TAL: American Limbo

This week's TAL is superb. The west virginians in treehouse one and the baseball one are magic.

Cheap Crap / NPR

A preaching to the choir story about low quality cheap food, and cheap goods in general. The author's book is relatively cheap on amazon.

Bitters / NPR

Very interesting story.

The money quote: "One of my favorite was from Ponds Bitters, which claims that it cures both diarrhea and constipation. (beat) OK? So, my question, obviously, and your question as well is how does the bitter know which one to cure?"

Organic vs. Conventional / Time Magazine

Video of a taste test comparing eggs, carrots, goat cheese. They actually compared quite a few other foods, too, but without video. There are quite a few sub-stories, quite frankly the organization of the Time website stinks. The 2nd link I provided links to all of the sub-stories in the article. Nothing groundbreaking, info-wise, but nice to see it in a major publication. They concluded that organic meat/eggs/dairy is more important to buy than fruit/veggies; I'd have to concur, but food is what I care about so I pretty much go organic all the way.

Sockeye / NPR

Man I hope some of this bounty makes it's way to the stores here. Sockeye is my favorite, though those who are in the know like Chinook better; I just love the red color of sockeye.

Vietnamese Dinner Party #1

Catfish + Bun + peanut sauce

Nuoc Cham

Made a couple of dishes: fried fish fillets with lemongrass, a quasi-Bun dish, a salad platter (lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, mint, basil), Nuoc Cham dipping sauce (recipe in the vietnamese crepes post), and peanut sauce (for spring rolls, which we didn't end up making; it was damn good regardless). So a bit disorganized and frantic, but pretty good. Oh, A&I brought egg rolls which were lovely.

Fried fish fillets with lemongrass:
the Little Saigon Cookbook, p. 108
3lbs catfish nuggets
1.5t salt
1.5 T sugar
1T chili paste
3T fish sauce
3T lime juice
1.5t black pepper
couple of stalks finely chopped lemongrass
garlic

You are supposed to marinate the fish with the salt and sugar overnight and then drain off the liquid. Alas I only had an hour. C'est la vie. Fry up garlic, add fish. Cook for 5 min or so. Mix up the rest of the ingredients and pour over. Cook till done. There was a bit too much liquid the night of the party, but leftover fish was excellent.

Quasi-Bun:
1 package rice noodles
leeks
garlic
chard stems
green beans
cilantro stems
chard leaves
cilantro leaves

I messed this one up by overcooking the noodles (you only have to boil them for a minute or two). Cooked the rest of the veggies in order, mixed with the noodles. Bueno with the nuoc cham poured on it and the peanut sauce. A proper Bun (Little Saigon, p.25) is cooked noodles and raw veggies, but whatever.

Peanut Sauce:
the Little Saigon Cookbook, p. 17
1T peanut oil
3 cloves garlic
1/2 c co-op ground peanut butter
couple of fresh chilies
3/4 c stock
1/3 c hoisin sauce
1t sugar
1t fish sauce
1/2 t cornstarch

fry garlic. turn off heat. mix in everything up to the cornstarch, stir till it is smooth. bring to a boil, then simmer for 5 min. Dissolve cornstarch in a little water, add, cook a little longer. You are supposed to garnish with some chopped peanuts.

Meat as a treat, rather than a routine

Mark Bittman reviews "the Coming Famine" today and in discussing it he provides links to an article he wrote about alot of aspects of growing and eating meat, and a TED talk he did. Lots of good info.

p.s. just realized I've linked to that TED talk before. C'est la vie.

Apricot Molasses

The apricot preserves I made this year were just apricots and sugar. I didn't add noyaux, or lemon juice, or lemon zest, or vanilla beans. Lazy. Plus the season ended kind of abruptly. Patricia Wells had a post right at the end of the season where she talked about those tasty add-ins, and I was feeling regretful that I hadn't made the effort. So when we found that one jar hadn't sealed I heated it up with a vanilla bean, and ended up cooking it quite a bit, down to a more molasses-like stage (reduced it by half). Tasty as all get out.

Public Art in Philly

very cool, from NPR

and more, from Google Images

Leftovers

S Bee is eating leftover vietnamese (post tomorrow), not leftover thai curry (post today) but whatever. It's a cute picture.

Tofu and Tuna Coconut Milk Curry

I can't believe there hasn't been a coconut milk curry recipe on the blog yet. Though if you saw all the coconut milk in my mormon pantry you'd suspect that I haven't used it in a while... Let's see, 'twas the Bee and me, chard, tofu, some super HQ tuna from my brother's friend Brendan that was caught off of Newport, Or. We do a less fresh version in Baja, using regular canned tuna, the tetra-pack tofu, potatoes, stuff like that. It's good too, especially when you are camping.

Tofu and Tuna Coconut Milk Curry:
14 oz can coconut milk
2-3T or so green curry paste
couple of leeks
chard
couple of chilies
stock
1lb tofu
fish sauce
basil
1 can tuna

Put the solid-ish top of the can of coconut milk in a deep/wide pan with curry paste. Cook it for 5-10 min, you want the excess liquid to evaporate and the curry paste to start frying. Add leeks and chard stems. Cook for a while. Add chilies. Add chard leaves, rest of can of coconut milk, some stock, tofu. Cook 5-10 min or so. [I happened to reduce the coconut milk alot and didn't add much stock this time, so it was a really rich/thick sauce this time]. Fish sauce and basil at the end. I like just putting the tuna on the plate instead of warming it in the curry so it doesn't disintegrate and disappear. Tasty.

green things

chard

tuna. Oregon.

yum

R, no S/L

R was here a week or so ago. Didn't get any pics of the food or people so no great rush to post. He came the day my molcajete & tejolote (mexican granite mortar and pestle) came, so we made salsa de molcajete. Sort of. Eliza the garden gopher thought she had cilantro but in reality she had flat leaf parsley, which didn't quite bash up properly. Anyway, I followed this recipe more or less. Had some peppers from the garden, poblano, jalapeno, green (under ripe) lipstick. Toasted them on a comal along with an onion. Bashed up raw garlic with salt, added peppers, onion, parsley. Used canned tomatoes as I didn't have fresh ones, season being delayed and all... Pretty tasty. With quesadillas. And Rogue.

New Almond Crop

Ran in to Mike V. at the farmer's market on Sunday and he scored us some almonds. The current crop; the dried fruit was still there on the outside and the shells were so soft you could twist them in your hands to get to the almond kernel. Nice.

dried fruit + nuts

Brian May / Fresh Air

Sara and I heard this while building raised beds for her garden 2 weeks ago, forgot to put a link up. Really great interview on music, photography, and physics. Highest recommendation.

Watermelons/NYT

Great article. The money quote (on traditional big, seeded watermelons): "You eat them ice cold, spitting the big black seeds at your brother."

Jersey Girl / OnionAV

A new my year of flops entry. I own the movie, and the writeup is spot on.

Gloomiest Gloom Ever?

Semi-good article in the Independent about our summer of fog. Park did a nice job of using stats to show this hasn't been normal; the NWS person was useless. I went to the farmer's market yesterday and tomatoes were ok, certainly not great. The season is about a month behind. Though I wonder if Roots is doing better, being in the Santa Ynez Valley and all. Must ask the Lerner. Dar-tritus chimes in that he's had solar panels for 6 years, and for the first time the meter isn't spinning backwards this summer. Most importantly, S Bee has spent a ton of time on SCI this summer cause of all of the fog, good for her research, less fun relationship-wise.
It's been sunnier in SB the last few days, for example this image from this afternoon, but you can also see the fog pointing towards Santa Cruz Island (3rd Channel Island, counting from the west). I believe it's pointing right towards S Bee's study sites....

Dave Matthews / NPR

Good interview with Dave Matthews this weekend. Best part is it allows me to relate not 1 but 2 stories. Kevbo and I saw them opening up for Phish in 1994. The whole opening band thing, especially for a Phish show, is kinda lame. We weren't all that impressed. He also has a South Africa connection, and made a comment about apartheid there, racism in America that I've made before, but less eloquently:

What it made me notice is, coming back to America, that it was the same here. One of the gifts living under the oppressive regime of apartheid was that because bigotry was so glaringly obvious there and because it was so, it was so unsubtle, then coming back to America, suddenly I think it opened my eyes to just how ingrained bigotry and fear and conformist we are here, you know? We pride ourselves in not being all those things. It's really, in my opinion, I think, it's a fight that you have to have sort of against a nature that is inside of us, to fear things that we don't know.

Around the World in 80 Diets / NPR

Interesting story from NPR. The slideshow makes it; images from Egypt, Kenya, China, urban Cali, Latvia (above), Tibet, the Mojave. The pic of the G.I. is more interesting than the one I nabbed, but MREs are disgusting...

Akira Kurosawa / OnionAV Primer

Nice basic article on the legend. I got the Ran Criterion disc recently, forget if I mentioned it on the blog, just simply amazing movie, the extras were great, too. Seeing Kurosawa in action was fascinating. Anyway, the article is good.

'dillas with an Artichoke Heart Salsa

This was pretty damn good considering the topping was a bit of an after thought. As with all flour quesadilla recipes I do, my brother is the one who came up with the idea of making a normal 2 tortillas with cheese 'dilla, and then adding a stripe of something and folding it up like a taco. Brilliant. I think the cheese was Organic Valley sharp cheddar. Topping was a raw artichoke pared to the heart and thinly sliced, sauteed with garlic and a green chile. Basil was put in at the end to wilt it. Raw red bell pepper. We ate outside, though I should have fired up the Coleman again so we could cook outside, too. [First meal post-fumigation was beef fajitas cooked outside cause the gas hadn't been turned back on yet. Good meal, but no pics, so no post.]

Red Le Creuset skillet is from the IV move-out this summer. Dual comal action to speed up the process. Lids to speed up the process.

Townes / OnionAV

Great. From the Nashville or Bust series.

Nigella/NPR #2

More food sexyness on the radio.

Peligro

I meant to do a writeup of my fumigation weekend, but said enough in the Bobolink post to take the edge off. The high point (i.e low point) was breaking a water pipe at the garden while digging to put in some gopher cages. Felt like an idiot. Was also drenched. Spent mucho time in the garden, lived out of the office and S Bee's car. Ate pb&j and yogurt and apricot preserves. One night we had dinner at goleta beach, tomato/cheese/pesto sandwiches. It all would have been good if i hadn't knocked out the water for the whole garden....

eBay :( #1

I wanted this but it went for over 400$ and I'm just a grad student.... 6 gallons, the thing weighs 25 lbs.

NWC Art Thursdays #2: Octopii

Tim Paul, Nuu-chah-nulth, Qwat-ma

Pat Amos, Nuu-chah-nulth, Octopus and Raven

Joe David, Nuu-chah-nulth, Octopus and Jellyfish

Art Thompson, Nuu-chah-nulth, Octopus 1975

Art Thompson, Nuu-chah-nulth, Octopus 1974

Ron Sebastian, Gitxsan, Octopus Dance

Danny Dennis, Gitxsan, Frog (l), Octopus (r)

Florian Schulz / Patagonia / Arctic

Great photos of the arctic on the Patagonia Cleanest Line blog.

Heathers / OnionAV New Cult Canon

A classic.

Bobolink Dairy

This weekend I was out of the house cause it was being fumigated for termites. Annoying, but the other 2 units were empty, so it made sense to do it now. Spent friday and saturday nights commando camping, but last night I stayed with Keely & Traves. Nice dinner involving that crazy Santa Cruz Market marinated chicken breast. Anyway, after that we watched an episode of the Anthony Bourdain show No Reservations, about food in New Jersey (all 4 seasons are streaming on Netflix). It was kind of tongue-in-cheek, except for the visit to Bobolink Dairy. Which looked epic. They said something about their cheese is so good they are the first American dairy to export cheese to Europe. They have an online store, Keely and I are going to order some.