Kevin&Vana in Ecuador

They are back on the road, give their blog a look.

Nigella/NPR

I only have 1 Nigella Lawson cookbook, and it's only alright, although having the word 'Express' in the title should have been enough to warn me away from it. She has other books. But her tv show is great, and she has been on NPR alot, recently, a semi-regular contributor. Her voice is magic. And she obviously loves food. Give a listen to her most recent appearance.

180 degrees South

A couple of recent surf movies from the Moonshine Conspiracy guys have had the trailer for 180 degrees South on them, and it is coming out Spring 2010. It's about a trip from Cali to Chile, mostly by boat. The Tin Shed at the Patagonia website has an audio slide show, which is amazing. The website uses Flash so is annoying and I can't link to it very well, but it's pretty easy to figure out -- click on the 180 degrees South poster. I screen grabbed 3 of the images, they are all by Jeff Johnson. His book 'Bend to Baja' is also pretty epic.

Midnight, Easter Island

Hobbit House, Patagonia, Chile

Unnamed lake, below Cerro Corcovado

There's also a separate website for the movie. The 'journey' section has some nice footage from the 2007 trip, but also from the 1968 trip which inspired it. The '68 trip involved Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins (founder of the North Face) and friends, they drove a van from Cali to Chile, to climb down there. YC mentions in the 'crew' section that after the trip he wanted to make clothes that would work on serious mountains, and the name 'Patagonia' came out of that trip for obvious reasons. This image is from the 'downloads' section, it's epic at full size:

Bob Burnquist -- Outside Magazine

This guy is nuts. And he drives a Prius. Seems like a nice dude. The article about him is interesting and very readable.

R.I.P.

RFK, Ted, JFK

Extract/Mike Judge on Fresh Air

A movie about a vanilla extract king? They made a movie about me? Ummm. Fresh Air has a very funny interview with Mike Judge. They talk some about his new movie, Extract, but also alot about Beavis, Idiocracy, King of the Hill. Highly recommended.

Surfer, Dude: OnionAV-style

One of my favorite movies, more or less, made it to the Onion AV 'commentary tracks of the damned' feature. Sweet.

McConaughey describes a relatively subtle joke about immigration and Oxnard, California as “one you may get the second or third time you watch it” though it’s doubtful even the president of the Matthew McConaughey fan club has sat through Surfer, Dude more than once. -- not true, not true at all. I've watched it at least 5 times.

In a scene involving Nelson and goats, McConaughey quips semi-coherently, “Goats and Willie Nelson; it’s like peanut butter and jelly.” I don't get this either but I think it is a thoughtful, eloquent statement.

Kangaroos - Faces in the Mob

I'm slowly getting through the collection of VHS tapes I got from Reg's office. The latest one was this guy about kangaroos. There was some anthropomorphizing and what not, but it was pretty interesting. The filmmaker's knew 15 years of history of this mob of kangaroos, so knew that one new mom had lost all 8 of her previous offspring, and were coloring their comments about her filmed mothering skills (or lack thereof) based on that. Her joey died on film. A different mom with a better record (2 for 2) went 3 for 3. Also apparently kangaroos determine the sex of their fetuses and have females when they are young to build a family and have males when they are old as the males leave the locale when they mature. Ain't mother nature crazy?

Fried Ricotta on Dandelion Greens 'n' Red Sauce

So I went with fresh tomatoes and fresh ricotta for a few nights in a row, and then the ricotta got a little game-y, so fried it up in olive oil. Yum. The dandelion greens were just roughly chopped and sauteed, and then I dumped in some of last year's red sauce. Have 1Q left of last year's, and something like the first 5Q of this year's.

Homegrown Toms

'Yellow Taxi' and a volunteer hybrid - I collected seeds from a 'red zebra' last year and it turned out looking like a 'purple cherokee' but with the shape of a small plum tomato.

How does my garden grow?

Happy rhubarb

Rhubarb, tomatoes, strawberries, thyme, butternut squash, homemade/ugly/gopher proof raised bed, basil, spearmint in planter

Tomatoes, sunflowers, epazote, basil, more tomatoes, chocolate mint in planters

Cooking Milk

1.5 gallons of yogurt in the kiwi le creuset, 1.5 gallons of ricotta in the all-clad, 2Q of yogurt in the old faithful farberware. Cheap 1/2 price organic milk from the co-op....

Heirloom Tomato Dinner 2009 #3

Green zebra, purple cherokee, basil, ricotta, good Figueroa Farms extra virgin olive oil. After this I think I prefer pesto to straight basil for tomatoes + ricotta, but still pretty good.

Bobcat

My love for Bobcat Goldthwait is well established. Hot to Trot & One Crazy Summer are monumental 80s comedies. 'Tis a shame Hot to Trot was never released on DVD, but I have a beat up VHS tape. Shakes the Clown, the Citizen Kane of Alcoholic clown movies.... I really liked Sleeping Dogs Lie -- a movie about trust in relationships and the need (?) to reveal everything about yourself. Onion AV has a pretty good interview with him about his latest directorial effort.

Blackberries/Mulberries

I heard a story on NPR this morning about picking blackberries in Seattle, while I was picking black mulberries in IV. Sweet.

I don't miss the 9 months of rain a year in Oregon, but blackberry picking in august is pretty epic.

The Perfect Scoop

This came today. And Kate is giving me an ice cream maker tomorrow, so I can augment my freezer sorbet/sherbet production. Sweet.

Zandalee/the Color of Night

These two movies appeared in the OnionAV, My Year of Flops column back-to-back a couple of weeks ago. The jist of the column is the guy reviews a movie that didn't do any box office, and determines if it is because the movie actually stunk, or if it was erroneously neglected. Both movies feature a big name Hollywood star (Nicholas Cage in Zandalee, Bruce Willis in the Color of Night), lots of people over-acting cause the scripts are thin, and quite a bit of nudity. They are pretty epic. Zandalee also benefits from being set in New Orleans, small roles by Steve Buscemi and Joe Pantoliano, and a big role by Judge Reinhold. And namedropping the Room in the review doesn't hurt, either. The Color of Night is notable for also using the house in Malibu that was used for the party house in the Matthew McConaughey classic Surfer, Dude -- alas, another flop. It also features Bruce Willis essentially reprising his Die Hard role, except in this movie he is a psychologist. Granted there is a crime to solve and stuff, but psychologists don't have cop training....

It's alright

There was a classic little NPR story this morning about Bob Dylan walking around a neighborhood in NJ. One could say quintessential NPR.... On the flipflop there was also a story about two morons who were taking a virtual roadtrip across the US, using Google Earth. The most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

My negative reaction was further enhanced as Keely is hosting a couch surfer from Maine who is on a real roadtrip across the US. We had a sweet little dinner party, fresh pasta, roasted squash, tomatoes & ricotta. After that it got a little crazy. Have you ever hung out with your grandma when you were little and she pushed all sorts of food on you? We had hoja de coca. Candied ginger. Apricot sorbet and yogurt. Rhubarb and yogurt. And then. There is a macadamia nut tree in IV. I figured out how to get the exterior skin off, but cracking the nut eluded me for a long time. I heard stories from Hawaii of people driving over them with their cars to crack them, for instance. The problem is the shell is a sphere, and as we know from math class, the sphere is the strongest shape in nature. It is also smooth, so you can't get any purchase on it. And then I read somewhere that vice grips do the trick. Ebay. Got them on friday. We cracked nuts on saturday. On top of that, we wanted to show A how to make ravioli, so he could share the wealth back east, so after multiple desserts we had a little bit of ravioli, too. A fun night.

Sandman

The article which was the reason for the pic isn't so hot, but it's nice to see a little Sandman action, never-the-less.

Reg Golledge Slide Collection

Because I live across the hall from Reg's office I nabbed some slide projectors and all of his slides when they were cleaning it out after he died. The very first box of slides I opened were from his first wedding! We sent them to his family. But I've been scanning the rest, starting a memorial website. Thus far there are some great images from the early 60s in NZ and an amazing trip to Nuristan, Afghanistan in 1968. Here are a few of my favorite images thus far:

Guess why this is my fave

Auckland - Hobson's Bay

Church at Tekapo. Stunning.

Strauss Cream-on-top Milk

I dig Strauss milk. Lately I have been scooping off the cream and cooking with it as if it were butter. Sure is purty.

Double Decker Bicycles

As I was biking home yesterday 4 guys riding double decker bicycles passed me going the other way. It was awesome cause it happened right at the top of the mini hill after the Pardall Tunnel, and I got to see their faces as they saw the tunnel and realized they would have to somehow crouch down in order to avoid decapitating themselves. I turned around and looked and they made it ok. There is usually a double decker bike parked by South Hall that I would have taken a picture of to illustrate this post, but it wasn't there today. So I stole a couple from here and here.

Heirloom Tomato Dinner 2009 #2

Rice and beans and cheese, with a 'purple cherokee' on the side.

Ricotta Pics

There was a ricotta recipe post at the beginning of the blog, in the data dump phase. Here are 2 making of pics:

Milk, salt, lemon zest, blood orange zest

Once it splits in to curds and whey, you let it sit out for a couple of hours to further congeal. The cheese mass starts to sink a little.

After that you use a slotted spoon and put it in a collander, no need for cheesecloth. Let it drain for at least 8 hours or so.

Bonnie Raitt/Taj Mahal, Evolutionary Medicine, and the most annoying interviewee ever

There were some interesting interviews on Bob Edwards weekend this morning {Sat. Aug 08 show, hour 1 & 2}. The Bonnie Raitt/Taj Mahal interview (they are touring together this summer) was wonderful. Good rapport, interesting, good music. William Meller spoke on evolutionary medicine, bits about mercury in fish and skin cancer were particularly interesting. He also discussed scorpacciata, noting that early people, because they couldn't preserve food, would eat as much fresh food as they could when it was there. Nice. Lastly. An interview that I kept hoping was a joke. A spoiled rich woman talked about her upbringing and life as if she was the most interesting person in the world. Just horrifying narcissism.

New Prints

Got 2 Art Thompson prints from '74 in the mail yesterday. The early 70s were pretty much the beginning of northwest coast (NWC) print making. I really like the simplicity of the moon image. The sea urchin one is crazy, a fairly unusual animal to represent.

Heirloom Tomato Dinner 2009 #1

Okay, I basically eat heirloom tomatoes w/ basil and olive oil and (sometimes) fresh ricotta for all of August and September. Sure it's a cliché and everything, but it is good. And to differentiate this post from the next 60 heirloom tomato dinner posts, I offer up some pics of my new furniture arrangement, and also pics of the tv set -- watching a nature show on Oz, a video from the Reg Golledge collection. Oh, this is a 'pineapple' heirloom tomato.

This former favorite plate has been relegated to co-favorite (see post below)

tv dinner

sofa and orange lamps....

Bon iFeist 2

There was a story on NPR last night about the best songs so far of 2009. Bon Iver came in at #3. Further down the list was a Feist song. She doesn't have an album out, so further research reveals there is a compilation called 'Dark was the Night.' Which has a pretty amazing tracklist. Now I need to find something else so I can hit 25$ and get free shipping...

Wabbit

I don't really like meat. Chemicals, artificial hormones, and lack of respect for animal welfare get me down. But also, growing up, partially for economic reasons and partially I don't know why, we didn't eat much meat. Last year as my neighbors were moving out I rescued some food from their freezer, and nabbed a NY strip steak, just to see what it was like. I remember the occasion pretty vividly, had a potato with it, some ketchup, and was watching Hombre with Paul Newman. It was disgusting. So much protein. How do people do that? So what does this have to do with rabbit you ask? I like meat when it is a flavoring agent, not the primary nutrition of a meal, not the 'star.' Unless we're talking wild sockeye salmon, of course...

Co-op, 1 August 2009. Organic Okra. Yes! I'd been thinking about cooking rabbit for r/s/l, but we ran out of time. But rabbit was on the mind, and okra and rabbit seemed like a natural. Ended up making a mutt-like rabbit stew. Not going to write a recipe cause there wasn't one, although I consulted some italian and southern cookbooks (Jamie 0, Paul Prudhomme). Used the cream off of the top of a Strauss Milk bottle + olive oil. Herb de provence, cayenne, bay leaf, blood orange zest. Onion, garlic, okra, peppers from the garden. Mushrooms, beet greens, red russian kale. Red sauce. Fish sauce. It was ok. I think I'll do some more experimenting, and might even follow a recipe next time. Albertsons has cut up rabbit for 6$/lb, not too shabby. Yea gods I just promoted Albertsons on the blog. When Clare was getting ready to leave I was hoping to do a rabbit dinner, and called all of the butcher shops, and no one had rabbit in stock, some wouldn't even order it, and that was downtown SB! So that a store in easy biking distance had rabbit.... had to do it.

Was rocking out to the Evening Blues on KCBX while cooking. Jackson Blue was hosting, he does an hour of acoustic blues at the beginning. I dig Elizabeth Cotten, she sounds like she's 12, but it works. A late dinner --> crappy interior lighting for the pic....

This photo violates the 1/3 rule of composition pretty nicely. Also avoiding lines unless they are diagonal. The other pics I took were worse....

The next day I pulled all of the meat off of the bones, shredded it a bit, added quite a bit of organic valley heavy whipping cream and some roasted acorn squash. The color isn't great, but the flavour is quite good. Especially on polenta, although this is leftovers on rice.

My new favorite plate.

In Julia's Kitchen

NPR love, about her kitchen being in the Smithsonian.

Michael Pollan x2

On the subject of cooking, and cooking on t.v., via the NYT and Fresh Air. I found quite a few tidbits that I liked.

We don't find time to cook, but we find time to watch other people cook.

Julia Child was less interested in making it fast or easy than making it right.

If you ask me, the key to victory on any of these shows comes down to one factor: bacon. Whichever contestant puts bacon in the dish invariably seems to win.

One observation of his is something I've definitely noticed when watching Food Network at Keely's: It’s no accident that Julia Child appeared on public television — or educational television, as it used to be called. On a commercial network, a program that actually inspired viewers to get off the couch and spend an hour cooking a meal would be a commercial disaster, for it would mean they were turning off the television to do something else. The ads on the Food Network, at least in prime time, strongly suggest its viewers do no such thing.

It took years of clever, dedicated marketing to break down this resistance and persuade Americans that opening a can or cooking from a mix really was cooking. Honest. In the 1950s, just-add-water cake mixes languished in the supermarket until the marketers figured out that if you left at least something for the “baker” to do — specifically, crack open an egg — she could take ownership of the cake.

Freed from the need to spend our days gathering large quantities of raw food and then chewing (and chewing) it, humans could now devote their time, and their metabolic resources, to other purposes, like creating a culture.

Bob Edwards Weekend -- Pranks

The 2nd hour of Bob Edwards weekend for Aug 1 (activists and corporate prankst) was pretty interesting. The prankster guys did some truly funny stuff, and got good press about some good issues. Basically their modus operandi is to make a fake website that looks like a corporate one, and wait for an interview request from the press. And then they go off in the interview. The second story was about the NYC actors troupe (Improv Everywhere) who do public art. TAL did a show on them, I think it was the t.v. show version of TAL. They do things like coordinated dancing in the windows of multi-story buildings, getting a large group to go shirtless in A&F 1 & 2. There are a ton of videos on YouTube.