Catfish

Catfish breaded with cornmeal. The veggie side was a little off. Okra, eggplant, zuke were good, but I added a little too much red sauce base to it, too italian like. Pretty good meal, though.

Wild Sockeye

Wild sockeye was in the store. I hadn't noticed it before this year, so we jumped on it. Skin side down in a hot pan with hot oil, finish it in the oven without flipping. I overcooked it because it didn't look uber-fresh, hence all the white fat on the surface. Still tasty.
Very simple green salad. But the greens are from Sara's plot. The lemon zest was used in banana, hazelnut, poppyseed muffins.

Tomatoes + Avo + Ricotta

Didn't eat this much this summer cause of the weather. Always tasty.

Fear the Pumpkin

with love from NPR.

Di Fara's

I saw this video on the 30 bucks a week blog. It's a student documentary about a pizza maker in Brooklyn. It's great. Nice guy. Passionate about food.

The Best Thing I Ever Done HQ from MargaretEmily MacKenzie on Vimeo.

R.I.P. Paul the Octopus

Sorry to hear that the mystic mollusk has died.

Jimi Sounds Like a Rainbow / NPR

Wonderful, wonderful story.

Apple Jelly / David Lebovitz

I've made jelly a couple of times, but his pics and instructions are so nice, I have to link to him.

JR / NPR

Super story about the street art artist JR winning the TED prize. Last year's winner was Jamie O, I loved his talk. There are lots of links to same damn cool art on the NPR 'the Picture Show' blog.

McRib / NPR

This story about the McRib semi-food product is pretty awesome.

Patsy Cline / OnionAV

more Nashville or Bust love.

SB Front Range Movie

I/we are draping 2 AVIRIS flightlines over a DEM for the banner of the geography dept webpage. We made a movie, too.

The linear feature you see when the flightlines are east/west is the border between the 2 images is due to bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) effects -- veg looks different in the forward scattering and back scattering directions.

Thunder

Thunder, power went out for a few minutes, rain. Nice little cell on the radar (UCSB is a little west of the town of SB).

Space Balloon

Ryan found this. Truly epic. A camcorder is sent in to space using a weather balloon and then parachutes back down to earth, recording all the while. Loved it.

Fuyu Persimmons 2010

I was all over them last year, the first year I had experienced them (there are a couple of fuyu trees in the garden). It looks like yield will be quite a bit less this year, but the taste is still great. Pictured is the 2nd one I've eaten this year, the first went down so quick I neglected to take a picture of it.

Red Sauce 2010

I've mentioned before that it's been a late/lousy tomato season. Things are starting to happen now. Pictured is the onion bit -- toasted fennel seeds, garlic, onion, oregano, bay leaf, a couple of heirlooms. In the 2nd pic, the 2nd pot is the tomato sauce/paste in the pot that I had food milled it into.

Quesadillas de Masa

The last night my brother was here we had beans + quesadillas made from freshly pressed masa tortillas. Such a good meal.

Dylan Witmark Demos / NPR

They have a bunch of the songs up. Sweet.

Blazers/Rogue

Funny question from a Blazers chat on ESPN:

Comment From Alex English: What is the best thing to come out of Oregon? The Blazers or Rogue Ales?

Whale Fertilizer / NPR

fascinating story.

Science Integrity / NPR

let's face it, Obama has been a disappointment. Obviously he's better than McCain, but I think Hillary would have been a better president. Anyway, here's a little number about how the Obama administration isn't using science very effectively.

Jamey Johnson / NPR

good piece about a new album in the outlaw country genre.

Unintentional Modern Art

This is a quicklook from a Gulf of Mexico AVIRIS flight from this summer. Love the face in profile, and the circle they flew (potbelly), and the foot.
This one kinda looks like a pelican wearing a top hat while flying

Taters and Crème Fraîche +

My brother is here, on his way to Baja. Had leftovers of the eggplant dish the first night. Potatoes, crème fraîche, pesto, tomatoes, avocado last night. Good. Real good. The avos are from a tree in the yard of a friend of Sara's, and they are killer. Spuds were german butterball, from the garden. Sauteed garlic, some chilies, chard stems. Added spuds, chard leaves, steamed.

Eggplant, Tomatoes, Zucchini

Yeahyeah, pic is terrible. Threw this together the other night. Was under a bit of a time crunch so didn't salt the eggplant, just cut it into rounds, and baked them on a cookie sheet for 30 min or so. The zucchini I warmed with the cream top from Straus milk, then covered and steamed. Combined in a 13x9 pan with some of this year's red sauce (spicy cause I threw in a couple of dried chilies from Ventura at Givens) and baked for 30 min. Microplaned parmesan on top. Pretty good. Alas, there should have been another eggplant post, as Sara made an Iranian eggplant dish out of Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East cookbook, but she cut herself pretty bad in the process so that dish might be cursed ;( we shall see.

Cranking it Down a Notch / NYT

Heresy --> an article about using a less flavourful item to make the overall dish taste better. He makes a reasonable argument, though.

Diana Kennedy / NPR

Love. She has a new cookbook coming out on Oaxacan cuisine.

Extreme Baby Carrots / NPR

NPR comes thru with a beauty. Among the many money quotes:

When people hear 'healthy,' it scares them a little bit, says Thieken. A lot of people are like, I hate healthy food. I don't want to eat vegetables and stuff.

Loretta Lynn / OnionAV

good article/music from the Nashville-or-Bust series.

NOLA

Keely is in New Orleans for a couple of days shooting spectra for our gulf oil spill work. I dug up this article for her, food suggestions and the like.

Rain

0.7" last night/in the morning. quite respectable. water quality in the ocean is going to be sketchy for a while...

You Bet Your Garden this week

He interviewed a guy from Fairview Gardens in Goleta on the show this week -- "Shaping your Shrubs." Groovy.