indigo schmindigo

2009-11-07T12:40:00.000-08:00

Will report soon about Day of the Dead fun with the Witch & her witchy posse, but right now I’m dangerously fixated on these smileys doing chores. Some people have way too much time on their hands, & apparently I must be one of them. Rationalize all you want about ongoing fascination with repetition & the mundane, but this is messed up!

Uh, yeah, I do have some real-life laundry to do, why do you ask?

2009-10-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

Decadently preparing for winter. The salad spinner is finally getting less use than the Le Creuset baking dish & Dutch oven. No, this is not an ad for Le Creuset, but I’m really not sure what I would be doing if mom-in-law hadn’t handed these two crucial items down to us, years ago.

First there was tomato sauce:

I got 3 batches out of a 20 lb. crate of dry-farmed Early Girls. YTMV. (Your tomatoes may vary.) Hint: unless you want to have All Tomatoes All the Time for 2 days, spring for the grade A instead of the grade B tomatoes, which have bright red voices made especially for screaming, “WE’RE GONNA SPOIL & ROT & MOLD ANY SECOND SO YOU BETTER DO SOMETHING NOW!” I’ve learned my lesson & next year I’ll be listening to the cheerful voices of the A tomatoes murmuring “no problem, take your time, we’ll be fine all week.”

So. Wash, trim & halve those loud, loud tomatoes. Put them cut side up in the aforementioned Le Creuset 9×12 baking dish. Layer them on top of each other until the baking dish is almost full, with a bit of room at the top for bubbling liquid.

Sprinkle on top: minced garlic & capers, salt, pepper, & a generous back & forth of olive oil.

Roast in 325-350 degree oven for at least an hour. Say an hour & 15 minutes. When you take it out of the oven, there will be tons of liquid in there. Take a big spoon & press the tomatoes down so that relatively clear liquid spills into the spoon, & transfer as much liquid as you can into the aforementioned Dutch oven (or other wide, heavy-bottomed pot). Put that on the stove to simmer. Stir the tomatoes around in the baking dish, turning things so the garlic & capers get mixed in, & stick it back in the oven for another half hour or so.

“Forget” about the simmering liquid on the stove. “Remember” suddenly that you might be burning the pot! In a panic, race to the stove just in time to see that you have the most delicious sludgey tomato syrup, which is just starting to brown. If you had “remembered” just a few minutes later, you would have burned it. Heave a sigh of relief & thank the tomato gods for your sauce-making 6th sense & the awesome pot that can handle such treatment. (Really, I promise Le Creuset never heard of me!) Take the tomatoes from the oven (or probably you already did, it doesn’t actually matter that much) & stir them into the syrup/sludge.

Here’s what it looked like after I already took a big spoonful & put it on spaghetti for my dinner. Much reduced, totally concentrated tomato goodness:

Honestly, if I hadn’t been totally absorbed in a phone conversation with the Triathlete, I don’t think I would have had the patience to let the liquid simmer down that far. Yay for happy kitchen accidents!

But wait, there’s more! You get two blog posts in one!

About the same time, Donna had parallel desires for lasagna & roast chicken. She brought home fresh sheets of pasta & 8 thighs. It would have made sense to make one thing one night & the other thing another night, but sometimes the week just gets away from you. Such as when you get in over your head with a giant box of screaming tomatoes.

Seeing as how we only have one baking dish (you know the one) suitable for lasagna &/or roasting chicken, & seeing as how both the fresh pasta & the raw chicken were starting to grow some slightly-urgent little voices themselves, I said, hey, what if we do them both at once?

CHICKEN LASAGNA STROGANOFF SMASHUP (ever so vaguely based on a mushroom lasagna recipe by Deborah Madison)

8 chicken thighs, bone & skin on, not the really big ones
at least 3 fresh rectangles of pasta to fit your baking dish
bag o’ large brown button mushrooms
bag o’ baby spinach
1 yellow onion
dried porcini mushrooms (I had half a tiny bag. A whole bag would be better.)
1 stick butter
1/2 cup flour
1 box mushroom broth
few cloves garlic
bunch of fresh marjoram
olive oil
salt & pepper

Note: You really need two people to make this. Lasagna is 3 or 4 dishes pretending to be one dish. On the other hand, if your ass hasn’t already been kicked by a bunch of tomatoes, maybe you could do it alone. I wouldn’t.

First, put the porcini mushrooms to soak in a bit of hot water.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Then, make mushroom gravy: Melt the butter in a medium saucepan, & whisk in the flour. When the roux smells insanely good, pour in the mushroom broth. I think it’s best if you heat the broth first. I kinda arrived at this gravy in a, um, less than straightforward fashion. You could, unlike me, consult a real recipe & then actually follow it. Anyway: whisk whisk whisk, bring just barely to a boil so that it thickens, then turn down to super-low simmer & keep whisking.

Meanwhile, rinse off the thighs, trim excess fat, pat dry, & then mix them around in a bowl with salt & pepper.

Wash your mushrooms & spinach. Slice the mushrooms. Chop a few cloves of garlic & an onion.

Are the porcinis good & soft? Whisk the liquid (minus any grit) into the gravy & chop the porcinis. In a large pan, brown the onions with garlic & olive oil, then add the porcinis & the sliced mushrooms. They should give off some liquid & get a nice color to them. We did this in two batches (so as to saute rather than steam). Move all of that into a bowl & then wilt the spinach in the pan to remove most of the liquid.

Wash your marjoram & strip the leaves into the chicken bowl. Toss & rub around.

Now assemble the lasagna as follows:
Butter the pan.
Just a thin layer of gravy.
Sheet of pasta.
Gravy, thicker this time.
Onions & mushrooms.
Spinach.
Pasta.
Gravy.
Onions & mushrooms.
Spinach.
Pasta.
Gravy.
Chicken! Arrange the chicken to cover the lasagna evenly, skin side up.

Like so:

Heft that thing into the oven & let it go for 40 minutes, then check to see if the chicken is done & continue roasting (or not) accordingly. The lasagna will be done before the chicken.

When it was done, Donna looked at it & exclaimed, “Sick!” (She’s been hanging out with kids.)

I did warn you it was decadent. Yes, you are ingesting extra chicken fat with every bite of tender lasagna. Yes, you can rationalize it all you want by saying “well we didn’t use any cheese, & the gravy is made with mushroom broth instead of milk….” Yes, it’s not the prettiest piece of chicken you ever did see (& this isn’t the prettiest picture either), but it’s damn delicious.

2009-10-09T23:59:00.000-07:00

More love!

At the Women’s Building tonight, Sherman Alexie (looking spiffy in cufflinks) tried to explain to the young people in the room what they’re missing in their lives. Citing Joan Jett’s remark that there is no anticipation anymore, he delivered a long, evocative rumination on the beauty of not knowing what you were going to hear when you so carefully placed that fresh vinyl on the turntable for the first time.

Then he laughed at himself for sounding so old: “That’s how fast things are moving now… 43 is the new 80!”

Dude! How true is that?! I sometimes forget that part of what makes me love Sherman so much (aside from his obvious greatness) is that I totally lock in with his pop cultural perspective because he & I are the same age.

Folks who hang out with me, consider yourself warned. You can look forward to me saying “43 is the new 80” for some time to come. At least until I turn 44, heh.

2009-10-06T12:35:00.000-07:00

Love:

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings at the Fillmore: More than worth the backache from standing all night long. That hallowed room is really not for creaky old bodies, but 10 feet from the stage with the flawless crystal sound, Gil & Dave working their magic, breathing & creating as one organism, it’s so good, it feels like love.

Warren pears: Almost not of this world—but they are of this world, they come from the ground, they grow on trees & aren’t we lucky beyond belief? It seems like insanity to eat any other fruit right now. (I am insane, though, & cannot refuse the last of the melons & stone fruits.)

Gourmet magazine: A different kind of love, more material & mundane perhaps, but no less real. I grew up ogling those centerfolds every month, year after yummy year. I refuse to say RIP! Will someone come in & rescue it somehow? Am I in denial?

2009-09-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

I went on a getaway with my pal the Triathlete to Door County, Wisconsin, where her mother-in-law has an old house. Behind the house is the sweetest meadow you ever did see.

Their neighbor mows these perfect walking paths through the meadow & a nearby grove of trees… I don’t know if he is some kind of landscaping design genius or what, but the paths are completely satisfying in every way: where they go, how they branch off from one another, how they are curved or straight in different places. Some of the coarser cut-off grasses make a truly excellent, quiet crunching sound under your shoes when you walk on them. I took the wildflower book out there one morning & identified at least three different asters.

When we weren’t hanging out in the meadow, the Triathlete was giving me a grand tour of awesome swimming spots. I swam in a warm little lake, & in wavy, windy Lake Michigan proper, & that tiny little shape is me swimming in Ellison Bay:

Plus I made a cherry pie, because Door County is famous for its pie-perfect sour cherries. We got the last of the season’s cherries. I’m pretty dang proud, because I’ve always relied on a food processor to make my piecrusts, but this one was all by hand & it actually turned out just fine. Didn’t know I had it in me! We bought local cherry honey to sweeten this pie. (Don’t mind all the cherry goo, we had only enough butter to make a top crust, no bottom.) It was delicious!

2009-09-03T00:40:00.000-07:00

You know how foodies (& other people, too) sometimes like to poll each other on what their last meal would be? Extravagant requests come up, tall fantasy orders for the prison chef (assuming this last meal would be before you get sent off to the chair at midnight).

I’ve always said it would have to be something I cook for myself. Even if they couldn’t let me cook in the kitchen, I could at least toss a salad for myself in my cell. How sweet, how profoundly self-loving it is, to cook for yourself: an unbroken throughline from thought or desire to action & creation to mouth to stomach, a completed circuit. I make my salad exactly how I want it.

This is comfort food for me, a late-night salad:

3 or 4 handfuls of small lettuces, mostly Little Gems (from Blue Heron)
1/2 of a large Dapple Dandy pluot
3 small pink radishes
flat leaf parsley
sherry vinaigrette (olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt & pepper)

I don’t want a lot of ingredients at 10 pm when I’m sad for no specific reason & lots of specific reasons, both at once. I want something simple & beautiful & nurturing, & I want to make it myself, taking my time to pay attention to what I’m doing, making tiny adjustments & changes as I move toward perfecting this small, finite vision. Maybe that’s why salad is so comforting to me: it is an easily attainable* perfection when so much else is so impossibly far from perfect.

I started by washing the leaves, spinning them dry & dumping them in the bowl. Then I mandolined the radishes, scattering the dots of them on top of the leaves. I cut a pluot in half & mandolined most of the half into sheer, soft little sheets that folded upon themselves; what was left, I realized I wanted cut into tiny chunks. Then I chopped some parsley, stirred up my dressing, tossed the salad, & served half of it onto my darling’s plate. I ate my half right out of the big salad bowl, because that feels good too in its own way.

There is no real border between the making & the eating of a late-night comfort salad. It’s the whole process that soothes from start to finish. Making a salad I want to eat is something I can rely on in myself, something I can always touch when too much is uncertain. Things feel more hopeful after that.

*Yes, I know it’s not easily attainable for most people. Chances are it’s within reach for most people reading this blog, though.

2009-08-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry to be gone so long. Sometimes I just don’t have much to say. Been doing some hard work pretty much sums it up. Not the kind that pays in dollars (well, there was a wee bit of that), but still I needed a bit of vacation afterward.

Herewith, the Art of the Staycation:

NO computers! We bent this rule only to look up information about Approved Staycation Activities: ferry schedules, concert ticket availability, maps to get to labyrinths, that sort of thing. Remember to turn the computer OFF when you’ve completed your mission, otherwise you’ll find yourself checking email after you get home from the delicious concert. Ask me how I know. Talk about a buzzkill.

Set specific starting & ending times for the staycation. We said ours would start at 7pm on Monday night. Ring a bell & leave the house to go out to dinner!

When you come back from dinner, walk around the house saying things like:
“Look at the nice place we’re staying!”
“I’m so glad I brought ALL of our books!”
“Hey, they sure have a nicely stocked kitchen for us!”
“Isn’t this bed comfy?”
In other words, really work the fantasy. If you are a couple & have usual sides of the bed you each sleep on, switch sides!

Themes are helpful. Our theme was labyrinths.

Sibley’s Mazzariello Labyrinth

If you go, note that they have changed things a little bit in the preserve & the labyrinth is now at marker #2, not #4.

Use alternate modes of transportation—all the less-efficient, more-expensive ways of getting about that you wouldn’t use in your normal life. We took the ferry & cable car(!) to get to the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral, stopping for some clam chowder & oysters on the way.

I didn’t get a photo of the labyrinth. When we were done walking it, we realized that we had like 10 minutes to make the last ferry, so in true staycation spirit, we grabbed a cab(!) & made it to the dock with just a minute to spare. It was dusk & the full moon was rising as we crossed the bay. (Sorry no moon photos. You had to be there.)

Next day, the labyrinth with the spectacular view at Land’s End...

... followed by The Infamous Stringdusters. Deep Elem Blues! Those boys tore it up. I want to see them again.

Even though our staycation officially ended when eyes opened this morning, we couldn’t resist capping it off with Charlie Haden at Yoshi’s SF tonight.

So decadent! Yet all still incredibly cheap compared to flying (or even driving) someplace where you have to pay for a room. I highly recommend it. Bay Area folks, there’s a reason why all those people come here from all over the dang world for their vacations! Go out & enjoy it!

2009-07-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

I’m kinda cheating. This is from Wyoming, 2004.

2009-06-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

: : : crickets : : :

2009-06-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve been burning a lot of CDs lately, which forced me to deal, really deal, with a problem that has been plaguing me for a while now: what the hell to put them in. Let’s face it, jewel cases shatter if you look at em wrong, & who wants to be responsible for more little plastic bits in the landfill? Those little paper envelopes get lost on the shelf or accumulate in disorganized stacks. For a while I was folding my own; these satisfied the DIY itch nicely, but over time they start to look kinda wrinkled & unkempt.

What to do, what to do? I wanted sensibly designed, reasonably cheap, recycled paperboard. At first there seemed to be only one game in town as far as recycled goes, but sleeves do not solve the spineless disorganization problem, plus I wasn’t crazy about having an open side. My tenacious googling finally struck gold: Stumptown Printers sells blank Arigato Paks, shipped flat. You can rubberstamp, print, embellish to your heart’s content, or just write on the spine, fold it up & be done with it.

Problem solved! Plus, you get to support a groovy cooperative letterpress shop. What could be better? (Well, if they sold them through a retail outlet in my neighborhood, that would be perfection itself, wouldn’t it?)

P.S. You can fit up to 3 CDs in one of these! I just cut squares of paper to layer between the CDs, & they all sit snugly in there together.

2009-05-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

Did I throw you for a loop with that last post? Just testing your flexibility….

First today, a big thank you to Valerie Soe for a fabulous write-up on my menu installation in the Present Tense show.

Then, some artichokes for your viewing pleasure:

I would show you cherries & apricots too, but I’ve been eating them up too fast. Happy summer!

2009-05-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

Again, still, always…

2009-05-03T17:58:00.001-07:00

From the opening, jam-packed especially for a rainy Friday night:

Between all that Censusing, Chicago, & the CCC, this is about where I’m at right now:

If you’re one of my many neglected friends… you will see me, I promise, just as soon as I catch up on some sleep & wash at least the first layer of those dirty dishes piled in the sink.

2009-04-27T10:02:00.000-07:00

In progress…

This especially goes out to anyone who has ever asked me: What are you going to do with all those Chinese takeout menus?! Well… at least some of them are going up on the walls of the Chinese Culture Center for this show:

WHAT: Present Tense Biennial: Chinese Character – an exhibition of
contemporary artwork by 31 artists that reflect and reinterpret China

WHEN: May 1 – August 23, 2009
OPENING: Friday May 1, 2009, 6:30 to 8:30pm

GALLERY HOURS: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10am to 4pm; Sundays, 12 to 4pm

WHERE: Chinese Culture Center, 750 Kearny Street, 3rd Floor (inside the Hilton Hotel), between Clay & Washington Streets in San Francisco CA

ADMISSION: FREE

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Tamara Albaitis, Nancy Chan, Anita Wen-Shin Chang, Julie Chang, Thomas Chang, Sergio de la Torre, Cui Fei, Khiang H. Hei, Justin Hoover, Bu Hua, Arthur Huang, Suzanne Husky, Larry Lee, Sean Marc Lee, Liting Liang, Lucy Kalyani Lin, Ken Lo, Fang Lu, Maleonn, Elizabeth Moy, Ming Mur-Ray, Tucker Nichols, Nadim Sabella, Zachary Royer Scholz, Indigo Som, Charlene Tan, Patrick Tsai, Imin Yeh, Xudong Yu, David and Michelle Yun.

TRANSIT: 10 minute walk up Kearny Street from Montgomery BART station; parking at Portsmouth Square Garage directly across the Hilton Hotel

INFORMATION: 415-986-1822 or Present Tense website

Special thanks to curator Kevin Chen, who instigated, nudged, & encouraged me to find out what the menus wanted to do (besides hibernate in my studio closet). Kevin also stayed up till the wee hours last night, finishing the installation with Lucy Lin after Donna & I went home exhausted. They were doing the hard part, too, up by the ceiling. Thank you Kevin & Lucy! You’re lifesavers!

By the way, in the process of sorting through menus for this installation, I couldn’t help but notice that I still have no menus at all from the following states:

Arkansas
Delaware
Kentucky
Nebraska
North Dakota
South Dakota
Utah
West Virginia

What’s up with that?! You know what to do. Thank you!

Finally, just wanted to post a coupla pix from a very fun Chicago trip. Here is the fabulous Karen Tam with her bowl of jajangmyeon, which somehow became a running theme throughout our two days together.

Soft shell crab at Joy Yee Noodle aka boba heaven:

As you can probably guess, an excellent time was had by all. The students were a great bunch—quite possibly the sincerest pumpkin patch ever! Thanks again to Dan Wang for organizing, administering, hosting, chauffeuring, & being generally awesome, as he does tend to be.

2009-04-13T21:17:00.000-07:00

Did I mention I got me one of those Census jobs? It’s kicking my ass! I’ve been enjoying my walking tour of North Oakland mezuzahs, dogs, & rosebushes, but still, I’m tired! So please forgive my laziness if I just link to Dan’s post about my Chicago gig instead of telling you all about it myself. Click on it if you wanna come to my slide lecture this Thursday night in Chicago. Otherwise, feel free to ignore, & just imagine me trudging from door to door in various parts of Alameda County, trying to build up Census stamina.

2009-04-03T19:12:00.000-07:00

Newly smitten with Francis Lam, thanks to a tiny little link from Orangette. Incidentally, her new book surpassed my expectations. How often does that happen? I’m not really supposed to be buying books right now (slashedbudgetyouknowtheeconomyblahblahblah), but I bought hers & I’m not sorry.

About Francis: that little link led to a recipe that demanded every pot in the kitchen, but his writing seduced me into doing it anyway. He worries about Cantonese food! He makes all kinds of sense about wine! Check out his tattoos! I’m in love. If you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s because I’m busy reading all his archives.

Actually that’s not true. You might not hear from me for a little while because I just got myself a job with the U.S. Census & April is hella busy. Send bag lunch ideas. Hmm… maybe Mr. Lam has some advice?

2009-03-30T22:02:00.000-07:00

Let us now praise the mighty force of nature that is Neko Case! Thrill over her insanely fabulous Knight of Swords album cover: is the resemblance not striking?

(Thanks to Learning the Tarot for this particular image.)

In Tarot, the Swords are the suit of air, & indeed Middle Cyclone feels like some serious wind. I have been playing this thing incessantly since laying hands upon it, & sometimes I could swear I feel my hair blowing back even when all the windows in the studio are shut. It’s not news that the girl has lungs & knows how to use them, but wow, how does she keep cranking out amazing album after amazing album? Despite all the air, Neko herself is a rock-solid dependable Virgo, which only goes partway toward explaining why I love her so.

Let me count the ways:

1) The feeling of enormous spaciousness she creates, which has stayed with me as an unflagging overall impression ever since I heard the first few notes of the Furnace Room Lullaby CD. It’s not just the heavy reverb, either.

2) The old-skool, uncompromising defense of her copyright. No Creative Commons for Neko, no way. Don’t get me wrong, I think there can be a lot of good in all that newfangled sharing, but Neko’s hard line speaks to my heart, as in the Canadian Amp liner notes: “THIS IS WHAT WE DO FOR A LIVING. WE HAVE KIDS, BILLS, AND RENT TOO. THANK YOU.” The current liner notes take a more threatening tone, & I love her for it.

3) The constant experimentation & fun & joy & excellence… I never claimed to be a music writer, & enough bytes abound from keyboards more polished than mine. I’ll just say my world would not be complete without her music arriving in fresh batches regularly the way it does, which brings me to

4) The professionalism & consistency. I am in awe of how she runs her operation. How she shows up all the fucking time. No weird drug habit, no moody off nights. No parched, thirsty deserts of endless time between albums. As much as I love Neko, there are musicians who sing more directly to my own soul, & of course they are the ones who dole out an album maybe every 5 years if you’re lucky, maybe because they’re too busy enjoying themselves (yeah, Gil & Dave, I’m looking at you), or maybe because it’s just too hard (I can’t really pretend to know, but Freakwater comes to mind), or maybe it’s just my own natural sympathy for my kin, the unprolific artists of the world. How lucky that we can rely upon people like Neko (& Sherman Alexie, who is going to bankrupt me with his prodigious output) to keep us all going!

5) You know I am a sucker for a really good Bob Dylan cover, & Neko’s “Buckets of Rain” just about breaks my heart. In the best possible way.

I could go on, but I’ll leave it at this: I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I’ve started making souffles just during this last little stretch of Middle Cycloned time. What food could be airier? It’s like eating clouds. Too bad they always collapse before I think to grab the camera. Put on some brand-new Neko, whip up some egg whites of your own, & then you won’t need my pictures anyway.

2009-03-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

The legendary Richard Aoki has passed into history. When I was an Ethnic Studies major at Cal, this picture was indelibly stamped into all of our impressionable young minds. Three bad-ass dudes (of course they were all dudes—it was the 60s) leading the struggle for the very education that we were now receiving, twenty years later!

By the time I fractured my pelvis & was wheeled off to aquatherapy, another 18 years later, the image was still easily called to my mind, but the bad-ass brothers’ names, not so much. Okay, not at all. At aquatherapy other things seemed much more pressing: getting in & out of clothes & swimsuit, hobbling from wheelchair to the funny little elevator chair that lowered me into the heavily chlorinated high school pool. Strapping the weights around my waist & grabbing a noodle? kickboard? (I can’t believe I’m not remembering what I held in my hands for stability!) to walk slowly across the pool & back again, backwards, sideways, frontways until that subtle moment when my body, fussier than Goldilocks, had had Just The Right Amount of exercise.

This is not a digression. You will see. Many other friendly aquatherapy regulars filled the shallow end of the pool: oldsters with the typical variety of oldster ailments, other (relative) youngsters like me who had been in accidents ranging from merely painful to truly terrible, like the man who had been shot up with 17 bullets & required an entourage of physical therapists to escort him slowly, agonizingly from one side of the pool to the other. Since this is an Ethnic Studies themed post, I am even more compelled than usual to point out he was a young African American man & statistically so much more likely to be suffering from bullet wounds than, say, me, the middle-aged, middle-class Chinese American woman who was bucked off a horse.

Anyway. While walking slowly across the pool one tended to fall into conversation with other aquatherapees (not a real word!) who were walking at similar speed & depth, so I started chatting with an older Asian American man who was recovering from a stroke. I don’t remember exactly what conversation bits soon led to me exclaiming with no small measure of excitement, “Wait! You mean that picture of the three bad-ass dudes, you’re the Asian one?!” Indeed, none other than the one & only Richard Aoki, Third World Liberation Front strike leader & Black Panther Field Marshal, was my pool-walking buddy! Awestruck, I gushed, “I owe my education to you!” (I think he appreciated hearing that.)

Water therapy got a lot more interesting. Along with re-learning how to walk, I picked up juicy nuggets of Panther lore, asked him Everything I Ever Wanted to Know About Firearms But Had Nobody to Ask, & played the Do-You-Know game, Ethnic Studies Edition—of course he knew everybody, & was even related to an artist I knew from a completely different department of my life.

He told me of his early heartbreak when his fiancee forced him to choose between the Panthers & her. I was surprised & touched by the bitterness he still expressed about that long-ago disappointment; it seemed to have turned him off to women permanently. While ranting about it, he even quoted Shakespeare: “Frailty, thy name is woman!”

“Hey,” I protested, “you can’t say that to me!” But he ignored my objection & went on & on about how women can never be as revolutionary as men. I held my tongue & thought, “well, not if you have a narrow definition of revolution that involves so many guns all the time…” but I didn’t really mind hearing him spout off about it; I knew it was much too late for anyone, least of all me, to change his mind, so I continued avidly listening to everything he said, history coming alive for me right there in the tepid pool.

Our conversations were casual & chatty but somehow also intense. It seemed to me that his very aura had a Black Panther flavor: that unique blend of militance & community orientation. We discussed the pros & cons of available options for elder care within the Japanese American community. We talked about Carlos Bulosan & Frank Chin. I noticed various aging Black Panthers shepherding him back & forth to aquatherapy, just as my friends & family took turns bringing me. Eventually I graduated to driving myself to aquatherapy, & then finally to swimming again back at my regular pool, where I walked the shallow lanes with a lot less pain, no weights, no noodle, & also no Richard.

I’m grateful for Richard’s open friendliness at a hard time in my life, & for his dedication & leadership throughout his life, sexist blind spots & all. I feel very lucky that fate threw me in the pool with him for those moments, & I’ll always remember that should I ever feel the need to acquire a gun, I would be best suited for a shotgun. Thank you, Richard. May you rest in revolutionary peace.

2009-03-08T22:53:00.000-07:00

What a weekend! I hope you got outside (if you’re in the Bay Area). Time to come out of hibernation.

2009-02-22T22:54:00.000-08:00

Rain, rain, la la la….

Flannel sheets, a persistent downpour, & no leaks in the roof (knock on wood): if that’s not a recipe for a blissful weekend nap, I don’t know what is. Eventually you’ll have to wake up, though, & when you do, you’ll be hungry. How about an excuse to turn on the oven? It makes the kitchen feel so toasty!

Here’s my pasta mashup of this roasted broccoli & this caramelized cauliflower. (Look for the garam masala variation in the comments of that post.)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Put a pot of pasta water on the stove to boil.

Throw into a large mixing bowl:
3 broccoli crowns, cut into small bite-size pieces
1 large red onion, halved & thinly sliced
3 green onions, thinly sliced
A generous amount of olive oil
Salt, approx. a teaspoon
Garam masala, a light sprinkling
(I would have put lemon zest in too, but my lemon was a bit past its prime & the skin looked tired.)

Toss it all together & spread in a single layer on 1 or 2 baking sheets (I used 2). Roast for 10 minutes, then stir & turn the stuff. If it seems dry, drizzle more olive oil on. (I also consolidated onto 1 sheet at this point, because the veggies had shrunk so much & I wanted them snuggled close together for moisture.) Turn the oven down to 400 & put back in for another 8 minutes or so.

During this second half of the roasting, boil your fresh lemon fettucine, drain it & plop it into the same big bowl you had from mixing the veggies together. (Please don’t tell me you washed it already!) Toss it around with a bit of olive oil so it won’t turn into a solid sticky lump while you’re waiting for the veggies to be done.

Around 8 minutes, check the veggies. I squoze half a lemon over them & stuck them back in for another 2 minutes. After they were all done, I squoze on the second half lemon; you want to do this while they’re still in the baking pan, since the lemon juice will have a deglazing effect on all the yummy onion bits that are stuck on the bottom. Then throw it all on top of the pasta, mix together & eat!

Feeds two hungry nappers, with a good amount of leftovers:

Edited to add this variation: I went to cook dinner for my mom, since she broke her foot (aww). She happened to have some nice fresh crab that her neighbor gave her (so don’t feel too sorry for her), so I added that to the recipe & used Old Bay seasoning instead of garam masala. Since the asparagus is here (yay!) I also threw in some of that, sliced. I added the asparagus at about the 15-minute mark, & the crab just a couple of minutes before the end since it was already cooked. Also threw in a can of garbanzo beans (at the very beginning w/ the broccoli & onions). Delish!

2009-02-08T14:59:00.000-08:00

I happen to have a thing about glass bottles & jars. This fetish predated—but has only been encouraged by—my environmentalist plastic angst. The plastic angst never goes away, although it does fluctuate, most recently spiking a couple of years ago after I saw horrible pictures of plastic bits found inside a dead albatross chick. On the other hand, last year’s chemical-leaching panic merely induced another lefty-Cassandra eyeroll: oh, so now after we’ve been saying for decades that plastic brings every form of evil upon the world, you’re suddenly gonna run out & spend a bunch of money on glass food containers because you’re afraid for your precious babies? (Not that I’m prioritizing albatross babies over human ones, just annoyed at the greenwashing consumerism so prevalent among ~~human~~ American adults.)

Anyway. I shall resist getting into my lefty-Cassandra eyeroll du jour re: the perils of free-market capitalism & the current state of the economy, blah blah blah. Instead, let’s talk about food! Here we have homemade yogurt, which is both economical & environmental.

I went to a yogurt & cheesemaking class at Institute of Urban Homesteading a few months back. When I signed up for the class I only saw the cheesemaking part of it, but as these things often go, the yogurt is the part that has thoroughly infiltrated my daily life. How wonderful to spoon yogurt out of a mason jar! If you’re lucky (geographically as well as economically), you can just roll on down to the store & buy St. Benoît in a quart mason jar for $5-something. But here, let me do the math for you: a half gallon of organic Straus milk is $4-something & you get two lovely quart jars of yogurt out of it. Plus the satisfaction of making it yourself, of course.

On the other hand, you might end up eating more yogurt than you knew was possible. I suspect that the plastic angst has actually been keeping a lid on my yogurt consumption for most of my life. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

2009-01-28T17:59:00.000-08:00

SF Bay Area folks, I shoulda said something about this earlier, because you only have through the 8th of February to check out Janet Cardiff’s cool video walk, The Telephone Call at SFMOMA. It’s easy to miss because you have to know to ask for it at the information desk. So I’m telling you: go ask for it at the information desk!

I’ve only ever experienced one other of Cardiff’s walks, her 1999 MOMA walk, but it made a huge impression upon me. Wonderful to experience another museum walk ten years later! The Telephone Call was commissioned in 2001 by SFMOMA & has actually been “on display” there twice before already, but I didn’t know about it the first time, & the second time… well… my dog ate it. Don’t let the same thing happen to you; who knows when there may be a fourth chance?

2009-01-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

Happy Year of the Cow! Moo!

2009-01-23T23:12:00.000-08:00

Arugula, sliced endive, mandolined Ambrosia apples (just because that’s what kind I happened to have), walnuts, Iberico (break off little nubs with your fingers). If you let this salad sit about 15-20 minutes after you dress it, the apples become rather deliciously pliable. Or just eat it slowly to experience the full range of appleness, from the first crisp bites to the last relaxed mouthful.

Truth be told, I can’t remember what dressing I used (educated guess: usual suspect red wine mustard vinaigrette), because I made this salad back in that Other Time, in the Bad Old Days, before we had a president who could not only form a complete sentence, but have it actually mean something, & furthermore, do sensible shit like shut down Gitmo. Seriously, I had gotten so pathetically downtrodden, so totally used to everything being done wrong all the time that I assumed all this “shut down Gitmo the first day” business was just some fantasy we had, one of those wistful lefty sighs that blows away with the least breeze of reality. Now? Let’s just say I’m feeling Obamalicious! Although tired. Exhausted, actually. My po little brain is working overtime to carve out new neural pathways to accommodate the fact that, apparently, I’m kinda in love with the whole First Family. Never thought I’d hear myself say such a thing in all my born days. I’m so confused, I’ve been taking way more naps than usual.

Not confused, however, about Aretha’s hat!!! (The people who don’t like it, now they’re confused.)

2009-01-12T19:46:00.000-08:00

Okay. Are you having a hard time? Depressed? Struggling through a rough patch? I swear, I thought it was just me, or just me & some of my friends, or how about just me & almost everybody I know? After getting off the phone with yet another pal who had recently fallen into a pit of gloom, I finally realized, hey… something’s going on here. I don’t think it’s just the economy, although they don’t call it a depression for nothing. (Recession my ass!)

I think we are all in some kind of weird anticipatory Bush post-trauma. (Anticipatory, because he’s not actually gone yet.) I mean look, the past 8 years have sucked & we’ve all tried to put a brave face on it & just keep going, because what else can you do, & really I can’t be the only one who thought that if McCain had won the election, it would basically mean the end of the fucking world, & so here we are now like in some action movie where we were dangling over the precipice hanging on by one cracked fingernail for the longest time, & someone finally threw us a couple yards of dental floss, just enough to pull us up & over where we now lie panting & sweating on the ground—just inches from aforementioned cliff, mind you—trying not to faint because [fill in your preferred action flick menace] is rapidly approaching & may end up throwing us back off the cliff anyway. Am I right? How can a person not freak out a little bit in such a situation? (I mean unless you’re Xena or someone of her ilk. Last time I checked, I most definitely was not anything anywhere near that ilk. My ilk is more like this or this.)

So cut yourself a little slack & remember the big picture, if that sort of thing helps you. Way back when we worked in adjoining offices, Michele K-Tel kept her famous Perspective Duck always near at hand. Whenever necessary, coworkers could run into her office, squeeze the duck, & it would dispense its little squeak-quack for us, along with some much-needed perspective. The original Perspective Duck didn’t sound anything like this, but why not give it a try anyway?

If that doesn’t work, make yourself some popovers.