501 Cocktails

is the name of the book I got for Christmas from my brother and sister-in-law. It coincided, happily, with Mom donating the family soda siphon, CO2 cartidges, and liquor cabinet cast-offs--sake set, sloe gin, pernod, bitters. So I've been cocktail-experimenting.

Yesterday's Burnt Orange (brandy, bitters, OJ) was interrupted when Caper the rat tried to sip from the martini glass and knocked it over. Now I am down to one martini glass, in which I had a New Orleans Martini (pernod, dry vermouth, gin) which I don't recommend.

Tonight's Delft Donkey is more my speed: 2 parts gin to one part lemon juice, shaken over ice cubes till they frost, then poured into a highball glass which is then filled to the top with ginger beer. Num.

The Care and Feeding of Your Veggie Scrap Broth

I've mentioned a few times that leftovers from your veggie preppin' can make a fine fine broth. This is true. Making veggie scrap broth eases the guilt for those of us who don't/can't compost, squeezes the last bit of flavor and nutrition out of your produce, and puts your neglected freezer to good use.

You will need:
a freezer
a freezer-friendly gallon bag or tub
veggie scrap consciousness
a pasta pot; bonus points if it comes with a pasta colander

As you peel potatoes & carrots & parsnips and onions & etc, add the peels & leftover bits to the freezer container. When you have a 1/2 gallon's worth or so, dump into the pasta colander, slip the colander into the pasta pot, and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then simmer covered for at least 20 minutes but longer = more flavor melding. Lift colander from pot, drain a moment, then dump the thoroughly used-up veggie scraps. Ta-da.

If you don't have an immediate use for the broth, save space in your fridge by continuing to simmer the broth until it is reduced to a reasonable amount. I keep mine in small jar marked "veggie boullion," then measure out a Tb or two per cup of water to re-constitute the broth. If you don't get to it in the first week, better freeze it for laters.

Items for an especially tasty broth:
-herb stems like thyme. sage, parsely, savory, tarragon, etc. Easy on the sorrell/rosemary, a little goes along way.
-potato peels. The Vegetarian Epicure swears by them, and claims you can make a highly satisfying broth from those alone. Avoid green skin, that's poison!
-mushroom stems. A way into the the depth of flavor meat broth's enjoy. Folks from the Fungus Fair inform me mushrooms impart anticarcinogenic properties. Thanks, mushrooms!
-stems from your sauteeing greens. Kale, chard, collards, etc. Go easy on the beet greens--their high sugar content means too many of them make the soup too sweet.
-artichoke leaves & middles. But not the stems. They are too bitter.
-onion ends & skins
-celery bottoms and leaves
-the afroementioned carrot/parsnip peels
-tart apple peels & cores. What? Like the beet green stems, go easy on them. But don't knock 'em. The tart apples will counteract the utter vegginess of your broth, and since apples impart a lot of pectin for jams & jellies, I have a crackpot theory that they improve the velvetiness of broth. That they are the vegetarian's equivalent of broken bones and marrow, which thicken meat broths.

Avoid things you wouldn't cook anyway, like the green potato peels/bitter artichoke stems mentioned above, but also the green parts of leeks (they turn the soup sour--some say the same is true for green onions) and the leaves from rhubarb. Poison! Poison!

Happy soup season!

Winter means citrus

...and specifically, those California Cuties clementines that take over the stores around here. They are snack-sized, easy to peel and sweet sweet sweet. I usually eat three at a time as a tv-watching alternative to popcorn. They are like candy, and it only takes a little to turn them into fancy dessert for entertaining. I bought a kit of the ingredients as a birthday present for my friend Tim, who doesn't eat sugar (but has a sweet tooth):

-peel a bunch of clementines. Get the little extra white strings off, if you can.
-arrange them on a plate or entertainment platter (blue tones offset the orange)
-put your thumb over the opening of a bottle of orange blossom water and sprinkle over the smiles. Just enough to moisten them. I found orange blossom water at the middle eastern market in San Luis Obispo, back in the SLO days, but since then I've found it at the natural foods store.
-if you are okay with sugar, sprinkle powdered sugar over the clementine smiles. I get an even sprinkling by pouring the sugar into a sieve or mesh strainer, then tapping the side of the sieve as I move it over the smiles.
-do the same with powdered cinnamon.

That's it! The platter looks festive, it smells great, and it's equally well received at potlucks, holiday parties, or by the coterie of regulars who come over for a casual night of cards.

Food Prep Miscellany

Wutt?? How did I forget about my cookin' jones/this blog? Uh. I went away to Seattle for Thanksgiving, and after being hosted for a great meal/macking on the leftovers for the rest of the weekend, I have just sorta coasted on a tryptophan coma (MYTH) ever since.

Still, I have made a few things & can report on them.

For one thing, I advised my rat sitter that she could make quick & easy popcorn in the microwave without using microwave popcorn. This is true. My old housemate Keri discovered this as a neglected & hungry youth after school, and experimented till she got it right for the benefit of all of us. Her formula:
-lunch bag
-3T popcorn
-2:30 minutes on high in the microwave. (I sometimes go 2:45)
Ta daa. And you can reuse the bag--the cleaner your microwave is, and by the way, clean out your microwave (gross), the more you can reuse it before the old food stains make it spotty.

Now you can butter your popcorn with less guilt, right, because so far this is a fat-free food (and we can't have that). The marketers of coconut have successfully reached my local natural food stores, so now their shelves are stocked with coconut water drinks and coconut oil. "Why are you talking about this now? We were just getting to the good butter part!" Because they got to me, too: "Better for you [less bad for you] than butter." So I scoop out a Tb or 2 out of the jar, put it into a li'l microwave dish, maybe with some garam masala spice or Chinese five-spice, because I am that gourmet, or, for you spice babies, cinnamon, and melt it 30 seconds on high for over the popcorn.

Or try:
-olive oil heated with dried oregano
-butter heated with crushed garlic
(same thing, 30 seconds on high)
-brown sage butter (see the soup recipe a couple posts back)

Also, I live in Hippytown USA, so I am obliged to sprinkle nutritional yeast flakes over the popcorn too. Fortunately it is very damn tasty, so I can recommend it to you.

I make popcorn for myself a few times a week for watching Netflix on my laptop in bed.
I am not a single sad sack
I am not a single sad sack
I am not a single sad sack
excuse me.

Also, for Make Good Thanksgiving with my Mom, who does not live in Seattle, I contributed the following Roasted Beet Salad:

Get together two bunches of fresh beets on their greens. About 6 beets total. If you are feeling fancy, get a red beet bunch and a golden/striped beet bunch. You won't use the greens till later in the week for yourself, but look who is a smart shopper? You are! (You can slow-cook sliced leeks over med-low heat in olive oil, then add chopped beet greens & cover till they are the wiltiest. Meanwhile, heat oven to 300 and dry roast some shelled pumpkin seeds for 10-15 minutes on a baking sheet till hear you hear them pop. Remove & observed their puffed-up light & crispy goodness. Once the beet greens are respectably limp, turn off the heat & kill the pan with some splooshes of balsamic vinegar & s&p to taste. Stir in crumbled goat cheese or feta, sprinkle in the pumpkin seeds, and serve warm or room temp. Our beet dish will incorporate these same ingredients.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

-Peel the beets, & chop into 3/4-to-1-inch chunks. Toss in a bowl with a little bit of olive oil & salt & pepper, and set aside.
-Slice a couple leeks and a fennel bulb , and spread out along the bottom of an olive-oiled baking pan. I used a 9x9, it was plenty big.
-put the shiny beet chunks on top, and bake for mmm, 30 minutes or so before checking on them and tossing every ten minutes till a fork goes easily through a beet chunk.
-while beets are still hot, sprinkle in balsamic vinegar to taste, and if you have the feathery parts of the fennel, mince some of that up & toss it in, too.
-while beets are cooling, roast some pumpkin seeds (see parenthetical, above). When they have cooled and the beets are room temp, toss them in with some crumbled goat cheese or feta. Then go wow your mom.

Also:
My rat sitter left some zucchini in the fridge, so tonight I sliced them into centimeter-thick chunks on the bias, drizzled a TB of olive oil into the bottom of that 9x9, and spread the slices out in a single layer. Then I turned them all over so there was olive oil on both sides, salted & peppered them, and put them in a 375 degree oven for 10-15 minutes. Then I turned the slices over again, sprinkled with shredded Parmesan cheese, and returned to the oven for 10 more minutes or so. If all goes well, as it did for me, you will have savory zucchini chips that are chewy-crisp golden on the outside, melty on the inside. I put them into sammiches or over quinoa with some kind of goopus.

Goopus like mole negro. Get one of those jars of the stuff in the "Hispanic Foods" aisle*, a quart of broth, an extra Tb of powdered unsweetened chocolate, and half a banana. Heat the jar contents in the broth and smoosh it around till you have a smooth consistency, then blender with the extra chocolate & half banana. Serve over roasted veg, nopales, or the traditional chicken.

*don't make it from scratch--at least, don't start the project when you are already hungry. A college pal & I tried to make it from Diane Kennedy's recipe in advance of our post-graduation trip to Oaxaca. We were confounded by the 30 ingredients (half a slice of french bread? Five almonds? Really? WTF?) and neglected to properly secure the blender lid, so instead of eating in 15 minutes like we thought we were going to, we were swabbing brown shloop off the walls 90 minutes later and still hadn't eaten UGH. Treat yourself better!

Vichyssoise

There were just enough potatoes in my sack to make potato leek soup tonight.

Pshew! I'd've kicked myself if, after all that Meg Fry-making, I had shorted myself on a key ingredient for one of my Favorite Soups Evarr. So I am a happy Kitschenueberfrau this evening.

There is no point in getting fancy with Vichyssoise. The name is fancy enough. And the blending of flavors is so perfect that why mess with that? So pretty much straight from the Joy of Cooking, the 1975 edition, here is what I did:

Mince:
*3 medium cleaned leeks, white only
*1 medium onion
and sautee for 3 minutes (I had mine on medium heat &, stirring them occasionally, let them sautee as long as it took me to mince the potatoes.) in:
*2 Tb butter (you vegans already know to check for milk product in your margerine, right?)

Add:
*4 peeled and minced medium potatoes
*4c chicken stock (or, you know, veggie stock)
and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes or until veggies are very tender.

Puree, in whichever manner your faith dictates.

Back over medium-low heat, add:
*1/4 teaspoon mace (I had whole mace that I mortared & pestled, then added before pureeing. It is so good with whole mace, OMG! Or if you don't have that, grate from a whole nutmeg; it's from the same plant. Or if you don't have that, then used powdered mace or nutmeg, but I hope it's less than a year old. Or if you don't have that, go with the spice sand you've been carrying with you through several moves, but use a mite more because that crap will taste like nothing. Nothing! Then get yourself to the natural food store and stock up from the bulk bins, because Jeez you deserve better!)
*S&P to taste
*1-2 cups cream (or better for your heart, half and half. Or even better for your heart but less better for your taste buds, whole milk. I believe, when I worked for the Saturn Cafe, I made successful vegan Vichissoise by adding unsweetened unflavored soymilk at this stage. )

Heat until super steamy or even simmering. Ladle into bowls andsprinkle with fancy-pants minced watercress or chives. Because "if there's no green flecks in it somewhere, it ain't gourmet."--what I bet authentic big time cheffy types really do say.

Serve with salad and a Nass Watt Juan (because French accent.)

Scratching the kitchen itch

Tonight I had a couple friends over for dinner, and used the excuse to take care of some recent cooking urges.

Cauliflower Apple Soup with sage & brown butter
Couple weeks back I went to visit my friend Jane in San Francisco, where she has just moved, and we dined at Spork, a fresh-local-ingredients hipster joint that took over a KFC location. On the menu they had a soup as described above, and it looked so interesting that we ordered it. But the execution was meh. It was too salty, and the promise of tart apple was drowned out by the pungence of the cauliflower. Still, the idea was fabulous. So I made a better version at home, as follows.

Sautee in a soup pot on medium low, in olive oil:
*1/2 onion, diced (or one li'l onion)
*a couple stalks of celery, diced
Stir every so often, for 5 minutes or so; you want the veg to be soft and translucent, but not browned. This is key.

Chop roughly and add to the pot:
*one head cauliflower (to make a colorful soup, I used orange cheddar cauliflower)
*same volume of peeled tart apples ( for a medium head of cauli, I used three little apples)
sautee that for a few minutes, stirring now and then. Again: no browning!

Add
*1/2 a quart-size carton of chicken or veggie stock, cover.
Once it boils, reduce heat to low, and let simmer 15 minutes or more. When veggies are super soft and liquid is reduced, remove from heat.

While the veggies are cooking, put
*2-3 Tablespoons salted butter
in a small skillet or pot over low heat and slowly, slowly brown.
While the butter is browning, mince
*2 teaspoons fresh sage
and add to bowned butter right as you take it off the heat. Sage should sizzle for a moment or two then settle down and make your nostrils happy. Set aside.

After you take the veggies off the heat, puree them. Blender, blending wand, potato masher, or old fashioned ricer. You want a smooth consistency. Return to heat.

Add:
*the other 1/2 of the stock carton
and cook over low heat for further flavor melding. After 15 minutes stir in:
the brown sage butter
and stir a few times so it's all swirly but not completely incorporated. Then when you ladle it into bowls it's still kinda swirly, and your friends will call you fancy.

This worked out well. The ratio of apples to cauliflower was right on. I avoided the bitterness of the cauliflower by sauteeing the veggies on lower heat, and the brown butter contained all the salt the soup needed. The chicken stock acted as a flavor bridge between the cauliflower & apple. And with the earthy sage, it tasted like autumn in a bowl. Serves 4. It's nice with steamed artichokes.

Featherlight Kale Chips
The collard version I made last week turned brown in spots, so I checked back with Mike at my favorite farm stand. He advised me to cook the greens longer over lower heat. So:

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Wash & dry:
*one bunch of greens. (collards = good, and tonight's Lacinato or "Dino" kale was also a winner)
Cut the leaves lengthwise along either side of the spine. (You may want to save the spines back for veggie scrap broth.) If you like, cut the lengths of leaves in half crossways. Or whatever shape seems good.

Toss in a big bowl with:
*1-2 Tablespoons olive oil
*salt & pepper to taste

When the leaves are all coated, spread them over 2 cookie sheets and bake for 30 minutes.
Out of the oven, they will remain green but be much smaller, like veggie shrinkydinks. Slide into a bowl & serve as "mouth occupiers" for appetizer, card games, movie time, etc.

Variation on Meg Fries
My friend Meg makes the best fries. That is just The Facts, so there is no point in disputing it. Anything I do frieswise will necessarily be a tribute to her frites prowess.

How she does them:
-peel too many potatoes
-cut them into genrous fry-shaped chunks
-dry off the slices (KEY STEP FOR BROWNING)
-toss in olive oil, salt & pepper
-and toss with optional goodies: sliced garlic, rosemary.
-spread out in baking pans
-bake for a good long while, like an hour, at 350 or so.
-munch mightily and weep bitter tears when they are all gone.

The variation I tried:
-cut up some potatoes & prep as above. AND
-peel and cut some parsnips, too. (Add any veggie peels to the running scrap bag in your freezer, and make broth later.) The 'snips were drier than the potatoes, so didn't need to be hand-dried. Advantage!
-My old boss the farmer has a friend who swears that duck fat is the best thing to cook fries in. I had some schmaltz leftover from a chicken I cooked down for stock, so I tossed the fries in that along with the salt & pepper. The farmer's friend: "That is not a duck!!" Me: [shrug] Vegetarians: "!!?!"
-salt, pepper, baking pans, same time and temp.

Big hit at dinner tonight. I cooked the taters and snips together, and maybe oughtn't to have done so. The snips cooked quicker that the taters, and were a little tough. So sweet, though! Mmm. So next time I will cook them in separate pans, and take the 'snips out sooner.

Update: farmer Amy says she cooks em at 400 degrees 30 minutes or so. I tried that, and at just shy of 40 miutes (in my oven, anyway) they were perrrfect.

I quit driving the farm truck and became a mediation coordinator. I got kicked out of my Coastal dreamscape (thtoopid "I can't afford to rent when I own a place" landlord) and moved to an apartment on the cliffs of another Coastal dreamscape. Blah blah, my life is unpredictable/charmed, whatever, I don't have time for these catch-up details! It is soup season, dammit! And at a good friend's request, I am posting the cooking details of the season.

Already I have cooked a chicken down for stock, saved back the shmaltz for parsnip fries and matzoh ball soup, shredded much of the chicken for mole verde or amarillo of the future, cracked the bones and cooked the stock down further for velvety texture, made chicken soup from that, then fed the cooked bones to the pet rats Pickle and Caper (for their teeth) (now there are pet rats, rest in peace my Bobba cat).

I have pulled the veggie scrap bag out of the freezer and dumped it in the pasta pot colander to make more stock, soaked the barley overnight, boiled the mild chicken Italian sausage in the veggie stock, then made mushroom-barley-beet green-sausage soup.

I cut some sort of green (collards? It was in the CSA share I got for being Free Wheelin' Farm's Raffle Grrl) off the spine, tossed them in olive oil salt & pepper, laid them out on cookie sheets, and baked them at 350 for a few minutes until they were feather-light crispy green chips. That was a tip from Redman House farm stand's guy Mike.

That's all in the past three days. I am Li'l Miss Kitchen Mania over here. And I still have to get to the leeks & potatoes waiting their turn to become Vichissoise, and what about the winter squash? There Will Be Pie. And there will be more details about all these things later. I am assuming those dishes will get done later, too. Pickle and Caper better get on it. There are a lot of dishes. Lazy rats!

peek from the studio

So, this is the sort of thing I've been working on up at UCSC. Combining photoetching with monotype to create a series of images. That's Bob, my cat, having a snooze. She will float at the top of these images, alternately dreaming about cat things (you can just make out the fish) and being an overseeing benevolent presence against ominous announcements and other life struggles.

Last night I was there again, up till 1am sanding copper plates to shine in prep for more etching. I probably over-polished--toward the end I realized I was crouched over a cloud of copper dust, and drove home with a metallic taste in my mouth--but the kids have good music to listen to up there, so I was content.

As part of this class I'm auditing, I have access to the Cave, the art dept's name for their room full of computers, fancypants printers and high quality scanners. It doesn't see daylight. On the assumption that I'll only have access to it for the next 5 weeks, I find myself scheming about other small works I can haul up there to be scanned and made available for you-all to see.

Not today, though. It's raining buckets. So no cliffside strolls for me, either. Today is all about baking banana bread, framing my piece for the Pacific Grove Art Center show (Feb 23-April 5, reception Fri Feb 23 7-9pm--see you there!), and tidying up around here. Putter putter.

My friend 4ank sent me a copy of the Neverhood, a fun puzzle-solving computer game made in 1996 by Dreamworks Interactive--out of clay. It's a claymation game. Years ago when I visited 4ank in Washington he was noodling around with it, and it charmed me enough to be thinking about it 10 years later. So I imagine I'll be fooling around with that, too. I'm already stuck.

Pip

studio marathon

Lordy! Who's had time for cocktails & sunset, beach walks, blogging, cooking mad pots of soup or just chilling with my crabby old broad of a cat? Not me. It's been quite an exhilirating run of studio, studio, studio. I've forgotten what a time sink intaglio printing is-- when I know what I'm doing. This class I'm auditing, up at the university, in photographic etching? It's like playing that operation game, where you are loudly buzzed for the slightest gaffe with the tools. There are a bajillion wax-on, wax-off steps that go into making a workable print, and I've come home from the print shop in the wee hours several times the past couple weeks with a mere baby step's progress. Good ideas are coming out of the process, though, and my first critique went well. I'll see if I can get some prints scanned for you to see.

It's interesting how photography has popped up recently. It all started when my friend 4ank was visiting, and I mentioned polaroid tranfer prints to him. That's a process in which you get the image from a polaroid onto paper. It tends to soften the image and evoke a sense of memory. Purdy. He went home and researched it all up, and has sent me a wad of the good info, links & suggestions from practitioners. I'll compile it here for our mutual benefit.

Then there's this photo-etching class I'm eavesdropping on.

So I figure it's time I get a digital camera. For my birthday, Mom got me research & a kick-start check towards one. Thanks, Ma! And my brother suggested I honor my good eye for imagery by treating myself to a real good one. Any leads out there?

Then I meet this guy who, it turns out, is big big into photography, and has done the whole Open Studios & art fair thing with his work. He has view cameras, 120 & 220 film cameras, fancy-pants digital cameras, the works. We're trying out photoshooting together as part of a whole Artist's Way/creativity push thing. We'll see if that becomes a rewarding steady gig full of sparky collaboration, or another Santa Cruzish good intentions trail-off.

A couple months ago I thought I'd be spending the next months on wooodcut printing, but the Universe has spoken up. Good things come from listening, I hear.

Pip

I have a trio of Nikki McClure posters on my kitchen wall. I am using them as reminders for how I'd like to conduct myself in the coming year. This in lieu of the sort of resolutions we're ecouraged to take up: lose weight, find a man, chase money. Instead, I seek to congregate with friends & creatives, share a table with them, and collaborate with them in projects that are greater than our individual selves.

Since retreating up the coast, I've calmed my schedule and my nerves, and sculpted a life that allows for more of the creativity that had previously gone fallow. I had resolved to do so a couple years ago, and voila! Now I work two days a week, and have lots of time in which to volunteer and make art, fine meals, and other happy messes.

In this current scheme, I notice I am most successful creatively in a structured environment--a radio show to program, and art class with assignments to interpret and classmates to interact with, a blog or a correspondent to write to. In the open free time here at the coastal shack, it's another story. I'm like the tree in the forest with no-one around. I often just drift about like a dust mote. In fact, I've become something of a hermit. So okay, a little wisdom has come with the ample time I now have for solitary reflection. I am sparkier playing off other people.

Oh yeah, I remember. In past co-ops & accidental communities, there have been massive meals which inspired love, a Winchester Mystery Basement Kitchen Orchestra that inspired the current rage, and downtown mischief that is still going on today. But, lately...?

"Lately," however, is different than "now." And now is a new year, isn't it? Ergo the McClure Resolutions. I'm letting a little more of this gathering and mischief back in.

Tonight, I join the Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra at a performance at UCSC's College Nine/Ten Dining Hall for their College Night. Not clear on what the theme might be of a dining experience for which an orchestra of cast-off metal and plastic could be an accompaniment, but thankfully we won't have to eat there.

And at the end of the week, I'm gathering with pals to celebrate my birthday. Cocktails at one occasion, and the next day, a potluck made up of things we've been hankering for lately. Much more interactive than last year's marking of the occasion, in which I prowled the railroad tracks and unexplored side-trails between my place and the town.

Pip

I never think of Davenport, but today I went there for lunch. So-so turkey burger and a Fat Tire ale at the Whale City Bakery's sunny, window-side table. I brought along a New Yorker to read, and passed the time guilt-free and bask-happy. That's better. Those Kelly's Bakery guys are on to something.

Earlier, as I was leaving for lunch, I heard a lot of automotive banging around in the driveway. I thought it was one of the new tenants moving in. (Holgar found a woman with a Chihuahua to take the room above his warehouse. I guess small dogs are okay.) But it was Holgar himself, wrassling with an enigmatic object in the bed of his truck. It was a big plastic drum, with some gunk on the bottom, attached to what looked like the side of a car.

I go, "What's that?" And he's all,"That used to be my washing machine. I think it just gave up." He told me he tried to fix it, "but this gaddam modern appliances, made in China, you have plastic-here-and-plastic-there, and it snaps together so once you snap it apart to fix it, that's it, it's over, okay. It used to be you could unscrew the top to take a look, okay? But now they have one long screw all the way on the bottom, and to undo it you have to take this-apart-and-that-apart, okay, and all the time Mahlia is telling me 'I don't think you should do that, what are you doing to the washer?' And I say 'Mahlia!!' and she says 'But I don't think you should be doing that,' and I say 'Mahlia, PLEASE!!'"

I laughed, enjoying the picture he painted of frustrated repair with the sweetie "helping," and seeing the pathetic result of his efforts in the bed of his truck. "So now are you going to get a new one?" I asked. He already had one, of course, in his warehouse. "I was at the Salvation Army awhile ago, okay, and they had an end of the month sale, and I think 'well, someday I'm going to need another washing machine', and guess what? That day has come!"

I tell him it's a lucky thing he has so much storage space. Holgar has a warehouse with its own address, a long building with a high ceiling that is full of stuff he'll need "someday". Mahlia calls it a "shed." When I first moved in, I noticed that my closet, that had been behind the front door when I first saw the place and said yes to it, had moved out with the previous tenant. I asked Holgar what I was supposed to do about hanging my clothes. No problem, okay? He unlocked the big side-rolling door to the warehouse, a dark and dusty place lit by windows way up there next to the ceiling. We went past the Bush-Cheney posters that mark his office, past a block of those metal grill shelves filled with old phones, electroncis and clots of wire, to a plywood wardrobe that had been painted yellow. It was only a little warped, a little stained, and only a little smaller than the space it would go in my place, but that was enough for me to refuse it. He said the wardrobe had come from my place, several tenants ago, and he'd moved it into the warehouse after that tenant declined to want it. "I thought, 'oh, is still a good wardrobe,' okay?" So he put it back here thinking someday someone will want it. Ha ha fat chance, I thought at the time. But see how that extra washer came in handy? And didn't he repair my suffering electricity with spare parts he had in the warehouse? So, okay, then. Maybe there's hope for the little yellow wardrobe.

I wish back then I'd taken a closer look around at what Holgar had in there, and at how far back it went, and at how many rows of shelves the space held. At the time, I was fresh off of missing my Dad, who was also an electrical engineer, who was also a packrat convinced that he could fix/reuse/find a use for all kinds of dusty stuff he crammed into the garage. Knowing Holgar had a whole hanger of stuff was a comfort at the time. I didn't really need to know what the contents were. But if I'd taken a closer look at it all, I could have decribed it for you in more colorful, gory detail.

Pip

Best Lunch Ever

Sometimes, when I go to Kelly's bakery on the Westside, I see a fellow I know, basking in the sun at the seat by the door and reading the morning paper over coffee. Last time it was a guy I worked with at a local winery; this time it was a guy I worked with at the radio station. Must be the best seat in the house, I thought. Then I thought, these guys know how to savor a languid morning. I do something similar, on lightly scheduled days, reading the New Yorker over breakfast and tea in my sunny coastal shack; but afterwards I often feel guilty for having squandered my time. Both these fellows were in a happy lounging reverie. Now that I think about it, when I showed up & said howdy, one started mumbling sheepishly about being caught reading reputation-bruising material, and the other gathered up his things to leave while he talked with me. At the time I thought I had smudged up their privacy, thereby ruining their groove, but now I wonder if they don't suffer the same guilt I do at morning-basking.

I was there to get a baguette for lunch at my friend Rita's. We made it together--a mussel and chard soup (chard from the farm where I work), a side dish of my own devising, and baguette. For side dish I had prepped ahead peeled, boiled sunchokes lightly tossed with lemon, olive oil, S&P, and fresh minced parsley. It turned out to be just the thing with the soup, mussels & chard in a clam-wine-tomato broth, a pinch of fennel seeds....well here, here's the recipe, which she'd clipped out of some magazine or other:

for the broth:
2c. white wine (we used cheap champagne)
2 8oz jars clam juice
for the beurre manie:
1T butter
2T flour
for the persillade:
2T minced garlic
1/4 c fresh minced parsley
also:
2# fresh mussels, scrubbed & debearded
1 bunch swiss chard, thinly ribboned (about 4c.)
3 tomatoes (about 2c.) peeled and chopped (--and deseeded, but eh.)
1c. (about half a decent-sized) finely chopped red (or other sweet) onion
1/4 t. fennel seeds (the recipe dubbed these optional, but if you ask me it makes the whole dish)
s&p to taste

*Okay so you knead the flour into the softened butter into a beurre manie (Julia Child explains that this is just an uncooked roux) & set it aside. You'll add it at the end.
*Same with the garlic & parsley. Mince em, mix em together, set aside.

*In a soup pot with a lid, pour in the wine & clam juice & heat it up.
*Add 1/2 the chard, mussels, tomotoes and onion; then add the other half plus the fennel seeds.
*Shake the pot vigorously, or stir with a wooden spoon to mix this stuff up.
*Lid it for 5-6 minutes so the mussels can steam & open up.
*Remove the mussels, take them off the shell, and put the meat back into the pot. Ones that won't open=dead. Don't use 'em.
*Add the beurre manie, add the persillade.
*Stir & simmer a minute, S&P to taste (ours needed none).
*Serve in warm bowls & garnish with a drizzle of olive oil (another step we skipped).

A quick soup, perfect for lunch.

Oh, and since the milk I was going to put in my tea was sour, Rita took the opportunity to make sour milk cake. A use for off-milk! She says it's like mild buttermilk, totally useable. The resulting cake is like a super light, moist brownie:

1c, sour milk
1/3 c. melted butter
1 1/2c. flour
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. powdered chocolate (or more, if you ask me)
1t. baking soda
1 egg
3/4c. nuts

Mix wets. Add dries. Put in greased 9 x 13 pan. Bake at an amenable temperature (her oven only has one) till you start to smell it, then check every 5 minutes till done. If it's not a total fucking cake emergency, you could even frost it after it cools. I'm thinking a cream cheese frosting could work, maybe with vanilla and some grated orange zest. We, however, snarfed ours warm & untopped, which was just fine.

Pip

I stayed wakeful longer than I expected yesterday. Last night, as I was climbing the ladder to the loft where I sleep, my morning alarm went off.

Perception got a little interesting, in the last half of the day. The band of ocean I can see at sunset looked like a vertical steel-blue plate that the sun slipped behind. When I got home from the print studio, the night sky was crystal clear. Looking up as I got out of the car, the stars really were arrayed on the underside of a vast black bowl. Wow, I thought. This is what everyone saw before science proved our perception to be off. Then I thought perhaps science had it wrong.

This morning I woke at 10, incredibly late. And I was late the rest of the day, perpetually crossing things off my do-list as time for them ran out. In fact, I wound up doing practically nothing. So tonight I am determined to get my creative on. Some free-form artplay.

Holgar's been trying to find someone to rent the place across the driveway from me. I considered it myself--the place is bigger, and shaped in such a way that I could actually fold my table out all the way and friends could sit around the whole thing. But it is really shady (read "even colder in winter"), and purportedly has a mold problem. My art papers, imperilled!Holgar fixed the leak that caused the mold, but who knows if its really gone? But it is still vacant. So I am still considering it.

I ran into my landlord this morning (late morning) as I was heading out for my consititutional around the Brussels sprout field. He said he's turned down eight or nine people with dogs, including a ceramicist who move away from the neighborhood and now wants to come back. Her dog was too big, he said. I told him he was picky (she's a great dog), but then he pointed out that he didn't want dogs to disturb the predatory birds the biologists had next door (also on his property). He's an odd blend of coldheartedness and doing right by his people.

Today I had work, delivering organic produce to restaurants in San Francisco. It is satisfyingly straightforward work in which I get to drive a big truck, stride into the back rooms of 30+ fine eateries, and be on a first-name basis with some chefs.

I wasn't sure how it was going to go today. I bed down early on nights before work, since the day starts at 2:45 am(!) so I can get to & leave the farm with the truck by 4am(!) so I can be in the city by 6ish (!). Last night, I slept poorly. And I dreamt about sleeping poorly. I even dreamt about other people sleeping poorly.

But the routine is automatic anymore, so when the alarm went off--ditditditdit! Ditditditdit!--I and Bob the cat* shuffled out of bed and went about our morning ablutions as usual.

Sometimes I worry about The Drowse, the temptation to close my eyes for just a second on the way to SF. On nights when the bedcovers are made of led, it can be a fight to keep the eyeballs open while driving, a kind of reverse-Clockwork Orange. But today I drove perkier than usual, and was aware enough to be tuned in to KQED in time for my 5:35am treat: Ian Shoales, speediest commentarian ever.

And I stayed sharp throughout the day. It was possibly the first time I ever made my delivery colleague, Javier, crack up spontaneously. (I suspect him, most of the time, of courtesy-laughing.) The soles of my shoes slipped nicely along the floor of Campton Place's delivery elevator, so I did a little soft-shoe routine. That's all it takes, I guess.

Tonight may be another matter, wakeful-wise. I've taken a shift monitoring our University's excellent print studio 7-10pm Saturdays. Last week I napped in the afternoon and still felt a bit tapped by the end of the shift (though absolutely nothing happened). I'm not napping today--still feel perky--and I have a project to work on up there....so it could go either way.

Produce tip of the day: I asked Modern Tea what they planned to do with the watermelon radishes I delivered. Normally they offer them on their nibble plate, sliced in a ramkin with salt you can add to taste. That's similar to what I do: I quarter the thin slices, sprinkle them with salt layer by layer in a tub, and refrigerate overnight for a quickie saltpickle. But you can also (Modern Tea said) slice and saute them in olive oil to put over pasta.

Pip

*of all the friends, co-workers, neighbors & other people in the encounters I relate in this Blog, Bob may be the only one who goes by her real name. Yes, "her."

Question about Holgar's "escape"

Geoffch goes,

Just how old is Holgar? In 1956 when I was 15 the USSR rather brutally put down an uprising in Budapest. Eisenhower's Sec. of State, John Foster Dulles, let it be known that if captive peoples rose up the US would support them. This was a foolish promise since we could in fact do no such thing. The uprising was unsuccessful but lots of Hungarians wound up here.

And I'm all:

Jeez, how old is that guy? Old enough to have been around for the Budapest uprising, I'd say. I wonder what his journey was like getting here? He's not banished, anyway; one of his vacations this year was back to Hungary to see family. So either not everyone got out, or he left for other reason. You'll forgive my lack of investigative journalism; I dig the mystery. Any story that unfolds slowly over time, with clues collected here & there...I mean, that's tasty.

Holgar's done pretty well for himself since leaving; man does he love this country! He's collecting 6 sets of rent from this property-- he must be close to paying off the mortgage if he hasn't already. And a place in Hawaii, for rent of course. He also does "repairs" for people in his old-country, that'll-do way. Later I'm sure you'll read about "Holgar technology" in this blog.

Pip

Who IS Holgar?

My landlord says things like, "I escaped Hungary to get away from this Socialist, internationalist bullshit, but now all I hear is how everyone is [here he switches to a simpering, mocking tone] 'afraid to hurt anybody's feelings'..." He tinkers and repairs and maintains the property out of the gigantic warehouse in back of my little place, with Rush Limbaugh blaring from his van, and thinks that if Europe wants to know how to really be in the world, they should follow Bush's lead in foreign policy. He's an electrical engineer with a few patents under his belt, including some sort of anti-hijacking device. He speaks multiple languages--aside from Hungarian and English, Japanese (after hosting Japanese friends in Hawaii, and brushing up on his Japanese, he is thinking of being a tour guide for Japanese because, among other reasons, "they tip really well.") and Spanish (upon hearing I use Spanish in my job, he once disoriented me by switching to Spanish in mid sentence, but with the same thick Hungarian accent that he uses in English, so I wasn't sure *what* language I was hearing.) So, you know. He's a smart cookie with a fierce point of view. What kind of life adds up to this character?

I heard the This American Life show on supers this weekend, as in, superintendents. Landlords, like. In the first one, a colorful, crabby Brazilian super amuses his residents with outlandish tales of, for instance, how there is an exception in the Brazilian constitution for him such that he could even kill the Brazilian president & not be prosecuted. Hah hah hah, funny old man. Then it turns out that he was, in fact, Brazilian secret police and had been in cahoots with the owner of the building to do crime, have people killed, etc. Woah, what?!? It's a great story, produced by Jack Hitt. Give it a listen sometime.

It made me think of an ominous statement that Farmer D said many months ago. Farmer D, you'll recall, is the foreman of the commercial, chemical-friendly farm across the street. The farm across the street and my colorful, foreign-born landlord have a history of feuding, about which I only know bits. Like Holgar fought the farm for neighborhood access to the public beach ( a worthy and righteous struggle, which he eventually won), but did it with such vigor & vitriol that he is now banned from walking the farm roads the rest of the neighborhood is free to traipse. Last fall the farm's irrigation reservoir was choked with something like duckweed, a green coating over the whole surface of the lake that then turned rusty brown. Farmer D lamented that because of it, the mallards wouldn't come to hatch their duckies (since then, they haven't, thoug hthe pond is now clear) and told me that area botanists identified the choking weed as nothing local. Where did it come from? Farmer D was sure Holgar had planted it out of spite. It's gotten that far, their mutual disregard and suspicion.

One time, in telling me about his previous difficulties with Holgar, Farmer D said, "He's not even a citizen of this country, did you know that?" I didn't; Holgar had met his current sweetie at the flea market 25+ years ago, so I know he's been in this country for a long time. How did Farmer D know this? "One time," Farmer D said, "he had a little trouble with a gun, you know know, brandishing it , but he had immunity and the authorities couldn't touch him." I admired the outlandishness of this statement so much that elected not to soil it with follow-up, so I don't know what the story behind *that* story is. But still, after hearing the TAL piece this weekend, I wonder what immunity means for Holgar, and what brandishing a gun means. I wonder what was going on in Hungary that my landlord had to escape.

Spooky, huh?

My organic farmer neighbor (not the commercial, chemical-friendly one) is off for a week or two, so I'm minding her chickens and ducks, and harvesting the eggs. Creaking chickens, grumbling ducks. Tasty eggs.

I live in a one-road neighborhood north of my coastal town, in a compound whose landlord is locally famous for shooing strangers off the road and the little beach you can walk to from here. He is colorful for being Hungarian, going against the local political grain, having a legendary past about which any of us only know snippets and initmations, and being frankly unsentimental and money-grubbin'.

On Monday I engaged him in a squabble about my suffering electricity, and the landlord--we'll call him Holgar--said he could check on it the followng day. He just got back from Hawaii, though, sprucing up another rental property, and needed to buy bread first. And eggs. Eggs, you say? I presented him with a six-pack of duck eggs I had just collected that morning. Holgar hadn't had them before. "Are they good?" he asked. I shrugged. "Dunno. I haven't tried them yet." Holgar held up the carton, eyed it suspiciously, thanked me and left.

Tonight he calls me, asking, "So, you try your egg yet?" I had. Duck eggs, it turns out, have thicker, yet almost translucent-white shells. When they break they seem less brittle, more plastic. The yolks are gigantic, and being freshy-fresh, they are bright orange. Because I cooked them with a little onion and cotija cheese in homemade corn tortillas with sour cream, though, I couldn't tell him if the eggs themselves tasted any different than hen's eggs.
"And are you feeling okay today?" he asked.
"I'm fine," I said.
"Ahh, good, then tomorrow I'll try my eggs."
I laughed; fine, I'm His Highness' taster. No poison here. The kingdom is safe!

Somehow I'm a blogger now

Okay. So I can use this space to gossip about my coastal neighborhood, hash out art ideas, spark collaborations of some creative kind, and keep like three readers up-to-date on my innermost prattlings.

Welcome.