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Merry Christmas to everyone!!
We're in the midst of recovering from our evening last night, packing, and cooking our Christmas duck. We've had a lovely, relaxing, quiet day and are looking forward to our trip to Miami.
I won't be updating the site for the next week, but when I return I'm sure I'll have many stories of food, music, and friends to tell.
Here's to everyone enjoying the rest of the holidays in peace, comfort, and happiness!!
Happy Christmas Eve to everyone!
This has always been one of my favorite days of the year. Our family celebrated Christmas in a very, very secular way (Hanukkah, when we were observant, was the "religious" holiday at this time of year). Starting when I was about 7 years old, my family has always gone out to a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve. We started at Ron of Japan (a local Benihana-type place perfect for a 7 year old and a 4 year old) and steadily moved up to fancier and fancier places throughout the years.
I love this tradtion...it's a wonderful reminder that the holiday season - no matter what holidays you celebrate - is really about your family and loved ones. It's extremely relaxing (especially if you're going to cook elaborately on Christmas Day), and always festive. M and I have decided to carry on this tradtion in our family; and though the past few years we've been to the same restaurant on Christmas eve, tonight we're going to dinner at La Folie, a fancy French restaurant that's doing a 5-course Christmas Eve extravaganza meal. We're very excited. I will give a full report tomorrow.
Of course, it's not hard to get excited about anything and everything when we leave for Miami the day! after! tomorrow!
And just to be all cheesy about it, today's "Song 'O Cheer" is Will Smith's "Miami." Just for fun.
PS: Also cheer-inducing? I got my Uggs!!! (In the Sand color.) And they're actually cute on me! Yay!!!
I spent about two and a half hours in the car today for no reason. I was supposed to tutor, but my student forgot and didn't show, and I was stuck driving all the way to the South Bay and back for nothing.
But I did have a lot of time to think, and I've decided that it's time to get cheery, dammit. The last half of this year has been pretty hard for lots of my friends, myself included. Somehow, we seem to have landed under a black cloud that's causing breakups, breakdowns, breakouts, and just general suffering. I personally have been stupefyingly bored and pretty much sick of everything lately. Which is sad, because the last few weeks of the year are quite possibly my favorite time of any given year, and it seems I'm doing my damndest to miss them.
So...we leave for Miami on Friday, and it's time to get excited. Usually I try to delay the anticipation because I get all worked up and freaked out. Last year I couldn't sleep for the whole week before New Year's Eve, and for good reason: Phish hadn't played together in over 2 years, we were skin-of-our-teeth lucky to get tickets, my brother was going to come with us, and I was still in the first blush of purposeful joblessness. This year, December's been slipping by and outside of putting ourself on a self-imposed Phish Listening Hiatus for the past few weeks, I haven't thought much about the shows.
So this week, each day, I'll be uploading a song that makes me happy, gets me excited, and puts me in the mood for New Year's Eve. Because bad luck's gotta end sometime, and I've decided that time is now.
On a related note, I just discovered that come January 1st, Phish is going to donate all the net proceeds of their Live Phish downloads to The Mockingbird Foundation, which is a volunteer organization staffed by Phish fans that donates money to music education-related charities. It's a great group, and they're going to get a major, major influx from the wildly-successful LivePhish site. It also makes me so proud of the band, and helps me remember why I have so much genuine affection for the four of them and why I care enough to be as crazy about all of this as I am.
Another reason I love the boys? Silly-ass covers like this one: Roses are Free (originally by the inimitable Ween, this version is from Hampton Comes Alive). It's also appropriate to be a song that spreads cheer, as the first line is "Take a piece of tinsel and put it on the tree...."
Cheers, all. Time to get happy.
The comfort food-fest continues here. After roast beef on Friday night (an ultimate comfort food for me, since my grandmother used to make a roast for almost every Sunday night dinner during the winter), and leftovers last night, we made scallopped potatoes with ham for dinner tonight. We even made the roux with half-and-half, which made for a much thicker, richer dish.
Of course, since we're going to La Folie for dinner on Christmas Eve, I think we're going to be eating soup and salad for the next few days, just to leave room for our five-course extravaganza.
And, in other news, I'm starting to get really, really, really excited for Miami. The first show is one week from tonight!!!!!
Happy Hanukkah!!
I'm currently spending my day being a "Hanukkah Housewife," making a somewhat elaborate traditional holiday dinner and cleaning the whole house to boot. Tonight we'll be having latkes, roast beef, asparagus, homemade applesauce, and ice cream for dessert. And challah (not homemade...I'm ambitious, not crazy) because it's Friday.
And after two plus years of marriage, we're finally breaking out our wedding china tonight. We only have 3 settings, so we haven't used it yet, but since it's just going to be us two, we figured we'd live a little. I'll take pictures of our festive table and post them eventually.
Happy weekends to everyone.
Over the past four or five years or so, San Francisco has been over-run with a restaurant trend called "small plates." (With all due respect to the NY Times, I hardly think we're copying the East Coast on this one.) It's an extension of the Spanish Tapas idea: food is served on small plates, often in small bites, and usually shared. In its best form, it allows you to have many different tastes on the table and can save a bit of money (as the plates are often half as much as regular entrees). In its not-so-perfect form, you can spend LOTS of money for very little food. You just gotta know where to go.
M and I have our favorite small plates places (most notably Timo's, which we've loved since the week we moved here and Tallula, which has recently opened to deservedly rave reviews), but this past week we've had a chance to dine at two more new restaurants - Cortez and Baraka - with mixed results.
We went to Cortez last Saturday night before the Christmanukkah party with W and Y. Four people at these restaurants is ideal, as you're able to sample much of the menu. We all enjoyed our meal here, especially the Katafi crusted crab cake which arrived looking like a spiky, forbidding, fried sea urchin all but tasted divine. I also loved the terrine of foie gras which was accompanied by chunky orange and Herbes de Provence marmalade - it had the texture of butter or a good triple-cream cheese and I loved the idea of mixing herbs in marmalade.
Last night, M and I went to Baraka in Potrero Hill, largely because of the favorable review in the Times and because we've been saving money by not going out to dinner and were feeling in need of a dose of civilization. We had higher hopes for Baraka given that the owners operate two other extremely successful restaurants right down the street, but I found the food very one-note and overly sweet. Perhaps we didn't do a wonderful job ordering, but nearly every one of the five dishes we received had raisins in it. And while I appreciate the well-used raisin (Timo's Catalan Style Spinach, I'm looking at you), I don't need it hiding in every dish on the menu. The lemon and cumin marinated quail was outstanding (though on a plate of soggy, overly-sweet spinach - with raisins!). We should try to cook little birdies on our own more often.
So tonight we're back at home, happily creating our own "small plates," as Clotilde's Oeuf Cocotte recipe bakes in the oven as I type.
In other news, for the holidays this year M and I decided to use an old merchandise credit we had at Williams-Sonoma to buy ourselves gifts. Apres nos oeufs ce soir? Ice cream from our brand new ice Ice Cream Maker!
And as exciting as that purchase is, I'm even more excited about this one. What can I say, I'm a kitchen dork!
Huh. I kinda thought I'd be Grover.... There's only one true statement in the following description. See if you can find what it is.
You are Janice.
You dig the groove man, nothing can bum you out.... Too bad you're too stoned to notice.
INSTRUMENT: Like, you know, guitar, fer sure.
LAST BOOK READ: "Finding Your Past Lives on the Web"
FAVORITE EXPRESSION: "Fer sure, like, fer sure."
FAVORITE THINGS: Peace, love and, like, granola, totally.
NEVER LEAVES HOME WITHOUT: Her inner child.
What Muppet are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
So....
This isn't a food blog quite yet. We certainly cook enough and eat out enough to fuel a true food blog, but there are people out there who do it much better than I could, and so I'm happy just to share bits and pieces of our culinary adventures from time to time.
Like tonight, for example. Tomorrow is officially our 5th year "dating" anniversary. We don't usually celebrate this anniversary (our wedding anniversary suffices, thanks), but since it's 5 years, we think this one's special. (In fact, since we officially got together at the company Christmas party 5 years ago, we think it's rather funny that tomorrow is also the same company's Christmas party...hence we're celebrating tonight, but I digress....) So tonight we opened up a nice bottle of wine and I cooked something grander than our usual mid-week fare: Spiced Lamb and Onion Couscous from Donna Hay's "New Food Fast."
I don't quite know why we don't cook more often from this book, but we certainly need to in the future. The premise of the recipe is that it takes "30 minutes" (as opposed to 10 or 20 minutes - the other two chapters in the book), which is pretty much right on the money. It's basically a slightly more elaborate version of lamb steaks and couscous: the lamb is covered in cumin, paprika, and chili powder then pan fried; the couscous is tossed with browned onions and thyme, then mixed with fresh arugula before serving. I violated my own rule and messed with the recipe a bit even though it was the first time we made the dish, using clarified butter to saute the onions and to pan-fry the lamb, and adding extra salt to the spices and to the onions, but it was outstanding. And honestly? It took about 30 minutes to make, which is totally do-able on a daily basis.
So YUM. And Happy Anniversary, M. If you want the recipe, give me a shout.
Sigh. Today is just...well...dreary. Even Parliament/Funkadelic isn't cheery enough.
It's started to pour here, and it's expected to rain - hard - for a few days. I really, really wish I had a bathtub, because with the weather looking so grey, I'd just hole myself up in there with some cocoa and a good book for a while.
Alas, today's the final runoff for mayor of San Francisco (good riddance, Willie Brown! Thanks for nothing!) and we have to venture out in the wet a bit later and do our civic duty. I never thought I'd complain about a race between two smart, young liberal candidates, but it isn't quite the "greater of two goods" choice that I had hoped for. Newson's somewhat smarmy, well-funded, and obviously ambitious beyond just the Mayor's office but he might take some positive, though unpopular steps towards making the city more liveable. Gonzalez is smart, motivated, and has some different ideas, but he's the worst kind of classic San Francisco bleeding-heart liberal who won't challenge the city to make tough choices. Honestly? I just want someone who will do a Daley or Giuliani and really take steps to clean up San Francisco's homelessness issue and growing crime problem. Chicago and New York have become lovely, beautiful, safe places to live, while the sidewalk outside my apartment just gets dirtier and less safe every day. San Francisco's the only city in the country where the councilmen will argue about a resolution to pick up human feces from the sidewalks. Just tell me who to vote for to make that better, OK?
Laundry's done, presents are almost wrapped, and if I don't get a job soon, I think I'm going to go mad.
Whee! We got our first holiday card of the season, from the lovely Albacore and her newly minted Ph.D cutie boyfriend HMB. And in more holiday news, our decidedly interfaith household now smells like "The Scent of Christmas" potpourri that my mom used to get every year. Not quite sure what the "Scent of Hanukkah" would be, actually. Fried potatoes? Gelt? Melting skinny colored candles? We'll find out next week.
Switching topics completely:
I think I'm now absolutely, completely, totally addicted to this crap. I mean, I have been for years, but it's getting ridiculous. It's one of the only processed non-organic foods we eat, but I could drink the stuff, I love it so much. Sigh.
Hee hee heeeee! That Hotel Verlutzig (or whatever) that Syd and Will checked into in tonight's Alias? Is none other than The Viceroy in Santa Monica where my mom and I stayed when we were in LA last spring! I lurved that hotel (it's designed by Kelly Wearstler who also did Trina Turk's Palm Springs boutique). When I get a job (sigh) I want to go down there for a weekend with M. Maybe I'll have to get hot pink hair extensions if we do.
And yes, kickASS episode.
Last summer, as many of you know, was the first summer that I have had “off” in many, many years. In fact, the last summer I remember having completely free was the summer before 7th grade (1987 to be exact) when I wasn’t yet swimming competitively and was still running around, going to summer camp, and just gallivanting like any normal kid. The next summer I had begun swimming full time, and every summer after that I was either training 7 hours a day or, after I stopped swimming, working like the normal adult that I am.
This past summer, however, I decided to go play. Taking into account the fact that I wouldn’t be willfully unemployed forever, and the multiple travel plans M and I already had in place (the Bahamas, Paris and Provence with Mom and Dad, Baltimore and Madawaska for weddings, and Boston for M’s parents’ 40th anniversary), I decided that I wanted to spend the rest of the summer “on tour,” following Phish around the country to as many shows as I could afford and get to between the rest of our travels. And I wanted to write about it because – as many of you who know me understand – the desire to go on tour was both a huge surprise and no surprise at all. After all, as the description to this blog clearly says, I do love Paris, Prada, and Phish in equal measure. I just don’t know many other people who do...
So I’ve been thinking for months about what I could say about the amazing month I spent on tour. I still have all my setlists, my ticket stubs, my pictures, and the last vestiges of a tan that – despite liberal applications of fancy French sunblock – I managed to get anyway. For the next few weeks, bear with me as I try to make sense of my experiences. I’ve waited so long now that it’s almost time for another tour (we leave 3 weeks from today!), and I can hardly wait to get back out there for another go. So I thought I’d start puzzling through my summer and building my excitement for New Year’s by sharing…
The Five Major Life Lessons I’ve Learned From Seeing Phish
1. How to live in the now: Yes, this one seems self-evident. I mean, it could be the entire point of spontaneously deciding to follow a band across the country (and learning how to be present in the moment has certainly been the bulk of my spiritual yoga training). But living in the now at shows takes on an entirely different and supremely urgent nature because part of what one sees Phish (or other bands of their ilk) for is to witness and absorb truly mind-boggling moments of musical transcendence.
No, I’m not exaggerating. My father has often said that the mountains are “his temple," and in the same vein, M and I have always considered our experiences at Phish shows to be among the most spiritual of our lives. Indeed, Trey said himself in this month’s Relix that he believes that “music is a language that gives you a glimpse of the divine.” When the band on the stage in front of you views music and their responsibilities as musicians in such an exalted fashion, the only responsibility you have as a fan is to be fully present and open throughout the entire experience (which is why I hate “yappers” and “clappers,” but that’s another entry altogether!).
2. How to stop being self conscious: When M and I were on our honeymoon in Spain, we went to see Orbital in Barcelona. The one thing I noticed during the entire show is how entirely at ease young Europeans are. None of the girls were appraising other girls in with that catty once-over American women do. No one was scoffing at my shoes, or whispering about that girl’s jeans. Everyone just let everyone else be, and it was a delightful experience to be at an electronica show surrounded by calm, happy, self-satisfied people.
Phish shows are a lot like that. When I first started seeing them, I worried way too much about what to wear: how to fit in with the “crunchy” crowd without compromising my love of clothes, shoes, makeup, etc. But when at one of the first shows I saw, I sat down in my seat before the concert started (wearing a carefully selected outfit) and the super-hippie wookie dude behind me said “Hey! Great shirt!” I realized that no true Phishhead would ever give me a malicious once-over. Since then, I’ve worn what makes me happy and comfortable at shows – everything from glitter to the same cargo pants three days in a row – and the only thing I worry about are whether my shoes are comfortable.
3. How to handle crises calmly: Heh. This is a lesson I learned mainly from dealing with stressful situations while not sober. It’s a wonderful challenge to have your world turned upside-down by some substance or another, and then try to deal with what comes your way: 19 hours of traffic, gale-force rainstorms in a small tent, porta-potties, camping on concrete, other non-sober people who can’t handle their shit, and – most notably – getting to and from the bathroom without getting lost (again, another story in and of itself, certainly not postable). When your world is right-side-up again, it makes adverse situations seem infinitely manageable.
4. How to be kind to strangers: I rant on a daily basis about how much people frustrate me. It’s hard to live two blocks from a major tourist destination in a large American city and not become irked by something or other. Strangely though, I can peacefully exist in a crowd of up to 80,000 fellow Phish fans without ever wanting to punch someone out. I think part of it is that everyone’s there for the same thing, and everyone’s happy to be there. But part of it is that people – for the most part – are generally kind to each other on tour. You sit down in your seats and introduce yourself to your neighbor immediately. You share your blanket on the lawn and your stories from last night’s show. People share everything, in fact: food, smokes, water, Advil (thank God!), gum, advice, setlists, and good cheer. The Phunky Bitches even stock the women’s bathrooms with supply kits. (In fact, the women’s bathrooms at Phish are one of the funniest, safest places to be if you’re a woman on tour.) It’s not all Woodstock-type free-love and naïveté, of course, but it’s certainly not anywhere close to the fire and riots of the 90’s version of Woodstock, either.
5. How to expect nothing (except the unexpected): By far the most important thing seeing Phish has taught me. In everyday life, I always say “Just set my expectations, and I’ll be happy.” I have a very hard time dealing with things that don’t go according to my expectations…not in a crazy control-freak way (though I do have those tendencies), but more because I’d like to be able to deal gracefully with what comes my way. (see lesson #3) But at shows, it’s the people who walk in the arena with expectations that are always going to be disappointed. Phish has many, many faces, and if you love one of them (jamming, funky, silly, raging, serious…) more than another, and you’re always looking for that style, those songs, or that feeling, you’re missing the whole gosh-darn experimental point.
The most important thing about the show to me is the music. And that’s the thing I have the least control over. Sure, there are songs I’m DYING to see (as you can read here), but if I head to Miami expecting to see them, I’m going to be mighty sad on January 1st. Not to mention the fact that they may do something completely unexpected and mind-blowing that I can’t even imagine.
And to not be open to that possibility is to not have learned anything this summer at all.
Happy Anniversary, boys. Here's to another 20 years.
Don't kill me Rappy, but I think I've decided to buy Uggs (the "Classic Short" boot, in either Chestnut or Sand) depending on whether or not I can find them. It's not going to be a big deal yay or nay, but I can't help thinking how ridiculously comfortable they would be after yoga, or at shows, or just slopping around town. I promise not to wear them with one pant leg in and one out, but I don't promise not to wear them with skirts.
Wish me luck (or tell me I'm crazy).