Santa Cruz Island July/August 2011

boat ride out, lots of dolphins, hard to get a good pic with shutter lag...

island fox at Christy ranch house

fennel, wet first morning

lady

black swallowtail caterpillar

bumble bee

view down Pozo canyon

details of topography with the 350mm on the 750UZ

Christy ranch yard

Christy beach

foggy Bishop pines on the way back

huge spiderweb

"red attack" tree?? I thought the mortality event was over.

view towards Rosa from Upem parking spot

healthy, red attack, dead

fun from the moving train

quite a few more pics on Picasa, 1030SW camera, 750UZ camera.

Yogurt Cheese

Saw a tip a little while ago, put a coffee filter over the top of a yogurt container, semi-invert it on to it's side in a bowl, drain for a day or so. Drink whey. Have thick dairy. Works a treat, plus I still have a ton of coffee filters from the stash Sharon gave me when they moved away...

Rain + Seedlings in 6-packs

Yesterday on NPR they said the storm that is on us right now is the biggest storm to hit Cali in 10 years; it's gonna rain for a week. Rainfall totals at 11am fri/sat/sun at the Goleta Fire Station have been 0.28", 1.56", and 3.52" so a little over 5 inches thus far. I planted a bunch of seeds in the ground at Sara's plot, my plot, and Keely and Eliza's before the rain, and also started some on my patio, some greens in big pots and some veggies in 6-packs: purple peacock broccoli, a more normal broccoli and cauliflower, sorrel, sacred basil, korean mint. All but the herbs are up, and it isn't quite the season for them, but they are from Wild Garden Seed and they are supposed to be cold tolerant, so I'm hopeful that they do come up.

purple peacock, and guess what, the stems are purple...

sorrel

The avos are from R/S/L, the hummingbird sage is from Sara. This pic was supposed to show rain, not sure how you do that with a simple digital camera...

Updates:

another 2.24", 0.39", 1.04", 0.09" by 11am monday/tues/wed/thurs, so 0.28 + 1.56 + 3.52 + 2.24 + 0.39 +1.04 + 0.09 = 9.12"

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.

the Wrestler and the Cornflake Girl

R establishes legend status by finding this article.

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.

Lake Wobegone Curmudgeon-ly-ness

We were honor bound to raise our own food, we did not buy canned or frozen food, and only ate canned or frozen food that had been canned or frozen by someone who we knew personally. It was our honorable duty not to pay extravagant prices for things we could make ourselves.... Well, my people all left the country, they left the farm and moved to the city, and the opinion of strangers became more and more important to them.... But we did keep this one ban, never ever look at yourself in a photograph... never ever look at yourself in a picture.

From the compilation show this past saturday. It's funny cause my grandparents all made it to the pacific NW, they weren't stuck in the midwest. But they espouse(d) depression-era values, which I guess are the origin for Garrison Keillor's spin on midwestern values. The bit about the photo is also funny cause 1) I prefer the shadow self portrait, and 2) I briefly gave S Bee publishing rights on the blog but that caused the pic of me and Lou in the 'about me' section to disappear, so I revoked her rights, so I guess I do like some pics of myself...

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.

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...

Weekend Wrapup

Prairie Home Companion was in Iowa, and he did a bit about how crappy corn is -- about high fructose corn syrup, and also about how cows can't digest it properly. I thought it was pretty brave of him, considering the location. Info was true, of course. TAL was decent, I really liked the first story, about a guy who tried to find out who the owner was of the abandoned car parked in front of his house.

In other news, we had waves all weekend, which was much appreciated.

Sunday night we did a pizza thing. A little before people showed up I got a call, a child's voice asking about pizza. I assumed Keely or Eliza were messing with me, but it turned out to be Sweet Lou. His timing was impeccable. Alas, I lied to him, I told him I was making 'normal' pizza. Mostly because I'm not good at talking with kids. I'd made a pimiento chile sauce with a ton of cilantro that we mixed with red sauce. So not entirely normal. But quite tasty. The sorbet and the sherbet were both good, though I felt bad about sending people off with cold bellies as it was cold out. But K/T/T were biking home, so they probably warmed up a little.

There was a little bit of dough left over, so monday I made a cross between an italian and a lebanese pizza. Lebanese pizza, at least according to Claudia Roden's Book of Middle Eastern Food, is pizza where you put raw meat on the pizza, and it cooks in the oven. I've done it quite often, it's great. So last night I did red sauce and pimiento sauce, with cheese slices interspersed with pieces of ground buffalo. Really tasty.

a Terrific Thursday

Surf looked great last night, offshore wind. Also had a nice chat with Ryan last night. Excited to surf this morning, opened the kitchen door to check the wind, and the door wouldn't open. There were three boxes of Roma tomatoes blocking it! Epic. I only have maybe 12Q of red sauce in the freezer right now, should get about 5Q out of these boxes. Surf was fun, surfed Depressions for the first time in a while. Was out about 1/2 hour before the sun popped over the bluff. A little small, but got one great left. 'Twas a tad cold this morning, wearing my brother's Kodiak Island Brewing Co. hoodie to warm up.

Bon Iver -- 11 October 2009 Milwaukee, WI

Nope, I wasn't in WI to visit R/S/L. Yet. A radio station there has a stream of the show. Give a listen. Observations: the "new" song 20min in is from the 'Dark was the Night' compilation album. From the stage, upon hearing a request: "we only have 11 songs, so you're probably going to hear most of them." They sound happier playing the newer songs. Except "Re: Stacks" is always good. There's more rocking out, I dig it.

Fuyu

Had my first Fuyu Persimmon only just last year -- there's a tree next to Amy's garden plot. I'd noticed the trees around IV before, but never tried one. It's funny, cause Lou probably had one before he was 2 -- that kid has been exposed to so much good food at such a young age...

Anyway. Fuyus can supposedly be eaten when firm, unlike Hachiyas, but I like them when they are super soft, too. Pics are from a couple of minutes ago: poured out the thin yogurt from the pot, added a little vegan smoothie mix (basically rice bran and spirulina) to thicken, and 2 Fuyus (the uber-soft one is buried beneath the mostly-soft one).

Goat Ribs/Goat Stock

We cooked goat ribs at a BBQ after R defended his phd. His mom made a marinade and they were goooood. I collected the bones, and corn cobs, and made stock, which I used to make a bulghur dish for their going away BBQ/potluck. The stock smelled amazing, it probably would have been better served in a soup or something, the wheat flavour kinda over-powered it. But I was pretty happy with the dish. Although it was a bit of a dud at the potluck -- I made it way too spicy, and it would have been more appreciated by a small audience. C'est la vie.

Wisconsin giveth, and Wisconsin taketh away

R/S/L left today, off to R's profesor job at UW La Crosse. A rough 10 days or so -- last week thursday it all of a sudden hit me that it was really happening. How do you act when 'family' moves away? Spent alot of time with them this week, helping and hanging out.

It's funny how this is kind of a physical/human geography thing. SB has an amazing setting, the mountains so close to the coast. And the ocean, especially during an el niño year, is why I live here. I've always been happiest alone in the ocean, but most of the coolest people I've known in my life have been here, too. It's the nature of the academic beast that people graduate, but damn.

It's kinda funny, this could just as easily be entitled D.C. giveth, and D.C. taketh away.... They are from D.C., and Clare is (partially) from WI and is in D.C., now. C'est la vie.

Love.

7.7.7

Ryan defended this morning, July 7 at 7am. he's still in the room with them, but he clearly passed. On to Wisconsin. Also today there's a wonderful post on making sourdough bread on Chocolate & Zucchini. Highly highly recommended reading. Just like Ryan's dissertation....

At night we had a small BBQ at goleta beach, butterflied leg of lamb and a whole bunch of goat ribs. Man oh man was that Good Eats! I collected the ribs for stock, probably will just make a righteous pot of beans, but we shall see.

The last 3 communal dinners have been epic.

4th

I like the 4th of July. Though when we lived back east it seemed to mean more, more history. The Prairie Home Companion this week was pretty good, too; those midwesterners do it up right. There's a bit about lutherans liking jello, but not red jello cause it stains the carpet, that caught my ears. I believe someone I know has firsthand experience with that.

Had my first heirloom of the season to celebrate. Pretty tasty, especially considering it's from a container plant that is 3 years old! The thing just won't die.

Dinner with r/s/l and his mom and step dad -- buffalo burgers, a noble food to be eating on such a day. Also vanilla ice cream they made with their rock salt and ice ice cream maker and some apricot sorbet that I made. Good.

Int'l Beard and Mustache Comp

Nice story about the 2009 version, which is in Anchorage. Ryan competed in the 2004 in Berlin.

One Big Cabbage

The offending cabbage in the kitchen. The cast iron dutch oven to the right of it is a 4Q one, so you can tell how massive the thing was.

I was given a huge cabbage a couple of weeks ago. Lou walked in with it, bigger than his head, I scrambled for a camera but it was too heavy for him to hold it comfortably, so missed the shot. We finally used it last night, did cabbage rolls. The recipe is in a lot of different cookbooks, Moosewood, MtAoFC2, Molto Italiano. I loosely followed the Molto Italiano version. It took alot of time, we ate at about 9. It felt like some of Julie's posts in her Julie/Julia blog, a really long slog in the kitchen, with good, but not great results. I really liked the leftover boiled cabbage leaves, sweet and tender and tasty. Made 2 fillings. The potato/ricotta/sausage one was good, but needed more potato and ricotta. Potato and cabbage seems like a natural pairing, probably read about it in Dr. Zhivago or something, but it seemed like all of the recipes I read involved alot of meat. The other one was a buffalo meatball type of mixture. But I didn't have enough buffalo so bulked it up with egg and poha (pressed rice). Not too exciting. More meat and/or more aggresive seasoning would have helped.

Stuffed Cabbage Leaves recipe:

discard the first few outer leaves of a cabbage.
make filling(s)
saute garlic in a stove top/oven safe dish (le crueset)
add red sauce, warm
remove, rinse 14 leaves
put in boiling water, in batches, for about 8 min.
put in cold water
cut off the thick, lower part of the stem, about 4"
lay out flat
put a dollop of stuffing on, and roll up, burrito-style
put in the baking dish, add some wine
375 1hr covered
That whole process took 4 hours.

The kitchen mess after the dish went in the oven.

The final result.

Rhubarb Cwisp

Tres de Mayo dinner party last night. Masa quesadillas and beans, nothing revolutionary. Sharon did homemade vanilla ice cream again, that stuff is good. Sara made rhubarb crisp which was good. Lou ate 2 bowls of ice cream and rhubard cwisp as he pronounced it. Couple of funny things. Lou walked in carrying a cabbage that was quite a bit larger than his head, but I was too slow with the camera. Eliza and Roger brought their friend Dave from NY, and for the 2nd time in 2 days the movie Red Dawn came up. Wolverines!