Tom Rush/Prairie Home Companion

I bought a couple of Tom Rush cds after the last time he was on Prairie Home. They are quite good, but he is just magic live on that show. He has great rapport with GK. He did 3 songs this week, but Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings were on, too, so the whole show was particularly listenable.

World Cup/NPR

NPR has had some coverage of the World Cup recently. The best bit in the story is how they mention ESPN is ditching the US announcers in favor of Brits. Love it.

Image from here.

Tesla/NUMMI/NPR

Interesting story last week about a partnership between Tesla (who make 'boutique' electric sportscars) and Toyota to use the Toyota/Chevy NUMMI plant to make Tesla cars. Great idea cause it's going to bring the price down so more people can go electric. Win win.

Dailey & Vincent Sing the Statler Brothers

Awesome, awesome interview last week with 2 modern bluegrass guys who made a cover album of Statler Brothers songs. The Statlers played with Johnny Cash for a bunch of years, so you probably would recognize them if you heard them. Bob Edwards clearly loves the Statler Bros, which made the interview great to listen to. I threw in the cool jpeg to catch peoples' eye, cause this description isn't so hot...

Bishop Desmond Tutu

There's a show on KCLU at 5am on sundays, that isn't archived. So I usually miss part of it and/or can't remember exactly what was said. It's called 'City Arts and Lectures' and it's from SF, basically they tape public interviews and play them. Last week it was an interview with Desmond Tutu, talking about South Africa (obviously), specifically about the truth and reconciliation commission, Mandela, religion, etc. He's a great speaker. He was talking about being with the Dali Lama at a speaking event in Seattle, something about how "70,000 people came to hear him, and he doesn't even speak english." Awesome.

We need more Helmuts

Nice post from Liz Clark on Swell from Tahiti.

Cherimoya Colada Sorbet

The cherimoya tree by Amy's plot has been good for the last month. Made a cherimoya/banana/coconut milk sorbet that was a little milquetoast, but Lou ate 3 bowls of it, so that made me feel good! Getting the fruit off of the cherimoya seeds was a bit of an ordeal, I scooped it into a collander and pushed it through the holes with a potato masher -- basically an improvised chinois. The ratio of cherimoya to every thing else was wrong, basically this was a banana sorbet, but I like the name cherimoya colada....

Cherimoya colada sorbet:
flesh from 3 cherimoyas
6 bananas
19 oz can coconut milk
6 oz sugar
lime zest
splash lime vodka

Mix it all together. Stickblend. See other sorbet posts for more details :)

Acerola (?)

This is a tree at the garden. I think it might be an acerola cherry but i'm not sure. The fruit is sweet and tart and small and good.

New Books II

Been spending alot lately....

In Defense of Food
Second Nature
A Place of My Own -- all Michael Pollan
Fat of the Land

the Book of Salads
the Natural Healing Cookbook
Stocking Up
the New Basics Cookbook
From Amish and Mennonite Kitchens
Silver Palate Cookbook

Spaghetti Westerns / OnionAV

Nice long writeup/intro to the genre.

Umbrella Recommended Movies/DVDs

All are highly recommended...

seminal
Donnie Darko/Cool Hand Luke/Apocalypse Now
Lebowski
Hot to Trot
Two-Lane Blacktop
Withnail and I
Quick Change
Freaks & Geeks
This is Spinal Tap

bodies of work
Coen Brothers' movies
Audrey Hepburn movies
Clint Eastwood movies
Werner Herzog movies
Michel Gondry movies
Jim Jarmusch movies
Steve Buscemi movies

comedies
The Great Outdoors
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Zero Effect
Firefly / Serenity
The Informant!
Surfer, Dude
Zombieland
Extract
Josie and the Pussycats
Tin Men
The Room (an unintentional comedy)
The Triplets of Belleville
Fanboys

dramas
Brick
BSG
Veronica Mars
Paper Moon
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Paris, Texas
Mystery Train
Bound For Glory
George Washington
All the Real Girls
The Color of Money
The Fall
The Hired Hand
The White Dawn
Julie and Julia
Duma
Zandalee & the Color of Night
Vanishing Point
The Lucky Ones
The Limey
Velvet Goldmine
Brotherhood of the Wolf
The Farmer's Wife

documentaries
George Greenough / Mike Stewart Surf Movies
Full Circle w/ Michael Palin
Long Way Round / Long Way Down
Tori Amos - Live at Montreux
Shine a Light
Encounters at the End of the World
Kangaroos -- Faces in the Mob
The King of Kong
Surfwise

A list I did when I first began the blog

Gulf Oil Spill

The Surfrider Foundation has an informative blog about the spill in the Gulf.

from CNN

Fruit Photos

Flat Nectarines
Cherimoya
Fuyu Persimmon
Fuyu + Yogurt
Rhubarb
Stewed Rhubarb
Yali Pear
Acerola ? Cherry
Rhubarb 2010

Will Allen

Was talking with Sharon this morning about life in Wisconsin, and how Ryan is getting UW-Lax to start vermi-composting, and she brought up the name Will Allen. I did a little reading today, and found some interesting articles about him. Quick bio: he grew up on a farm, played basketball professionally, is back into farming, but urban farming, now. This NYT article on him is great, the money quote being: As Allen can’t help reminding us, with a mischievous smile, “Chicago has 77,000 vacant lots.” This fleshes him out more, and has a pic of him with Michelle Obama. Some midwestern press, which includes a trailer to FRESH, a movie about thinking about what we are eating. He is amazing in the videos, very charismatic.

Earth as Art II

Image by S Bee.

World Cup 2010 post #1

I love soccer. Played for 7 years as a kid. World Cups are so fun. The '94 one I was working as a janitor in the dorms with a bunch of mexican guys, breaks were a little longer than normal that summer.... The best part of the experience is the british announcers who do all the soccer for ESPN; they are so quotable. The worst part is listening to american announcers. I don't know if they dumb it down cause they think the audience doesn't understand, or if they are really just terrible observers of the game, but... in 2006 I muted the bad announcing and played Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood over and over and over again.

Quality geography

Loquats

Had the first loquat of my life at the co-op a couple of weeks ago. Hit up the tree at the garden this morning. I even kind of like the only semi-ripe ones, but they are best when they are on the soft side.

not intentional, but kinda cool

Samamidon / Sam Amidon

The Captain (Kirk) tipped me off that Sam Amidon, Band of Horses, and the National all have new albums out. Thus far I've only heard the Sam album, it's great. I love his album 'But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted,' and 'All is Well' is good (both recorded under the name Samamidon). He records old old songs, with old instruments. His voice has a really unique rhythm, and the albums are banjo heavy. Works for me. Brooklyn Vegan compiled a bunch of links to recent press (including an NPR World Cafe appearance), check 'em out. This is a good interview from 2008.

What is this?

R/S/L are going to be visiting soon, surfing the web for new sorbet ideas... thinking a rose petal one might do the trick. Found a true monstrosity -- rhubarb + blood orange + orange + rose petal (all in the same dish) sorbet. The picture isn't pretty, either.

New Potatoes

"Harvested" some french fingerling potatoes. The quotes are cause the plant was eaten by slugs before it did much, so I only got 4 potatoes out of it. Now every morning I go and pick slugs from my potatoes and strawberries and chuck them at thistles.... Anyway, I read somewhere that for brand new new potatoes they will cook in the vapor emitted by (covered) steaming greens. No boiling or lengthy frying required. It's a good trick. Cooked them with chard and kale.

+

=

Mint Tea

I remember, when I first started working at Amy's garden plot, noticing all of the mint, and wondering how to make fresh mint tea. Alot of time was spent/wasted on the web looking for amounts to use, and how to prepare it. So to save people the trouble, this is how I do it. My tea pot holds 1.5 Q of water. I put in 3 peppermint sprigs (cut the plants off at the ground, stem is ~10" long, leave the leaves attached to the stem). Bring to a boil and then let it steep for 10 min. Bring back to a boil (only takes an extra minute or so). Voila. Note that peppermint works best; spearmint is ok, chocolate mint is ok, apple mint is very boring for this use.
Of the 1.5Q I use some to cook my oatmeal (pour on oats, cover, let steam 10 min, then I nuke it for 2 min more), some to make rooibos tea, and I bottle 1Q in old juice bottles -- the lid even seals when the tea cools so you don't have to refrigerate it!

Mine Guder Taller Dansk II

Yesterday morning I took pics that would have accompanied this post. A tablecloth of clouds over the front range. Beautiful.

west

east

funny narrow band of clouds

far west

due north

west

it's a lizard

Kentucky Fried Movie / Alternative Energy

Watched Kentucky Fried Movie again recently, it has a funny/prescient bit about alternative energy that floored me. It was made in the late 70s, and one of their suggested ideas essentially came true! -- a bit about collecting oil that drips off of fast food and using that as oil; an alternative take on biodiesel. Even their untried-as-yet ideas don't seem thaaaaaat far fetched today: collecting the oil that clogs pores on teenagers faces, collecting oil stuck in combs, and collecting anthropogenic methane emissions from eating fast food (that's a euphemism...) Methane is a huge green house gas, a couple of people in the lab study it in that regard, methane from feed lots is a specific concern. It certainly seems that harvesting it and burning it would be better than letting it go up into the atmosphere unimpeded.

22:44

Very long, very interesting story on NPR tonight.

Lake Foul / NPR

Eliot Porter, Dungeon Canyon

The (^%O*^%(*& who damned Glen Canyon died recently, NPR had a brief remembrance of him tonight. Cadillac Desert is the classic book about the damning of the Colorado in order to have golf courses in the desert. Great book. Really there are a ton of interesting books about Glen Canyon: 'The place no one knew' by Eliot Porter, 'Glen Canyon: Images of a lost world' by Tad Nichols, 'All my rivers are gone' by Katie Lee, are 3 great ones. The Glen Canyon Institute has a great website about pre/post damning, and they show that with the current drought in the west some of what was covered is now visitable again.

Tad Nichols, Goddess of Glen Canyon

Fideos y Colorín

Mexican food themed dinner party on sunday. There's a blogger/Portland Trail Blazers fan who cooked a dinner every game this season based on the city of the opposing team -- for the 1st game of the Suns playoff series she made Fideos -- vermicelli in spanish. Basically you toast pasta, then add a liquid sauce which cooks the pasta and ends up the right thickness to be a proper sauce. It's gonna be my new favorite camping meal -- when you're camping (in Baja) it isn't trivial to get more fresh water, so you try to be frugal, so I've never liked cooking pasta in water when camping. I didn't really follow her recipe, just the proportion of pasta to liquid in order for the final product to be right. Recipe below.

One of the books I got recently was the Art of Mexican Cooking by Diana Kennedy; have a couple of her other books already. Paged through it thursday night and she mentioned that coral tree (colorín) flowers are edible, and are commonly used to make tacos. There are a ton of coral trees right by my office here. And they are in flower right now! Stoked. Alas, I forgot where in the book I'd read that, so spent some time saturday/sunday looking at every-damn-recipe in the book. Kinda lame, but there were a bunch of recipes that looked great, and I probably wouldn't have identified so many cool ones! The funny part, I started at the back ~p. 500. The colorín mention was in the intro, p. vii. Brutal! There's very little info on the web in english about colorín, about the only thing I saw was a suggestion to cook them with garlic and onion, and then they taste kinda like beef. I did and they did. A huge success. Only bummer is they lose the vibrant red when you cook them. C'est la vie. Recipe Below.

Also made chongos zamoranos again. I started too late in the day, so the whey syrup didn't cook down as much as the 2nd time I made them. That was the best batch so far.

Fideos:
8 oz vermicelli (I used spaghetti)
olive oil
cumin/corrainder/ancho/garlic/onion
salt
15oz can tomatoes
1c stock
2 chipotles
some tomatillo salsa

Colorín:
a bag of freshly picked colorín flowers (~1Q)
cumin/corrainder/ancho/garlic/onion

Grind cumin and corriander seeds in a coffee grinder
Toast for a couple of minutes in a cast iron skillet
Add ground ancho chilies ~1t, toast maybe 30 sec
Oil, garlic cook a couple of minutes
Add 2 onions, salt, cook 10 min or so
This is the flavor base for both dishes.

Toast pasta in maybe 2T olive oil in a wide pan for 3 min or so. Turn/stir for even color.
Add 1/2 of onion mixture, tomatoes, salsa, stock, chipotles.
Cook ~20min.

Add colorín to remaining onion mixture and cook ~5 min.


The compost bin afterwards. Limes, cilantro, onion, avo for Andrew's yummy guac; a colorín bud. Good times.

Update: I've made fideos at least 3 times now. Made it once with just a tomatillo sauce and didn't like that as much. Seems like a can of tomatoes plus some chilies is the way to go. Thus far I've only made it with spaghetti and it's fine, just takes longer for the noodles to cook.

Cherimoya

The cherimoya tree by Amy's plot fruited in January, but the fruit then was really uninteresting. It's got fruit on it right now and it's super good.

Wilted Kale

Made ricotta with 1% milk accidentally (was making yogurt with 1/2 price milk, but it split as it hit 180). Surprisingly I liked it, usually anything less than whole milk leads to dry, uninteresting cheese. Maybe it's cause in the spring we tend to eat less and lose weight. Anyway, raw kale, with hot fried ricotta placed upon it wilts a little, looks cool, tastes cool. Me gusta.

Dixie Chicks/OnionAV

Another good article in the Nashville or Bust series. I love their album Home. The 2 Patty Griffin tunes are great. There's one Patty tune on Fly, too.

Roy Orbison / NPR

He had an album come out while we were living in SA, when we had no tv and listened to the radio. He was all over the radio. The Traveling Wilburys were big, too. I like him alot. Tonight NPR is covering him as part of their 50 great voices series. Sweet.

All Things Considered Turns 39 Today!

I think it will turn 40 next year, unlike your average person....

Poizner & Pot-lucks

Two old bits, one from This American Life, one from Prairie Home Companion. On TAL a couple of weeks ago they had a story about Steve Poizner, a candidate for governor of California, who wrote a book about a teaching gig he did in a supposed inner city high school in San Jose. The kicker is the school wasn't rough and wasn't in a rough part of town. They clearly showed this by interviewing kids and teachers there, and gave Poizner the opportunity to hedge his words a little, but he held firm. I'm doing a TERRIBLE job of explaining this, but the show was great. I was reminded about him cause he had a debate with the other Republican candidate yesterday, and the California Report reviewed it this morning. From the TAL bit and the coverage of the debate he would appear to be a pretty good example of a two-faced politican.... I mean, the democrat, Jerry Brown, will win anyway, but man Republicans are scary....

Towards the end of the News from Lake Wobegon on Prairie Home (~1:33 into the show) there was a funny bit about food/cooking/potlucks that really struck a chord in me. He talked about a church potluck, and how everyone was complaining about the number of store-bought dishes:

The world is changing, and the old regime is passing away, the old ladies sat there looking at this store bought stuff... they looked at it, they were like the last survivors of Versailles... here they were, the last survivors, and nobody remembered the day when everything was made from scratch, and it wasn't snobbery, it was a sense of pride, that you would not pay an extravagant amount of money for something that was inferior when you could make it yourself and do much better, they had pride, the people of the Depression.

Preaching to the choir.... Amen.

Movie and a Dinner #1: the Great Outdoors

I knew I wanted to do something like this when I was writing the post about the exotic fruit in Mystery Train, but it didn't quite click. Re-watching the Great Outdoors recently, I realized that food plays a role in many of my favorite movies. Paul Newman eating 50 eggs in Cool Hand Luke, white russians and Sioux City Sarsaparilla in Lebowski, I could go on and on, and I will. Look for the movieandadinner tag. The Great Outdoors is a classic 80s comedy. John Candy and Dan Akroyd, 'scary' stories, a bat and a bear, townies vs. vacationers, fish-out-of-water, it's got all the cliches, and they all work great. I love this movie. The sub-titled raccoons talking about the food in the garbage cans would have been good enough to kick off this feature, Akroyd and lobster tails is good, too, but the scene where Candy eats the ol' 96er (a 96 oz steak, eating the gristle, too, hence the face in the upper-left corner) in one go is beautiful cinema.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Finally saw it. When the movie came out I posted a link to an interview with Werner Herzog about the movie, and also a link to the trailer. OnionAV did a new cult canon for the movie a couple of weeks ago when the DVD came out, and I elevated it to #1 on the netflix queue. To some extent it's a movie for movie snobs; the movie doesn't make much sense as a murder mystery, but it makes perfect sense as a comedy making fun of the cop/murder mystery genre/plot conventions. The movie is so ridiculous it has not one but two critter cam shots -- an alligator that is watching the scene where a dead comrade has caused a traffic accident has a camera on it's back, and one of the above iguanas has a camera on it that gets in the face of the other one. At least I think that's what was going on, Werner Herzog is credited with the camera work in the credits, so theoretically he could have been hanging out with alligator's to get that shot -- less dangerous than some of the crazy stuff he's done more movies. Also, Nic Cage channeling Klaus Kinski was interesting as heck. I didn't love this, it's a little too tongue in cheek, but I quite liked it. The dvd is bare bones, so I don't think I'll buy it, but it's certainly worth a rental.

On a side note: I've cut back my Netflix to 2 a month for a while now to reduce distractions as I try to finish the dis. Cutting back on buying used dvds, too, to some extent. I have a 3 disc changer in my dvd player (an old Pioneer) and Saturday night I had an old movie in (Blues Brothers) a netflix movie (Bad Lietuenant) and a new to my possession half.com movie (Zero Effect). A very tough choice. I went with Zero. I love that movie. Great plot, cute girl, and lines such as:

I'll shoot you. Really. I will. I have a gun and everything.