Magic Spot Flowing

According to Michael Pollan, rocket is also the “proper American name” for arugula:

It is true you might want to plant iceberg lettuce rather than arugula, at least to start. (Or simply call arugula by its proper American name, as generations of Midwesterners have done: “rocket.”)

Arugula is the Italian name for it, so I’m not exactly sure what people have against it. Zucchini and broccoli (hardly pretentious vegetables) also have Italian names. Lots of American favorite foods are Italian in origin — pizza and pasta, anyone? Well, unlike zucchini and broccoli (and pizza and pasta), it is often expensive, and since it is expensive and sounds foreign, its existence must clearly be at the insistence of liberal yuppiehood. (It probably helps that Italian is now also associated with Starbucks and other gourmet coffee brands, as I presume it wasn’t when zucchini, broccoli, pizza, and pasta became part of American culture.)

Dan commented on the LJ feed of my blog on the same thing Pollan is talking about:
You know how arugula is the new metonymy for all things liberal yuppie? I doubt that’d be the case if we called it “rocket”.

My response was:
Maybe I’ll start calling it rocket. (But then I think people will mocket (ha) by calling it ‘roquette’.)

As it turns out, it actually is called roquette too.

I enjoyed the article a lot — I love the thought that some of the White House’s South Lawn could be turned into a Victory Garden of sorts. I don’t agree with everything that Pollan suggests, but it’s a great batch of ideas to assess. And it has this amusing tie-in to my last entry. Win!

After my first year of employment (I think first full year, but it doesn’t really matter to this story) I had saved more money than I expected. I was telling my mom this and that I really wasn’t sure how I’d done it, since I didn’t keep a good budget (I still don’t; it is something I really need to work on).

Later on we were talking about the farmer’s market and how sometimes the stuff there is really cheap and awesome (like beets and carrots and basil for $1 per relevant unit), and sometimes it’s expensive but worth it, but sometimes it’s just expensive. So then I don’t buy it, most of the time. Arugula [rocket, for you UK people], for example, is very expensive at the farmer’s market, and cheaper at Trader Joe’s — but I don’t actually buy it in either case, because it’s expensive at both places. So I joked that I saved all my money by not buying arugula.

But I do buy arugula sometimes, and whenever I do I remember why it’s sometimes worth it. It’s sour and peppery, and it’s so easy to make it into a tasty salad. This time I stuck an avocado I’ve had for a while, raspberries, walnuts, and red pepper into the bowl, and drizzled olive oil and balsamic vinegar over it. And it’s a slightly funny-sounding combination, but it just tastes GOOD, and has all these fun texture contrasts. The same salad with a not-arugula green wouldn’t be nearly as tasty.

And that’s why arugula is sometimes better than saving money.

I love strawberries. The best ones are fragrant and sweet with a hint of tartness. I want to describe them as a “flavor burst in the mouth” but that sounds unfortunatey like a commercial. I buy them almost every week in the summer when they’re available. I freeze them to keep for over the winter when they aren’t available at the farmer’s market. But I also find strawberries incredibly frustrating. Their attractive red appearance can conceal many flaws — an unripe white center, or a soft spot that feels mushy and will soon mold. Even worse, equally ripe-looking and beautiful strawberries can taste completely different. One will be sweet and glorious, the next watery and flavorless with a tinge of sour. And they go bad so quickly. I have to refrigerate them, even though conventional wisdom is that fruit flavor is destroyed by refrigeration.

After thinking about this, I realized that these problems are common to most soft fruits, although they’re probably pronounced with strawberries and other berries because of their lack of a firm skin. But certainly stone fruit (cherries, peaches, plums) is just as much of a crapshoot from one fruit to the next, and it reaches the peak of ripeness quickly and just as quickly goes mushy and over-sweet. Avocadoes and tomatoes also vary some (bad spots and poor flavor), and with avocados you can’t even see inside at all. Even apples, which aren’t even soft fruit, vary a bit from fruit to fruit, though less so. Bananas are about the only 100% consistent fruits. No wonder they’re so popular.

I wish we had the kind of markets that they have in France where you tell the seller when you want to eat the fruit and they’ll pick out ones that’ll be just perfect that day. But I don’t think even they will sell you individual strawberries!

June is apparently National Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Month. It’s also National Candy Month. Mixed messages, anyone?

And…National Crab-Stuffed Flounder Day? Are you kidding me?

When Barbara posted her recipe for Imam bayildi, as an eggplant lover, I knew I had to make it.

It is as good as she says it is. It is by no means low-calorie, but it is vegan and the main bulk of it uses seasonally-available eggplant and tomatoes. It is also kind of time-consuming to make, requiring long cooking and then chilling. Definitely a special-occasion or once-every-so-often dish, but totally, totally worth it. The sauce is like red velvet, and the combination of the eggplant with the sweet caramelized onions and tangy sauce is nicely complementary. The pine nuts provide a pleasant crunch. Highly recommended!

This morning I went up to Berkeley to ride with my friends/team members up there, J & C (you guys let me know if you want full names or initials on the blog). We had planned to do a 38-mile route up Grizzly Peak that I found on Bikely (Downtown Berkeley - Grizzly Peak - Skyline - Pinehurst). The full route has 5000ish feet of climbing, so I figured if we could do that, we could do W2W (which it turns out likely has closer to 5500 and 3200 ft of climbing rather than the 8000/5000 listed on the topo map due to topo overestimation). So it would be a useful test, and an interesting challenge.

But in the end, we took a wrong turn on Skyline (possibly due to the cue sheet being left, with my book, back at their apartment) and did a 24-mile ride up Grizzly Peak and Skyline and down Tunnel, then out to the Marina for a quick lunch/snack (1700 ft climbing, instead of the 5000ish given for the full route) and back to their apartment.

The 1700 ft of climbing was mostly in the first 6 miles, with the next four being variably up and down, then down for the last part. Spruce was somewhat brutal and I was dripping sweat and had stopped to rest twice (briefly, just so my heart wouldn’t beat out of my chest) by the time we got to Grizzly Peak Blvd. But the rest of the climbing was relatively gentle, though I stopped to rest once more later on. The lower gears on my touring bike helped, though toting a rack pack probably didn’t. Descending was a challenge, but my brakes stood up to it, and I felt that on the long downhill I was practicing good technique in when I decelerated and when I coasted, so that was very useful.

We all remarked afterward that we didn’t feel too terrible and thought both that we could have gone on (though none of us wanted to climb back up in order to do so…so…who knows!) and that despite being cut short, it was a good prep ride because so much climbing is compacted into so little mileage. It turned out well in many ways, giving me time to meet someone for coffee afterward and J time to get to the airport. I also saw Berkeley Bowl for the first time (finally, you are all saying). What a great place, wow! I wish I lived near there. It’s like every grocery store I’ve ever been to, plus a farmer’s market, rolled into one, all on steroids. We saw Mt. Tam cheese there, which I’ve been led to believe is amazing. C and I joked about how expensive it was and said that it would be a treat for after Waves to Wine, rather than for today.

The picnic table we found at the Marina was just sheltered enough to be pleasant without being hot. To get there, we inadvertently missed the turn onto Addison down to the bike/ped bridge, and illegally crossed on University instead. People were surprisingly patient given the total silliness of our presence on that overpass. It must happen reasonably often since the sign that warns you away is small and placed just after you get on. (City of Berkeley, please note.) On the way back we enjoyed the peace on the bike/ped bridge.

I noticed that most drivers up on the hill, in contrast, were not at all patient and would pass too close and at awkward times. Another cyclist we saw reported he had a guy come up behind him rapidly and skim by so close he touched him (and on the downhill too). Augh! I wonder why the distinction in behavior.

My total mileage for today was around 28 miles (counting all the incidental mileage I did), so I’m just going to re-divide the weekend mileage and do around 50 tomorrow so it should equal out, more or less. Despite the intensity of the climbing, I am feeling restless and eager to do more tomorrow. I think I have reached the point of needing a certain amount of intense physical exercise to feel good — which at this point in training I think is a very good place to be!

I’ve had kind of a crazy week — maybe kind of a crazy month, really — and two things this week were particularly fantastic:

Dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes from Ella Bella Farm

These tomatoes are expensive compared to most of the heirlooms and organic tomatoes at the Menlo Park Farmer’s Market — they cost I think $3 or $3.50 a pound. But they are SO WORTH IT. OMG. They are fantastic and amazing and so flavorful and with great structure and they are great alone or in tomato-basil-mozzarella sandwiches and they pep up anything they are in, making a salad into a fun hunt-the-tomatoes experience.

XKCD Store’s customer service

A while back I ordered the Regular Expressions shirt from the XKCD store and I got it when I got back from Portland, but I hadn’t worn it until this week (everyone at work loves it, incidentally). When I did I found a small hole in the shirt. I wrote to the XKCD store person saying, hey, I found this hole, I don’t think I made it but I can’t be sure, and they said, basically, “No worries! We’ll send you a new shirt right away! Feel free to keep the old one!” How awesome is that? Love.

Wall-E should probably make this list too, because it is really sweet and funny and I liked it a lot, but foodie geek that I am, the other two things actually make me happier. Tomatoes and XKCD FTW.

I haven’t been doing a lot of cooking lately, for various reasons, but one of the reasons is that in the summer when the farmer’s market is overflowing, looking at cookbooks rarely yields recipes that make maximum advantage of the ingredients I have, and I haven’t been feeling independently inspired or desirous of going shopping for random things I don’t have.

Today, though, I was looking at the eggplant in my fridge and thinking “I remember that Spanish cooking blog where they rolled up eggplant into little tubes of something. Maybe that would be good, but I want to make something more substantial…”

Anyway, I ended up consulting Veganomicon to see if they had anything like that. They did, but it is much too complicated for a weeknight. But that woke up my imagination and I started thinking about how to using a couple things in my fridge to make something similar, but easier: baked thin slices of eggplant with tomato sauce and tofu ricotta. Which handily gets rid of the extra canned tomatoes and the tofu that badly needed to be used.

I don’t know how it’ll turn out yet because it’s still in the oven, but it was nice to be reminded that cookbooks are useful for inspiration, even if you end up making something quite different to take maximum advantage of what you have.

My lunch today was similar, just something I threw together after looking at the fridge: arugula, tomato, and cucumber salad with cilantro. Grapes for dessert. And a Dapple Dandy pluot for snack while I wait for the eggplant. Yum. Some things don’t need any help being good.

What I actually did in Toronto:

The ROM. You can see one of the most interesting things about it from the website — the building was recently renovated and a “Crystal” added on to the front. It wasn’t as crystalline as I expected from the name, but it’s an interesting addition. The interface between the new and old buildings was what fascinated me the most. Inside, the shape of the galleries in the Crystal is conducive to exploring and more open than the traditional materials.

I was really impressed with the ROM in general. The presentation of the materials was very thoughtful, like the exhibit about the changing styles from the Middle Ages to the present. I know about the eras (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, etc.) but their presentation of them illustrated the transitions and transformations very well.

I spent most of my first day in the museum, taking a break to eat lunch at Fresh on Bloor (admission for the museum allows multiple entrance and exit). The lunch was excellent and huge. I had a chickpea wrap and their signature sweet potato fries with miso gravy. The gravy was a bit intense, but everything else was great, and I saved half and ate it for dinner because there was so much. This was my favorite place I ate while I was in Toronto.

The link says “nontraditional vegetarian food”, but I actually saw it as kind of “traditional modern” in that it was a lot like what I would get in good vegetarian restaurants around here. But maybe that’s non-traditional for Canada!

That night I went to a Fringe comedy show called “Between Commutes”, which was a sketch show about the hassles of commuting. I was expecting a bit more of it to be about public transit, but some of the sketches were very funny, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

The next day, after picking up the loaner bike and having coffee with the owner, who is wonderfully nice and generous, most of my day was taken up by a visit to Toronto Island. The island is car-free, so I took the bike on the ferry (the ferry was quite crowded with bikes) and rode around, looked at the lake, and relaxed in the park. It was nice to be away from cars, and everything seemed to run at a slower pace as everybody relaxed in the afternoon sun. I took a walk on a beach, and stopped briefly to swing on a swingset. I’m not sure I was supposed to be on the swingset, but no one stopped me, and I enjoyed the feeling of flying that I recalled from childhood.

On the way back, I ate at Urban Herbivore in the Kensington Market area. I had a sesame tempeh sandwich and a fresh juice (red juice — beets, apples, carrots, lemons, and ginger — which tasted wonderfully gingery but with good body from the vegetables). I wasn’t originally going to have any juice because it was expensive, but the server spontaneously refunded me my sandwich cost because he was slow to get it to me. It didn’t seem slow to me — I was writing in my journal and had only just started wondering when my sandwich might arrive when it did — but I appreciated their effort to hold themselves to a high standard, and felt that buying a juice when I wouldn’t have otherwise was a good way to return the kindness. The sandwich wasn’t the best, with the tempeh overly dry and salty, but the bread was excellent and the sandwich well-made overall, so I enjoyed myself. It was an interesting neighborhood to watch while I ate — it reminded me a little bit of the Mission.

Sunday I had a notion to go to a farmer’s market, so I decided to visit the Distillery District (history), but I got a slow start and the market was mostly gone when I got there. But I did see the old buildings and art galleries and studios full of quite fascinating art. My favorites were two artists working in encaustic, Joya Paul and Tanya Kirouac (Tanya’s site at tanyakirouac.com seems to be down). Both had some lovely flower/nature paintings. I also liked Thompson Landry gallery and Nathalie Maranda’s paintings in that gallery.

That evening, I had a drink with the fun and inimitable Emily, whom I had missed while in Toronto five years ago. It was fun, and we talked animatedly about food, our jobs, and travel.

My last day, besides Urbane Cyclist, I went to Bakka Phoenix Books and LinuxCaffe. Both are Toronto landmarks, with Bakka Phoenix being the incubator of several Canadian SF talents including Cory Doctorow. LinuxCaffe, in their own words, “is a cozy corner caffe offering dark organic coffees, simply delicious food and pleasant surprises. It is also the home of Toronto’s Open Source software communities, hosting user group meetings, workshops and distributing free software.” It’s basically a friendly cafe with an open culture, lots of geeks, and a bunch of old software books. Very nice place, though it was quiet on Tuesday lunchtime in the summer.

That was my last stop before returning the bike and a brief visit to Union Station; then it was back to Pearson in time for a spectacular cloudburst, a delayed plane, and a fantastic sunset on takeoff.

I’ve been to or known of a lot of weddings of people I know this year, including two in June (both lovely, and very different). Thus I was charmed to find my interest in transit combined with this recent swell in weddings in Annie’s post about a couple traveling to their own wedding on the Tube.
Favorite line: “We didn’t feel that we needed a stretch limo to get to their register office when we have got an Oyster card and the Tube.”

What a great idea! Weddings are often resource-intensive, so I love their concept of trying to make lighter mark. Three weeks ago Barbara also wrote about doing a “local food” catering for a wedding (vegetarian, too), for another person who is committed to “green” living. The food, of course, sounded absolutely lovely, but that goes without saying since it is Barbara.

Post about my trip to Toronto coming soon, I promise.