Choo Choo Goes the Spice Train!

Way back in January I bought a truly excellent international curries cookbook from a book shop in Kokura, but only had the opportunity to make some of the simplest recipes in it on account of the scarcity and sky-high cost of premium Indian/S.E. Asian spices. Not so here in Cali, thankfully! I just now whipped up a delicious Sri Lanka-style curry that I'm about to serve over brown rice (not really the traditional rice to serve curry with, if you go that route) and best of all is how simple it was to prepare. A little coriander here, some turmeric there, enough coconut milk to make an elephant empty its bowels (it's a natural laxative--ask me about the Hawaiian luau and coconut jello story sometime) and you've got a damn tasty, nigh restaurant-grade curry.

One thing I didn't know about curries that this book enlightened me on is that the British sort of invented the idea of "curry and rice". Traditionally, many curries are treated as a soup and eaten as such or they're like thick stews and dry-ish veggie pan fries that get eaten with bread--like chapati and naan--or hands. In many ways the British did to curry and rice what we Americans did to chow mein, namely that they stone cold invented the modern dish and labeled it an exotic foreign delicacy.

And just because we consume industrial-sized quantities of the stuff, I also fashioned up some simple hummus from as scratch as I'm liable to get anytime in the near future. I mean, I didn't grind the tahini out or grow the garbanzos or anything, but in a perfect world filled with plentiful garden space and free kitchen implements I would.

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I'm reaching a high level of exasperation with the cat who, in honor of the town bicycle cat from Kusu we used to feed, we've dubbed "Strumpet". She's adorable on the surface, but deep down I think she's got a few shoots of catnip lodged in the grey matter. I am terrified to touch her without knowing the secret ingredient that makes her swipe. I was adjusting a pillow on the couch tonight after having a seat and she had a go at me for that. We have to kick her out when we go to bed just to make sure she doesn't use our cottage as a toilet, but she'll come back minutes later to the rooftop window feet from our head and meow loudly. Such a tactless moocher of a cat...

Strumpet, Class A Moocher

--Matt

"I Am Destiny To Do Something GREAT Today!!!"

Just came across a hilarious series of dramatic readings from celebrity tweets. After listening to them you too will wonder why we support these brainless parasites by buying into the media, or even how we allow them people to walk the streets. It's difficult to say which is my favorite, but the Tila Tequila rants are very, umm...what's the dead opposite of lucid?...totally batshit insane. Yeah, that's it. Something you'd expect to come out of the scrambled brain of a serial coke snorter after an ELO marathon at Studio 54.

--Matt

A Return to Dungeon Crawling Days

It seems I forgot to mention an interesting chance meeting from last Thursday that occurred while I was hovering around the city on my bike, specifically in the Hayes neighborhood. I was there checking out the Timbuk2 messenger bag line--I honestly don't know why, my 3-year-old Chrome bag is damn near unparalleled--when I crept past a cafe to scope it out for a cuppa and saw my former coworker, Jason Thompson, emerge on the phone. We chatted and caught up while I handled some job hunt stuff on my laptop. Jason was always one of the folks at VIZ I could most identify with, mainly because he is an unabashed geek who lets it all show. Case in point: he wants to play D&D on the street and invite the public to come get their D20 on...and I'm going to give him a hand.

After a little brainstorm at the cafe a plan of action was unofficially drawn up. As it stands, on the 24th or 25th of October, he will get dressed in a balaclava, wizards hat and black cape, plop down a card table and DM shade at the chess playing cluster at the Market/Powell intersection and challenge passersby to slog through his dungeon. Since I don't play D&D (honestly, I jumped that stage and went straight into more hardcore tabletop games) I volunteered to film the mad event and make a trophy or some prize to lure the public in. I also came up with the idea to have plants in the crowd, accomplices that will walk around saying "Oh, this looks interesting," or who will loudly jump into the game and hopefully hook a few people who have nothing better to do on a weekend afternoon. I think the biggest challenge will be keeping the dignified old men of the chess cluster from caning Jason.

An interesting weekend it will be.

--Matt

A Venti-Sized Order of Depresso

Holy crap, I found a pair of the most depressing books mankind has ever produced in a free leftovers bin after a Temescal neighborhood garage sale today. Here's a pic, get ready...

Jeez, they're children's books too! Here's a rundown of the most heart-crushing lines in the books.

From Mom and Dad Don't Live Together Any More:

"If I had a whishbone I would wish for us to all live together again. Mommy and Daddy say that will never happen. But I still wish it sometimes."

"Mom, when I grow up, will I get married and then get apart?"

"I love my mommy and my daddy. My mommy and my daddy love me too. Just not together."

From My Mother Lost Her Job Today:

"I go outside and pick some dandelions. Fat ones with long stems. When I come in, I give them to my mom to make her feel better. She sets them on the counter instead of putting them in water. She doesn't even say 'thank you'."

In Mom and Dad, whether intentionally or not, the illustrations of the girl whose life has been torn asunder by her parents' separation show a face devoid of expression, eyes dead and soulless, as if saying to children reading it "This'll be you after mommy runs off with the Schwan's man and daddy starts taking more and more frequent trips to Bangkok. Get used to it, kid."

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There's a strange visitor in the house as I type this: a fluffy little cat seemingly suffering from a case of bipolar disorder. Or whatever the equivalent is in felines. We haven't a clue who she belongs to, but she normally hangs out with an orange spotted cat in the area and loves to traverse fences and roofs as her primary avenue of travel. She's been reluctant to enter our house so I gave her some milk in a yogurt top the other day to lure her inside. She left shortly after finishing that time, but tonight is different. I estimate she's been sitting here for upwards of two hours and doesn't want to go, which is starting to be an issue.

The problem is that she's incredibly loud and unpredictable. One moment she's mewing her head off and rubbing against your leg, then the next, when you reach to pet her, she attacks and hisses. Maia's got a few nasty stab wounds while I have a single prick. We haven't a clue what will and won't set her off. I tried to show her the door a while back only to find she didn't care to exit and I'm too afraid to go pick her up and toss her out. I guess it'll have to be a tray of milk on the porch finally to lure her outside.

--Matt

A Morning Filled With Four Hundred Billion Suns

I don't know which is better, auto-tune or Carl Sagan.

--Matt

South of the Border (Down Mexico...AHHH! My Spleen!!!)

In my hometown of Castro Valley, occupying prime real estate within the Castro Village shopping center, a Mexican restaurant named Don Jose's dishes out their unique brand of cuisine from South of the Border. It is, to put it succinctly, a terrifying journey into the heart how bad "professionally" prepared food can get. I think it only ever got business because CV residents came in droves to get hammered at its margarita bar, though I've heard the food has improved enough in recent years to warrant a visit as long as one keeps expectations down to Earth. My traumatic last visit some time ago to Don Jose's involved a plate of nachos smothered in very dry, stringy chicken, off-color guacamole and ballpark-quality nacho "cheese". You know, the stuff that comes in an industrial use two gallon tin can. To call it a grotesque perversion of one of my old comfort foods wouldn't be going far enough.

Tito's on E.14th in San Leandro was the only other ostensibly Mexican eatery to ever approach Don Jose's abominable culinary abortions...until yesterday. I haven't typically been eating lunch in SF after my morning shift for KQED's pledge drive thanks simply to the appetite suppressing powers in a cup of Farley's strong stuff, but I knew I'd be tooling around the city until the evening pledge shift began and it seemed reasonable to keep myself fueled until free food came my way. The Mission having its reputation as a Mecca for cheap, tasty Mexican being what it is I felt I would peel away from the norm of El Farrolito or Taqueria Cancun and try something new. Deeper into the neighborhoods east of Mission St. I found...you know, I'd better not say its name lest the owners hire thugs to hunt me for sport. I'll leave it nameless and say that you should avoid the Mexican restaurant on 21st and Treat.

It looked like any other innocuous divey Mission taqueria with its gaudy plastic flowering vines, maps of Guatemala and metal chairs stolen straight from a Catholic church pot luck all parked beneath formica-clad pressboard tables. No cause for alarm, really. I ordered a combo plate featuring beef flautas and settled in with my book, but was distracted when a Mexican builder with extensive tattoos went out to his Ford Econoline van (parked fully on the sidewalk and practically blocking the restaurant's entryway) and gunned the sickly engine full bore. The deafening mechanical clacking of a grossly mistimed engine made my ears bleed while the exhaust shooting into the door simultaneously choked me. This goes on for fifteen seconds or so, but it's OK, everyone in the place is having a great laugh at it.

A day laborer walks into the eatery apparently looking for work. I can't understand him, but he sounds respectful. There's plenty of "señor" and "por favor" peppered around. The owner then seems to lay into the man with a vengeance and the laborer slowly turns on his heels and exits, stopping once to look back at the owner with a face filled full of pity and the deepest contempt. Very uncomfortable for me.

And then the star of the show: my food. The flautas were filled with the stringiest, gristliest beef I have every eaten, no hyperbole. The rice tasted like it had soap in it. The beans were fine. The menu indicated a side of sour cream and indeed a little porcelain cup of white gelatinous stuff was brought out, but it wasn't sour cream. It was mayo. What. The. Hell.

Without a word or a hint of a facial expression I paid $8.11 for the meal(?) and left. I must have got through something like fifteen pages of my book. Don't remember a thing about it.

During the KQED evening pledge shift my stomach felt like it wanted to claw its way out of my body and check into the hospital, I felt so bad. The starchy and delicious mac n' cheese we had catered took the edge off somehow, but the feeling of dread among my internal organs didn't abate until around 11PM.

I don't want to be dependent on Yelp to make my culinary decisions for me. What a terrible way to live life, never risking anything and only going with the flow. This may have been one exception, however, as my Yelp search turns up, this place's taco window is rated an unbelievable-to-me 5-stars! There are a couple possibilities: first is that Yelp users can not be trusted, which is entirely possible; and next is that their tacos are brilliant while everything else falls flat, or craters violently. I, for one, will never be returning, thank you very much.

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One final bit. I was rudely peering over some dude's shoulder on BART yesterday while he read the op/ed page from...some national newspaper and saw this political 'toon. It pissed me off, needless to say. Having hope is fine, but the nation and indeed the world can't just foist their dreams and wishes onto a single man's shoulders then sit back and expect them to be made reality. From the moment the ballots indicated a win for Obama that's what has happened across the globe, nobody seeming to understand that the man is not a deity or a magician who can gesture away the evils of the world and herald in a golden age. It takes the strength and brains of millions to move such mountains--right now about half of America lacks a shred of the latter. If the artist's intent was to indicate the loss of hope because of the current state of healthcare reform then he's missed the mark. Don't confuse the lunatic attacks on reform by ignorant mouth-breathers with some non-existent loss of hope or effectiveness in the administration. If anything, I for one am losing hope (I mean, moreso than my nominal levels of contempt for the homophobes, racists and chicken fried steak-eating masses) in the intelligence of the American people to participate in politics when they continually rally against their own interests (the current healthcare "debate" being just the tip of that iceberg).

Getcher head out of your ass, America.

--Matt

My High School Self Would Never Believe His Future Lifestyle

Let's hope time travel never gets invented and he gets to know the now me lest the info induce a heart attack in the past, causing a time-space paradox now! Or then. Whenever.

OK, I'm writing on batteries and a one-hour-only free internet connection at Farley's, so time is of the essence. Nothing like a deadline to get the fingers ticking away. I'm downright in love with this cafe now and can understand where its reputation springs forth from. Not only does it have the best latte in the land, the ambiance is unmatched: there's a rotating selection of art hanging on every bit of wall real estate; the patrons come from diverse backgrounds and social strata (an afro-sporting, mustachioed cop just got his morning coffee alongside the skate punk); and there's a detective agency directly across the street called "Golden Gun Investigations", just to name a few of the environmental features offered here. The staff also has apparently been secretly keeping track of my shirt and jacket selection this week because I just had a chat with the barista about the meaning of "neko ni shinju" and past phrases on my clothing. Staff chatting with their customers--even the new faces--and building community...that's the stuff this great city is made of.

I've made coming here part of my daily ritual after volunteering at the KQED offices and will be beside myself with sadness when the drive ends tomorrow night. Of course, to get into SF in time for the morning pledge shift means waking at AM 5:30, but you know, I'm actually starting to like it. And this is just the beginning of why my younger self would be incredulous about my activities these days.

I have, in retrospect, made some incredible lifestyle changes in the past few years. Starting in Japan when I was a student were the decisions to ride to school instead of taking the train, which turned out to be a catalyst for a healthy living ethic I've expanded on. It's my opinion that Americans--really, anybody from an industrialized nation that relies heavily on mechanized transport and industry--must make certain concessions of convenience in order to keep both themselves, their children, their society and their planet healthy. It's not hard, but it does at first run counter to conventional wisdom. I can go on for hours about the benefits of cycling and how there is a bike to fit everyone's needs and comfort zone, but everyone's tired of me blowing that horn so often and vociferously. There's also the Buy Local movement in respect to food and manufactured goods to reduce the energy it takes to transport XYZ product to the consumer. It turns out this is a critical step on the path towards energy independence, and one that hardly anybody--even those in the environmental movement--really think about. Consider it: if you buy an out-of-season strawberry and it has to come from South America, that single piece of fruit may cost hundreds of times its calorie cost in energy before it reaches your mouth. Staggering.

I don't know, maybe I'm the only one who feels guilt about these slights. All I know is that I feel fantastic after riding into Oakland or SF instead of driving, high off of farmer's market produce finds (I really need to visit the Berkeley one more often). Self-righteous? Perhaps. But I'm liking this side of the line just fine and the fringe benefits (for example, riding through 'hoods instead of zooming by in a coach allows one to become an expert on an area without living or even working there) can't be beat.