BORSCHT!

 

I cut vegetables, however I wanted. Carrots, Celery, Onion, Garlic, Orange Bell Pepper, Potato.

 

With the scraps from the vegetables, I made broth, later scooping out all the solids with a sieve.

 

Beets.

 

Lots of onion cooked up with Kerrygold Irish Butter, then adding all the other vegetables excepting the potato, which just went into the hot broth. After sauteing these veggies, I added some of the broth, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, some beer that happened to be in my hand and lots of dill.

 

Everything was then amassed together and set to simmer. This happened until the potato was soft. I then added the remainder of my homemade sauerkraut including all the juices.

 

Next up, the immersion blender took everything to pieces, nice and consistent.

 

No more chunks here. 

Then cream was added.

And it was good.

 

Supplemented here with a baguette of fine sourdough.

Delicious.

Two Giants Fallen

This is to commemorate two great men: Howard Zinn, the historian of the people, and J.D. Salinger, hermit novelist extraordinaire.  Zinn (author of A People's History of the United States among many, many others), a well-spoken, intelligent and unabashed liberal, gave the people a voice in a world stricken with the history of the conquerors. Salinger, author of Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories and most famously, Catcher in the Rye, also gave voice to the discontent and lived his life in extreme obscurity from that world from which Holden Caulfield was surely escaping. There is only one known recording of his voice, which he had not allowed to be aired since. There is much more to say, but I won't.

 

J.D. Salinger (January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010)

 

Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010)

Affectionate Portraits of Houseplants

Now that we have gotten to know each other, who ever you are reading this right now, I can expose my inner world to you. Inner as related to inside of my apartment, and outside of my kitchen. Over the last two and a half years I have hosted various potted lifeforms, some going by the way side (Scott, the spiky devil has been relinquished, only to possibly haunt our nightmares from the beyond the dumpster) and some becoming bonafide characters of the household. Although the following cast may not all become these iron-clad members of my abode, they all have a portrait as realized by my new camera (which I may or may not be using overzealously). So, either pass by this post with haste if it is that the simple idolization of various plants isn't your "thing" or enjoy the small glimpse into my living room. Without further ado:

 

Motley Crew.

 

Gentle Loner.

 

Mother-In-Law's Tongue and Wine.

 

Awkward Pariah.

More after the jump~

Poems of Prosaic Proportions

I will today share a couple of poems I wrote while taking a Prose Poetry course at the Richard Hugo House here in Seattle. The course was taught by a very talented prose poet, Andrew Michael Roberts, whose efforts have been rewarded by publication in various journals such as The Seattle Review, The Iowa Review, 42opus, Cue, and Sentence among others and the reception of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Here are a couple links to his work:

http://www.versedaily.org/2007/aboutandrewmichaelrobertsbr.shtml

and

http://www.bigtoereview.com/id16.html


And, here is my own:

That Smell

I sat on the windowsill to get a whiff of the neighbor’s papayas that were sleeping in their backyard pastures. The scent was intoxicating. I drowned for a moment in silent reverie, stared at the digital clock, it was sitting where the end table used to be, and wailed outward, toward window or floor I can’t be sure. But now the end table is gone and so is she, that wardrobe full of so much fine scented clothing, which I didn’t really smell until now, until the moment the papayas took hold, like last year, this time, a pale amber stole the room, female adornment all around. Still, the papayas make it better.

Thoughts While Rocking Back and Forth and Staring at the Sky

Place of sky, blue, and building, gray architectures of windows and steel howling at the moon from the diaphragm of their furnaces, those swollen fiery bellies of industry. The tips of the treetops, barely visible, but reaching, are competing … with this world of man, this world of progress, this world we left on the burner too long … competing with these stony, steely, glass and blood fixtures of springtime in civilization, stacked upon so rudely. The tides are turning ever more mechanical, rolling in with words and digits and dot coms galore – and this where the leaves fall on asphalt, on concrete, and cannot find a place wherein to plant a tree, a flower, a thought, a fancy, a romance, cannot build a monument to sun, cannot see past the smog flowering from rooftops for a glance to the mother, the father, those archaic old balloons, cannot. The halo has no face. Leave it be. The moon is no jellyfish. It’s not a squirrel. It’s a mirror for the earth, not you. How vain we are to look starward as looking into a pool of still water.

Have a wonderful day!

Maybe the Most Romantic Film I Have Ever Seen

Bar none.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1zmfTr2d4c

At least it isn't ants.

OK, so I love ants. What of it?

So again I give you ants. Leafcutter ants this time. And yeah, maybe there is some fungus in there too. Both very cool creatures. Watch for a minute and you will have to watch the whole thing.



I told you it was cool.

Scenes of Seattle Winter

 

 Oh Seattle, you shouldn't have.

Went to See Art

As the title suggests, I went to see art. It is also a careful nudge toward a blog that I also write on: GO SEE ART. Check it out. Now, the art show that I found myself attending lately I heard of through my girlfriend, the illustrious, beautiful and extremely talented artist, Anne Petty. It was her show. Here is her website: Anne Petty Dot Net. It was also the show of Hugo Shi.

Pictures after the jump~

From Russia, With Love

Pirozhki! The Russians may be unfortunately endowed with an 11 time-zone hunk of cold and lonely landmass, but their food is excellent. And they drink much vodka. That helps, I am sure. These amazing little pastries are filled with a variety of different hunger-sating items, from the sweet to the savory. I tend to lean to the savory side. Luckily, that is the side of much multiplicity. You may even make up your own, if you were so bold. I made three. One which I enjoyed very greatly, and which was very simple, was sauerkraut sauteed with onion and garlic, with a little bit of nutmeg. This nutmeg twist really makes it. Also, It was the homemade sauerkraut that I just previously posted about. Perfect pirozhki! My second favorite was a stinky one. Think of the most umami egg salad you can imagine. It was mushrooms (fresh buttons and mixed dried) sauteed with garlic and onion, and mixed with hard-boiled eggs and dried dill. Tremendously tasty. If only we would have included the cottage cheese. The third was a little blander, but not bad anyway. It was potato and spinach with onion, garlic, thyme and dill. All of these fillings were carefully deposited into folds of dough and baked on my baking stone at somewhere like 425 degrees. To accompany these little buns, I baked some beets, beautiful red things they are. All in all, a very visually stunning and sumptuous meal. Take a look.

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.