Braun Stick Blender

Hello Eliza, this is what I look like. Love, Seth's stick blender.

When it rains, it pours

Lots of posts today. Got a little love from the Patagonia 30% off sale in the mail today.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Bee

OnionAV New Cult Canon.

Trailer for new Coen Brothers movie

Oh yeah!

Lime Buttermilk Sherbet

Sherbets have dairy, sorbets don't. Got some organic valley buttermilk 1/2 price from the co-op, did a little research, and happyness ensued. Perhaps this one sounds a little odd, but many people have tried it and liked it.

Lime Buttermilk Sherbet:
1Q buttermilk
1 1/4 c sugar
3/4 c freshly squeezed lime juice
zest from the limes
Make a syrup with the sugar, juice, and zest. Cool. Stir in the buttermilk. Freeze. Stick blender. Freeze. I didn't add booze to this for no particular reason. It was a little tiny bit icy -- you can see crystals in the pic. Still good.
Umbrella sorbet post

Apricot Sorbet

I made apricot sorbet quite a while ago, when apricots were in season, but posts slip through the cracks not having the interweb at home.... Actually i'm not even sure what went in to it beyond the very very basic recipe I'm writing down. It could have been this simple, though not likely.

Apricot Sorbet:
2lbs ripe apricots
simple syrup -- 1c sugar, 1c water
little bit of booze

umbrella sorbets post.

Dolphin

My friend James sent me a link to a portfolio from the recent south swell. Lots of cool images from an airplane, but this dolphin one from a pier is particularly sweet.

WWWD?

Clicked on a Google Ad. Nice shirt.

Falafel

Keely rocked the falafel last night, a dinner party to break in my "new" couch. I had it once before when r/s went to Albania. Now it's back with r/s/l off to WI. We followed the falafel recipe from Claudia Roden's 'Book of Middle Eastern Food', one of the best cookbooks ever written. The 'Goha' stories are hilarious. General jist is soak dried chickpeas for 24 hours, drain, put in food processor in batches, add onion/garlic/spices, make balls, fry at 350. Buy the book.

Slow shutterspeed fun

Rhubarb, the Victoria variety, I think

I cook it with blood orange juice to make the color red....

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.

Tin Men

Pulled Tin Men from the freebin the other day. I had never heard of it before, but it's pretty entertaining. Danny Devito and Richard Dreyfuss and alot of character actors that many would recognize. The real dreamy part, though, is that one of the characters is named 'Babowsky' which sounds suspiciously like Lebowski. And the Fine Young Cannibals are the house band in the neighborhood bar. FYC were huge on top-40 radio when I lived in South Africa. Huge. Seeing them brings me great joy, their lead singer is kinda funny looking.

I hate farmed salmon, and so should you

My dad is an oceanographer in Oregon and has done alot of research around salmon. My brother is a research tech up there, and has also been on a salmon boat out of Kodiak, Alaska. My friend Scott also has been involved in salmon research. So while I care alot about the food I eat in general, farmed salmon is particularly obnoxious to me. I was really happy when a law was passed that they had to add a sticker saying 'color added' for farmed salmon. Cause aside from polution from the extra fish food and concentrated fish droppings, the need for drugs to keep them healthy in restricted quarters, and driving down the price for real fish, farmed salmon looks like crap without food coloring! There's a nice little article in the Oregonian about how the fish farms in Chile are having trouble. Good.

Whole Foods SB

When I lived in San Diego I shopped at the Whole Foods alot. Highly targeted shopping, obviously, as it is expensive, but their beer selection was unbelievable {Oregon and Norcal microbrews, including a bunch of Rogue XS which I've never seen anywhere else} , and I was just getting in to organic food then. It's pretty cool that they are finally coming to SB, on Upper State. I think the competition will be great for the area. Don't think it'll affect my beloved IV co-op, but hopefully it'll take a bite out of Trader Joe's business.

Reservation Radio

Neat story about how native radio stations serve their communities.

Tour de France quotes

A running compendium of quotes from the newsflashes for the tdf:

9 July-- "God of thunder strikes in Barcelona".

15 July -- Kinda funny, kinda long --

12:46:08 - Prize Classifications Review: Part 01 – Yellow Jersey

There was a split in the finale of the 10th stage that saw 106 riders lose 15 seconds to the front group of 52. Two of the riders in the second peloton were Bradley Wiggins (GRM) and Levi Leipheimer (AST). The delay caused a reshuffle of the top 10 in the general classification. Wiggins dropped down from fifth overall to seventh (1’01” behind Nocentini); Leipheimer was fourth but is now fifth (at 54”).

Andreas Kloden (AST) moved up from sixth to fourth overall and is now on the same time as his team-mate Leipheimer.

Nocentini (ALM) is in the yellow jersey for the fifth successive day. He has a lead of six seconds on Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong (AST).

12:46:49 - New Rankings Just Announced

Moments after the review of the general classification was posted, Radio Tour announced that the jury has decided that the 15" that separated the first 52 riders from the second peloton will be void. This means that the top order of the general classification remains the same as it was before the 10th stage.

The alterations announced in the previous newsflash are thus incorrect.

and

"Obviously it's never comfortable if you hit the deck while riding at 45km/h but he seems okay"

July 16

"The name of title of the town hosting the start (Tonnerre) translates to "thunder" but the conditions are anything but stormy."

July 17

"15:26:15 - Jesus Led Over Platzerwasel In 1967

The Platzerwasel ascent has only been a feature of the Tour on one occasion before today. That was in the eighth stage of the 1967 edition. The first at the summit was Jesus Aranzabal."

Tomatillos

Neko & Cat/NPR Saturday

Neko Case was the guest on Wait Wait this saturday. It wasn't amazing, but was enjoyable. Later in the day, a Cat Power song was used in a story on Horseshoe Crab love. Sweet.

Simon Birch

Simon Birch is the title of a movie that is very loosely based on the John Irving book 'A Prayer for Owen Meany." I lovelovelove that book, it, and 'Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey are my co-favorites. 'Sometimes...' is hard to read, 'Owen Meany' is easy to read and is just amazing, it's about faith, religious faith sort of, but religion isn't too overbearing in it. Anyway, I found a VHS tape of Simon Birch during the IV moveout period, and recently watched it. They really butchered the book, as most adaptations do, but they changed some pretty fundamental things. I'm realizing that I can't explain why the movie stinks without giving away the ending, which is everything. Doh! Anyway. Read the book, avoid the movie.