This is possibly my favourite pie, in part because you can only make it for a very short while when blueberries are in season. The trick is to only cook a third of the berries, so the remainder are still fresh, whole and bursting with flavour. Every year, I wait for Fatapples bakery in Berkeley to have them on the menu. I even once made halli walk a mile and a half there from work. (It's possible he was less excited about this than I was.)

My dad and I picked up some really good blueberries in Fitch Bay (where everyone who has a farm seems to be selling blueberries from a roadside stand right now), and I made this tonight, and now it might be my mother's favourite pie, too.

Is there anything better than making one of your favourite things for someone you love and having them love it too? No. There is not.( Fresh blueberry pie recipe )

I am not such a big fan of the Olympics, but I am a big fan of women's weightlifting. Look at Cao Lei, how beautiful and strong she is.



And how about Carol Huynh and Icho Chiharu?

I got some roasted almond oil awhile back. Apparently, it is high in one of the "good" Omega acids, or at least, that is my current excuse. Mostly I love almonds, and how could an oil made from roasted almonds be anything but good?

I finally got around to using it tonight. Do you remember the boston-lettuce-and-toasted-almond salad with citrus that was popular in Canada in the early nineties? No? Well, this started off there, and then went all California on me. ( foodie rambling follows )

...I am planning to take an unexpected BART+bus combination later today to get to IKEA. I am getting a little tired of making trips to IKEA, but the thought of the unusual (for me) bus connection has me all excited.

Seriously. Every few minutes, I think about it, and I get happy with anticipation.



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If you really want to know, I'm excited because I found out that the Emery-Go-Round free shuttlebus runs a late schedule on weekdays. So I can get there after my late Tuesday meeting. And I have a good book to read on the way.

(Okay. So that probably didn't seem all that thrilling to *you* but trust me, I am quite excited about it.)

I found someone who wants to put my old 1970s/1980s tv to good use.

If you are looking for a retro tv set to complete your period living room, this is the TV for you, I wrote.

He called. O, he said, is it the one with the fake wood grain?

It is, I said.

O, he said, terrific. He's stopping by to pick it up tonight.

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Star Wars looks totally authentic on it, too.

In the park, if you are careful, there is a spot where you can feel the trains running along beneath you.
Every few minutes they go, to and from North Berkeley station, rumbling along curved silver rails in the dark.

It's very exciting.

I has subwoofer. :) :) :) ACI Titan II.

halli? Come back for a visit soon and bring your Mahler!

the speakers are here now. so far, we have tested them on mahler's 5th, britney spears, manitoba, coldplay, and massive attack. i will let you guess which of those are mine.

i am reeeeeeeeally happy with them.

edited to add: also, the empire strikes back.

In Montreal last week, Nadine and I stopped in at the Musée des Beaux Arts. I liked Mark Tansey's Action Painting II a whole lot.

I used to go to the art student shows and openings when I was working on my Masters. "Ah!" they'd say, "an astronomer! Tell us what you see!" And I'd invariably disappoint. My views on art are not terribly informed.

But I did really like this one... I forgot his name and was going to make Nadine go back to look it up for me, but hurrah, the Internet knows all. Here's a pretty good (slightly illicit) photo of the piece with reasonably good colour. The whole work is monochrome, in a light green-blue that always reminds me of the 1950s and my grandmother Esther. It was one of her favourite colours. (I bet it has a name, it might even be "robin's egg").

Also, they have a really lovely Wilhelm Lehmbruck piece. I first saw two of his figurative works at the MOMA in New York this spring. They have all the strength and grace of later art deco, but also sadness. This one is either more weathered or less finished, but it is very lovely indeed.

The Incredible Hulk was one of two tv shows that gave me nightmares and made me hide from the screen behind my mother. Hiding from the Incredible Hulk is one of my earliest memories. "It's okay," my mother would say to me, "he's really a nice man, he just gets very upset and smashes things." One button starting to pop on that sweaty white shirt (was it really sweaty? perhaps. this was the 1970s) and I'd duck and cover.

I wasn't allowed to watch The Incredible Hulk much, to be honest. (It was on past my bedtime.)

Also: I love Ed Norton. I think he may have the most beautiful wrists of any actor in Hollywood, and the shape of his back and his hip when (artistically) naked (for reasons important to plot) aren't too shabby either. I love that he can act. And also, I really like how he looks in sweaty white button-down shirts.

When I saw he was going to be in this Hulk remake, I was soooo excited. And then disappointed. Because, how could it possibly be good?

Apparently it's good!

I'm so going to see this movie.

the arrival of the new stereo has made me industrious. this weekend, i gave away my old student loveseat and the ikea spindle bed frame that supported me through the graduate student years. farewell late student furniture! the loveseat is going to make some vietnamese family in fruitvale happy, and a cute guy in a truck picked up the bedframe for a buddy of his.

it's nice to know they're not just going to landfill, but i am equally glad to have them out of my living space.

later today, a trip to chez l and c to deliver the dvd i no longer need, and then urban ore with the old vcr (it ate south park. it must go.) and the vhs videos that went with it. i love that i can drop this stuff off somewhere it will (probably) get reused.

now the boy and i are reclining at home with the new sound system, which 1) now picks up radio and 2) turns off our ancient 1980s vintage tv by remote control. i am so excited about the ability to SHUT THE TV OFF BY REMOTE that i had to do a little happy dance right there in the living room. (not such a big fan of TV -- i see it mostly as a device to get the boy to lie still so i can snuggle.) the new speakers have not arrived yet, but the sound is already improving, even with our crappy old all-in-one 6 ohm speakers.

we watched Star Wars: A New Hope in sort-of Dolby sound. which is to say it would be Dolby if i had three more speakers and a subwoofer.

quoth i to the boy: darth vader needs me to get a subwoofer.
quoth the boy to me: i thought you were worried about scaring the neighbours?

me: did we, uh, remember to pay our rent this month?
it has sort of been a problem, the remembering.

boy: yes! totally! in fact, i am so organised, that it HAPPENS without me doing ANYTHING. i set it up through online banking. it sends a cheque.
me: it sends... a cheque?
boy: yes, with postage and everything! i always forget to run over to his house to drop it in the mailbox and now i don't have to.
me: wow! and here i just thought you were decorative. you are amazingly clever!
boy: yes, this new technology is great.
the boy *beams*

boy: uh, except... did i actually do it?
boy:well it sends me a memo. so i know it went.
boy: uh, i don't remember a memo.
boy: maybe i should just...
boy types ferociously at his computer. there is furrowing of brows.


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As it turns out, he totally MEANT to set it up. But got disctracted by how cool the feature was. Next month...

We went camping up near Willits, on private land. There was so much good. Good energy, new people, and new layers with K who invited me. I had a spectacular nap, in the sun, in a field, under a big live oak tree. I can tell the strength training is paying off because I can hold my cast iron pan full of bacon tipped over in one hand without shaking even a little. Left hand, right hand, makes no difference. And my little tent is cozy and warm and dry, even when it rains.

Cooking while camping is like improv, and we had extra people along, and no one went hungry and it all seemed like there was a plan even though there really wasn't.

Oh, okay, there was a plan. The plan was "moar bacon". But other than that there was no plan.

Delicious fun.

Late breaking plan... Henry is in town so we are getting dim sum brunch on Saturday.

Legendary Palace, Oakland @ 12:30.

Call me or comment if you're coming and I'll add you to the reservation count.

So I'm at lunch with my coworker A, who likes Monopoly.

I mean really likes Monopoly. He's explaining this and I have visions of him in a green visor cap, at a table usually reserved for poker, taking bets and moving the little metal shoe click click click past Park Place. He's explaining his strategy, which is complex, and involves being Very Secretive and casing the other players and coming up with elaborate strategies to hide his True Intent vis à vis specific Monopoly properties.

No one, he says wistfully, will ever play Monopoly with him more than twice, because they become suspicious and they won't make a deal and it's just not fun any more.

I'd play Monopoly with you, I say, but I only really have one strategy. I like to buy all the railroads.

That's not a very good strategy, says A.

It makes me happy, says I.

Do they know you'd be working on that transit project even if you had to pay them.

Thankfully, says I, they do not.

==

http://maps.google.com/bayarea

At some point, I realised it had become a list...

1. Make a really good latte.

We have real espresso machines in the office. When else will I have such good equipment at my disposal anytime I want it? The rule is: I have to drink the latte. So I'm highly motivated to improve. My current rate of success is "better-than-usual-Starbucks-not-as-good-as-Ritual-Coffee-Roasters".

I made an iced soymilk coffee for the co-worker I've been mentoring for the past while. Turns out she used to work in a coffee shop. Ha ha. (She drank the coffee and pronounced it pretty good.) I think this means I can get lessons in milk steaming. Did you know the angle matters? That's my new fact for the day.


2. Run on a treadmill.

I fear treadmills. I fear running. Part bad knees, part lack of coordination. Except I haven't had bad knees since I took up biking, and the strength training has been fixing the lack of coordination. So I have no excuse anymore except the fear of flying off the thing.

5 minutes today without holding on. I thought I might lose my mind at 3 minutes but I stayed on for 5.


3. Make fresh fruit preserves.

I miss the rhubarb-ginger preserves I used to eat in Denmark. I am going to make me some.


4. Real push-ups.

Because after all this strength training I ought to be able to show off. (Only I still do really tragic push-ups.)


5. Measure blood pressure with a real blood pressure cuff.

I actually already learned to do this, but I'm not terribly good at it yet and there's a lot of fumbling.


6. Regularly leave the office before 5:30pm.

I am not sure I ever knew how to do this, but now that I am in BART distance of work, I have no excuse.


7. Make orecchiette by hand.

(My mother said, when I stole her cookbook, "you're going to do what?")

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What are you learning lately? I'm curious!

At the Monterey Market this week, Bill Fujimoto recommends artichokes. I picked up four for 1$ and now there is artichoke and mushroom and chicken and brown rice casserole simmering away in the oven. I did what I usually did , which is start with an idea of what I wanted, and then read all my cookbooks (and the artichoke advisory board's website) and ended up just making it up anyhow. Yes, I cook just like my mother.

I love fussing with artichokes. They're like alien vegetables, and they're so much a regional thing here in California. I can't prep one without thinking of the fields of artichoke like so many triffids out between San Jose and Monterey. My hands smell of artichoke and olive oil, green and springy and fresh.

I do love my San Francisco commute. If I walk quickly, I can make it door-to-door in 40 minutes now. Today I left a bit early with Mano, and we took AC Transit and rode our bikes up Solano and back in the late afternoon.

Now the frogs are singing in the creek and I'm ready for some lounging on the couch with Michael Ondaatje's new book, Divisadero. I'm so excited it's finally out in paperback. I'm reading the chapters slowly as I can. I love this one so far; it's much more Billy the Kid than English Patient, with a dose of California frontier romanticism thrown in.