected after the whole famine in the 80s and whatnot. Kenya was a really big surprise to me. Because it has been famous for so long I assumed the animal watching experience would be uber yuppified, but where they were was still quite wild; Kenya looked like real Africa to me. Rwanda, Gorillas in the Mist-style, was sweet. Also, Ewan thought wild celery, a plant the gorillas really like to eat, smelled like rhubarb. Aah rhubarb, how much do I love thee? Vic Falls, sweet. Maun/the Okavango Delta in Botswana, sweet. Skeleton Coast, sweet. Southern Africa was gorgeous when we were there and it still looks to be lovely.

Dandelion Green Pesto & Candied Lime Peels

I taught myself how to cook, read all of the cookbooks my folks had. Tassajara Cooking, Moosewood, Cuisine of Armenia, Seasoned America, MtAoFC were the most interesting to read. One of the ways I improved was I force myself to not throw away mistakes. Thus when experiments go awry I pay the price, which helps me to learn what works and what doesn't. I'm not a very conservative cook, so some things get pretty weird. Case in point, I made Dandelion Green Pesto a couple of days ago. I wouldn't recommend it, dandelion greens are really really bitter. C'est la vie. {Speaking of which, Clotilde at Chocolate & Zucchini has a new post about radish leaf pesto, looks like her results are more interesting.} I had a similar reaction to candying lime peels, they aren't anywhere near as good as blood orange peels. Will be saving my lime zest for limecello from now on....

Update: Clotilde suggested using pistachio nuts to cut the dandelion bitterness and it worked. Pretty tasty pesto.

P-Funk/OnionAV/Uncle Jam Wants You

Gateways to geekery for P-Funk. There's a whole lot of rhythm going round. I saw Phish play a festival with P-Funk in '93 or '94. It was epic.

Adult Baby Food

I've missed alot of NPR this past week, Jesusita Fire/basketball playoffs and what not. Slowly catching up. This story about crappy food is shooting fish in a barrel to those of us in the choir, but the adult baby food line is borderline genius.

Houston 2, L*kers 2

Well, Houston isn't going to win it without Yao, but at least they are making the L*kers work for it. Denver is looking pretty good.

Sunset / Utah

Keely gets Sunset Magazine and one of the articles caught my eye. 'Follow the Red Rock Road' is subtitled 'In tumultuous times, find tranquility in the parks of southern Utah.' I really like Utah, the Escalante area, San Rafael Swell, Arches, the Anasazi Ruins in SE Utah.... The article struck a chord with me as we were on a car camping trip in Utah in Aug/Sep 2001. We were camping in BLM land in the middle of nowhere the whole trip, except for Sep 10 we were in a real campground - Calf Creek, and heard about Sep 11 from the campground host. Very surreal hearing something so messed up in such a beautiful place. It's kinda funny actually, my folks read about Calf Creek in Sunset Magazine back in the 70s, and we camped there every time we drove through Utah, which was often cause we drove cross country 10 times when I was a kid. 

This pic on the right was taken Sep 11. We did a hike down the Escalante River, and there was some Anasazi rock art in places. 

Everett Ruess

One of the classic mysteries in S/SE Utah had been what happened to Everett Ruess? He disappeared in the canyon country in the early 1900s. He is mentioned in a lot of books, and the book specifically about him is interesting. This morning NPR had a story about him, the mystery is solved. Alas, it's alot less romantic than what prior 'best guesses' were. 

Take Two -- the Movie Show

It's a great radio show on KCBX/KSBX. Most of their shows are archived. I'm highlighting shows about certain actors/directors, but every show is at the very least listenable. 

Highlights of 2005 and older shows include: Holiday Films (21 Nov), Jim Jarmusch (1 Aug), Sam Peckinpah (2 May), Steve McQueen (31 Jan & 7 Feb), Steve Buscemi (17 Nov 2003), James Coburn (25 Nov 2002).

Highlights of 2006: Robert Altman (4 Dec), Russ Meyer (28 Aug), Character Actors (20 Mar), Phillip Seymour Hoffman (6 Feb). 

Highlight of 2007: WIlliam Freidkin (18 Jun)

Highlights of 2008: Monsters/Special Effects (24 Nov & 1 Dec), Paul Newman (29 Sep), Sidney Pollack (Jun 9 & 16)

Highlights of 2009: Stanley Kubrick (Apr 6, 13, 20, 27)

Jim Jarmusch / the Limits of Control

Jim Jarmusch has a new movie out and he's done press with my fave people: onionav and npr.

Also, Take Two, the movie show on KCBX/KSBX did a show about him on 1 August 2005.

I like him, but he's definitely a cult movie maker. And even then some of his stuff is just too slow. Dead Man, for instance, is very hard to watch if you are already sleepy.

I really liked Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Night on Earth, Coffee and Cigarettes, Broken Flowers.

I loved Mystery Train, Ghost Dog.

Catsitting II

Fire seems under control, so I can write about frivolous things again.

Keely did a surprise trip home, and Traves is at a wedding, so I'm catsitting Nala again. Watching tv again. I've seen a few interesting things.
This morning there was a Blues Traveller show broadcast on one of the public access channels. Not sure why it fit their programming, but it was pretty sweet.
Rachel Ray. Yes, she's incredibly cute-sy and annoying. I remember when she first showed up on food network 2001 or so. She can't cook. Somehow she has become famous. Whatever. She was making sloppy joes, but the theme of the show was making lots of food to feed lots of (baseball playing) kids, so she called them Sloppy Joe Dimaggios. I thought that was pretty clever, actually. But then she revealed she was a fair weather Red Sox fan, and lost all of the goodwill she had accumulated.
The Carl's Jr, Padma Lakshmi ad is really good. I like her. Supermodel. She was on the food network when it first started. Not a great technical cook, but her food looked pretty good. She had a funny, semi-awkward tv style.
The Honda Insight ad is good, too. That's a nice looking car. The first time I saw a Prius I couldn't believe how ugly it was.

Watching Ingrid Hoffman's show right now. First time for me. She is Columbian; has a decent website. She is cooking with her mom on mother's day. Bueno. The arroz con leche looked great. Also the fried/smashed/refried plantains that Keely/Traves do. Good show.

Oh man, just went to the farmer's market, copious strawberries, and they are pretty good now. Almost didn't make it, Nala didn't want to let me go. Crawled into my lab and was purring up a storm.

Jesusita Fire Saturday

6am. 57 degrees. 89% humidity. Onshore winds. Big ol' marine layer sitting on us.

The active parts of the fire are burning towards the crest, and wind isn't supposed to do much for the next few days, so I think we are ok.

The perimeter on this is from yesterday, but the fire detects are up-to-date, so you can see it's pretty much burning to the top.

Doc put the friday night data on Google Earth and made it 3D.

He has a brand new post this morning, w/ saturday morning data.

Here is the pretty little marine layer in the socal bight this morning.
Seems like everyday I read on twitter the 'joke' that the person thought 'jesusita fire' was a contraction for 'jesus it's a fire.' tired of that.

Jesusita Fire Thursday Night/Friday

Last night got kinda crazy.

I biked over to Keely's, catsitting again, and took photos at about 5 and 7. And then again at 8 when it got dark. The fire went dramatically westward, even crossing the 154. This morning there was major ash fall in IV. The fire is supposedly at least 5 miles wide across the front range. 1 Geography professor lost their home, and quite a few came close. It's cooler today and the wind is pushing it up towards camino cielo. Zaca, Gap, Tea, now this.

5pm. somewhat benign

7pm uhoh

8pm double uhoh

Red Moon

Red Dawn, from the garden this morning

Keely pointed me to The Frame, which has some nice pics. A little UCSB pride in the last one.

Mercury Press International has a lot of pics of burnt homes.

Friday (noon) 1km visible

It is an offical fire, finally. It is up on InciWeb.

Over at Keely's, catsitting. On the ride over the fire looked really unimpressive (5:30 pm). Smoke lazily rising straight up. Where it was burning yesterday it just looked like weak smoke. They called in a DC-10 today, so looks like it is doing it's job, at least under low winds. Also, the active part of the fire looked to be way up towards the crest, so Goleta is looking alright.