schmindigo

Richmond

I hardly ever go to Richmond, & as far as I remember have never been in the particular neighborhood between Kaiser & the BART station. Since I was there this morning with time on my hands, I walked around looking for the Chinese restaurant. The neighborhood felt so very much like some of the faded Midwestern towns I remember (the ones with consistently inspiring Chinese restaurants) that I felt sure of striking gold.

Aha! Nothing to look at on the outside, but it was open already (since 7:30 am), so I went in to ask for a menu. I don’t know what I expected, but I was surprised to see the place more than half full, with mostly African American seniors chowing down on breakfast.

A glance at the menu told the tale: Chicken & Waffles breakfast special, $4.95! You get 3 waffles, 2 eggs, & your choice of 4 fried chicken wings or 4 sausages or 4 bacon. Try & beat that. If that’s too much food for you, how about Hot Oatmeal with milk for $1.85, or 2 eggs any style with toast & hash or grits for $2.95? “Popular Prices” indeed! I want to go back & eat there.

arugula flowers

Woops! Where did March go? I think Camera Shy may be distracting me a bit.

I am quite smitten with the arugula flowers.

Did you know you can eat them? I didn’t. I like them. Hard to describe the taste without sounding weird, but… they make me think of fresh wood. No, not like eating wood chips. Nothing like that. Much nicer.

I like throwing them on top of everything, just like I was throwing the leaves on everything all winter long. Makes sense, to go from winter to spring, leaf to flower.

3 o’clock

What is that strange & wonderful thing?

Why, it’s Baconhenge! Of course.

We (the 3 o’clock girls—always a good time!) could not resist populating it.

Camera Shy

Been meaning to mention this little project I have going on… I was doing it kinda stealth for a while, because I believe in different sizes of audience for different projects, at different times. (I have one art project that is for an audience of one: just me. It’s very satisfying; in fact I recommend this for all artists.)

This one started out with an audience of about 20 friends. I think it’s ready for another dozen people or so, which is about how many people read this blog, so here you go:

Camera Shy

I recommend you go back & read from the beginning to understand what the hell it’s about. Then after a while if you get tired of the text, why then just look at the pictures! Or vice versa. (I have art friends who want it to be just pictures. I have writer friends who like the text best. As with all things, YMMV.)

Pop lyric diagrams

Coming to Shadowshop soon (early next week, I guesstimate): grammatical sentence diagrams of pop lyrics!

Long-time readers of this blog may recall me as Dr. Diagram, diagramming lyrics to order at the Art Health Fair at the Oakland Museum in 2003, or Roadside Elixir at the Headlands in 2004. Well, if you missed those opportunities, you can still truck on down to SFMOMA & get yer rock & roll mitts on a hand-drawn diagram—for just $12! Choose from classics like “Freebird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd (pictured above), “Last Dance” by Donna Summer or “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin!

I couldn’t resist sneaking a Dead tune in there too…

Following is the little blurb that’s tucked in with each diagram, except here, you get links with that:

Mere days into 6th grade, I found myself sitting on the gym floor in a circle of girls, who began passing around a David Cassidy LP so that each of us could kiss his picture on the cover. I was the new girl in this school; no way could I afford not to kiss it with as much enthusiasm as I could fake (not much at all—I was soon relegated to the nerd clique, if you could call it that). So began my adolescent crash-course in pop music, which gave me my generational & cultural identity (just as it has done & continues to do for decades of 6th-grade girls). Around the same time I also learned how to diagram sentences; this methodical, visual organization of language so elegantly revealed grammar’s structure that I loved it even then. (How’s that for nerd cred?!)

As an artist, I’m always looking at the under-the-radar stuff of culture, the things that we know without knowing that we know them—what is given, hidden in plain sight. The grammatical structure of our language is of course all-pervasive, yet usually invisible. Pop music can function similarly, as a library of cultural fragments that we accumulate, consciously or subconsciously, throughout our lives. I started diagramming lyrics around 2000; later I diagrammed collaboratively in public, asking participants to recall lyrics from songs that were formative or meaningful to them. Sometimes people misremembered lyrics, so these diagrams may reflect the inaccuracy of pop memory. I also can’t guarantee grammatical correctness, although I tried my best with much help from A Workbook of Sentence Diagramming, self-published by Eugene R. Moutoux, 2002; & my brother’s old copy of Prentice-Hall Grammar and Composition: Level 6, 1982.

Thanks also to: Donna Ozawa, for inviting me to diagram at the Oakland Museum Art Health Fair (2003); Claudia Tennyson, for inviting me to diagram at the Headlands open house (2004); Becky Pringle, my 6th grade English teacher; & Janice Kleeman, for teaching me the history of rock & roll & the aesthetics of pop.

savory bread pudding

So, I had made & eaten this killer savory bread pudding, & I was so pleased & proud that I was gonna tell you all about it… but then we got hit with that lovely warm spell, during which I only wanted to pretend it was May, or even June. Which means no bread pudding—that’s a winter food!

Now that it’s pouring cats & dogs again, I thought you might be ready to hear it. This is an adaptation of an adaptation of a Tartine recipe. So easy & so good!

GOAT-CHARD SAVORY BREAD PUDDING

1 lb. loaf of day-old bread, preferably Acme Levain, cut into 1.5” cubes*
1 small yellow onion
3 spring onions, red**
10 large eggs
1 quart whole goat milk
3/4 tsp. salt
freshly ground pepper
pinch nutmeg
a little fresh thyme or other herbs
1 bunch (approx. 3 cups) rainbow chard, chopped
2 cups grated goat cheddar
extra virgin olive oil

Oven at 350°

In a skillet, cook onions in olive oil until tender. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, salt, nutmeg & pepper.

Throw into the egg mixture: bread cubes, chard, 1 cup of the cheese, herbs & onions. Mix well.

Butter or oil a 9×13 baking dish. Pour the stuff in, sprinkle evenly with the remaining cup of cheese & a bit of pepper.

Bake for about an hour, until it passes the toothpick test.

You can serve this on its own, or for a more balanced meal, swath it in arugula leaves. Yum!

* I think my cubes were a bit smaller & quite uneven. You could even cut thick slices & then tear them up into chunks. (What, you would use your Tartine loaf this way after going through all that trouble to get it? Not unless you happen to live walking distance or something….)

** If you can’t get spring onions, you can use leeks or just another onion.

folklore indexing

Folklore geeks, rejoice! Used to be you had to drag your folkloric ass to the library to access the hallowed tomes that contained the Aarne-Thompson taletype index & Stith Thompson’s motif index. It’s been a few years since I last googled, & hey, here they are! As the interwebs continue to expand & develop in ever more wonderful & horrible ways, count these among the wonderful:

Aarne-Thompson on Wikipedia

Thompson motif index. If the messed-up characters in the online version bug you, download the document for your very own, although you’ll miss out on the handy sidebar index.

I like all the variations on T11.4. Love through sight of something belonging to unknown princess, including:
Love through sight of hair of unknown princess.
Love through sight of hair of unknown hero.
Love through sight of slipper of unknown princess.
Love through finding lady‘s wreath.
Love through seeing bouquet.
Love through seeing marks of lady’s teeth in fruit which she has bitten(!!)
Love through finding lady‘s handkerchief.
Love through finding lady’s ornament (ring, comb, etc.).

Yeah, this is how I spend my time when I’m supposed to be cleaning house in preparation for the Year of the Rabbit….

sold out pencils

I am laughing more than bragging, but yeah, I’m bragging too: 360 pencils imprinted with the simple sentiment “MY FAMILY IS DRIVING ME CRAZY” have sold out in the first 6 weeks of Shadowshop.

A bunch more are on the way, so if you want any, they should be there in a week or two. Not just for the holidays!

arugula

I am head-over-heels in love with the arugula in our garden. I just keep throwing handfuls of it on top of everything I eat. When I think of all the winters that I’ve lived without it… well, let’s just say I intend to keep growing this amazing stuff as long as I live.

scream

I know I’m a mercurial blogger, but I do try to stay at least somewhat on top of our thriving local ice cream scene. So: after a most tantalizing slow tease of a build-up over the past several months, Scream is open & scooping 6 flavors of sorbet, all vegan. They will over the next few weeks work up to 18 flavors at a time, including some sweetened with honey, maple & agave, for y’all who may be averse to processed white sugar. They’ve also got sorbet sandwiches (the cookies are not vegan—yet) & prepacked sorbet to go.

I homed right in on the lemon shiso flavor, but dude behind the counter was making sure I sampled my way there, with very pleasurable stops at satsuma, grapefruit, cranberry orange, pistachio, & Askinosie chocolate. All of them were as good as they possibly could be, except for the grapefruit, which had an odd pithy flavor that went sadly astray of its mark—& I’m speaking as an avowed grapefruit fanatic. The chocolate, on the other hand, provoked me & the customer sampling beside me into an incoherent contest of descriptions: insane, crazy, mmm & oh baby were some of what we uttered before he bought a pint of the stuff to go & I (so disciplined) returned my attentions to the lemon shiso, which was all that I had hoped it would be.

$3 will get you a tiny cup, which may not sit well with you value queens out there—I know because I am one myself, but when it comes to my white sugar quota I actually don’t mind a small portion. I was more than happy with my perfect little scoop of acidy-perfumy sweetness, which I ate sitting on the window bench watching the last bit of sunset.

Oh, & the dairy? You won’t even think about missing it.

Hours: 11am to 9pm every day except Monday. Next to Bakesale Betty in Temescal, with the very charming old-skool vertical neon sign proclaiming SORBET. A most excellent & necessary addition to the hood. Much as I hate to speak ill of any ice cream shop, this is Tara’s final cue to just give up already.

Sorry no pictures; that’ll teach me to leave the house without my camera.

with a girl

I couldn’t resist this widget that maps out the 37 states I’ve visited.

My map is a guess, though. In 1989 I drove from Providence RI to Emeryville CA, the long way, with a girl—let’s just call her Paul. From Boyertown PA we ended up a couple nights later in Atlanta GA. How did we get there? I remember complaining about song pollution, John Denver stuck in our heads as we drove through Shenandoah National Park, where we most likely camped. Which means we probably crossed those tiny jigsaw bits of both Maryland & West Virginia on our way into Virginia. Then both Carolinas on the way to Atlanta would make sense, right? (Scary how much I’ve forgotten!)

Likewise, the little Yellowstone corner of Montana is all I’ve seen of that big, tantalizing state, & Delaware I’m assuming I must have passed through asleep on an overnight charter bus from Providence to a big reproductive rights march in DC. (Remember those?! It was like 1985 or something.) That kinda barely counts as “visiting”, but you could say I’ve been there.

Interesting to see which states have so far eluded me, & which I’ve visited more than you’d guess. Some things I do remember: Paul’s friend trying to teach me to play pool in a bar in Atlanta, eating boiled peanuts (hey, that’s Chinese!) somewhere in the hills of Alabama after visiting Paul’s father (who let me drive his pickup truck), & fireflies when we camped in Memphis. I’ve been in Tennessee kind of a lot, considering. You can read that sentence both ways.

Shadowshop

Bargain hunters of the Bay Area, mark your calendars for Shadowshop at SFMOMA! Cheap art galore from over 200 local artists, beginning on the 2nd of December. If you’ve always wanted a real Indigo Som Chinese restaurant photo on your wall but had neither budget nor space for the 40-incher, you can go scoop up Southern mini-prints (approx. 7.5”) for a mere $50! If that’s still too rich for you, I’ll have other good stuff there starting at 50¢—yes, fifty cents!

Shadowshop goes all the way until May 2011 so wares & services (hmm, services!?) will come & go. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for Stephanie Syjuco for conceiving, organizing(!) & implementing this fun project.

Correction: sorry, I got dates mixed up. The shop is already open now!

Eastern City Cafe

Emeryville. Eastern City Cafe has been in my sights for a long while now, but I am not a morning person, & this restaurant needed to be shot in the morning. Patience pays off. The baby blue station wagon was a gift from the photography gods.

eating green things

Gnocchi & pesto at Encuentro!

Risi e bisi! Recipe from Ferry Plaza Farmers Market cookbook, peas from Swanton.

FOAF (Friend of a Friend) cucumber melon gazpacho! (Same free-association recipe improvisation method as FOAF salad, of course.)

(I know, kinda crappy photo. I’ll give you some nice waves at the end of the post to make up for it.)

I started with cucumber gazpacho in mind, but my recipe wanted lemon & I only had lime. Well, lime is friends with melon, & gazpacho is friends with cilantro & pepper, so…

Fill your blender jar with an assortment of peeled, seeded cucumbers, cut into chunks. I like to get a bunch of different kinds of cukes from different stands at the farmers market, but you could keep it simple & just use one kind.

Then pour in:

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup water

1/8 cup white wine vinegar

Blend so the level goes down.

Add:

Lime juice; start with half a lime. You may want to add more later.

A very small, very mild pepper. By very small I mean not much bigger than a finger.

Couple sprigs of cilantro

Small pinch of cayenne

Salt & pepper

Melon, a couple of big scoops (with a regular soup spoon or tablespoon). I tried this with an Eel River melon from Full Belly & also with an Ambrosia melon; I suspect almost any melon would work. Will try Galia next.

(optional) Small clove garlic

Blend again, taste, & adjust as necessary. You are aiming for a balance of flavors that tastes good to you; it will not be great yet, until you give it several hours—preferably a whole day—in the fridge. See if you can detect just a little hint of the melon; it should not be a sweet soup. Then stick the whole thing in the fridge.

Next day, put it back on the blender & give it another go, just a few seconds, to re-blend anything that separated while it was sitting. Then garnish as you like, or not.

It’s finally really summer!

The Castle

At last, I have seen it live & in person…

The pool that every swimmer dreams of swimming in… (well, the decadent swimmers anyway—can’t speak for the sporty austere types).

I did not actually jump in, but you better believe it took some self-restraint.

I woulda been glad just for the chance to spend a couple hours staring at it & walking around it, instead of the few minutes I got.

Overhyped? No way.