Get in my belly

Did you know that Chris Ware looks just like a character out of his books? Not only that, but he acts like one too. I saw him with Art Spiegelman at a talk at the JCCSF, which has a fabulous lecture series. Definitely see Art Spiegelman sometime — he is hilarious.

Just queued up at on the SFPL request list: Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes (both Ware and Spiegelman are huge fans of him), Black Hole by Charles Burns, and Blankets by Craig Thompson. Also Battlestar Galactica Season 2 Disc 2. Have I told you how much I love the library?

You might end up in a video about mangosteens (4:17 if you can’t sit through the whole thing). I think this was the day Mike convinced me to buy a pork shank.

Dear Taco Truck,

Better and more knowledgeable writers have penned their own love letters to you, the petition to save LA’s taco trucks is more than encouraging (come on, you too!), and I’m only just really getting to know you. But I needed to write to say this:

You had me at cabeza.

For someone whose childhood imprinting of Mexican was the Taco Bell Nachos Supreme, this is revelatory. So juicy. So flavorful. So… multiple. So I’ll be back. You, taco truck, are the town troubadour of tastiness. Your ambulatory existence draws crowds wherever you go and inspires legions. You have replaced the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile in my fantasies of meals on wheels.

Same place same time? See you there.

yours,

joyce.

Aida taught us how to make empanadas asturianas today. I have no idea how she pleats those things so perfectly with just her index finger. And no, it’s not easy as it looks.

Inside, she’s got browned ground beef with onions, olives, raisins, and a few other things I can’t recall right now. And yeah, they taste as good as they look.

I pickled ramps yesterday morning. To be opened and enjoyed in January 2009, or whenever winter desperation sets in.

Dear Pope,

Why would you come all the way to New York City and eat Italian food?

I guess it must be a catholic thing.

Next time you’re in town, I recommend hitting up Momofuku. You might not be able to get into Ko, but Ssam Bar on a Monday or Tuesday night isn’t bad.

Sincerely,
Winnie

PS. Nice ride you got there.

Sunday morning (okay, okay: afternoon), WKCR’s bluegrass followed by country, and breakfast sandwiches of pan-fried Benton’s country ham steak, eggs (fried in ham drippings, naturally), and Bittman’s yogurt biscuits. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Having the C/Karls around has done wonders for my cooking. I do more of it. And it’s more inspired. And I think nothing of having an impromptu Wednesday-(or Monday, or any) night dinner party these days.

It’s also done wonders for my eating: Carl makes no-knead bread twice a week. And his granola is not only orders of magnitude tastier and costs a quarter the price of the store-bought kind, it also makes the apartment smell like a coconut paradise (personal horn-tooting: I try to contribute to the ambient coconut fragrance by making toasted coconut ice cream every other week). Karl has made it his mission to conquer cookies of all kinds, starting with the molasses cookie:

Three trials later, the Cook’s Illustrated orange zest-sugar topped specimen has emerged the winner. (Alice Waters’s version was a total baking soda-saturated disappointment.)

And cooking with Carl has pleasantly surprised me in many little ways; I’ve learned a lot from him. Mostly about being openminded about solving problems. (I’ve forgotten how to be an engineer.) For example: I’m pretty religious about getting good salted, high-butterfat-content butter for my bread (unsalted for cooking and baking), and what with all the bread in the house these days, we go through butter like you wouldn’t believe. And of course, one day we were out of all the salted kind, and Carl just picked up the Maldon and shook it all over the butter — which, of course, worked like a charm. Totally obvious, perhaps, but though I know all about compound butters, I, for whatever reason, felt constrained to only letting the buttermaker put the salt in my butter. And I’m pretty sure a lot of other food people are the same (corroborate or refute, please?). Also, though Carl maintains that he’s a pretty strict recipe guy, he’s come up with some pretty brilliant things recently. Tonight, for instance:

Chickpeas with sautéed sliced garlic, cilantro, black olives, anchovy paste, lemon juice, and mustard seeds. So, so tasty.

Living with the C/Karls means there is no going hungry. Not that I ever had that problem.

who gets the heebie-jeebies from fractals in cruciferous form. Everything’s better as a cookie, right? And I thought I had too much time on my hands. [via CHOW]

I was about to write the following sentence: If you get the chance, catch the Eels on their current tour. But then I checked their tour dates and it turns out they’ve already hit the east coast. Joyce, you can still go see it this week.

They played at the Palace of the Fine Arts Theatre, which I’ve never been to before. I knew vaguely where it was, but I didn’t realize it was the same building as the Exploratorium. The ticket people let us take our burritos into the lobby and we bought cold beer and life was good. The venue itself is pretty drab but full of cushy seats, and as soon as I sat down, I said, “This would be a great spot to watch a movie.”

And then the lights went down and the movie started. Really. (My friend leaned over and whispered, “Next time you should wish winning the lottery.”) The opener was a movie about E’s father who, as a graduate student, invented/discovered (the different between these two concepts is not clear to me when it comes to theoretical physics or math) the concept of parallel universes. Seriously. I looked it up on Wikipedia so it must be real. The film, Parallel Lives, Parallel Universes, was made for the BBC, and it’s worth seeing if you get the chance. The show was great too, a sweet-and-sad rock show with a dose of melodramatic rock opera. We were sitting in the center, six rows back, and it felt incredibly intimate even though 1,000 people were sitting behind us. Storytime with a crazy guy, his friend, and a circle of musical instruments.