so california right now

So I'm at lunch today, devouring my delectable In-N-Out burger & fries on the sunny patio under the palm trees and hugging the freeway, and it strikes me just how very california this is.

You know what I mean?

Yeah. I'm still in love with this place.

photo credit: unsureshot (flickr)

sunday breakfast

Variations on a stone fruit theme. Both were first-time experiments. The one on the right is a recipe from Grandma* Bittman; the one on the left, which is the one that graduated to Sunday evening barbecue, came to me in a dream. Or so I say.

*not really my Grandma, but merely an affectionate term for Mark Bittman, author of the How to Cook Everything books. No malicious or derisive intent; only the result of a moment of stupidity/inventive listening when I confused Bittman with Joseph's grandmother. That didn't really clear it up, did it.

still life with bottles and mini-blinds

This is what happens when you go shopping at Whole Foods at 9:30pm with only a vague impression of what you are shopping for.

two reasons why i love california in the summer

1. Outdoor yoga.

Once a week I end the work day with yoga class, on a shady spot of lawn outside tile-roofed, arcade-lined building with a Spanish name on a peaceful, idyllic campus. Bliss. Then when I come home I feel like dancing. And I usually do. Like an idiot. But you'll have to take my word for it, since there are as of yet no witnesses to this phenomenon.

2. Fresh apricots.

When I was growing up—wait. I'm still doing that. Let's try that again: when I was a kid in Maryland, we always had dried apricots in the pantry. Always. Many a school lunch included a little sandwich bag (or snack bag, once they became available—remember how great they were?) full of dried apricots. Though I never grew to flat-out dislike them, I often tired of them. Every once in a while I wondered why other kids seemed not to come from environments so heavily saturated with dried apricots.

At the time of year when fresh apricots became available in the stores, Mom would always bring some home. But she was never satisfied. They were never as good as her memories of the fresh apricots of her California youth. I never understood what the fuss was about. I mean, I've always loved fresh fruit. Even in the days (and they were many—sorry Mom&Dad) when my I-will-eat-this list contained about fifteen specific items, fruit was always acceptable. But fresh apricots never impressed me. The ones I tried at home in Maryland were for the most part bland, mealy, or worse: both. I didn't see the point, but Mom kept buying them, kept trying and hoping that they would live up to her expectations of the apricot in its most exalted form.

Well. Mom: my apologies. Now I understand.

PS: if in the course of your grocery shopping you happen to see angelcots, get them. They are called Saintly with good reason.

maybe pomegranate is passé by now

But this still caught my eye:

Pretty, eh? (Besides the resolution. Sorry. Cameraphone.)

It's really too bad I didn't decide to splurge on a bottle, because when I got to the checkout line the store's computers were down, and though I thought we were just going to wait a few minutes until they were back up, shortly thereafter the clerks started bagging groceries and sending us off, "whole paycheck" intact.

Of course, this happened on the day I got totally boring stuff like onions and potatoes and cheap generic cereal, the only day I didn't have a single excessive item in my basket. Not that I'm complaining. Just observing.

 

all-natural watercolors

in progress:

drying:

ta-da:

colors:

Cruz de Malta yerba mate

Mighty Leaf organic Spring Jasmine green tea

black bean juice (water used for cooking them)

spotted at whole foods last night

Sometimes, when I am at the grocery store at night, I see things that amuse me enough that I must record them.

Remember the Coca Puffs in Utah? Well, here in California I've found a milk substitute called Hemp Dream. Pour those two into a bowl, and that's part of your complete breakfast trip. 

I know, hemp itself isn't a drug. 

Neither is coca. 

I'm just having fun. As were, apparently, the Hemp Dream package designers:

Subtle, yet effective.

28: vine

I spent the afternoon in Napa.

Yes, a day in wine country. And I don't drink. 

I inhaled the volatile esters of some nice fruity cabernets and for once in my life the smell of alcohol didn't make me physically ill. As my friend tasted and compared the 2003, 2002, and 1999 vintages, I read the lovely, sometimes fanciful descriptions of the different varieties, one of which was purportedly "opulently structured." 

We got to see the Quixote winery, the whimsical Hundertwasser's last design. (I mentioned the Austrian architect once before.)

The landscape in Napa county is stunning: all that greenery and the rows of old-growth vines rolling by, the occasional babbling brook, and dramatic open skies. Plus, wildflower season is coming on, so a rainbow of poppies and my favorite yellow daffodils were popping up along the roadside. And the air is so clean and refreshing. The word idyllic comes to mind. So does fantasyland.

As my friend made his purchases, I checked out the labels for design inspiration. Eponymous is nice, as is Blackbird. And there was another one that I made a mental note of, but I've forgotten it already. This is why I usually write things down.

As we drove back toward the city, the odd little world of monoculture and almost surreal natural and societal environment melted away behind us. And yet I know that somehow it still exists. As do a lot of other microcosms that I have little to no contact with in daily life. In some ways, it's not really that small of a world, after all.

(all photos mine, of quixote winery)

22: or until golden

There's nothing quite like baking in the middle of the night.

This batch of cookies is the first thing I've baked since I came to California. Yes, that's right. It's been nearly seven months. I'm not quite sure why it took me so long. Maybe I just needed a worthy cause. You know, besides, 'I want cookies and therefore I am going to bake three dozen and eat them all by myself.' Doesn't make a lot of sense.

It was Claire's idea. And she always has good ideas. (And it just so happens that today he admitted to having a serious sweet tooth.)

So I consulted my new copy of How to Cook Everything, selected my recipes, and went out to gather the ingredients, including all the essential "baking needs" (I always found that designation on grocery store aisles sort of amusing. I'm weird). I didn't have any flour. I didn't even have sugar. Not to mention cookie sheets.

It wasn't until sometime after midnight that I got around to the chemistry experiment (yeah, yeah, I'm lying about the time again). I apparently have no proper measuring spoons, so I totally guessed on the baking powder. Also, I completely forgot the vanilla. Luckily, the cookie sheets fit in my somewhat diminutive oven, and the finished product turned out quite nice, I think.

Behold: 

Chocolate Chip 

Blueberry 

Oatmeal Cookies

There's something about baking sweet treats in the middle of the night, making messes in the kitchen while everyone is asleep, that's... I don't know, really. Like it just fits, somehow, even though it may seem unusual. The act of mixing the dough and then arranging bits of it in neat rows on a cookie sheet, it nestles into the dark, quiet hours between midnight and dawn, as a drowsy cat on a sunny windowsill. Like it belongs there, like this is the time baking should be done.

I must say it's more fun with a partner in crime. I'm thinking of the epic Larson cinnamon rolls, countless pans of late-night brownies and lemon bars, and industrial-sized batches of rice-krispie-oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies that I used to bake with Claire (of course, who else?) It's not so bad going it alone, though.

21: replenish

I suddenly want to be a farmer.

I have been reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan's fascinating exploration of our nation's industrial food system and some possible alternatives. Representing the alternative in food production, Joel Salatin attained something akin to rockstar status once he was featured in Pollan's book in 2006.

Mr. Salatin spoke at Stanford on Thursday evening. Several hundred people turned out to hear him, and he did not disappoint. Certainly no country bumpkin, he is clearly a very intelligent man who is entirely devoted to (a stance which includes motivation by love) his farming by smart and unconventional (oddly, most conventional methods in this country are simply counterintuitive) methods. Plus, he is a thoroughly entertaining speaker (not to mention inspirational, even though that sounds kind of cheesy).

A self-described "Christian libertarian capitalist environmentalist lunatic," Salatin is the owner of Polyface Farms in rural Swoope (pronounced swope, with a long o), Virginia. His "beyond organic" farm is grass-based and thrives on naturally-evolved interspecies relationships. He calls it allowing chickens to express their chickenness, pigs to express their pigness, and so on. As descriptors of Polyface, words like holistic, circular, and sustainable join the ranks of idyllic, pastoral, and communal.

As a Christian, Salatin believes that his mission is to be a steward of the land and to return it to its Garden of Eden state. 

There are plenty of good reasons why people of faith ought to be conscientious of the way they treat the earth and all its inhabitants, including humans of course, but also all other forms of life. I remember attending an excellent lecture with Julie in our freshman year of college. Professor George Handley spoke about LDS perspectives on environmental stewardship. I don't remember any specifics now, but I do remember getting a general impression that I might articulate as "Duh, why don't more people see how much sense this makes? The gospel + environmentalism = resonance." I really ought to write more about this another day; I think it's just one facet of how the gospel can be applied, as we like to say, to everyday life, and with eternal consequence for good. (I just discovered this LDS Earth Stewardship website; will be checking it out and likely reporting on it here later.)

Mr. Salatin reports that, based on the demographics of current U.S. farm owners, about 50% of the nation's farms will change hands in the next 10-15 years. Somehow I find that really exciting. Without too much imagination, I can see myself in a decade or so farming a nice green patch of land in the central valley, perhaps. Maybe you'd like to purchase the farm adjacent and we can be neighbors as we return to our agricultural heritage and commune with the land and its creatures?

(photo: turkeys at Polyface, by Spicy Bear)

16: i see

As a general rule, room temperature is not an ideal state for a beverage.

However, many products are stocked that way in the stores. Cranberry juice, Dr Pepper, tequila, Vitamin Water... just to name a few. This makes sense, of course. No need to waste energy on refrigeration of products that will not spoil without it.

Still, I prefer to consume liquids either hot (think chocolate, chamomile, or related families) or chilled. So I've gotten into the habit of tossing newly-purchased bottles of room-temperature beverages into the freezer to quickly chill the contents. The problem is, approximately 59% to 83% of the time, I completely forget that I have done so. Vanessa will attest to this phenomenon. It was a particularly frequent occurrence during the thesis-writing days (which were also fueled by large quantities of hot beverages).

And since the room-temperature beverages that I purchase are always water-based and never ethanol-based, they always freeze. Sometimes I snap out of my moronic moment in time and the subject has only reached a slushy state. I've found that Cherry Coke and the dragonfruit-flavored Vitamin Water in fact work quite nicely that way.

At other times I have been known to leave two-liter bottles in the freezer overnight. Solid. Tonight, I deposited a bottle of Diet Coke into the icing chamber a little before 6 pm. After returning home from orchestra rehearsal, I remembered that I had just bought some Diet Coke today and it would be nice to pour a glass before sitting down to finish a movie I had started earlier. It was then that I also remembered that it was in the freezer. It was about 11 pm. Giant bottle-shaped Diet-Coke popsicle, anyone?

It's sitting on a towel next to the radiator, slowly metamorphosing into a more readily drinkable form. Sometimes I am nearly blinded by my own brilliance. (Like just now when I tried to type that sentence with my fingers one key off: it came out Domryimrd...)

(photo credit: Darren Hester)

15: mustered

While in San Francisco yesterday, I spent a good amount of time wandering around Potrero Hill.

At one point I stopped in a little corner market and asked: 

—You wouldn't happen to have any yerba mate, would you?

—What?

—Yerba mate...?

—What? Mustard?

He finally pointed me to the selection of herbal teas. No yerba, of course, but the shop owner suggested Walgreens. I didn't go to Walgreens. I continued on my way, and laughed. I wasn't really expecting to find what I was looking for, but I wasn't expecting that much confusion, either. Silly me, I guess I should have. Nothing like sharing a hot cup of mustard with a friend on a cold rainy day, I suppose.

I had thought that I would find some (yerba, not mustard) in the Mission. I remember having seen a little shop on 24th St with an Argentine flag in its window, but somehow I missed it even as I strolled the length of it between Mission and Potrero. I think it's because I was on the phone with Claire. A worthy distraction, anyway.

After returning home, I sent an email out to a mailing list for area Argentines, asking where they buy their yerba. Instant responses. There seem to be several good options in the area, including a few near Palo Alto, as well as one on 24th in San Francisco—and now I know the cross-street!

Technology can be a wonderful thing.

(photo credit: Gerard Girbes)

a grotesquely serendipitous combination

As seen in my Google Reader this morning: 

(click to enlarge... or don't)

Some things just need to be shared.

plop plop fizz fizz

For the most part, I consume a fairly healthy diet. But when I feel even mildly ill, all I want is Saltine crackers and 7up. What with the high fructose corn syrup and all, I know that I cannot be biologically evolved to crave these highly-processed foodstuffs (can you tell that I've been reading Michael Pollan?), so I'm sure it's a cultural thing. No doubt the connection is largely psychological: I have Saltine-and-7up memories from childhood sick days, and somehow the pair has been built up in my mind as a semi-magical elixir, despite how unhealthy I know the components to be. I figure, since I never eat Saltines or drink 7up unless I'm feeling sick, it's not so bad to let them sneak in a couple of days a year, right? If nothing else, they make me think that I feel better. And they give me some calories when I don't feel like getting them from anything else.

What do you crave when you're sick?

what i realized with despair as i tried to fall asleep last night

A vegan diet precludes chocolate.

!

If I were Vanessa, I would have had a big bowl of wheat chex for breakfast this morning.

a year in preview: ABCs of 2009

Ah, the new year's resolutions. I never really liked that terminology. I think it's because the word resolution implies that a person means to do away with a problem that was left unsolved at the end of the last year, possibly due to a broken resolution made at the beginning of the last year. And so the typical new year's resolutions tend to be about the same every year, most items on the list remaining perpetually unresolved.

I am certainly not immune to the allure of new beginnings, but I prefer to think of the new year as a blank page rather than a blank slate. I'm taking pen to paper on a new chapter, not an entirely new book. And I didn't burn everything that my life wrote in previous years.

Well, now that I've set the semantic scenery (a conspicuous linguist am I), I give you now my list of twenty-six goals, predictions, and dreams for this year that we number 2009. Question them, critique them, adapt them into your own lists, make alternate suggestions, mock them; just please, don't call them resolutions. Thank you.

ABCs of skylark's 2009:

Adventuring

Bizarrities

Canadian escapade

Dinner parties

Eccentric acquaintances

Forest exploration

Grad school applications

Hikes with new buddies

Iphone purchase

John Steinbeck pilgrimage

Kiwicha in Bolivia

Long bike rides

Modern dance

New blog

Oboe performance

Published translations

Quechua classes

Romance and heartbreak

Sufjan live

Twitter tweets

Underground art

Vegan experimentation

Weekend in Austin

Xerophyte adoption

Yuppietown to hippietown

Zapateao

and the boxcar goes to...

Thanks to all of you who participated in the first ever etxerantz balderdash contest. It was fun to see what you came up with, and many of your answers made me laugh. Out loud. Repeatedly. In a manner that might have been embarrassing had anyone been around to hear it.

It was not easy to choose the winners. But I said that I would, so here we go:

First of all, a bonus point goes to Kim for cross-bread. I don't know about you, but whenever I go to the grocery store I see a number of products that easily fall into the category of cross-breads. Sprouted wheat sourdough with flaxseed, anyone?

Honorable mention goes to Mac for his definition of mysteriopus: 

/mi steeree ō'pəss/ n - a large cat-like carnivorous dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period whose method of hunting involved spreading mud on the upper part of its face and around its eyes in order to paralyze its prey with suspense. [etymology 'unknown']

Honorable mention goes to Vanessa for both of her entries. Although I had to disqualify mysteri.opus on the grounds that it was not a clearly circumscribed definition, it deserves comment because (1) the film in question might be a good example of a mysteriopus, as Vanessa implies (i.e., a work—in this case, a film—focusing on a mystery), (2) that scene always makes me laugh, and (3) it was uncannily appropriate in light of the fact that when I saw Vanessa's answers I happened to have just finished reading And Then There Were None, which continually made me think of—and want to watch—the movie Clue. 

Vanessa's second definition:

lanudary=wool milk

kind of makes me gag, but it was too charmingly nerdy in its etymological literalness to ignore.

First prize goes to Claire for her definition of mysteriopus:

a many legged (and therefore footed) creature whose leg count has yet to be determined by science.The centipede and millipede look practically footless in comparison.

And the grand prize goes to FoxyJ for her definition of lanudary:

what happens when you need to do laundry but have no clean clothes to wear while doing it; hopefully this doesn't happen in a public place.

The winners do not really get boxcars. Sorry. I know that would be cool. Mostly I picked that word because I like it and it sounds a little like Oscar. FoxyJ wins a Librarian Action Figure with Amazing Push-button Shushing Action (not in its original packaging, but like new. includes stack of accessory books and trading card). Claire wins the pleasure of my company in Toronto, probably sometime in March. Okay, so that was going to happen anyway. I'll bring some other prize, too. I don't know what yet, so it'll be a sur-prize. You honorable mentionees, well, you win all the glory that comes with being mentioned honorably on my blog. 

Thanks for playing, everyone, and Merry Christmas! Look out for the dangers of public lanudary and lurking mysteriopuses.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the edifice

not a creature was stirring, not even a mysteriopus...

what's in a name? have a taste and see

Sometimes my brain does very odd things with words. I am not referring to the mildly bizarre, yet simple, word associations like grateful --> full of graters or confusions like did he die in the fire --> upgrade to papaya which, though perhaps surprising, are nevertheless logically traceable in morphological and/or phonetic terms.

No, no, here I am thinking of an even weirder phenomenon.

Exhibit A: Lenscrafters.

Remember Lenscrafters? Sure, they're still around. These days they don't seem to be advertising much, though, at least not like they were a couple of decades ago. Recognize this?



There is really no reason that this ad should be memorable. It's not funny; it's not clever; it's not aesthetically pleasing; it has no catchy theme music. The 3-D graphics--the lab dropping into the store--were pretty cool for their time, I guess, but not spectacular. The apparently 80s fashion may be amusing now, but it's not really all that glaring and, in the 80s, it wasn't really strange.

Nothing, indeed, makes this commercial memorable except that, for me, it conjures up crackers. That seems simple enough, given the visual and aural similarities between the words crafters and crackers. But it's not that simple, I tell you. This unassuming, and really rather boring, commercial, creates for me the impression of a very specific taste. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but it has always been the same, ever since I first saw the ad as a very young child. The best description that I can formulate at the moment is like a sort of stale Saltine cracker that is not very salty and slightly sweet besides.

Seriously. Where does that come from?


Exhibit B: Whitney

Here is another one. It is similar to Exhibit A both in effect and in duration: I can remember experiencing both phenomena since I was about five years old.

However, Exhibit B is, as I see it, far more inexplicable.

I'll keep this compact and posit just the question:

Why should the name Whitney make me think of, and nearly experience, the fragrant, sweet, just slightly tangy taste of vanilla yogurt, specifically the Yoplait variety?

Really.


Does this happen to anyone else?

ten times ten and seven times seven

This is my one-hundredth post on Etxerantz.

As it happens, never in the first ninety-nine posts did I mention where the name etxerantz comes from. It is a Basque word, etxe meaning "house" or "home," -rantz being the directive case suffix (itself a compound of the allative -ra, "(going) to," and the destinitive -rentzat, "for"), indicating "toward." Hence the full title, Etxerantz - Toward Home. Now you know: both where the name comes from, and how nerdy I am. But you probably had a pretty good idea of the latter already.

I wanted to do something special to commemorate my hundredth post. Like it or not, I am conditioned to measure accomplishments in numbers. And the number 100, in our base-ten society and double-is-better culture (like it or not), is kind of a big deal. My first blog topped out at 55 posts before I retired it; interestingly, the next one ended up with exactly 55 posts as well. (In its defense, it was meant to be short-lived, documenting only my five-week stay in Peru.) My photo blog is marching steadily toward its centennial, but, being very young still, shan't celebrate the big three digits until February. Having reached one hundred posts here helps me to be optimistic about the future of this writing space. I hope to celebrate with you many hundreds more.

Let's do one thing at a time, though, shall we? The task at hand is, or at least my desire was, to write a special commemorative centennial post. However, I did not come up with anything meaningfully worthy of such a weighty calling, and rather than spend more time brooding over it, thus unnecessarily delaying the next etxerantz installment--who really cares that it's the one immediately following the ninety-ninth, anyway?--I opted to post something that has nothing to do with the number 100 (though number 3 under the second category comes pretty close).

That said, one might be surprised by how much time and energy I managed to put into what one might have expected to be something of a throwaway blog post. Ah, but I take these silly lists seriously, you see. I'm doing my duty here (not that I don't enjoy it): I was tagged, after all. And I liked Vanessa's variation on the sevens theme. That was a lot of v's. Here's my own slightly modified edition:

7 Things I Can Do:
1. ride a bike
2. write
3. host a slumber party
4. surprise people by speaking Spanish when they least expect it
5. get lost in strange cities (and enjoy the experience thoroughly)
6. play the oboe (and English horn, when I can get my hands on one)
7. cartwheels

7 Things I Cannot Do:
1. speed-read
2. fly a plane
3. control the size of my netflix queue
4. fall asleep with cold feet
5. understand everything
6. ski
7. survive without water

7 Favorite Foods:
1. lomo saltado
2. tacos al pastor
3. tofu
4. pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream
5. costa pork salad
6. snow day black bean soup (it's kind of a family recipe)
7. chocolate (pretty much any variety, but especially the hot, drinkable kind)

7 Books I am Currently Reading (or at least intending to read in the near future)
1. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
2. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
3. Casi una mujer by Esmeralda Santiago
4. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
5. Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
6. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
7. A Rare Benedictine: The Advent of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters

7 Songs That I am Currently Listening to Obsessively *Note: if you follow no other link on this page, you really ought to click on the one labeled "Elephants on Parade." you won't regret it.*
1. Headphones by I'm From Barcelona
2. Airport Surroundings by Loney, Dear
3. Face to Face on High Places by School of Seven Bells
4. To Cure a Weakling Child + Boy/Girl Song by Adem
5. Mirando by Ratatat
6. Elephants on Parade by Podington Bear
7. Incubator by A.R.S.

7 Favorite Words:
1. cacophony
2. luciérnaga (Spanish for firefly)
3. Flugzeug (German for airplane, literally "flying stuff")
4. ma'muaang (my best shot at transliteration. Thai for "mango")
5. matzaqik (Maya K'iche', said at parting and roughly equivalent to "take care;" literally "don't fall")
6. q'omer (Quechua for green. the sound transcribed q' might be my favorite phoneme.)
7. sassafras

7 Travel Destinations Currently High on my Wishlist:
1. Toronto
2. Bolivia
3. Chile
4. Lassen Volcanic Park
5. Iceland
6. Berlin
7. Australia (all of it. yes, I know it's a whole continent. could take a while to save up enough vacation time.)

on dining out alone on a saturday night (tableaux from a solitary weekend, 1 of 3)

After a delectable Thanksgiving feast and a day-after meal of scrumptious leftovers, on Saturday I am in the mood for something lighter. So I walk down the street to get a salad. Normally, I would get it to go, head back home to eat alone, maybe in the company of Ed Chigliak and Chris in the Morning.

But there are no gifts from Netflix waiting for me at home, and although retreating to a lonely corner is exactly what I want to do, somehow I feel that, today, it is also exactly what I should not do. So tonight I decide to stay in the restaurant, to eat alone, in the detached company of strangers.

I do not know that it did any good for my psyche; merely being in the same room with other people does not necessarily lessen one's feeling of loneliness (in fact, it has been known to have the opposite effect). At least I saved some takeout packaging. And I got to pay plenty of attention to my salad, which happened to be delicious.

I am no stranger to dining alone, to being alone. But this particular experience is poignant. Suddenly I feel like I'm starting over, from scratch, and I don't even know what the ingredients are. Applewood smoked bacon, matchstick-cut apples, toasted sliced almonds: they make for a tasty salad, but, even as a team, their powers are limited. Comfort food is only food, after all. We humans, as reluctant to admit it as we sometimes are, we need each other.