Braun Stick Blender

Hello Eliza, this is what I look like. Love, Seth's stick blender.

When it rains, it pours

Lots of posts today. Got a little love from the Patagonia 30% off sale in the mail today.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Bee

OnionAV New Cult Canon.

Trailer for new Coen Brothers movie

Oh yeah!

Lime Buttermilk Sherbet

Sherbets have dairy, sorbets don't. Got some organic valley buttermilk 1/2 price from the co-op, did a little research, and happyness ensued. Perhaps this one sounds a little odd, but many people have tried it and liked it.

Lime Buttermilk Sherbet:
1Q buttermilk
1 1/4 c sugar
3/4 c freshly squeezed lime juice
zest from the limes
Make a syrup with the sugar, juice, and zest. Cool. Stir in the buttermilk. Freeze. Stick blender. Freeze. I didn't add booze to this for no particular reason. It was a little tiny bit icy -- you can see crystals in the pic. Still good.
Umbrella sorbet post

Apricot Sorbet

I made apricot sorbet quite a while ago, when apricots were in season, but posts slip through the cracks not having the interweb at home.... Actually i'm not even sure what went in to it beyond the very very basic recipe I'm writing down. It could have been this simple, though not likely.

Apricot Sorbet:
2lbs ripe apricots
simple syrup -- 1c sugar, 1c water
little bit of booze

umbrella sorbets post.

Dolphin

My friend James sent me a link to a portfolio from the recent south swell. Lots of cool images from an airplane, but this dolphin one from a pier is particularly sweet.

WWWD?

Clicked on a Google Ad. Nice shirt.

Falafel

Keely rocked the falafel last night, a dinner party to break in my "new" couch. I had it once before when r/s went to Albania. Now it's back with r/s/l off to WI. We followed the falafel recipe from Claudia Roden's 'Book of Middle Eastern Food', one of the best cookbooks ever written. The 'Goha' stories are hilarious. General jist is soak dried chickpeas for 24 hours, drain, put in food processor in batches, add onion/garlic/spices, make balls, fry at 350. Buy the book.

Slow shutterspeed fun

Rhubarb, the Victoria variety, I think

I cook it with blood orange juice to make the color red....

Goat Ribs/Goat Stock

We cooked goat ribs at a BBQ after R defended his phd. His mom made a marinade and they were goooood. I collected the bones, and corn cobs, and made stock, which I used to make a bulghur dish for their going away BBQ/potluck. The stock smelled amazing, it probably would have been better served in a soup or something, the wheat flavour kinda over-powered it. But I was pretty happy with the dish. Although it was a bit of a dud at the potluck -- I made it way too spicy, and it would have been more appreciated by a small audience. C'est la vie.

Wisconsin giveth, and Wisconsin taketh away

R/S/L left today, off to R's profesor job at UW La Crosse. A rough 10 days or so -- last week thursday it all of a sudden hit me that it was really happening. How do you act when 'family' moves away? Spent alot of time with them this week, helping and hanging out.

It's funny how this is kind of a physical/human geography thing. SB has an amazing setting, the mountains so close to the coast. And the ocean, especially during an el niño year, is why I live here. I've always been happiest alone in the ocean, but most of the coolest people I've known in my life have been here, too. It's the nature of the academic beast that people graduate, but damn.

It's kinda funny, this could just as easily be entitled D.C. giveth, and D.C. taketh away.... They are from D.C., and Clare is (partially) from WI and is in D.C., now. C'est la vie.

Love.

Tin Men

Pulled Tin Men from the freebin the other day. I had never heard of it before, but it's pretty entertaining. Danny Devito and Richard Dreyfuss and alot of character actors that many would recognize. The real dreamy part, though, is that one of the characters is named 'Babowsky' which sounds suspiciously like Lebowski. And the Fine Young Cannibals are the house band in the neighborhood bar. FYC were huge on top-40 radio when I lived in South Africa. Huge. Seeing them brings me great joy, their lead singer is kinda funny looking.

I hate farmed salmon, and so should you

My dad is an oceanographer in Oregon and has done alot of research around salmon. My brother is a research tech up there, and has also been on a salmon boat out of Kodiak, Alaska. My friend Scott also has been involved in salmon research. So while I care alot about the food I eat in general, farmed salmon is particularly obnoxious to me. I was really happy when a law was passed that they had to add a sticker saying 'color added' for farmed salmon. Cause aside from polution from the extra fish food and concentrated fish droppings, the need for drugs to keep them healthy in restricted quarters, and driving down the price for real fish, farmed salmon looks like crap without food coloring! There's a nice little article in the Oregonian about how the fish farms in Chile are having trouble. Good.

Whole Foods SB

When I lived in San Diego I shopped at the Whole Foods alot. Highly targeted shopping, obviously, as it is expensive, but their beer selection was unbelievable {Oregon and Norcal microbrews, including a bunch of Rogue XS which I've never seen anywhere else} , and I was just getting in to organic food then. It's pretty cool that they are finally coming to SB, on Upper State. I think the competition will be great for the area. Don't think it'll affect my beloved IV co-op, but hopefully it'll take a bite out of Trader Joe's business.

Reservation Radio

Neat story about how native radio stations serve their communities.

Tour de France quotes

A running compendium of quotes from the newsflashes for the tdf:

9 July-- "God of thunder strikes in Barcelona".

15 July -- Kinda funny, kinda long --

12:46:08 - Prize Classifications Review: Part 01 – Yellow Jersey

There was a split in the finale of the 10th stage that saw 106 riders lose 15 seconds to the front group of 52. Two of the riders in the second peloton were Bradley Wiggins (GRM) and Levi Leipheimer (AST). The delay caused a reshuffle of the top 10 in the general classification. Wiggins dropped down from fifth overall to seventh (1’01” behind Nocentini); Leipheimer was fourth but is now fifth (at 54”).

Andreas Kloden (AST) moved up from sixth to fourth overall and is now on the same time as his team-mate Leipheimer.

Nocentini (ALM) is in the yellow jersey for the fifth successive day. He has a lead of six seconds on Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong (AST).

12:46:49 - New Rankings Just Announced

Moments after the review of the general classification was posted, Radio Tour announced that the jury has decided that the 15" that separated the first 52 riders from the second peloton will be void. This means that the top order of the general classification remains the same as it was before the 10th stage.

The alterations announced in the previous newsflash are thus incorrect.

and

"Obviously it's never comfortable if you hit the deck while riding at 45km/h but he seems okay"

July 16

"The name of title of the town hosting the start (Tonnerre) translates to "thunder" but the conditions are anything but stormy."

July 17

"15:26:15 - Jesus Led Over Platzerwasel In 1967

The Platzerwasel ascent has only been a feature of the Tour on one occasion before today. That was in the eighth stage of the 1967 edition. The first at the summit was Jesus Aranzabal."

Tomatillos

Neko & Cat/NPR Saturday

Neko Case was the guest on Wait Wait this saturday. It wasn't amazing, but was enjoyable. Later in the day, a Cat Power song was used in a story on Horseshoe Crab love. Sweet.

Simon Birch

Simon Birch is the title of a movie that is very loosely based on the John Irving book 'A Prayer for Owen Meany." I lovelovelove that book, it, and 'Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey are my co-favorites. 'Sometimes...' is hard to read, 'Owen Meany' is easy to read and is just amazing, it's about faith, religious faith sort of, but religion isn't too overbearing in it. Anyway, I found a VHS tape of Simon Birch during the IV moveout period, and recently watched it. They really butchered the book, as most adaptations do, but they changed some pretty fundamental things. I'm realizing that I can't explain why the movie stinks without giving away the ending, which is everything. Doh! Anyway. Read the book, avoid the movie.

Plum Jam/Jelly

Plums are by far my least favorite stone fruit. I think it's because the flesh clings so tenaciously to the pit -- feels like you are wasting food if you don't suck on the pit, but the fruit there is so sour. It also seems like the flesh to pit ratio can be pretty small for plums. There was no way I was going to cut flesh off of the pit for 200 plums, I wanted to be able to cook them into jam/jelly with no prep other than washing. So I kind of amalgamated a couple of recipes, and used what tools I had laying about. Basically cooked the plums covered for a couple of minutes to get them to split their skins and release juice, then cooked uncovered for about 30min to get them to release pectin from their skins. Poured that into a colander over a pot, and mashed with a potato masher {you are supposed to use a chinois}. Thus no skins and no pits the easy way. I probably left some flesh behind but the worms will eat it. Recipes call for adding 1/2 the volume of the plum juice in sugar. I eyeballed it, the first batch was less sweetened/better tasting than the second. Cooked it for an hour or so, so it was nice and thick, probably would go less in the future as there was plenty of pectin, I didn't have to reduce it for it to be thick. Pretty tasty.



Here is an earlier post with links, lots of research went into this...

Outdoor Dining

By popular request, I now have an outdoor dining table. The impetus was I borrowed a drill from Dylan in order to fashion a raised bed for the garden plot. Had some raw materials laying about -- a small endtable which I took apart for legs, and I had found a nice painted piece of plywood during IV moveout, and voila. It's a little rickety yet, need to scrounge up some more wood, but it's close. Strong enough to hold a couple of plants....

Garden Pics

I'm tending Amy and Micah's plot in the garden. Well, me and the gopher are tending it. He is really really annoying. Took out another tomato, and some red russian kale this week. Grrrr. I'm going to put in a raised bed this weekend. And as you'll see in the pics, I have some funky protection strategies.

I like the shadow self portrait. Thyme and strawberries.

White trash tomato trellising.

Red russian kale, epazote, sunflowers (?), chocolate mint in a container.

Tomatoes in chickenwire cages, tomatoes in milk crate cages, basil, onion.

Adzuki bean. The gopher was eating on the foliage. Butternut squash on the side.

You don't have much control on focusing with a point and shoot.... still kinda cool.

Volunteer bean from whatever Amy had planted last year.

Ditto. Ditto.

Tomato in a milk crate and tomato in a wire mesh trashcan.

Strawberries. The Gopher is killing them. Any tips??

The Room/Tommy Wiseau

There was an interview with Tommy Wiseau in onionav a couple of weeks back, and his answers were so odd, sometimes in Sarah Palin-esque broken english, that I had to see the movie. Well. Bizarre. From the interview it sounded like he might know what he is doing, but golgi, oh, woe is me, the thing is more amateurish than an Ed Wood movie. There was a bit in the interview where he talked about using a film camera and an HD camera side by side, but the movie looks like it's all HD, and maybe not HD, maybe just regular crappy video. Just visually very unimpressive. Though part of that may be the quality of the transfer to dvd. Anyway. The movie started out as a drama with terrible 'acting', but basically evolved in my mind into a comedy because the acting was so ridiculously bad. There's a onionav cult canon article about it that gets in to the plot and everything if you want to know more. My immediate reaction to the movie (when i still thought of it as a drama) was that I'm selling this on half.com asap, but the movie kind of grew on me. I wouldn't recommend buying it, that's for sure, I don't think he needs any encouragement to make another movie, but if anyone wants to borrow it....

From wikipedia: It is also implied several times that Lisa is very, very beautiful and looks good in a red dress. However, this is not particularly true. It is rumored that the repetition of a single sex scene was caused by {her} refusal to "be near a naked Tommy Wiseau ever again".

Also from wikipedia: the movie is only shown, midnight-movie style, in 2 cities, LA and Montreal. And it was mentioned, obliquely, in Veronica Mars episode #60 (season 3).

From YouTube: Trailer, Lisa's Beauty, Chocolate is the symbol of love (the funniest scene)

7.7.7

Ryan defended this morning, July 7 at 7am. he's still in the room with them, but he clearly passed. On to Wisconsin. Also today there's a wonderful post on making sourdough bread on Chocolate & Zucchini. Highly highly recommended reading. Just like Ryan's dissertation....

At night we had a small BBQ at goleta beach, butterflied leg of lamb and a whole bunch of goat ribs. Man oh man was that Good Eats! I collected the ribs for stock, probably will just make a righteous pot of beans, but we shall see.

The last 3 communal dinners have been epic.

Le Tour

It's that time of the year again. About the only time of the year when I wish I had a tv. Versus (formally OLN) does a great job with covering the tour on the web, too, though.

Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, Bobke.

Domestic Sunday

One could easily argue that all sunday's for me are domestic, but this one particularly so. Keely had a house guest via couchsurfer.com, from Italy, and we decided to do a dinner. I had some ground lamb in the fridge, and was feeling italian, so the theme ended up being me trying to cook italian that a real italian would approve of. Somewhat simultenously I also cooked up a bunch of apples for applesauce and a bunch of plums for apricot-plum jam -- stove got a lot of use. Cooked the lamb up with garlic/onion/carrot/mushrooms, and some red sauce. It was really really sweet mid-summer sauce, so I added a bit of vinegar. Really nice. Also panzanella, with leftover olive juice bread, and apricots and cucumbers, and then the normal ingredients. I was pretty happy with that, as well. Served the lamb over warm polenta that Traves and Teresa had stirred for a long time. My love for warm polenta is from Jamie O, it's the only way to eat it. Keely floured and fried up some eggplant and squash and that was tasty, too. Aprocot sorbet and blueberry sorbet for dessert. The best meal I've had with other people in a while. Though the best meal alone also involved polenta....

4th

I like the 4th of July. Though when we lived back east it seemed to mean more, more history. The Prairie Home Companion this week was pretty good, too; those midwesterners do it up right. There's a bit about lutherans liking jello, but not red jello cause it stains the carpet, that caught my ears. I believe someone I know has firsthand experience with that.

Had my first heirloom of the season to celebrate. Pretty tasty, especially considering it's from a container plant that is 3 years old! The thing just won't die.

Dinner with r/s/l and his mom and step dad -- buffalo burgers, a noble food to be eating on such a day. Also vanilla ice cream they made with their rock salt and ice ice cream maker and some apricot sorbet that I made. Good.

Tom Brosseau/NPR

Tom Brosseau is a pretty interesting singer/songwriter, and did a nice interview on Weekend Edition this sunday. For Clare, Tom P., and L. Brosseau.

Me and Bobby McGee

Heard a story on NPR about love songs that will last the test of time, and they played the Janis Joplin version of Me and Bobby Mcgee. Well, in Two-Lane Blacktop they use the original Kris Kristofferson version, which is beautiful, and as much as I dig Janis, it's better.

Flat Nectarines

I was at the farmer's market on sunday, and my guy got a bunch of #2 quality stone fruit from one of the other sellers to bait his gopher traps, and gave me some. The flat yellow nectarines were amazing, super dense and rich and just awesome. Kinda pretty, too.

Plum Jam

There's a plum tree in IV with about 5 branches so overladen with fruit that they are on the ground. So I have been picking it pretty hard. Trying to figure out what to do with them, aside from giving fruit away, which works, too. Plum sorbet sounds really good, I forget where I saw the recipe, but I'm definitely doing it and I'll write it up properly. Just came across this funny performance art recipe for plum jam. Real plum jam recipe, plum paste 1 & 2.

Pluots and apriums are way better than plums. Not as good as apricots; hmmm, maybe so, maybe not. They probably don't bruise as easy as apricots.

New (Used) Cookbooks + a Foodie Rant....

Got some cookbooks in the mail from half.com, so now I have more than 101 cookbooks. I like half.com alot, they give you a shipping discount when you buy multiple things from the same seller; once I find something I want, I always go through the person's inventory and see if they have anything else that looks interesting. Anyway, got:

Jamie at Home, Cook with Jamie, the Ethnic Paris Cookbook, Easy Exotic, West Coast Cooking, Crescent City Cooking, Nigella Express, Lidia's Italy.

Both of the Jamie Oliver books are interesting. I like him alot, more below. I'm excited to read Nigella Lawson's book as I've seen her shows occasionally and heard her on NPR, but haven't read her yet. Lidia Bastianich is supposed to be right up there with Marcella Hazan when it comes to italian food, so her cookbook should be great, too. Easy Exotic is by Padma Lakshmi, I loved her show on the food network, we'll see how the book is. The rest were cheap but well reviewed on Amazon, so what the heck.

Ok. Jamie. I could cook pretty well before I saw his initial show on the food network, but he really has had a huge influence on me since. I have a pasta machine because of him. I own a tart pan because of him. I make yogurt because of him. I buy organic because of him. There's an absolutely killer fish served on warm polenta dish I make that is out of one of his books. He is really enthusiastic, but he also really knows how to cook, he isn't just a pretty face. He's got 8 cookbooks out, with only one of them being a dog (Jamie's Dinners is uninteresting to me). The photos are great, recipes are interesting, he's a good writer, blahblahblah. The two I just got are his two most recent ones, and they are great, no let down in quality as he ages, he isn't getting lazy. Anyway, he has a rant in the beginning of Cook with Jamie that I feel like I could have written, and it goes well with the "Every food purchase we make is a political act" ethos from Food, Inc:

in this book i'm going to be brutally frank at times and tell you how i think it is... it always amazes me how these days people can be totally up-to-speed and knowledgeable about so many different things - computers, music, fashion - but they don't give a toss about what they put in their mouths everyday. If it's meat, they don't care where the animal has come from, how it's been reared or what it's been fed on. If you walk around your average supermarket, even though big efforts have been made, there are still lots of products riddled with additives, hydrogenated fats, and a whole catalogue of fillers -- fake food. What I want to try and do with this book is make cooking and eating real food, natural food, healthy food, normal again... I do think we've reached a critical point in history now - the way we produce and cook our food is going to radically affect what the next generation grows up on... I want you to have fun, not just from cooking and eating, but also from sharing your food with others.

Bueno

Olive Juice/I Love You

Been cleaning out the fridge, and decided to use up some olive juice -- the stuff left in the jar after you finish up the olives. Made kind of a quasi no-knead, sourdough bread. Mixed the olive juice with whole wheat flour one day, added some white flour the next, and some more the next, and kneaded it at the very end. Made a loaf of bread and also pizza. While the oven was on I also threw in a banana bread and toasted the apricot pits I've accumulated this year.

Apricot pits smell amazing when they are toasting. The frenchies are all over the pits. I swear, you have to try eating them, don't just compost them! You crack them like any nut.