8.8

Roberto Candia/AP

Popcorn + Nuclear Cheese

R sent me the cheese powder from WI. He probably thought I would treat it as a gag gift, but the ingredients actually were reasonable, so I've been using it. Popping popcorn in coconut oil is the bomb.

Shine a Light -- Rolling Stones

I have an interesting relationship with the Stones. I grew up with my parents' record collection, Beatles, Dylan, Johnny Cash. No Stones. I think they were a little too bad boy. Dunno. I remember when they came through NY in the 80s on some of their way over the hill tours, and maybe that made me think less of them. But at some point songs like Sympathy for the Devil, Paint it Black, Wild Horses, etc. caught my ear. I was at a party at the chicken house and they played Hot Rocks, the greatest hits album, and was floored. That said, it's still the only Stones album I own -- which is funny cause normally I despise greatest hits things, I'm much more of a complete-ist than a generalist. But anyway, back to Shine a Light. It got great reviews, which helped to overcome my reticence due to the Stones being in their 60s, so I bought it. It's a surprisingly great movie. Mick annoyed me at first, a lead singer who does nothing but sing bothers me, and he was gyrating about the stage, upstaging the rest of the band in the first song. For that matter he does it throughout the movie, I guess I just got used to it.

Loving Cup was the first song that made me happy I saw the movie. It's a wonderful song. Phish has covered it often, in fact it was a key part of the best set of Phish I ever saw: (Portland, OR, 24 November 1996, set 2) 2001, sparkle, BOWIE, a Day in the Life, YEM, Loving Cup, suzy G + ginseng sullivan, cavern. Nice. Mick's voice is shot, but he dueted with Jack White, so the good voice/shot voice contrast was great.

(Loving Cup)

Doing yoga last night, 3 songs in a row really struck me: Just my Imagination had a great groove to it, Far Away Eyes with Ronnie Wood on pedal steel guitar was a cool little country tune, and then Champagne & Reefer with Buddy Guy was amazing -- there was a point in the song where Buddy Guy was at the mic, had finished one verse and was waiting for the next, and was staring into the camera for about 10 seconds. His eyes were amazing. A cool moment. The song was rocking, too.

The song with Christina Aguilera had a ton of energy, overall the songs with guest artists were all particularly noteworthy. That said, I also really liked the 2 songs that Keith Richards sang, mellow, spare, quietly powerful.

The camera work, particularly the close ups of faces and arms was amazing. These guys have done some serious living. Keith Richards really has earned the lines in his face. His hands also were crazy, huge blood vessels standing on top of sinews and bones. A little creepy maybe, but really cool textures.

Anyway. Highly recommended. (I'm going to have to make some screen grabs, cause I couldn't find many great pics on the web.)

Update: the disc would appear to be copy protected or something, cause when I paused it and did a screengrab --> photoshop the resulting image was jet black. shame.

Walmart sells local produce?!

Good read.

WWSD? -- Straus Whole Milk x6

The return of WWSD? Very exciting. This time I was asking the question of myself; I make a gallon of yogurt every week, occasionally a gallon of milk gets converted to ricotta, too; last weekend I got 3 gallons of Straus whole milk 1/2 price. Milk is a funny thing. I'm not lactose intolerant but my brother is, and quite a few friends are, so I'm aware of it. That said, I much prefer fermented milk products (yogurt, buttermilk, creme fraiche), cause even though I can digest milk, I think you get more nutrition, more easily out of the fermented products. So part of this was deciding what to make, and part of it was doing a brain dump so I have a list for the future. In the end I kinda chickened out and made 2.5 gallons of yogurt, and then tapioca 2x with the remaining 1/2 gallon. Here's the list:

yogurt
ricotta
mozzarella
soft white cheese
hot chocolate
cocoa pudding
tapioca pudding
rice pudding
bechamel sauce
custard sauce
potato gratin
panna cotta
new england clam chowder
french toast
chongos zamoranos (Diana Kennedy: the essential cuisines of Mexico, p. 434)
queso de napoles (DK: tecoM, p.415)
flan a la antigua (DK: tecoM, p.413)

'Soft white cheese' is a soft, spreadable cheese, kinda like marscapone. You can order the stuff to make it from Ricki. She has a pretty amazing website, tons of ingredients, recipes, tips, etc. She has the stuff you need to make mozz, too. I really like cocoa pudding. There's a recipe on the box of Kingsford corn starch that I've made for at least 10 years, probably more. Tapioca pudding is good, especially the version with eggs in it, though the 2 versions I made this week were only soso, still trying to find the right recipe. Bechamel sauce is the thing for lasagne. Lastly 3 recipes from Diana Kennedy. I've made the 2nd two cooked custards a couple of times and they are great. The chongos sound really interesting, basically you go 1/2 way towards making cheese by adding rennet to milk, then instead of draining the whey you make syrup with it that the curds cook in. Sounds pretty good to me!

TAL/Chimpanzee story

Run, don't walk, to hear it. Epic.

Salmon / Mark Bittman

Good post by the NYT food writer, he got the 5 pacific salmon species right (with their alternate names), and has a good bit of history about the farmed crap and whatnot. Informative. Though I disagree with him on one thing, sockeye is better than chinook; the color does it for me. Though my brother worked on a salmon boat out of Kodiak, and prefers chinook...

NPR Humor

To balance out the Jamie O thing, which is a fairly intense mini-lecture, 2 stories on NPR just made me laugh. The bit about the guy who sat next to the Christmas Day bomber is surprisingly funny. And the 2nd letter about the Chrysler Ram logo is awesome.

Jamie O on food/diet. Wonderful. #2

The html code I copied to embed the video appears to clip it a little, so here's the direct link.

I thought it was a really powerful talk, the best 21 minutes I've spent in a while. Made me cry a little. He notes right off the bat that diet related diseases are killing alot of people, a ton more than the number of homicides each year, but murder makes the paper, dying of obesity related disease doesn't. His big thing is teaching kids how to cook, to break the cycle of households that don't have cooking as a tradition that gets passed along. Even though I'm a bit too competitive in the kitchen, clearly it's better if people are cooking anything using real ingredients than eating the 'healthiest' fast food. I loved the talk.

Jamie O on food/diet. Wonderful.

Black Bean Strogonoff

Was just kinda messing around with leftovers and available ingredients, but this was quite tasty, so worthy of a post. Garlic, peppers, kale - sauteed. Some black beans and adzuki beans that had been cooked with garlic, onion, cumin, corriander, epazote, bay leaf, asafoetida. Some old creme fraiche that smelled a bit rich and cheese-like. On couscous made with veggie stock.

Carl Sagan 2x on NPR today

About the Gold Record, and how he and his wife fell in love -- amazing.

About the Voyager 1 pic of the earth.

Macaroons

Very, very good NPR story about a new food fad -- macaroons.

Orange Creme Fraiche Sherbet #1

Much like the lemongrass one, this is a work in progress. I cut way back on the sugar compared to the lemongrass one, too much. Mostly followed David Lebovitz's recipe for orange popsicle icecream, except he's been living in France too long, he should have called it orange creamsicle. Also I don't use an ice cream maker, just ye olde stickblender, so I'm calling it a sherbet. This is what I used: 1 1/4 c OJ, 1/2 c (4oz) vanilla sugar, zest from 2 oranges, ~2c creme fraiche, ~1t vanilla extract, ~1/4 c orange-cello. I kept adding orangecello cause with the too small amount of sugar I needed something so it wouldn't freeze as easily (i.e. booze) and also there's some sugar in orangecello.... As you can see in the pic I used too much booze as it is only just frozen.

Nelson Mandela...

...was released from prison 20 years ago today. I remember it vividly. We lived in SA from august 1987 to may 1989. You weren't supposed to, but we talked about apartheid at school often-ish, the consensus being that it was a crappy system, but how to end it safely? Alot of kids were concerned about how Zimbabwe transitioned from white rule to black rule. So when Mandela was released less than a year after we left, it was pretty amazing. I cried. And SA seems to be doing good... Can't wait to watch and listen to the World Cup this summer.

the Fall/OnionAV Cult Canon

The Fall is a visually stunning movie, and listening to the commentary track helps one's enjoyment of it a ton. The director is a great speaker, and the stories behind the making of the movie are super interesting, maybe moreso than the plot. But whatever. It's filmed all over the world at gorgeous locales. The pic is from a place in India that supposedly inspired MC Escher; as a still it's pretty cool, the scene in the movie is intense.

Rudy Rudy Rudy

pic from the Oregonian

Yes Yes, We Have Big Bales Here

Last night I realized that the radio broadcast of All Things Considered misses out on some stories that are available online, I think maybe it's supposed to be a 2 hour show. Anyway, one of the stories, about a castle built in a haystack is solid gold. Now all I have to do is catch up on the 5 stories/night * 5 days/week * 8 years of listening to NPR that I've missed....

Lemongrass Creme Fraiche Sherbet #1

This is a work in progress. Tammy has some lemongrass going, with lots of dead leaves, so I figured I'd prune it. Well, those dead leaves smelled pretty good, so I made tea, which smelled amazing. Basically boil up some water, added say 6 12" long fronds, let them steep for 10 min or so, boil again. Ended up with 1.5 c of tea. To that I was intending to add 1/2 c of sugar, by weight (4 oz) but it came out in a rush, so ended up adding 8 oz. Made a syrup. Very sweet. Added 1T of fresh lime juice that was laying about in the fridge. The 'plan' was lemongrass tea sorbet that would be eaten with creme fraiche on the side, contrasting flavors and textures and whatnot, but added the creme (~1.5 c) directly to the lemongrass mixture to tone down the sugar. It's still on the sweet side, and no one else has tried it yet, but it smells like perfume and doesn't have any acid-y lemon flavor, so it's interesting. One thing to note, because of the ratio of sugar to everything else, it only just freezes, and I didn't have to use the stickblender on it, just a fork to break up the few, weak ice crystals that were able to form.

Interview with Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes)

Apparently he is 'the J.D. Salinger of cartoonists' and hadn't done an interview in 20+ years. It's pretty brief, really, but here's 1 funny exchange:

How soon after the U.S. Postal Service issues the Calvin stamp will you send a letter with one on the envelope?

Immediately. I'm going to get in my horse and buggy and snail-mail a check for my newspaper subscription.

Cilantro Pesto

I just spent 5 min trying to take a decent pic of my lunch (rice, beans, cilantro pesto) to no avail -- it just isn't that photogenic. Meanwhile I'm sitting on 2 posts, a creme fraiche one and a lemongrass tea/creme fraiche sherbet, but haven't been able to take pics with natural lighting.... The lemongrass thing is interesting, a work in progress flavor/recipe-wise, but the potential is there.

TAL/Tickets to the Gun Show

I was biking through IV yesterday with my discman that gets radio stations on, listening to TAL #81, and laughing like crazy listening to Sarah Vowell talk about her father the gunsmith. A magic moment.