Don't Be So Sauer!

      Sauerkraut, the wonderful German condiment, consists very basically of salt, cabbage and water. Through fermentation, these ingredients are joined by various lactic acid bacteria, including Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. This fermentation gives the shredded cabbage its distinct sour flavor.
      Beyond being extremely tasty and German, sauerkraut is very very healthy. Cabbage itself consists of isothiocyanates, amazing anti-cancer agents. Further than that, the bacteria which are wrought from the ferment are the same or similar to those within yogurt, which are good for your gut, promoting an active flora within your insides (and that is a good thing). One study suggests that sauerkraut is as effective as Viagra in stimulating the nether regions of one's self. Lastly, sauerkraut is high in vitamin C.
      To do this, I merely sliced cabbage (5 heads, various colors), salted it as I went, and tamped it down into a gallon jar. When I reached the top, I placed a clean ramekin in to push the solids beneath the brine (created almost solely by the cabbage itself). My friend and I modified the lid to make way for a grommet and airlock (conveniently obtained from the homebrew store). Then, I waited. In two weeks, after much bubbling, the kraut was finished, and appropriately sour. And here is the result:

Happy New Year!

They Froze Light!

As it says, the newspeople are now telling us that light has indeed been stopped, albeit for 10-20 microseconds, though this is huge for a thing that travels 186,000 miles a second. This power, they say, might be useful in the future for making quantum computers, which would make your brand-spanking new Mac seem like a relic of the past. The idea is that we could use the light particles, photons, to store and process data, making new computers much smaller and at least ten times faster than our computers today.

What next?

Beauty in Lack of Memory

Billy Collins is one of the great American poets of our time, born 1941, a product of this great steely machine of industry and war, this great conglomeration of states. He speaks to our biggest fear, forgetfulness. Without further ado, Billy Collins:

(If you would rather listen with playful animation, continue on to this:

Forgetfulness
 The name of the author is first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.


Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye,
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,


something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.


Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.


It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.


No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.


I hoped you enjoyed.

Let's Watch Kangaroos Box

Just as the title says, let us watch these kangaroos fight. I never realized how weird these animals are. Watch and enjoy.



Happy Holidays or whatever.

Tempeh-tations

Tempeh is fermented bean stuff, covered in a fuzzy colonization of mycelia, and it is beautiful and I made it. Me and my friend Lucas. This first image is what the bean cakes look like when they aren't bean cakes, bean cakes unbinded, before incubation. Prior to this picture, the soybeans were soaked, dehulled, skimmed of skins, and skimmed of more skins, and more, and then inoculated with spores from the Rhizopus oligosporus. The ziplock bags are poked with a fork or needle or something every half inch or so, in order that contact is made with air, and they are stuffed with the bean and spore mixture, packed tightly and about one inch thick.
    In the bedroom I rigged up an incubator system with a digital thermometer and a heating pad, with an oven rack and blankets. I got the temperature up within the range of 80 to 93 degrees F and put those little puppies in to sit for 24 to 36 hours, which they did, hence the next few pictures, where the cakes are now white with mycelium, the fungus fully winding its way through the crowded beans and partially digesting them. In this form they are solid and easily sliced.

Work In Progress

I've taken to baths lately, finding the most important things in life seem to be the simplest (i.e. sleep, food). Bathing, I realized, didn't have to be merely for the strict and quick utility of cleanliness, but could be prolonged indefinitely, recharged when needed. One only needs to stare blankly to muse successfully. I wrote a poem encapsulating this experience, or one among many, but it is still a work in progress, as I say. Not even the title is a surety.

Bath
Soapy water and drippy faucet and that sky of empty
that sky of jets and radio waves
that sky of black and cloud and wet
sounding down through the ancient
ventilation of this seventy-year old behemoth
sounding out into bathroom
bringing a sort of ambiance to
the solitude of bathing
an existentialism
and awareness
that
strip the walls
and there are
many nude, many recumbent
humming jazz
and staring ceiling-ward
contemplating nothing
but the planes passing overhead
booming through the atmosphere
tumbling over rooftops
and steeples
echoing proudly down
those antiqued
and white-acrylicked vents

It's jagged out there
and cold
I can hear the rain
tapping bebop on the roof
spitting the rhythms
of way back
old school
the oldest of musicians
Inside, many boxes of home,
enclosure, safety, warmth
the whole reproduction
of womb
and out there
it's classical music
the stuff of baby geniuses
and that most premier
of mothers
humming inwardly

Two Down, Six To Go

I have now successfully completed two applications for graduate school. University of Massachusetts - Amherst, and San Francisco State University. Left are: Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Washington, University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and Naropa University. What work this is! Yet, each one does feel like a small victory. But, why does applying to school, to put yourself in a better financial situation, cost so damn much money?

So Much Depends Upon

Here is one of the best poems I have ever read. And one of the shortest. From the master, William Carlos Williams.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens. 

We can say so much with so little.

Ants again.

        I have been watching, on youtube, several David Attenborough videos as of late, about various animals and plants, but close-up and with David Attenborough's voice. They are great. This one falls into the familiar realm of ants, but mixed this time with the realm of fungi. Cordyceps, the mushroom involved in the following clip, is apparently also very humanly beneficial. As wikipedia is concerned, a specific type of Cordyceps, cordycepin, is used to make a pharmaceutical drug. "ciclosporin — a drug helpful in human organ transplants, as it suppresses the immune system." It seems that it also might have use as an anti-depressant, although I think that there may already be some mushrooms that claim that honor. Anyway, enjoy this beautiful video.

Thanksgiving Redux

OK, thanksgiving was nearly a week ago, but I am now only writing about it. We went over to our friend, Stephen's, house. He had an elegant dinner setting out for us. How wonderful it is to be a guest. For this event, I made two dishes, both having come from a book at my work, surreptitiously photocopied and not bought. The book, Cooking With Pumpkins and Squash, has many amazing recipes in it. Thus, I photocopied the recipes for a Pumpkin Gnocchi and a Roasted Squash Soup. The soup was the star, but the gnocchi was amazing itself, buttery and decadent and time-consuming as all hell. The soup was vegan and the gnocchi was rich and vegetarian. The way in which they recommended to make the soup was something I had never imagined. The gnocchi would have been easier if I would have had a potato ricer, which I just got today. Anyway, just look at these images of these recipes. They're pretty.
P.S. I did not take these pictures, but they would be almost as pretty.

These Chair Legs

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have been thinking a lot lately about one of my favorite quotes, which actually is a reference to a Gertrude Stein (Gertrude Stein, Rose) poem. It is in an essay by Aldous Huxley, one of the literary greats of England, called The Doors of Perception (from which Jim Morrison derived his band's name). This paragraph speaks to the idea of human perception and the sentence about the rose gets me every time. How effectively poetry can push at those vague buttons in our heads, engaging our innermost questions with the language of emotion, the ecstatic, the language which the world of paint can speak as well. Anyway, eat, drink, laugh, cry, give thanks, and tell as many people as you can that you truly love them. Here, here to the only expectation-less holiday!

From The Doors of Perception, 1954:

From this long but indispensable excursion into the realm of theory, we may now return to the miraculous facts - four bamboo chair legs in the middle of a room. Like Wordsworth's daffodils, they brought all manner of wealth - the gift, beyond price, of a new direct insight into the very Nature of Things, together with a more modest treasure of understanding in the field, especially, of the arts. A rose is a rose is a rose. But these chair legs were chair legs were St. Michael and all angels. Four or five hours after the event, when the effects of a cerebral sugar shortage were wearing off, I was taken for a little tour of the city, which included a visit, towards sundown, to what is modestly claimed to be the World's Biggest Drug Store. At the back of the W.B.D.S., among the toys, the greeting cards and the comics, stood a row, surprisingly enough, of art books. I picked up the first volume that came to hand. It was on Van Gogh, and the picture at which the book opened was "The Chair" - that astounding portrait of a Ding an Sich, which the mad painter saw, with a kind of adoring terror, and tried to render on his canvas. But it was a task to which the power even of genius proved wholly inadequate. The chair Van Gogh had seen was obviously the same in essence as the chair I had seen. But, though incomparably more real than the chairs of ordinary perception, the chair in his picture remained no more than an unusually expressive symbol of the fact. The fact had been manifested Suchness; this was only an emblem. Such emblems are sources of true knowledge about the Nature of Things, and this true knowledge may serve to prepare the mind which accepts it for immediate insights on its own account. But that is all. However expressive, symbols can never be the things they stand for. 

Mycelium Running!

Ok, I read this book many months ago, but nevertheless realized that I should recommend it widely. Mushrooms and fungi are of a world so piteously under-researched and misunderstood that many actually have a phobia of them, especially in America. But fungus might just be the most important lifeform for the creation and sustenance of life in this world. Beyond its gastronomical use, mushrooms have applications across the board, as the connecting tissue of the forest, siphoning nutrients from root to root, as a filtration system for nasty man-made toxins, as a medicine, and as an eco-regeneration tool. This book by the foremost mycologist details these many applications, and how they have the ability to save the world from our own destructive tendencies. Great! So, before you pass them off as merely shamanistic voodoo plants or rich-person grub, read this book. I loved it.

MYCELIUM RUNNING

A Supermarket in California

A Supermarket in California

Allen Ginsberg

   What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down

the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at

the full moon.

   In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went to the neon fruit 

supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

   What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! 

Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! 

---and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

   I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among 

the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

   I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What 

price bananas? Are you my Angel?

   I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and 

followed in my imagination by the store detective. 

   We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting

artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

   Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which

way does your beard point tonight?

   (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel

absurd.)

   Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to

shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.

   Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles

 in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

   Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did

you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking

bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

Berkeley, 1955                                                                                                 1956

The last line refers to forgetfulness. In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the rivers of Hades. Charon was the boatman who ferried the dead to the underworld. 

 

 

HOWL

The following poem, Howl, was subject, in 1957, to obscenity trials on the basis of its contents, including illicit drug use and sexual references, both homo- and heterosexual. These claims were brought to an end on October 3rd, 1957 with Judge Clayton W. Horn's ruling that it was not, in fact, obscene but actually had "redeeming social importance," as verified by the testimonies of nine literary experts. The poem gained extreme popularity and helped spawn an era in which people became less afraid of their natural bodies and more worried about their own encroaching egos. It didn't take long, though, for people to once again couch themselves comfortably inside their egos again and rally against the blasphemy of their own tainted nakedness. Anyway, the poem is long, and as I said, it contains words and ideas that some have considered "obscene." Close your eyes and enjoy hearing it straight from the poet's mouth.

HOWL by Allen Ginsberg

Another Poem, by a lesser poet

Forth
I saw the sun beginning
Through the diminishing
Glass while the water washed
Over and made me new
The ache left me or rather
Moved from below and
Started up as if for
Cough or laugh or unholy
Mutterings in languages
Unknown to all and most of
All me but forth nothing came
But a quiet moan of the day before
Me and I saw in it the things
That I am not the things
Which define the paper
But not the grain by which
I live and love and for which
I eat not for survival or the want
To continue the gestures
The practiced motions
But for the bit of light that
Glints from the droplet
The cool aromatic breeze of
Spring’s orgasmic coming
The poking eye of pink or gold
Or crimson from bud to crocus
That awakens in me the vigor
Of life

by Sean Flannigan 

Poetry of a Different Flavor

OK, well, that is merely my fancy-pantsed way of saying, "A Recipe." I got a free casserole book from work because it was bound upside-down in its cover. Thus, I am able to supply these humble, very humble, masses with this recipe, pre-guinea-pigged by me.

So, pick your poetry.

Three Poems, Various

One of my favorite poems, by a Pittsburgher named Robinson Jeffers. 

Vulture

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling
high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit
narrowing,
I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-
feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, 'My dear bird, we are wasting time
here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you.' But how
beautiful
he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the
sea-light
over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak
and
become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what an enskyment; what a life
after death. 

 This second piece is by the great William Carlos Williams, and although not the most well known of his works, a beautiful and humorous one all the same.

Portrait of a Lady

Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze—or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
—as if that answered
anything. Ah, yes—below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore—Which shore?—
the sand clings to my lips—Which shore?
Agh, petals maybe. How
should I know?
Which shore? Which shore?
I said petals from an appletree.


And third of all, and surely drunkest of all, is Charles Bukowski, the epitome of blue collar poet (move aside Kerouac), with a sad and pretty piece that is even better when heard through his own life-worn voice (Bukowski Reading "Bluebird").

Bluebird 

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Read, think, reread, stare at wall, repeat. These things will help.

Pizza Again?

Surely.

Here it is. I am making dough. I think they refer to it as a "ass-load" of dough on the streets. The dough is cornmeal and semolina riddled. I found that this makes for a delightfully crispy crust. It is not a wheaty sort of dough, but you can't be good and fiberful all the time. I am also making sauces. A red, some form of a white, and probably a garlicky nutritional yeast and oil number as well. Whoever is coming over will be bringing toppings for a pizza of their choice. We are thinking that maybe between eight and fifteen people will find their way here. a lot of pizza for a lot of people.

I will post the (possible) pictures and results later on.

Until then, in the tradition of Garrison Keillor and the Writer's Almanac, here's a poem by Jorge Luis Borges:

Camden, 1892

The smell of coffee and the newspapers.

Sunday and its lassitudes. The morning,

and on the adjoining page, that vanity---

the publication of allegorical verses

by a fortunate fellow poet. The old man

lies on a white bed in his sober room, 

a poor man's habitation. Languidly

he gazes at his face in the worn mirror.

He thinks, beyond astonishment now: that man

is me, and absentmindedly his hand

touches the unkempt beard and the worn-out mouth.

The end is close. He mutters to himself:

I am almost dead, but still my poems retain

life and its wonders. I was once Walt Whitman.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.


--------------------------------------------

I didn't have a camera proper, so I just used the little built-in camera on the laptop. We made eleven pizzas, one of which was sent across the street to the wonderful proprietor of our favorite coffee shop, Wings. I made an alfredo sauce, a red sauce and a peanut sauce. All three were stars in their own right. Here is a couple:

And here are the pizza-eaters:

It was all very enjoyable. The aftermath though, not so fun. 

Sushi it to me?

Japanese food, being a clean, simple and solemn food, is a beautiful thing. There is something so loud about the only food category we here can claim as Americans: BBQ. It is something of bombs and pools and thirty packs of light beer. It is a thing put on pedestals by those scared of food, ethnic in particular. I will say that Barbeque has a certain allure, and the Koreans sure love it, in their own way, but it is without innovation, excelling only in marinades. I will also say that I am amazing at BBQ. I no longer consume the flesh of land animals, but it is enough to know that I can grill it better than many.

Back to the point. Japanese cuisine. That of vegetable and rice and hammered seaweed. And the occasional recently swimming fish.

We have no fish. We have marinated and fried tempeh, and marinated tofu. Plus carrot, avocado, cucumber and sprouts. Instead of white sticky rice, I am using brown basmati rice, which I overcooked into sticky-dom.

Pictures and taste report to come.
We are also going to accompany the sushi with either Hitchcock or Coen Brothers.
Notorious? Or, Raising Arizona?
Hmmmm...

-------------------------------

Raising Arizona. It accompanied the sushi well. As for the sushi, well, I forgot to take pictures. But, they were fairly attractive and extremely edible.
They did not look like this though:

Our sushi lacked a certain Jackie Chan-ness.

It was a bit more bite-sized. Almost exactly like this, but with a different hand:

It's Pizza!

I even made a pizza with apples, almonds, spinach, roasted garlic, onion, veggie sausage and swiss cheese (fig. 2)! It was delicious.

A Menu of Sorts and the Smell of Italy's Delightful Halitosis

Today, as with every Thursday, we received our CSA box. That's Community Supported Agriculture, for any of those not in the sustainable know. Anyway, it is great. Every week, we get several vegetables and fruits, anything from potatoes, cabbage, avocados, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, apples, mangoes, pears, squash, etc. A list of this week's array is included with your order as well as a vegetable specific recipe list. I have included a scan of this week's recipes, which all seem particularly delicious. Many of the delectables we get are from the farm (Full Circle Farm, to be precise) but they supplement from other farms for what they may lack, hence the availability of avocados and mangoes.
But, I am creating none of these things tonight, but rather a series of pizzas made atop semolina and cornmeal laced dough (I also snuck [sneaked? really?] some wheat bran in there). The dough is rising, as we speak, towards pillowy mountainous proportions. It smells of yeast, ferment. Soon enough my home will be thick with the smell of roasted garlic, the kind which you can squeeze from the papery outsides like toothpaste.
Until that time, I will speak to the merits of one of my newly found internet joys. BookMooch is a site through which, when signed up, one can give and get books based upon a system that resembles the westernized idea of Karma. You create an inventory list. This is a list of books that you have which you are willing to send randomly across the country (or further). For simply putting these titles on your list, you receive one/tenth of a point per book. Further, when said books are sent, you get one point per volume (unless sending to another country, in which case you get two points). Your other list will be your wishlist. Mine is rather long. When a book on your wishlist becomes available, you will be notified and you can request it sent to you for the charge of one point (or two if out of country). See? Easy. I have sent and received several books. The only money involved is that which you spend to send the books, and media mail is cheap. All my books have come in good condition. Go here for this:
BOOK MOOCH!

OK, hope all enjoy the recipes.

Election

Today, we in Seattle are voting, or should have voted already. I am crossing my fingers for the approval of Referendum 71, which would let the gays of Washington keep their partner benefits, and with its approval, I will be able to sleep knowing that our world hasn't entirely fallen apart. People still care about other people, even if they happen to do people of their same anatomy. Also, I'd like to see a win for McGinn, Constantine, Lacata, O'Brien, etc. I will come back with the results of the state of our world.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

R-71 approved! Barely. I would like to know, who are these people who would vote against gay couples having rights? Forty-nine percent of Washington voters are that hateful and sick? I surely hope no-one thinks their God is telling them so, because that isn't the case no matter what religion or how much one thinks their hatred is justified and righteous. Even worse in Maine though, for they repealed gay marriage. A sad day. How long will it take for sense and caring to prevail?
On a different note, it looks as though the rest of our Seattle race is going my way, towards "the good guys." Seattle Mayor still has days of counting but McGinn is in the lead. Things may not be alright but at least I can see an election go my way.

Where hunger is concerned, I made bread the other day, one which required me to make a starter (biga) and leave it in the bread machine for a day. It is dense, as wheat will be, but it is good all the same. I am trying to find the best ways to make whole wheat amazing. I am working on it.

Good day.

--------------------------------

By the way, days and days later, our man, Mike McGinn officially pulled through in the race for mayor. Eat it Mallahan! So, that's good. My first fully satisfying election complete. Over and out.

Whitish Meal of Unexpected Goodness AKA Don't Judge a Book By Its Bland Looking Cover

OK, not exactly the prettiest thing ever slung from the kitchen, but, all the same, it is actually one of the most tasty and inventive. This, my friends, is a tomato cream curry with cauliflower, peppers, cabbage, tofu, onion and egg. I had no diced tomato on hand, so I used ketchup. Add curry spices, garam masala, cumin, turmeric, hing, garlic powder, black pepper, soy sauce and whipping cream. You've got yourself some sort of curry. I wished I had potatoes as well. A true Indian breakfast. After cracking the eggs in there, stirring them around and letting them cook under cover, out came a fluffy and certainly fattening curry. The ketchup worked amazingly well. These are things that can be done with little food in the fridge. But, it is truly all in the spices. If you have a good curry mix or masala mix, you can do wonders. The tomato-cream curry is essentially just the tomato (diced in a can, diced on your cutting board, processed into a bottle for hot dog use), some sort of cream, and spices. Then the vegetables and, if you must, meat are yours to pick and choose. If you can find a spice shop that makes their own spices, and possibly even one that mixes and sells them whole (which can be ground by way of mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder set aside for such a purpose, whenever it need be used in a recipe) then you can be led into a world of culinary possibilities. Wars were fought for these wonderful seeds, leaves, roots, twigs and fruits (see The Dutch East India Company or Frank Herbert's Dune).

Enjoy.

Also, Anne Petty, my girlfriend is now of age to drink six years ago. Cheers!

Dig it.

I thought that this was a really interesting video.

Milkman Revised

Gone are the days when a man would come by and put six reusable bottles white to the brim with milk onto your porch or into your milk door (a smallish cabinet outside your domicile with an inner door for retrieval) exchanging out those bottles you downed last week and very politely rinsed out for him. Yet, there are still beverages which a person might want to have delivered to their home. Something less viscous, less in need of refrigeration. So we traded the nectar of the bovine teat for that of the vintner and the brewer. Two days ago I received my first delivery of beer and wine, and despite the conjecture of many, it wasn't brought by winged cherubs, but by a simple man with a simple idea: Bring the people joy, bottled and various. My milk door is long ago sealed up (yes, we do have an old milk door, circa 1940's) so after buzzing this new age milkman in, we had to settle for human contact, a box of beer and wine for a Spongebob Squarepants check written out, simply, to "Milkman."
If you live in Seattle, I would suggest giving him some business. No delivery charge, no price hike, just a five dollar monthly fee. Some relics of the past can be revived.

Here is the site:
http://milkmanseattle.com/

You never have to leave home again!

Indian Feast!

  

I was given to throwing an Indian feast last night. Every conceivable stop was pulled. As one can see by the plate awash in a background of blackness, the results were favorable. The menu was as follows: 

• Brown Basmati Rice (cooked with onions, garlic, carrots, turmeric, cumin seed and cardamom)
• Saag Paneer (Spinach and fenugreek leaves, cubed paneer, with spices)
• Dahl (Not the Roald variety, but actually red lentils, tomato, onion, garlic, curryleaves, various toasted spices and possibly a splash of wine)
• Cauliflower Curry Stuff (Cauliflower and carrot in a tomato and cream curry sauce, with hot peppers from my window sill)
• Samosas (homemade semolina and wheat wrappers enveloping a mashed potato-pea spice explosion, also including hot peppers from my sill)
• Tamarind Chutney (spicy and sweet, for the samosas)
• Papadums (bought in a non-descript package at the Indian grocery store, toasted under the broiler until wavy and crunchy)
  

  Our faithful captain, Lucas, made the cauliflower dish, the tamarind chutney, the amazing samosas, and the Saag Paneer, with help from some purple lipped prep cooks and paneer fryers of course. I made the dahl and the rice. Every dish was astounding. We outdid ourselves, I said to Lucas. He smiled and drank wine. So did I.

 Today, I am eating leftovers. 

 Today, I am drinking pots of tea at the coffeeshop and reading and writing.

 Today, I don't yet know what I am doing.

 I can't exactly do a step-by-step on these dishes since 1) I didn't make all of it and 2) Indian cooking is more of an intuitive task than one enumerated. We had vegetables, butter, oil, rice, lentils, many varied spices and love, and also wine, for the cooks. The best way to learn is to try it. Once I see it done before me, I am validated to do it myself, fail or win.


This site is where we found out how to do samosas:
http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/ 

Check out this site for sure. There are so many good recipes.

The Completed Meal

    With my hunger in check now, and my head a little more firmly attached to the rest of me, I am able to celebrate a minor accomplishment. Shiro Wot. What it became though more resembles refried beans. Thus, the accoutrements are rather Mexican. Lettuce, tomato (heirloom I might add), avocado and cheese. All on corn and wheat tortillas.
      Now, this is a minor accomplishment, as I note. The texture was great. It was spicy (which is positive if it were only me I were cooking for). The berbere was missing something maybe. Or I should have used tomato paste like the nice Ethiopian lady told me. I don't know. I like it, not love it. 

My Shiro Wot

• Handful or so Shiro Flour Mix from Zuma Ethiopian Grocery (which includes their own berbere spice)
• Water
• Small spoonful or two Niter Kibbeh (spiced Ethiopian butter) or olive oil to saute
• Quarter of a medium onion, finely minced
• Three to seven cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2-1 cup diced tomato
• Salt and pepper as needed 

Extraneous ingredient to add if wanted for texture or just if you like said ingredient:

• Tempeh or small cut potato or tofu or something else other than these things

     You want to mix the Shiro flour (chickpea flour) in a bowl with enough water to make it the consistency you want. You can mix berbere into the flour before this if you have berbere, or mix it in when it is cooking. If you don't have berbere, look it up and try to make something similar with the spices you have. Then you want to add the onion and garlic to a hot skillet with the oil or butter. Cook it down for a few minutes. Add tomatoes. Few more minutes. Add shiro mixture. Stir together, cover and cook for 15-20 minutes on low heat, checking on it occasionally. If it is too thick, add water. Too thin, add more flour. Salt and pepper to taste. Beyond this, if you taste it and it needs something, add a little of something. Maybe some honey. Or balsamic vinegar. Or soy sauce. I added some ginger powder and ground coriander among other things. Make it yours.

Upper Endoscopy

I remember nothing. Apparently, according to the pamphlet I was given days before, they inserted a small camera down my throat for investigation of my insides. Six hours later and I am still foggy. Mix this sedative with two cups of coffee and you are left with pages of abstract poesy and prose and the desire to visit the Ethiopian grocery to pick up Niter Kebbeh (that is, spiced butter) and Shiro flour. Which I did.
Still having not eaten, I am at once entirely unmotivated and ferociously hungry. My head swims a bit too.
Off to make Shiro Wot!

Def.: Shiro Wot - An Ethiopian stew consisting of garlic, onions, spiced butter, chickpea flour (shiro), berbere (ethiopian spice mix) and water.