Carl Sagan 2x on NPR today

About the Gold Record, and how he and his wife fell in love -- amazing.

About the Voyager 1 pic of the earth.

Macaroons

Very, very good NPR story about a new food fad -- macaroons.

Orange Creme Fraiche Sherbet #1

Much like the lemongrass one, this is a work in progress. I cut way back on the sugar compared to the lemongrass one, too much. Mostly followed David Lebovitz's recipe for orange popsicle icecream, except he's been living in France too long, he should have called it orange creamsicle. Also I don't use an ice cream maker, just ye olde stickblender, so I'm calling it a sherbet. This is what I used: 1 1/4 c OJ, 1/2 c (4oz) vanilla sugar, zest from 2 oranges, ~2c creme fraiche, ~1t vanilla extract, ~1/4 c orange-cello. I kept adding orangecello cause with the too small amount of sugar I needed something so it wouldn't freeze as easily (i.e. booze) and also there's some sugar in orangecello.... As you can see in the pic I used too much booze as it is only just frozen.

Nelson Mandela...

...was released from prison 20 years ago today. I remember it vividly. We lived in SA from august 1987 to may 1989. You weren't supposed to, but we talked about apartheid at school often-ish, the consensus being that it was a crappy system, but how to end it safely? Alot of kids were concerned about how Zimbabwe transitioned from white rule to black rule. So when Mandela was released less than a year after we left, it was pretty amazing. I cried. And SA seems to be doing good... Can't wait to watch and listen to the World Cup this summer.

the Fall/OnionAV Cult Canon

The Fall is a visually stunning movie, and listening to the commentary track helps one's enjoyment of it a ton. The director is a great speaker, and the stories behind the making of the movie are super interesting, maybe moreso than the plot. But whatever. It's filmed all over the world at gorgeous locales. The pic is from a place in India that supposedly inspired MC Escher; as a still it's pretty cool, the scene in the movie is intense.

Rudy Rudy Rudy

pic from the Oregonian

Yes Yes, We Have Big Bales Here

Last night I realized that the radio broadcast of All Things Considered misses out on some stories that are available online, I think maybe it's supposed to be a 2 hour show. Anyway, one of the stories, about a castle built in a haystack is solid gold. Now all I have to do is catch up on the 5 stories/night * 5 days/week * 8 years of listening to NPR that I've missed....

Lemongrass Creme Fraiche Sherbet #1

This is a work in progress. Tammy has some lemongrass going, with lots of dead leaves, so I figured I'd prune it. Well, those dead leaves smelled pretty good, so I made tea, which smelled amazing. Basically boil up some water, added say 6 12" long fronds, let them steep for 10 min or so, boil again. Ended up with 1.5 c of tea. To that I was intending to add 1/2 c of sugar, by weight (4 oz) but it came out in a rush, so ended up adding 8 oz. Made a syrup. Very sweet. Added 1T of fresh lime juice that was laying about in the fridge. The 'plan' was lemongrass tea sorbet that would be eaten with creme fraiche on the side, contrasting flavors and textures and whatnot, but added the creme (~1.5 c) directly to the lemongrass mixture to tone down the sugar. It's still on the sweet side, and no one else has tried it yet, but it smells like perfume and doesn't have any acid-y lemon flavor, so it's interesting. One thing to note, because of the ratio of sugar to everything else, it only just freezes, and I didn't have to use the stickblender on it, just a fork to break up the few, weak ice crystals that were able to form.

Interview with Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes)

Apparently he is 'the J.D. Salinger of cartoonists' and hadn't done an interview in 20+ years. It's pretty brief, really, but here's 1 funny exchange:

How soon after the U.S. Postal Service issues the Calvin stamp will you send a letter with one on the envelope?

Immediately. I'm going to get in my horse and buggy and snail-mail a check for my newspaper subscription.

Cilantro Pesto

I just spent 5 min trying to take a decent pic of my lunch (rice, beans, cilantro pesto) to no avail -- it just isn't that photogenic. Meanwhile I'm sitting on 2 posts, a creme fraiche one and a lemongrass tea/creme fraiche sherbet, but haven't been able to take pics with natural lighting.... The lemongrass thing is interesting, a work in progress flavor/recipe-wise, but the potential is there.

TAL/Tickets to the Gun Show

I was biking through IV yesterday with my discman that gets radio stations on, listening to TAL #81, and laughing like crazy listening to Sarah Vowell talk about her father the gunsmith. A magic moment.

Chantal Ackerman

Hands down one of the most interesting interviews I've ever read, especially considering I didn't know who she was.

Weather Report

Beautiful morning. Lots of clouds to the east, so good color. To the west, a big front was rolling in, so really dark lower clouds, and then pink ones above. A cleanup set came in while I was watching at the end of DP, 8' maybe 10'. Impressive. Also had a mini-conversation with the guy who walks the beach everyday, picking up trash. I've seen him for atleast 5 years. It hasn't started raining yet, but should get interesting today.

Liz Clark's Blog

Liz Clark went to UCSB a while ago. Right now she's sailing around the world, mostly solo, surfing all the while. Her blog is wonderful, she's a good writer and she's on a cool trip. Her first posts were on the wetsand website, but they reorganized it, pics are gone, and you can't navigate between posts. But I saved a few direct links to some posts: mex, crossing the pacific, kiribati, to bora bora. A little youtube action, too.

Her blog on her own site starts up summer of 2009. She spent a little time in Oregon, Portland to be exact, working on a book to raise money to continue the journey. She specifically mentioned eating berries, oh those Oregon berries.... blackberries everywhere.... She's currently stuck in a boatyard on Tahiti.

RIP Donald Bordelon

Radio is funny, you make mental images to go along with the stories, and sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong. Donald Bordelon appeared on morning edition many times, he was a Katrina survivor in New Orleans, and his voice and general outlook on life always made for an interesting interview. The funny thing is, I thought for sure he was a black guy (big, booming voice; New Orleans resident), so when I was listening to the interview with his wife this morning it was surprising as heck when she said she loved his beautiful blue eyes. Anyway. Give a listen, and they have links to some of the other stories, too.

about Paul McCartney

Bob Edwards Weekend had a fascinating interview with an unauthorized biographer of Sir Paul. Great insights, great music, obviously.

TAL/Prairie Home this Weekend

Maybe it was just because I was having a good saturday, but both shows seemed particularly good this week. TAL had 3 great stories: first was about people who bid on repossessed storage units; 2nd about an archaeologist who dove a Byzantine shipwreck yet was afraid of water, something like that; third about a guy who lost his memory because of taking malaria medicine. Prairie Home did something I wish they would do more -- they incorporated the musical talent into one of the stories: the 'the lives of the cowboys' skit. There also was a cover of an Allman Brothers tune, always good. Perhaps it was cause I was in a good mood, looking over the show summary nothing stands out...

WWSD? -- Venison

New feature for the new blog year. What would Seth do? S of R/S/L fame asked me to suggest a marinade for venison, a little google research found this: an elegant marinade. The name is money, the ingredients aren't really that special, but c'est la vie.

1

The blog turns 1 today.

To celebrate had a simple saute of garlic, a 'cherry bomb' pepper, a chanterelle from the co-op, a buffalo patty, some red sauce and some arugula; on rice. tasty.

Mark Bittman

He is a food writer for the NYT, he's a decent writer, especially good on the ethics of food production.

An earlier post, about a video of a talk he did.

His NYT page. His blog, 'Bitten'

NYT articles: On industrial meat production, on peanut butter, agua fresca, HOMEMADE CRACKERS (I'm going to do this for sure), a well-stocked pantry (good tips), why take food seriously?, no knead bread, culinary uses for lavendar, tomato jam, using less meat -- this is a good one, he talks about how americans eat a TON of protein, and that if you cut back (or eliminate) meat, protein probably isn't going to be an issue for you, yucatecan food (spuds and poblano tacos sounds good), granola, limeade (particularly interesting), tomatillos, on cast iron, thai roasted veggies, tofu in caramel sauce, miso-broiled seafood, on anchovies, on octopus, on Marcella Hazan.

5-4

Bush vs. Gore was bad, but this latest 5-4 might be worse. Unlimited corporate spending --> the death of democracy? We shall see....

The Opposite of Sunny

According to the Goleta weather station we've gotten over 5" of rain this week. The initial storm fronts were quite narrow, so it would rain for 3 hours or so and then clear up. The one on wednesday initially did this, but the backside of it seems to have stalled, and there are little thunderstorm cells that have popped off every once in a while. Thursday morning was the first time I got rained on. Thursday night it started raining as I left the building, and stopped about 100 yards from my house -- I hadn't even put on my rain jacket. This morning my karma failed completely. It looked dry-ish, I even did laundry and have damp clothes strewn about the apartment to dry. I did have the jacket on for the bike ride, but a slow drizzle became hail. I tried to save time by cutting through campus instead of bikepathing it all the way. In going around a hipster couple sharing an umbrella I hit a bunch of rotten 'Victorian Box' tree fruit on the ground, and my front wheel washed out! Then on the ground my left foot wouldn't unclip for a few seconds. Funny and pathetic. So here I am at school, my right side is semi-covered in 'sticky golden-orange seeds.' Oh. And when I opened my backpack my yogurt container had exploded. It's just a #2 plastic greek yogurt container from TJs, but C gave it to me 3 years ago. C'est la vie. Anyway, here are the infrared satellite images for the past 3 days, I think they are thermal IR cloud top temperatures, but not sure.

Wednesday. Just after the front went through.

Thursday. Somehow the junk behind the front on Wed. became organized. Thursday was the rainiest day this week.

Friday. You can see the little thunderstorm cells that nailed me...

Harold McGee

He has written two god-like books on the science of cooking, 'On Food and Cooking' and 'the Curious Cook.' Here are some links to his web presence:

NYT page
curiouscook.com (his website)
news.curiouscook.com (his blog)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
an article on yogurt and creme fraiche, which is how I found his NYT page...

an article on the culinary uses of tomato leaves. interesting.

an article on using less water to cook pasta -- saves energy, less waste of a precious resource. In Baja when making mac and cheese we got it so that we used the water to cook the noodles, didn't drain it, added powdered milk and mystery cheese, and it had the perfect consistency.

an article on not brining the turkey. might have to try this as i've kinda burnt out on turkey the brined way.

an article on nukerwave cooking.

an article on cooking tender octopus.

double dipping, Seinfeld-style. [note that Mythbusters tried this, and found that double dipping doesn't contaminate the dip].

rare apples -- this is a neat article, about heirloom trees, but also about the bizarre flavors that result at a Cornel apple breeding lab.

on using the tomato seeds, too -- my friend Chris cooks in NYC, and he cooked for me once -- 'twas the first time I saw someone blanch tomatoes to peel them, and also cut them in half to squeeze out the seeds. Apparently it's a french cooking thing. I've always used the seeds, I do squeeze them out, but boil them down separately, and add them back at the end. It works a treat. And it adds that 'unami' stuff to the sauce.

the 5 second rule, revisited.

Susan Vreeland / Writer's Almanac

Caught the Writer's Almanac this morning, and he mentioned that today is the birthday of Susan Vreeland. She wrote a book called 'the Passion of Artemisia' which is a fictional biography about a real woman who was a painter during the Renaissance. Pretty interesting book.

Terry Gilliam / OnionAV

Great interview.

The Sea was Angry Today My Friends

Actually not alot of swell, but it's funny when depressions looks like a left pointbreak. Windy, rainy. No sign of the Titleist.

Update: this is awesome. Just now, watching Anthony Bourdain on the travel channel, he was squid fishing in Sicily, and dropped the 'the sea was angry my friends line'. Sweet. Ah, tv and interweb and a nice cat on a rainy day.

Veronica and the Dude on TV

Last year I happened to be catsitting the night of the Syracuse/UConn 6x overtime game, arguably the most amazing college basketball game ever. This morning I caught interviews with 2 of my favorite actors: Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) and the Dude (Jeff Bridges). Very happy.

When You're a Jet....

Super stoked the Jets won yesterday. It was nice to see the NY Jets win the way the NY Giants used to -- strong running game and solid defense. Plus I hate the Chargers. I was living in SD the year they bought a team the same year that getting the public to pay for a new stadium happened to be on the ballot. It was so disingenuous it was ridiculous.

Fresh Air x 2 -- T-Bone Burnett; George Lucas

Great listening. Talking about Jeff Bridges (T-Bone), and the days when Spielberg, Coppola, et al. (Lucas) were young.

New Patty Griffin Streaming on NPR

Love

Alternate Reality Eliza

Listened to a great interview while watching the surf this morning, trying to decide to go out or not. Scott Simon was talking with Ke$ha. Apparently all the kids like her. The money quote from Rolling Stone is, "Ke$ha's music is repulsive, obnoxious, and ridiculously catchy." I was kinda wondering why they had her on at first, but she was a great interview, a really smart person; sounded like a two roads diverging thing with her and my friend Eliza, as Ke$ha is also super smart and likes math and physics, but she decided to do music instead.

Haiti / Bill Clinton

Man, what an unfortunate situation for a country that didn't need a natural disaster anytime soon. Super interesting interview with Bill Clinton about it, you'll learn alot.

Greens, Two More Ways

These are the last 2 dinners I've had. I've been eating greens every dinner for a while now, happened to take pics of these dishes. First up, ricotta fried with Tammy's breadcrumbs & arugula added to a saute of garlic, hot peppers, curry powder, steamed, then the pan deglazed with balsamic vinegar. Second, arugula added to a saute of garlic, pimiento chilies, curry powder, with fresh pasta and chickpeas added at the end, a little balsamic vinegar, and fried ricotta on top.

All of the professional cookbook recipes for greens say you should blanch them before the saute. Recipes like that annoy me -- waste of water and energy. Saute-ing briefly and then covering the pan for a couple of minutes works just fine.

Super Macro + on camera LED light = no weird colours

Breadcrumbs + ricotta = love

Official WWI fork made my Rock Island Arsenal. Old is cool.

Pasta and chickpeas is a classic soup. Tasty as an entree, too.

Moulin Rouge is a pretty good movie.

More:
Jungle Curry
w/ leftover chicken
collard stems and beet greens
fried ricotta on dandelion greens
duck w/ dandelion greens
chanterelle w/ arugula
kale
black bean strogonoff
vietnamese crepes
greens 'n' cream
wilted kale
new potatoes + chard

Patty Griffin, Jan. 26

Johnny Cash, American VI, Feb. 26

The Dude

Abides

Canning / NYT

I added 2 links to the blog to Mark Bittman's pages at the NYT. He did a Q&A about factory farmed meat a while ago that I really liked, might have been pre-blog. Anyway, he had a link to a sweet article about canning. Give a look.

(photo from NYT)

Pizza Dough

No recipe, I just like this pic -- finger imprints look cool.

Beth Grant / Random Roles

A little long-winded, but always nice to read some stories about Donnie Darko, Southland Tales, etc. Also, she calls Patrick Swayze 'Buddy'.

Vintage Sarah Palin

OnionAV has a blurb that she is getting a job with foxnews, but they accompany that with a youtube clip of her doing the sports wrapup in Anchorage in 1988. It's mesmerizing.

Eggnog Jello

One of the advantages to staying in IV over the christmas holiday is empty surf. The other is 1/2 price on the sell-by date dairy from the co-op, cause no one is in IV to buy stuff. A couple of years back I got some eggnog and made eggnog jello, which is basically panna cotta. Made it again, added some cocoa powder. It's really quite good, and has it's roots in traditional european cooking, with a Seth twist.

Cocoa Eggnog Panna Cotta recipe:
1Q eggnog
1.5 T gelatin
1/3 C cocoa
pinch salt
vanilla extract

Soften the gelatin in ~1/2 cup of the eggnog (sprinkle gelatin thinly on the surface of the liquid, in about 5 minutes it will have bonded with the liquid).
Stir in the cocoa powder and salt.
Nuke it till the gelatin dissolves, maybe 3 minutes.
Stir in the rest of the eggnog, which will cool it down.
Stir in vanilla.
Fridge till set.
Note: the usual rule is 1T gelatin to 2c liquid, but eggnog is so thick you can use less.

Sunrise 10 January 2010

I could take this every morning, happened to have a camera on me today.

Full Circle with Michael Palin

This is a BBC travel series from the late 90s that I recently netflixed, after seeing a couple of episodes back in the day. It's pretty darn cool. He starts on an island in the Aleutian chain, goes down Asia, through Oz and N.Z., over to Tierra del Fuego, and all the way up the Americas to that isle at the edge of the Bering Strait. Took 245 days. The DVDs are great, but there's also a BBC website that covers Palin's version of the trip (diary entries, photos), and also the still photographer's vision (photos). The Chile part was great, including a neat stay on Chiloe. The Atacama portion of the trip was epic, I really want to go there. There are roads that are at 15000' feet. The el Tatio geyser field looks amazing. In Mexico City he saw some Lucha Libre wrestling which was great. He visited a subsistence farm in the countryside and had an experience somewhat analogous to Amy's. In TJ they spent quite a bit of time on the wall there/illegal immigration (read all of day 226). Anyway, some of the Asia stuff was interesting, the boat trip down a tributary of the Amazon was cool, and tooling up Big Sur in a convertible Morgan was nice as well. {If you've clicked on the links and been semi-unimpressed (aside from Amy's post), note that the tv show is more interesting than the website}.

Here are some images I got off of the websites:

Valley of the Moon, near San Pedro de Atacama

Atacama Dreamscape

Train from Arica, Chile to La Paz, Bolivia. Love the rails.

'Super Barrio' in Mexico City

TAL

This week's episode was good, not great; I found the story about the guy hoping to be paroled pretty interesting, but the other story, about a man who let his house and property deteriorate, was sad. But there was one nugget: one of the people in the story bragged repeatedly that his truck had a 'class 4 trailer hitch.' This reminded me of when we were on the ferry up to Haines, Alaska, and one kid kept talking about his dodge pickup with the 'cummins diesel engine.' I must have heard that phrase 10x -- everytime he sat down next to someone new he'd talk about his truck.

Carl Kasell / Bob Edwards Weekend

Bob Edwards was 'forced' out ( I don't know/remember the politics of it) as morning edition host a couple of years ago, and now has his own show independent of NPR, but broadcast on NPR stations. Today he had an interview with Carl Kassel; they had worked together for 25 years, and Carl just recently retired. Just a wonderful interview.

Blazers 107 L*kers 98

The game on friday made me happy.

Factory Farms

The term was surely created to denigrate them, and well they should be. Super interesting article on Casaubon's Book about a NYT article about factory dairy farms, and how they can't deal with the waste from 4000 cows very well. The nugget from her wry commentary:

My town had twice as many dairies 10 years ago, and twice as many as that 20 years ago. It has been a long and painful process of agonizing attrition, farmers hanging on just one more year, trying to make it work as they are undercut by people with 4,000 cows and with an agricultural system that would rather invest money in research to make the poop less toxic than simply recognize that none of us are served by the consolidation of dairy farming.

Bottle Rocket / OnionAV Cult Canon

Excellent movie, lovingly discussed.

Best of 2009

Following the list of questions at Chocolate & Zucchini... I skipped a couple of hers because I haven't bought that much new stuff, the kitchen seems to be working pretty good.

Favorite new kitchen pet
The kombucha mushroom Traves and Keely gave me. I'm still drinking the 1st batch, and still brewing the 2nd, so a pretty small sample size, but it's tasty. The blog is a nice pet, too.

Favorite new cookbook
I recently got the Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Roden and have made a couple of things out of it, a Yemeni cilantro/chilies dip/spread was super good. From scouring the wilds of IV/the free bin a nugget was No Man Knows My Pastries, a semi joke cookbook by some jack mormons in Utah.

Favorite new pieces of cookware
My mom gave me a nice little copper/stainless steel lined saucepan that she found in a thriftstore in Oregon. It's a nice size, and cute.

Favorite new pastry challenge
My dad made pies when I was a kid. And I liked them alot. Something about rolling out dough has always scared me though, so I skipped pie making and went straight to tarts, using the Jamie O press in tart dough recipe. Lately though both Keely and Sara have made pies and it doesn't look too hard at all, so maybe...

Favorite new staples
I've made a ton of sorbets and sherbets this year, closely followed by popcorn made in a cast iron dutch oven. Whole roasted winter squash, cooled, cubed w/ skin, sauteed with fennel/cumin/corriander, garlic, a chile is super good, too.

Favorite blogging moment
Starting it has been fun (started last January). In general, the Eliza as the gopher that has been tearing up my garden running gag has been fun.

Favorite new DIY projects
I'm not sure that Peach-cello counts, as I brewed in in 2008 but didn't start drinking it till this year (I blogged about the 2009 batch). Also, I've been making hot sauce. Have only posted one recipe, and it's not the one I eat the most. Problem is, I don't really know the recipe for what I eat the most. Vanilla sugar is pretty great, and so easy I haven't bothered to post about it. Kombucha mentioned above is good.

Favorite food adventure
Picking apricots in IV, picking persimmons in various places, picking the volunteer arugula at the garden that came up where I put the cuttings of the seed stalks.

Favorite (non-food-related) reads
I don't keep a list of books I read, but there are piles all over my apartment. East of Eden, perhaps.

Arrgh, I just read more of her year-end best of posts, and see that she tailored her categories to what she liked blogging about. So, a couple of seth categories:

Favorite free bin find (t-shirt)
'Absinth makes the heart grow fonder'

Favorite Neko Case peculiarity
She got 7 pianos off of craigslist and put them in her barn, great story.

Best tasting/worst picture
Easily this polenta dish.

Favorite weird food experience
No lutefisk this year. Or durian. Miracle fruit.

Favorite movie post
About surf movies.

Favorite white-trashy food post
Chocolate sauce, pretty basic stuff, but the pics are cool

Favorite thing I had forgotten about but was reminded of as I scrolled through the blog
Candied blood orange is epic. Better than other citrus.

Favorite sorbet
No clear fave, alot of good ones. Chocolate sorbet using the Lebovitz recipe, but adding crushed red chilies was great; blood orange sorbet, also using Lebovitz was great; lime + buttermilk was great; lime + basil + coconut milk; vanilla + persimmon was epic, and maybe should be the winner.

Favorite by-product of the Julie/Julia movie
That I found the pic of her 'dancing' with a turkey to illustrate a post, and also that the DVD had footage of the Dan Akroyd as Julia SNL skit.

Favorite DIY post
Apricot preserves. The pics were taken in real light, and I thought the excel graph about yield was particularly inspired :)

Favorite totally random post
Blue

Favorite american food post
Definitely not stuffed cabbage, which we tried twice. Fried green tomatoes lived up to the hype.

Alan Thicke / Random Roles

Another great OnionAV random roles, this time with Alan Thicke. The stuff about Richard Pryor is great.

Kale

I was looking at the recent-ish posts, and noticed it's been a while since a cooking post, so... I've been gardening a bit lately: weeding, mulching, planting, picking kale and arugula. Nice. Especially since the arugula patch is volunteer -- it came up from the pile of arugula stalks that I cut after it went to seed. Anyway, aside from the epic sharon/me Quail & Kale Pizza from a few years back (saute the kale, crack a couple of quail eggs over it and cook ~1 min longer), I usually cook greens by steaming them in a little bit of cream, with a little bit of red sauce. Pics (horrible colour, I know, CFL bulbs, sigh) are of a little more complicated version: a couple of kinds of peppers, red russian kale, homemade creme fraiche (post on this magic elixir soon), red sauce, chickpeas, ricotta.

attempted tower of power

plate-licking good, Blood Simple in the background

Lhasa De Sela

Interesting person, sadly no longer with us. Might have to check out her cds.

30$/Week Food Blog

Co-op had a link to this, and I quite liked it. It's a food blog, 2 vegetarians, food bill of 30$ a week.

a few of their posts, the tip of the iceberg: food for hard times, very well written post about Michael Pollan,

Altruism All-Stars

Interesting article, some good causes.

Post-fire Rebuilding

Really interesting article from the Independent about rebuilding after fire in the SB foothills. Highly recommended.

Vermont Cheese

I found a copy of Martha Stewart Living in the free bin and there was a nice article about small farms in Vermont that make cheese on the premises. Cool. The online version seems abbreviated but still interesting.

CDs i've been enjoying II

One of my first posts was about the music I was listening to prior to the blog. Time to do an update. Probably would have been 'ideal' if I'd done this as a 2009 wrap-up post, but haven't been on the interweb much lately.... Happy New Decade....

in no particular order:
Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline; Live at the Gaslight 1962
Le Loup - The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millenium General Assembly
Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago; Blood Bank
Los Campesinos! - Hold on Now, Youngster; We are Beautiful we are Doomed
Ladysmith Black Mombazo - the Star and the Wiseman
Dark was the Night
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
Steve Earle - Townes
Tom Rush - What I Know; No Regrets
Johnny Cash - at Folsom Prison
Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard - Pancho & Lefty
Yim Yames - Tribute To
Victor Jara - en Vivo en el Aula Magna de la Universidad de Valparaiso, 29 May 1970
Elizabeth Cotten - Shake Sugaree

OnionAV has a nice bit about pop culture items which will be coming out in 2010, including a new Los Campesinos! album.

Jamie O on Iron Chef America

This weekend I caught a summary show of the greatest moments of Iron Chef America, something like that. The #1 thing was when Jamie O was on, he brought his friend/mentor Gennaro along, and Gennaro proceeded to trash talk and generally be obnoxious the whole time. It looked to be pretty funny, so I googled for the full episode. The ingredient was live Cobia (a fish). A side note: while surfing today, a cormorant surfaced near me with a fish in it's beak, maybe 6-8" long, it made a pretty big bulge going down it's throat. Very cool. Anyway. It was nice to see Jamie and Gennaro in action, the highlight was that they used an ostrich egg to make their pasta. Definitely check out the video, a worthy way to spend 42 minutes.

Cool Pic

This is from the current front page of Patagonia.com. Makalu, Nepal, by Marko Prezelj. Cool image.

Christmas in Cali

As previously noted, no Baja for me. So enjoying empty IV and catsitting for Keely. Last night I had dinner with fellow in-town-for-christmas-person Sara; what I made didn't really flow, but individually they were good dishes: 1) delicata squash roasted whole. Cut in half, save seeds. Toast fennel, coriander, cumin, added 'butter' (the cream top from Strauss organic milk), garlic and a chile from Ventura at Givens Farms. Add roughly cubed squash (skin intact). Awesome. Kinda north african french cooking. 2) chopped red russian kale from the garden, Strauss heavy whipping cream, vermouth, a little garlic. Steam. Added bay scallops at the end and cooked them for just a few minutes. Quite good. Pretty traditional french cooking. Post-apartheid South Africa rice separated the two on the plate. Sara made pie dough and wrapped individual apple slices in small pieces of dough. It was a clever dish.

Slept in until 6:20, Magic. Watched the ocean for a while, it was small, but it is also christmas, so what else was I going to do? Ocean was pretty slow, but got 2 great waves. It was really shallow, less than 1' of water where it was barreling. Hit bottom with various body parts, my right hand is kinda messed up right now -- jammed it on the bottom twice.

Freebin has been good to me this week. Found a nice merino wool sweater. The State's Shirt Project is at 36 shirts/states. I got an unusual one this week, North Dakota, but small states like Delaware and Rhode Island are going to be tough, I reckon. Also I've been finding shirts made with organic cotton and even hemp, so pretty stoked on that. When I was there today someone returned a book to the bin that I had put there a week ago -- nice to see stuff is getting passed along.

Am writing this at Keely's. Having fun with her cat, Nala. There was a ton of basketball on today. L*kers lost, which is always good. The (heavily depleted) Blazers beat the Nuggets. Bummed about all of the injuries, but was happy to see them on tv.

Merry Christmas to all.

Kit Carson

On NPR this morning was a blurb that the explorer/mountain man Kit Carson was born 200 years ago today. When I was a kid I named my cat after him. She was an amazingly smart cat, and lived 17 years.

Veronica Mars

Finished re-going through VM the other day, on a bit of a re-watching things kick lately. Veronica Mars is about a girl who's father was sheriff of the town they live in and now is a P.I., and she also does investigations. It's also about high school. It's a good show with a strong, smart female lead character. Seasons 1&2 are classic, both involved murder investigations. Season 3 had a little less of a through-line, but still was pretty good.

Some tidbits: Season 3 was done as BSG was breaking big, so they used the word 'frak' a couple of times in the first few episodes. The creator of VM is a huge Big Lebowski fan, and there are subtle and not-so-subtle references to it in episodes 2,4,8,10,&16. There's a great Johnny Cash reference in episode 5. There's a great Blazing Saddles reference in episode 16. Finally, episode 3 included not only a Neko Case song, but also a Regina Spektor. Nice.

Extract

Got Extract from netflix the other day. It looked cool when it first came out. I liked it alot. It's a small subtle comedy, played completely straight, though the plot is slightly skewed. Basically a guy wants to cheat on his wife, so he hires a dude to hit on her, so he will be justified in hitting on someone, too. Said guy owns and operates a factory that makes artificial vanilla extract and a host of other artificial flavors. Lots of good actors in the ensemble cast, including the Sparkle Motion mom from Donnie Darko.

Mila Kunis doing a sweet Laverne & Shirley impersonation

OPB

In general, I really like David Lebovitz's blog from Paris. His christmas post is particularly good.

Baja

For the 3rd year in a row I'm shut out of Baja, after going pretty much every year since the winter of '93-'94. My folks aren't up to it this year, and my brother is 1) already down and 2) he took out the passenger seat from his truck. Bummer. This is him from a couple of weeks ago:

Encounters at the End of the World

A documentary by Werner Herzog, about Antarctica. A few stunning scenes: scientists with their ear to the ice below them listening to seal calls. Sea stars under the sea ice. Mount Erebus Volcano. Time capsule at the South Pole. It's about science and scientists -- often nature documentaries just show animals/phenomena and try to be dispassionate; Herzog makes documentaries about nature and humanity. I don't want to spoil it by saying too much, see this ASAP!

On the type of people who live down there: "phds washing dishes and linguists on a continent with no (native) languages."

Screengrabs to whet your whistle:

Exploring a fumerole (volcanic gas vent) on Mount Erebus

Under the ice, jellyfish