Splendor

I'm up late because I'm living well. Tonight I went to a folk concert for the second time. It was beautiful, intimate, and oh-so-East-Bay.

A few weeks ago, I started seeing this guy named Whitney. He's charming, creative, and admirable. He lives in a co-op in Berkeley and has amazing friends and roommates. One project he's been working on is to refurbish this big blue school bus, and turn it into an RV. He and his friends recently competed this task, and took the bus on the road, stopping to have pop-up concerts along the way. The tour is called Splendor All Around (click!), and I was fortunate enough to go to the very first show of the tour in Berkeley. It was at the house of the parents of the guy who bought the bus and worked so hard to transform it into a living/performance space. Among the beautiful landscaping and Berkeley hills, we piled into the bus for a tightly packed but soothing set of folk music.

Whitney and his friends went north to Washington, playing shows and living small. Then, they came back this week, a little early. Tonight, I got to go to one of the last shows on the tour. This time, it was with a band that they met on their tour, and was in the back yard of someone who clearly likes to garden. Instead of an all acoustic show, this one was with microphones. It was a very different experience, and I'm glad to have had both.

The music makes me miss home, and Asheville, where folk music seeps out of the corners of quiet old homes. It made me think of family, and my friends, and the kind of future that we can build together if we treat our friends like family. It was a really good night.

Breakfast

My fritada this morning looks like Packman. :) it tastes good too.

Lucky Day

Couple nights ago, my coworkers invited me to go out dancing after work. I was a little apprehensive, but excited to connect with them. They are such good people and the prospect of being social was really encouraging. So after work, we booked it on our bikes to the BART Station to catch a light rail train to San Francisco. When we got to the station, Kevin had forgotten his bike lock, and SK's lock suddenly wouldn't work. We heard the last BART train of the night arrive and quickly locked up the bikes all with my lock, and got into the station just in time.

The Trader Joe's crew, Kevin, SK, and I, met up with Kevin's twin brother Peter. Peter's moving back to Boston so wanted to go out on the town to enjoy one of the last weekends he'll have here. We ducked into the first recommended bar called the Make Out Room. It was a small place, and felt really intimate. The DJ was mixing Salsa and Samba music with popular base-heavy stuff. Fun to dance to. I had a great time dancing with my coworkers and we even felt like staying out extra late, so we tried to find another bar after the Make Out Room closed. We called an Uber car, which is like a Taxi that you can order to your location with your smartphone. The Uber driver picked us up and we drove to this other club, but the scene looked sketchy so we decided to just head back to the East Bay to go to bed.

When the driver got us back to the BART station to pick up our bikes, we found that the cable holding our bikes together had been cut, and Kevin and SK's bikes had been stolen. Kevin was not phased at all, as he had just got a cheap bike from the internet, but SK was devastated. She bikes everywhere and has had that nice bike for so long. Lesson learned: Don't just lock your bike with a bike cable. You have to lock your frame with a U-Lock directly to the bike rack. Lucky for me, my frame was locked to the rack and my bike was still there. In the rush to get them home and for me to hop on my bike, I must have dropped my phone in the Uber car, with my credit card and ID inside.

I spent yesterday just processing. I figured there was nothing to do about my lost things until a weekday anyway. Went to work and came home, feeling happy that I didn't have a phone to look at every 10 seconds. I hopped online and logged into my Google account on my computer, and locked my phone remotely, and commanded it to display a message if anyone turned on the phone asking them to call my roommate and return my phone and I'd give them a $20 reward.

Then this morning, my roommate got a call! The Uber driver was cleaning out his car when he found my phone. He had remembered me, and was happy to meet me in the city this morning to give me the phone, with ID and CC! I gave him the $20 reward, though I didn't think he read the message. Nice guy. And I'm the the lucky guy!

But wait, there's more. I came home to find that I had a care package from my mom with Maple syrup, my long lost stuffed animal from childhood, and a couple shirts. AND, a card from my Grandparents (HI GUYS!) with pictures and loving words... Thank you to y'all, and thank the universe for being so nice to me and returning my things!

Bicycle Safety

My housemate, MaryAnn is a Bicycle Safety instructor. She keeps chiding me to wear a helmet when I bike. I figured out my finances for the month and I have enough for a couple purchases. So today, I got myself a nifty helmet. $60 worth of safety that should save me a brain injury. The tank top is new too, but that was just plain vanity.

This post is for you, mom. :D

Back Pat

Today, I, again, made really awesome food. Vegetable stock from scratch, the majority of which turned into beef stock with stew meat. I made a rice pilaf that will be both an additative for the beef stew and for the meatloaf that I'll make tomorrow. I sauteed shitakes and onions that are going in the stew, too. For now, I'm eating pilaf, mushrooms, turnip greens from a couple days ago, and sauerkraut from Trader Joe's. Tonight I'm having sweet potato lentils that I made yesterday. I have a rotation of leftovers accumulating, but my hunger cannot be sated. I keep eating, so I keep cooking.

Wish I could post pictures, but my camera on my phone is taking crappy ones lately so I am unmotivated. Plus, I keep watching this show called Game of Thrones, so that will take up some time. Big beautiful delicious day and I still have a shift at work ahead of me. Bet I'll be whooped tonight, but a day well spent, I'd say. 'Specially cause earlier, I also cleaned the tub, dishes, and laundry, and went to the farmer's market. Life feels easy, suddenly, now that I'm caught up from moving. Wonder where I'll stick my nose next.

J

Inspiration

My coworker Brian lent me this AWESOME book set by a chef in Denmark. The trilogy of books has a journal kept by the chef, a cookbook of his dishes (and also here), and a book of snapshots of his coworkers and collaborations. The book is inspiring me to experiment a lot with food.

Redzepi, the chef, spent a lot of his life foraging for food, experimenting with how to bring out the best in everything edible around him. His family and he survived this way. When he created his own restaurant, he focused intently on how his business worked with the people nearby. Not only his clientele were considered, though. His suppliers have become a big part of his success as well.

Redzepi and his chefs go to producers' farms and seek to get a grasp for the cultivation and potential of their ingredients. They source a great majority of their food within a short distance of their five-star Copenhagen eatery. And this jolt of insight makes it to the restaurant's patrons, when they are surprised by the abundance of variety and flavor greeting them at their doorsteps.

I've been thinking a lot about this new, old approach to food. Instead of trying so hard to wring each kernel of corn from a tired soil, maybe we work with the land's wild tendancies to let in more variety of species. Let the vegetables adapt to the local climate and express a uniquely-nearby flavor. And in this urban environment, how can I get creative with whatever is in season and makes it to me in the city? How can I piece together things I already have in my kitchen to make a dish both spectacular and economical.

Some recent failures: I made a broth out of vegetable leavings like onion skins and broccoli pieces. The (1) broth tasted a LOT like broccoli. Before realizing this, though, I (2) combined it with roasted squash to make a squash soup. I also added coconut milk for creaminess, which had the whole soup tasting bland, and unbalanced after all that. I saved the half gallon of extra broccoli broth, and the soup just in case I had another jolt of inspiration. It came yesterday.

Some recent Successes: yesterday I finally spiced and finished the (1) squash soup. I added lots of curry and some yogurt and some toasted pumpkin seed oil and it turned out really well. The curry was a bit strong, so I cut the soup by half with chicken broth and it was fantastic.

I have really gotten good at (2) green smoothies. my roommate has a great blender, so I've been making smoothies out of 2 apples, one banana, 2 handfulls of frozen berries, a handful of frozen something else (pineapple or mango), something creamy (yogurt, milk, or a handful of sprouted nuts like cashews), and juice or soy milk to liquify. I then add a generous fist of something leafy and green like spinach (frozen or fresh), kale (this one is sorta bitter), cilantro, or basil.

And this morning I figured out what to do with that broccoli broth: mixed it with miso and ground toasted sesame seeds and it made a (3) fantastic soup!

Today I am working on rice to add to the squash soup to make it stretch even further, and making plans to make this carrot soup recipe to keep me hydrated and nourished these next busy days.

But now, if you'll excuse me, I have to finish eating before work!

Cooking Up Some California

Sorry again for going radio silent. So long since I last posted, and so much to say!

Gosh, so last time I think I had just landed and was getting my feet dug into the earth in the East Bay. Every day I am here I like it more, and feel more at home. The garden in the backyard is tended by my housemates and it is wild and overgrown and still productive. There is even a plum tree in back that is fruitful and produces the best plums I have ever tasted. I used backyard Meyer's Lemons today for a sprouted cashew hummus I made this morning. The beans and tomatoes and peppers and strawberries and purple potatoes need very little tending and are happy nonetheless. I feel connected with them.

About a week ago, my friend Jeff visited from Michigan. He has a friend in San Francisco who he stayed with, but we got plenty of time to catch up. We went to a little alley not far from my house, where there are cool little shops. One of them is an herbalist shop called Homestead Apothecary that sells bulk herbs for tea and other applications. and speaking of Applications, I am in communication with Nic the owner about working there :D They have stuff for making tinctures, salves, and decoctions, but plenty of already-made stuff. I bought beeswax candles and nettle tea. Another shop that I loved was Crimson Horticultural Rarities. They sell air plants, little blown glass "bottles" for mini-terrariums, specialty gardening tools, and other gift-y plant-y stuff. I applied there too, and they said that they have a landscaping  branch that I would be useful in.

Last week, also, I started working with my friend Oliver, who is a personal chef. He pays well, and I get to learn the tricks of a smooth in-home kitchen production for the dinner parties we feed. There's so much I can do to make money in a big urban environment like this, I have to be judicious about the gigs I take on, weighing if they are worth my time. This gig is definitely always worth my time!

Just a couple days ago, I got two big packages just as I was heading to work. I had to wait until afterwards to open them, and found that they contained the long anticipated computer from Chris. Chris is a video game designer, and he recently got a new computer, and graciously said he'd send me his old one. I am so happy to be back in the world of easy internet and an adequate computer to blog, and surf the web. I can even play video games with my friends that I live far away from.

Throughout it all, I have been enjoying getting reacquainted with my violin, which I bought back from my roommate. Playing old songs that I can remember, and plotting what songs to learn next. Now that I have a computer, I can learn from YouTube videos about new songs, and tecniques. I can also learn all sorts of other useful skills like cutting my own hair and brush up on how to clean a gun. For now, though, I've got to go take care of my buddy who is oh-so-sick with strep!