Top 10 Things To Do Before Leaving California - #10

OK. I don't *really* have a list written down and hidden off somewhere, BUT IF I DID - this would be on it, and lower down than you'd think.

Top 10 Things To Do Before Leaving California - #10: Tell off a mid-life crisis asshat in a high performance sports car.


I get it. Highway One is scary. It has curves. It has hills. It has curvy hills, and hilly curves. It takes a long time to get anywhere, but goddamnit it's gorgeous and it's even more gorgeous seen from the window of a car driving the appropriate speed. For me this is in the 57 - 63mph range.

For this guy I was stuck behind yesterday, it was 30. In a Lamborghini. I have often had this thought, but seriously - if you're going to buy a high-performance car, I think it's a shame to not drive it as such. And unfortunately I come across these types of mid-life crisis asshats all the time. They buy these amazing and amazingly expensive cars and then take them for day rides on Highway One, most probably full of some sort of romantic notion of roaring up and down the coast a la James Bond. Except they don't roar, they crawl, and locals like me get stuck behind them when all we want to do is go home. 60 miles later this guy wouldn't use any of the turnouts - my tailgating be damned, apparently - and there must have been 20 cars behind this guy. Had I been that car I would have developed seriously suicidal tendencies and taken over. Kind of like Herbie, but Italian. And not annoying. But I digress.

At Stewarts Point there was an accident blocking the road. We all came to a stop and asshat got out of his car and came up and tapped on my window and asked me to stop tailgating him. I suppressed my rage at his blatant asshattery as much as I could and responded with "you had the balls to write the check, but you don't have the balls to drive the car?"

#10 doth been checked off the list.

Sweet, sweet relief

Soo.... came across this today in my daily perusal of the interwebs. As I'm leaving California, I am excited about having found this.

OK. Nix that. The closest In-n-Out burger is almost 2 hours from here, so I'm happy to find this in general.

If you don't live in California, you will not understand the In-N-Out phenomenon. The best way I can think of to debunk it for you is just to tell you: In-N-Out is awesome*. And finding this website** means that if I am ever ever EVER seriously craving an In-N-Out burger, I can make it happen. In the comfort of my own kitchen. In my PJ's. With beer.

And the next time you see that iconic sign, go in and order a double double animal style for me. Thanks!

*also home of California's first drive-thru. 'Nuff said.
**dude. He used math to figure out the sauce on this burger. Another example of how I would have *liked* math if this sort of problem had been involved in my math classes in school. And the scientific way in which he deduced the amount of relish!

Holy Cow!

There was a knock at more door today. And there was my good friend standing at my door holding a gallon of milk fresh from the cow. In fact I think I freaked out and held the warm container to my face in sheer delight.

Yup.

She had actually called me earlier to go milk a cow at a friend of hers, but unfortunately I was already enmeshed in the making of rice pudding and bread and couldn't get away.... but her showing up with the warm milk was still a surprise, and I was blown away.

Recently I have been making Mozzarella cheese from scratch - if it weren't for the fact that I am leaving in the next month, I would be attempting some hard cultured cheeses, but alas I do not have the aging time.... Mozzarella is a great compromise - you can still get the funness that comes from making cheese, without having to wait, and without having to use molds, cultures, etc....

Raw milk from a cow is a whole different ballgame. This may seem like an obvious statement, but even though I was expecting it, it still blew my mind. At one point during the cheese making process, according to the book I use* "the curds will look like thick yogurt and have a bit of shine to them". So far my reaction to this step has been along the lines of "yeah. Right. Dude. It looks like watery cottage cheese. What kind of fucking yogurt do you eat?". But my Mozzarella has always come out just fine and still above and beyond the majority of the Mozzarella you can get in the store.

Now. I love the milk I get here, but sorry Clo - I don't know that I can make cheese again without getting raw milk. Holy shmoly. Not only did the curds actually look like think yogurt and her description was accurate, it produced cheese that is awesome. I did overwork it just a wee bit in the kneading process and so it came out a bit tougher than usual, but I just think that really showcased the higher protein content and the higher viability of the protein. The stuff came together and got all silky and smooth almost immediately, and that just wasn't something I was used to. Even though I buy Organic whole milk to make cheese with, the difference between the milks was just mind-blowing. I love it when the difference in what you make and what you buy is so readily apparent. If only I had some little kid standing in the kitchen with me for brain-washing purposes!

I apologize to my new bovine friend for overworking the milk, and I won't ever do that again. Promise. Keep the yummy raw milk coming.

UPDATE: I made Ricotta from the whey, as I am wont to do. It is literally so so sweet (no sugar or anything is added, minded you. Just vinegar and salt) - I have never eaten anything like it. So I may have *slightly* bungled the texture of the actual Mozzarella on my first time out with raw milk, but the Ricotta was heavenly.

*This is, by the way, the BEST home cheese making book out there. Just FYI. She also runs the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company - and they have EVERYTHING you need to make just about every kind of cheese you can think of.

Self-sustainability and us

I had a couple of interesting revelations the day before yesterday....

A Japanese family that I was very close to in High School happened to have a day in Berkeley and I went to see them. I hadn't seen them in 9 years, or since the last time I was in Japan, and that's even more unfortunate as they used to be such a huge part of my life. Anyway - we were talking about my moving to North Carolina and homesteading on my parents' property, and the whole sustainability issue, etc. I went on my normal rant about eco-friendly practices, etc (why I think growing your own veggies at the very least is greener than not driving your car....a whole big long discussion). She asked me what other things I do to be 'green' other than growing as much as my own food as possible, especially as where I am now gets close to no sun and I have to supplement the light in my outdoor garden with lights. I answered with the fact that I have a paperless kitchen, and an almost paperless household. She kind of stared at me blankly - and then quite matter of factly asked me how else my kitchen would be? I then remembered that a paperless kitchen in Japan is the norm. Even with the Japanese tendency to deep fry things, paper towels in the kitchen are pretty much unheard of (some housewives buy special non-waxed absorbent paper for deep frying, but most people just use news print...). Using and reusing cloth is the norm. This also extends to household cleaning - windows are cleaned with cloth or old newspaper, and floors etc, are cleaned with cloths that are washed and reused..... And it's amazing how these practices got leeched right out of me when I came back to the US and proceeded to assimilate back into western society.....

I had a second realization at the same time - I was searching for the Japanese version of the term 'self-sustained'. I couldn't for the life of me think of it, and was obviously stumbling. That in of itself was an oddity as I'm not a huge fan of the term in English.... I finally just had to admit I didn't know the word and went about just explaining my meaning. At which point the person I was talking to just supplied to phrase for me. The thing is - in Japanese it's such an old word that people of my age don't often know it, but it is ingrained in the culture and the language of Japan. It just illuminated the fact that we in the west have so completely grown away from self-sustainability (even though in the not-so-distant past homesteading and growing all your own consumables was the norm....) and have had to come up with a term fairly recently to describe such a seemingly foreign concept. In Japan, however, the concept is still on the forefront of people's minds enough that the term was never completely lost - perhaps from being closed off to the world for several hundred years? I don't know, but it was another one of the sociolinguistic things that just kind of smacked me in the face.

I wonder how many more of these concepts are lurking back in the habits I grew up with in Japan?

Share!

I think that this is a truly fabulous idea - and if I weren't moving next month I would participate. Ugh - and just think. If all of those ridiculous chain mails/emails you got as a kid were this eco-friendly (not to mention fun), the world might be a slightly greener place.

http://www.earthmama101.com/2010/07/lets-share-seeds-2010-seed-share.html

history of THAT cookie!

OK. I love food. I love food history. I love vintage cookbooks.

But how do I feel about this? I'm not so sure. While I would love to know where the hell we got some of the food we eat, and I would be happy to tell you how Campbell's cream of mushroom soup became a staple in 'American' cooking (but only if you have an hour), this is a scooch over the top, me thinks.

http://justinsomnia.org/2009/01/melt-in-the-mouth-cookies-a-brief-history/

OED Word of the day

Today's word of the day from The Oxford English Dictionary: "purvey"

I worked in the food industry for 5 years before I learned it was spelled 'purveyor'. I thought it was 'proveyer'. As in provide. But I never had enough confidence so I just used used 'vendor'.

If only my writing were legible...

This would be so cool - but only if I could read my own writing :)

http://www.fontifier.com/

I'm Back!!

In an effort to do a few things (conveniently listed below), I have decided to put more of an effort back into this blog.

I intend to:

• stop spamming my mom (as well as others) and filling up their inboxes with weird random stuff
  
• write more (I love it!)
• do something more productive with the endless hours I spend sitting in front of a computer (... after a long day at work also sitting in front of a computer. something is not right here)

This means more fun! Excitement! Recipes! Pictures! Not too many of my dog, though I promise! And a potential site overhaul to...well....update the thing a bit.

new faves, new phone

As it has been quite an odd time for me in my personal life, I am noticing some changes...

For one thing - I am addicted to the dehydrated strawberries from Trader Joe's. For a long time it was the mangoes, but now it is most definitely the strawberries. It's as if you purchased a box of overpriced healthy fruity cereal of some kind, and picked out all the strawberries and put them in a bag. It's wonderful. It may be the fact that I dump them in a bowl of Tapioca pudding (also courtesy of TJ's). I think for my next trick I'm going to mix them in the pudding and then freeze the whole thing....

And! I'm getting the new iPhone!! Yay!! July 11th can't come soon enough... GPS, iPod, phone, email, internet bliss here I come!

**Currently Addicted to:

Burger Shop. It's just SO addictive...

My Life as a Musical

Not sure why, but my life is a bit of a musical at the moment. I was recently introduced to possibly (as my friend 'The Pants' puts it) THE BEST guerrilla-style indie musical EVER. While you may or may not have heard of Colma (the place or the movie - like how I did that?), I can not get the catching tunes out of my head and I absolutely adore it.

To top that, I was listening to NPR on the way home from work yesterday, and the Swell Season were being interviewed on Fresh Air. Which made me remember another current favorite movie of mine : Once.

Oh so very very good.

**OUCH**

Yes - that is the sound of me filing my taxes. While it may seem like pennies to some, I owed the government $1300. Which I just paid. I am seriously wondering how I am going to eat until payday...

On February 13th, 2008, our glorious government passed an economic stimulus package to 'stimulate' the economy. I believe the exact words were 'to give it a shot in the arm'. Does that metaphor sound odd to anyone else? As if the people passing it have a frightening familiarity with intravenous substances? Anyway, I filed my taxes today and found out that lo and behold! (all rise Hoyt Axton fans!) I qualify for the full $600 rebate provided in this package.

The point of this stimulus package is to give people 'free money' that's not taxable that they will go out and spend, therefore boosting the economy. I get why it's a cash rebate, and not a tax credit. BUT - what if the fact that I just practically cleared out my checking account to pay the taxes makes me unable to pay for food and therefore starve to death before I get that check? OR what if I have to go in to debt to survive until I get the check and I end up relying on the government for help in the meantime? Wouldn't have just made more sense (and be cheaper, too) to give a break on taxes? If I didn't have to pay so much in taxes, I'd be much freer to go out and spend money and **gasp!** boost the economy!

Somehow I know Bush is to blame....

oh yeah - I'm getting taxed to pay for the war in Iraq, and not basic government provided services. That then mean there are a lot more people unable to get what they need, and the become reliant on what few government services are still available to them. Which then means that I pay more in taxes to support them. which means......

And thus I have become one of those ranting people.

And wait! Don't my taxes pay for he economic stimulus package? Or did they get private investors for that?

I have not posted in almost a year

It's very sad. I have not posted in almost a year. and so much has happened! Most importantly - my Doggie!! All hail the cuteness!!

And no, thaht is not my house that is trashed - it's a construction site :)

And the out at Fort Funston:

Bush, Homeland Security & Google Maps.

Hate is a strong word. Most people that I talk to frequently know why I use this word when describing a certain multi-billion dollar search engine company (never mind the hypocrisy involved in the fact that I use Blogger..).

Here's the latest reason: Google Maps.

For my job, I spend A LOT of time on Google maps helping people that work for us get to where they're going, helping the clients figure out where their events are, etc. They recently added a 'Street View' function for SF, Vegas, Denver, Miami, and NY. Since I really don't want the address of the company where I work for up here, I will not post the example, but when you search for the office on Google Maps, my car is parked right out front. And you can make out the license plate numbers. Need to know what a building downtown looks like so you can find it better (and addresses seem to be inadequate these days?). Throw up a picture. But what is the point of being able to zoom in on a residential street close enough so that you can make out the numbers on people's plates? What if I was washing the dishes naked? Or taking out the trash in clothes that are oh-so yesterday?

And why the hell are all of the Google employees (yes, they refer to themselves as 'Googlers') out front as the picture is being taken? Don't these people have Internet to police? Businesses to buy? Technology to take over? And who said you don't have to be evil to make money?

The bad news is some people like it (like these folks). The good news - some don't.

Despicable

I work for a company that provides an employee benefits related service to corporations nationwide. We have one client that is HUGE and spends millions on various benefits for their employees nationwide. They are a multi-million? Billion? dollar company, and we are a small family-owned business (national as we may be...).

I had a meeting at their offices today. I went with one of my employers (one of the two owners). We walked in to an ambush that was absolutely despicable and ridiculous. Business may be business, but our contact at this company is downright unprofessional and a bully. If I had someone working for me that misrepresented my company in that way I would absolutely not allow it. I feel kind of dirty... Our contact their barely let my boss (the CEO of the company I work for) finish her sentances...

In my short time since college, I have tried really hard to work for businesses that were small, and had some sort of good thing to offer the world. After working at NTT in Japan for a stint, and suffering through my mom working there for a few years, I cam to the conclusion that life is just way to short to put yourself in a position where you are compromising your morals for the sake of a paycheck. And probably not even a great one, at that. Today's meeting completely reminded me of why I have taken that stance, and showed me that once again, the folks that I work for rock. We do what we can as a small company to get by in this day and extremely biased age, and not only do we strive to treat our clients well, we really try to treat the people working for us as employees and independent contractors, as well as our vendors with respect. And we respect their integrity.

I suppose there's the whole karma/what comes around goes around view of things, but I really hope our contact at this company gets their comeuppance. AGH!

HMM??

As you know, I have a (most of the time) hellish commute over the Bay Bridge every day. Today I got stuck behind a car that looked waaaaay worse than mine with an odd yellow bumper sticker on the back. While I am getting over the shock of seeing a crappier car than mine actually moving and being driven by some (poor crazy) soul, I realize that the bumper sticker says the following:

"My Other Vehicle is the Mahayana"

(For those of you unfamiliar, go here)

While staring at his dilapidated car (think hood and doors are different colors than each other or the main body of the car, the windshield is held in with duct tape, the antenna is a hanger, you get the idea...), I am realizing that while this guy is probably a very strong believer in the teachings of Buddhism, he's not doing a great service to it in terms of PR...

It just goes to show you that now matter how hard you try, and no matter how liberal minded your audience is (i.e., me), you can never escape being judged by the car you drive.

I gotta get me a new one.

I'm glad I didn't have to memorize this stuff...

Grill cook cheat sheet....

Embellishment

I realize that not everyone watches the food network, nor is nearly obsessed with food as I am. To help my mom understand why exactly Anthony Bourdain's post was so funny, I wrote an explanation of who the people he was talking about:

Alton Brown - wow geeky food science meets sesame street for adults TV show. But you DO actually learn shit.

Emeril - "kick it up a notch!!" involves adding salt and 'essence of Emeril' by throwing them vehemently AT the food. Preferably over your shoulder with a loud 'BANG!' and lots of flair and flourishing Why does 'essence of Emeril' sound like something I DON'T want to eat?

Mario Batali - I think this guy knows more about Italian food and the regions and food history of Italy better than anyone in the US, and possibly Italy, too. Fat red-head dude in shorts and clogs. And his fingers look like Vienna sausages.

Bobby Flay - what a load of horse shit in a guy. They've made a caricature out of guy by stylizing him into the tough-talking red head from Brooklyn who can cook.

Ace of Cakes Guy - aka Chef Duff. This dude is cool. He makes these designer cakes in these shapes that are totally outrageous. Like the one with the hand of rock coming out of a flames adorned with mini sock monkeys. And the cake in the shape of a Highland Yak for a Scottish Wedding (he wore a kilt and had a bag piper come in to the bakery for that one). The only show on the food network I would watch regularly if I could remember what time the show is on. And he uses power tools because the 'cake tools' don't cut it. Literally. He has a band saw in his bakery.

Giada - Italian-American hoochie mama who's hair never moves when she does, and who is Italian and uber-skinny.Not that there's anything wrong with skinny Italians, don't get me wrong. But she's like an anorexic baker - I just don't trust her. And she always has perfect nails, her wedding ring/engagement rock combo looks like it will break her finger, and her face looks painted on - it's scary.

Rachel Ray - the most annoying non-cook ever. If you don't know what she looks like, she's often on Triscuit and Ritz cracker boxes. Her first show on the food network was '30-minute meals'. Where she told everyone that you can put a delicious meal (???) on the table in under 30 minutes. What she doesn't tell you is that you would then have to eat the shit she calls food. And she has the most annoying nasal voice ever.

Paula Deen - Older portlier woman from Georgia. Southern cooking done by a white woman with big hair, a big heart, and a big laugh. Never-you-mind that the 3 potato casserole with sour cream, cheddar cheese, bacon bits, cream, mashed potatoes and potato chips and slices is not something I will be putting in my repertoire.

And that leaves us with Sandra Dee. Oh Sandra Dee. If Barbie were to meet a bone fide Nabisco brand Keebler elf with an endorsement from Satan, got drunk and spawned a mentally challenged child with aspirations to become the next Martha, that being MAY be comparable to Sandra Dee. Need a new cookie recipe to impress the neighbors? Buy store-bought sugar cookie dough (I always have some in my freezer, just in case!!) and roll in some crushed Hazelnuts! Et Voila~! Add a bow and it's the perfect welcome to the neighborhood gift! make sure that the apron you are surely actually wearing matches the drapes in your kitchen perfectly! Buy frozen food, microwave it yourself and call it home cooking! Shoot me! Shoot me now!

Not to sound pretentious, but it appalls me that these people make gazillions of dollars a year, and, more frighteningly, that people actually copy these people!

The Food Network

If I could have said it better myself, I would have. Anthony Bourdain's take on the Food Network.