Best Tiny Desks

 The Bob Weir one I've listened to more than 20 times

 

the Weight, from COVID times

 

Billy Strings

 from various sources

 

Tori Amos on Rick Beato

 one of the best interviews I heard in the past few years

 

Travel vloggers

 It's a pretty big genre on youtube. Here are some I've really enjoyed the past few years:

Kombi Life Pan Am highway (there's a theme...) except south to north. Took him forever as his vw bus broke down constantly. Legendary channel. Recently european trips that are also fun.  

Max & Lee Pan Am  Videos started in Baja and were amateur at that point, so that was a bummer, but I really enjoyed their slow way of travel. Super sad ending though: Lee basically had a mental breakdown cause of social media, they broke up, she actually lived in SB for a while, committed suicide by Amtrak!!!!!!!!!! eek. onto happier thoughts. 

Eva Zu Beck long career on youtube. She has a video with an Iranian goat herding family that is really stunning. A real pro. Recently got hired by National Geographic to do a show that is decent. 

 Nick and Mathilde french couple. Started watching when they were in convoy with Eva at the start of Pan Am, they've been on the road now for 4 years and are in central Asia currently. 

Toyota World Runners Pan Am, another sad one as after the trip and they got back to Canada they died in a car accident. The videos from this trip are unbelievable, great camera work and narration, and a really cool custom vehicle (Landcruiser with a camper). Peruvian Andes and then Bolivia, Argentina Altiplano videos particularly great.

 Dan Cycles the World Pan Am, by bicycle, but via dirt as much as he can. Also great camera work and narration. Seems like a really, really nice and cool guy. Baja and Peru videos were particularly awesome. In Bolivia/northern Chile right now. 

Go Alone. Pan Am, but then also a couple of neat vids in southern Africa.  

Kepa Acero Legendary surf traveler 

Desert Drifter another sad one as he passed in a car accident. SW US hiking: cedar mesa, etc 

Dylan Graves: Alaska trip

 Dylan Graves has a number of videos on youtube about novelty waves that are enjoyable. This is a more conventional trip, except it's a boat trip in Alaska, not the Mentawais, so not that conventional... Really enjoyable wildlife, fishing, etc, the Alaska experience. 

 

 

The Occ cast

 

 Old youtube content popped up in my feed. Occy's podcast stopped having new content a while ago, there are some great interviews. I posted about the Jack Johnson one back in 2019. Here are a number of other good ones. 

Dane Reynolds

Tom Curren

Rob Machado

Dave Rastovich

 

Paul Theroux quote

 

 from Fresh Air Fiend, I'm not familiar with the 2 books mentioned but I love the line anyway...

 

"The first book that was read to me was Make Way for Ducklings, and the second was The 500 hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, by Dr. Suess. As soon as I could read I wanted to be a hero. 

 

 

Paulina Borsook interview

 great interview from Amanpour & Co, about silicon valley, tech (and not in a good way)

blog reboot

 the iphone killed the blog, for me. cause blogger doesn't have an app to allow for posts from the phone (and its camera...). also too many distractions. but I did quite like how the blog is a receptacle of memories. so, trying again. 

 

 

yellow thai curry

 made a simple yellow thai curry today, for the first time in a while, and took some pics. it seems like yellow curry recipes always involve potatoes; potatoes cooked in coconut milk are so good. i also used green garlic, beet greens, and fava from the garden.

combine ~2T Mae Ploy yellow curry paste with the cream top of a can of coconut milk, simmer until the oil separates, then add the rest of the can, and add a can of water or stock. 

Then add veg to the sauce/broth. I added a couple sun dried tomatoes, 4 green garlics, 6 medium yellow potatoes, some beet greens, some fava beans, and a little fish sauce. More veg, herbs, tofu, would all be good, too.

 

Patagonia graphics

a few of my favorite graphics on capilene 

Moroccan Lentils

 This recipe comes from Cafe Morocco by Anissa Helou, where it's called lentils with swiss chard. Basically it's brown/green/"normal" lentils cooked with greens and herbs and a nice spice blend. It's super easy, too, as there's no saute step, it's all just boiled together.  

Moroccan Lentils

1.5c lentils

1lb greens

3oz cilantro (this is about 1 bunch in a store)

1 onion

4T evoo

1.5t cumin

1t paprika

1/2 t pepper 

~1/2 t salt

juice from 1 lemon

Cook lentils with 1Q water for 15 min, add greens, cilantro, onion and cook 5-10 more min, covered. Add evoo and spices and cook another 10 min covered - till lentils tender. Add salt and lemon juice at end.

 

Sheridan Anderson

 

I got a capilene shirt on ebay cause of the cool/funny graphic, signed Sheridan. I'm a patagonia supporter cause of their environmental stance and their clothes last a long time rather than being a climber, so I guess it's slightly poseur-ish to like the graphic but whatever. Sheridan Anderson wrote a couple books and did illustrations for climbing books and journals. The above graphic was the cover of Summit magazine in 1970

Got a grain mill

 I bought a bunch of kamut berries a while ago thinking I'd get in to sprouting but didn't. So recently got a grain mill to make fresh flour. Pretty yummy.

fresh favas, lightly steamed/mashed beforehand, good aged cheddar

taco pizza ish with lentils, hot sauce, good aged cheddar

Xonequi

I love masa harina but making tortillas is hard for me. I can make quesadillas, empanada-style, alot easier. But lately I've been doing things like polenta made with masa, tamale pie - chili with a masa-based top crust, and something I'm calling mishmash which is basically garlic/onion/spices/mushrooms, masa, liquid, then black beans. The classy option, though, is Xonequi, basically black bean soup with masa harina dumplings cooked in it at the end. It's so good. Recipe is from Diana Kennedy's My Mexico. So garlic, onion, cumin, coriander, ground chipotle, black beans; masa, warm water, ground chile, chopped onion, evoo, make balls, simmer about 15min at end of soup cooking.

 

Here's a version with fresh favas added

Chickpeas a couple ways

 The VIPER lab did the eat by the alphabet again Feb 2023. I had chickpeas a couple of different ways and enjoyed each one. For U I made Usal - indian chickpea curry. For Y I made chickpeas with Yemeni spices. Mostly I eat them fairly simply, I cook them with garlic, kombu, CA white sage, then pour over some EVOO.

soak 'em

I save smaller cloves for cooking with beans, don't bother peeling them

White sage, the CA native medicinal plant is great for cooking chickpeas

kombu in there, too

 

The Indian and Yemeni dishes are pretty similar, just the spice combos are different, so spices, garlic, onion, cook with tomatoes, chickpeas at end. For one of them I used a concentrated red sauce and cooked for less time, the other got diced canned tomatoes and cooked longer. The Usal is from East by Meera Sodha, a really nice veg cookbook.

The Yemeni one I roughly followed this. Basically it's 2 onions; T coriander, cumin; couple cloves; seeds from 8 green cardamom pods, 1/2t fenugreek seeds, turmeric; a cup or so cooked tomatoes, cilantro. Use a coffee grinder for the spices.

A couple more days, A & G. Not pictured hippie hummus (has hemp seeds)

The red sauce is Romesco, basically red chilies (arbol, ancho) with ground almonds and ajo (garlic)

Green garlic, garbanzo, gochujang

cilantro pumpkin seed pesto

 from healthy hedonist holidays, p.36. delicious

1c chopped cilantro

1/2c evoo

1/4c lime juice

1t salt

pinch cayenne

1c pumpkin seeds, roasted, cooled, ground in a coffee grinder

 

blend first 5, add seed meal at end. 

Runner beans (warning)

 I have a strong stomach. Yesterday I ate some undercooked fresh runner beans and a couple hours later did some pretty serious projectile vomiting!! Backstory. Winter beans I have figured out pretty well. Favas I can eat fresh raw, fresh cooked later in the season, and cooked dried throughout the year. Garbanzos I eat fresh raw or cooked dried. Summer beans I'm still figuring out. Green beans raw or cooked seem fine. I've grown a number of varieties of beans to dry and cook later. I wanted to try cooked fresh beans as it seems that picking the plant when they are mature but far from dry will encourage the plant to produce more. But I made a really big mistake, I didn't cook them much, kinda like how I treat favas when they are only just beginning to toughen up. This was the only time I've puked because of eating something that wasn't spoiled. It was gnarly. I remember reading somewhere that there was an issue with runner beans so I approached them slowly. Small raw green pods seemed ok. It's my understanding now that fresh beans you have to boil for 10 min in order to render the phytohaemagglutinin inactive. Only 6 beans did it to me! The flowers are pretty and the beans are pretty, whether I can ever stomach them again is an open question.

 I'd like to turn this smile upside down

There's a rule in nature that colorful things are often poisonous....

RIP Lizzy Girl Part 2

 I've been managing the garden since the beginning of 2011. One of the most important jobs was to feed Lizzy the cat every morning. So many interesting interactions over the years. One of the strangest is when she was losing her fang, 2012-ish, it started pointing more and more straight out of her mouth, she used to slobber when she was pet, and one day out came the tooth in a puddle of saliva. I still have it. There was a phase where she'd forget to retract her tongue into her mouth and walk around with it poking out a little. She generally stayed near the greenhouse but would walk the garden with me sometimes. She was a real free spirit, and provided comfort/entertainment to lots of people over the years. In terms of her early years, the earliest mention of her in old garden emails was March 2010, but she's older than that for sure. A blog post in 2005 suggests at least two of the late 90s garden cats (Smokie, Blondie, Cali, Mamma Grey) were still around. Garden management folks Kristen Labonte and Abbie Peairs both said she wasn't around in 2007. Alan Sechman who was manager spring 2008 - spring 2009 thinks he remembers a small quiet cat, so sounds like Lizzy. It makes sense that he didn't know her that well because her caretaker then was "Skypilot" Al, who was a real character. A true wanderer, he would go on walkabout throughout the West - he walked from SB to Reno, for instance. Lizzy kept pulling him back, until he finally had to quit the garden cold turkey around 2010. My guess has been that she was around 15 y.o., that seems about right if she came to the garden as a grown cat sometime in 2008, a pretty good, long life for an outdoor cat! Here are some pics thru the years:

May 2011

Aug 2011, she would sometimes venture out to our plot in the other side of the garden (taken from GBH 2, looking towards GBH 1)

Oct 2012

July 2014

 

May 2015, probably my favorite photo of her

 

Circa 2015, she used to like being up on the tables outside cause she could sleep and be away from any danger

 

Spring 2016

 

Nov 2016, the 1 fang, and her cute tongue 

 

Feb 2017

March 2017

March 2019, rainwater was always the beverage of choice

May 2019

 

June 2019, checking out her portrait

 

July 2019

 

Dec 2019

 

March 2020, she still had a healthy weight here, her last year her body slowly failed her

 

Nov 2020

Dec 2020, rainwater again

Feb 2021, she was a good eater

 

day before yesterday, nap in the shade

yesterday

Some more text after a few days worth of reflection

 In 1983 my family got 2 calico cats. My cat lived to be 17, my brother's cat 18. Cats are obviously fiercely independent, and mine was particularly so - it wasn't uncommon for her to go on walkabout for days at a time. Lizzy's independence was on a different level. She didn't really like to be picked up, and certainly not held. Very, very rarely she'd approach the idea of getting into my lap. She'd scratch me often - after happily being petted for minutes. She bit me occasionally. She didn't purr that often. I didn't consider her as a pet, and referred to her as the garden's cat. But damn I'm mourning her hard.

I began gardening at GHGP in the spring of 2009 thru using the plot of other Geography grad students; I have no recollection of Lizzy during that time, although I didn't use the greenhouse or the toolshed cause of my unofficial status, so wasn't in her territory. She grew on us quickly, though!

 She was a survivor. Aside from itinerant bobcats and coyotes she also had to deal with raccoons - she once got bit on the butt when one got too close (she was super patient/calm when going to the vet). Her safe place was incredibly hard to get to, there is a small gap in the upper wall from the greenhouse into the toolshed, then she'd walk along a "ledge", the 1/2" wide top edge of a piece of plywood, and sleep on top of the cabinet in there.

 The funny thing is despite her independence she was super dependent on humans for food, she wasn't a hunter at all! I saw her chasing lizards, but the only thing I ever saw her catch was a mouse. She caught it in the greenhouse and was so proud of herself she brought it to me at my plot. She then proceeded to drop it and it ran away. 

Sound was an important part of our relationship. Sometimes she'd visit our plots on the west side of the garden, meowing loudly to let us know she was coming. When I arrived at my plot by the greenhouse to feed her I had a whistle tone to let her know I was there. Our intern Hanna was telling me that when she hears a rustle in the leaves she turns around expecting to see Lizzy but instead it's one of the many garden lizards. Lizzy's spirit lives on! 

 

Lizzy, God light, April 2021