Catching Up On Pies, Both Cutie and Pizza

Wow it's been busy lately! Teaching a senior synthesis class, attending end-of-the-year events on campus, getting ready to return to work at Providence Archives, strengthening our neck muscles...

Thankfully every now and then there's time to relax!


So, it's taken us a little while to post some of these, but here's a little photo round-up:

A couple more nice shots of Grandma Rhonda and Grandpa Ray's visit:



Thanks again for coming to see us!

And for joining us on some fun restaurant outings, including my first chopsticks-over-a-baby lunch :)


And here's Franklin, his mom, and his drool:


He was also a good sport the other day as we prepared a homemade pizza:

We saw Mark Bittman's recent article and had to give it a try. Verdict: yummy, could be yummier... so we're trying again this weekend!

And boy do I love that magic part of spring when asparagus is in season!


As I said, a busy time, but at least Emily and I have such charming and handsome company:

My Food and My President

Okay, I really need to run--I have a reading group this morning, and I haven't done the reading yet! And it's Plato, so, you know, people are going to expect that I read it!

Before I go, I'll just let you know that I am still working (?) on a post about newspapers, those wonderful, troubled things . . .

But for today, how about a shot of the best paper's crossword puzzle from Tuesday:

Isn't it fun? I included the key clue, but if you look around you'll see other relevant answers . . .

(Oh, and sorry about spoiling this one for you, Mom; maybe by the time it's in the Herald you'll have forgotten?)



In other news, I heard Mark Bittman on a local radio show the other day. So he's got a book about--for lack of a better term--conscious eating. In the spirit of that sort of thing, I've started a food journal.

And in the spirit of our weird, confessional, online culture, I've been publishing that journal on the web. Take a look, if you're interested:



So far (one day!) it's been fun and interesting, but I've already been told that my format is less than ideal.

(If you have suggestions for standardizing or otherwise improving it, feel free to share!)

[Update 17:30 24 January 2009]
What about a table?


And why push-ups? Aside from obvious answers, it's really because of an article we read in a newspaper a few months ago. Now we're both hooked on push-ups (and on newspapers).


Okay, better get back to work! Have a great weekend!

Minimal No More

As you may have heard, Mark Bittman's Minimalist column has reached its end. I understand the reasons, and I'm looking forward to his new projects.

But I'll definitely miss the Minimalist recipes. And the videos! Here's one from the Times' "Best Of" list:


The guy doing the filming picked another, but I can't get it to embed, so here's a link.

Wondering when's he's shown up on here? Try this search.

Anyway, I'm getting hungry. See you soon.

2010 So Far, Pt One: Food! Yay!

Thought some thematic posts might be a fun way to kick-start my '10 blogging. So in the next few posts I'll catch you up on various activities and interests--movies, musics, exciting new leisure developments, maybe more professional updates.

Politics? No, not for a little while. Ugh.

So, coming next time: Movies we've seen--and thanks to the online database E created for the two of us, 2010 should be a great year for keeping track of what we see and what we think!

Hey, speaking of Emily, the website she's been working on for the upcoming Western Roundup, an archives meeting in Seattle this spring, involving all sorts of groups (Conference of Inter-Mountain Archivists, Northwest Archivists, Society of California Archivists, and Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists) is up and running!

Looks great, no? I love that flyer!


So, now to talk food.
One recent highlight was a winter vegetable chili that Emily made, using a recipe from Food and Wine magazine.

Parsnips, carrots, hominy, even chipotle: what a great combination of flavors and textures! Definitely a keeper! (Food and Wine, you ask? Well, back before we knew how fun flying first class could be, we spent some frequent flyer miles on some magazine experiments. This recipe? Worth at least one round-trip upgrade!)

One thing I'd gladly pay lots and lots of my hard-earned money to read is the New York Times. Recently Mark Bittman did a story on lentils and other legumes, and I made the lentils with curried tarka: it was amazing.

Now, granted, it had half a stick of butter in a recipe that served four, so the odds were in our favor. But wow, for something that took like 20 minutes to make, this was super tasty.

Finally, a week or so ago I did a wing-it kind of thing with some butternut squash that we had leftover from the farmers market (returns in May, just 4 months from now! can't wait!). We consulted and then adapted and then transcended (?) this Roasted Butternut Squash Risotto recipe from epicurious.com (originally in the, alas, now-defunct Gourmet magazine).
No photo, but here's a rough account of how we made it:

• Cut 2 small butternut squashes (?) into one-inch cubes and bake until tender at say 450º (this should take something like 30-40 minutes)
• Heat a few cups of chicken broth, preferably home made from what was left over last time you cooked a Stokesberry Farm chicken
• Chop one medium onion and sauté in butter in a relatively big sauce pan until soft
• Add one and one-half cups arborio rice and a teaspoon or so of cumin; stir for a minute or two
• Pour in one quarter cup of dry white wine, stir for two or three minutes
• Add one cup of chicken broth at a time, stirring regularly until absorbed
• After 20-25 minutes, you should have some tender and delicious risotto
• Add a quarter cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, the squash, and some salt and pepper
• Yummy!

What I'm Eating

What's the deal with this blog lately? I'm not as busy with teaching, and the weather's been kind of cold and rainy, so I should be posting more, right? Weird.

Maybe it's got something to do with my back? Well, I'm trying acupuncture this morning, so hopefully that will soon resolve itself...

In the meantime, how about a round-up of some recent Twitter posts about food?


Recently I had my first banh mi sandwich. Honestly, I have no idea why I haven't been eating these for years! Crispy baguette, chilies, cucumbers, carrots, cilantro: oh wonderful mix of France and southeast Asia!

Got ours from Phở Cyclo, conveniently located around the corner from our apartment building. Got it because of that recent New York Times story. Huzzah!


Also from the Times (yes, I know...):

Citrus salsa (or "xec"), by Mark Bittman


And zucchini pancakes:

Recipe from the Temporary Vegetarian column.

They were great, and the garlic and yogurt sauce was also delicious!

All right, better grab some breakfast. Cheers, reader.

Speaking of Tacos

(Thanks, Los Taco Trucks, for the photo.)

So the other morning NPR ran this story about a website that lists addresses and reviews of taco trucks on the west coast. Now as you may have noticed in my last post, I'm a fan of the taco. As much as I love Seattle, however, there is a severe--and severely disappointing--lack of worthwhile Mexican food here. Having spent so much time around Chicago, where there's lots of great Mexican, it's been an unpleasant adjustment. So when I heard that story, I got pretty excited: Mexican! West coast!

Alas, when I took a look at the website (yumtacos.com) I discovered that Portland was the closest place they list . . .


Now, it was some comfort that we were able to use our new tortilla press and some of Mark Bittman's recipes from last week to make some tasty tacos at home, but, well, it's just not the same.

Just as I'd resigned myself to this bland fate, however, Emily stumbled across a piece on some local taco trucks in the Seattle Weekly.

At this point, two main things became clear: all hope was not lost; and people really seem to be talking about tacos a lot lately. Indeed, there was a front page story in today's Times about recent legal issues confronting taco trucks in LA, which included this charming passage:

This a where you can pave over a freeway’s carpool lanes with toll roads, and few will complain. You can propose a 40-story skyrise in the center of Hollywood, and hardly anyone two miles to the west will take notice. You can squander public money, close down the ports and flatten landmarks, and many residents of this sprawling metropolis will simply yawn and move on.

But this is also a food-obsessed city with rich Hispanic cultural traditions, and tacos have crossed the miles of road and class divides.

Ah, tacos . . .

Anyhow, this evening we booked ourselves a Zipcar (Flexcar was bought out, but whatever), drove down to the Columbia City neighborhood, and had some terrific carnitas at Tacos El Asadero. Delicious, affordable, and served in a bus that's been converted into a a tiny kitchen and ten-stool seating area. What could be better?

Emily, in fact, said that it was the best carnitas she had ever had. Oh how I love a happy ending.


Now why is it that good food like that is served in a converted bus miles from the supposedly cool part of the city where we live? I don't know, but there's something wrong somewhere. The writer of this '04 review in the Stranger agrees, though, that's it's worth the trouble getting there.

Overwhelmingly positive reviews on yelp seem to share the sentiment as well.

Also, note that the link I put for the taco place is not to their own website (they sell tacos for $1.20 in a converted bus!); it's to a site that seems to do a decent (if not particularly up to date) job of tracking local taco trucks, called Los Taco Trucks.
Why did I use their photo above? Well, here's the one I took with my phone:



Oh, and what are carnitas? Try the Wikipedia entry.

Sunday Magazine Notes

Liking a lot of the new New York Times Sunday Magazine, including this story about a pretty cool amateur dance video.

Here's the video trailer:

Girl Walk // All Day from jacob krupnick on Vimeo.

And the new Bittman column is here, looking good...

But I loved Virginia Heffernan! How could they cut her??

The world moves forward, though, for better and for worse. And in case it seems odd to devote an entire blog post to my thoughts about a magazine, let me end by praising Sam Anderson's discussion of marginalia. He hits it near the head here: "a way to not just passively read but to fully enter a text, to collaborate with it, to mingle with an author on some kind of primary textual plane."

Blogging's not quite margin-writing, of course, and I agree with Anderson that e-readers haven't quite mastered their margins (though they're awfully close), but I share his hope that "technology, rather than destroying the tradition of marginalia, could actually help us return it to its gloriously social 18th-century roots."

So, here I'll make these notes on the new Magazine. And if you want to follow my note-taking as I read with the Kindle app, this link should work.

Jams and Bread

As I mentioned, we checked out HONK! Fest West last weekend. Lots of fun music, even if it was accompanied by stilts, kilts, and jugglers...

Our favorite was definitely the Seahawks drum line:

Makes me think I might have to go to a football game one of these days!

Was such a nice day that I rode my bike there (!) with my friend Laura, and we met up with Emily, who'd just finished up at the Seattle Archives Preservation Roadshow.

As Laura captioned this, "sunglasses needed!"

Back home, we've been losing our minds over the no-knead bread recipe that Mark Bittman wrote about a few years ago.

Incredibly easy, and incredibly tasty—nice crunchy crust too! And, as Jim Lahey says in the great video, it has "beautiful crumb structure."


You know what else is beautiful? Plato's Greek is truly beautiful. I've been fortunate to have found a few other faculty members at Seattle U. who'll read Plato in Greek with me lately.

Lots of fun, and a nice chance to spend time with faculty from all over the University—Physics, History, Theology, Philosophy.

Right now we're reading the Euthyphro. Slow going for most of us, but rewarding. Want to take a look? The Perseus site will gives you access to a side-by-side Greek and English version. Good stuff.

All right reader, back to work. Cheers!