NWC Art & the Olympics

Got an email from Black Tusk Gallery just now, about how a canadian skeleton racer who won gold did it wearing a helmet designed by a NWC artist. Cool.

the Michael Pollan Food Rules

He has a new book out, 64 rules about eating, and NPR has some quotes from him:

Don't eat any foods that you've seen advertised on television

If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't

My dining room table, circa June 2004

Pizza, Beer, Zombieland

Had a nice Sunday evening. The pizza dough had been made atleast a week earlier, lots of long, slow rising time in the fridge; perhaps the best dough ever. Also part of it was King Arthur bread flour. Epic. Notice the bubble in the pic below... The usual red sauce, some old stinky cheddar, and a pepper from the garden. With an Alaskan Amber, a fine beer.
Zombieland came very highly recommended. First time through I liked it, except for the zombies. Not a horror fan. But the comedy was great. Second time through I loved it -- the thing with horror is the surprise/anticipation scares you, once I knew what to expect I could better enjoy the rest of the movie. The Bill Murray bits were great (yes, bits, there is a brief thing after the credits that is epic); I'm not sure which situation was funnier, this one, or the one in Coffee & Cigarettes where he plays a waiter that GZA and RZA recognize (youtube). Actually, I just rewatched the C&C scene, they are quite similar, he plays himself, and some of his classic movies are mentioned in both scenes. Anyway, Zombieland is great.
Obviously this isn't from Zombieland, the pics from it are a little gross for a quasi-food blog. Lost in Translation is a pretty solid movie, and this was a cool scene.

Serenity/New Cult Canon

Groovy, 2 days in a row for new cult canon articles. This one about Serenity, a movie I very much enjoyed. My brother had it on dvd, and I saw it before Firefly, the tv show that it was providing the coda for. blahblahblah, I've already done a post about Firefly afterall...

Donnie Darko/Southland Tales/the Box

OnionAV has a new cult canon article about Richard Kelly's 3rd movie, the Box, today, I don't think I posted the articles for DD or Southland Tales before, so here they are, all in one post. DD is epic; Southland is a bit frustrating, but I loved the lipsynching scene with Timberlake; haven't seen the Box yet...

Dylan/Cash Sessions

As mentioned in the last post, I stumbled upon a sweet website just now, with 22 songs from the sessions for Nashville Skyline. They are in 4 posts: 1, 2, 3, 4. I'm over the moon. A different guy posted a slightly different boot from the sessions, a couple of songs are different. The interweb is a good thing.

Johnny Cash/Fresh Air

Fresh Air replayed an interview with Johnny Cash from 1997 last week, on his birthday. It is epic. They also redid an interview with Rick Rubin about the American Recordings sessions that is pretty darn listenable. As an aside, I trolled google for a while to find a good pic of Johnny, and found a website that had uploaded boots of the Dylan/Johnny Cash sessions for Nashville Skyline. I am so unbelievably stoked right now!

Fresh Air/William Hurt

I feel weird about posting semi-frivolous pop culture things, bumping the amazing Chile earthquake pic down, but honestly, this is an amazing interview. He's a good actor, 'the Accidental Tourist' is one of my favorites, but he's a pretty deep, real person, too. His upbringing is fascinating, and the Brasil story is nuts.

8.8

Roberto Candia/AP

Popcorn + Nuclear Cheese

R sent me the cheese powder from WI. He probably thought I would treat it as a gag gift, but the ingredients actually were reasonable, so I've been using it. Popping popcorn in coconut oil is the bomb.

Shine a Light -- Rolling Stones

I have an interesting relationship with the Stones. I grew up with my parents' record collection, Beatles, Dylan, Johnny Cash. No Stones. I think they were a little too bad boy. Dunno. I remember when they came through NY in the 80s on some of their way over the hill tours, and maybe that made me think less of them. But at some point songs like Sympathy for the Devil, Paint it Black, Wild Horses, etc. caught my ear. I was at a party at the chicken house and they played Hot Rocks, the greatest hits album, and was floored. That said, it's still the only Stones album I own -- which is funny cause normally I despise greatest hits things, I'm much more of a complete-ist than a generalist. But anyway, back to Shine a Light. It got great reviews, which helped to overcome my reticence due to the Stones being in their 60s, so I bought it. It's a surprisingly great movie. Mick annoyed me at first, a lead singer who does nothing but sing bothers me, and he was gyrating about the stage, upstaging the rest of the band in the first song. For that matter he does it throughout the movie, I guess I just got used to it.

Loving Cup was the first song that made me happy I saw the movie. It's a wonderful song. Phish has covered it often, in fact it was a key part of the best set of Phish I ever saw: (Portland, OR, 24 November 1996, set 2) 2001, sparkle, BOWIE, a Day in the Life, YEM, Loving Cup, suzy G + ginseng sullivan, cavern. Nice. Mick's voice is shot, but he dueted with Jack White, so the good voice/shot voice contrast was great.

(Loving Cup)

Doing yoga last night, 3 songs in a row really struck me: Just my Imagination had a great groove to it, Far Away Eyes with Ronnie Wood on pedal steel guitar was a cool little country tune, and then Champagne & Reefer with Buddy Guy was amazing -- there was a point in the song where Buddy Guy was at the mic, had finished one verse and was waiting for the next, and was staring into the camera for about 10 seconds. His eyes were amazing. A cool moment. The song was rocking, too.

The song with Christina Aguilera had a ton of energy, overall the songs with guest artists were all particularly noteworthy. That said, I also really liked the 2 songs that Keith Richards sang, mellow, spare, quietly powerful.

The camera work, particularly the close ups of faces and arms was amazing. These guys have done some serious living. Keith Richards really has earned the lines in his face. His hands also were crazy, huge blood vessels standing on top of sinews and bones. A little creepy maybe, but really cool textures.

Anyway. Highly recommended. (I'm going to have to make some screen grabs, cause I couldn't find many great pics on the web.)

Update: the disc would appear to be copy protected or something, cause when I paused it and did a screengrab --> photoshop the resulting image was jet black. shame.

Walmart sells local produce?!

Good read.

WWSD? -- Straus Whole Milk x6

The return of WWSD? Very exciting. This time I was asking the question of myself; I make a gallon of yogurt every week, occasionally a gallon of milk gets converted to ricotta, too; last weekend I got 3 gallons of Straus whole milk 1/2 price. Milk is a funny thing. I'm not lactose intolerant but my brother is, and quite a few friends are, so I'm aware of it. That said, I much prefer fermented milk products (yogurt, buttermilk, creme fraiche), cause even though I can digest milk, I think you get more nutrition, more easily out of the fermented products. So part of this was deciding what to make, and part of it was doing a brain dump so I have a list for the future. In the end I kinda chickened out and made 2.5 gallons of yogurt, and then tapioca 2x with the remaining 1/2 gallon. Here's the list:

yogurt
ricotta
mozzarella
soft white cheese
hot chocolate
cocoa pudding
tapioca pudding
rice pudding
bechamel sauce
custard sauce
potato gratin
panna cotta
new england clam chowder
french toast
chongos zamoranos (Diana Kennedy: the essential cuisines of Mexico, p. 434)
queso de napoles (DK: tecoM, p.415)
flan a la antigua (DK: tecoM, p.413)

'Soft white cheese' is a soft, spreadable cheese, kinda like marscapone. You can order the stuff to make it from Ricki. She has a pretty amazing website, tons of ingredients, recipes, tips, etc. She has the stuff you need to make mozz, too. I really like cocoa pudding. There's a recipe on the box of Kingsford corn starch that I've made for at least 10 years, probably more. Tapioca pudding is good, especially the version with eggs in it, though the 2 versions I made this week were only soso, still trying to find the right recipe. Bechamel sauce is the thing for lasagne. Lastly 3 recipes from Diana Kennedy. I've made the 2nd two cooked custards a couple of times and they are great. The chongos sound really interesting, basically you go 1/2 way towards making cheese by adding rennet to milk, then instead of draining the whey you make syrup with it that the curds cook in. Sounds pretty good to me!

TAL/Chimpanzee story

Run, don't walk, to hear it. Epic.

Salmon / Mark Bittman

Good post by the NYT food writer, he got the 5 pacific salmon species right (with their alternate names), and has a good bit of history about the farmed crap and whatnot. Informative. Though I disagree with him on one thing, sockeye is better than chinook; the color does it for me. Though my brother worked on a salmon boat out of Kodiak, and prefers chinook...

NPR Humor

To balance out the Jamie O thing, which is a fairly intense mini-lecture, 2 stories on NPR just made me laugh. The bit about the guy who sat next to the Christmas Day bomber is surprisingly funny. And the 2nd letter about the Chrysler Ram logo is awesome.

Jamie O on food/diet. Wonderful. #2

The html code I copied to embed the video appears to clip it a little, so here's the direct link.

I thought it was a really powerful talk, the best 21 minutes I've spent in a while. Made me cry a little. He notes right off the bat that diet related diseases are killing alot of people, a ton more than the number of homicides each year, but murder makes the paper, dying of obesity related disease doesn't. His big thing is teaching kids how to cook, to break the cycle of households that don't have cooking as a tradition that gets passed along. Even though I'm a bit too competitive in the kitchen, clearly it's better if people are cooking anything using real ingredients than eating the 'healthiest' fast food. I loved the talk.

Jamie O on food/diet. Wonderful.

Black Bean Strogonoff

Was just kinda messing around with leftovers and available ingredients, but this was quite tasty, so worthy of a post. Garlic, peppers, kale - sauteed. Some black beans and adzuki beans that had been cooked with garlic, onion, cumin, corriander, epazote, bay leaf, asafoetida. Some old creme fraiche that smelled a bit rich and cheese-like. On couscous made with veggie stock.

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.