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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Country Music Week / Fresh Air


re-runs of old interviews. some are excellent.

Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Charlie Haden Shenandoah at the end was great
Patsy Cline cd review epic
Merle Haggard really epic, the San Quentin bit was amazing
George Jones he sounded uninterested
Bobby Braddock epic
Willie Nelson really epic, the song he plays at the end is wonderful
Waylon Jennings epic
John Doe
Ricky Skaggs
Charlie Louvin
Doc Watson
Carolina Chocolate Drops
Puns

the Wrestler and the Cornflake Girl

R establishes legend status by finding this article.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Watermelon

It hit 100 at the SB airport on monday. Luckily we had a watermelon in the fridge. And wet washcloths...

Monday, September 27, 2010

Blazers '10-'11

from Ben at Blazersedge.

Dylan -- Witmark Demos

Bootleg series 9 would seem to be pretty epic. Demos recorded between '62 and '64. These guys are streaming snippets of the songs temporarily. It's nice. Girl from the North Country might be my favorite Dylan song.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

New Orleans / Bob Edwards Weekend

In the early summer Bob had a series of interviews with New Orleans-based musicians. Super interesting. Then he interviewed people from all walks of life who live there -- the 'No Place Like Home' series of interviews. The food scene in NOLA has interested me for a while, Harry Shearer's show is often NOLA related, and now with our lab being involved with remote sensing of the oil spill and the aftermath I'm a little more connected. Here's an annotated list of the shows:

1 Preview of the Jazz Fest interviews, full Dr. John Interview
2 Ben Jaffe / Preservation Hall
3 Stanton Moore, Trombone Shorty
4 Anders Osborne, Theresa Andersson
5 Allen Toussaint
6 Irma Thomas
7 Roger Lewis
8 Jimmy Carter (Blind Boys of Alabama), 2 church deacons on life in NOLA after Katrina
9 A gulf deep-sea diver, Keely Smith, NOLA shave ice (awesome interview)
10 Jon Cleary, Preview of the No Place Like Home interviews
11 mostly about the levees
12 seafood, shrimper, duckhunter
13 oiled birds
14 wetlands (this one is particularly good)
15 how the city is doing
16 St. Bernard Parish (the 2nd story, starting ~17:45, darn good)
17 post-Katrina stuff: entrepreneurs, farmer1, farmer2 {his questions for the farmers were kind of weird, the 2nd guy answered them better}

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Oatmeal Banana Yogurt Scones

When you freeze and then thaw bananas they are essentially liquid. So I followed the sour skons technique, soaking oats in banana for a couple of days, added some yogurt cause total biomass was low, salt, flour to thicken, baking soda. Yum.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

N.Y. + DMB + 1 scary video

The audio is a cover of All Along the Watchtower by Neil Young and DMB from a FarmAid concert. The video is GNARLY. I'm scared of heights and I almost puked watching it.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Bikes

I stole these from my friend Casey's fb page. Different socio-economic classes showing their love of bikes, I like that. Right now there are 3 rideable bikes and 1 frame inside my apartment, and 2 rideable bikes and 1 frame outside. And I have my eye on a frame on ebay right now.

Japan's Missing Centenarians

Fascinating story on NPR last night about how the famed japanese penchant for living to an old age might be utter BS. Apparently people aren't reporting that old people have died so that they can continue to receive the dead person's pension check.

Robert Plant / NPR

He's got one of their 50 greatest voices. The full 20min long interview that is available off of the same link is worth it. And they have ~50min of a Band of Joy show from the link. The song Patty Griffin does from her album Downtown Church is nice. Couple of Zeppelin tunes. Couple of tunes from the Band of Joy record. Here are some youtube vids from the show NPR had audio for.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Chile

This pic was in the latest Surfer's Path 'Monday Morning Wave' mass email. The backwash-exploded tube behind the guy riding is pretty epic. By Chris Burkard.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Machaca de Res

Not great pics, but tasty. Initially I wasn't in the mood to cook that night, was just going to eat cold rice and yogurt. But ended up sauteing some garlic and peppers, and decided to pull some machaca (shredded/salted/dried meat or fish) out of the freezer. I bought it at the corner store in San Ignacio, Baja California Sur 3-4 years ago, but it's dried beef in the freezer, so no worries. So added machaca and a tomato or two and got a nice little beefy tomato-y gravy going on. Warmed rice in the pan, too.
On the machaca tip, in the winter of '98-'99 my brother and I drove about 1/3 of the Baja 1000 course from that November and had burritos de machaca de manta raya at the end of a long day in the middle of nowhere -- a tiny little restaurant next to Mission San Javier. A very memorable meal. Manta ray machaca is tastier than beef machaca when prepared by someone who knows what they are doing, but I haven't had as good luck cooking it myself.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Werner Herzog Movie Recommendations / NPR

Always nice to hear his voice.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Waves / Laird / NPR

Bitchin' story about a new book about big waves, with a Laird Hamilton interview thrown in, too. Nice to see a pic of Ryan Hardy at Pipe on NPR!

Monday, September 13, 2010

Oatmeal Beer Scones


Basically same deal as the Sour Skons (oatmeal + buttermilk scones), soak oats in liquid for quite a few days in the fridge. Beer was some leftover mini-keg german beer. Yesterday I added cinnamon, salt, some sugar, baking soda, and enough whole wheat flour to make a thick dough. I added baking soda too late so it didn't mix very well and there is a baking soda aroma, but otherwise it's great. 400, ~30 min.

Update:
I ate the whole batch in 3 days. Very tasty. I like oatmeal in the morning, these scones are like oatmeal to go.

Dinner Last Night #2

rice, beans, tomato/orange bell pepper/cilantro, chipotle salsa, blurred Bee hands

Apple Pie

So good. Crust was from Joy of Cooking, with butter instead of shortening. Apples from the mini-donkey farm. Standard filling: apples, lemon juice, cinnamon, lot of nutmeg, sugar, cornstarch. Deep dish casserole cause I didn't have a regular pie pan. Served with Stonyfield organic vanilla ice cream.


Bee's New Truck Trip

We jaunted around the Santa Ynez valley in her 86 Nissan 2WD. Photos are from a 'mini-donkey' farm. They also had a zebra/donkey hybrid named 'Zeyore.' Nice. For dinner we had beef sausages from the rancher near Lompoc + garden-grown spuds + some chilies. Nice. Plus Sara made apple pie (next post). Very nice with ice cream.


Zeyore
"Be the ball"
joy/fear

Friday, September 10, 2010

New Books IV

Alot more, and these are just the cooking/gardening ones. For the most part they are about 2$ each, shipped, so no biggie. They are the motivation to finish the Dis -- I want to have time to read all of them! In the meantime, it's fun to flip through the pics with the Bee to see what sounds good... Lots of Vietnamese ones, on a Vietnamese kick... Lots of Mexican, ice cream, Jewish, Indian, American.
----------------------------------------------------------

Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen
The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook
The Zuni Cafe Cookbook

Cleaving

Let it Rot!

Native American Cooking
The Food of Asia
The Mexican Kitchen Garden
Everything Tastes Better Outdoors
Madhur Jaffrey's Flavours of India
Italian Food

How to Cook like a Jewish Mother
Saffron Shores
The Foods of Vietnam
South East Asian Food
Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings
The Classic 1000 Indian Recipes
Real Thai
The Book of Ice Creams and Sorbets
Recipe of Memory
Jerk
The Fearless International Foodie Conquers Pan-Asian Cuisine

Sorbets and Ice Creams
The American Century Cookbook
Jeremiah Tower's New American Classics
The Best of Nicole Routhier
L.L.Bean Book of New NE Cookery
The New Laurel's Kitchen
Alaska Sourdough

Perfect Mexican
Rick & Lanie's Excellent Kitchen Adventures
Cocina de la Familia

The Complete American-Jewish Cookbook
Preserving the Fruits of the Earth
Simca's Cuisine
The Minimalist Cooks Dinner
NYT Bread and Soup Cookbook
Farm Journal's Complete Home Baking Book
The Mexican Mama's Kitchen
The New James Beard
Cooking at Home with America's Test Kitchen
Lebanese Cuisine
Cold-Weather Cooking
Scandinavian Cooking
How to Make Love and Dinner at the Same Time
A Taste of Cuba
New Mexico Cooking
Farm Journal's Country Cookbook
Food as Foreplay

The Jewish Gardening Cookbook
Mediterranean Hot

Time Travel Theoretical

Interesting hypothetical question on the OnionAV today about where and when you would like to travel to. Me. J-Bay (surf spot in South Africa), anytime before the present. Ideally a long time ago when there would have been critters to see, too.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys / NPR

very very cool story from tonight's show.

'Candied' Rhubarb

This batch isn't quite as good as the last one, but it's definitely better/different from regular stewed rhubarb. I have a thing about wasting food. Often I'll make things just so I can make something else. For instance, if I want to cook beans I'll cook pasta one night, soak the beans in that pasta water overnight, and cook them the next day. Is pasta water food? You bet. In this case, I had canned some loquat 'jelly' that was closer to syrup earlier this summer. Yesterday I cooked it down to true jelly, canned it, and then cooked rhubarb in the pot with the loquat residue. This 'residue' which had been cooked to 220-something degrees is a kind of hard candy, and the rhubarb cooks up differently in that kind of sugar, even if you have to add more regular sugar, which you do, cause it's rhubarb.... So. If you slice the rhubarb into long chunks, 2" or so, and stir minimally while cooking, you almost get candied chunks of rhubarb (as opposed to a stewed mush). As previously mentioned it worked even better the first time, I (accidentally, on purpose) air dried the rhubarb for a couple of days before cooking it so water content was lower, which allowed the rhubarb to hold it's shape better. Good.

Dinner Last Night #1

very light dinner: lettuce, yellow taxi heirloom, pimiento pepper, nuoc cham, peanut sauce.

Cali turns 160 today

Nice little nugget from the Writer's Almanac this morning.

Best Outdoor Documentaries / Outside Online

Interesting post. I've seen alot of them, the 2 Werner Herzog movies, the one about Fitzroy that you can buy from Patagonia, Riding Giants, Food Inc., Inconvenient Truth, Earth (the mini-series version), Endless Summer, Koyaanisqatsi. Good list.

Cheap Gear / Outside Online

useful. kind of a placeholder post...

Monday, September 6, 2010

David Lebovitz / Fennochio

Awesome post about a little ice cream shop in Provence.

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton / Congo Rover / NPR

I loved the series she did last week. 5 stories were played on Morning Edition, but they don't appear to be archived in the normal way. This is the official website for the trip. Here are some behind the scenes stories. Blog posts: intro, day1, day2, day3.1, day3.2, day4.1, day4.2, day5. And here is a follow-up interview.

John Irving / NPR

This morning On Point did a rebroadcast of an interview from last year with John Irving. Most of the callers asked about or mentioned A Prayer for Owen Meany, which is my co-favorite book of all time (Sometimes a Great Notion being the other). The interview was slightly ornery but well worth a listen.

TAL: Family Physics

Great one this week. Listened on my new Sony SW7600GR radio (gonna be the bomb in Baja) at the garden with the Bee, eating bagel + cream cheese + lox + cuke + brandywine tomato. Epic. Act two was particularly good, but a very strong show all around.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Montana del Oro Trip

My camera battery died after this first pic. Which is a pic of the trunk of the rental car that we got after the Peanut died. It's a little ghoulish really, having a glow-in-the-dark pull tab so you can escape from the car if someone kidnaps you and puts you in the trunk..... Eek.

Montana del Oro was alright. Foggy and cold -- our 'summer' has been nuts. Though that kept the rattlesnakes at bay; apparently MdO has a ton of rattlesnakes, someone was bitten 2 days before we got there. Eek.

The coastline was nice. The coastal sage scrub looked very healthy.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Storycorps

Another great storycorps. Garbagemen from NYC.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Freddie Mercury / NPR 50 Great Voices

Can't argue with this. Queen were awesome.