Bay & Champion

Off the Writing Wagon.

2010-07-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

Remember last month, when I posted nearly day? I liked doing that, and I hope to start again soon. Not this week, but soon. Be warned.

(Photo found here)

This Weekend.

2010-07-16T10:12:00.001-07:00

1) I'm going to drive the new car to Anacortes, poke around in antique stores and treat myself to lunch at Adrift;

2) I'm going to pick out a new book or two;

3) I'm going to rent a stack of movies and take naps. It will be perfect.

That's my garlic, up there, by the way; this photo was featured in the latest issue of Grow Northwest, in an article about container gardening. I'm sort of tickled about it!

How Things Work.

2010-07-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you decide - at the age of 22 when you are very much under the influence of Jean Luc Godard's films and the Velvet Underground's music - that you have to move to the Big City. So you get out your calculator, and you calculate how much money needs to be saved and how long it will take you to save that money. You find it will take you eight months to save enough. To kill time, you decide to start applying for jobs anyway, just to see what it's going to take to get one, and you get a well-paying one immediately. And you move, seven months sooner than you expected.

Othertimes, you decide you want out of the Big City fast, so you get your calculator back out, and start guesstimating how much money you need to save to move back to your slow-paced, train-whistle-of-a-town. You plan the details meticulously, but it seems impossible for at least a year. On a lark, you send an e-mail about a job you aren't qualified for, and are invited to take it. With a snap of the fingers, you're back.

Othertimes, you decide to take up jogging. Not running - because running involves dedication and commitment and a competitive spirit you can only muster for board games and nothing else. But jogging works off the coffee jitters and is free, so you start. After a full summer, you get up to a mile and a half, and imagine that someday, you'd like to jog three miles. You decide to get yourself up to three miles by the end of the following summer - although it seems ridiculously far away and, perhaps, impossible. Then, one day, after having a rather crummy day, you come home and drink too much Cabernet Sauvignon. You find yourself in front of your computer signing up for a 5k. You're too busy to go running for the next two weeks, and when you finally get unbusy you realize: I have to run 3.1 miles next week. So you do. You put on running shoes, go outside and your body makes it happen. And your body makes it happen again on the day of the race, a full six months before you ever intended to run three miles. And you realize that running five miles isn't out of the question.

Still othertimes, you conclude that it may be time to start thinking about buying a car. You think it is time to start faithfully (albeit begrudgingly) setting money aside for a down payment, that an enormous amount of planning will be involved, that buying a car is a huge life decision that probably won't really happen - just like inheriting a million dollars and moving to Argentina won't really happen. Just like marrying Jude Law or writing a brilliant novel won't really happen. But then, one day, you stay home from work with a terrible sunburn that kept you up all night feeling nauseous, and your friend in car sales picks you up to test drive the tiny, adorable, fuel-efficient car you love "just to see," and you go with her to the dealership and find out you can finance the tiny adorable car with 0% interest and exceedingly do-able monthly payments, and all of a sudden you're walking out of the dealership with a brand new car. No planning, no queasiness in your gut, no huge life decisions. Just a whole lot of roadtrips to take.

I pulled Jack Kerouac's List out of an anthology and framed it a few years ago. Some of the directives are incomprehensible, but #20 tugged at me in my very early 20s. I didn't get it, and I tried to ignore it, until one day I did get it, and was pretty blown away. And - trust me - I hate to apply insight and philosophy to such silly things as buying new cars, but. Things come exactly as they're supposed to, in ways we can never, ever plan. It's exciting.

A Little Light.

2010-07-09T14:12:00.001-07:00

Another thing to add to my list:

I've wanted to make tin-can lanterns forever! This post reminded me of that. My decision to switch entirely to dried beans for cooking is foiled: I'm going to have to keep on with pre-cooked beans for awhile, just to hoard some cans.

Something really wonderful happened recently: I won a contest. I decided on this photo for my prize, and I can't wait to get it in the mail. It's going in the bathroom, to live with the poster I have hanging in there already.

(Photo from Design Sponge)

In One Sitting.

2010-07-08T15:40:00.000-07:00

I suggest you make this the next book you read:

I started it yesterday at 5:30 and finished at 11:45. Each story is brilliant, and the writing is easy (though smart). All day long I've been thinking about various characters, wanting to re-read their stories, and wishing I could know some of them in real life.

Also, make this the next CD you buy
(if you still buy CDs, that is):

Pure summer party music - and it's officially summer in Bellingham! Heavenly.

Apply it in Even.

2010-07-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

a) Love this week's horoscope. It invites some serious introspection, and perhaps some Venn Diagram making.

b) I did it: I got a phone call yesterday about arranging a job interview and I confidently stated: "I have decided I am happy where I am." I don't think I've ever said that, and I'm sure I've never believed it, before.

c) I finish housesitting at or around 5:00 tonight. Which means I'm finally done with everything. And I'm so excited: I want to lay down in my own bed and not get up for a few days. I have not had a homemade meal (aside from a fried egg on toast Sunday afternoon) since last Thursday's dinner party at Caitlin and Berit's; I've been living off of Starbucks hummus wraps and cheese plates, canned soup, and sub sandwiches. So over it - my body is cranky and demanding kale, lentils, and a very long bike ride.

d) Mount Eerie is playing at The Business in Anacortes tomorrow...and I want to go so badly...

e) I will finish a roll of Holga film before Sunday - maybe two rolls - but I might not be back here again until next week.

Signing Off.

2010-06-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

I'm heading out for Sam and Tobias' grand wedding Friday morning. I'm lucky to have tomorrow off to pack and prepare, to finish up an an article for Grow Northwest, and to catch the matinee of The Secret in Their Eyes. It's going to be busy, busy, busy until next Thursday when I have de-weddinged and finished house sitting, so you may not hear much from me until then. Tonight - I'm so excited - I'll head out to eat my very first Banh Mi. I've scouted around this town for months looking for a Vietnamese restaurant that serves them; during a Sustainable Connections poster delivery to Soy House last Saturday, I peeked at the menu and there they were!

Mostly, I cannot wait to return and settle back in for the reason you see above: Amanda dropped some homemade freezer jam by on Monday. I'm already dreaming of the jam slathered over toasted Honey Whole Wheat, with a generous slab of butter.

Chicken Salad.

2010-06-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Chicken Salad with Crispy Potatoes

(from Everyday Food)

Preheat oven to 450 and roast two chicken breasts smothered in olive oil, coarse sea salt and pepper for 35 minutes. When done, shred chicken with a fork.

Meanwhile, slice two or three Yukon Gold Potatoes 1/4" thick and bring to a boil in salted water. Cook potatoes until they are tender (5 - 7 minutes), then drain.

Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat, and add half the potatoes in a single layer. Cook undisturbed until potatoes are golden brown, then flip and cook otherside. Repeat with more oil and remaining potatoes.

Prepare dressing with 1 Tbs fresh lemon juice, 2 Tbs olive oil, chopped garlic, salt and pepper. In a large bowl, combine salad greens, potatoes, chicken and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND some crumbled goat cheese - the warm chicken and potatoes melt the goat cheese a little and you will think you've died and gone to heaven.

Architects of Common Destiny.

2010-06-22T12:02:00.000-07:00

Good Lord: I am obsessed with Eva Peron. If you know me, you know that. I love her. I love Eva Peron even more than I love Charlotte Gainsbourg, who took Sofia Coppola's place of My Biggest Girl Crush ca. 2005.

The picture above is of the Peronist Feminist Party's letterhead - can you imagine? 1940s Argentina is so romantic. The top inscription reads:
"Todos sean artifices del destino comun pero ninguno instrumento de
la ambicion de nadie."

I wish I could accurately translate that.

(via Letterheady - a very brilliant blog)

Bathroom Sink.

2010-06-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

I will keep this photo on my mind during the next two weeks. Looking at that cool porcelain sink and the fluffy white towels is like meditating - and I'm gonna need some calm centeredness in the coming days. What's Up! and Grow Northwest articles need writing; Food and Farm Finders, Eat Local Every Week, and Think Local First materials need delivering; Sam and Tobias' super-sized, out-of-town wedding needs coordinating; the house of my firm's Alpha Female needs housesitting. I'm doing that thing I do during the second half of every month - that teeth gritting, I Will Not Volunteer For Anyone Next Month Or Ever Again! promise I make and always break. (I don't mean to sound curmudgeonly - I just have that list that I really, really want to start crossing things off of).

I'll be going to bed early, early tonight to prepare for the onslaught. I'll also be doing my best to take some good photos this weekend.

(sink found Chez Emersonmade)

Kitchen Table.

2010-06-17T12:55:00.001-07:00

Do you see that perfect table? It's my favorite color, and I'm going nuts for it - along with the whole rest of this apartment (which I found via Sandra Juto).

I'm having my very first dinner party in the State Street apartment tonight! Me, Amanda, and the three ladies from last week's Edison adventure will eat melon & prosciutto, cheeses and baguette, a salad with garlic, avocado and Whatcom County radishes, and Asparagus Risotto (to which I plan to add peas). I don't know how we'll all fit - it's going to be more of a picnic in my living room than a formal dinner party - but I'm hoping to, after dinner, sneak downstairs to the Chuckanut Ridge for jazz night and mas vino.

The Eulachon.

2010-06-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

I am in love with Holden Caulfield.

2010-06-15T12:41:00.001-07:00

It's true.

Joel took me out to Herb Niemann's Steak House in Everson Saturday night (Everson should not be confused with Edison, though they are both tiny little farming burgs: Everson is pretty much hicksville, and Edison is perfect). It was pretty hillarious because the Steak House is all white crocheted doily-like tablecloths, and pinecone and antler decorations, and pre-frozen and mass-produced garlic bread (that comes to your table in a papertowel lined basket), but it was fun. I would never complain because it really was a funny adventure, and I get taken out to dinner approximately three times a year (and never, ever to places that serve meals in the $20.00-range as the Steak House does), and the Steak House reminded me, in a good way, of the "fancy" restaurants in my hometown, which are not fancy at all.

After the Steak House, we came back to town and stopped at the bookstore. I found a copy of The Catcher in the Rye and it reminded me that I wanted to re-read it. Of course I read it in highschool, but I didn't get it. I don't know if this is because I was actually a more well-adjusted person in highschool, less annoyed and confused than I am now, and really just didn't "get it," or if my 11th grade Advanced Placement English teacher, who insisted on reading the book to us in voices he thought were funny (and that were the veritable opposite of funny), just flat out ruined it for me. The Catcher in the Rye had been number one on my list of things (like Annie Hall, like AC/DC) that I feel like an alien for not adoring. I've been trying to re-visit these things lately.

So, I bought the book and now I am obsessed. I can't pull myself away! Holden Caulfield has officially replaced Dean Moriarty as my literary dream man. I'd like to marry him, but since it's impossible, I might just buy myself this shirt instead.

Found Finally.

2010-06-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

Sophomore year of college, in English 202, I found this poem:

Home-Baked Bread

by Sally Croft

"Nothing gives a household a greater sense of stability and common comfort than the aroma of cooking bread. Begin, if you like, with a loaf of whole wheat, which requires neither sifting nor kneading, and go on from there to more cunning triumphs."

- The Joy of Cooking

What is it she is not saying?
"Cunning triumphs." It rings
of insinuation. Step into my kitchen,
I have prepared a cunning triumph
for you. Spices and herbs
sealed in this porcelain jar,

a treasure of my great-aunt
who sat up past midnight
in her Massachusetts bedroom
when the moon was dark. Come,
rest your feet. I'll make
you tea with honey and slices

of warm bread spread with peach butter,
still fresh with dew. The fragrance
is seductive? I hoped you would say that.
See how the heat rises
when the bread opens. Come,

we'll eat together, the small flakes
have scarcely any flavor. What cunning
triumphs we can discover in my upstairs room
where peach trees breathe their sweetness
beside the open window and
sun lies like honey on the floor.

I think it was from one of those behemoth Norton Anthologies, and I foolishly sold the book back at some point. I've always regretted it - I lost the poem, the story I wrote in response to the poem, and couldn't remember the author's name. I've never gotten over the images of peach butter paired with sunlight across a wooden bedroom floor (because the bedroom floor is obviously wooden). I thought of it again - just now - and then, Google to the rescue.

If you're feeling like making bread, you should try my friend Shelley's vegan version. I haven't yet, but cannot wait to.

After Hours.

2010-06-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I missed a day. But the batteries in my camera died, and I had so much fun on Wednesday night that I came home from work yesterday and immediately fell into a nap, waking briefly around 8:30 to make a burrito, before heading straight back to bed. And now, the sun is out for the moment, and I know that what I really need is a run or a bike ride...but exercise will have to wait. I've got a pile of unread magazines, two rented movies, and Lines & Shapes to occupy me tonight. It always feels great to get home from work on a Friday - but today it's feeling extra, extra good.

I promised pictures of my slumber party in Edison. I tried to get some, taking shots of our pretty cheeses and salami and Breadfarm baguette, of the roast chicken and potatoes Berit made and the salad Jane and I assembled, of the Edison slough.

But I'm not sure pictures could detail how delicious the food was, how lovely little Edison is, or how much fun we had, because this was a time when photo-taking felt strained. It's hard to capture honest moments when you're on the lookout. Maybe it will become more immediate, more natural in time - but I've felt that the best pictures I've taken are the ones where I've inadvertently seen something, and not where I've tried to stage a scene, or capture the inherent movement and dynamism in an event.

I did get a private viewing of the current Smith & Vallee exhibition, though. I loved:

Todd Horton's cypress trees look just like booming skyscrapers (or do, perhaps, after six glasses of wine). I want to borrow that dynamic - I want to fit it into something like a Venn Diagram - to help explore all the city/country bits floating around in my head.

(For more of Todd's work, visit the Smith & Vallee Blog).

Smudgy Lights.

2010-06-09T11:10:00.000-07:00

I love these Mark Yankus photos. They make the city look as calm and warm as the farmland around Edison on a hot August evening. I included a few of these in a December post that I later deleted (deleted because of my paranoia of over-sharing on the internets). Perhaps you've noticed I've been blogging everyday instead of twice a month? I'm trying. Couldn't come up with original content for today's installment, and I thought these lovelies deserved a re-post.

Oh, speaking of Edison, guess who's going down there for a slumber party tonight?...

...there will be pictures.

Just Tuesday.

2010-06-08T16:53:00.000-07:00

It’s veggie box day! Glorious pluots, white salad turnips, and a cantaloupe should make this week perfect. Tonight I’ll boil slices of the potatoes and then fry them, then add them to the spinach with some goat cheese and a simple lemon-oil-garlic dressing.

Last night, in Bird by Bird, I read: “You can see the underlying essence only when you strip away the busy-ness, and then some surprising connections appear.” I love this – I’m forever consciously and unconsciously trying to break things down. But the idea goes against every wise thing I just read in The Book about seeing the world as not a continuum, but as a whole. I don’t know what makes more sense, but I’m sure that Anne Lamott’s words are the precise reason I drool over Malevich's White on White , and the chant-like lyrics of these songs - two of my all-time favorites:

The New Plan.

2010-06-07T16:59:00.000-07:00

I had a landslide of an idea last week: what if, instead of jotting ideas down on slips of paper and on random pages of notebooks, I collected a list of every project I want to complete on one sheet of paper?

Since the age of 9 or 10, I’ve made lists of the Things I Want to Buy. This list has evolved into a single page, with the first side listing a mish mash of mostly clothing, shoes and housewares. The second side is divided into three sections of books, DVDs and CDs. I’ve not yet positively determined whether this list keeps my spending in check or promotes it, but it has prevented a whole lot of impulse buys over the years. I review my list a lot, and sometimes I wonder if I get more satisfaction over crossing an item off my list than I do from the item itself BUT, it really didn’t occur to me that I could use this model for more constructive purposes.

I’m over the moon: I dug through notebooks and binders full of collected slips of paper and made my list:

Food:
Roast Whole Chicken
Harissa
Old Bachelor’s Jam
Iced Coffee (very specifically, this type of iced coffee)

Art:
Cubist piece
Suitcase/Ferry Dream
Rachel’s Car/Skagit Valley

Writing:
Strawberries/Snow/L’Année Dernière à Marienbad
Pregnant Couple short story
Rachel’s Car/Skagit Valley
Topics for The Sun

Misc:
Luis Buñuel
Aretha Franklin
Phrase for iron-on letters
More Southern Gothic Literature
Frame Flashcards
Jazz Records
Collection of dinner plates

The plan is to cultivate, and to pay as much attention to, my Projects list as my Things I Want to Buy list. I don’t think it will be a difficult swap.

What else?

Peas with Prosciutto.

Crystal and I shared a batch last night, with toasted and garlic rubbed, goat-cheese swathed crusty bread and Ho. Ly. Cow. You will love it.

Back on the Farm.

2010-06-04T18:18:00.000-07:00

Joel and I made our first trip back to Bill's farm last night.

Bill and Angela really know how to live, and driving back to town felt like summer for the first time this year. The cows were far out, grazing, and the sheep were scattered. There were a few lettuces ready to harvest, but not much else except a new kind of kale:

It's Russian. Bill sent us home with a bagful, and this weekend will be entirely devoted to trying it.

Lean Times.

2010-06-03T13:04:00.000-07:00

May was one giant spending binge on cookbooks, dresses for weddings, adorable tins of Spanish olive oil, and so much other stuff. Nowadays I feel bloated and guilty after heavy-duty shopping sprees; I kind of don't recognize my apartment when I walk into it now.

But, sort of thankfully, the extra spending money I had is all gone now, and I am back to pretending that I'm going to grow up someday and be wise the next time I have extra money. I want to think of lean times as like winter: a time to re-acquaint oneself with, and be nurtured by, the indoors. I want to want to live mostly in the lean times, so that I don't forget to appreciate what I already have.

To this end: I don't currently have the option of running out and buying a new book now that I've finished the two I've been reading; instead, I am going to re-read this:

I found this First (British) Edition of A Moveable Feast at Henderson's last month, and just couldn't say no. I had a wallet full of cash from house/dog/teenager-sitting and bought it for $20.00. The same sketchy website where I found the pictures above is selling a copy for $395.00. YES! 395 US DOLLARS! I thought twice at the cash register - I wasn't blown away when I read the book in high school, so I bought it entirely for the jacket design - but. But I melt in the face of beautiful things, and maybe this time it was a good investment.

Very Clever.

2010-06-02T14:55:00.000-07:00

Because striped tee shirts are the greatest - and because it's not hard to spend a bunch of money on a cute one - and because everyone has a random plain tee shirt in their dresser, you should read this.

(Photo from 3191 Miles Apart).

Routine.

2010-06-01T17:46:00.000-07:00

Three-day weekends have the same effect on me as vacations do: usually, after arriving home from a vacation, I feel like I need another vacation to get myself fully rested. Three day weekends also tend not to be restful, and I have a hunch that - at least for me - having the extra time makes it easier to waste.

I've come to crave routine, and yet I constantly battle with the very adolescent side of me that's superafraid of getting bored. On Friday night, I sat down with my flashcards spread out around me, but got bored and went out looking for adventures. I didn't make harissa, I didn't get my cathartic weekly apartment cleaning in, and I woke up today feeling lethargic, the annoying by-product of too much outside excitement.

But it's Tuesday, which has become a very important day Chez Moi: it's food processing day.

About a month ago I signed up for Dandelion Organic Delivery, and on Tuesday mornings I receive a big blue tub of fruits and veggies. Once home, I set to work washing and storing them, and I immediately chop the carrots up for snacks. It's been a funny and happy lesson in routine: I can no longer plan my week's meals on the weekend, because I'm not sure what will be in the bin until Monday. Sometimes I get avocados, sometimes cabage raab, and this week, mangoes and mustard greens. But I've learned to cook a bit more off-the-cuff; I'm making more basic meals, like stirfry. I tend to be rather bi-polar about meals - either making elaborate new recipes that require lots of grocery store and cooking time, or throwing a frozen pizza in the oven. But I romanticize simple meals - just as I romanticize the idea of staying in on Friday nights to frame foreign language flashcards. The veggie bin has focused my attention squarely on lentils, brown rice, and chicken for most dinners, and there's something entirely nourishing in that almost-boring simplicity - which, I'm thinking, is a very important lesson to keep mind of.

(lentil, spinach and goatcheese salad with citrus dressing - delicious, but not Joel-approved)

Blue Islands.

2010-06-01T09:52:00.001-07:00

Just a few months after I moved back to Bellingham, I read The Living by Annie Dillard. It was interesting to imagine Bellingham in its early days, but the book just wasn't an immediate favorite. I was really impressed with the reccuring image of the San Juans appearing blue, though; for some reason, before The Living, I'd never noticed that they were.

(Holga Photos taken on and on the way to Lopez Island)

Home & Garden.

2010-05-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post these for awhile:

I love this apartment - though I'd quite possibly love it more if it was a tiny house in the Lettered Streets neighborhood of Bellingham. In the top photo, that framed "one One" print reminds me of these - which reminds me that I've never done anything with my French and Spanish language flashcards other than hoard them in a plastic sleeve in a three ring binder in my closet.

My flashcards will be framed, I will make harissa (because store-bought jars of harissa do not exist in Whatcom County, I am convinced), and I will scan some of my Holga photos this weekend. This is me setting practical goals.

(You can read all about the apartment - and its owners - here.)

Worms and Tree Bark.

2010-05-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

A Sturdy Crate.

2010-05-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

I spent last Friday night and Saturday in Seattle.

I had a blast – dinner with Rachel and Shawn, then Adam Carolla live and five feet in front of me, then a whole lot of drinks at a slummy strip-mall dive bar. I maneuvered through three of the worst parts of the city (Friday night rush hour on Aurora Avenue, Saturday afternoon U Village chaos, the terrible armpit of a suburb named Kirkland) without getting anxious or cranky or teary. I guess I can handle it now.

And I stayed up on 15th Avenue – jaywalking across that street for morning coffee as though it were a residential alleyway, feeling so turned on by the legions of interesting, creative city people doing the morning coffee house thing. “It’s so quiet up here!” I kept saying. And it is; it’s a really nice part of the city that I didn’t spend enough time with before.

I came home with a truckload of fun new things (a Polaroid camera with film! The most perfect bowl for eating June strawberries from! A sturdy wooden crate found unattended on a sidewalk! CANAL HOUSE NO. 3!!), but Seattle will never, not ever, be able to give me the Saturday night I had at Honeymoon’s Singer/Songwriter Circle, with Honeymoon’s meatball & veggie soup (with bread and butter), or the feeling I have during and after a perfect Bellingham evening. I thought I’d made a decision to move south in the fall – and it’s entirely possible that I will eventually find myself in a pre-war apartment in 15th Avenue. Or in a mother-in-law apartment on a vineyard in Wenatchee, or a single-room cabin on Lopez Island, or a farmhouse outside of Marfa Texas.

Coming home on Saturday afternoon, though, I decided to decide one thing for sure: I’m going to stop planning things for awhile. I’m going to stop periscoping my head around, looking for signs and exits and greater opportunities, and instead focus entirely on the list of projects that I can work on right here on State Street – which includes turning my bed into one that looks like this:

(polaroids by me; bed from - forgive me - I forget)

Rural Fetish.

2010-05-24T14:24:00.001-07:00

It's boxier and more Modern than I usually prefer, but...

...it's also France + Italy + Fingerbone, ID (the made up, dreamy setting from Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping).

And totally perfect.

(First spotted here).

Breakthrough.

2010-05-19T23:35:00.000-07:00

Guess what I can do? :

FILM STILLS!

Amy Merrick, who is the genius behind these fantastic posts (which I'm always looking forward to), and who is gracious enough to respond to random e-mails from people just DYING to capture their own film stills, taught me how.

It's pretty simple, but this is huge for me. I've been desperate - just desperate - to capture cinematography as photography, for a very long time.

Many more to come. I may not leave the house ever again, in fact.

(All photos from Paris, TX - one of my all-time favorites.)

Oh Wait!

2010-05-14T16:01:00.000-07:00

Before I leave again, look at this:

It's from here (which I found out about from here), and oh god, I may have own it.

Tourism.

2010-05-14T13:54:00.001-07:00

Because I am so absent these days, and perhaps will be for awhile longer, I give you today's shining star (aside from randomly walking in on Nikki McClure signing artwork at The Paperdoll this morning! She's dreamy.):

"Tourism vs. Pilgrimage: we set off neither quite knowing what is wrong with us nor how our destination is meant to resolve the issue."

(Alain de Botton)

Serendipitously found here.

I don't know if I know exactly what it means yet, but you can bet I'll put entirely too much thought into it this weekend.

Pigs Fly, Hell Freezes Over, &c.

2010-04-26T13:09:00.000-07:00

For two weeks now, my mind has been happily filled with thoughts of writing classes at Richard Hugo House, of hijacking a spot in Rachel's new yard for kale and garlic, fancy work clothes, maybe some cool roommates, Ethiopian food, Puerto Rican food, Delancey, watching the ferries glide in and out of Elliott Bay from the 19th floor of a skyscraper, a brilliant idea of Christina's that I'm hoping she'll let me help her with, Ballard's brick streets and how gorgeous they are when shining with rainwater, steam coming off of manholes, the click-click of high heels on marble floors and the whistling of espresso machines, Espresso Vivace, six block walks to the Comet or SAM and Than Brothers' cream puffs ...

I sort of want to skip Summer and go straight to Fall. I'm not pretending that Seattle is The Answer, or that it's perfect, or that it will magically feel like home this time around, but I'm believing whole-heartedly that it might be the right fit for a little while, again.

(Photo from here)

A New Soup.

2010-04-13T17:43:00.000-07:00

Some pretty exciting things are happening around here. Or, rather, some pretty exciting things are happening and some pretty exciting things are possibly happening around here. Nothing's certain, but there will be updates...

In the meantime, I want to share Keith Weaver's iphoneography. If you need a cheerful hit of inspiration, this is it. Look especially at this one. And this one. And this one.

I also want to share a new soup.

I finally, after nearly a year of The Lentil Soup five times a week, began to approach a bowlful with markedly less enthusisasm. So I started researching replacements, with some sort of minestrone in mind, but the parameters were only that the soup must be hearty and kale must fit in. I eat pizza for dinner more times a week than I care to admit, so a blast of good health at lunch time is absolutely necessary for me.

I went through the archives of every food blog I regularly follow, and ended up selecting this one.
Two normal-sized cans of white beans can definitely be substitued in for the dried, and purple cabbage, I feel, is a better choice than green. I'm lazy about herbs - but diligently sauteing the carrots, celery and onion for 15 minutes or more (and in butter, with plenty of salt) gives all the flavor you could ask for. Kale will take the place of swiss chard in the original recipe, but last Saturday, the farmer's market had a surprise for me: kale flowers.
I haven't been able to find much about them online, but the stems, raw, are crisp, sweet, and definitely worth investigation.

The Feast to Come

2010-04-07T12:24:00.000-07:00

On Wednesdays, I pick up a copy of the Cascadia Weekly and flip straight to Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology. It's a ritual I cultivated with Lovely Christina. I've never been much of a horoscope reader, but I've always identified with my sign. Brezsny's snippets, though, are so eerily right on that I've become semi-religious about analyzing every word he writes.

Here's what I got today:

Can you believe it? It's perfect.

Disappointment and Malaise

2010-04-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

For February, March, and now April, I've been so, so blah. The only thing cheering me up has been an obscene amount of Mary Tyler Moore on DVD and - for a mere 24 hours - this adorable, tin-roofed cabin on Lopez Island:

Joel and I made a brief appearance on Lopez this past weekend, and even though the weather was crappy and we missed several ferries and we didn't bring our bikes and everything was closed - and the one restaurant that wasn't closed was too expensive - it was lovely. The cabin was to die for, and we spent Saturday night stuffing ourselves with French Train Sandwiches and Reality TV. Lopez Island, in fact, has now overtaken Anacortes for the number one position on the Places I Want to Move list. I bought myself a darling bag of cranberry beans from Blossom, as a souvenir.

As happy as I am about my cranberry beans (and the signed and numbered Magnolia Electric Company poster I scored at The Business in Anacortes), I'm still in the doldrums, or perhaps suffering from SAD. Top three biggest disappointments?:

1) Polenta Fries. I tried to get excited last week. I tried to suck it up and party - so on Thursday night, I put Paul Simon's Graceland on repeat, turned it up loud, danced a bit and decided the Polenta Fries from Everyday Italian would be thrilling. Nope. They were super boring, and I doubt I'll bother with them again.

2) The Diana Mini. I funnelled $16 dollars worth of film into it, only to find out that exactly zero pictures were taken: the Diana Mini sent to me is missing the mechanism that opens and closes the shutter - which of course I didn't even notice, being new to film cameras.

When I dropped my rolls of film off at the camera shop last Friday, I was prepared to pay a bundle for photos that were terrible, out of focus, possibly destroyed by clumsy exposure to light, etc. - but I was expecting some pictures. To learn from. The film I turned in was as good as new, just stretched out. With a heavy heart I called to determine whether I can return or exchange the camera. Its cuteness begs me to exchange it. But the tiny viewfinder, faulty buttons, and cash money I paid have won me over for a refund. Optimistically, I still have the Holga to spend exorbitant amounts of money on.

3) This CD.

It looks lovely, doesn't it? Fact: it's even more boring than polenta fries. I try to see money spent on CDs - even crappy ones - as a cultural investment, and therefore worth it and not wasteful. But I can't help but feel like this one was a stupid impulse buy - and nothing puts me in a bad mood faster than stupid impulse buys.

I know that fantastic things are coming (the month of May better not let me down), but since I am currently no fun and have nothing nice to say, I'll turn things over to Debbie Downer; she, at least, will get you to laugh. Click here for laughs. Click here for even more.

Found: Hot Pink and Purple

2010-03-25T18:47:00.000-07:00

My two favorite colors from age zero to 9 (at which age I developed a bizarre obsession with Navy blue that lasted until 13, at which age I got really into orange for awhile, etc.), are a ridiculous combination once one has parted ways with their Barbie dolls UNLESS they are:

a) A two-volume set of Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, spotted while browsing under "P" for Plath at Henderson's Books

b) Some pretty fantastic flowers I can't identify. Anyone?

Itchy.

2010-03-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

I want to move to a little house in Wenatchee or Skagit County. I want my friends to come spend weekends with me - we would eat a lot (especially a lot of these for breakfast) and drink a lot and go on some walks. But mostly, these days, I want it to be summer: I want to be warm in cutoffs or dresses and overwhelmed with boredom.

(Photo from here)

Adults Do Not

2010-03-11T20:22:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure whether to blame my new bike, or being back on Facebook, but I've definitely forgotten about Bay & Champion. Even the blogs I adore are boring these days. Maybe I'm over it? Maybe it's still winter.

I'll pretend to keep up for now. My writing instructor gave us an extra assignment: write a 250-word sentence. Here's what I came up with - it's actually 340 words:

Adults Do Not

There will be many days as an adult – windy ones, whale-gray ones – that you come home from work and simply lay down in your work clothes: on these days, you will watch two full movies before the sun sets; you will have a bag of tortilla chips for dinner and when those don’t fill you up you will have some ice cream; you will let the calls go straight to voicemail and you will wish you didn’t have to get out of bed to brush your teeth; you will stare at the wall, or out the window perhaps, for an hour, content; you will briefly consider reading (but then you will glance at that Sartre book on your nightstand and feel nauseous); you will plan to call in sick to work the next day, or maybe for the rest of the week since there are ten whole days to use up this year – and it comforts you that you’re finally getting used to this, getting used to falling asleep at nine-thirty with the lights on and dirty dishes in the sink, and you suddenly wish that successful alumnus had said, point blank, in his commencement speech four years ago that Frankly, life is not an adventure with surprises around every corner just waiting for you to find them; you wish he’d confessed that adults do not feel compelled to read philosophy in their spare time, that adults do not meet up with friends for live music and tequila shots six nights (or even one night) a week, that adults do not make lasagna noodles from scratch – and adults do not unload their acrylic paints and paintbrushes – on weeknights (and that adults do not feel guilty about this, either), and that adults do not stress over the fashion statement they are not making with the very unfeminine clogs they wear to work every day – because if that successful alumnus hadn’t lied so brazenly, you wouldn’t have been so desperately unprepared; you would have enjoyed your early twenties instead of panicking, panicking.

Nothing to Report

2010-02-24T11:18:00.000-08:00

...besides a new Abstract Expressionist to fall for.

Franz Kline:

Merce C

(First spotted here.)

(Even) More Marfa

2010-02-19T11:32:00.000-08:00

(Source)

I want to go back soon.

And looking at these and these (so good!) makes the missing so much worse.

Ways to Beat Boredom.

2010-02-16T16:24:00.000-08:00

February is really dreadful; it's my least favorite month.
But without even thinking about anything, really, I signed myself up for a writing class; I ordered myself a Holga and a Diana Mini; I started writing for What's UP! again - a food column, of all lovely things; and I bought a huge load of picture frames last weekend and added and rearranged things on the apartment walls. I don't know where this momentum came from because I've mostly been sick and laying in bed all month, reading Sophie's Choice and listening to the somber new Beach House album.

Otherwise, I'm desperately smitten with the new Dolce & Gabbana print ads.

(Source)

I read somewhere that they were inspired by Italian Neorealist Cinema, which is so great an idea, I'm loading the Holga (when it arrives in my mailbox) with stark black and white and officially declaring March to be the month I watch Federico Fellini's everything.

Fancy Feast

2010-02-02T17:46:00.000-08:00

I got myself mixed up, for a night last month, in what was supposed to be a foodie-wine drinker's book club. Quel désastre. The hostess’ intentions – the sorts of people she was trying to attract to her Pottery Barn Catalog of a house, and her brand of “foodie” – made my stomach sour. If I wasn’t sure before, I am now: I am not the truffle oil type. Instead, I am the French Train Sandwich type.

Spotted on the lunch menu during my first adventure to The Fountain, "French Train Sandwich" immediately placed me in the Summer of 2006. Travelling from Paris to Munich by train, Amanda and I sat across from the most adorably European family you can imagine. The father was disheveled and looked like a philosophy professor or perhaps a poet. He slumped in his seat, glasses nearly sliding off his large nose, with a pile of books in the seat next to him. The mother was quietly cheerful, petite and plain and calm. There was a little boy, whom I don't remember so well, and then there was a little girl who was beyond perfect, jabbering away, asking children’s questions in adult language. Sometime after crossing into Germany, the mother pulled out a baguette, cheese, some sort of meat and a condiment that required spreading and prepared their lunch: French Train Sandwiches.

I have had my own version, which was previously unnamed. To be honest, I co-opted the original idea of my newly christened French Train Sandwich - along with a taste for Ingmar Bergman films and drone music - from an ex-boyfriend in Seattle. On nights that we were too worn out from city-navigating and soul-murdering city jobs to deal with cooking, he and I would head straight to the QFC on Broadway for tomatoes, a baguette, brie and salami - and usually as much fresh fruit as we could afford, as well. We'd bring it all home and assemble platters to graze from cheefully, trying as best we could to extend the hours between leaving work and having to go back.

In concert with cheese, tomatoes, and delicious deli meat, half a baguette suddenly becomes a filling dinner. Good mustard is necessary, and I've recently (inspired, again, by The Fountain) upgraded to whole grain Dijon. You could swap the Brie for Camembert, as Crystal and I did one Sunday last month, and I've definitely swapped in that soft Laughing Cow cheese with good results, when finding myself too broke for Brie. With an avocado to scoop from, the platter is complete. Slice a baguette and start topping.

Flash Cards

2010-01-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

(from Design Crush)

I love this - because I am always bewitched by words pretending to be art. My friend Amanda picked up a set of word flashcards from Digs last month; I feel like they might be the same ones as shown above, and I was smitten with them at first sight. Will investigate flashcard options this weekend, buy a set, and make fun word combinations for hanging. I also have a muy pequeno collection of old-time Spanish flashcards (purchased from Watson-Kennedy, my favorite store on earth) that I've hoarded, too afraid to use. Maybe I'll just end up framing them this weekend?

Oh - guess what? I met Michael Pollan last night. I am pleased to report that I remained rather nonchalant and cool about the encounter. I don't even think I blushed.

I said [robotically]:

"You are a phenomenal writer I love your humor your writing is so witty and intelligent."

He looked up at me, smiled politely and said, "Thank you. Humor is very important to me." Love!

Returned

2010-01-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

I did not fall in love with Baltimore, but I fell in love with the lives of graduate students. Baltimore is urban, but not fashionable. It’s not glamorous, but it’s refreshingly unpretentious. And though Baltimore is definitely rough, it's also polished with history.

I fell in love with Anna’s friends and roommates, and I loved the fact that as hard as I tried to spend money, there just weren’t places to spend it. Instead, I feasted upon spicy Italian sub sandwiches at Potbelly's, and the awesome collections at the American Visionary Art Museum, The Walters Museum, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

I had a delightful Ethiopian birthday dinner, followed by bar-hopping around the more trendy-seeming area called Fell’s Point. It snowed and Anna and I stayed up until the early morning talking over each other about lord-knows-what. It felt good to be surrounded by interesting young people, to sleep late in Anna’s bed, to have a new city to explore. I came back to work today and was overwhelmed with sluggishness, an “Is this it?” boredom.

I want to relive January 5, 2010 over and over: for Anna’s birthday, she purchased twenty or so cheese Totino’s Party Pizzas, and asked her guests to bring toppings and drinks. The party consisted of twenty or so guests decorating their pizzas with a wild array of food items (including macaroni and cheese – courtesy of Anna’s roommate Mark), followed by a hilarious karaoke adventure at the Grand Central. It was like college, but grown-up. I loved it.

It’s really the New Year, now. The boy scouts picked up our Christmas Tree on Saturday and I’m officially a year older. This is the year I will get a writing portfolio together for graduate school applications. This is the year I will not only give up bananas, but eat asparagus only in April and strawberries only in June. I, by the way, have a week ahead of foodie-packed events: Michael Pollan lecturing at Western and a Wednesday night book club meeting for ladies who like food and wine. I plan to spend the rest of this evening making that curry I can't stop talking about and pouring over my fancier cookbooks for epicurean hors d’oeurve ideas. In truth, I kind of hate the connotation of “foodie” – I prefer food that is glorious in its simplicity and unencumbered by class distinctions – but I’m excited for a culinary challenge.

It's Happening.

2009-12-30T10:03:00.001-08:00

I am not, not, not starting to get all romantic about having a wedding or being a wife, but in the face of my darling Rachel's engagement, my involvement in Sam and Tobias' wedding, and realizing that FIVE (5) of my ex-boyfriends are either married or engaged, I am aware that I can't keep fighting it: I am of the marrying age (apparently), and someday it will happen to me. I just need to accept it.

I don't often see pictures of weddings that are awesome, because weddings are generally not awesome. I got to be a bridesmaid for my friend Shelley a couple years ago, and hers was the first wedding I'd experienced that was actually original and fun. It was outdoors, in the country, relaxed and honest and totally home-made. Though it was on the grounds of a really neat old mansion, and not in a barn, it sort of had the same lovely spirit as this wedding:

Photos by Braeden Photography

(From Once Wed via A Cup of Jo)

I'm drooling a little. These people's wedding is actually making me want to have one. So: mark your calendars for My Wedding in a Barn starring me and Jude Law and coming at you in Late August 2025. I will wear a cute little sweater over my wedding dress, with classy brown boots for both me and my bridesmaids. We will munch on apples under simple white christmas lights and there will be turquoise Mason jars everywhere!

Forty Seasons

2009-12-28T17:22:00.000-08:00

I wish I could smartly eulogize the past decade. I have typewritten pages from old journals, pictures, mix CDs and letters to prove that ten years have gone by, but I’m at a loss to describe what has happened. Though December 1999 feels light years away, I still can’t fathom a decade.

Decades have always seemed so finite to me: In the 1970s people wore polyester bell-bottoms. In the 1980s people listened to Dire Straits on cassette tapes. In the 1990s people watched Seinfeld on TV. I know that time has never stopped to recalibrate at the beginning of a new decade, but I guess I always imagined it somehow did. What’s current will not be bookended on Thursday, ripe to start brand new. It’s not yet a finished volume to stack next to the others. I’m now realizing that time passing is rather like that frog on the stove, immersed in gradually heating water – we adapt to newness in small ways, continually, so that even huge changes don’t seem so huge until we look back. But the fact is, I barely remember life before I carried a cell phone or wore low-rise Seven jeans, and I’ve never become altogether comfortable with my iPod. Ten years ago I was an inch shorter and ten pounds lighter. But my hair was the same length, my politics, aspirations, and taste in books and music were intrinsically the same, if not yet refined. Forty seasons have passed, and despite any physical evidence I have, I wish I felt their weight more profoundly. I have observed Joel’s mother making lists of all the books she reads, and preparing page-long Christmas Letters in the place of Christmas Cards, recounting the year in paragraphs instead of canned sentences. I want to develop time-tracking systems and rituals like these, so that I don’t get caught like this at the end of 2019, grasping at memories for case studies or proof.

I live and die by lists, so I’ll produce an end-of-the-year commemorative something before 2010. I can’t talk about a decade, though. I just don’t know how to.

But let’s start detoxing first. It’s been a month of daily chocolate sugar highs, nightly half-bottles of wine, prime rib Christmas dinners, Joel’s birthday cheesecake sampler, sausage stuffed potatoes and those six pints of beer I sucked down the Friday before last.

By “detox” I of course mean "forcing my stomach capacity to shrink a bit." I certainly don’t have the willpower for any sort of real detox plan, and there’s just no way I could slurp down pureed soup, no matter how delicious, without a side of cheesy, simple carbohydrates.

Butternut Squash and Roasted Garlic Puree

(From Williams-Sonoma Soup)

Preheat the oven to 350. Peel and chop a butternut squash into one inch pieces, then combine in roasting pan with 20 cloves of peeled garlic, 2 Tbs olive oil, 1/4 c water and coarse sea salt. Roast for 50 - 60 minutes, stirring occasionally. Once done, puree in blender, in batches, with 5 c vegetable stock. Bring pureed soup to a simmer on the stove until heated through. Season with salt, pepper, and I'd suggest a few squirts of Sriracha.

Cheese Croutes

(From Williams-Sonoma Soup)

Slice as many pieces of crusty bread as you wish, then toast in oven at 375 for 5 minutes. Brush each toast with olive oil, then dip oiled-side down into a pile of freshly grated parmesan cheese. Return to oven for 5 - 7 minutes until cheese is melted but not browned. Season with freshly grated black pepper.

Let's Go.

2009-12-18T22:18:00.001-08:00

The future belongs to the few of us still willing to get our hands dirty.

(via Swiss Miss)

Robert Redford

2009-12-11T10:48:00.000-08:00

Lately Joel and I have been watching tons of movies starring Robert Redford. He's a great actor, and he's also insanely good-looking. What started as an admiration is now becoming a problem: I've been finding myself thinking about Robert Redford at work, at the grocery store, when I'm trying to fall asleep at night...

(Source)

For more great (but watermarked) photos, go here.

Full-Bellied

2009-12-09T19:01:00.000-08:00

It's been so cold, and I've been cooking and cooking, and eating even more. From the past two weeks:

1) Brunch at the Copper Hog, where the Serrano Ham Eggs Benedict cast a spell upon Joel and I. As a prelude to our breakfast, we were first brought a small nest of out-of-this-world donuts, warm and fresh, and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.

2) The latest post on Orangette, which finally gave me an excuse to explore the meat selection at Old World Deli. Bringing home a slab of prosciutto made me feel delightfully European.

3) This amazing soup. After two bowlfuls, Crystal and I finally got around to making homemade butter, and nearly finished an entire baguette.

4) Cacio e Pepe, from a recipe in the January 2010 Cook's Illustrated - and also immortalized here. My first attempt was a little soupy, so halving the recipe didn't work out too well, but I fully intend to conquer and perfect it.

5) Chicken Enchilada soup from Torre Caffe - my longstanding Thursday lunch ritual.

6) The best thing I've cooked all year: Curry with Roasted Vegetables. Joel and I have had it for dinner three times in two weeks, and Wednesdays around here are now known as "Curry Night." I originally made this Tempeh Curry, but was underwhelmed by the tempeh. The second time around I went straight for roasted cauliflower and butternut squash and added potatoes to those two tonight: a curry holy trinity.

Curry with Roasted Vegetables

(adapted from 101 Cookbooks' Tempeh Curry Recipe)

Roasted veggies of your choice*

1 Tbs. unsalted butter

2 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, peeled and chopped

1 tsp. whole cumin seeds

1 tsp. curry powder

1/4 tsp. turmeric

1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper

1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes

3/4 c water

large spoonful of yogurt

Melt butter and olive oil in a large skillet, then add onion and a bit of salt and saute for a few minutes. Stir in cumin seeds, curry powder, turmeric and cayenne, then add tomatoes, water and yogurt. Remove from heat and, working in batches, blend in a blender or food processor. At this point, I pour the pureed curry sauce back into the skillet, add the roasted veggies, and heat through. Serve over jasmine rice with raw minced garlic on top.

*Smallish potatoes, butternut squash and cauliflower do well thrown together at 400 degrees for 40 minutes.

Love the Questions Themselves

2009-12-08T16:56:00.000-08:00

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day." (Rainer Maria Rilke)

It's my second day of working for only seven hours, and though I'm sure heading to work Friday morning, after five long months of sleeping in, will be a shock, I'm already so happy with this new evening time. Yesterday I finished an entire art project. Today I've put in forty-five minutes of lazy stretching and sloppy yoga.

Weekend Agenda

2009-11-19T18:09:00.000-08:00

This may be one of my last four-days weeks, so I'm hoping to really savor it. Joel's leaving for a one-night trip to LA where he will hopefully meet Adam Carolla as well as take in a comedy show. I have a small project to work on for Sustainable Connections, a 401(k) meeting at the office tomorrow, and a birthday celebration tomorrow night. I'm also hoping to:

1) Brainstorm ideas for an art project along these lines:

(From Design Sponge)

(From Here's Lookin at Me Kid via Simple Lovely)

I'm a glutton for text-as-art. I already have a trillion words-only snippets framed, but I’m really crazy for that huge, overwhelming slab of plywood…;

2) Finally narrow down what it is I want to make for Thanksgiving. This year, my friend Ashley is hosting dinner at her house in Port Angeles. Our mothers and their male companions, her grandparents, husband and daughter will all be in attendance. It’s rather unconventional, but I’m so looking forward to it;

3) Stock up on kale and butternut squash, per usual, at the Farmer’s Market;

4) Rent one or two movies that Joel would never be interested in sitting through – I’m thinking of Fellini’s Amarcord, in particular;

5) Make meatballs. I’ve recently spotted some of the chicken variety, and some made from pork (with a tasty sounding yogurt dressing) and have been craving them all week.

More from Wenatchee

2009-11-17T17:53:00.000-08:00

(We stopped for a yummy, greasy lunch on the Western slope of Blewett Pass)

(My Le Creuset-esque Antique Mall score)

I had "Rudie Can't Fail" stuck in my head on my walk home from work today - which was rather cheerful since it's now certain that I need to go back to a 5-day work week. Built to Spill at the Nighlight tonight - so very excited! I've been hopelessly addicted to their new album during the past few weeks.

Found Online

2009-11-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon Nerd Boyfriend sometime last week, and am infatuated. Along with the Bob Dylan picture I posted last week, these are two of my other found favorites:

(Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg)

(Mr. Paul Newman)

Found in Wenatchee

2009-11-16T15:09:00.000-08:00

Joel and I spent the weekend in Wenatchee, visiting his parents and some of his highschool friends. I kind of love Wenatchee and its wholesome, quiet culture. Wine is big, farmland is plentiful, and there are lofty, academic book clubs, proliferating natural foods stores, and a few great shops downtown for exploring. You can buy adorable homes for under $175,000.00. And the accidental gems: when we stopped by John and Carly's house Saturday night, I found this on their dining table:

1960s Guerilla Poetry from South America with English translations mirroring their Spanish originals. Amazing. Carly works for the Good Will and found it among the books there. She said she reshelved it for months before finally realizing she had to bring it home. I ordered myself a used copy this morning.

I also found a really great cooking pot - cast-iron covered in robin's egg blue enamel - for $35.00 at an antique store. I have some more pictures, I think. I'll dig them up this evening.

Love Them

2009-11-11T08:27:00.001-08:00

A young Ernest Hemingway:

(spotted on The Simple Connoisseur)

A young Bob Dylan:

(borrowed from Amoeblog via Nerd Boyfriend)

Kale Addict

2009-11-10T19:50:00.000-08:00

1) I’ve been meaning to revisit the lentil soup I made at the beginning of the summer because it’s become such a focal point in my week it’s hard not to mention. I’ve made a pot nearly every Sunday since the beginning of July – it makes the perfect amount for a Sunday afternoon snack and three to four work lunches. I’ve been consistently adding on to Heidi’s original recipe, starting with the Sunday in August that I randomly had an extra boiled potato sitting in the fridge, to a Sunday last month that I had some extra stalks of celery. I think I’ve finally perfected it, though, by the addition of:

a) Muir Glen’s Fire Roasted Tomatoes with Green Chiles (for the canned tomatoes);
b) A spoonful of salsa over the top of the warm soup; and
c) A beer if its sunny, a good glass of wine if it’s not.

Here's how it goes:

Sometime around 2:00 on Sunday afternoons, I bring a pot of water to a boil, drop a medium sized Yukon Gold potato in and let it cook for 25 minutes. Once it has, I immediately stick it in the refrigerator to chill. Then, I get out a soup pot and bring 6 cups of water to a boil. I add 2 cups of lentils and let them cook for 20 – 25 minutes. While they’re cooking, I roughly (and I mean roughly – I love chunks) dice a red onion, chop a few sticks of celery, and rinse a head of kale. I’ve found that you can savagely grab handfuls of kale off of the stem and rip the leaves in your hands instead of bothering with cutting the stem out and chopping it uniformly. I don’t know why I’ve never put carrots in, but anything your heart desires can be chopped at this point. Chop the cooled potato in to large chunks as well. When the lentils are done, drain them and bring the pot back to the stove. Add oil and let it heat before adding the onions. Saute the onions for a few minutes, then add the celery or carrots, etc. and some salt. Saute for a few more minutes before adding the lentils, a 28oz. container of diced or crushed tomatoes, 2 cups water and the potato. Let the mess come to a boil before finally adding the kale. I work in bunches – letting a handful of kale wilt and become incorporated before adding another handful. That’s it! It’s amazing, and I say that after eating it nearly every day for the past four and a half months. I’ve been adding kale to just about everything lately. It goes wonderfully with pasta, for example, as a pizza topping, and added into baked dishes.

2) I am a meat eater that doesn’t eat a lot of meat. After a couple years of no meat to a few more “avoiding meat” I’ve come to start cooking meat (a gigantic step) while still aiming toward a mostly meatless lifestyle. And though I can’t wait for the day that I roast a turkey for my own Thanksgiving, I was delighted to find this idea for a Vegetarian Thanksgiving last week (find the recipe here). Tofurky and other fake meats have never sat well with me. This gorgeous, autumn-themed bread pudding (with loads of kale) is by far more palatable and festive.

To be honest, last night's attempt needed a little something – perhaps a shot of chile oil or a drizzle of arugula pesto? But overall, it's a winner, whether you’re a turkey eater or not.

3) A little bit of Bellingham in Fall:

(Jane, Amanda and I got a sneak peak of the under-construction Pickford Film Center during Art Walk last Friday)

On the Bandwagon

2009-11-02T20:34:00.000-08:00

Holy moly, Portland. Thinking that I've spent the past seven years thinking you "seem cool, but not that cool" now makes me blush. If it weren't for Joel and my back-to-the-land fantasy/obsession, I'd be right now packing my bags to move south for good...just like everyone else. From the baristas to the DJs to the sales girls in T.B.D. at Nordstrom, I was delighted and impressed by how chill and unpretentious Portlanders are. I also met a girl named Cedar who happens to have the exact tattoo I've been thinking of for myself for years now (but with a difference in geography - it's certainly no secret which city in Northwest Washington State my heart would be pointing toward...)

(a restaurant in the Pearl District with the loveliest name...if there wasn't already a gorgeous and inspiring blog with the same name, I'd steal it for my own.)

It was a three day blitz of coffee, wine, walking everywhere, parties, beyond delicious vegan food and cooking dinner to Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. The train ride down is another chapter completely - the glassy stretch of shore between Bellingham and Burlington on a foggy early morning was a huge, "I can't believe I get to live here" moment - and was so good I doubt I'll ever travel I-5 solo by car again.

Modern Literature

2009-10-28T17:37:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to get through The Golden Notebook for ages, it seems. It's not that it's difficult so much as it's gigantic and dense. I'm always reading books like this - old, long and intense - and I've come to a point where I want to explore contemporary writing for a change. Bestselling stuff, perhaps, just to bring myself up to date on where the literary world is at. Names like Don Delillo, Jonathan Safran Foer and Margaret Atwood come to mind; my trip to Michael's yesterday was for something along these lines, but once I was there, my brain went blank. If anyone out there has a few recommendations, I would be truly grateful...

On the book front, I picked up John Seymour's Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It from the library yesterday. After being really disappointed by the lack of material in Jenna's book earlier this month, I am overwhelmed by this one. Everything from clearing land, to milking cows, to making homemade wine is covered. You wouldn't believe it. It's charmingly illustrated, but not quite as glamorous as the farm-tribute in Vogue this month:

(a few excerpts from the spread, borrowed from Fashionising)

Instead of spending last weekend reading, or doing anything else I mentioned on that post last Friday, I was visiting with Sam; she's marrying one of my best friends this June, and has asked me to help her coordinate their wedding. I couldn't be more tickled. She drove up from Mill Creek on Saturday and we went over all that she's been working on so far. The colors and themes she's picked couldn't be more perfect or original. After some preliminary chatting, we headed out for coffee at Adagio and from there, once the clock struck happy hour, we went on to my heaven, Temple Bar. We had barely ordered before Ken, Lisa, and an animated crew of Martini-tasters from Bellingham Alive sat down next to us. Ken generously gave us his classic martini, and let us take sips off of his second, "interpretive" martini, which we later found out was a French '75. I don't usually go for cocktails at Temple Bar, but that one was so fantastic, it might become my official drink. Each of the tasters had an elaborate scorecard, and I'm really looking forward to the next issue for the results. From where Sam and I sat, we had a premier view of the intersection this blog is named after.

I'm headed to Portland by train this weekend and I can't wait. I arrive downtown on Friday afternoon and I'll have something I've always wanted and never had - a few hours of total free time to roam the city by myself.

October So Far -

2009-10-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

- has been comfortably hushed by last year's episodes of The Office, 30 Rock and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on DVD. The garlic is planted, my avocado pit is soaking, and we brought home our last batch of veggies from Bill's farm last Saturday. I got to visit with one of my greatest friends in Seattle the weekend before last, and have another trip South planned this coming weekend. This time, I have every intention of visiting Delancey; recent photographs on the Blue Hour got me bound and determined. If people are flying in from New York, I can certainly make a 90-minute drive.

It seemed like, for a few days in these past weeks, my conversations with Joel centered around how things used to be - as though the decade's nearing end unconciously reminded us of the late 80s and early 90s. I must be getting older, because I'm starting to understand how time cycles - fashion, particularly, is starting to seem silly now that I've followed it long enough to see how blatently it borrows from the past. Modern culture has always felt plasticky to me and it continues to as I see the Vans I ached for in 4th grade popping up on every highschool hipster in town. I've always wished I belonged to an older generation. I remember, at 19, telling Amanda that I was going to pretend the present was 1943 - that I would only use or buy things I could have in that year. She responded by suggesting the Dragonfruit Vitamin Water I was sipping on might be the first modern device to abandon.

(That lady to your upper right, by the way, is my great-grandmother's sister Angeline. Her lips and eyes are identical to my mom's; I inherited neither, but did manage to get the clunky Italian ankles. I've always been sorely disappointed it was the ankles and not the creamy olive complexion.)

I've come to realize that my wish to belong to the past was the precursor to the lifestyle choices I'm aiming to embrace now: simplicity, a retreat from over-stimulation. I won't be giving up TV on DVD, my food processor, or the addition of Lycra to cotton tee shirts, but I'm starting to recognize the paralells between now and then and its relieving: the present and future can be as entirely lovely as my fantasy version of the 1940s. Sunday, I both finally downloaded iTunes for my (very neglected) iPod and made Crystal a mix tape. Perhaps the great freedom of the present is being able to pick and choose.

In a roundabout way, I think I'm finally seeing the end of my early-20's frenzy of What in the world am I going to do with my life. An ex-boyfriend once described me as living in an "over-romanticized haze"; it was fitting then, but evaporated on the day I graduated from college. I'm planning to go back. I glanced up at the charcoal fall sky today, and in and instant I was standing outside of myself, recognizing my life in Bellingham. Years strangely merged and seven autumns became one. I don't have an answer to what I plan to do with my life, but I think I finally understand that my life is happening right now.

I'll end with my latest blazing find: you really, really, truly must make yourself a batch of these.

More Marfa

2009-09-29T12:05:00.001-07:00

(Photo by Allison V. Smith)

Back Home

2009-09-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

I expected to come home to rain last Saturday, but it’s been June-like all week in Bellingham. I’m not complaining – I’ve had a full week, and hopefully a couple more to come, of jogging the Boulevard Park trail comfortably, of not having to worry about finding the money to join a gym. I took very few pictures while gone, and the ones that I did take aren’t particularly interesting. It’s like my European backpacking adventure with Amanda three years ago: I came home with roughly seven pictures, three of them of ruby London buses with advertisements for Snakes on a Plane along the side. Tragic.

In ten days, Joel and I put nearly 2,700 miles on the Mitsubishi Gallant we rented. We had 48 hours of Loveline on Joel's iPod, and hotels lined up in seven cities. We had a good mix of the touristy (The Grand Canyon, Taos, Tombstone) and the lesser-known. I was completely taken with Technicolor Arizona: the red soil, lime green ground cover, and blue-scale sky – its so vast out there, it seems you can see the entire sky and how it moves from pale aqua to deep cobalt. The clouds seemed fluffier and somehow more defined than in the Northwest.

Most of New Mexico was drab in comparison but fiery with lightning storms. We felt like we wasted a day by driving to Taos, which left us with less time to explore Santa Fe; the Georgia O’Keeffe museum, though definitely not one of Joel’s favorites, was really all I needed from Santa Fe anyway. We didn’t see any oriental poppies, but I fell in love with some of her more obscure work like:

Untitled (City Night)

Marfa, TX was the biggest hit. I keep telling people – I don’t remember where I read about it, but I’m guessing it must have been while I lived in Seattle. Apparently Bill Gates has been buying property there. All I know is that I had this picture of a tiny art gallery-filled town in the middle of nowhere in my mind, and I was dead set on visiting. It’s a drive – much longer than I expected, and my spirits were low by the time we got there. In Giant and No Country For Old Men, West Texas is romantic. In real life, its extremely discouraging and ugly if you're tired and unsure of the end goal. After driving a sad stretch of I-10 from El Paso for hours, only to get to Van Horn and turn onto a barren two-lane highway, I nearly suggested we turn around and skip Marfa. That would have been a terrible mistake because Marfa is the coolest, most authentically artsy place I’ve ever seen. And real artsy - cutting edge, Portland-y, Brooklyn-y, non-folk-art artsy. It’s a tourist destination (vaguely), but you’d never know it – it seems like more of a secret hideout. The streets aren’t crammed with galleries, there are no signs on the buildings, and you quite literally need to talk to someone who lives there to figure out where to eat or where to go. Most of the restaurants (if you can find them) keep random hours; I imagine that eating out for the people that live in Marfa is more like a dinner party at so-and-so’s place than having a meal in a restaurant.

We met Robert Arber who invited us into his studio, gave us a beer and directed us to Cochineal for dinner. We went and looked at the menu, but feeling rather cheap, got directions to Padre’s instead. Keep in mind that downtown Marfa is about six square blocks. It’s ghostly like Concrete, but upon meeting a local, layers are peeled back and its hidden liveliness peeks out. I can’t say enough. We had a blast. Our hotel was like something out of a movie from the 1940’s, and we had a fantastic night at Padre's with four Chinati Foundation interns. Joel said he’d move there. I’m pretty sure I would, too. I’ve bookmarked the Marfa Chamber of Commerce’s calendar so that we can make another trip down, hopefully coinciding with an event of some sort.

That doesn’t even really begin to cover it – but I’d rather not write a novel right now. Plus, look what I made yesterday:

So easy (with a food processor) and delicious! I don’t usually eat a lot of bread at home but lately, I’ve found myself digging into Joel’s supply on the weekends. In a split second after writing "bread" on my grocery list yesterday, I decided to make it instead. I wasn’t expecting much for the first time at it, but it turned out wonderfully. It also appears to be perfect for freezing, and will surely become a weekly habit. Making bread reminded me that I really need to do a second attempt at mozzarella. I’ve wanted to try out homemade butter, as well.

In this vein, this post got me excited about putting down my food books for awhile to focus on learning to build, fix and grow. I am especially, especially excited for Made from Scratch - a city girl deciding to fumble her way to homesteading bliss is exactly the inspirational story I need. Additionally, I picked up a copy of Garden Anywhere in Tucson, and spent our plane ride home falling in love with Alys Fowler. I have one avocado sitting on my countertop, ripening away for this project. In the coming weeks, I also plan to build a planter box of some sort, and plant some garlic on my porch.

Final Stretch

2009-09-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve waited too long, again. The end of summer in Bellingham was a burst of the moon rising over Mount Baker, of watching Joel help Bill trim the wool from the behinds of the lady sheep he hopes will mate in the coming weeks, of jungles of ripining tomatoes, of nights in bars and the new Boundary Bay Black IPA (not as good as the original, but worth trying), of Jean Rhys’ haunting, colorful Wide Sargasso Sea, of fudgy chocolate cake and particularly of the Subdued Stringband Jamboree where, around a campfire with a mugful of wine, I watched my adored Librarians play haphazard lullabies to a crowd of maybe eight. In Robert Blake’s words, their music is the soundtrack to a dream you desperately wish you could remember upon waking.

But all of that seems distant today, and fittingly, it poured rain on September 1st; Labor Day weekend brought a wind storm and more rain. I can barely contain my excitement – I love fall above all other seasons. There will be more time at home, more writing, more art projects; a new pair of clogs, and a return to warm lattes; a punch of fantastic concerts courtesy of the Nightlight.

But first – Joel and I are making one last go of summer. We leave in the morning for a 10-day roadtrip around the Southwest. We’ll be staying in Kingman and Flagstaff, AZ before heading East to Santa Fe. From Santa Fe we’ll head South to El Paso and Marfa, TX. From Marfa we head North again, staying in Truth or Consequences, NM, Tombstone and, finally, Phoenix. For as much as I love the rain, I’m also crazy about the desert: all that open space has a way of getting my pen to avalanche ink across its paper.

Love/Hate

2009-08-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

In my dreams, I live on a farm somewhere South of Deming and North of Acme. Or maybe on Samish Island. I spend my days in rubber boots feeding chickens, planting, weeding or harvesting vegetables, canning tomato sauce, making soap from goat's milk and writing flash fiction. I earn money by teaching state-sponsored cooking classes to low-income single parents, and maybe I teach a few literature classes at the local community college. Maybe I also teach creative writing classes to prisoners or at-risk teenagers. I travel abroad once every two years, and I make wonderful decorations for my tiny farmhouse from thrift-store salvage. I live simply and on very little, but I never, ever feel lack.

But then the J. Crew or Design Within Reach, Garnet Hill or, most seductive of all, Anthropologie catalogs come in the mail and I want to run right back to Seattle, start working downtown again with a downtown-salary to afford such treasures. The August Anthropologie catalog came in the mail today…right alongside my August student loan statement.

(anthropologie)

I am bursting with cognitive dissonance. In my dreams, I clomp around in rubber boots, yes – but they’re gorgeous, scarlet red Hunter Wellies. In real life, I have a subscription to Lucky: The Magazine About Shopping at which I light up and then cringe when it arrives in my mail box. I know it's ridiculous, but I'm actually grateful for the subscription because I can't trust myself to not buy it at full cover-price each month. I’m naturally a minimalist with a stringent distaste for clutter and unnecessary crap, but as hard as I try, those qualities don't make me any less vulnerable to media-projected images of style and quality and luxury.

Last summer, I was lazing around my apartment on a Saturday, bored, sitting in my one chair and listening to Leadbelly. Eyeing my bookshelf, I picked up the textbook used in my English 101 class – I don’t think I ever opened after Winter Quarter '03, but I kept it for paradigm-shattering essay on photography (“In Plato’s Cave”) by Susan Sontag. I randomly opened up to an essay by Stuart Ewen, exploring the history of industrial design and the rise of advertising (“The Marriage Between Art and Commerce”). It is, in equal turns, fascinating and appalling. Ewen illustrates how valuable but simple technology became commodified; how pushing design onto products allowed the things we buy to become disposable (also discussed in Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, as I mentioned previously). I very, highly recommend seeking this essay out. I was so inspired that I immediately set to work on an art project: I had clipped and saved a picture from an Anthropolgie catalog showing a glamorously barren bedroom (bare windows with multiple square panes, exposed brick, splintering wood floors) with a Spanish-style wrought iron bed frame ($1,698.00) swathed in pure white linens (I think the duvet cover alone was well over $400.00). Over the top of the picture I pasted this quote, typed out on my typewriter:

Pictures are painted before the consumer’s imagination representing the pleasurable aspects of possession of the commodity…Styling must speak to the unconscious, to those primal urges and sensations that are repressed in the everyday confines of civilization.

Really, marketing consultants become flat-out creepy when you start thinking about how much they’re thinking about us. And the bedroom image that lulled me to the length of cutting it out before recycling the rest of the catalog was clearly speaking to the aesthetic of my "primal urges."

I put the mini-collage in one of those omnipresent clear-glass Ikea frames that clip together on each side, and hung it above my nightstand. It wasn’t particularly novel-looking or interesting, but it was a good reminder to glance at before leaving the house, wallet-in-hand.

Sometime later, my wise and always-inspiring friend Christina sent me a link to an article about just how finitely constructed Anthropologie’s variety of shabby-chic is; you can read it here. I keep a printed copy of it in my file box and refer to it from time to time. Trouble is, there are a few things I just can't shake: I still really want that bed frame.

I Just Couldn't Wait

2009-08-02T18:09:00.000-07:00

Avocat en Salade

Avocado and Potato Salad

From The French Market: More Recipes from a French Kitchen

by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde

1 lb. boiling potatoes, preferably purple potatoes

2 bunches chives

1 or 2 red chile peppers

A bunch of flat-leaf parsley

2 Tbs creme fraiche

1 Tbs olive oil

juice of ½ lemon

sea salt, to taste

freshly ground black pepper, to taste

3 large ripe avocados

I did some research and found out that Mexican-style sour cream is just about the same as creme fraiche, and since neither the Co-Op nor Haggen had creme fraiche, I went for Dairigold's Crema Agria. The book suggests steaming the potatoes for 20 minutes, but without a steamer basket large enough to hold the lot, I boiled, skinning the potatoes after they cooled. Meanwhile, I sliced the chile and put it in the food processer with the chives and parsley. After it was finely chopped I added it to a bowl of the lemon juice, then stirred in the oil, crema, salt and pepper. Once the potatoes were cooled and chopped, I halved the avocados and spooned out the flesh. I then chopped the flesh into pieces as directed and added the potatoes. Finally, I poured the dressing over the top and tossed. The avocado's flavor takes a backseat to its texture, as the parsley and chile take center stage. It's just as delicious as I thought it would be, though; the whole batch was gone within two hours.

One Smash-Hit and a Flop

2009-08-02T12:01:00.000-07:00

Hopefully the heatwave is over; I am not impressed by extreme heat and my apartment would have been completely unbearable last week without excessive amounts of the following:

1) Ice Cream
2) Beer
3) Season 2 of Mad Men on DVD
4) BLTs made with Hempler’s Pepper Bacon
5) The Gaslight Anthem’s The ’59 Sound

The heat didn’t keep me out of the kitchen, though. Strangely, I think I did more cooking last week than any of the previous weeks since moving. I made a less-than-spectacular aioli last Saturday that’s not worth discussing. And then I discovered on successive, blisteringly hot evenings, one of the best things I’ve ever cooked followed by the worst recipe in the world.

The Best: Smitten Kitchen’s Asparagus with Chorizo and Crutons.

I check Smitten Kitchen almost everyday, and am always impressed with the goods. This recipe immediately stood out to me, though I don’t like chorizo and I didn't feel like adding almonds. I ended up with some pretty basic smoked turkey sausage, a can of cannellini beans, a dried out baguette and a pound of asparagus. I think you could easily swap the sausage for tofu or tempeh but the sausage juices really made the beans stand out. Next time I will toast the croutons in the oven before adding them to the pan. This is a perfect dinner for nights when you have no energy to cook but need something more comforting than a frozen pizza; I’d like to experiment with other veggies (maybe broccoli?) to see if the dish hits the same high.

The Worst: Emeril Lagasse's Cilantro-Avocado Potato Salad.

I don’t know anything about Emeril Lagasse except that he has his own line of cookware. I generally avoid those sorts of food celebrities (making exceptions for Martha Stewart and Nigella Lawson) in favor of food bloggers. Here’s what happened: I ordered myself a copy of Joanne Harris’ French Market cookbook and found a recipe for Avocat en Salade: purple potatoes mixed with avocado, chives, parsley and crème fraiche. The ingredients, mere words on a page, got me salivating. Finding myself at work on Thursday without my shopping list, however, led me to Google “Avocado Potato Salad” for a reminder of what I needed to pick up on the way home. Instead, I found the Cilantro-Avocado number, and noting that the weather was definitely more in line with lime juice than crème fraiche, I thought it would be a perfect accompaniment to Burger Night – a weekly tradition Joel and I have had since sometime around New Year’s.

While shopping for the potatoes, I stopped way short of the 2 pounds called for thinking that even 1 ½ pounds seemed like far too much. I was right. I came home and spent nearly an hour peeling and chopping potatoes, cooked them until tender, drained them and even let them cool slightly. Once they were added to the rest of the ingredients, I had mashed potatoes. I got excited anyway, thinking mashed potatoes + warm-weather trimmings would be tasty. It was horrible. I woke up the next morning feeling like I had somesort of stomach flu.

I’ve re-read the recipe several times to see if I just missed something – I miss important steps sometimes. I’ve always made regular potato salad by boiling the potatoes whole, first, and I’m sure that would have made a difference. The good news is I got a charming bag of purple potatoes at the farmer’s market yesterday and can’t wait to tackle the Avocat en Salade.

Since Last Time

2009-07-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

1) I read Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture and though certain chapters were far more academic than I expected (by no means a bad thing), it was still a fast and validating read. Somewhat recently, I was thinking about cast iron skillets. My thoughtstream ended at: Why aren't more things - most things, everything - like a cast iron skillet? They're so simple and do their job perfectly; they are affordable and therefore available to everyone; they hold up over time. Boxy metal Swingline staplers are like this, Absolut Vodka is like this. (The Le Parfait jar I bought for Joel to stick his mess of loose change-batteries-lighters-old ID cards-stray screws and bolts-etc. in is like this.) Corporations want our things to be disposable – we now purchase items that flaunt “design without craftsmanship.” It's gross. It's also really overwhelming to start thinking about everything you currently own that's made in China: very nearly everything is. The eco-chic grocery bags I saw in a magazine two years ago and had to order! (which are fraying like crazy, about to unravel completely) come with this attempt to absolve potential consumer-guilt:

Laughable - but the Chico Bag FAQ page does a good job of outlining the attention they pay to their manufacturers. Cheap, on the other hand, guarantees that even the American companies actively striving for high factory standards aren't attaining them, that it's impossible to effectively audit sketchy labor practices in China. I can't tour Chinese Factories and decide for myself, but it seems safe to assume the system is outright heinous. How long have I intuitively known this? Forever. And yet it's so easy to forget when roaming the isles of Target on a Bellingham-sized paycheck. I will now think (even) harder before I buy stuff.

2) I can't imagine anything more spirited or more Bellingham than a sage-colored soup trailer.

I finally, last week, occasioned to try the turkey + brie baguette sandwich.

Fantastically delicious, but very, very heavy. I'm in love.

3) My first piece of real art - also the first thing Joel and I have put up on our walls. Thanks to Cameron; he's a genius.

4) A trip to the Pleasant Valley Dairy.

Joel and I sampled the Smoked Gouda, Jalapeno Gouda, Peppercorn Gouda, Farmstead, Mutschli, and a "Dessert" Gouda spiced with cloves, cumin and caraway. The Farmstead and Smoked Gouda were by far the best; we snagged a block of each for less than $6 total.

5) A lovely half-day vacation in Portland. Joel rode his bike from Seattle to Portland, and we spent the Monday after breakfasting at Bijou (so charming), browsing Powell's, and sipping Stumptown lattes. Portland's fine - it's nice. I've never understood the mass exodus down there, though. Perhaps because I'm so content right here? Yesterday I titled an e-mail to my friend Lawrence "Lotus Eaters" - it was the subject of my Page-a-Day desk calendar - not at first realizing it was a fitting allegory for my past two weeks. I've been a blissed-out, sleepy homebody consumed by the four books I'm in the middle of, cooking and organizing, not thinking about the past or future, not worrying, contentedly leaving things half-done. It's definitely a new gear for me, and I'm growing rather used to it.

Scenes from the County

2009-07-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

I logged 91 miles around Whatcom County this afternoon, delivering bundles and boxes of Sustainable Connections' Food and Farm Finder to the libraries, shops and farm stands that distribute them outside of Bellingham.

I'm not entirely sure how I pushed the odometer so far, but I was on the road for four or so hours. Driving used to be my favorite way to both kill time and de-stress, and I put 30,000 miles on the Nissan Altima I got for highschool graduation when I first moved to Bellingham. I would skip my classes to drive around and explore my new home; I made a hobby out of finding backroads and secret paths. I love the view from the driver's seat and like many teenagers, driving my car as far as I wanted (always playing some mix-CD I'd stayed up late to make) was how I knew "freedom." Eventually, I found roads that were my favorites - Old Samish Road south of Fairhaven and Haxton Way around Gooseberry Point in particular - so I stopped exploring as much and settled into loops. Today was a nice revisit to unknown backroads, the relaxed mindset of being lost but in no hurry. I read Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays a couple months ago and was amused (but a little alarmed!) by how much I related to the protagonist's obsessive driving; I've now been car-less (in varying stages) since early December and had forgotten how calming it is behind the wheel at 60 miles per hour. Here are a few of the sights I saw along the way:

(A surprising bit of urban style inside Greene's Corner)

A Bird in the Courtyard

2009-07-08T22:56:00.001-07:00

At twenty-five I
keep the apartment
exceptionally
tidy: I

pay my bills I
iron my clothes I
go to work I
found a good man.

I drink a glass of wine when I
feel like it.

I don’t take vacations and I
don’t take sick days. (I
take B complex flax
oil and selenium supplements.) ...

There are a disappointing amount of days that I come home from work feeling like the mechanical “Fitter Happier” drone on OK Computer. It's not my job that gets to me, exactly, just the work week. It gets to everyone. It depresses creativity and makes us artificially exhausted. Still, I'm the sort of person that gets a bit bored during a 3-day weekend, and I do like having a reason to get out of bed before 9 AM most days. I used to think I would have a job that would be soul-saving, that would be a smooth balm to daily disappointments, minor crises, difficult relationships and self-consciousness. Over the course of two years I’ve found that I can live without a computer and high-speed internet and a car, and that I want to be tied to the earth and make (not buy) more of the things I need. And in that same time, I’ve become rather skeptical that a desk job can provide any of the grand-scale gratification I once thought it could. I’ve become apathetic about finding a corporate ladder to climb, and that seems like a sure and satisfying sign of progress. This week is my first of officially working a 4-day week – last Friday was a holiday so it didn’t truly count. My Fridays are now mine to sleep in, have a latte for lunch, and volunteer. I will be a bit poorer, but I’m shooting to become experience-rich.

I went out to the purported final Wisconsin Slim show last night – a sad occasion, but I’ve never seen the Green Frog more wired. Towards the end of the set, the entire place – fully packed – was up and into it. I didn’t notice immediately, but when I did and looked around, I was kind of blown away. The affair was easily one of The Best Shows Ever and I’m hoping, hoping, hoping Wisconsin will take it as a sign to keep on. I was delighted to find an IPA from Port Townsend on tap – the Hop Diggidy – and though I recommend seeking it out, it still "pale-ales" in comparison to Boundary Bay. Bellingham wins again.

Close to midnight, I walked back home in the rain to hull some strawberries and roast some beets. Beets: with the generosity of Joel’s co-worker Bill – who has a wonderful farm off the Hannegan, who graciously allows me to visit twice a month to ask ridiculous questions like, How is it possible that hens lay eggs when they have no contact with a rooster? – I’ve rigged up a small-scale CSA. This past weekend, Bill sent Joel and I home with a mountain of kale, swiss chard, strawberries, a lettuce mix, broccoli, zucchini, garlic, onions and beets. I have no experience with beets aside from the grated pile you get on the Big Salad from Juice It, and I vaguely remember sampling a pot of borscht made by my friend Tobias some years ago, but I knew I wanted to do something fun with them. On Monday, I visited my usual food-blog haunts and came up with nothing. Then I rather savvily Googled “Roasted Beets” thinking that might lead to something good and there it was: Roasted Beet Risotto. Perfect for a Wednesday night dinner with Crystal.

I scrapped the one-and-a-half hour roasting method detailed in the recipe for this quicker version, so that Crystal and I would be ready to get on with it after work. I’ve made a handful of different risottos before, each batch better than the last as I get the technique down but I have to tell you, it was at Crystal’s insistence that we take a break from the stove to walk Tug that led to our brilliant dinner. As I’m stirring constantly, the way I've practiced and as all risotto recipes demand, arguing that I can’t leave it alone for even a minute, and feeling dismayed that I’ve already been stirring for 15 plus minutes and having still diamond-hard rice, Crystal decides that we will dump a large portion of the remaining broth into the pot, put the lid on, turn the burner way, way down, and leave the apartment. When we came back ten minutes later, we had the fluffiest, creamiest risotto you can imagine. It’s my new method – adding broth slowly and stirring constantly for the first half of the cook time, and then letting it sit with two cups of broth for the next half, and then adding a touch more broth and stirring constantly again for a few additional minutes.

Joel came home from a long bike ride and wasn’t nearly as smitten with our valentine-colored success; he thought the beets had a "moldy, yeasty taste" and ate crackers and coffee for dinner instead.

I have this silly idea that I’d like to paint something with beet juice. Maybe food process a few and thicken it up with white acrylic paint or something? I’ll Google it. I’ve also been packing these bottle caps around since Joel, his brother Scott and I car camped at Gorge Lake last month:

I adore them, but don't know what to do with them. Any suggestions?

Hello State Street

2009-06-30T22:09:00.000-07:00

I’ve known I’d be moving since late March, and yet I was so unprepared to transition from my rather barren and ultra-tidy studio to the sure to end up cluttered one-bedroom I’m now in with Joel, that the past weekend was excruciating. On Monday morning, after two full U-Haul loads and a gazillion elevator trips up and down, five hours of cleaning my old apartment and five hours cleaning my new one, two arms and two legs spotted with red bruises, plus five more hours of volunteer work for Sustainable Connections thrown in on Sunday, I could barely believe it had really all happened.

I called in late to work Monday in order to turn in the keys to my studio, and stopped back by the old place en route to Windermere. When I looked around, it was pristine and fresh; I already missed the vast Southeast view of the Bellingham skyline and the tree branches that overhang the D Street entrance. In contrast, my new apartment – in addition to being horrifically disorganized – smelled like cigarette smoke and toxic chemicals.

I’ve now moved 21 times in my life, which seems like an awful lot for being only 25. At one year and two months, my last studio was the place I’ve lived the longest since moving away from home. It’s also the only place I’ve really been hesitant to leave. I generally look forward to moving: the first few nights in a new place echo with possibility and things you've forgotten you had turn up in unexpected places. Although my studio never grew old to me, the idea of a cozy apartment with Joel was too good to turn down. I’ve been overwhelmed by the dumpy-cheap motel smell of the new apartment, the lack of sleep and the torrent of fast food I’ve been living on for nearly two weeks, but the worst is over and I’m optimistic. I’ve armed myself with a gallon of vinegar, baking soda, and a spray bottle full of diluted cedarwood oil. And tonight, I made my very first home cooked meal in what seems like a month: Heidi Swanson’s Lively Up Yourself Lentil Soup. I adore Heidi Swanson – I love her writing for being thoughtful but non-chatty; I love her recipes for being wholesome but inventive.

Tonight, a towering pile of chopped kale was an oasis in the Pizza Time pizza desert I've been traversing; dicing an onion at the counter and stirring the soup on the stove made me forget that splayed behind me was a living room that looks like this:

I have yet to buy saffron, so I used plain yogurt with no pizazz for the topping. I’ve been lusting for saffron since the first time I attempted to cook a meal – a (not very good at all) paella, made in the apartment I subleased from Don McMaster during the summer of 2003. Crystal and I had to add half a block of cheddar cheese to make it palatable. I intend to make some sort of milestone out of the day I buy saffron for the first time – I’ve been saving that day up, actually, for a time when I really need something spectacular to happen.

Aside from the move, I was one of the many judges at Pizzafest 2009 in Fairhaven the weekend before last and gave my very enthusiastic vote for best pie to Pizzazza. The pizza they brought for sampling was, I believe, the Rustic Chicken - so delicious and definitely worth tasting yourself. My volunteer gig on Sunday was inspiring: for Sustainable Connections’ Imagine This! Home and Landscape Tour, I was stationed at the home of Wildroot Botanicals' Leslie and Orion, who have chosen to use their front yard as an enormous vegetable and medicinal plant garden. They also keep chickens, and have a greenhouse already boasting red tomatoes – all on a residential lot about a mile and a half from downtown. I was, and am, awestruck, and could have sat out in their yard under the Mock Orange tree all day.

Joel returns from a three-day camping trip tomorrow, so we’ll finally be able to tackle this new apartment together. I have lived with one boyfriend before, and Joel has lived with two girlfriends. I can't help but wonder if we'll bring any of these past people into our new home - if their habits and interests are embedded in our own. I guarantee it will turn out marvelously; the place will air out, we'll buy a nice couch, maybe start making homemade ketchup.

Polenta Torta

2009-06-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

Last week Molly Wizenberg, the minor-celebrity blogger behind Orangette, came to Bellingham to promote her new book. Instead of reading in the basement of Village Books, Ciao Thyme was the chosen venue, and sample foods, taken from recipes included in Molly’s book, were served. I'm much more interested in how pretty Orangette is than in Molly’s writing, but the girl has indisputably great taste and finds some fabulous recipes. The Ciao Thyme studio was packed and sweaty, but charming; Molly was very polished and gracious.

Taking a cue from Orangette, and the other lovely food blogs I follow, I've made a discovery that's worth sharing: Polenta Torta. Even with having been predominantly vegetarian for the past eight years, my experience with polenta before Sunday was nil. My unfamiliarity with it led me to dismiss polenta recipes as too exotic – ironic as it’s actually anything but. I found this recipe in Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food, no less. I don’t think of corn as being particularly nutritious, but the tastiness of this dish leaves me unconcerned. I’d guess polenta is about as healthy/not-healthy as pasta noodles, and the torta is very much like a thicker, spongier lasagna.

I used Bob’s Red Mill polenta mix for this recipe, and the back of the package says to cook the polenta for 30 minutes. Alice's recipe says to cook it for an hour. Although, she says, the polenta will be thoroughly cooked in 25 - 30 minutes, cooking it a full hour develops the flavor better. With that in mind, it's important to know that this recipe is easy, but it isn’t fast: you’re looking at at least two hours in the kitchen and, most likely, one very sore arm from grating cheese and whisking polenta. It’s also rather heavy for a summertime dinner, but I promise it’s delicious.

Alice’s torta recipe is straight polenta, sauce and cheese, but I chose to add two layers of wilted spinach sautéed with red onion. She also suggests a homemade tomato sauce, but I’ve used the punchy Newman’s Own Sockarooni tomato sauce instead.

To make the polenta base, Alice Waters style:

Boil 4 c water.

Once boiling, add 1 c polenta and 1 tsp salt. Start out whisking constantly until the polenta is dissolved.

Cook for 1 hour “at a bare simmer” (I interpreted this to mean pointing the knob of my electric stovetop at “3”), stirring occasionally; Alice says to add water if the polenta gets too thick.

After the hour, stir in 3 T butter and ½ c grated parmesan. Have a greased baking dish standing by.

I doubled the polenta recipe Sunday night and came up with far too much polenta; last night, I made the suggested amount but came up with too little. I’m going to guess that 1 ½ c polenta and 6 c water is the way to go. I also found it hard to leave the polenta alone for more than two or three minutes before it started sticking to the bottom of the pan, so I would recommend sticking it out for that hour very close to the kitchen.

For the wilted spinach, I started with about 15 minutes left before the end of the hour. After heating olive oil, adding and sautéing the onion for 5 or so minutes, I added a very large bunch of spinach (you’ll need more than you think; the spinach contracts quite radically) and some salt then haphazardly pushed it around in the pan for two or three minutes more before taking it off the burner and letting it wait.

To make the torta:

Grate 1 c parmesan and slice 8 oz. of mozzarella

Spread a layer (about half of the total) of polenta in the baking dish, and top with half of the tomato sauce. Add half of the mozzarella and half of the parmesan. If using the spinach mixture, add it on top of the cheese. Do one more round of polenta, sauce, cheeses and spinach, and then let the torta sit for 30 minutes to let the polenta firm up.

Finally, preheat the oven and bake the torta for 30 minutes at 350. And don’t be surprised or ashamed if you eat the whole thing yourself, straight from the baking dish.

Up, Down, East, West

2009-06-11T17:33:00.000-07:00

I was very sleepy at work on Monday, and my mind couldn’t focus on spreadsheets, or financial statements, or court pleadings. Instead, I kept thinking about the bright blue robin’s eggs I photographed Saturday afternoon, and the yummy-but-sloppy polenta torta I made for dinner Sunday night. I also started thinking about Bay & Champion: I have a page-long list of places around town I’d planned to capture and write about, but this isn’t supposed to be a guidebook, and it doesn’t feel right to go around hunting things down and checking them off a list. I’m not any sort of expert; I only want to uncover the simple, the ordinary, the Bellingham culture that’s as breezy as the air coming off the bay. My list of places (and events and treats) will eventually turn up, I’m sure, but on their own time as they pop up naturally. Meanwhile, I’m going to be a bit looser here, and probably a great deal more personal.

Besides the robin’s eggs and the torta, the past five weeks have been a landslide of adventures. At the beginning of May, Joel and I hiked up to the Oyster Dome. I’ve never been much of an outdoorsperson, but I’m starting to come around. I appreciate hiking mostly for the exercise and opportunity to get out of the house; I have yet to feel any sort of grand connection to wilderness. The view from the top is, of course, sensational – but I was far more taken with the view from the Samish Overlook; the farms laid out below remind me of flying over the Mid-West, with its endless, quirky patterns of crops. The islands West of the Oyster Dome lookout just aren’t as inspiring to me; looking South from the Overlook, you can see the tiny grove of trees that mark Edison, with Farm To Market Road shooting out and over the hill. Samish Island and Anacortes appear more clearly, and that entire nook of land and towns is even more ideal and romantic to me than my memories of Southern France.

The Samish Overlook is also better suited for a picnic lunch or dinner, as you can drive right up to it. Joel and I snacked on tasty sandwiches atop the Oyster Dome, but once we were back down and resting on the Overlook, I couldn’t help but think it would be a prime location for a drawn out, lazy, multiple-course affair.

The following weekend took us East to Concrete, where I was finally able to quench a longtime curiosity. I’m not sure how or when I first heard of Concrete, but I was immediately intrigued by its low-brow reputation. I tried to explain the allure – a hick town in the middle of nowhere apparently didn’t have the same, pressing draw to Joel – but after chatting with a co-worker and former resident then subsequently renting This Boy’s Life, he was as hooked as me. We drove out on the sunny Saturday that happened to be Concrete’s 100th anniversary; we missed all of the planned festivities, but had much fun poking around in the few small shops. I found a nice selection of cast iron pans and Mason jars at the main hardware store, but a $4.50 copy of Dr. Weil’s Natural Health, Natural Medicine was my sole souvenir, purchased from the poorly stocked but well-intended Rainy Day Books. We picked through junk at a neon-blue shack run by a man named Rhino, and took a random dirt road up to an abandoned mill of some sort. Concrete is definitely worth a trip; the two blocks of shopfronts on Main Street is as surreal as a de Chirico painting. I regret not trying a local restaurant; the Red Cedar Inn looked like it might have some good burgers.

The weekend after Concrete brought us a trip to Port Townsend to meet up with my mom for her 50th birthday. Joel was adamant that we should spend the night, and found us an amazing castle of a hotel. I spent my early childhood in Port Angeles and am no stranger to Port Townsend’s charms, but after a full day of perusing upscale kitchenware shops and walking around the waterfront and around the beach and lighthouse, I was smitten. I nearly denounced Bellingham – I started planning a move to Port Townsend. At dusk, after dinner at The Belmont and en route to a punk show at the American Legion Hall, we passed a guy playing gypsy-style violin on the street and I was immediately sure Port Townsend and I were truly meant to be. Violin players of Whatcom County - why aren’t you on the streets at night? I gave that guy $3.00 in quarters if that’s any motivation for you.

Port Townsend got me thinking about Bellingham’s waterfront redevelopment, though, and how I should be paying closer attention to it; there is nothing more lovely than a waterfront boardwalk on a warm evening. We have a lot to look forward to. Port Townsend is exquisite, but maybe a little too finely sanded; I’m far too amused by the late-night dance parties on the corner of Railroad and Holly to really be serious about leaving town.

Strange Religion

2009-04-30T07:39:00.000-07:00

From 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM, Monday through Friday, I sit at a desk organizing paperwork and taking phone calls. Sometimes it’s interesting, and sometimes it's not but I tell you: I positively could not do the job either physically or mentally without an arsenal of colorful and fun office supplies. I have this idea that if the office supplies I use for work (or the pans I use to cook in, or the tupperware I carry my lunch to work in) are beautiful and well-made, or at least conscientiously purchased, the time I spend using them will lend a greater fulfillment to the process at hand than just using whatever happens to be laying around or bought on the cheap. And if conscientiously purchased office supplies were my religion, which they very well might be, then Grigg’s Stationers would be my church.

Grigg’s has been around forever – and they have framed photos of each of the managers, from the turn of last century to the present, behind the cash register to prove it. They’re a local, family business and friendly as can be. This is a pretty awesome deal; do you think they have cute, family-owned stationary stores like this in downtown Seattle? Not that I could ever find. A fancy paper store with some calligraphy pens on 1st Ave., and an “Office Max Express” on 4th Ave. was the closest I came. So, if you aren’t yet a believer, take my word for it: Grigg’s is a true gem.

Like a college bookstore, Grigg’s sells most things individually, so you never have to buy more than you need, or commit to five pens when you only want to test run one. My top picks? The gorgeous rainbow of Sharpie markers, file folders and Post-it flags…wait – what? You say you have no need for turquoise Post-It flags or cotton-candy pink file folders? Well I’m sure you have a pair of rusty old scissors in your junk drawer that needs replacing, a poster you haven’t hung for lack of thumb tacks, or a spiral notebook that’s running out of empty pages. It’s time to make Grigg’s a habit for these sorts of things.

L'avventura di Mozzarella

2009-04-22T16:42:00.000-07:00

While the aim of this blog is to capture all of the wonderful things to do and see around Bellingham, it has occurred to me that sometimes, “all of the wonderful things to do and see around Bellingham” will in fact take place in my apartment – or, more particularly, in my kitchen. Please be patient – I have no intentions to make this a food blog or a personal blog, but since food and me are two of my most very favorite things, it’s inevitable that they will be mentioned. And probably with great frequency.

Recently, a fabulous burger chef by the name of Joel Myrene gave me a copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle. I whipped through it in about 32 hours and I highly recommend the book to any of you who haven’t yet read it and are interested in where food comes from. There are a hundred great ideas laced through the pages, but the one I got most excited about was making homemade Mozzarella; I called my friend Crystal (who is perhaps best known for keeping a block of Tilamook cheddar in her dorm room mini-fridge and eating it like one would an apple or nectarine) and we agreed that this was an adventure we couldn't resist. I got a gallon of Edaleen 2% and some citric acid at the Bellingham Food Co-Op. Crystal found rennet tablets at the Skagit Valley Co-Op, but the hunt for liquid rennet nearly shut down our operation before it began. I made several calls, and finally tracked some down at Terra Organica. With Mr. Tug Beaumont, a very large stainless steel pot and a meat thermometer in tow, Crystal and I began on a journey – hoping for the best, but fearing the worst. Cheesemaking, after all, does seem intimidating. I’m here to tell you it shouldn’t.

Well, okay. Truthfully, it may take some practice because when I researched examples of homemade mozzarella on Google Images the next day, I was disappointed to see how measly and hard our curds were in comparison. The cheese we ended up creating was thick and rubbery (but in a good way!) and more closely resembled the halloumi cheese I was first acquainted with in 2004 when I came across this scrumptious delight from Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Bites, than mozzarella. After a whole bottle of wine and approximately two hours, though, having some sort of cheese (as opposed to a stainless steel pot with a gallon of warm milk in it) was just as good as having a sack of gold. Halloumi is notorious for grilling well, and likewise, our mozzarella (mozzaroumi? hallourella?) was picture perfect atop sliced Italian peasant bread smothered with pesto and broiled for a few minutes:

Crystal made an incredible salad:

Tug provided a whole lotta cuteness:

and Bellingham was majestic at twilight:

Pizza Lust

2009-04-21T07:11:00.000-07:00

I started keeping a list titled The Best Things about Bellingham a few months ago. The list started on a weekday, after I randomly wandered into La Vie En Rose looking for something to munch on and I fell upon pure treasure: tucked behind the pastries in the front display case lay a few rectangular slabs of pizza.

Being that I am positively nuts about pizza, I was tickled with this discovery. The slice I took back to my office for lunch that day was the thread of inspiration behind my Best of Bellingham list, so it’s only fitting that this pizza should be the first subject discussed on Bay & Champion.

Greasy and sloppy it’s not – and I readily acknowledge that times exist where the only pizza that will do is of that variety. La Vie’s pizza isn’t going to nurse you into a full-bellied food coma after a night of too much whiskey, but instead, is the perfect lunch-time antidote to a boring day at work. It’s vaguely rustic, delightfully simple, and oozing with flavor. The dough is neither thick nor thin, feels slightly doughy and is crustless, serving as the perfect yeasty-flavored base for the tangy-sweet tomato sauce. The toppings are selected by La Vie staff daily; in my experience, red onions are a constant, and pepperoncinis are frequent. I’m usually rather indifferent toward pepperoncinis, never going to lengths to seek them out - but somehow, on top of this pizza, they are transformed into shining, brilliant stars of the pizza topping kingdom. The veggies manage to keep their bite, while effortlessly blending in among the sauce and salty, melted – almost crispy – cheese. The whole ends up being a roaring symphony, proving it doesn’t take much, just a few quality ingredients in a smart combination, to create a culinary bang.