pånyttfödd

Happy Birthday.

Wish you were here.

Or maybe...

...vice-versa.

Peach Pie Sunday

... and Dinner for One.



















clockwise from upper left: bread with Lomo salumi and Idiazabal & Tallegio cheeses; organic butter lettuce with egg salad; salmorejo cordobés with chopped egg and jamón Serrano; sweet vermouth with lemon on ice.

Bon Weekend

Do we appreciate life a bit more when we've been spending time with people we rarely see?


















Lunch, Café Buenos Aires: Jeffery, Tracee, Joe





















If you think we're remotely cute now (well, Jeffery has hardly changed a bit), you should have seen us 17 years ago... SEVENTEEN years ago! Ay, Dios!

Bet You Didn't Know My Middle Name is Stanley (Really)

And maybe this is becoming a food blog. With a nod to a mentor, of sorts.

The farmers' market was pretty glorious on Saturday. My main objective is merely to try to eat most of the things I bought without having to throw any away. It's not that I bought very much; it's just that due to my improper planning, produce has a way of sitting unused in my fridge until it starts to brown or turn slimy without having been touched. Weeknights often race by because I'm occupied doing other things, or I just eat a bowl of breakfast cereal with fruit for supper. Before I know it, Friday has arrived, and nature's bounty looks more like compost than consumable.

In addition to buying fava beans, rainbow chard, arugula, and Medjool dates, I was excited to see a stand with at least four or five varieties of avocado. I enjoy the ubiquitous Hass (which apparently is the "correct" spelling, after years of them having been labeled "Haas"... whatever), but I tend to fall into the anti-monoculture camp, so it's nice to be able to give unpopular varietals some love. I picked up a Zutano and a Fuerte (I tried to take a photo of the stand, but some woman and her cocktail ring got in the way).

All photos below except the pasta were taken with a camera phone, so quality may be questionable.




























































































Courtyard of Santa Barbara Historical Museum


















Saturday dinner: Fusilli with fava beans, olive oil, lemon zest, parsley, and ricotta salata cheese

Not Going to Take This Anymore!

Thanks indirectly to the Thief, I learned plenty this evening about Sara Jane Moore.

I don't really agree with the Moore quote below, of course, but I find it hilarious in a metaphoric sense. Taken to its literal extreme, though, it scares the hell out of me.

“I didn’t want to kill anybody, but there comes a point when
the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun.”

Here we go again

Photo by John Wiley at Flickr.

One Fine Day

Give us time to work it out...

Well, Hi. There's nothing special to report here, but that's pretty much a good thing. I'm enjoying the spring so far.

Carry on. I'll do the same.

Aloo Gobi Sunday

Aloo Gobi (Potato Cauliflower Curry) with Homemade Yogurt "Cheese" and Mango Pickle

I was inspired to have this today by a recent post by Stash regarding the glories of the potato.

This isn't a dish I eat very often, since I'm somewhat averse to cauliflower; among the few forms I enjoy it in are this curry and raw. I don't usually obsess over every gram of fat, but lately I find myself worrying just because there are a few extra inches that refuse to budge. This dinner could have been pretty low cal and low fat, but a dollop of ghee and a couple dollops of that whole-milk yogurt cheese just felt in order.

Touched your perfect body with their minds

Every day is a revelation, even in a small way. I discovered the above Leonard Cohen song -- and Nina Simone's version of it -- just today for the first time, thanks to Tom Schnabel's show on KCRW.

Anyone who knows me a little knows that I'm a fan of Nina Simone; they may not know how much her voice and her story break my heart just a little every time I hear one of her recordings.

I can't call myself a fan of Cohen because I really don't know enough of his music. A year or so ago I tried watching that recent documentary, I'm Your Man, but frankly was so disinterested after thirty or forty minutes that I turned it off. It also didn't help that Nick Cave's singing completely got on my nerves, and I'm not enough of a fan of any of the Wainwrights to be riveted by them either. I may need to try just listening to some of Cohen's original material.

Certain readers may be tired of the triteness of it, but I do admit to loving Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah, which I was only introduced to via the recent German film Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei (The Edukators), which I liked quite a lot.

And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind

Mercury! Venus! Jupiter! Saturn! Mars!

With credit to Junk Thief for making me think of these kawaii punk girls.

Let's Knife is a CD worth owning, or at the very least several songs are worth downloading.

A reminder of fun, perhaps more innocent times in UCSB student apartments, circa 1993.