Stop It Already With The Antibacterial Soap

This just in*...

In our bodies, human cells are outnumbered by bacterial cells ten to one. You are less you than you are bacteria. Chew on that.

Here is the link to a story about it:
WE ARE BACTERIA

Also, I suggest reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. The above fact is one of many in this mind-blowing science book.

*Not exactly just in. More like, in several years ago but you probably don't know about it yet.

San Francisco Pt. 3

Today will concern the our initial day in San Francisco. It will be briefer than other posts. We were tired and it was a bit of a gray day. It seemed as if the landmarks of Seattle had merely changed for the sky looked exactly the same. Regardless we had a good time. Our hosts, Jill and her boyfriend Jade, gave us a walking tour of their neighborhood (near Golden Gate Park and the famed and drug-addled Haight-Ashbury) after a wonderful breakfast of homemade (Jade-made) crepes, which were delicious. We had been to SF before but didn't make it to Golden Gate Park and only saw a little bit of the Haight. The Haight itself is known for its Beat and Hippie constituency back in their heyday, the 50's and 60's. Now, though, it seems it has partly gentrified and partly become a sad advertisement for its famed anti-consumerist former inhabitants (a store covered in one too many peace signs and selling bad crepes comes to mind). Despite the bad, it still houses some great bookstores and boutiques as well as an amazing plant culture. I became quite taken with the plants that took over this part of the city. Jades and other Succulents flourished on sidewalks and porches. It was, for me, truly beautiful.

We ended up heading towards de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. The building itself was a work of art on its own, as you will see. Anne and I, being Bank of America users, got in free by some great luck. The museum's tower looks out over the whole city, which despite being clouded over was beautiful. Then we perused the art downstairs, including an exhibition of Amish quilts that I found very cool in their own right. There was a good deal of great art, most interesting of which, in my opinion, was the work by the artists of the Bay area such as Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff and David Park. This was the highlight of our day. Plus, the sun began to peek its head from the clouds and the clouds gave way to blue. This was nice.

The highlight of our night was a restaurant that I had been dreaming of since my last SF experience, three years before. The restaurant is called Dosa, located in the Mission District of San Francisco. Indian food varies greatly from region to region. A lot of Indian food hails from the Northern Indian tradition. This restaurant was of the Southern tradition, which is mostly vegetarian and uses dosa (rice and lentil flour crepes) as a vehicle for tastiness. In my mind, this is the best region for Indian food. It was delicious but I have no pictures. Also not pictured is our full-bellied stroll to a bar in the "deep Mission" (i.e. part of the Mission less subjected to gentrification than other parts and therefore covered in neon-lit nail parlors and authentically and prominently Mexican bars) where we drank a few beers and couldn't keep from watching the muted cheesy horror flicks on the TV in the corner. Then sleep. A long day, well-spent.

 

So many plants.

More after the jump~

Interlude Accompanied By Pressure Cooker

To momentarily deflect attention from my increasingly distant San Francisco visit, I will take a moment to praise the culinary efforts of my trusty pressure cooker by way of the presentation (with obligatory photos) of the meal I quickly made up last evening. I will not name it for to do so would be to diminish it to some easily identifiable and therefore hum-drum existence. It, like much in life, is a construction of parts, of which none can lay absolute claim for its eventual resulting texture and flavor, in the way that a swingset is a swingset and not a metal tube or a plastic seat. My rhetoric, I am aware, is becoming ridiculous (though true).

These parts are: 1 cup dry brown rice (Basmati), 2 cups dry red lentils, two medium orange carrots (chopped), one medium russet potato (chopped), half of a yellow onion (diced coarsely), five to eight cloves of garlic (minced), three-fourths of a bag of frozen spinach, fourth cup of olive oil or so, splash of balsalmic vinegar, fourth cup of sesame seeds (ground fresh), some nutritional yeast, maybe fourth cup sugar, five cups of water, one cup soy milk and spices (details forthcoming).

The spices I used are the following: mixed peppercorns, cumin seed, black mustard seed, asafoetida a.k.a. hing (interesting history behind this special spice), curry leaf, coriander seed, toasted lentils, cayenne powder and coconut. Hence this bowl of spices:

 

More after the jump~

San Francisco Pt. 2

This second installment of Northern California, going along in an intentionally non-chronological order, concerns our last full day in that beautiful and sunny city, because I want to. We were left to our own devices that day (these devices, in this case, being our own feet and wavering senses of direction) and Jill parted with us in the Fisherman's Wharf area (which according to this website is the suckiest part of Frisco, and I agree). Before our paths diverged, we went to the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero, which features an enormous clock tower front and center and sits right at the edge of the water. This former ferry terminal now is host to shops and restaurants inside, which center around local and sustainable fare, and a three-day-a-week farmer's market just in front. As some of the pictures will attest, there were shops dedicated to meat and lard, "Tasty Salted Pig Parts," fresh baked breads, gelato, fresh mushrooms and mushroom growing kits, as well as newspapers and assorted tourist detritus.

We were given a simple explanation of the SF Muni train system, by which we were to travel back for dinner, and then the aforementioned devices of ours took over. We traveled around in the Fisherman's Wharf area for a bit, passing the entryway for the Alcatraz tour and stopping in at a sourdough bakery called Boudin (they made their breads into various shapes and sizes such as a larger boule and an alligator) where we got a large sourdough wheat to bring home and a small one to eat as we walked. Sourdough has a special stake in San Francisco for nowhere else is there the same bacteria floating around in the fog-laden air. Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis is key to the sourdough starters there and it supposedly imbues these breads with a sourness not found outside the city. We chewed on the bread and honestly were not impressed. No extra sourness that I could detect. Maybe there is a secret place we didn't go.

Chewing mindlessly and wandering about the Wharf area, we began to feel like everything around us was merely high-priced San Francisco advertisements -- shirts with Golden Gates hanging from awnings, chain restaurants, street performers whose allure only works on tourists -- and we quickly made flight towards Coit Tower, a defining landmark which would bring us into North Beach and closer to City Lights Bookstore. We didn't go to Coit Tower since we went last visit, but found our way out of the tourist trap nicely. Before reaching City Lights Bookstore (the place of Beat legend and publisher of many a Ginsberg poem) we stumbled upon two churches of classical enormity and style. The first was the church wherein Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were married called Saints Peter and Paul Church. The other church was less about the church and more about the section attached to its hip. Inside there was the city's as well as the national Shrine of Francis of Assisi, which was a 75% reproduction of the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. The man inside who showed us around and explained the history (as well as the papal decree which would absolve all who entered that they never see Hell i.e. us) we found out was a Knight of St. Francis as outed by a young and overly zealous Catholic boy who knew all the ins and outs of the transportation of religious iconic statuary. 


Now that we would never see Hell, we walked a little lighter on our toes. It took some time to locate it, but we finally found City Lights. We searched the shelves lazily but were really hoping for used books which they didn't have. Quickly soaking up the history of the place, including the basement section where I could feel the quiet energy of jazz poetry spoken live 50 years prior bouncing off the walls, many people clapping with their fingers. We left and didn't get far. Next door was a bar. It was called Vesuvio and it felt good to know that Beat legends such as Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady spent nights writing and drinking there. I got Merlot. Anne got beer. It was around 3 o' clock and the sun poured in on us where we sat upstairs. Regulars lined the bar and spoke about things we didn't understand in grizzled happy voices. It was fun.


After this, a little buzzed, wine-toothed and sun-touched, we walked to the train and went back for some amazing soup Jill created, which we accompanied with bread from the bakery around the corner and some Portuguese beer that was $5.99 a six pack at the wine shop. Our night finished at a bar with some strangers where our team got second place on Trivia Night. 

 

Beauty.

More after the jump ~

San Francisco Pt. 1

I quite recently vacationed in the beautiful city of San Francisco. It was terrifically soothing and ultimately the antidote to former stresses which lived still in the damp suit of Seattle. Girlfriend Anne and I enjoyed a nearly perfect California week, only given to one day of precipitation. Not bad. As we did quite a lot of things, I will segment it into appropriately short portions. They will not occur in any particular order but they will all concern San Francisco or its outlying areas.
One day we set off to see some redwoods (precisely the Coast Redwoods) at the Big Basin Redwoods State Park, which is the home to the largest continuous stand of ancient Coast Redwoods south of San Francisco. It takes much driving on winding roads to get there and as long as you don't sit in the back seat (like me) you won't feel dizzy and weird (like I did). Getting there, we paid the people and ate some of the snacks we brought. In a sort of random way, one of many trails was chosen and we walked around and up to the top of a little mountain where we could see the ocean or, more precisely, imagine the ocean sitting beyond the fog. We imagined it was gorgeous. Along the way I took many pictures of strange things I couldn't always identify.

 

Enormous.

  

More after the jump~

The Best Shucking Time

Oysters. Sake. Three men. The Waterfront. I could think of nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon. I was accompanied by the Cains, a motley pair born from the same woman, for a leisurely and, in part, aimless stroll about the avenues of Downtown Seattle on this somewhat sunny and absolutely perfect day. We found our way, as is customary, to a wonderful place of Asian delights called Uwajimaya in the International District south of Downtown. For seafood, there is no better place I know of. Further, their sake diversity is unmatched. While there we picked up a dozen Olympia oysters and a dozen Quilcene oysters (from the upper Hood Canal fjord). In addition we each picked up a personal sized sake, all of different brands, and a jar of MSG-less kimchi. Plus one lemon and some hot sauce begged from a food stand in Uwajimaya. Then we set off and found a perfectly empty pier with benches and a great view of the partly clouded Olympic mountain range on the Olympic Peninsula. It was a beautiful time. Simple. Sating. Cheap.

 

Train tracks. 

The notorious Cain brothers.

 

Olympic Peninsula from our sweet little benches on the waterfront.

More after the jump~

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.