ABCs of Cooking in February

refried black bean, beet greens, broccoli, blue borage flower burritos

Long story short. My phd adviser is a little eccentric and at one point in time he tried to eat by the alphabet for some length of time. I.e. on monday he'd eat apples and asparagus and so forth. The precise details are hazy. Sara randomly met his housemate at the time who told her the story, and the seed was planted, so the VIPER lab decided to try eating dinners by the alphabet for a month. We chose February cause 28 days was the closest to 26, and it gave us a little while to psych up for it. Here's the geography news write up of us.

It was super fun up to about L, it began to drag on after that. Some of the more clever desserts were fluffernutter for "f" and nanas 'n' nutella for "n". There are some pretty fine alliterations if I do say so myself. Here's what we cooked for the month:

alphabet pasta w/ arabiatta suce + artichokes + albacore

refried black bean, beet greens, broccoli, blue borage flower burritos + fresh bread, butter, blackberry jam + blonde sour beer

cauliflower, collard, chard, coconut, cilantro curry w/ chile pickle

dal + leftover curry, date shakes

eggplant parmesan on einkorn wheat

frittata with fungi and feta cheese, fluffernutter sandwiches

grits with greens and ground beef gravy, growler of green valley ipa

hot chocolate, hamburgers w/ horseradish, home fries w/ honey + japanese horseradish dipping sauce

italian-ish, indian-ish, irish-ish mishmash dish.

jack shit till 10:51 cause the arlington tavern was too slow before the Avett Brothers; japanese pesto, blackberry jam

kasha w/ king bolletes, massaged kale (4 kinds of kale) salad w/ kalamata olives, kombucha, kiwi fruit

leftover beans/grains w/ preserved lemon; 4 layer salad w/ meyer lemon, lemonaise, loquat liqueur

multiple mushrooms, machaca de res, multiple misos soup; mango

nori; frijoles negro con liqueur de naranja, nutella 'n' 'nanas

savory oats w/ oregano, olive juice, olives, olive oil

pesto pizza, poached pears

qupe chardonay, quinoa dark chocolate bar

red curry w/ red meat, rainbow chard, rainbow kale, red potatoes, radish greens on rice noodles; rogue ales brutal bitter, rosemary tea

roasted squash & sweet potatoes w/ sesame seed paste sauce & sumac & sriracha; rogue ales shakespeare stout; sapote & sorbet

torchiette pasta, tuna, tomato sauce, turnip greens

uova strapazzate

vichyssoise w/ a splash of sherry vinegar and vermouth

wascaly leftovers, wasa crackers, watermelon wadish, water

X (ten) layer nachos w/ Xochitl chips and xiang cai (cilantro); xocolatl (chocolate)

yams, yelag yogurt

zwieback, green zhoug, zeytinyagli havuc, blood orange zest, zaca mesa mourvedre

 cauliflower, collard, chard, coconut, cilantro curry w/ chile pickle

 fluffernutter

hamburgers w/ horseradish, home fries (2 kinds of homegrown sweet potatoes)

multiple mushrooms, machaca de res, multiple misos soup

 watermelon radish

Ellison Owl

baby great horned owl

Scenes from the VIPER lab 19 June 2014

Shaver Lake

Sara has a pre-doc post-doc gig for about a year, doing plant physiology stuff up by Shaver Lake in the Sierra. Long hot drive, but some snow up top. Not a whole lot of artsy fartsy imagery, but some. Here's a taste:

 fluorescent mustard, Wind Caves, Gaviota

 southern central valley desolation

 Site 1

 tower at Site 2

 CADE

 ABCO

 ARPA flowers

 fisheye + either the built in orange or red filter

 dogwood a little lower elevation than town

 sucking up some aquifer

 semi-classic

you have no idea how green this appeared to us after driving through the valley

Thermal

We got a FLIR thermal camera in our lab somewhat recently. We took it out yesterday and did a cheesy lab photo, but found the resolution kinda stinks. So we also did photos of individuals so you could see more. Pretty cool.

Sweatshirt vs. t shirt is cool. Effect of beard. The heat from my desktop computer coming out the back of it and warming the wall.

Titan arum

The UCSB greenhouse had a Titan arum plant bloom this summer. Pretty cool.

 the central stalk heats up so that the odors are more easily released

they moved it outside when it opened to make viewing easier

the circus. something like 2,000 people came

Robertson

I had this pic saved on my desktop and realized I didn't put up a post about it/him on the blog. This is my friend Chris Robertson. I lived with his brother in the dorms my freshman year, and with him my senior year. We cooked together some during the summers in IV. He's cooking in NYC now.... good article.

Disarm

When I started at UCSB in '92 my roommate Kevbo introduced me to all sorts of bands, the Smashing Pumpkins included. They even came in '93, although memories of that concert aren't great: lousy seats, being from Chicago they didn't seem to like being in SB, and not having gone to college he seemed to resent playing at one. C'est la vie. But damn if this video doesn't get the juices going. Some serious audience signing along at the beginning of Disarm, and the band & audience are amazing throughout. In the Civil Wars post I had a link to them doing Disarm on their North American tour, here it is again (stage banter ends/music starts 3:39) so you can compare the versions. Great song.

Community Gardening Issues

You bet your garden this week (5 May 2012) has a fascinating interview with Mark Birdsall, who is involved with setting up community gardens for under privileged people who are used to receiving food from food banks. (The interview starts around the 14min mark).

Some interesting points, that reflect on the UCSB garden:
They will have master gardeners on hand to help with people's questions. This is one of our biggest issues. When I give away plots to new garden members I try to point out the plots of gardeners with alot of knowledge that people can seek advice from. I also give some basic advice about what grows well for me. But we are pretty far from being master gardeners. Producing a document of gardening tips for new garden members is something I've thought about and I definitely think we should do it; by pooling our info I think we could help alot of people.

Teaching people to grow food can be difficult, but it is as important to teach people how to cook what they grow. We've put some recipes on the garden blog, I think I'll put more of a focus on that.

Some gardens (i.e. school gardens) suffer because the school year doesn't match up with the growing season... "good intentions do not manage a garden." This is more of an issue back east than in California, but plots that are unattended in the summer do suffer. And that's also when many of the fruit trees produce, so people gone for the summer don't experience that benefit.  

Snow in the front range

Late season storm, pretty damn cold for SB. Rained friday night into saturday. Snow in the front range saturday night, showers off and on sunday, a light dusting sunday night. This is from monday morning.

UCSB stuff

Cool little blurb about installing bike repair stands, I dig it.

Landsat 5 is done, too

This might be too much of a coincidence. On the same day that Regis Philbin retired the USGS released a press release that the Landsat 5 satellite is being put out to pasture. AND, the press release was released during that final Live with Regis & Kelly show! hmmm......

Bittman, the Santa Barbara Syndrome

"This kind of approach — grow what you can close to where you live and eat what you can grow — is obviously nothing new. (Even in my lifetime, I can remember seeing asparagus only in late spring, Macintosh apples in the fall and Empire apples — long keepers — through the winter.) What’s new is the lack of farmland, because much has been lost to sprawl or commodity crops, and farmers who can make it happen, farmers working on a scale between sustenance and industrial."

the whole article

One NUGGET in his article was a link to this article about the Santa Barbara syndrome. In our country we export 99% of what is grown here. AND IMPORT 95% OF FRUIT & VEGGIES THAT ARE EATEN!!! Holy Cow! David Cleveland, UCSB professor and garden friend is quoted thusly: "Picture two produce-laden tractor-trailers passing on the highway, one bringing food into the county; the other hauling it out."

Here's the UCSB press release on the Cleveland study

Goleta Representing

I found the black Goleta hat in the pic in the free bin a while ago and sent it to my friend James, who lives on the Big Island. Modeling it is another friend from the UCSB dorms. Goleta in the islands...

Recent Dinners

Haven't posted in a while as I was busy finishing up the dissertation and Sara was busy with her orals and other stuff. Lots of stress in the household.... We're all clear now, though.

cutie w/ some of the finer things

sauteed rutabaga with broccoli shoots steaming on top

The final dish, rutabaga, grassfed beef bratwurst, broc, this was really really good. I'm loving rutabaga.

This was interesting. Potatoes simmered in goat milk + crushed green corriander seeds. Served with cilantro and kale and some pickled veggies that the Lerner gave us.

deep dish quiche from last night

Erin made earl grey ice cream. So good, and really good with stewed rhubarb