Jamie O on Iron Chef America

This weekend I caught a summary show of the greatest moments of Iron Chef America, something like that. The #1 thing was when Jamie O was on, he brought his friend/mentor Gennaro along, and Gennaro proceeded to trash talk and generally be obnoxious the whole time. It looked to be pretty funny, so I googled for the full episode. The ingredient was live Cobia (a fish). A side note: while surfing today, a cormorant surfaced near me with a fish in it's beak, maybe 6-8" long, it made a pretty big bulge going down it's throat. Very cool. Anyway. It was nice to see Jamie and Gennaro in action, the highlight was that they used an ostrich egg to make their pasta. Definitely check out the video, a worthy way to spend 42 minutes.

Cool Pic

This is from the current front page of Patagonia.com. Makalu, Nepal, by Marko Prezelj. Cool image.

Christmas in Cali

As previously noted, no Baja for me. So enjoying empty IV and catsitting for Keely. Last night I had dinner with fellow in-town-for-christmas-person Sara; what I made didn't really flow, but individually they were good dishes: 1) delicata squash roasted whole. Cut in half, save seeds. Toast fennel, coriander, cumin, added 'butter' (the cream top from Strauss organic milk), garlic and a chile from Ventura at Givens Farms. Add roughly cubed squash (skin intact). Awesome. Kinda north african french cooking. 2) chopped red russian kale from the garden, Strauss heavy whipping cream, vermouth, a little garlic. Steam. Added bay scallops at the end and cooked them for just a few minutes. Quite good. Pretty traditional french cooking. Post-apartheid South Africa rice separated the two on the plate. Sara made pie dough and wrapped individual apple slices in small pieces of dough. It was a clever dish.

Slept in until 6:20, Magic. Watched the ocean for a while, it was small, but it is also christmas, so what else was I going to do? Ocean was pretty slow, but got 2 great waves. It was really shallow, less than 1' of water where it was barreling. Hit bottom with various body parts, my right hand is kinda messed up right now -- jammed it on the bottom twice.

Freebin has been good to me this week. Found a nice merino wool sweater. The State's Shirt Project is at 36 shirts/states. I got an unusual one this week, North Dakota, but small states like Delaware and Rhode Island are going to be tough, I reckon. Also I've been finding shirts made with organic cotton and even hemp, so pretty stoked on that. When I was there today someone returned a book to the bin that I had put there a week ago -- nice to see stuff is getting passed along.

Am writing this at Keely's. Having fun with her cat, Nala. There was a ton of basketball on today. L*kers lost, which is always good. The (heavily depleted) Blazers beat the Nuggets. Bummed about all of the injuries, but was happy to see them on tv.

Merry Christmas to all.

Kit Carson

On NPR this morning was a blurb that the explorer/mountain man Kit Carson was born 200 years ago today. When I was a kid I named my cat after him. She was an amazingly smart cat, and lived 17 years.

Veronica Mars

Finished re-going through VM the other day, on a bit of a re-watching things kick lately. Veronica Mars is about a girl who's father was sheriff of the town they live in and now is a P.I., and she also does investigations. It's also about high school. It's a good show with a strong, smart female lead character. Seasons 1&2 are classic, both involved murder investigations. Season 3 had a little less of a through-line, but still was pretty good.

Some tidbits: Season 3 was done as BSG was breaking big, so they used the word 'frak' a couple of times in the first few episodes. The creator of VM is a huge Big Lebowski fan, and there are subtle and not-so-subtle references to it in episodes 2,4,8,10,&16. There's a great Johnny Cash reference in episode 5. There's a great Blazing Saddles reference in episode 16. Finally, episode 3 included not only a Neko Case song, but also a Regina Spektor. Nice.

Extract

Got Extract from netflix the other day. It looked cool when it first came out. I liked it alot. It's a small subtle comedy, played completely straight, though the plot is slightly skewed. Basically a guy wants to cheat on his wife, so he hires a dude to hit on her, so he will be justified in hitting on someone, too. Said guy owns and operates a factory that makes artificial vanilla extract and a host of other artificial flavors. Lots of good actors in the ensemble cast, including the Sparkle Motion mom from Donnie Darko.

Mila Kunis doing a sweet Laverne & Shirley impersonation

OPB

In general, I really like David Lebovitz's blog from Paris. His christmas post is particularly good.

Baja

For the 3rd year in a row I'm shut out of Baja, after going pretty much every year since the winter of '93-'94. My folks aren't up to it this year, and my brother is 1) already down and 2) he took out the passenger seat from his truck. Bummer. This is him from a couple of weeks ago:

Encounters at the End of the World

A documentary by Werner Herzog, about Antarctica. A few stunning scenes: scientists with their ear to the ice below them listening to seal calls. Sea stars under the sea ice. Mount Erebus Volcano. Time capsule at the South Pole. It's about science and scientists -- often nature documentaries just show animals/phenomena and try to be dispassionate; Herzog makes documentaries about nature and humanity. I don't want to spoil it by saying too much, see this ASAP!

On the type of people who live down there: "phds washing dishes and linguists on a continent with no (native) languages."

Screengrabs to whet your whistle:

Exploring a fumerole (volcanic gas vent) on Mount Erebus

Under the ice, jellyfish

Kombucha #1

Got a Kombucha mushroom from Traves and Keely 2 weeks ago, and just harvested my first batch of tea. I quite like it! It's supposedly good for you, it's a little bit of an acquired taste, but it definitely seems like something I'll be brewing for a good long time.

Batch #1 I brewed 6 bags of pomegranate white tea, 12 oz of vanilla sugar, and added water to make a gallon (vanilla sugar isn't necessary, it's the only thing I have right now). Cool to room temperature, add the mushroom/fungus, cover with a cloth, let it sit for 2 weeks.

The mushroom and a little of the tea from batch #1

Bottled love. The pomegranate tea gives a nice color.

Update:
the ratios i'm using now are (per 1/2 gallon of water):
4 tea bags OR 2T loose black tea OR 2T yerba mate
6 oz (3/4c) sugar

I'm sold on using a couple of bags of pomegranate or raspberry tea for colour and loose black tea for nutrition of the kombucha mushroom.

NPR x3

Some interesting stories this morning. When I heard they were going to do a bit about the Coen Brothers I was thinking best sunday ever - 'cept I hated the story when I heard it. The author was annoying, and the concept kinda meh. The story about bamboo bikes was awesome. The prison story was great, too, highest recommendation.I'm not super big on expensive single speeds, I think they should be something you make out of cast-off parts, but the frame is kinda cool looking...

'Not Eating Animals'

Sara found a nice little article in the NYT Magazine today, ostensibly about vegetarian cooking, but it included some interesting introductory text:

It is one of the great conundrums of modern entertaining: cooking at home for friends whose dietary restrictions do not match your own... A dinner constrained by rules can make your grocery shopping easier. But it’s hardly much fun.

As everyone reading the blog probably knows, I totally disagree with that entire sentiment :) Dealing with restrictions is fun; dealing with challenges/limitations makes you a better cook. Oh, the recipes in the article look scrumptious, might have to do the tofu one soon.

Rey Fresco / Bob Edwards Weekend

I really enjoyed this interview. Rey Fresco is a band I had never heard of; harp, guitar, bass, drums. From Ventura. Some are surfers. The father of the harp player makes harps in Mexico. The drummer used to make surfboards for Patagonia, and makes his drums out of surfboard fiberglass. On top of having cool stories, their songs are pretty cool. Some NPR love, too. Myspace. Facebook.

Julie and Julia

Finally saw this as it just came out on dvd. I've talked about the Julie/Julia Project before, and the link to it is on the right side of the blog. She cooked every recipe in MtAoFC vol.1 in 1 year. Wrote a blog about it. Got a book deal. Got a movie deal. I loved the blog, liked the book, the movie was alright. I think it's all about quality and quantity of content. Lots in the blog; some in the book; and then, as for most movies based on a book, the movie paled somewhat. But there were some nuggets:

1)they included footage from a Dan Akroyd as Julia Child SNL skit that is pretty awesome
2)they included the bit about Amanda Hesser eating at her place and writing about her blog in the NYT, which Becky saw and told me about, which lead to me reading the Julia/Julia Project in it's entirety in about 2 weeks
3)really interesting: a guy from the SB newspaper who's name will not be mentioned called Julie cause he was writing a story about Julia (who lived in SB until the end) and told her that Julia didn't like the blog. in the director commentary we learn that Julia was kind of slow to adapt to new things, and she thought Julia would come around to the blog if she had lived longer. For example, apparently Julia originally thought that organic food was a fad and wished it would go away!!! In her later years she was known to frequent the downtown SB farmer's market.
4) Jane Lynch is great in a small role
5) Meryl Streep did a pretty amazing job of mimicry.

Again, I loved the blog. And Julia did alot for cooking in America. Combining stories about Julia's and Julie's life was kinda interesting, but the movie wasn't particularly visually interesting or anything, so wasn't really necessary for me. But if it brings converts into the cooking fold that is good.... Update: was just looking at her blog again, there are a ton of brand new comments, so it looks like the movie did the trick. Bueno.

the Last Fuyu Persimmon of the Year

The tree next to Amy's plot dropped all of it's leaves a couple of weeks ago, and lo and behold, there were 3 persimmons on it. Stoked. Ate 2 yesterday, here's the last one:

Playing Around with Pumpkin Pie

Sara made this, she had a little bit of leftover filling from making pie for the geography party, so the pie was super thin. She made it at my place, and I don't have pie plates, only tart pans, so we made do. I think it's pretty photogenic.

More from Reg, SB area '79/'80

Scanned some of Reg's slides of SB/Goleta/IV from the winter of '79/'80 today while watching the final day of the Pipe Masters.

SB Museum of Art, really dig this one

B of A building. It became the Anaconda, a music club. Became a pool hall, IV Brewing Company. Nowadays it's a lecture hall for UCSB. I don't have internet at home, so I often sit on the wall right next to that orange hatchback to get free wireless from Woodstock's Pizza across the street.

The 3$ place, it closed a couple of years ago unfortunately. Check the movie line-up.

Peach-cello 2009

Saved my peach pits all summer, put them in a jar of vodka. Let that sit till a week ago, and filtered it through a coffee filter. Then I boiled up the pits with water to make the simple syrup (2:1, 500ml peach water: 250ml (8 oz) vanilla sugar).
It's not very well mixed yet, you have to let it sit for a couple of months before you drink it. The batch I have from last year is killer, so I know the wait will be worth it.

~500ml peach vodka + ~500ml peach simple syrup = love

Chocolate-dipped Dried Apricots

Eliza made chocolate dipped apricots for my birthday, and they were great. I took the pics just now, so the chocolate is a bit oxidized, but you get the point. The big crystals are coarse sea salt, the small ones vanilla sugar. She also used cinnamon and curry powder. Maybe other things. Basically just nuke chocolate chips for a minute or so, stir, dip. Use parchment paper.

Paul Nicklen / Bob Edwards Weekend

Great interview with a nature photographer. Some highlights of his work. I stole one of them for this post:

The unicorn of the sea

Reg Golledge Slide Collection Updated

Was scanning some slides today while watching the pipe masters. There are quite a few from field trips of UCSB Geography, most I think are from North America, but not sure. This one is unbelievably epic.

Update: turns out many of the slides I've scanned are from Dr. Jeff Dozier, who used to be in Geography, is now in Bren.

Mick Fanning

Mick Fanning just won the 2009 surfing world tour. Pipe has been really inconsistent the last couple of heats, and Parko didn't make it out of his heat. The webcast has been pretty epic, quite a few 10s today. Mick is a great surfer, I first saw him in the movie Shelter, highest recommendation on that one.

the Color of Money

This movie is a semi-follow up to 'the Hustler' which is one of Paul Newman's best movies, about playing pool. The Hustler is a better movie, one of the all time greats, but Color is entertaining, in it Paul Newman attempts to mentor the new young buck, Tom Cruise. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio plays the (way smarter than Cruise understands) girlfriend. One exchange really caught my ear last night:

MEM: You know how we met? My old boyfriend last year got busted breaking into Vincent's parents' house. We met at the police station.

PN: You were bailing your boyfriend out.

MEM: No. I got busted, too. I was driving the car. See this? Look. Vincent's mother's.

PN: He gave that to you?

MEM: Nope. From the robbery. Vince says his mother has one just like it. He's sweet.

Update March 2010: a nice OnionAV article

Bon Iver Rockin' with the Eau Claire HS Jazz Band

the best thing i've seen all day.

Poor Blazers

The Blazers are having a bad season. Tons of injuries, and the healthy players aren't doing so good either. Greg went down for the season on saturday. It got so bad that NPR did a story on the sad state of affairs...

This chart is from The Oregonian

The Eddie

The Eddie Aikau event at Waimea Bay is on today (8 dec). The footage from yesterday is gnarly, it was a little too big and crossed up to run the event... I'll update this, as this is a really cool event. Eddie Aikau was a lifeguard on the North Shore of Oahu, a really legendary figure.

Martin Potter is commenting, they just did a bit of southafrican slang, it was epic.

NPR actually mentioned the event twice. Sweet.

The Heats on Demand are up. Heat 8 had the best waves.

36

So I turned 36 on friday. A day that will live in infamy. Or something. I was laying in bed, trying to decide what to make for the party and heard Nigella Lawson talk about chili with chocolate chips in it, and reckoned I'd do a 36 ingredient chili. The party itself was alot more fun than I expected. The nature of the gradschool beast is you get really close to people, and then they graduate. There's been too much of that over the past couple of years.... We've had fun birthdays in the past, but they were largely more dinner parties than birthday parties. This one Keely and Eliza went out of their way to make a birthday party. I blew out candles for the first time in easily 20 years. They also put together a list of '36 things we like about Seth' and had everyone there read it aloud. Some were funny, all were true; I don't think I fully appreciated that even though my best friends have graduated, I still have wonderful friends here. It was quite touching. I'm putting it at the end of the post for those who were there in spirit only, as I think they might enjoy it.

36 ingredient Chili:
2c red kidney beans
2c black beans
1c adzuki beans
2c nixtamal
2 dried chiles from Ventura
a lot of dried small round chilies
couple of stalks of dried epazote
2 bay leaves
tomato stock
1 cinnamon stick
1T coriander
1T cumin
½ T paprika
½ T aleppo pepper
½ T chipotle powder
½ T garlic powder
salt
pepper
olive oil
onion
garlic
1c red wine
2 red ripe poblano chilies
5 red ripe anaheim chilies
2 ‘black’ chilies
3 serrano chilies
3 thai chilies
~1/4 c homemade red chile sauce
1c carrot
1c celery
1 bulb fennel
2 28 oz cans tomatoes
2T cocoa
1T oregano
1 bunch cilantro
pinch or so asafoetida

you might quibble that salt and pepper shouldn't count, i did have extra ingredient ideas (pinto beans, chipotles en adobo, veggie stock, masa harina, chayote, OJ, citrus vodka) so it's not like i was relying on them to hit 36 ;)

36 Things We Like About Seth (in no particular order):
His snarky sense of humor
Sense of surprise when answering his phone
How he leaves fruit peel on his desk
His great commitment to living “low-impact
His “high-impact” on his friends
His listening abilities
His sometimes a bit harsh, but almost always helpful, constructive criticism
His lemon buttermilk sorbet recipe
His basil lime sorbet recipe
His red sauce
His entertaining and creative blog entries
His ability to inhale mini-Almond Joy candy bars
His smile
His art collecting
His love of physical activity
His aversion to vomiting in front of attractive older moms
When he wears his Winnie-the-poor cardigan
His love of unicorns
His sense of loyalty
His modesty
His awesome I.V./free-bin finds
His love of Nala-kitty
His long-term memory regarding slightly unfunny jokes
His smile
His facial hair (mountain-man style
His awesome never-matching socks
His geopyro-geniusness
His lab-prank leadership
His dinner parties
his keen sense for BS
his commitment to helping others
his biking/bike expertise and willingness to share it
his forearms (even though Keely will beat him in arm-wrestling one day
his photography
his mad Unix skills and his endearing hatred of Matlab
that today is his BIRTHDAY!

Andrew got the 'lemon buttermilk sorbet' wrong in #8, it's 'lime buttermilk sherbet' but whatever -- this probably points to #1. #2 is really funny and true. That 'smile' appears twice is doubly ridiculous. There are alot of inside jokes...

Speaking of inside jokes...

BSG Revisited

I just finished rewatching BSG, took it slow as I own all of the DVDs now. Watched it with commentary on; he (Ron Moore) has a couple of commentary in-jokes throughout the series, it's pretty entertaining. My favorite episodes are '33' (episode 1, season 1 after the mini-series) and the boxing episode from season 3: 'Unfinished Business.' Just amazing stuff. I was really happy taking my time through the series, I think the netflix--watch as fast as you can approach was a bit sub-optimal, and watching season 4.5 via scifi.com on my computer really stunk in retrospect -- image quality kinda meh, and I missed plot points. I liked the finale a ton more on DVD than I did watching it on the computer.

One tidbit from the commentary of the last episode: Mary McDonnell was cast because of her role in Donnie Darko. So DD comes through again!

James Hansen / NPR

He gave a great talk at UCSB a couple of years ago, he's still fighting the good fight.

Louvre / NPR

We went to the Louvre in 1989 on our way back from South Africa. I didn't know that the pyramid was brand new that year; NPR did a cool story about it being 20 years old.

4 December 2009

By popular request (from the blog gopher/Eliza) a birthday post. I learned last year that I share a birthday with Jay-Z. Today I learned that I am the exact age as Tyra Banks. Sweet. What else? The Civil War game last night (OSU/UofO) was pretty good. I wish Oregon State had won, but it was a fun game to watch, lots of offense. Made a chili this morning for a thing tonight, which will eventually have 36 ingredients, right now it's something like 31. And lastly, another epic Freemail video blog. Go Blazers! and while they're at it start Andre Miller...