Life of Wry

Made a mousse today. Mousse isn’t something I’ve ever made, but I was looking forward to the challenge. I’d been assigned dessert for our more-or-less-quarterly food group–the divine Dining Divas. The menu was largely pre-selected by the host–this time Madeline–because boreal menus and recipes are not that easy to come by.

She drew mainly from The Boreal Feast: A Culinary Journey through the North by Michele Genest

Madeline chose a boreal feast as her theme, inspired by her recent trip to Alaska and Yukon territories. I’m still not quite sure what all a boreal feast entails, but found this description online: “wild ingredients found in the boreal forests from Yukon to Alaska to Scandinavia.”

So a White Chocolate Mousse Blueberry Parfait it was!

Besides white chocolate, cream, brown sugar, and lemon (all in abundance and easy to find here in the 38th parallel) my recipe called for wild blueberries (which I got at the coop), birch syrup (which I couldn’t find, so substituted maple syrup), and Haskap liqueur, (edible berries of the blue honeysuckle plant, native in the cooler temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere). Couldn’t find that, either, so substituted Cassis (another berry liqueur).

Safe to say, the ingredients list was causing me some trepidation. But I was more intimidated after reading the preparation. It had so many techniques that have traditionally been dicey for me. For example, anytime I have to whip cream (or egg whites) to a certain consistency I get uneasy; it’s never clear to me what, exactly, constitutes soft versus stiff peaks, for example. Folding in whipped stuff is also a delicate proposition, especially when there are warnings about not over mixing and maintaining “as much air as possible.” I totally understand mousses are supposed to be light and smooth. Uh oh.

Reducing things to half their original volume is another inexact science. I get it, I have my methods, but that’s always a little subjective and gives me a wee bit of consternation.

The scariest for me though, was the part of the mousse preparation where you’re melting the chocolate. They said that because white “chocolate” has a lower melting point than other chocolates, and because it scorches and seizes more easily, you’re supposed to use a double boiler and watch it carefully (I always fake a double boiler, but not without a little self-doubt). You’re also supposed to be extremely careful to make sure NO condensation from the sides of the pan get into the chocolate or it will get super clumpy (I’ve had this happen when making rocky road; it’s weird and unappealing… definitely not the desired smooth). So you’re supposed to keep wiping the sides down and drying the outer edges of the pan. Now I had condensation consternation.

Finally, they were very specific about the fat content in the cream you used. I couldn’t find anything in the store close to what they stipulated (35% cream) so my mousse has a much higher fat content. (At least I think it does.) Winging this requires some knowledge of gram/calorie computations, but I was uncertain as to whether it was just the saturated fat content that one uses to calculate fat or all of the fat.

Mousses. I swear. And mousses that use hard to find native ingredients from the northern-most latitudes.. well.. I was very dubious about my abilities to carry this off.

In the end, it came out okay! My biggest disappointment was not the dessert, per se–I thought the flavors and textures were good. It was the vessel. It’d have been far more attractive and easier to both assemble and eat had the dish been smaller and shallower. You’ll see below.

Here’re some pictures, starting from the beginning:

I decided to make the mousse part first, in case that failed, in which case I wouldn’t have bothered with the rest, and might have substituted some boreal ice cream (sure the coop has some)!

I was to finely chop some white chocolate (instead I smashed some chips into small bits with a meat tenderizer):

Added 2T of “35% cream” to keep it smooth (which, again…..):

I used this:

Which has this much fat:

Which, by my best used-to-be-a-math-major calculation is 60% fat:  4 grams of saturated fat X 9 calories per gram = 36 calories = 36/60 = 60% fat (based on a serving having 60 calories). If I calculate all the fat (6g), I get 90% fat… which sounds possible for heavy cream… but where in the world does one find cream with 35% fat? Even calculating Half & Half gives me a range of 51-77% fat.. so I’m probably doing something wrong, but I’m not sure what. So that bummed me out.

I followed their instructions, however: melted the chocolate with the cream, managed to keep the chocolate from seizing and ended up with this thick stuff, which oozed fat. It’s sort of like Silly Putty in texture, hardish, but malleable.

I whipped the cream…

…hopefully sufficiently stiff. Then first vigorously mixed a small amount into the melted, Silly Putty-ish chocolate, then gently, airily, folded in the rest. It seemed light, smooth and tasted pretty good. Wow!

Then put it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

While that cooled, I gathered the ingredients for the blueberry compote:

… heated the berries with syrup and lemon:

…stirred frequently for about ten minutes until most of the liquid was gone. It looks a little primordial, doesn’t it? Very thick, densely flavored and nicely reduced.

Then pulled it off the stove, added whatever sugar seemed necessary (barely a T of brown) and a bit of the Cassis:

The compote joined the mousse in the refrigerator to cool and set. I took them to the dinner and assembled the individual parfaits there, and made a simple topping of blueberries and drizzled Cassis:

Here’s a blurry shot of my goofy presentation… too much vessel for too little parfait…

Oh well. It did taste good and is worth trying again.

And as long as I’m showing pictures of food, here are a few more of the courses that preceded dessert…

Susan made these great smoked salmon toasts with dill-spiked cream cheese and cucumbers as an appetizer:

Carol made the best Borsht I’ve ever had and it was absolutely gorgeously presented. It was very fresh with pieces of cucumber for added crunch. The sour cream both in the broth and as a condiment made it rich and creamy:

Susan also contributed a noodle and cabbage dish that was excellent:

Madeline made braised short ribs (fantastic) with a delicious crust (forgot what all went into that; I don’t yet have the recipes) and served them with morels and carrots (wow). The gravy was insane. Tracy made baked, mashed Yukon Gold potatoes with saffron which had an amazingly light and crusty texture and went perfectly with the ribs and gravy.

Rissa was the wine gal and brought a Riesling and a Zin that were both great.

New this time was a palate cleanser course… daikon radishes, endive, kohlrabi sticks, cranberries, toasted walnuts, served with a highbush cranberry vinaigrette. It was wonderful.

As background, Madeline ran a slide show of her recent Alaska trip, so it was like being in the Northern territories. Clever way to carry through the theme! And informative.

We even got to take home some of the highbush cranberry vinegar used in the above vinaigrette. SCORE!

All in all, great, fun, very tasty and educational evening.

Or as another friend called it, “Nitwit Day.”

Picnic Day’s always a mix. Some great events, a lot of tradition, a lot of good hometown energy… and some horrifying behavior on display, mostly the result of warm weather, beer pong games that are in full swing by 9:00am and too many young people short on good sense. It’s gotten so bad (and dangerous) that the University seriously considered terminating the tradition a couple years ago. Big deal, considering this year is the 101st annual…. that’s a lot of tradition to throw out the window. So they didn’t.

As I type this, midday, there’s been a steady stream of sirens, and as I look out my window, I’ve seen a lot of patrolling cop cars. There will be a lot of red cups to clean up and maybe some barf. If you’re Sabrina and Bill, you got barf and pee and very sick kids as the day wore on.

That aspect of Picnic Day drives a lot of community folks out of town. It really can get disgusting. We usually hang in… traditionalist that I am. Trying always to find the good stuff. At least it’s fun to watch people.

Anyway, some photos…

Here’s the shirt I’m wearing today.  Backstory below:

About twenty six years ago, I was in Thailand and bought this t-shirt at about midnight in an open air market. I was punchy and jet-lagged and thought it was funny. It reads:

YELLOW STADIUM CLUB

There are lots of interesting.  Thing to do in the town

That’s Why we just can’t Stay at Homed

Anyway we Must Go out of Doors all our Friend are on Parado

[sic]

Ever since, whenever I’m at a parade, I think, “all our friend are on parado.”  As you can see, I still have the shirt and decided to wear it today… actually the first time I’ve worn it to a parade.. after twenty six years. Ha.

On the way to the parade, we walked through Farmer’s Market.. looks like the Putah Creek Crawdads got the nod as the Picnic Day entertainment:

Then… some parado shots….

A Cal Aggie Marching Band-Uh member… nice day, huh? We’re sitting on a Second Street curb, between E & F.

This was pretty cute (the whole band’s on their backs on the ground):

One of these amphibious cars:

One of the Whimcycles:

I’m not a huge parade person, but it was fine.

Then… we went to Crepeville for lunch, got a table outside.. very, very nice:

Except for these guys…

… who were partying on a balcony unit directly above Crepeville, who, in their drunken stupor, toppled a full bottle/glass of something over the edge that came crashing down to the ground right next to an adjacent table… glass shattered and sprayed everywhere. The couple at the table next to us had two dogs that had to be cleaned of glass. The kids above remained oblivious or indifferent to the drama they’d caused.

Sigh.

Still, lunch was great on a lovely day. Afterward we headed over to campus for a brief walk along the outskirts of the festivities. Came upon this display and participated in the challenge…

You were to pull a photo, attached to a magnet, from a bucket, and place it in its appropriate spot on the map. I drew a photo of the Food Coop–had no trouble recognizing it, but had a little trouble finding its place on the map because the map was upside down and the detail small… but finally did.

The other folks here are Bob Dunning’s family… Bob’s standing right behind “the red haired girl of his dreams” and coaching her, probably. That was a fun little added bonus.

We headed home. Just past the corner of 5th and A, where the fraternity was having a rousing party, we came upon this partied-out young woman:

Another couple of students were passing her at the same time and thought to ask her how she was doing… she flashed a thumbs up so we all stepped over her and continued on our way. Not a pretty sight. I saw her about twenty minutes later making her way swervingly up A Street. Jim called it in.

The UCD baseball team is out of town and it sounded like they may have had the annual Picnic Day track meet last night, so no sporting events are calling me this year…

Dinner with P&J will cap the day.

Mellow.

Today (April 17) is a day I neglected to post anything (and you know how that bugs me), so today (the real today…ten days later), I’m declaring this road shot day; I’ll tell you why at the end. I’m just going to upload a bunch of some of my favorite road shots.

Here are a few on the way to, and into, Yosemite National Park:

Here are a few on the way to Dillon Beach:

I like traffic shots:

And then there are these that I can’t take my eyes off:

I love truck butt shots:

(apparently.)

And then, Kauai:

And Mississippi:

I have gazillions more. Really.

But the reason I was reminded of road shots was because I saw this one today that my friend Wes took.

Which just kind of redefines road shots for me. Stopped me in my tracks, it is so beautiful. And it’s just an I-80 shot, but see how amazing it is? Ordinary, but extraordinary. I love it.

So I shall continue to work on my road shots!

(I’d love to hear if you have a favorite among these — not counting Wes’s.)

This is Peter Paul. So named by June, my former neighbor (93) who now lives over at Atria. I was walking past June’s old house this morning, and there was Peter Paul. Coincidentally, I was talking to June on the phone as I was walking past her place (and snapping this photo!). I believe that Peter Paul knew this.

June claims that PP comes when called. She fed him a lot of peanuts over the years and suggested that I pick up a bag to have on hand now that she’s clear on the other side of town.

I think I might just do this.

One of the things I really love and admire about Peter is his curiosity. I’m not saying it to sound like we are somehow responsible for raising this really great, naturally inquisitive kid and deserve some kind of pat on the back. And it’s not like it’s unusual or unique, it’s just him.. and all the other curious kids out there. He came out that way; from the time he could talk, “How deep do you think this is,” “How far do you think I can throw this,” “How fast do the wheels go around?” Endlessly, endlessly.

But I am saying it’s a quality I love.

And he cracks me up.

He is Mr Experiment. Mr Try This and See What Happens. Mr Throw This Up in the Air, or Down to Floor, or Against the Wall. Mr Run This Under Water or Put it in The Freezer. Mr Toss This Thing onto a Moving Ceiling Fan Blade.

To wit, a new shipment of laser pointers arrived a couple days ago… a purple one, a green one and a yellow one. He’s fascinated by them and has been goofing around with them doing all kinds of experiments on walls, in the sky, on skin (I hope this isn’t hazardous to one’s health). Up next is something to do with laser beams and a bunch of boxes he has been setting aside.

It’s a good thing this isn’t the second and final semester of his all-important junior year and he doesn’t have any homework or any grades to bring up. (It is and he does.)

He sits at his computer in the kitchen a lot, but he’s not playing games. I can’t remember the last time I saw him playing anything. Do kids still? What he does do is research stuff. Mostly, lately, he reads up on physics. I think kids these days do spend a lot of time on YouTube, and he definitely does that. Often he’s watching videos about doing experiments or he’s watching lectures on this or that, or some kind of how-to.  He likes to know stuff.  I like that. I don’t remember being like that in high school. Um, ever really.

This whole experimenting thing is not a messless proposition. Besides maybe water everywhere, or furniture completely rearranged, there might be rubberbands everywhere, stretching from one thing to another, or balls of every size and density rolling hither and yon, or couch pillows strewn about. He often leaves destruction in his wake–this morning I found broken chopsticks, for example. He leaves lots of messes to clean up which mostly I do because he is just oblivious (and thus his other nickname, Mr O’Blivious–a nickname that is just between Jim and me).

My tolerance for all of this has gone way, way up, largely because I realize his days living under our roof are numbered. And you know what? It’s what he does. Suddenly, I can deal just fine with most of this. It’s the cost of having him with us. Messes and destruction are his calling card.

Well, anyway…  I write about all this because I had a picture from a couple of days ago and wanted to use it. It’s part of a series of things he was doing with a small, light foam ball–throwing it this way and that, dropping it from heights, catapulting it from makeshift launches.. and this: suspending it mid-air on a column of his very own hot breath. He explained to me what was going on vis a vis various physical properties and principles. But mostly I was just enjoying 1) the eager enthusiasm for his various inquiries and 2) that there was no mess to clean up.

I went to Costco today, which means I saw a lot of this:

Maybe I love it so much because I grew up in the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles–hours from the nearest crop. Nary a tractor did we see.

I just find it pleasing.

I get a kick out of visits from my family, when we can drive minutes in just about any direction and see crops. Better yet, get stuck behind a tractor, or get buzzed by a crop duster. I feel all proud of my new home (never mind that I’ve lived here, in the heart of farmland, for over thirty seven years, and lived in the greater LA basin for only eighteen).

Somebody or something took a big bite out of the Compassion Corner Earthbench.

Honestly.

I guess where there are young (I assume), angry, disenfranchised, bored, self-obsessed, destructive punks (everywhere, right?), there will be vandalism.

I never had any fantasy that the Earthbench would somehow be immune to common vandalism, I was just hoping that the vandal guys, whoever they might be, would maybe this time just leave the bench alone… maybe recognize the irony in committing violence upon a monument dedicated to kindness and compassion and open-heartedness.

Well, no.

A funny: A few weeks ago, very shortly after the City installed, at long last, a nice informational plaque describing the bench’s history and purpose (the text of which I wrote), somebody made off with it (the whole plaque–laminated flyer inserted into a grooved metal stand).

I’m like, wha…?!  What on earth would somebody want with that?

No sooner had I reported it to the City, it showed up again. As though it were never gone. Whoever stole it decided, I suppose, it wasn’t worth having (right?). Or, maybe they read the plaque and realized that stealing a modest and sweet little information sign about a feel-good community effort to build a monument to compassion and gift it to the City was kind of a lame, classless act. And mean spirited, too.

Well that vandalistic act resolved itself.

But this bite out of the bench? That’s going to take some work to fix.

Sundays are good days for kicking back and just luxuriating in the sweetness of a springtime walk downtown.

I’ll sneak a Saturday shot in here, too, because it’s also pretty sweet:

Don’t fall off your chair.

When I mentioned later to Peter how impressed I was that he’d mowed the lawn, he reminded me that he regularly mows the varsity baseball field.

Oh.

Still, somebody call Norman Rockwell.  Our boy just did a chore.

Got a call a week or so ago from a guy, Neal, who wanted to pick my brain about a slice of Davis history that is both unique and long since past. There aren’t that many people who could really talk about this. Turns out, I’m a person with quite a lot of institutional memory and turns out I had a lot more to say about it than I thought I might. So that’s what I did today… met with this guy… … and talked for hours about the ol’ Davis cable coop experiment. Turns out, Neal, who still lives in St. Paul, MN, was somebody who was instrumental in visualizing a community-based, democratic, locally-controlled model for cable service back in the “blue sky” days of cable roll outs (the late 70s and 80s). He was brought to Davis in about 1980 to address and inspire our City Council at the point at which they were (finally) considering various cable television options for our community. He must have been compelling because the City did, indeed, pursue a cooperative form of cable ownership, and thus Davis became the nation’s first urban cable coop.  Thanks to, of course, a powerfully effective local group headed by Mr. Cooperative–David Thompson–his wife Ann Evans, and numerous others. (Cable coops were a model seen in a few rural areas in the US and Canada, but never before considered in a larger, urban setting.)

Anyway, having been employee number two (of two initially), I knew a little bit about the whole experience–the launch, the challenges, the frustrations and, ultimately, the failure. And having outlasted every single employee we ever had (maybe three), and having been part of the effort to parlay the failed coop (our experiment lasted only three years) into a lasting community treasure (Davis Community Television), and having served as the founding executive director of DCTV for over twenty years, I had a few things to share.

In some ways, it turned into a very fun afternoon. When you look back on something with that kind of distance, its shape becomes quite a bit clearer. Fascinating, really. We talked far more about the significance of our anti-corporate, community-based objectives, and far less about the organization that grew out of the Davis Community Cable Cooperative. We talked about what those early efforts were about at their core–the St. Paul, Davis, Palo Alto experiments–and how things might have been different were those efforts to have been successful. Uphill battles all the way, though, trying to get a foothold in an industry dominated by profit motives (I know, what industry isn’t).

I guess what I’d really lost touch with, and with which I was glad to reconnect, was how laudable the objectives were and how proud we should feel for the effort. Neal is pulling together a website that will record some of this history so it’s not lost altogether.

After St. Paul’s effort failed to materialize, Neal went on to rabble in other ways in the ever-progressive Twin Cities and married a very liberal, long-time State Senator. I knew we’d have a lot in common when I saw his Democracy Now baseball cap and learned that he was on his way to meetings in SF with an organization that, among other things, funds Free Speech TV. I mean, really.

And again, fun…. because I hadn’t thought of any of this for a long, long time.

Here’s me having fun.. 🙂

Then Neal got on a train. And I walked home, deep in thought.

Baseball’s crazy fun, we know that. Turns out, it’s even crazier fun when you win. Tonight, we had our first official league win of the 2015 season.

We are now 1-2.

Once again, our pitchers carried the day, this time Kris P making his season debut, after nearly a year of injury (he did great) and Daniel H who relieved and just blew everybody away with a jaw-dropping performance. Yay those guys.

So…. pics… um… I have this one that I took from that really cool spot beneath the bleachers and behind home plate, behind a thick plexiglass window which makes you feel like you’re right in the middle of the action (this is at Sac City College, a very nice baseball facility):

And then Wes took this one of the post-game huddle… a baseball ritual in its own right..

i do love, and am grateful for, Wes’ pictures.