Carrizo Plain Wildflower Trip 2010 post #3

From the 1030SW

Run like an antelope, out of control

Selby Cow Camp

Self portraits

Encilia farinosa

UCSB / NPR

UCSB was mentioned in a story about high school kids being wait-listed for college admission this morning. Kind of cool to hear our name on NPR...

Electric Motorcycle / NPR

Very interesting story. Loved the bit about using bicycle frame building materials/know-how to build a motorcycle.

Exotic Fruit/ Mystery Train

Been on a re-watching movies kick. Love 'Mystery Train' by Jim Jarmusch. The main jist is the movie consists of 3 stories, and these stories overlap in that the people involved all spend the night at the hotel owned by Screamin' Jay Hawkins (in the red outfit). It's set in Memphis, which is most critical to the first story, about 2 japanese kids on a pilgrimage to see Graceland, but the city plays a part in the other stories, too. I am mesmerized by this movie. Screamin' Jay's outfit plays a part in that.... Anyway, there's a scene towards the end with Jay and the bellhop that makes this a perfect entertainment item for the blog (food & movie together....)

Say, do you have anymore of those Japanese Plums? Or any other exotic fruits from around the globe?
You ate my only plum, remember?
Ohhhhh. Yeah.

Doesn't look like much on the page, it's great cinema, though, I promise.

Carrizo Plain Wildflower Trip 2010 post #1

Red in Los Olivos

Salvia carduacea

This and the next few are from the Selby Cow Camp building area, Selby Rocks in the distance.

it's a lizard

Early 50s Dodge pickup

Salvia ??

"I've just seen a face, I can't forget the time or place that we'd just met..."

Fence post

Nikkormat, view from Selby Campsite

This one is my favorite of the digital pics. Felt good to shoot slide film and have more control, we'll see how those turn out. Here is a long, detailed article on the difference between film and digital.

We (the royal we, actually S Bee) drove 154 - 101 - 166 - Soda Lake Rd - 58 - 101. We probably should have driven on more dirt roads in the Carrizo Plain, but we still saw some pretty good displays.

Post #2, Post #3, Picasa I,II

Chongos Zamoranos

The last time I had an over-supply of milk I went through many of my cookbooks and made a list of recipes to try the next time it happened. Well, recently I got 4 gallons of day old whole milk from the co-op. Organic Valley, not Straus, but still pretty good. Made ~ 2 gallons each of yogurt and ricotta, the ~ is because I made 1Q of Chongos Zamoranos twice. The recipe is from the Essential Cuisines of Mexico by Diana Kennedy, it's beguiling, and I really messed it up the first time, so had to make it again. Basically it is milk that you add rennet to as if you were making cheese. You let the curds set up. Then you cook it slowly, adding sugar, so the curds cook in a syrup made of whey+sugar. It's clever as heck. And tasty, too.

I made a couple of mistakes the first time. I stirred the milk/egg yolks/rennet (mixing in the yolks) too long, so broke up the curds. That was bad, but more importantly the recipe emphasizes low heat, and even on my lowest burner turned as low as it goes, the heat was too high. The output from the 1st try was basically sponge-y protein matrix, and a ton of whey syrup. It tasted good, but the texture was wrong. Pictured is the 'protein matrix':

Executed properly it is like a really good soft baked custard in texture, but it's richer cause the whey is gone. Well, not gone, used for another purpose. The spiced syrup is nice, too.

Chongos Zamoranos:
Diana Kennedy + slight modifications
1Q whole milk
2 egg yolks
1/16 tablet rennet
1/2T cold water
4oz sugar
1 cinammon stick
1 star anise

Dissolve rennet in cold water. The 1/16 is ridiculous, I know, but if 1/4 tab is enough for 1 gallon.... let this sit for a couple of minutes to insure it dissolves.
Whisk together milk and yolks in a wide pot, heat to 110 F
Mix rennet, milk, let sit in warm place for ~30 min. The curds will separate (it'll form a mass slightly shrunken from the side of the pot).
Cut the 'mass' into 8 wedges.
Turn on heat very very low. I doubled up the cast iron trivets on the stove to get the pot far away from the heat. Worked good.
Add sugar, cinammon, anise. She didn't use anise and used dark brown sugar. I used vanilla cane sugar. The sugar forms a syrup which poaches the curds.
Let it cook down for atleast 2 hours. I did more like 5, so there wasn't much syrup left, it cooked into the curds/evaporated.

Curds are separate from the whey, wedges cut, just started cooking

Doubled up cast iron burner thingys

Final product. Curds are cohesive, but still silky. Syrup is mostly gone, glistens a little on the curds. Tasty.

Lemon/Lime Creme Fraiche Sherbet

This is a bit of a mutt of a recipe. Julia Child in MtAoFC, or maybe From Julia Child's Kitchen??, talks about making ice cream by whipping cream before hand instead of letting the machine aerate it. So I started with that idea. Used crème fraîche instead of regular cream, and it whipped up just fine. To be honest, crème fraîche plus sugar plus lemon juice made a really tasty concoction that would have been great served with fruit or something like that. It's pretty good frozen, as well, but this one isn't a huge triumph, like some of the others in the Sorbet Chronicles.

Lemon/lime crème fraîche sherbet:
1Q crème fraîche
6 oz sugar
1/2 c lemon+lime juice
pinch salt
pinch orange zest

Whipped the crème fraîche, added sugar, whipped more, added juice, froze without stirring at all.

the 8th Grade Science Test

In an otherwise ho-hum onionAV random roles with William Atherton comes this:

We had the eighth-grade science test. I went under the bag, and I asked, “How much shaving cream is in there?” And they said, “Not that much.” So I said, “Well, how much does it weigh?” “It’s about 75 pounds, but it’s shaving cream.” “You know the whole thing about 75 pounds of feathers and 75 pounds of lead? It’s about the same thing. [Laughs.] So can we figure out what’s going to happen with this?” So they put some poor stunt guy underneath to show the sissy actor “Okay, nothing’s going to happen.” So they unleashed it, and it flattened him. So they took out half of the shaving cream, and I went in very happily and was slimed.

This was a story about the making of Ghostbusters. awesome.

3-D Catholic TV / NPR

I'm having a real hard time believing this isn't a April 1 leftover story. It's amazing. "The Catholics have always beat the Jews".

New Books

This is basically a placeholder so I remember to review these books, and also put them on the list of cookbooks down the side of the page.... a couple of good shipments, recently....

The Art of Mexican Cooking -- Diana Kennedy
The Cooking of Southwest France -- Paula Wolfert
Julia's Kitchen Wisdom -- JC
Rosa's New Mexican Table
Mesa Mexicana
Organic, Inc.
Amarcord -- Marcella Hazan
Hidden Kitchens
Wisconsin Cheese
Putting Food By

Jupiter's Travels -- Ted Simon
Baja Book IV -- Ginger Potter
In the Shadow of the Volcano -- Humphreville
Tree Spiker -- Mike Roselle

Books

I saw this image upside down (yoga) and thought it looked cool -- I like it that most books you can't see the title of, but some are shaped funny, so they fit in the stack with the spine pointing out. Focus could be a little better (low morning light) but the nuggets include: "the Book of Yogurt," "Northwest Coast Indian Painting," and "the California Surf Project." Pretty representative of my interests, eh? and I didn't manipulate the scene at all. The sweet red/black print is Thunderbird by Robert Davidson, a pretty rare print -- was super stoked when I got it off of ebay.

Julia Butterfly Hill / West Coast Live

This post is a bit of a tease cause West Coast Live doesn't archive their shows, but last night they reran their Earth Day Show from 2000, which included a lengthy interview with Julia Butterfly Hill who then was freshly down from her 738 day tree sit in an old-growth redwood tree. If they ever do digitize their archive I'll update.

I missed the first couple of minutes of the show, so didn't immediately realize it was an old one; I thought it was a little weird to be interviewing someone who had been 'famous' so long ago (Kevbo had a picture of her on his fridge circa 1999) but whatever. But when she started talking about Grey Davis as the current governor of Cali things made more sense....

Jakob Dylan / Bob Edwards Weekend

Jakob Dylan and Kelly Hogan were on Bob Edwards Weekend today. They did a couple of songs along with a ~40 min interview. It started out a little slow, but there were some nuggets in there.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

I didn't know anything about this film an hour ago, just read a very positive review on OnionAV. The jist is it's a film about street graffiti art, including the artist Banksy from the UK. The trailer is on the official website. From the review, wikipedia, and trailer I think you will be interested, too.

Cave painting graffitti being covered up by a city maintenance worker -- Banksy

Organic Food is Marketing Hype (?)

Found a cool video via being a friend of Straus Creamery on Facebook, it's a 100 min debate, done a day or two ago, about 'is organic food marketing hype' -- which sounds cheesy -- basically it was about are there legitimate, scientifically proven benefits to growing/eating organic food. Personally I think there is some difference for fruit/veggies, and a massive difference in meat/dairy. There weren't any earth shattering revelations in the debate, but it was worth my time. And there wasn't any substantive refutation of the fact that conventional meat/dairy is sketchy....