Apricot Preserves 2009

Last year was the first year that I canned stuff myself. Turns out it's pretty easy. Also, when you do preserves, because the sugar content is so high (sugar is a preservative) you just boil up the lids and screw them on right after you put the fruit in and that's it, none of that boiling for 10 min and then using tongs to pull the jars out nightmare. I'm using a recipe from an old french cookbook that was recently translated in to english -- La Bonne Cuisine. The technique is simple, combine fruit and half it's weight in sugar, let it sit for 24 hours, cook till the fruit is 'translucent', and can it. When I began the blog I included the formal recipe at the bottom of an early post, so I won't repeat it, but it really is as simple as the last sentence suggests. This year I've been using lemon zest instead of lemon juice, adding toasted apricot kernels (toasting them supposedly renders the tiny amount of cyanide in them inert), and using vanilla sugar. Atleast the first batch got vanilla sugar. Here are some pics:

Out of focus, apricots and organic unrefined sugar

yum

Getting ready to cook the first batch, the syrup forms naturally over the 24 hours

Toasted apricot pits. Crack them in a nut cracker.

yum

The second batch, pre-sugar

Thus far this year I've canned 13.5 quarts of preserves. Here's a little nerd activity, note the mammoth R-sq:

NPR gives me an excuse to reminisce

On Car Talk some guy called asking if it was safe to take a new used Chevy Tahoe on a roadtrip, something about him not being sure he trusted it yet as he just got it. Their response was basically go for it, and also it's not an adventure till something goes wrong, something like that. Got me to thinking about all of the used cars we've taken down to Mexico. Before I was born my folks took and old Opal station wagon. The only new car they've ever bought, a '80 Diesel Volkswagon Rabbit survived one trip. The '55 Chevy Pickup made a couple of trips. As did the '73 Toyota Landcruiser. A Toyota fastback passenger car survived one trip. Heck, a 70s Datsun station wagon survived some crazy roads, although just barely. Baja Bugs work down there, VW Vans not so much. Toyota 4Runners work well. Good times.

On Wait Wait the 'not my job' questions were about Dario, the butcher in Tuscany. I've mentioned him before on the blog. He's pictured in Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Italy. He's featured in Heat by Bill Buford. Clare ate at his restaurant with her family.

USA - Brasil

Brasil spotted E.E.U.U. two goals, the second of which was a beauty by Landon Donovan, before they decided to play. All of their goals were nice. A respectable showing, I reckon.

Gay Rights/Duckhunting

This NPR story about gay rights is really funny, especially considering it's a serious topic.

Browsing (the old-fashioned kind)

Had a nice morning. Ate some raspberries at the garden, then blackberries off of the bikepath. Went to Keely's to feed and amuse the cat, and low-and-behold, a Jamie Oliver show all about rhubarb was on the tube. Got home and pigged out on freshly stewed apricots. Pretty much perfect.

Two-Lane Blacktop

I've mentioned it a million times, but I hadn't dedicated a post to it yet. Was browsing OnionAV this morning and at the bottom of the page, in the 'auto-recycler-o-matic', was an interview with Monty Hellman about the 1999 DVD release of Two-Lane Blacktop, the version from Anchor Bay that came in a tin with other collectable stuff/junk. Criterion also released it, last year. The commentary track on the Anchor Bay one is better, but there are a ton of extra features on the Criterion, so both are good to have.

The movie reminds me of the Seinfeld tagline -- a show about nothing. Cause nothing much happens in Two-Lane, it's just guys driving across America, but the photography and music are great. And there's just enough plot. And Monte Hellman. And Warren Oates. And non-actors in starring roles (James Taylor and Dennis Wilson). And interesting character actors. And local people. For it to come together wonderfully. It's one of my favorite movies.

Amy's Blog

I've mentioned it before, but Amy's last few posts have been really interesting, she's a good writer and Mexico City seems to be pretty darn cool. Check it out.

Serendipitously, here's a nice NPR story about Mexico City.

New Regina, Streaming

I didn't like the first song that was released too much, but she was on Morning Edition today and the songs they played were solid. So I bought it. Here's the NPR stream of the album.

Photo is by my friend Jon Klemm from NYC. She's mostly known for playing the piano, but she looks pretty good with a guitar, too.

'Blue Lips' is a killer song. I like the album alot.

Cold Water Classic -- Capetown

There was an ASP event in Capetown just now, and the website of the event has some nice videos and photos from all around the Cape Peninsula. I miss it. The final day was held at Kalk Bay reef which we weren't good enough to surf when we lived there; the wave looks super fun for the final.

Cormorants, I think. They don't just have surfing photos on the website....

USA 2 - Spain 0

Just watched the end of pretty decent soccer game. How the heck did that happen? 2nd goal was garbage-y, but the US was on the attack. Not sure why Spain couldn't score.... Maybe USA soccer is starting to be respectable, the part of the game I saw was certainly watchable.

Apparently the game was played in Bloemfontein, SA. Bloemfontein!?! Actually, maybe it's ok, I'm not sure if we went through there on any of our road trips, but it's certainly no Capetown.

Food Inc./Fresh Air

Fresh Air did a good bit on Food Inc. last week, better than the previous reviews I've seen. It's a little longer of a review, so they got in to some of the agribusiness issues, and have some clips from the movie. The first video clip is about how Walmart doesn't sell rBST milk anymore, didn't know that, and I think it's great. Baby steps, but important.

A really good listen.

Every food purchase we make is a political act.

Vanilla Bean Custard

Blogging has been a slog lately what with no interweb at home anymore. Also the kids have been fleeing IV like rats leaving a sinking ship, so I've had my 'art from scrap' hat on, and haven't been cooking that much. Recently I made a milk/egg custard using a bourbon vanilla bean, and it's pretty good. Different cultures call it different things, oeufs du lait inFrance, flan in Mexico. I generally followed Clotilde's recipe, approximately doubling it. Used Strauss cream-on-top milk, hence the yellow (butter) color in the first 2 images.

Vanilla steeping in the milk

Cooked up. A little over cooked, so texture is a little sketchy, but flavor is great.

Louvin Brothers/OnionAV

Good read/listen about the Louvin Brothers.

Quick Change/OnionAV

Bill Murray 2x today. Sweet. Kinda funny aside: I used the "crying on the inside" line in public once, and it kinda freaked Ryan out. He didn't realize it was a movie quote.

Update 7/15: Just got it in the mail and watched it last night. I didn't realize how much of this movie I had internalized. The old woman walking down the street saying, "flores para los muertos" over and over particularly stood out. But I remembered a ton of the movie, and I probably hadn't seen it since 1997 or so. OnionAV noted that the first 30min are electric and it slows down a bit after that. True and all, but that first 30 are amazing, it couldn't keep up that pace. A very satisfying movie.

If I Kill All the Golfers... II

This morning I had my first tomato. 'Twas great. And a nice strawberry. And an amazing blackberry. And then, while weeding, out of the corner of my eye I saw the very tomato plant that gave me love earlier waving about wildly. The ^&*%*^% gopher took it out. I didn't think they ate tomatoes. I stuck the hose down the hole and blasted, Caddyshack-style. But realistically it's looking like I'm going to have to dig up all of my plants and protect them.

'77 Blazers

Pretty funny piece on the True Hoop basketball blog, talking about a piece on NBA.com about Bill Walton and Luke Walton corresponding publicly. Luke seems to believe that this year's L*ker team could have beaten the '77 Blazer championship team. I was too young to remember them, though we were living in Oregon at the time. Anyway, Bill Walton's retort was Blazers in 4, cause of the presence of Maurice Lucas, who Luke Walton is named after. Zing.

Muppets

Very nice post from I Love You So.

Here be Monsters

Read all about it.

Food, Inc.

Coverage of it on NPR and OnionAV. I dunno, is there a way to change americans' minds? People are so set in their ways. Could a nation dumb enough to (somewhat mostly) vote for Bush ever give up eating supermarket meat & dairy, GMO food, etc, etc? I care about this issue a ton, but don't see anything changing. People whine about how organic, or at least hormone free stuff is too expensive, elitist, whatever. If you cook, raw ingredients don't cost squat. But not enough people cook anymore.

Dude, Where's My Carbon?

I proudly say 'dude' alot. NPR pretty much rocked my world this morning, talking about the cap and trade system of carbon credits, and the word 'dude.' It was awesome.

Book Recommendations/NPR

In the continuing, recent tradition of having links rather than original content, Morning Edition had a great set of book recommendations this morning.

Today is Maurice Sendak's Birthday

Heard on Writer's Almanac this morning that today is his birthday. We Love You So has a nice picture of a birthday cake.

If I Kill All the Golfers...

I'm in a war with the gophers at Amy's garden plot. They've taken 3 out of 5 mature pepper plants that I transplanted there. So today I dug up the rest of the old ones, and the new ones, and put them in chicken wire cages. I think I'm going to collect kitchen knives during the IV move-out and landmine the plot, too. Anyway.

This is a war.

Bear

During the Jesusita Fire there was a story that a black bear was seen in a neighborhood, fleeing the flames. Apparently it has taken to taking a bath in the ocean instead of returning to the front range.

Water in the West

Cadillac Desert is a book everyone should read, it's basically about the partitioning of the Colorado River water, (over)development, golf courses in the desert, etc.

The California Report had an interesting story this morning about farming in the central valley and how that will change due to smaller allotments due to demand, the Delta Smelt, climate change, yada yada yada.

Fixies

A rant. I've been riding a bike with 1 chainring and 3 gears for a while now. It's clean, light, and there are enough gears to climb small hills. The first fixie I saw was a dude who shops at the co-op, just a beautiful, simple, homegrown conversion bike, with a front brake only. I think the guys who ride track bikes (no front brake) on the street are a little crazy, but it's their life. This year at school there have been a ton of brand new shiny road bikes with 1 chainring and a freewheel rear hub. These dudes are lame. Spending 500$ for a bike to ride 1 mile to and from class?? I don't get it. Today I witnessed the height of stupidity. Track bike frame (no rear brake), road bike fork (front brake), and a freewheel. So this moron can pedal real fast, coast when he wants to, and go over the bars when he has to stop real fast with only his front brake. Rich kids are lame.

Tuna

I stole the pic from Kevin and Vana's most recent blog post, from Tokyo. Beautiful.

Clint Eastwood/OnionAV

My favorite Clint Eastwood movies are High Plains Drifter and Every Which Way But Loose/Any Which Way You Can. But obviously a ton of them are great. Luckily for you, my dedicated, illustrious blog readers, onionav has a 4 page writeup on his films.

Fanboys

Got Fanboys from Netflix yesterday. It got pretty terrible reviews, but I quite liked it. General jist is a couple of Star Wars fans can't wait for Phantom Menace to be released and decide to drive to Skywalker Ranch to steal/watch it. So it's a road movie with low brow comedy, Veronica Mars doing the smart/sassy thing, Jay from Undeclared, Seth Rogen in a couple of cameos, and lots of Star Wars/Star Trek jokes. I think I am their target audience. Here's the trailer so you can decide if you are targeted, too.

Buckets of Rain II

Rained a bunch this morning. Harvested about 50 gallons of water and watered house plants. Fun, fun, fun.

Where the Wild Things Are / Arcade Fire

The trailer for it is pretty awesome; also, check out the hipster math for the movie. There's a blog with posts that are loosely related to the movie project. Actually i'm not sure what the connection is for some/many of the posts, but on the 3rd page they had a link to the storycorps archive, so they get my seal of approval.

Jeez, the cast is pretty damn good. Catherine Keener, who everyone loves except Clare. Catherine freaking O'Hara from Beetlejuice and the Christopher Guest movies, Mark Ruffalo, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Forest Whitaker, Gandolfini.

Blue

From Meme Cats

Vanilla

So I've used the vanilla in a couple of ways now. Threw a bean in with some organic unrefined sugar and that stuff is awesome. Doesn't seem like I need vanilla extract anymore. Speaking of which, threw one of each kind in with 1c of rum to make vanilla extract. Lastly, a post by an Estonian blogger about putting a vanilla bean in when stewing rhubarb has made me very happy. The pic could be better, but you get the jist. Actually, I cheated a little on the color, added about a cup of blood orange juice when cooking it to make the red more vibrant. The rhubarb from the garden is the variety that is more green than red. Either that or I'm picking it too soon. Still tastes good....

More uses:
A vanilla bean added to cooking apricots is great
Oeufs du lait
Extract
Persimmon Vanilla Sorbet

The Dunk

NBA finals start today, so I reckon I'll post something I've had laying around for a while. It's about the dunk John Starks did over Jordan and Horace Grant in the '93 playoffs. The Knicks lost the series, but everyone lost to the Bulls, the Blazers included, it's all about style points. Anyway. The following text used to be on the web, but it's gone, now. So I'm going to repost it.

God looks a bit like a dunk
By DAN SEYMOUR

The gods decided to communicate with mankind on May 25, 1993, and yet the multitudes still refuse to acknowledge their message.

With Vince Carter's ludicrous dunk in the Sydney Olympics last summer, a rather bitter sentiment has resurfaced among various Knick-hating circles. I am referring, of course, to the sentiment that John Starks' infamous, incredible slam dunk at Madison Square Garden in the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals against the Bulls was, and I quote, "overrated." This was the sentiment formerly expressed by front-running, heretical Bulls fans who, by the way, though their sentiment has resurfaced, will not themselves resurface, at least until such time as the Bulls win another championship. In other words, not for a long, long time. So while these Bulls fans themselves remain harder to find than a Nets fan in Arkansas, their widespread conception that John Starks' dunk is "overrated" continues to linger.

However, in the face of unfathomable athletic and acrobatic dunks by Vince Carter among others, I still maintain that Starks' legendary dunk, known simply as "The Dunk" to New Yorkers, was the greatest dunk of all time. I say this not to imply that it was the dunk that displayed the most athletic prowess; nor do I wish to imply that it was the dunk that was the most aesthetically pleasing to watch, since it had a sort of gritty ugliness to it that only a Knicks fan could love. There have in the past been dunks that were more athletic, and more aesthetically pleasing to watch. However, "The Dunk" is so named and fondly remembered not just for its athleticism or its aesthetic value, but because of what that dunk meant to the Knicks and the city of New York at the time. It was the dunk's significance, what it symbolized and what it meant to the players and the fans. It was the dunk's spiritual relevance that transcended the artificial standards by which dunks are normally judged, and made it not only the greatest dunk of all time, but more importanly by far the most profoundly meaningful. For that moment, the line separating player from fan was melted as all of New York became a broiling skillet of fanaticism with one single, unified goal, one heart and one soul.

In retrospect, to fans, Michael Jordan was the best basketball player of all time, an icon, a demigod, a face for posters and Nike and Gatorade ads and a household name used to refer to when discussing greatness. But to Starks and the Knicks, he was an actual, real-life opponent. A superior opponent, we can indeed safely say in retrospect, but an opponent nonetheless. And at that, an opponent the Knicks knew they could beat, despite the skepticism of the rest of the known civilized world, and probably also despite the skepticism of varied life forms on other planets that we never even knew existed.

That they never beat Jordan is irrelevant, because it takes nothing away from the celestial significance the dunk had at the time. "The Dunk" was by itself, in its cosmic sense, a simplified, accurate portrait of the psyche of New York, as expressed through some inexplicable leap from the baseline. It was a visual metaphor for New York's attitude and temperament. It was the collective unconscious of New York City, wrapped up into a single athletic maneuver. "The Dunk" occupied a sacred place in the hearts of New Yorkers even before it ever happened, since while the actual, physical dunk hadn't yet taken place, the rage, triumph, and frustration expressed in the dunk had always existed and will continue to exist as long as the Knicks keep losing to teams like the Hawks and the Clippers.

"The Dunk" was symbolic of the Knicks' character, their personality, and their struggle against the then two-time defending NBA champion Chicago Bulls, the bad guys, the oppressors. The Bulls were Goliath, the seemingly unbeatable villains, fortunate sons, big-money guys in suits, the big names with gold chains and a cellphone in a stretched limo, the tax collectors, the royalty. The Knicks were the grimy street kids, thugs and hoodlums, hood rats with dirty faces and filthy fingernails, goons that fought dirty, offering toughness and hard-nosed hustle over skill. They were basketball's new bad boys, the rough defenders. They were notorious for pulling stunts like head-butting Reggie Miller, clotheslining Scottie Pippen, breaking Kenny Anderson's wrist with a flagrant foul, or brawling in Phoenix or Miami. When you went into Madison Square Garden, you knew that, if nothing else, you were going to get pushed around. The Bulls were the princes, the Knicks the paupers. "The Dunk" was a direct expression of New York's status in the rivalry between these two teams. It was an heroic statement, an affirmation of the Knicks' stance within the spiritual context of basketball. "The Dunk" was in itself a metaphor for the anguish and the faith of the downtrodden fans of New York.

Vince Carter dunked over Frederic Weis (incidentally, a former Knick hopeful.) Bulls fans, at least the ones you can find now that they're the worst team in the NBA, are fond of bringing up Pippen's nice dunk over Ewing. Let's face it: Ewing is in everyone's highlight video. On the other hand, Starks dunked over MJ himself, the very symbol of the forces oppressing the Knicks, the very archetype of the mountain the Knicks had to climb to become self-actualized winners and champions. The Knicks still have yet to climb that mountain. However, for one microcosmic flash of a beautiful, magical moment, Starks himself ascended that mountain, only briefly but not alone. And that's why it was the greatest dunk of all time.

I still think there was divine intervention on that dunk. That a 6'3 mortal could jump so high and so long is simply unfeasible. The elevation and distance he got on the jump disobeyed the laws of physics, and probably even disobeyed some New York State statutes as well. There were clearly divine forces at play. Now, obviously I don't mean to suggest that God actually physically lifted John Starks on that dunk; that would be silly and superstitious. It was probably an angel or an invisible gnome of some sort.

John Starks, any Knicks fan will tell you, had a momentary flash of magic, an awe-inspiring spark of high-flying, timeless divinity. It may well be that the spirit world decided to communicate with New York through that dunk for that one split-second, choosing to display the message of the gods in a time and place when they knew everyone would be watching. Needless to say, they conveyed their message effectively,in a blurry burst of flames and ostentatious smoke that was straight out of a dream. We all know that dream. It's that dream in which the Knicks overcome their obstacles, defeat evil, ride a wave of sorcery, and win a championship. It's a dream that New Yorkers are having less and less these days.

Banana Sourdough Bread

Just messing around. It looks nice, although you can tell from the pic that the gluten isn't very well developed. Yeast, water, flour for a day or so, added 2 very ripe bananas, another day or so, then enough flour to knead it.

Stuffed Cabbage II

Made stuffed cabbage again, took more photos, had a better filling, but still wasn't too terribly impressed. I dunno. The presentation is nice, but flavour isn't too terribly interesting. For posterity's sake:


Filling. Beef, corriander, cumin, caramelized leeks, etc.
God bless Global Knives. Also, when you smash garlic you don't have to chop it that well.
Boiling up the cabbage leaves
Rolled, stuffed, unbaked
Rolled, stuffed, baked