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

Kombucha #1

Got a Kombucha mushroom from Traves and Keely 2 weeks ago, and just harvested my first batch of tea. I quite like it! It's supposedly good for you, it's a little bit of an acquired taste, but it definitely seems like something I'll be brewing for a good long time.

Batch #1 I brewed 6 bags of pomegranate white tea, 12 oz of vanilla sugar, and added water to make a gallon (vanilla sugar isn't necessary, it's the only thing I have right now). Cool to room temperature, add the mushroom/fungus, cover with a cloth, let it sit for 2 weeks.

The mushroom and a little of the tea from batch #1

Bottled love. The pomegranate tea gives a nice color.

Update:
the ratios i'm using now are (per 1/2 gallon of water):
4 tea bags OR 2T loose black tea OR 2T yerba mate
6 oz (3/4c) sugar

I'm sold on using a couple of bags of pomegranate or raspberry tea for colour and loose black tea for nutrition of the kombucha mushroom.

NPR x3

Some interesting stories this morning. When I heard they were going to do a bit about the Coen Brothers I was thinking best sunday ever - 'cept I hated the story when I heard it. The author was annoying, and the concept kinda meh. The story about bamboo bikes was awesome. The prison story was great, too, highest recommendation.I'm not super big on expensive single speeds, I think they should be something you make out of cast-off parts, but the frame is kinda cool looking...