I made a yummy.

As in, yummy vegetables.  Amazing but true.  I once wrote a Foodie Tuesday article about one of the best ways to cook cauliflower.  Today wanted to incorporate some other veggies I'd picked up at Milk Pail yesterday, so I made a kind of westernized stir-fry.

Vegetables: white cauliflower (half a head), chayote squash, about 2/3 a leftover carrot.
Seasonings: Pepper, two springs of chopped up home-grown Italian parsley (that is the western part), and just the right amount of salt.  And some constarch dissolved in water to thicken the sauce (that's the eastern part).

I was kind of surprised by how few seasonings this required.  I had to stop myself from adding crushed garlic to the mix, and I'm glad I didn't.  I wanted to showcase the natural flavor of the veggies, each of which is so naturally, so delicately sweet on its own.  Together, they created harmony.  Garlic would have totally overpowered the dish.  Even Garry enjoyed it.  Lesson learned!

Edit - my process: I should mention that a lot of getting vegetables (or anything really) right is heat control and timing.  It takes practice and a certain "tuning in" to your food.  I learned from my mother that different vegetables cook at different rates, but I had to learn for myself exactly how that translates into a dish.  I've made many mistakes where one kind of veg would be overcooked and mushy, while another would be undercooked and too crunchy.  

In this case, I knew from previous experience that chayotes take a LONG time to simmer down, soften up, and sweeten.  So I added them first to a bit of oil over slightly higher than medium heat and let them warm up, covered, while I finished cutting the cauliflower into florets.  But cauliflower also takes quite a while also, so I put them in soon after, stirring the veggies so they got even heat distribution.  I peeled the carrot, then checked on the veggies.  They were starting to brown a bit so I added a few splashes of water and covered again so they could "steam-fry" and cook faster and more evenly.  I sliced the carrots, then lifted the lid and added them in.  At this point I also added the pepper and salt.  Covered it again and cleaned up my mess, then dissolved a mounded teaspoon or so of cornstarch in a couple tablespoons of water.  Chopped up my parsley.  Then when the vegetables looked done (the best way to tell is after they have fully turned color, then leave them in for a minute or two longer - if in doubt, try a little piece for tenderness), I threw in the cornstarch and parsley and stirred until the cornstarch thickened.  Voila.

How I'd monetize at least part of YouTube, if I were still at the Goog

Sell. CDs.  From. Indie.  And. Commercial.  Artists.

Sell.  DVDs. Next to. Movie Trailers.

Take a small percentage of the sales revenue.  There's got to be a huge population of people who watch movie trailers, music videos, covers of popular songs, and original work by indie artists trying to get exposure.  Relatively, the sample players on Amazon and Barnes and Noble suck so bad.  This is the perfect way to test drive media before buying - if Google just brought it all onto one platform and standardized the checkout/distribution process.... just think.  Omg.  They'd be even richer than they already are.

I guess they already sell mp3s, but I think it's about getting all these people who make new music and don't have a good way to distribute it, make it buyable.

Just random brainstorming on a Wednesday evening.

Suddenly in love with Kina Grannis. Marie Digby, eat your heart out!

Thanks to GiveandGo for tipping me off about this extraordinary young singer-songwriter.

I don't think there is much to say here about the talented and 24-year-old Kina Grannis, making her way through YouTube, because her music speaks for itself.  There isn't much use talking about the obvious things, like her beautifully delicious voice, or her mastery of her chosen instruments.  I'll leave it at this:

1) She's lovely and adorable.  I mean, look at her!  Unaffected, unselfconscious, down-to-earth, totally chilled out.  She definitely falls in the category of Women I Would Totally Date, If I Were a Dude.  Not to mention, she gives Jason Mraz a run for his money on the ukelele in "Back to Us."

2) She's fearless and playful. Makeup mishaps notwithstanding, she goes out of her way to connect with fans in "Stars Falling Down."  

3) For the most part, her 'originals' are way better than her covers. One exception is this fantastic cover of the "White Winter Hymnal" by Fleet Foxes, performed with a couple of her friends.  It reminds me a little of the gorgeous music made by the Sisters of Kuumba at Harvard.

4) I can't pick a favorite.  Seriously, every one of her original songs are totally solid, if not outstanding and repeat-worthy.  Here's "Make Me," the introspective and slightly melancholy one from GiveandGo's posterous that got me hooked:

Been MIA...

Just wanted to stop in and apologize for being so absent.  The month at work has not been going so well, and it's taking all I have at the moment.  Never fear, when things calm down I'll be back with more.

Meanwhile, you may or may not have noticed that I finally (finally, finally) started tagging my blog posts, starting from the oldest entries forward, including a couple of the most recent ones.  I don't know why I resisted it for so long (I guess the Posterous boys made it easier to tag stuff, though not en masse yet), but I'ma bout half done.  People have complained before about how random my blog is, but I didn't find that to be true - most everything fit into a number of tags: music, design & decor, food, etc.

And everything else landed in 'randar.'  Haa!

Foodie Tuesday: A Modern Travesty, or--Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, the Book vs. the Movie

Given how much I love food, children's books, and movies... well, you know I HAD to say something about this.

Back when I was a kid, it went without saying that Judi and Ron Barrett's excellent Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was one of my favoritest picture books, ever.  As a kid, my imagination lit up at the thought of this magical place called Chewandswallow, where food rained down from the sky, where no one went hungry, and where everyone, regardless of color, got to eat yummy American food instead of boring Chinese food.

As an adult, I can appreciate stuff like the beautifully painstaking details of the woodcut illustrations.  I remember a few things well.  The banks of cumulus hamburger clouds.  The Jell-O sunset.  The roofless restaurant.  And of course, Grandpa's pancakes.


But, then I saw the trailer for the new movie.  As it began, I had no idea what they were getting at--it looked like another silly excuse for a Hollywood kid's movie that had been developed within an inch of its life (too many cooks in the kitchen, pardon the pun).  The trailer was halfway through before I realized it was a film adaptation of this most beloved children's classics.

First off, while they borrowed heavily from the visual concepts presented in the original book, the movie retains none of the book's rich, charming artistic style.  While the real Chewandswallow is a place peopled with colorful characters, busy and alive with warmth, the world of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, the movie, is a cold and empty place where there's only the main character and his female sidekick/love interest.  Not to mention, the book includes a ton of incredible details that I'll never get sick of discovering (Rich people frowning over limp broccoli! A newspaper called the 'Chewandswallow Digest'! Lower Intestine Street!).  Compare images from the book and the movie in the diptychs I made below, along with some extra images I love from the book.

Secondly, in the book, food raining like manna from the sky is presented as, gasp, a good thing.  As a kid I totally ate up (har har) the different scenes of regular citizens going about their day, catching chicken drumsticks on the go and filling their umbrellas with orange juice. In the movie, food is a menace from the get-go.

Thirdly, like Superman, Chewandswallow comes with inherent superpowers.  Its ability to shower food on its citizens is totally natural, delightful even.  In the movie, the food is the creation of some loser mad-scientist guy.  How lame is that?


Lastly, the storytelling in the book is wonderfully tongue-in-cheek and smart, if very straightforward.  I really doubt the movie will carry on any of that subtlety and delicacy as it whups us in the face with its fancy effects and loud graphics.

I'm definitely one to agree with this blogger that Hollywood is about to turn this masterpiece into a "shitty, nihilistic movie."

Ivy League Crime Rates: Perception vs. Fact

via yaledailynews.com

Saw this through FB friend Steve Lu in the wake of Annie Le's tragic murder at Yale med school. How fascinating, the discrepancy between perception and reality, especially in ultra urban areas like NYC and New Haven!

And really sort of scary that Harvard has the most crimes of them all. Not super surprising though because I definitely heard of muggings, rapes and intrusions over the course of four years. One of my classmates even had to tackle and take down an intruder right in my dorm's courtyard!  What a hero.

Made the Yelp weekly newsletter

...for my review of the local taco truck!

"¡Hola, yelperitos! Tomorrow is Mexican Independence Day, and what better way to celebrate than by downing some cerveza, agua fresca y tacos deliciosos? Hard or soft, fishy or meaty, there are endless possibilities for your taste buds to be tantalized... so grab your finest sombrero for a tour of the tastiest tacos around. ¡Ándale!

If you're on the Peninsula, Stephanie L insists that you make a pit stop at Tacos Peralta in San Mateo and 'KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).' She consistently gets 'at least one carnitas taco with hot sauce, onions and cheese, and it is always a taste experience.'" 

Read the entire Yelp Weekly Newsletter here!

First trip to Rainbow Grocery in the Mission - the Spoils

I have been weirdly "into" nonconventional grocery shopping lately.  I try to avoid chain supermarkets at all costs, and that includes hoity toity ones like Whole Foods and Draeger's.  Why bother, when there are so many better options in the Bay Area?  (Exception: Safeway is having a $1.99/lb sale on heirloom tomatoes until 9/15, which is a downright steal, and I am a big fan of Nob Hill Foods.)

So it was only a matter of time before I found myself exploring the canyon-like aisles of Rainbow Grocery Cooperative in the Mission, and the only reason was that I didn't get a chance to drop by Berkeley Bowl yesterday like I had wanted to.  

The first thing to greet me was the bulk spices section.  I had never seen anything like it!  Saffron, Chinese 5-spice powder and arrowroot powder by the pound!  I was so amazed...normally I get my bulk spices from Indian grocery stores (where they are SO much cheaper than going to Safeway or even the Mexican market!), but their selection is quite limited and they come prepackaged.  You can't, like I did, get a mere 1oz of dill weed and pay $0.50 for it.

I moved on to the regular bulk foods section where I was dizzy with pleasure - comparable to BB's, but there were quite a few things I saw that were NOT available at BB, like grits and blue cornmeal (they even had blue corn grits!).  

I grabbed some juice--on sale--a 100% organic berry fruit juice mix, then sampled some cumin-spice French black olives, and spooned some bulk pesto sauce into a plastic container (to note, it turned out to be about the same as TJ's prepackaged pesto).

When I came to the produce section though, I was thoroughly disappointed.  Firstly, they had nothing but organic produce.  I mean, often it makes sense to shell out the extra $$ for organic produce (peaches, for instance), but what the heck do I need to buy organic bananas for?  At $1.70/lb no less? It's not like I eat the peel!  (For a more complete list of which foods to buy organic and which you can get away with buying conventional, check out Wendy's blog here.)  Secondly, they seemed to have a much more limited selection of fruits/veggies available.  Like I couldn't find peaches anywhere.

I felt a bit better after I nabbed some excellent cookies in the snack section.  The full list below, clockwise from upper left:

Organic Bartlett pears (not bad at $1.60/lb), Bellweather Farms sheep's milk yogurt with natural fruit filling on the bottom (pricey at $2.29 each, but SO worth it - the most delicious, fresh-tasting yogurt I have ever had), bulk blue cornmeal, bulk cannellini beans, bulk grits, L&A mixed berry juice, organic mission and sierra figs, bulk fried veggie chips (expensive but yummy!), bulk traditional pesto sauce, bulk organic spelt rotini pasta, bulk regular rigatoni pasta, organic portabello mushrooms (SO NOT worth it at a whopping $9.99/lb!  Next time I'm going to Costco!), Pamela's ginger cookies with sliced almonds (so delicious, with the perfect amount of spicy kick, soft texture and pleasing crunch of almonds), bulk dill weed and bulk whole cumin seeds.