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Strange Fruit
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs[/youtube] Strange Fruit Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant South, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh! Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop. I had never heard this song before, nor did I know the story behind it. I was listening…
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Gung Hay Fat Choy!
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Mavericks
Down near Half Moon Bay (yes, very close to where we took the girl scouts to the beach a few weeks ago, but under totally different conditions) there is sometimes held a ‘Big Wave’ surfing competition called Mavericks. This year the waves appeared to be right, so the elite big wave surfers voted to hold the competition, and it was on, February 13, 2010. HUGE waves, 50 ft, which is five stories tall. You might think that if waves are going to be that big, people might stay away from the shore, but a couple of hundred people were swept off of their feet on Saturday morning, 15 of them…
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Gorgeousness and Gorgeousity
Where the heck does the time go? Maya will be 14 in 6 weeks. All grown up, yes? Admire the new hairdo. The cool pink and blue are gone, the lovely blonde highlights are in. In about 10 days, the braces come off. Those high school boys won’t know what hit them.
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Lamb Ragu with Mint
(photo found here, because I’m too lazy to take a picture of my own…) I saw Giada make this recipe on TV the other day, and I decided that I wanted to try it. Fortuitously, the next day, I saw an episode of America’s Test Kitchen where they talked about the problem with recipes such as this one, and they talked about how to correct it. So I put the two together, and made a killer Super Bowl Sunday pasta for our dinner. Really, really good. (Go Saints!) So, here’s Giada’s recipe, which varies slightly but (I think) critically from her cookbook: Lamb Ragu with Mint Ingredients * 1 pound…
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Jon Hamm as….SERGIO!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MADdGkWtbCw[/youtube] If you thought you loved him as Don Draper in Mad Men, wait until you see him as Sergio the Sexy Sax Player! Wait…I love Don more. Wait…Don’s an ass. I forgot.
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(Not) Lost Generation
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA[/youtube] I got this in the email the other day. I liked it. See if you do, too.
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People of the Book
(page from the Sarajevo Haggadah found here) From Wikipedia, where you can also read the fascinating history of this beautiful book: The Sarajevo Haggadah is an illuminated manuscript that contains the illustrated traditional text of the Passover Haggadah which accompanies the Passover Seder. It is one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadahs in the world, originating in Barcelona around 1350. The Haggadah is presently owned by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, where it is on permanent display. The Sarajevo Haggadah is handwritten on bleached calfskin and illuminated in copper and gold. It opens with 34 pages of illustrations of key scenes in the Bible from creation through…
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Crappy One Pot Taco Soup
I have a confession to make. I like ranch dressing. I like it on my salad, on my pizza crusts, and on my fried zucchini or mushrooms. Yummy. I like to mix the powdered dry mix in with turkey to make turkey burgers, or make oven fried chicken with it. So I came across this recipe via Yahoo the other day. One of those “5 nights of meals” articles, and this was one of the recipes. Doesn’t it look good? Don’t be fooled. For one thing, the recipe they linked to doesn’t have tortilla chips, cilantro, OR sour cream, and it has red meat, not chicken or turkey or whatever…
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Lovely Weekend
(Pescadero State Beach, gorgeous photo found here) This weekend, I joined Maya and her girl scout troop camping at Camp Butano, in lovely Pescadero, California. Pescadero is just south of Half Moon Bay, and we were fortunate to get perfect weather. The girl scout camp at Butano is way off the beaten path, with a creek babbling nearby. We arrived on Friday night, and layed low there. Then on Saturday we went to the beach, where we had a lovely picnic, including a loaf of amazing artichoke garlic herb bread, which was hot out of the oven. We happened to be there as the tide was going out, and there…
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Friday Dog Blogging
(photo found here) Did anyone else see this story yesterday, about the poor dog that floated 75 miles down Poland’s Vistula River and into the Baltic Sea, and was lucky enough to be rescued by some Polish scientists doing research? The story is here. There’s video as well. The story is that firemen in a town about 60 miles inland saw the dog floating down the river, and they tried to rescue him, but were unable to get close due to the shifting ice. Eventually he drifted out to sea, where the research boat came upon him. The rescue was somewhat harrowing, because the dog slid off of the ice…
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Missing my Mom
I was brought to tears this morning by Jon Carroll’s tribute to his mother-in-law, who died last week at the age of 98. I started crying, thinking of how sad his wife, Tracy, must be at losing her mother. (Really? Was I really crying for Tracy, whom I do not know? In an abstract way perhaps. But mostly, no. Mostly I was crying for me.) And then I started crying harder, because I still miss my mom so very much. I had to wonder, how is it different to lose your mother when she’s 98 than it is when she’s 66? When she’s 98, people are pretty much expecting it,…
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Read’N’Review Challenge
Here we are, it’s almost the end of January, and I’ve finally gotten off the fence and decided to take a reading challenge this year. I tried to muster some enthusiasm for it back in December, and I just couldn’t do it. But I’m reading nonetheless, and I like having the list of book reviews over there on my sidebar, so I decided to sign up for the Read’n’Review Challenge, hosted by MizB, which is an easy challenge, because there’s no lists of award winners or particular genres that you have to look for. Just list the books that you want to read, read them, and review them on your…
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Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The unnamed narrator of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ is a writer, who has recently moved into a Manhattan Brownstone inhabited by a cast of characters, most prominently Holly Golightly, who lives below him. Holly nicknames him ‘Fred’, after her brother, who is away in the army. Fred is a writer who can’t publish what he writes. Holly is a lonely party girl, who makes her money by spending her time with wealthy men who give her $50 every time she has to go to the powder room in a fancy restaurant. As the story takes place in the 1940’s, $50 was a lot of money. The average employee in 1949 brought…
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Ribollita
(photo courtesy of SFGate) This week’s Sunday paper had a drool-worthy section of soup recipes, including a recipe for Ribollita, which is a Tuscan soup with bread in the bottom of the bowl, and a rind of Parmesan simmered within. It sounded perfect for a rainy evening, and I wanted to try it. But when I looked more closely at the recipe, I decided I wasn’t so sure. 3 cans of beans is a lot of beans for a soup, and I’m not that fond of kale. So I thought I’d look and see if Giada had a version I might try. What do you know, she did! So I…