Category Archives: food and drink

New Beginnings

By | | , , ,
5 Comments

It has been a wonderful Spring for me so far, I must say. On many fronts. For example, work is trundling along steadily, with small but regular landmarks in my project being set and met, and the garden is planted with lots of new vegetable plants that carry promise for tasty treats in the months to come. In the mornings the garden has a cacophony of sounds from all sorts of birds, all determinedly busy with whatever it is they think needs to get done that morning. It is good to start that day hearing all that activity. mourning_doves_2(Fully half of that sound comes from a remarkably energetic Northern Mockingbird that manages to run through several distinct birdsong choruses at high volume while flying from tree to tree in the neighbourhood. It is almost as though it is trying to create the illusion that there are several mockingbirds in residence…) In the photo you can see a pair of mourning doves (the same pair I think I spoke about earlier), surveying the activity in the air and on the ground below.

There’s a feeling of promise, hope, and growth all around at this time of year. It’s everywhere. A nice surprise waited for me early last week. I was filling the kettle at the sink for my first cup of tea of the day one morning and noticed something green […] Click to continue reading this post →

And So It Goes…

By | | , , ,
7 Comments

bottega_louie_2So it has been a quiet week or few in my immediately local world. This is by choice. Recall that I’m on sabbatical, and working on a project. I’m trying to work on it exclusively, but I keep getting interrupted by several other things, especially since I returned from Walkabout.

But I do what I can, saying no to some things, doing some duties where I am needed, and tending somewhat to my private life and friendships of course. But mostly I’ve been hiding and working on the project. Overall, I can report that I’m very pleased with progress in the last month (since I returned to LA) on several aspects of the work. I’m sorry that I have not – and still will not – tell you anything about the project. I’ve already given my reasons, and nothing has changed. Perhaps later.

Most of my work has been in Away mode, which means at offices other than the one assigned to me at work. I am certainly staying away from the department as much as I can, (no disrespect intended, but people find things for you to do if you’re perceived as being around – I am not around!), and the same goes for the campus, making only fleeting visits to the latter, mostly in stealth mode (my obligatory sabbatical beard, among other things, has helped here). Sometimes I appear for a […] Click to continue reading this post →

A Return

By | | , , , , , , , , ,
2 Comments

gladioliI find myself back in Los Angeles for a bit, putting Walkabout mode on pause. Perhaps to do my laundry, perhaps to chair the committee of the upcoming Ph.D. defense of my student, Tameem, perhaps to be able to sit outside in the early morning sun in a T-shirt and blog over breakfast.

The garden is full of weeds and flowers, and all is well with the world, albeit a bit blurry due to my jetlag.

Anyway, a few random things to note:

* * *

mourning_dovesAnother Spring is here, in full force. I once again snort in exasperated laughter at the bizarre claim so very many people make about Los Angeles (Southern California more generally) not having seasons, as I marvel at all the many signs of it screaming for attention. As a random example, I’m observing some mourning doves eyeing me up from nearby as they try to decide whether I’m a threat to their potential nesting sites that they are checking out. Seems that at least one pair is rather impressed with my cluster of strelitzia nicolai and want to move in. I want to tell them that I’m not the problem, but the fact that they’d be in plain sight of the crows/rooks/ravens/winged-Nazgul that pass by here a lot will be. I’ve seen them strike nests in those trees from previous years and scoop up a tasty warm meal.

* * *

Eight hours of jetlag means only one thing: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Dessert Coffees

By | | , , ,
3 Comments

three_coffeesThese are not really my cup of tea (at least not first choice), so to speak, but they are very pretty.

While working at the countertop of a coffee bar at Mercado San Miguel, in Madrid, (drinking my usual café cortado) I watched the fellow at the counter making them for some customers.

It was a rather elaborate process, and quite fascinating to watch. It might seem odd […] Click to continue reading this post →

Night Moves

By | | , , ,
1 Comment

edison_outing_artwalkSome local thoughts. I can report that the downtown Artwalk is still a great event, effectively a street party running over a wide area of the city. If in the area, I recommend that you visit it (some upcoming second Thursday of the month) soon. (See earlier posts, e.g., here.) It is all part of the steadily increasing activity that’s going on downtown that I’ve mentioned several times here. It is not just second Thursdays. More businesses are simply opening their doors and people are coming. It’s great. The other night I went with a friend and colleague to try out the beer and sausages at Wurstküche, and had a wonderful time. wurstkuche_sausagesYou can see […] Click to continue reading this post →

Bad, but ever so Good

By | | , , ,
13 Comments

bakes_squidThe other day I had a moment of nostalgia and made some of what we called bakes when I was a child, growing up (for some years) in the Caribbean. Bakes are known as Johnny cakes in the US, as far as I understand, and used in much the same ways that we used them. This is certainly not something you should have every day, since they involve fat (vegetable shortening, or lard as we called it, although elsewhere the term is used for a kind of pig fat), flour, salt, and a pan half full of oil to deep fry it all in.

Definitely sinful.

I have very happy memories of having bakes with tasty oily fishy goodness of some sort. Salt fish (salt dried cod) would be a typical thing (bacalao as the Portuguese and […] Click to continue reading this post →

Nine

By | | , ,
4 Comments

Yes, still with the morning baking. I feel a bit bad about not getting bagels from Brooklyn Bagels (on Beverly) anymore (after six years of being a regular), but there’s only so much I can eat in baked goods and I seem to be in the mood to do it all myself these days.

Not sure why I’ve never done these before:

nine_biscuits

Sweet potato biscuits*. Perfect for using up that left over sweet potato, and, like all […] Click to continue reading this post →

Happy New Year!

By | | , , ,
4 Comments

(Since it is bowl season…)

bowl_season

It has been rather pleasant here in Los Angeles over the last week or two, since there has been a mixture of rain, cloud, and sunshine that has been very good for all concerned: climate, mood, garden, etc.

Perhaps you’ll have noticed that I’ve been quiet with regards writing here over the holiday period. This is not because I’ve fallen off the planet or anything! I’ve been […] Click to continue reading this post →

Final Morsels

By | | , , , ,
10 Comments

cheesy_biscuitsThey’re sitting the final exam for my graduate electromagnetism class right now, having started at the ungodly hour of 8:00am. I’m sitting outside in the bright, lukewarm Winter sun with a cup of coffee, two cheesy biscuits I baked at 6:30am for no reason other than feeling in a baking mood (see right), my phone in case there’s a reason for the TA on duty to contact me, and my iPod, which I am of course using to write to you.

It has been an odd few days. Not so much because of the pair of them that had me wandering around a huge studio lot, being wardrobe-checked and make-up checked, shot from all angles with a live cheering studio audience in attendance (for your viewing pleasure on a new prime-time series on Fox to begin airing next month – more on this later, perhaps), but because early on Saturday I woke up with a severe vertigo attack. vertigoVery odd indeed and although I managed to get it under control and it had worn off over the days, every now and again it gets close to being triggered again. I don’t know the source for sure – I think it was correlated with a reaction to some of the food I had on set, maybe combined somehow with the severe ear blockage I had about a month ago after catching a (short-lived) cold on a long transatlantic flight? – but I have to say (and this is the point of my digression here) that it is a remarkably odd experience for me to feel slightly off balance for such an extended period. I’m used to being on the tips of my toes ready to skitter along the line at the edge of a low wall if the mood takes me while walking along. But I can’t imagine doing that now. I feel like I’ve lost my powers… it’s often amazing to me how little it takes to make a person feel very mortal, even fragile, again. It will no doubt pass.

I’ve been gentle on this final exam. I still find it disturbing that kids today (yes, I said “kids today” – perhaps my lack of equilibrium has put me in crotchety-old-man mode), even the very smart ones, typically do badly on any advanced exam that […] Click to continue reading this post →

Jetlag Benefits

By | | , ,
4 Comments

cake_walnut_1When I’ve got a decent amount of jetlag, coming West, I find it not so much of a drawback as a way of seeing how to arrange one’s days differently. Sometimes the results are tasty. I had to leave a birthday party early last night due to the need to sleep, but this meant that at 6:00am today I suddenly felt in the mood to make a walnut […] Click to continue reading this post →

OctoTriple

By | | , , ,
8 Comments

octopus_piYes, I sometimes find myself asking the question “Is it just me or…?” from time to time. Something to do with the issue of differing views of the world and so forth… This time it is about this bag.

To me, there’s a huge Pi on it, first and foremost. Just Pi. You know, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. When I first saw it I had not seen the octopus written below, and so was feeling pleased to see a commercial logo on a shopping bag that simply had Pi on it. It fit with my oft-expressed desire to see more science and science related things out there in the general culture. This stretched to plays on numbers, mathematics, and so forth.

So then I wondered what the Pi stood for, or what clever pun they were going to work into the mix to connect it to their product. Then I saw that they simply meant it to be octopus eyes. (On a severely deformed octopus – I always thought that they had eight legs…). Given that the blob has the wrong number of legs and all, I can’t properly make it work for me as an octopus. How about you?

Bit disappointing that Pi is not involved. Perhaps it could have worked if the store was using the plural form of the animal’s name.

I’ve been saying legs. Perhaps I should say “appendages”. This all puts me in mind of […] Click to continue reading this post →

So Much To Do…

By | | , , , ,
3 Comments

madrid_cathedral_1I spent an astonishing stretch of time in the Prado on Saturday, in an operation that experience and aesthetics have taught me to pace properly. I pick a particular artist or cluster of artists and focus on them for an hour or ninety minutes (visiting the parts of the museum that are relevant to them, not focusing on anything else, more or less), then I find the cafe, get a cup of coffee and a tasty, and relax for a bit, glowing from the experience. Then I plan the next pieces of the museum I will visit next and begin my focus on that part. The temptation with a museum the size and complexity of the Prado, with the remarkable depth it has in its collections, is just to show up and try and see everything in whatever order you find them. This results in confusion, superficiality, and major headache and backache, at least for me. I’m happy to go in and see a subset of what is there really properly and in context rather than just “see stuff”.

So of course I mostly focused on Spanish painters – several of the masters before the 20th Century – and later, other masters who perhaps were creating work in a Spanish context of some kind, and later, particular masters who happen to have examples of some of their great work housed in the Prado, whether there be a Spanish context or not, of which there are several such examples.

The collection is amazing. About 1/3 of my time was spent on Goya, in fact. (I wisely […] Click to continue reading this post →

Less Work, More Play

By | | , , , , ,
2 Comments

madrid_eating_2Well, the weekend is here and so I have wrapped up most of the official part of my visit to Madrid. Lest you think that I spent most of my time eating (not that there’s anything wrong with that), let me mention that I ended up, from Monday to Thursday giving about eight hours of detailed exposition at the board and fielding questions (the lectures and seminar), umpteen (an official number, I’ll have you know) hours of preparation of the notes needed to do this in a successful and clear way, and several more chunks of time in private physics conversations of various sorts. Quite fulfilling, tiring, but worthwhile for all concerned. (I even heard that various people liked the lectures and the seminar, so that’s a real bonus!) It has been a good week.

Thursday night saw me wandering the city streets in the drizzle for several hours. It all started out with a quick walk near my hotel to see if I could stumble on a restaurant, but eventually turned into a longer walk and then an epic quest, as happens to me so often in such situations. I start applying a list of criteria for what I […] Click to continue reading this post →