Welcome to the Aurosphere

Onineko Nisshoku, ~7/1/2018 - 10/10/2020

auros — Sat, 10 Oct 2020 23:23:33 GMT

Nisshoku was born in a household with a cat hoarding problem. We have photos of him visiting our yard from as early as October of last year (see Plymouth's Rainstation Rescues album), and I had seen him and his siblings in the front yard of the house earlier than that. Eventually the hoarders were evicted, many of his kin were confiscated by the local PHS/SPCA, and he was left on the street. When we realized they were gone and there were several cats left with nobody taking care of them, we did our best to get everyone fixed, vaccinated, and re-settled. We caught seven cats, and our understanding is there were a few more, a Siamese with some kittens, who were caught by a different neighbor and just turned in to PHS.

The first month or so that we were feeding him he gained back some weight that he had lost with no steady source of food -- though that still left him at like 6.5 pounds. But after that he started to lose energy and spend more time sleeping. He still was happy to see us bring food, and would do these little jump-headbutts against your hand or knee, but he was clearly a bit slower than the other three cats who visit us regularly. Eventually he developed an eye infection, and we noticed him having a wet cough. When I took him to the vet, they concluded that he had some really bad health condition -- we're still not sure what the underlying issue was, most likely either lymphoma, or feline infectious peritonitis. (FIP is caused by an interaction of a genetic issue with a common cold type coronavirus. There's actually an experimental drug that was already undergoing testing for FIP, which has been pulled into trials for Covid-19, because the mechanism of action is similar, causing fluid to leak from blood vessels.)

We brought him indoors for a couple of weeks to treat the eye, hoping that keeping him away from the bad air quality would also help his lungs. Unfortunately it was difficult having him as an indoor cat, because if we didn't physically pick him up and put him in the litter about every two hours, he would pee in random places, which meant at night he had to be locked in the bathroom with absorbent pads. He did seem to get better for a bit. The eye infection cleared out. He was left with some cloudiness in his cornea, but he was able to focus with both eyes again. He was able to jump up on the counter to go after food, and he came and explored the bedroom and jumped up with me while I was working on the bed. When the air quality got better, we moved him back outside to an enclosure -- the little gazebo we used to use to have connected to a cat door, so Hoshi and Tsuki could sit outdoors at our house in San Mateo. He seemed to like being able to at least watch the birds and sniff the air. We were still concerned if we just let him out, when we needed to medicate him twice a day, he might start hiding from us at the medication times.

Unfortunately a few days ago he lost interest in food, and began rapidly declining. Two nights ago when we came out to try to bring him some food, and apply appetite stimulant to his ear, he came out of the enclosure and crawled right into my lap, whereas usually to give him medicine I'd had to grab him. (Although once the medicine was over, he was generally content to sit there, take a treat or two, and get pets and warmth.) He hung out there while his brother Gesshoku and their friend Taiyō wove circles around me begging for kibbles.

We kept him one more night inside the gazebo, because he was in no condition to protect himself from raccoons, and there seemed better than the bathroom. We let him out yesterday morning, and tried again to offer some food. He took a couple licks, but then toddled off through a hole in the fence. We were worried he might just go hide in a bush and expire, or get himself in trouble with a dog, but he came back in the afternoon and hung out in the yard for the rest of the day. Around 9:30pm when I went out to bring wet food, I found him collapsed just below the step outside the back door, unable to raise his head. I figured if he'd dragged himself there, maybe he was associating getting inside with being safer. We brought him in and tucked him into a basket with some towels, to keep him warm and as comfortable as we could. Eventually we put the basket in bed between us. He passed away some time after 1:30am -- Plymouth woke up to use the restroom in the small hours and realized he'd gone.

He was a sweet tiny thing, and made an excellent lapcat once he got over his feral spookiness. I wish he'd had more time. We've wondered if we should've just let him out earlier, but we did our best with the information we had. We'd been hoping that the treatment would buy him a few extra healthy months. At least he got to take one more lap around his territory, and then spent his final hours somewhere warm and safe.

Onineko Hoshi, ~9/20/2002 - 6/3/2017

auros — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 23:00:32 GMT

	A role model for procrastinators everywhere, Hoshi was sloth incarnate. She wanted nothing more than to eat, sleep, occasionally get petted and groomed, and watch the day roll by from a comfortable pillow. It's possible she was just as clever as her mastermind sister, but simply couldn't be bothered to get into mischief -- all that effort was beneath her dignity.
	She had been chronically ill with some mild bowel inflammation and diabetic symptoms, over the last two years, but that seemed to be under control with a daily oral steroid. She died very suddenly today -- keeled over on her side and lay there panting, was rushed to the nearest emergency vet, managed to get up for a bit and act normal briefly, but then relapsed and died. The vet thought it was most likely a stroke.
	I will miss my sessile pudge-a-puss. She was a most excellent bedwarmer.

Pear Upside Down Coffee Cake

auros — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 23:23:47 GMT

Adapted from a recipe Elizabeth Falkner created for Harry & David.

We replaced the crunchy-sugar stuff with our usual fruit crisp topping, because with the original sugar crunch the cake was so sweet you really needed to have it with black coffee to make it palatable. We also don't use loaf pans, because we don't have any. (Except the one inside the breadmaker.) We make a double-recipe, relative to Falkner's original version, and split that between our 3 qt and 2 qt Pyrex lasagna/casserole trays. (Well, technically the smaller one is Anchor Hocking, not Pyrex.) The cook time is 50 minutes. I don't know exactly why it takes so much longer than what's called for in the original, but that's what works to get it nice and fluffy through the center (and to get it to pass the knife test), rather than still being TOO dense/moist.

This will make something like 16 servings, depending how big you're cutting it.

Crisp Topping

3/4 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup brown sugar (packed down in measuring cup, not loose)
3/8 cup all-purpose flour (or gluten-free oat flour, if that's how you roll)
spices, to taste; I use something like 2 teaspoons of spice total, mixing allspice, cardamom cinnamon, clove, ginger, and nutmeg
3/8 cup butter (3/4 of a standard stick) cut into small cubes
If you buy unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt, maybe 1/4 tsp
3/8 cup chopped nuts and/or shredded unsweetened fresh coconut

In a large bowl, combine oats, brown sugar, flour, spices, salt, and nuts. Stir to combine. Add butter and mix til you get coarse crumbs. The easiest way to get the right texture for crisp topping is to clean and dry your hands, and then pinch bits of the dry mix around the cubes of butter. Keep doing that as long as you can see identifiable bits of butter. It helps if you have a friend who can scrape topping bits off your fingers with the back of a knife, when you're done. Or you can just lick your fingers. :-)

You want this stuff to be done right around the same time as the cake batter, which is tricky if you don't have more than one person working on it. You want the butter in the topping to be just warm enough to merge into the crumbles, but not so melty it starts to ooze out. And the cake batter is even more time sensitive because once the baking powder is wet, it's only going to keep providing lift for a limited time. If you need to make it first, and then work on the cake, you may want to shove it in the fridge for five minutes or so while you're getting all the ingredients ready, and then pull it back out before you start actually mixing stuff.

This is 1.5x the original crisp topping recipe, against 2x of the cake batter... I'm considering trying it at 1:1, so it would be 1 cup of oats and brown sugar, etc. Probably won't make it again until next December, though, since we don't have enough pears left and don't plan to get another box this season... (I guess I could try it with a different fruit at some point. It's kind of insanely decadent, though, so I don't make it often.)

Cake

4 medium or 3 very large pears, cored and sliced so that they're about 1/4" to 1/2" on the outer edge. You can leave the skin on. (We use this recipe every year when we get the Harry & David Royal Rivieras. They are also delicious all by themselves. I have exactly one left from this year's boxes, which I'll be having with lunch in a little while...)
8 oz. unsalted butter (two sticks)
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups sour cream (one standard tub)
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups flour
3 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 325˚F.

Cream together the butter and sugar. This is easy if you have an orbital mixer (like a KitchenAid -- use the regular mixing paddle on the lowest speed) but you could also do it with some kind of hand mixer, or a dough whisk, or even a fork. (I've also heard the tip of freezing the butter, running it through a cheese grater to get very small bits, then mixing it up with the sugar and waiting for it to soften up.) Once the butter and sugar are brought together so you don't see any streaks of unmixed butter anymore, mix in the eggs, then sour cream, then milk, then vanilla. Make sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl to ensure none of the butter/sugar mix is hiding out under the more liquidy stuff.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Take the bowl of wet ingredients out of the mixer. Dump the dry ingredients into the wet, and fold together gently with a spatula, just until you're not seeing clumps of dry flour anymore.

Lay out the pears to roughly cover the bottom of your baking pans. Spoon over about 1/3 to 1/2 of the crisp mixture. Pour the batter over. It doesn't need to make a thick layer, it's going to poof up a lot; you do want it to cover the pears and be more or less even across the whole pan, though, so smooth it out with the back of a spoon or a spatula if you need to. Spoon the rest of the crisp over the top.

Shove the pans in the oven. You may want to start taking a look through the oven window every five minutes or so when you reach 30, and if it looks like the cake has turned nicely blond and the crisp is nicely browned, do a knife test (poke a sharp knife in the middle, see if it comes out clean, with no wet batter on the end, just maybe a bit of steam). For us, it takes 50 minutes to get it done properly. Possibly the 30 minute time on Elizabeth's recipe is because she's using a convection oven.

Stick the pans on top of sturdy cooling racks, or something else to put some air-circulation space underneath, and let stand for at least 20 minutes, so the cake can cool and firm up. If you have enough people to eat the whole thing immediately you can turn it out onto a cutting surface (cut around the outside, hold the cutting surface firmly against the pan, and flip). We usually just cut servings out from the Pyrex pan to serve one at a time, and that works just fine, as long as the servings are large enough to slip the spatula underneath and pull the pears with the cake. (And really, even if the pears get stuck in the bottom you can always grab them after getting the cake part out.) It also stores fine in the fridge for several days.

anyone want to volunteer to take care of feral cats?

auros — Wed, 20 May 2015 20:01:46 GMT

plymouth and I volunteer with a group called The Purrfect Catch, which does fostering and adoption for cats that are OK around people, and trap / fix / manage-in-place for ferals. We go and visit one of our local colonies once a week to feed them and keep an eye out for any developing health issues, or new cats that may need to be fixed / vaccinated / etc.

One of the volunteers who handled two stations along the SF Bay Trail, in South San Francisco and San Bruno, recently dropped out due to health issues, so the management of the group is looking for one or more volunteers who live in that area who could handle visiting a feeding and shelter station on any of Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. Any time during the day is fine, though before full dark is preferable. (The person who's dropped out was retired, and had been able to handle all three.)

If interested, I can put you in touch with the head of the group.

PSA for fellow fans of Roman Mars

auros — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 20:21:05 GMT

I took the 99% Invisible Blog's RSS feed and syndicated it on LiveJournal: http://99pi-feed.livejournal.com/

Shameless Commerce Department

auros — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 23:10:46 GMT

If you're considering noise cancelling headphones for commuting on our ridiculously loud trains around here, I recommend the QuietPoint ATH-ANC70, from Audio-Technica.

I bought a used pair of these portable (battery powered) noise-cancelling headphones recently, to use on the BART, and I really liked them. They deliver performance comparable to the best Bose or Sony stuff, at a significantly lower price point (admittedly still not cheap, but, well, $200 is significantly less than the $300-350 I was seeing for the comparable Sony and Bose models; and I got the used pair for somewhat less than that). Unfortunately, after a couple months of frequent use, something in the electronics died, and they stopped working. I was really bummed because they were not under warranty (and even if they were, I would've needed the original receipt from the guy I got them from). But I got in touch with tech support, and shipped the 'phones in to their service center.

They sent me back a brand new pair, along with a note saying that they concluded there was a manufacturing flaw in the ones I sent in, and they were replacing them free of charge, even though they had survived past the warranty period. They even paid the return shipping.

I figure when a company exceeds my expectations by that much, they deserve some recognition.

root veggie / lentil / seitan / dried fruit stew; apricot ice cream

auros — Sat, 06 Jul 2013 18:31:25 GMT

Chop:
Two medium carrots
One large parsnip
Four smallish red potatoes
Half a red garnet yam (you can wrap a paper towel across the cut side and put it in a bag to store in the fridge for later use)

Basically this is roughly equal quantities of the various veggies, probably something like half a pound each. I cut the parsnip, carrot, and sweet potato down into discs that were about a quarter inch thick. The chunks of potato were a bit larger, maybe half- to three-quarter-inch cubes.

In a large baking dish (I used our pyrex lasagna pan), toss the cut veggies with enough oil to coat, a bit of salt, and spices:
paprika
cinnamon
turmeric
coriander
brown mustard seed
just a bit of cayenne

I didn't really measure any of these, but they're listed in roughly descending order; the paprika, cinnamon, and turmeric are the dominant notes.

Stir the spices into the veggies. Roast in 350F oven for 45 minutes.

In a large stock pot, saute one large or two small onions (chopped) until translucent / soft -- at least a good ten minutes. Adding a dash of salt helps draw out moisture and speed up the cooking. Add 6 cups (1.5 qt) of broth. Sprinkle in some more of the previously-mentioned spices, plus some cardamom, thyme, and sumac. (These don't take as well to dry heat -- they just end up tasting burned -- so I didn't put them in the oven.) With a microplane grater, grate in some fresh ginger. (Maybe a 0.5 to 1.0 teaspoon worth?)

Dump in the roasted root veggies, a can of garbanzo beans, a tub of muhammara (or a 6oz can of tomato paste; we use muhammara as a substitute for tomato, and actually the nuttiness of it was quite nice in this), half a pound of seitan (we used Sweet Earth original flavor strips), a cup of chopped dried apricots, and half a cup each of dried tart cherries and { raisins and/or sultanas }. Stir in about half a pound / a generous cup worth of red lentils. Bring stew to a simmer, turn down heat to low, cook covered for fifteen minutes, stirring every five minutes. Turn off heat, allow to cool (still covered) for at least another fifteen minutes or so. (Both becaues you'll burn yourself if you try to eat it immediately, and because you want the fruit to finish soaking up broth.)

(We were using some fresh apricots that I'd attempted to dry somewhat by sticking them in a warm toaster oven for a while, but even so, they were so moist that they just kinda fell apart. Dried would be better.)

For dessert, we made this.

1 lb fresh ripe apricots
1/2 C water
1/2 C sugar
1 C heavy cream
3 drops almond extract
lemon juice, to taste

Cut the apricots into sixths and place them in a saucepan with the water. Cover and cook them over medium low heat until tender, stirring to prevent scorching. Remove from heat, add the sugar and stir until dissolved. Cool to room temperature.

Place the mixture in a food processor and puree until smooth. Whisk in the cream, almond extract and lemon juice, to taste. Chill thoroughly.

Process in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Pour into a clean container. Press a piece of plastic into the surface, cover and place in your freezer to firm up.

I have no idea how you'd cut an apricot into sixths. I always cut them open around the seam, pull out the pit, and then either halve or quarter each side, so I end up with four or eight pieces.

I added more like 3/4 cup of water and sugar -- extra sugar on the advice of somebody who'd tried the recipe, and extra water b/c o/w the sugar wasn't going to dissolve. (And also I'd gone a bit over on the amount of apricots, hitting around 1.15 lbs, without pits. I'm not sure if the listed 1 lb was supposed to be before pitting or after.) Also, I put the sugar and water in with the apricots, cold, and simmered them in the resulting syrup for 10-15 minutes. (I don't know why you'd wait to add the sugar. That seems silly.) After finishing the simmer, I let it cool, sitting on the stove.

We got rid of the almond extract b/c Xta doesn't like almond, and instead put in a teaspoon of vanilla extract (added to the cooled apricots and syrup, so as not to boil off the volatile compounds in it). And I cooked a few shakes of nutmeg in with the apricots. We blended the apricots with a stick blender after adding the heavy cream (slightly more than a cup, since everything had been scaled up a bit). I would increase the nutmeg, if we ever end up making it again. Also, I'd swap out the heavy cream for half-and-half, because the final result is really, REALLY rich; I'd prefer it a little lighter.

Waffles

auros — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 23:15:01 GMT

Since I've mentioned making these in recent FB posts, I thought I'd post the recipe.

For reference, this is the waffle iron I use. I turn it up to the max setting, and its indicator lights work pretty well, with the Bisquick version of this. If you swap the Bisquick for the substitute mixture, you get a denser waffle -- each one has more heft, and is chewier / less fluffy -- and you need to wait maybe 45-75 seconds past when the indicator light says it's done, to get something properly cooked through and browned. OTOH, maybe you like a lighter waffle, in which case the light will be fine...

Bisquick substitution: Bisquick contains hydrogenated oils, so some folks like to avoid it; I am told by folks who've experimented (including my dad and my older brother) that there doesn't seem to be anything else on the market that makes as-fluffy waffles; the industrial sifters and mixers can coat the flour granules with oil in a way that ensures they don't bind up and form a dense, gluten-y batter. However, the first time I made this, I used the substitute, and they were still, IMHO, pretty darn tasty. So, the substitution: One cup of Bisquick is more or less equivalent to a mix of one cup of flour, 1½ teaspoons of baking powder, ½ teaspoon of salt, and 1 tablespoon of oil. Mix up your not-Bisquick before the step where you combine it with the nut butter.

PERFECT WAFFLES (from Fred and Sandra Gey)

In blender combine 1/3 cup each of sunflower seeds, pecan pieces, and cashews. (You can mess around with substituting these; I actually did about 50% pecan, 35% cashew, 15% pine nut in today's batch.) Add 3/8c oil (ideally something like 50% canola / 50% some nut oil like walnut, almond, or hazelnut). Blend until well ground. Add 2/3 cup milk and blend in. Set aside.

Separate 4 extra-large eggs or 5 regularly-large eggs. (I have an egg separator tool, and I crack my eggs into a very small bowl, then drop the yolk in one larger bowl and dump the white into another -- and this saved me a lot of grief today, because I did rupture one of my ten yolks. If you get any significant amount of yolks into your whites, the whole batch will be ruined -- you can't get a stiff-peak meringue if you have yolk in there; some protein in the yolk messes that up.)

Add yolks to blender, and blend until smooth.

Mix egg whites with beater/whisk, until stiff peaks form. (There is really nothing that will do this as quickly and effectively as a KitchenAid stand mixer. I lurrrve my KitchenAid; I hadn't been using it a lot, the last few years, but then we've used it a bunch in the last couple weeks, doing waffles and cakes, and I remembered why I like it so much.)

Place 4 cups (480g) of Bisquick (regular, or low fat if preferred; or substitute previously described) into separate large mixer bowl. Dump in contents of blender. Rinse blender vessel with 2 cups of milk, adding that milk to bowl of soon-to-be-batter. Mix using paddle on a low-ish setting (start at the basic "stir" setting, and go no higher than about 4) until it generally comes together, forming a slightly lumpy batter (should only take about a minute).

Turn on waffle iron, so it will be fully heated as soon as the batter is ready.

Pull bowl out of mixer, add egg whites into batter gently with a rubber spatula -- don't stir, just fold the meringue down into the batter. Leaving clumps of meringue is fine, because next you shove back under mixer, re-attach paddle, and stir for another 15-30 seconds to fully combine.

Ladle waffle batter into iron. Bake til golden brown. :-)

And here are instructions from my brother Greg on his variant, which has kind of a crunchy / granola-y texture, and is much faster to mix up.

Nut Mixture:
In a Cuisinart type food processor, throw together about one cup of whole oats, one cup of flax-flakes or similar stuff, two cups of walnuts, 1 cup of almonds, 1/2 cup of corn meal. Then I just turn the sucker on until it's evenly mixed and chopped into little tiny pieces -- not chunks, not plasma, just nice and grainy. Then I put the whole shebang in a jar and use it to mix up various things, including the waffles.

Waffles:
Take about 1 cup of the mixture from above, 1 cup of Bisquick (if you can find a no-hydrogenated-fats mix that works nearly as well, let me know; every "crunchy" substitute I've tried produces yechy waffles), 2 Tbsp. brown sugar. Mix dry ingredients until, you know -- mixed. Put in 1 egg, 3/4 cup of plain, whole yogurt, and then enough milk to make it the right consistency for waffle batter. If you're into a bit of oil, splash a bit of canola in there before whisking together. Let it "breathe" for a minute or two to make sure your consistency is what you want, then waffle away.

That's what I do anyway. Nothing to say that it's as good as it could be. Of course, I recommend all natural, organic, outrageously tree-hugging ingredients of every kind whenever you can get them. If you come up with improvements / fun variations, let me in on it.

One of the nice things about these is that you can make a ton of them -- we've been doing them in double batches, which gets even the big 6qt KitchenAid bowl alarmingly full -- and freeze what you don't eat that day; they're fine in the freezer for at least two weeks. Probably longer, but we always eat them all by then. :-)

To reheat, put them on a baking pan, covered with foil, and stick in a 375F oven for about 15 minutes, then pull the foil off, stick back in for ~2.5 minutes, flip over, stick back in for another ~2.5 minutes, then serve. This process of getting them warm in a way that keeps them moist (steamy, even), and then crisping them up on both sides, will bring them back to almost exactly the state they were in when they were fresh off the iron.

Tapioca / mango / palmyra pudding

auros — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 08:19:17 GMT

In a small pot, combine:
One small (5.5 oz) can of coconut milk.
A similar amount of milk.
1/2 cup of tapioca pearls.
1/4 cup of crystallized coconut palm sap, or other form of palm sugar; or you could use a bit less of regular sugar, or even some maple syrup. (And honestly, given how sweet the dish came out, you could probably cut the sugar by 10-15% relative to this, as long as you're using palmyras in syrup, not packed in just water or some kind of juice.)
a pinch of salt (maybe 1/4 tsp?)

Simmer for five minutes. Add one mango, diced, and maybe half a cup of palm seeds. (We found them jarred, in syrup, at our local Asian grocer. I generally expect stuff in glass jars to taste fresher than stuff in cans, but it probably doesn't make a huge difference.)

Simmer for another five minutes. Test the a pearl to see if it's cooked through.

Cooking time may need adjustment depending on exactly what size / type of pearls you use.

Xta remarks that she should've taken a photo; it's not particularly pretty, but it is quite tasty. I was attempting to replicate a dessert I had once, a number of years ago, at a South-Chinese place in Mountain View. I think I came reasonably close, actually, on the first try.

Las Cascadas del Río Cuervo

auros — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:38:15 GMT

A photo of this waterfall, in more or less this same condition, was part of how I originally pitched the idea of going to Spain for our honeymoon. As I recall, Xta asked me whether there would be any snow in Spain, so I went googling for photos with "Spain ice", "Spain snow", and "Spain winter"...

Obviously the person is included in this photo solely to give you a sense of scale, not because it was totally awesome to creep out and touch the giant 9-foot-long icicles.

When we were starting the hike, there was a family (British?) coming back down. Their daughter, who was probably about 10 or 12, was carrying a javelin-length icicle in her mitten. Now that's parenting I approve of.

Full honeymoon trip report...

auros — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:21:28 GMT

I'm pirating this from stuff I originally wrote up for our travel agent, then adding more detail that may be more of interest to friends, especially if you might be visiting some of the same cities...

Edited to Add: Xta added a few good thoughts down in the comments. Also, since I mentioned I was writing this for our agent, I should mention her: Laurie Valdez of Peak Travel was extremely helpful in planning the trip, even working through the last few itinerary details outside regular work hours so Xta and I could sit in our living room and talk things through with her directly rather than going back and forth in email. We found her through the Better World Club. (Which I also recommend in general -- it's like AAA, except not evil. AAA funds lobbying against public transit, cleaner cars, etc. If you join BWC, get our member number, I believe there's a referral credit.)

We've had a busy week since we got home, re-acclimating to work, the 9-hour time shift, etc. You can find a lot of photos and commentary on our Flickr accounts (mostly Christa's -- on mine I've just been doing commentary on the restaurants):

One general warning, if you're trying to think through scheduling for a trip to Spain: a LOT of things either close early, or entirely, on Sunday, Monday, and in some cases Tuesday. We narrowly missed driving out to Cardona only to find everything shut down, because fortunately I checked scheduling / reservation stuff online, and we adjusted our car reservation schedule to make it work. (We also, on our last day in Madrid, ended up not getting to go to a restaurant we'd been interested in -- Arola, in the Reina Sofia Museum -- b/c it was closed Sunday, which is actually a change from the hours reported for them on Google Local and some local newspaper reviews; I guess maybe they reduced hours for the winter. n.b.: Don't try to Google the restaurant; their web registration apparently expired and got hijacked by some annoying domain squatter, who posted rather unpleasant porn. If my Spanish were better, I might've tried to explain that to the woman I got on the phone when I tried to call for a reservation. As it was, just understanding that she was telling me their hours had changed and they were totally closed on Sunday was about my limit. I really wish restaurants would be smarter about their websites.)

Getting from the Madrid airport to Atocha to Barcelona was a bit of a chore, with the bus connection and then the vastness of Atocha station, but the AVE ride itself was really neat. We desperately need intercity high speed rail in the US.

Barcelona: Barcelona House was very pleasant, if a bit spare. Nifty modern decor. The elevator was a bit cramped, but that seems to be the norm throughout Spain. My only complaint would be that we simply could not persuade the damn maids to not to change our towels out every day. Like all hotels these days, they had one of those little signs saying that if you wanted to be water efficient you should hang your towels on the rack, and they wouldn't change them, but the maids paid no attention to that rule. This would be a mild annoyance from an environmental point of view in any case, but for us it's also a functional issue: we both have very long hair, and really NEED an extra towel or two in order to dry off after showering. And every time they'd change the towels, they would not replace the extras. So we'd have to call down for extras every morning, and have one of us wait to shower until they'd been delivered. After the first two days, this got kind of irritating. Only on the very last day of our stay did our extra towels survive the maid visit. :-P

There's a quite nice and affordable restaurant, The Grill Room, right across the street from Barcelona House, and it's also very close to a location of a Spanish chain called Nostrum, which was convenient for breakfast or healthy snacks. We also had awesome meals at two places in the Gothic Quarter recommended to us by Elizabeth Falkner: Espai Sucre (expensive but amazing), and BubóBar (much less expensive, with innovative takes on traditional tapas, and situated right next door to Bubó, a world-renowned sweet shop).

Sagrada Familia was fabulous, and Parc Güell and the Gaudi House. If people are going to stay down near Las Ramblas, they should be prepared to use the Metro to get over there, as it would be a quite long walk. (On the bright side, the Metro is not difficult, and all the routes we used had cars roughly every three minutes. The Madrid Metro is similar, with cars as frequent as every 2 minutes in some parts.) I found Las Ramblas itself mostly kind of depressing -- totally overrun with tourists, students, and slackers. On the bright side, you can walk northeast from there into the Gothic Quarter, which is great (we probably could've spent another whole day checking out the various churches and little museums back there, and every time you'd turn a corner you'd come across some little plaza with a neat sculpture). Also, Plaça de Colom (at the end of Las Ramblas) and the piers were pretty. You can walk from there (or take the Metro from the Lyceum) over to Montjüic, which is gorgeous. We spent basically two whole days wandering around up there, and there were still parts we didn't see. Our first visit, we went past the art museum and through the Olympic campus to the cemetery. Unfortunately, the visit there got cut a bit short because I was coming down with a cold. Fortunately, there is at least a convenient bus that runs from the bottom of the hill back around to the harbor end of Avinguda del Paral·lel, a block from Plaça de Colom. Possibly we should've just taken that around to visit, since it's the lower parts of the cemetery that have most of the older, more elaborate stonework, anyways.

We took a whole day to go out to Girona for El Celler, and it was entirely worthwhile. The city of Girona is not much to look at, though the river park is pleasant. But the restaurant completely deserves its reputation, and for its quality was quite decently priced. (€155 per person for the longer "festival" menu, including VAT, and of course you don't really have to tip in Europe. I was recently reading about a place in SF that has just been awarded two Michelin stars, and looked at their website; their full menu is $250 per person, and I'm assuming that's before tax and tip, so you'd have to call it more like $325 by the time you're done, even if you're going cheap on drinks. The value comparison there tilts heavily in favor of El Celler.)

We also did the day trip to Cardona, which I highly recommend, for both the castle (which isn't huge, but is worth a couple hours of wandering, especially the sanctuary and crypt) and the salt mine (which is completely unlike any other caves I've seen -- though I'd recommend people try to schedule a visit where the tour guide is at least using Castilian, rather than Catalunyan; they'll give you some materials in English, but I suspect I would've gotten more out of the trip if I'd at least been able to pick up a little of the guide's talk). I kind of wish we'd been able to stay in the Parador, inside the castle; it's just gorgeous, and the restaurant looked very nice as well. The central "old town" area was interesting, but small, and the gothic church was closed for renovations, so I can't say much about that. Cardona wasn't really a tourist attraction until just the last 5-6 years or so; it's starting to have good infrastructure for visitors (though still a bit short on English translations), but hasn't become at all crowded yet; even our friends in Guadalajara, who have travelled around the country a lot, hadn't heard of it.

I will digress, here, to mention that National / ATESA "upgraded" us from the compact we'd reserved to a midsize Peugeot (bigger than my Saturn ION at home). It handled like a nauseated cow, gave me terrible visibility to the sides and rear so I was constantly nervous, and had a turning radius that may have been worse than the Astro minivan my mother used to own. I hated that car with fiery intensity of a thousand burning suns. Somebody needs to explain to those morons that given the narrow streets (especially in the old town areas -- it's a miracle I never gashed the side of the car taking some turn in Granada or Cuenca, where our hotels were right smack in the medieval parts of town), and Spanish drivers' tendency to regard things like signs and traffic lights more as suggestions than actual laws, a small nimble car is an absolute necessity, and they clearly ought to be stocking a lot more of them. Oh, and speaking of: Anyone who's going to drive in Spain ought to be warned about just how nuts the drivers are, and the signage. They put all their traffic lights on the side of the intersection that's closer to you, so once you're at the stop line, it's quite difficult to see the light. Most drivers, I suspect, are actually watching the pedestrian walk light, and will start driving again as soon as that turns red (even though that's several seconds before the proper traffic light goes green). Also, you get many situations, especially at the (numerous!) circles, where there are two or three lights stacked up practically on top of each other, and it can be quite difficult to tell which one is intended for you. And then there are the highway signs, that will give you a dozen different things that a given exit is taking you "towards", which makes it tricky to figure out what the exit is actually going onto. Generally the exits before and after the one you actually want will end up sharing several of the labels. It was a good thing we had both an in-car GPS and the iPhone -- each of them had some failings (in particular, the data on the in-car system was about two years out of date relative to major construction that had been happening on the A-4, on our trip from Granada to Cuenca) but between the two we got by mostly OK. The signage around Madrid is particularly egregious -- we managed to miss the same exit on two different days, first when we were returning the rental car, and then again driving the car we borrowed from our friends in Guadalajara (actually Cabanillas del Campo, a little suburb on the edge of Guadalajara, on the Madrid side of town).

Tarragona: The AC Hotel was pleasant, though I wish they offered free in-room WiFi. They had free WiFi only in the lobby, and the in-room price was a bit unreasonable. Their hotel restaurant look OK, but overpriced, so we went elsewhere to eat. (We found two really great places near the Plaça de la Font, Crêperie Kenavo and Degvsta. The plaza itself is kind of a tourist trap, but there's great stuff hidden in the blocks just around it.) It was a bit of a walk from the hotel to where most of the interesting sights were; not a huge distance, but at least 20 minutes. Depending on how people feel about walking around an unfamiliar city, that could be an issue for some travelers. (We definitely were referring to my iPhone map a lot.) There's a great walking tour of the ruins that we kind of stumbled our way into, that begins on the Via de l'Imperi Romà. The visitor center, with various pamphlets, and a set of really cool models of the Roman city, is through the door to the right, on Plaza del Pallol; the walking tour of the old walls starts through the door on the left. If you follow the walls all the way around, you can then kind of make a u-turn into the section of the city that has the Cathedral, Seminary, Arquesbisbat (the seat of the local archbishop), and University Rovira (which has some neat architecture from more recent periods -- say, 100 to 200 years old, instead of 500 to 2000 years *g*). From there it's another short walk to the Museo Nacional Arqueológico de Tarragona, which is spectacular -- it includes a visit to a roof deck with a truly amazing view, and the back exit takes you through the ruins of the Roman Circus. When you get to the end of that, you can either turn right and head over to Plaça de la Font for a meal, or make a left and walk two blocks down to the amphitheater. We also took a detour from there down to the beach. We managed to do all of that in one (very busy!) day, including lunch at Degvsta and a very brief visit to the acqueduct on the way out of town... I think we could've easily spent two days there instead of one. I would've liked more time to see more of the sights in the park around the acqueduct. The acqueduct itself is really amazing -- it's incredible to see this structure that's lasted for literally milennia. You're allowed to just walk out across it, all the way to the other end of the valley if you want. (It was already getting towards sunset already when we were there, unfortunately, so we didn't take the time -- needed to get on the road to Valencia.)

Valencia: The Barcelo is nice in some ways -- pleasant staff, decent rooms. A few issues: Their parking is useless for any but the very smallest cars. Fortunately, there's a fair bit of unmetered street parking in the area, but still; I would not even count them as "having parking" unless you're going to be driving a subcompact. (You could get away with something bigger than a Smart ForTwo... but only barely. We certainly could not park the odious Peugeot there.) Their in-house restaurant is kind of terrible, and it's a bit of a walk to get to anyplace good (though I highly recommend going over to Café Infinito, which is maybe a 15-20 minute walk or a very short bus ride). The whole building is black, and not terribly well ventilated, which means that the sunny side gets really warm during the day unless you want to just leave your window open (and with winter weather it can be tricky getting the balance between too warm and too cold). The amount of stuff in the old town of Valencia is almost a bit overwhelming. We definitely could've spent an entire second day there. The tourist card is a great value in here -- makes many things free, and gets discounts on many more. I think the coolest thing we saw in there was the museum of the Almoïna, where you walk down below street level into some preserved excavations, and see how all the layers of history are literally piled up on each other, with pieces of Roman, Visigothic, Cailphate, and Gothic settlements all layerd onto the same site. The anthropological museum was also pretty neat, with artifacts from the pre-Roman Iberians, among other things. We also went up into both of the remaining pairs of gate towers along the old city walls, and in between stopped for an Agua de Valencia cocktail (kind of an alcoholic orange-ade, using the local Valencia oranges, which are superb, some local cava, and possibly some sort of orange liquer -- anyways, it's very tasty, and it's the city's signature drink, so if you tipple, you're sort of required to have one).

We had a quite nice dinner that evening at La Lola, which is apparently known well enough locally that when we mentioned it to our waiter at Infinito the next night he knew it. It's not cheap, but not super-expensive either, and it's nice for a romantic dinner. The chef (at least I think he was the chef) is a young, energetic, long-haired guy, probably around the same age as us, very hands on about greeting and serving customers, and speaks quite good English. When we were leaving lunch (at Creperie Breton Annaick, which was also quite good, and inexpensive) he attempted to invite us in; we demurred for obvious reasons, but ended up coming back later, b/c the place did sound good, and our Valencia card was good for a free drink. :-)

For the City of Arts and Sciences, I think the one day we allotted was probably enough; maybe you could do two days if you wanted to take things slower, and have a half-day to relax after all the walking around. (By the end of our visit there, Christa was starting to get a bit of travel burnout. Also, I kinda wish we'd spent more time either walking the river park, or visiting the art museum, or even just seeing a show at the Hemisferic, instead of visiting the science museum, which was OK, but not that much better than any other science center. A lot of exhibits were copies of San Francisco's Exploratorium, and acknowledged as such in the displays.) The Oceanografic is definitely a must-see, with its various underground chambers. Also, we never walked down to the marina district at all, so there's another day we easily could've spent... (I think maybe there's a maritime museum down there, with stuff about the history of seafaring? Sounded interesting...)

Heading south from Valencia, we went through the Parque de la Albufera, which was neat. We also drove by some cities that have amazing landscapes. Calp, in particular, has this amazing rock over it that reminded me a bit of pictures you see of Rio de Janeiro. I could've seen spending half a day in the park, and half getting up to the top of the rock in Calp and then staying overnight there, if we'd had infinite time...

Granada: I think the 2 to 2.5 days we were here was about right. The Reina Cristina was OK, but a bit antiquated. You had to call down to the desk to get your heat turned on. Also, the in-house café didn't look very good, and the actual restaurant looked so expensive we didn't try it. On the bright side, they did have cheap network access. The parking lot is a two block walk away, and requires staff to help you access it. Also, it's another place where things get very narrow and windy; parking the Peugeot was harrowing, though we ultimately did manage.

The night we got to town we finally did appropriate research and realized that we should buy tix in advance for Alhambra, so we got them for the latter day we were there. You can buy online then get the tix from any La Caixa ATM. The first day we walked up the mountain past the Alhambra, to go see a cemetery that's grand enough to be on an official EU registry / tour of scenic and historic cemeteries. There's also a lot of open parkland up there, and seemingly-abandoned olive groves. Very pretty. We also walked by some of the historic buildings in the old town, and had a nice meal at Cafe Botánico, near University Plaza. (There was also a little creperie right on that plaza, that we kind of stumbled into our first night after the first place we tried to go was overcrowded and the second was closed). The Alhambra itself was gorgeous, and soaked up the morning and early afternoon -- we made sure to get there on the early side of our window, since you have to pick only a half-day, for your ticket... We had lunch at an awesome little taginery where the owner, a former history student, spent a year re-creating the look and feel of an Andalucían palace. After that we visited the Royal Crypt and Cathedral (both spectacular, though they have stupid no-photo rules, which most people actually ignore, and I wish we'd started ignoring sooner, since we missed getting shots of the crypt), and walked up the hill to San Nicolas.

Cuenca: On the drive up, there was the minor adventure of the GPS becoming very confused because the road we were on had not existed when its data was loaded. Also, we saw ALL THE OLIVES IN SPAIN. I jest, but really, you'd come to the top of some ridgeline, and look around and see olives out to the horizon in every direction. There must have been millions of trees, maybe tens of millions.

Finally we got to Cuenca itself, which was gorgeous, if a bit small. I think our one day visit to the city was mostly sufficient. We saw the cathedral and the modern art museum in the hanging house, walked down through the ravine over to the Convent of Saint Paul and then back across the bridge, and then out to the highest point. I do wish we'd been there on a day when the restaurant in the other hanging house was open. If we'd stayed a second day, we could've hiked down the north side of the mountain, to the scenic path along the Júcar. The Posada San Jose was beautiful -- in some ways the most luxurious of the hotels we stayed in, certainly in terms of how spacious the room was and the quality of the view out the window. On the downside, there was no network, and although breakfast was nice, their restaurant wasn't even open for the winter. We ate dinner both nights at El Aljibe, the restaurant attached to the Hotel Convento del Giraldo, because they had free wi-fi for patrons, and the food was tasty and reasonably priced. (Though ordering there was a little tricky -- the local accent is kind of hard to understand.)

The latter day we were there, when we were planning to end the day in Guadalajara, we drove through El Parque Natural Serranía de Cuenca. I simply cannot emphasize enough that this is a place more people should see. The landscape is as unique as any of the great parks in the US, like the Grand Canyon, or Arches in Utah. Driving through, almost every curve brings you to some insanely beautiful vista point. You see vast cliffs in which the striations of the different layers of rock are distinctly visible, with stripes of all kinds of colors -- beige, and gold, but also the occasional greenish streak, and reds, some of which are so dark they're shading into purple. The river is gorgeous, and the lake / reservoir that's just east of Uña. We stopped for lunch at a place in Tragacete called El Gamo, where we had an absolutely superb meal. The owner spoke very little English, but was extremely friendly. We talked a bit about how difficult business is currently (especially with winter being bad for tourism, even though the park is still absolutely gorgeous then, and we were getting by fine with our US-east-coast-appropriate layers). I told him that I would mention his place to our friends, so here's the contact info from his card:

Hostelería El Gamo Gestión, S.L.
Fco. Javier de la Hoz del Pozo (javier@elgamo.org)
Teléfonos: 687-76-92-63 y 969-28-90-08
16150 Tragacete (Cuenca)
www.elgamo.org / info@elgamo.org

We didn't stay in a room there, but the restaurant part was very comfortable. We got a table right by the fire, which was nice, since it was a cold enough day that by the time we left the park in the evening it was snowing. If you're going through the area and you're remotely into hiking and nature, I highly recommend staying a day or two, to get a full visit to some of the various sights. We went through Ciudad Encantada and did the shortest part of the Nacimiento del Río Cuervo hike, just up to the Cascadas hillside, which with the cold weather was an amazing curtain of icicles. We didn't go the full 40-minute hike up to the springs. There also was apparently a nifty hike to the springs for the Júcar, with some cool waterfalls; I really wish we'd had an extra day, to see more of that stuff, as well as going back over to the area around Uña.

When we finally got to the Madrid area, the weather had turned so cold and snowy that we ended up giving up entirely on going out to Toledo and Segovia. (Segovia, in particular, was suffering a blizzard.) We spent one day just relaxing at our friends' house, and the rest of the days we went into Madrid, and saw various things -- the Royal Palace and Cathedral, various plazas, El Prado, the Royal Gardens and Parque del Retiro... We also visited the Cemetery of the Almudena, which was amazing. We also went up to the fashion district around Chueca, partly just to visit the New Rock Store -- we both have boots from them, and they're a Spanish brand. We also got Christa some new leather gloves b/c her old ones tore, and went to a goth club in that neighborhood, Club 666 at La Sala Wind on Plaza del Carmen, which was amusing; goth clubs in Spain turn out to be pretty similar to those in the US, including where we originally met. *g*

We didn't end up going to any really fancy meals in Madrid, though we did really enjoy Pui's Thai Tapas, which is in the same neighborhood as the Reina Sofia. They had a couple dishes I've never seen in the US. The Pad Bameen was particularly good. It's almost like a Thai version of Spaghetti Carbonara (which I'd seen in several tapas bars, and enjoyed thoroughly at Grill Room; apparently large swathes of Europe have adopted that dish with enthusiasm). The Bameen has some ground pork and vegetables with a bit of yellow curry, tossed over stir-fried noodles with a whole fried egg on top) -- and some really good cocktails. We also had some more traditional tapas at a place simply called La Tapería, on the Plaza Platería de Martínez, just off the Paseo del Prado, across the street from the Royal Gardens.

For getting into Madrid after we'd returned the rental car, one day we just went with our friends from Guadalajara (who were wonderful hosts in general -- their house is gorgeous, and they fed us very well the whole time we were there, and refused to let me pick up the tab for the meals we had when they came into town with us), and the other couple times we drove a borrowed car that was, shall we say, interesting. Since it was stick, Xta had to drive, and finally gained an appreciation for the difficulties I'd been having tracking everything going on around me when I was driving, for earlier parts of the trip. :-P

We ended up using three of our four rail pass days -- Madrid to Barcelona, Barcelona to Girona, and then we used them a final time going from Guadalajara to the airport. Oh well. I think we still got either most or all of the value on that, because just that first AVE trip, by itself, was a huge chunk of the value.

I think that about covers everything. :-)

Next time (probably at least ten years out, sigh), we want to get back to see the progress on Sagrada Familia, then visit the Euskal Herria, and San Sebastian and Bilbao -- there are no less than four of the World 50 up that way -- Mugaritz, Arzak, Martín Berasategui, and Asador Etxebarri -- as well as of course the Guggenheim Bilbao. Then maybe we could go back south and actually see Segovia and Toledo (and I could also add that I'm interested in getting to Salamanca and Zaragoza), then go down south for Seville, Cordova, Málaga, and Cadiz... And of course we still wouldn't have gotten to the northwesternmost area, with places like Gijón, and all of Galicia, which has its own dialect and culture (Gallego) like Catalunya... It turns out that Spain is kinda big.

Nomz.

auros — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 07:55:12 GMT

I've finished annotating the photos from El Celler de Can Roca, which placed second on last year's World's 50 Best list. And I can see why.

Interestingly, although it's certainly expensive -- the most we've ever paid for a meal, by a substantial margin -- while we were in Madrid, I had an email from one of the coupon services offering a discounted seating at some up-and-coming place in the Mission that just got awarded two Michelin stars. The price for this place, even after the discount, would be more than what we paid for El Celler; and I'm not even accounting for tax and tip. This place is clearly commanding a premium simply for being the hot new thing; there is no way it can possibly justify such a stratospheric cost, solely based on food quality. In any case, after running those numbers in my head, I decided there was no reason to go, and so I forgot the actual name.

Woo, photos from two-ish weeks ago!

auros — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:32:04 GMT

I have finally finished writing in descriptions on photos from Espai Sucre, the "dessert restaurant" that Elizabeth Falkner told us we needed to try. It was awesome, and I can see why she's into it. We are kind of taking today "off" from running around seeing sights, and just chilling out at our friends' house in a suburb of Guadalajara, the city with too many As.

One of the more puzzling constructions in Spanish...

auros — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:10:41 GMT

...at least to my mind, is "hace [tiempo]". (Incidentally, "tiempo" can translate as "time" or "weather". I'm thinking about time here, even though you also can ask "¿Qué tiempo hace?" to ask what the weather is.) You get things like: "¿Cuánto hace que está construyendo esta valla? Hace una semana que él lo construye." Literally, this translates to something like, "How much does it make, that he is building this fence? It makes one week that he builds it." Idiomatically, it's more like, "How long has it been since he started building the fence? It has been one week since he started constructing it."

What gets me is the fact that both verbs involved are in present tense. My understanding is that the nature of the "hace [tiempo]" construction does require that whatever you're asking about continue to be true into the present time; you're attaching an earlier starting date to something that can be thought of in present tense. So, you can say, "Hace tres mil años que el Rey Tutankhamun lleva muerto." It has been three thousand years that King Tut carries* deadness. This conception sorta helps make it work in my head, but I still find the construction strange. Even stranger than subjunctive, and don't get me started on how bizarre I find the use of subjunctive. (In particular, how come I don't use subjunctive with "creer"? When I say, "I think that X", I almost always mean that I believe it, but am not certain of it. If I were certain of it, I would simply state proposition X. So why do we get indicative with "creo que X", but subjunctive with "espero que X", I hope that X.)

If you want to talk about something that isn't true anymore, I'm pretty sure you have to use something else, like "[tiempo] atrás", which you might translate as an amount of time aft; "X está detrás de Y" says that X is located in a place behind Y, whereas the "a" particle in "atrás" gives a sense of movement and directionality, towards the back. To say "I spoke Spanish pretty well fifteen years ago, but I've forgotten a lot," I use, "Hablaba español bastante bien quince años atrás, pero he olvidado mucho." I think this is pretty good idiom, but I'm not entirely sure. I don't suppose anyone out there is a fluent enough speaker to comment on this? (Maybe kragen and paisleychick?)

* "Llevar" can mean "to carry" or "to wear", but it can also be used with adjectives like "muerto", dead, and "casado", married -- although that one almost always gets used in the plural, casados, for obvious reasons. These days some of y'all might even be llevando casadas. Hooray for diversity! :-)

ETA: Rosetta stone gives some examples where they use a preterite verb with "hace [tiempo]", and they appear to mean ago. ("Mis abuelos se casaron en África hace cien años," appears to be "My grandparents married each other in Africa one hundred years ago.") So maybe at least in European Spanish that's the correct form? Blargh. I got taught kind of a mix of European and American Spanishes, because I had teachers who'd learned different ways, over different years of school. And then I forgot most of it, so it's all a bit of a muddle... :-/

El mejor frase de todos en la Piedra Rosetta.

auros — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:05:20 GMT

El gato está en el lavabo.

Complete with adorable picture. Like these. Very cute, if a bit bittersweet.

Yo tenía una gata a quien le gustó mucho estar en el lavabo.

spoiler alert

auros — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 03:23:39 GMT

ARRRGH! :-(

Elizabeth Falkner does not win Next Iron Chef. :-(

The competition between Mehta and Garces came down to a very similar call between creativity and potential, versus technique and control. They made the same call last time. I still think that one was an epically bad call.

I at least am actually really impressed with Zakarian. I find Garces boring. Zakarian doesn't take the kind of risks or come up with the kind of absolutely off-the-wall genius dishes that Elizabeth does, but he has incredible subtlety, and he can take the essence of a traditional dish and refine it into something surprising.

I do think, though, that when you hear the judges saying stuff like that Zakarian is "like an athlete at his peak", while Falkner is exceeding her reputation and still developing -- even though for this competition she was only a hair behind him -- doesn't that mean you want the person who's still growing, rather than the one who's peaked? Again, this is the same way I felt about the judgement on Mehta. OK, maybe he arguably did not deliver quite as good a meal that day; but who do you want on the show? The guy who's predictable, or the one who will maybe take a few episodes to learn to manage the time better, but ultimately will deliver things that are surprising and innovative?

Anyways. I have to respect Zakarian; the meal he delivered looked and sounded amazing. I'm at least glad Elizabeth made him work hard for that victory.

Random revelation: the brussel sprout leaves that turned up integrated into the butternut squash ravioli at our wedding? That was a flourish from Elizabeth's Next Iron Chef finale meal. Very cool.

Orson - Next Iron Chef ep05

auros — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 02:35:19 GMT

Pics are up on Flickr now.

I figure, if you want to read about it, you can read the text there.

I was so stuffed after this one. Really, really good food.

Orson - Next Iron Chef ep04

auros — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:08:44 GMT

Oh look, a new icon!

I don't feel like taking the time to properly edit a table-formatted entry to post the pix from ep04, so I'm just putting them on Flickr. You can see the pix here.

Xta took some shots as well, and may've put some up on her Flickr account.

Orson - Next Iron Chef ep03

auros — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 07:36:25 GMT

Best episode yet. Both the main challenge, and the secret ingredient elimination, had some very tight competition. Elizabeth emerged with a well-deserved victory; the other two folks in the top three had ingredients that were significantly easier to work with. (A cinnamon syrup is not that hard to work into a savory -- you can get that into a variety of European, Moroccan, or even Chinese dishes -- and for the root beer, heck, folks in the South braise or marinate meat in soda-based liquids all the time. If you haven't had Coca-Cola based bbq sauce, you don't know what you're missing.)

For this week's event, Elizabeth got ambitious, and made stuff with almost all the other chefs' ingredients, as well as replicating her own dishes. I believe her phrasing was, "We took the other ingredients and made better things with them." *g*

They're probably going to skip next week (because of Thanksgiving), and then do a double-header the week after. This week was actually less crowded than last, which surprised me. Maybe Falkner fans tend to be people for whom coming after work is convenient. I had a pleasant conversation with a Japanese woman who came here a few years ago to go to architecture school, and I finally got to meet Esther, who runs the main kitchen at Orson. And Elizabeth says she'll see what she can do about getting us a table at Tickets, and I sent her the list of evenings we could potentially go, so yay.

		My boots are on fire! Wore these, along with the pants from the wedding and the shirt from the engagement shoot. These were considered for the wedding, but I decided to go with the Italian loafers, b/c the color matched better, and they were more comfortable. (I was standing for about 8-9 hours that day. Plus dancing.)
		Entrance I loved the jars of malt balls at the entrance. Also, a friend of Elizabeth's who does magic hung out at a front table and delighted onlookers with assorted card tricks, coin tricks, etc.
		Raisinet Tapenade Diced Raisinets, with roasted red peppers, eggplant, capers, possibly some other stuff. (Kalamata olives, maybe?) Surprisingly... unsurprising. But very pleasant. The choco-raisins add a hit of sweetness, without overpowering the more usual flavors.
		Cocktail Fixings Note the labels. They melted down the gummi bears and sour-patch kids. Yum. I stole several of the garnish bears.
		The Gummi Bear and The Sour-Patch Kid Each made with its respective syrup. The Gummi Bear also contains vodka and a dry muscat. The Sour-Patch kid has rum and Canton ginger liqeur.
		Spare Ribs Braised in Root Beer and Soy A hybrid of American South and China. (If you've ever had a cola-braised bbq... this was better.) Elizabeth said she would've enjoyed getting the root-beer as her ingredient, b/c she's played with those sorts of flavors in both savory and sweet dishes before. (We had a dessert named Sassafrass Leaves at the rehearsal dinner.)
		Hot Tamale Buffalo Chicken A basic buffalo wing sauce, with an extra hit of heat from a syrup of melted-down Hot Tamales cinnamon capsules. You can see the bleu cheese dressing in the photo of the ribs. This photo was of some breast-meat nuggets. Later, they brought out some whole bone-in wings, which were even better -- the rougher surface held the batter and sauce more effectively. (And they're just fun to eat.)
		Popcorn Soup The soup was not all that distinguishable from a basic corn chowder, though it was pleasantly buttery. The garnishes are truffle-oil sauteed mushrooms, and cocoa nibs mixed into some kind of mildly peppery paste. (Maybe a play on mole?)
		Fry Station Oil heating up on an induction plate. Fresh-made potato chips, dusted with cocoa and malt-vinegar powder. Sweet malt aioli, with flecks of chocolate visible. It was much tastier than it sounds. (Bear in mind that this is the dish that won the episode.)
		Feeeeeesh! (before) Fillets of black bass, swimming in barleywine / malt-vinegar marinade, awaiting a very hot bath.
		Feeeeeesh! (after) The first golden-brown, crispy piece of fish emerges from the hot oil.
		Q&A Time Elizabeth answers questions from the crowd. Q: Which chef was the most cutthroat? A: I was! Q: So who was the nicest? A: I was! Q: Who was the sexiest? A: No comment.
		Popcorn Ice-Cream Sandwich Buttered popcorn ice cream, between popcorn sugar cookies. This was really, really good.
		Hot Tamale Macarons and Raisinet Phyllo Wraps The meringue was infused with hot cinnamon oil, and the filling was a cinnamon gel. The phyllo wraps had a flavor quite similar to cocoa-raisin ruggelach.
		Victorious Cake! Basic vanilla chiffon, with barley ice cream (surprisingly bittersweet and complex), and a malt-ball / cocoa nib crumble.
		Elizabeth and staff assembling plates of cake.

So, yeah. That was awesome. And any of you who can should come next time. And if you're not watching the show, it has been, thus far, the best season of NIC that they've aired. (Season Two was pretty good, but I have never forgiven them for making such an egregiously stupid call at the end.) If you like Iron Chef at all, or the concept of competitive cooking, you should check it out. Tomorrow night: cooking mad libs. SRSLY.

another metaphor for coraline

auros — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 20:55:47 GMT

The experience of planning a wedding is, apparently, very much like falling into a black hole. The passage of time slows asymptotically towards a halt, and you get stretched thin by unimaginably powerful tidal forces.

Hair appointment today. Meeting with Elizabeth tomorrow. Rehearsal Friday. Wedding Saturday.

Must remember to take Obama's advice.

Hee.

auros — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:47:22 GMT

Go to this page.

Download the MP3 or launch it in a separate window so you'll have a wide slider to work with.

Jump to 48:40 or so. (Or, hey, if you have an hour, listen to the whole podcast. Subscribe, even!)

Be amused.

The item he mentions, that I told him he was wrong about, was from late September. In the course of talking out the Perry / Bachmann / HPV vaccine kerfuffle, he was radically underestimating the prevalance of HPV; something on the order of a quarter of all American women get exposed at some point, and the strains in question are responsible for a large proportion of all cases of cervical cancer. The public-health case in favor of mass-distributing the vaccine, and administering it before sexual debut, is quite solid. It's been laid out in Slate, in the DoubleX blog. I had to scold him for not reading his own employees' work thoroughly enough. :-)

I'm still about two weeks behind. This podcast was from 10/13, so, 12 days ago... :-/

foodpr0n: Astaria, for Xtauroversary VII

auros — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:49:22 GMT

Now with more Roman numerals, and only about a hundred days until our wedding. Christa posted some silliness from our dinner conversation. (If you're unable to read it, well, how do you even know me without having gotten on her f-list? It's been seven years!)

wine: (we would've gotten cocktails instead, but the TravelZoo coupon thing we'd gotten specified two glasses of wine for up to $12 each, and even though the cocktails we wanted were less, they wouldn't let us make a substitution; which seems kinda dumb on their part)
Three Rivers Riesling, 2007, Walla Walla, WA (pleasantly sweet, very floral, maybe jasmine-y)
Hannah Nicole Viognier, 2009, Contra Costa, CA (Xta said it was tarter / sharper than she was expecting from a Viognier, but good as a crisp, palate cleansing kind of drink)

Ahi Tartare: Xta said this was a particularly good rendition; it came with what I'm pretty sure were Japanese yam chips (with pretty purple stripes and flecks), and the tartare had a spicy soy sauce that she liked, and some black sesame seeds and scallions.

Steak Salad: spinach and arugala, bits of grilled skirt steak, basil-balsamic strawberries, pickled red onion, feta, spiced pecans, strawberry vinaigrette (very tasty; the vinaigrette was a really good sweet/savory combination)

Lobster Ravioli with Summer Corn Sauce: Christa really liked this, and I liked the bite I tried a fair bit. I like both corn and lobster, but neither is a particular favorite; but the way the earthy, savory, and sweet notes that show up in each of them played off each other was really interesting.

Cordon Bleu Pappardelle: Kind of an inside-out chicken cordon bleu; noodles topped with a gruyere cream sauce and prosciutto (and asparagus -- though I think the vegetable may be a seasonal thing, since I noticed they were serving asparagus as a side with a lot of dishes at the tables around us, and it wasn't specified on the menu), with a crispy-breaded chicken breast on top. The thing with this dish is it seemed like they'd taken a truly spectacular pasta dish, and then dropped on a chicken breast that was... OK. The breading was really pleasantly crunchy, and there was nothing objectionable about the chicken, but it wasn't particularly flavorful or interesting. I feel like they ought to at least cut down to half as much of it, if they're not going to do something more interesting (maybe marinate it in something, or spice up the breading a bit more). Or just give me the pasta and skip the checken entirely -- it would've been plenty of food, and the prosciutto was already enough meat for me in an entree. (Actually, just the steak from the salad would've been enough meat for one meal.)

Buttermilk Beigneits with three sauces (raspberry, chocolate, caramel): All three of the sauces were excellent; but the beignets themselves were not quite what I expected. I've had beignets in New Orleans; the dough style was a bit more similar to a raised donut than these, which were very cake-y. That would've been OK, except that they also did not seem to have the balance of buttermilk to baking soda right; it tasted to me like there was just a smidgen of unreacted baking soda left in them, which left just a hint of an unpleasant bitter/chemical aftertaste. :-/

Overall, a bit hit-or-miss; if we'd been paying their rather exorbitant full price, I would've been pretty annoyed. That said, the stuff that was good, was good enough that I still think I might like to go back some time. I'd kinda like to try a different dessert (there were some other things that sounded interesting), and the cocktails. I'd probably just order appetizers next time, or we could split an entree. The entrees were gigantic, and IMHO overly meaty, though I guess most people like that. I could just try one of their other salads (the caesar with smoked trout, or the beet salad), and get the pizza with goat cheese, cherries, bacon, and caramelized onion. (The couple at the next table had the basic Margherita, and it looked and smelled good. And their pizzas appear to cost roughly the same as a comparably sized multi-topping pizza from Amici's.)

auros — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:40:31 GMT

Tsuki Onineko
Born in the Palo Alto Baylands Colony circa September 20, 2002
Singer of Songs, Slayer of Bugs, Opener of Doors, Queen of All She Surveyed
Left the SkyDen to join StarClan on March 18, 2011

She was a Good Kitty.

foodpr0n: Bushi-Tei

auros — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:37:11 GMT

Japanese-French-California fusion. Sacre bleu! And also gochiso-sama deshita.

My parents took us out for dinner. I contributed a $40 coupon I'd acquired from one of the numerous daily-deal sites. How do I love thee, YipIt? Let me count the dollars saved...

Amuse bouche: Pâte à choux shell filled with red miso and braised beef.

Complimentary french bread with toasted rice baked in. Mmm, toasty.

Riesling, Mittnacht-Klack Schoenenbourg Vyd, France 2003. Sweet, but not overly so. Complex. Hints of honey, aftertaste of apricots.

Appetizers:

Potato soup with ginger. Contained no dairy, yet came across as creamy. Ginger nice for clearing the palate, and sinuses.
Vegetable caponata, poached organic egg, parmesan. Not actually Japanese or French -- Sicilian. Lightly sweet-pickled eggplant, red bell peppers, tomato, zucchini, possibly some other veggies I'm forgetting. Plus capers. You can never go wrong with capers. Delicious with the runny yolk from the egg, and the parmesan, and a little salt and pepper.
Golden beet carpaccio, roasted paprika coulis, mizuna, truffle tapenade. Wafer-thin slices of beet, barely cooked (if at all?), very sweet, earthy. Paprika coulis brings color, a little heat, a bit of fruitiness, smoke. Truffles (more wafer-thin slices) add even deeper earthiness, and umami complexity (I don't usually go for mushrooms, but bits of good black truffle are yummy). Mizuna very young, crisp, not stringy. (I had a mildly traumatic near-choking experience with some older mizuna once -- if you try to swallow it when one end is stuck in your teeth, it will try to strangle you. In general, I don't like it. Too fibrous.)
Herb marinated ocean trout, (some other element? the menu on the website shows some previous version of this dish that used hearts of palm, but I'm sure that wasn't it), ikura (salmon roe), sauce gribiche. Served like a ceviche or sushi. I tried a bit; not crazy about the texture, but then I don't generally like raw fish. Still, the flavor was good. I wouldn't have thought to pair fresh-ish fish with a pickly sauce. Though, I suppose sushi rice uses vinegar and sugar, and it's commonly served with pickled ginger.

Main course:

Sauteed Orata (a fish), kabu (Japanese turnip), fennel, forest mushrooms, potato mousseline. I don't think I got a bite of this, but evidently my parents liked it.
Day boat sea scallop, saffron Yukon potato chowder, popover. Very simple, showcasing the lightly-seared scallops. I think the little popover may've had a bit of saffrony potato stuffed into it, or something? In any case, Xta liked her scallops.
Sonoma duck breast, baby mizuna, mascarpone mustard, dried chutney. Duck cooked perfectly; cheese, mustard, chutney all played very well together -- smooth, creamy, spicy, savory, sweet...
Kurobuta (Berkshire pork), coco blanc beans, bacon, apple-ginger chutney. This was the dish I actually ordered for myself. It was delicious, though I would've preferred a slightly smaller cut of pork, with a larger portion of the various side/accent things. The chutney, in particular, was wonderful.

Dessert:

Apple dumpling (with a bit of brie and chutney cooked inside the dumpling, for a savory-sweet touch), french vanilla ice cream, caramel sauce. My parents had this, and I wish I'd gotten a taste; she said it was really good.
Caramelized banana, black rice pudding, banana ice cream -- I think this would've been better had the banana itself been a shade riper. It was still pretty darn good. The black rice pudding was really nice, bringing out the nuttiness of the rice.
Black sesame blancmange, pineapple strawberry salsa, coconut milk reduction. Xta and I shared this and the banana; she said if we go back, she's just ordering this, and not sharing. It's amazingly smooth, and the sesame flavor somehow manages to be simultaneously delicate and intense. The pineapple and strawberry bits (roasted in vanilla-bean oil) give you little fireworks of flavor.
Complimentary house truffles rolled in toffee and nuts, and mini almond cakes.

Was amused by the Japanese Toto toilet in the bathroom. Left completely stuffed. I think unfortunately I didn't get all the flavors I could've out of some of the things we had, because I was just starting to feel the effects of the bug I came down with today. Sigh. Anyways, we'll have to go back some time, though there are so many good places around SF, it's hard to make return trips to any but our absolute favorites, or ones that are particularly convenient to other places we want to be...

foodpr0n: Orson, with planning

auros — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 07:32:12 GMT

We went to Orson last night to sign paperwork and put down the deposit for our wedding, and talk with their private events coördinator about drawing up the floor layout to figure out the exact count of how many people can fit, and how to time the rehearsal dinner the day before (when they'll still need to be able to open at 5pm for their regular dinner service), and so on. He's supposed to get back to me within a few days, with the layout plans, and a few possible times to meet with Elizabeth to discuss food and cake. We also met the general manager, and talked a bit about the A/V system.

For the meeting, we were hanging out in the nook on the right side of the bar, where the wall-paper kind of looks like slightly-derezzed paisley. In a good way.

Since we were there anyhow, we had dinner. And we were there early enough for happy-hour cocktails...

Cocktails before/during meeting:
Angels Nogging: Creme Anglaise, brandy, bourbon, rum, nutmeg. Basically, a very strong eggnog.
Sunshine in Winter: Vodka, kumquat puree, lime, simple syrup, with a whole kumquat as a garnish. As promised, the flavor was intensely summery.

Cocktails with dinner:
Terms of Endearment: Rum, sugar-pie pumpkin butter, Luxardo Fernet. Pumpkin pie. As a cocktail. *head asplode*
Beyond Good & Evil: Gin, quince compote, Aperol, rosemary. The Aperol bitters (which includes orange and rhubarb) combined with the quince to make something surprisingly fruity, but not overly sweet. I keep meaning to get some bitters to play with at home. I suspect our cocktails would come out a bit less fruit-punchy with that addition.

Amuse bouche:
Crispy flatbread with small bowls of harissa and beet-nut spread.
Shot of sugar-pie pumpkin soup, with a drop of (hot!) chili oil.

Dinner:
Salad of red and green endive, thinly-sliced pears, maple-candied bacon, and blue cheese crumbles.
Butternut-sage cavatelli, caramelized squash, browned butter, sage. Cavatelli are little dumplings, a little like gnocchi, but without the potato, often with a bit of ricotta kneaded into the dough. These also had some butternut squash puree in them, so they were pale orange. And there were the little cubes of slightly candied squash. Yum. At first the serving looked a little small, but those little dumplings are much denser than standard pastas.

Dessert:
Herbs & Thistle: Guiness gingerbread, Fernet ice cream, brown butter toffee sauce, spicy pecans. Again with the smallish-looking, but dense. The Fernet ice cream was kind of amazing just on its own.

All very yummy.

Also, OMG, we're actually having a wedding.