An Experiment: Steak

I've always been a little wary of cooking meat, especially since as a child I was a vegetarian until age ten. And after that, it was always my parents who handled the meat, and who served it in delightfully pleasing forms alien to my concept of any raw or butchered animal.

As everyone who knows me is probably sick and tired of hearing by now, I recently read this incredible book called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Now, I'm not a fan of her fiction, but this nonfiction account of her family's year spent eating only self- and locally-grown foods is not only incredibly inspiring but also very honest about the pros, cons, and possibilities of her family's venture. One chapter deals with the slaughter of the first round of heirloom turkeys pre-Thanksgiving, and while the account is indeed bloody the farmers display an incredible amount of gratitude and respect towards the animals they raised humanely and subsequently use fully.

Now, I'm not saying I'd like to slaughter my own meat, but I'm certainly getting more acquainted with the idea of cooking meat myself, especially since Star Grocery (near where I live) stocks Niman Ranch beef and other local meats. I've never been particularly picky; recent months have seen me fall in deep passionate love with sushi (previously abhorred), attempt to put zucchini in nearly everything (previously dismissed as "useless") and even make the extra effort to taste things like shrimp (of which I'm still not really a fan). In keeping with having a healthy diet, and living cheaply, I'm trying not to buy too much meat, but it's become considerably easier for me to deal with handling it when I know it's been treated humanely during its lifetime. Plus, between spinach and the occasional meat dish, I'm probably not going to have to start taking iron supplements anytime soon!

Here's a solo dinner I cooked up a few weeks ago: chuck steak pan-seared (just seasoned with salt and pepper), arugula salad with avocado and feta and lemon dressing, and ice water! Seriously, I forget to drink water so often, but drinking juice feels basically like pouring sugar into my veins so I try to avoid it most of the time.

Miss Alison, in Two Parts

This was a day for picnics; for mac n' cheese, for guacamole and chips and sitting by the lake as the sun goes down.
miss alison lives here and here.

Tuesday Collaborative Dinner

Had a couple of girlfriends over for a quiet dinner the other night. We made mini-burgers (sliders?) with homemade spicy puttanesca sauce, fresh basil, and goat cheese; also salad and Kashi pilaf (which is quite crunchy and tasty). And raspberry sorbet for dessert! Perfect.




Also this surprisingly fun sparkling wine that Caitlin got:

Blender Inauguration

My father treated me to a Bed Bath and Beyond shopping spree a few weekends ago; the catalyst for the mission was to find me a food processor/blender. Well, needless to say, we were successful, and this was one of the first results: cauliflower soup!
Subsequently, pesto!




All in all, a very satisfying set of culinary experiences.

Procrastination Dinner

A few girls and I got together a few weeks ago to study and work on our various term papers for our Baroque class - (un)fortunately we got distracted by our mutual love of food and ended up just creating a feast for ourselves instead. Well, what can you do when you live so close to the Gourmet Ghetto and Cheeseboard?


We made spicy pasta puttanesca (the secret is to add a little brown sugar when you're browning the onions), sautéed summer squash and bell pepper, and I added a little bit of mock boursin cheese on the side of my plate. And tangelos, Ritter dark chocolate with hazelnuts, and ginger tea for dessert! Maybe we didn't get any work done...but hell, it was worth it.

Portland Ephemera - March 20th-26th 2009

Ahhhhhh Portland! My hometown of the heart, so to speak. Stumptown Coffee, of course, is one of the major reasons to go to Portland, but instead of going to the original watering hole or any of the satellite Stumptowns, I prefer to get my fix at the Fresh Pot. Attached to the Powell's Books on Hawthorne, the Fresh Pot is the perfect place to get a cup of coffee or an espresso drink (pictured here) and settle down with a book or your laptop.

Taking MAX back from dropping Jesse (the boyfriend) off at the airport and reading John Berger. Portland has pretty excellent public transportation, with buses that go all over the five (yes five) quadrants of the city. And MAX, the light rail system, is reliable and also goes pretty much anywhere you need to go.

We took a trip out to the coast - the drive was incredibly intense since we drove out of Portland drizzle and into a snowstorm. We drove to Seaside, which is actually a horrible little carnival tourist town, but luckily we escaped quickly and drove out along 101. Hilariously enough, we found a town called Cooterville! No joke! Unfortunately, GoogleMaps doesn't believe me that it exists; I think the population was something like 12 people anyway. The coast was incredibly beautiful, all tiny towns that reminded me of Bolinas in West Marin.

Right near my friend's apartment is this bar called The Pub at the End of the Universe, and ever since I lived in Portland summer of 2007 I have wanted to go there and have a beer. Luckily, this time we did (and had an incredible dark cider that I can't for the life of me remember the name of), and we found this awesome sort of scratchy graffiti on one of the seats. Definitely one of my favorites!

I miss Portland...I have a feeling maybe I'll end up there when I want to raise kids, but for now the life and variety of the Bay Area, as well as the proximity to my family, are more relevant to me and to my process of figuring out my future.

Summer...

How I miss it...

Bittersweet Cafe, Oakland CA

Bittersweet Cafe is a tiny mecca for chocolate lovers tucked away into Oakland's Rockridge district. With friendly employees, an impressive array of chocolate bars and a growing selection of house-made confections, Bittersweet is the perfect place to spend a rainy hour or two.

Bars are divided into three sections: Dark, Milk, and Surprises! The particular chocolate pictured below is an Earl Grey-infused dark chocolate, with tiny crunchy nibs for added texture. There's a benefit here to spending too much money on chocolate; I don't know if it was just a Valentine's Day special, but we bought four bars and got a free aluminum tin to keep them in!

Divine ended up being my favorite - pure dark chocolate, with a really sweet and mild aftertaste; we got another bar that was 70% cacao (read: delicious) but was a little too acidic for me.


Besides their impressive array of chocolate, Bittersweet is, after all, a cafe. Go with any one of their chocolatey drinks, including Spicy! ("Hot and spicy, a kick of pepper and a hint of cinnamon and rose"), and you won't be sorry. They also supply Blue-Bottle coffee for all of your caffeine needs.

(First image from the Bittersweet website, second from my camera!)

Design Cravings

As my roommate situation has finally evened out, with my new roommate comfortably inhabiting the spacious dining room that constitutes the second bedroom of my apartment, I find myself jonesing for interior design in an entirely new way. Up until relatively recently, I've been satisfied with tacking photos and posters up on my bedroom walls and tossing some blankets over the well-loved couch. But glancing through design blogs like Notcot.org and SF Art & Design Lover makes me want to decorate, decorate, decorate.

For starters, the Jo-8 colorful nesting coffee tables by London designer Timothy Schreiber make me want to have more dinner parties just so everyone can have their own table. Apparently based on Joseph Albers' 1927 Bauhaus design and made from aluminum, these lightweight (and colorful! COLORFUL!) tables would be perfect. I do have to admit, I like the color acrylic version that Notcot posted about much better than the aluminum model - frankly, it's prettier!


To continue the nesting theme, Generate Design, specifically the designer "morph," has produced nesting plastic kitchen implements! Far from the commonplace tablespoon/teaspoon measures, the set of 8 comes with not only tea- and table-spoons but large and small mixing bowls, a sieve, a colander, and measuring cups! Love the colors too. This also comes in a smaller size, a set of 5, which includes a juicer.

I'm starting to feel like the world of household design is splitting into different spheres; there's the everyday stuff you buy for its utility and its no-frills functionalism, like a blender or a refrigerator. But household design (specifically of consumer items) is also spinning off in a whole new direction: much like couture fashion, the consumable product is turning into something that is more about the construction than the function, something the average consumer might be intrigued by but is less than likely to buy. I find things like six-dimensional couches and light installations to be unbelievably, well, cool, but I'm not about to blow a whole bunch of cash on something that, let's face it, isn't so useful. The thing I like about the two products I listed above is not just their pretty colors and eye-catching symmetry; it's the efficiency of construction designed to increase functionality that really catches me.

I've never actually taken anything but modern/contemporary or survey courses in the Cal Art History department, which I'm hoping to change this semester at least.

I'm waitlisted for HistArt 170, which focuses on Italian Baroque (i.e. post-Renaissance) art, including painting, architecture, and sculpture. The work at the left is Bernini's St. Theresa of Avila in Ecstasy (1647-1652), sculpted for the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. I'm desperately hoping to get into the course; I'm high on the wait list but graduating seniors apparently have priority.

I'm particularly fascinated by the evolution of sculpture over the past 500 or so years; examining Bernini's work should be interesting.

The other course I'm actually enrolled in for this semester promises to be difficult, simply because of the density and relative obscurity of the reading; we're using Lives of the Artists (1550/1568) by the fellow pictured at the right (Giorgio Vasari) as a central text. I must admit, I do enjoy reading works that I may not have picked up otherwise, and of course expanding my knowledge base - that's why I'm in school, after all! But skimming even the introduction and the first one or two artists discussed has proven to be a somewhat yawn-inducing task.

That said, the professor teaching the course is particularly charismatic (although he speaks very slowly), and I feel privileged to take his course as this is his last semester teaching before he retires.

This course also discusses sculpture and architecture in addition to painting, which I find particularly relevant and interesting. Apparently, the five different types of classical columns (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite) are designed according to a sort of Vitruvian Man principle; their diameter is proportional to their height based on the proportions in differently gendered human bodies. For example, the more slender columns, such as the Corinthian and Composite structures, are based on the more extreme (1 to 9 or 10) ratios of a woman's body, while the stockier columns such as the Doric or Ionic models are based on the broader construction of the male body.

I'm actually looking forward to this semester now, which I certainly wasn't before; modern and contemporary subjects, such as the study of new media or foreign propaganda, are usually what float my boat. But hearing the first few lectures and being presented with the opportunity of learning about something I've never even considered - well, how could I not be excited?