sábado, septiembre 30, 2006

My, but it's nipply out...

The cold settles into my bones. Toes curl under in desperate attempts to warm themselves, futile, yet practically involuntary.
Ok, so perhaps I should have looked at the weather report before getting in my car to drive the 100 miles to LAX, and brave the national airspace to land in our country's capital.

Fall on the east coast. I had forgotten. Happily, now, post-conference presentation, Jenny and I returned to her Logan's circle nest, to curl up in bed with her five cats, including the newly penis-less Ollie. We had all the intention of changing into non-work clothes and braving the streets, but were sucked into the vortex of her memory-foam covered bed instead.

I love visiting with her because I am constantly reminded of episodes completely erased from the hard-drive of my life (not to mention that she too shares my propensity for leaving bathroom doors open wide and wandering around the house semi-nude). Just a sampling of such past delights: I am told, and perhaps vaguely recall, that once upon a time, me being buxom and she small-breasted, acquiesced to letting her hold my breasts in her hands just so she could get an idea of what it would be like to be different. additionally I am the only person of whom she has partaken of their breast milk (now this I distinctly do remember, as we had a running joke about me being a walking draught milk-bar). We all do what we can to accomodate our friends' curiosities, right?

What will they think of next? She reminded me that we made a public pact to streak across the Washington monument, but I shudder to think of what it will do to me in this nippy weather. Perhaps postpone for a springtime visit? On the agenda still, a jazz concert at the Kennedy center, Ethiopian food and cheezy bars... And a drag brunch at Perry's before flying back to my paradisiac coast. Lucky for us, she'll be out there next week. Adventures to be continued...

viernes, septiembre 22, 2006

Braving Barcelona

Once upon a time there was a little girl who hated to wear clothing, feeling it was one of life's great injustices that little boys should be allowed to play football shirtless and little girls, who by all observable standards were completely equal from the waist up, should be made to scorch in insufferable heat.

There was a World Cup, 1982.

There was an older brother, who urged her to escape, though their only words in the language were: "dos coca-colas por favor".

There was a father who made the mistake of playing hide and seek among the pillars of the Parque Güell...

And then there was history.

C'est moi

Sometimes things look so different from our memories that we are unable to draw a direct line from what they were in our mind's eye, to what they are. Gaudí, it seems, suffers no such transformation. This little girl hid behind the very same rock, trying to escape from the ghosts of past errors. She found that perhaps there are some things that we simply cannot escape.

Barcelona will always have a mystery, I think, a pain of liberty that palpitates beneath our skin. There are some pictures, that might express this better than words.

miércoles, septiembre 20, 2006

Cantering across Cantabria

And valtzing about País Vasco.

Two more sets of photos for perusal.

Cantabria and Asturias

Fire Walk with Me


País Vasco


Detail

lunes, septiembre 18, 2006

Solamente muero los domingos...

The raw crackling voice carries over the hushed millions. Breathing is suspended.

My eyes are closed, my eyes are shut tight, shutting out the universe, the nothing, the death and dying. The prison walls surround us, the guitar drowns out the screams of the missing, faces on a wall, a little death, I hold my breath, a blue Sunday, where there are no more stays of execution. Swallow. Dangling, circling, out of body above the bright blue ocean, above the crashing waves and the famished sharks.

The lights explode through the thin membrane of flesh that cradles my eyeballs, and the roar and rush fade almost as quickly, angling in from above, up here where we perch, up here where there is no tomorrow and no yesterday, only a now that means less than nothing, a now with no anchoring, a now that compromises its very own existence.

Gulp. Swallow. Opening eyes up into blinding light, the incessant rays of the early morning sun that rival the blaze of the rage in the forest, flaring in the dark, spitting ashes into the night that trails behind. Standing up, with wobbling knees, trembling hands, aching lungs, aching heart, to see into that pit, the darkened abysmal cavity of all that once stood erect.

jueves, septiembre 14, 2006

Girls in Galicia

giggle giggle

So, as my travelogue had no accompanying pix, I am now culling through the thousands (yes, thousands) of photos to provide a visual interlude of maximum pleasure, and representative images from prior journeys. I have decided to go region by region, mostly for my own semi-neurotic purposes, but also, so that comparisons can be made more easily. Forgive the lack of written text, as I have been more than errant in my writing ways, but let us just say that while I am mostly well, and good, for the sake of all involved in my life, I refrain from publishing actual thoughts. It has been nearly two weeks since K. and my most recent adventures in Ukiah, and food, as per norm was fabulous, company, spectacular, and scenery, stunning. There will, some day perhaps, be images to peruse, beauteous banquet that we prepared, but I am, to say the least, behind the times.

Here is a show of the most recent set on Galicia:


Or, if you prefer, just the facts, m'aam

domingo, septiembre 10, 2006

Paris in Photos

I am slowly working on compiling a pleasantly palatable number of photos of my summer travels. This is the first set, most manageable because, of course, the least amount of time was spent here. See the set here, or the slideshow, below.

Lit

Referring to my tour of París a pie.

viernes, septiembre 01, 2006

Salsa

I'm not particularly partial to parsley, let's just get that straight. It brings up ambivalent childhood memories of eternal passover seders in which wine was not so much flowing as, well, being dipped in an endless litany of plagues. It was meant to represent bitterness, the tragedy of one group of humans enslaving another (never a pretty endeavor, nor a righteous one, but today I won't go there). Nevertheless, I was tempted by Chefin' Stefan's (of recent Barcelonan adventures) suggestion of a divine beet salad with nothing but julienned boiled beets, chopped walnut, and parsley. Oh, and we can't forget the key ingredient which actually drives the deal home. Truffle oil.

Brilliant, simple. Obscenely expensive?

I wondered, given the price of truffles (which I must shyly admit I had never experienced prior to a foray into Fresh Fields in D.C. years ago with Kirsten, the kitchen goddess and all around fab friend). One of the last things acquired on my pampered-daughter spree was a bottle of the golden(ish) elixir. Ok, that isn't precisely true. At the gourmet shop in the mall of New Hampshire, where I also obtained another hefty dose of silicon (no, not for that, although... oh... get your minds out of the gutters) I sought, and found both black and white truffle oil, and not knowing the difference, or purported benefits of either, chose the bottle whose expiration date was the farthest from present. I know, embarassingly pragmatic at times, and embarrasingly not so at others...

There was also a choice of whether the base oil would be olive or grapeseed. Needless to say, I chose the grapeseed as its flavor, in my semi-informed opinion, was less likely to interfere with the infused truffleness. And though a small, and important piece of my luggage was likely pilfered by the TSA, none of the myriad bottles of Porto, sea salt and body oils and creams, nor the truffle oil spilled. Ok, one container did leak, just a little, but the heather grey shirt that it darkened may yet be salvaged. But, I digress.

Oil obtained, it took me one whole day to find myself at the local organic farmstand buying produce to my heart's content. I must also confess that I will always go for the tomato seconds when planning on sauces or soups (in this case destined for a test run gazpacho) because the exact consistency becomes far less important than the ripe sunshiny sugar that will burst forth when liquified. It has been so long since I got to refill an entirely empty fridge, and my hands where aching from lack of kitchen over the past months. In that respect, it was so good to be home. Ha ha! I discover, there are fresh beets, looking round and delicious, in their mildly dusty cover.

If course it took me several days and a few other meals under my belt before I felt truly ready to make this experiment. Stefan made me promise (and I swear that I complied) to make this salad exactly per his instructions before meddling with it, as I wanted, by adding a bit of crumbled goat cheese. Wow. The beets were boiled the night before, while I pressure cooked a pot of black beans for future consumption, and laundered, in desperate (and succesful) attempt to not charge my sublettors for the very expensive mattress cover that they washed but that did not dry properly and smelled of a sickly sweet tangy sort of invisible mold. (Once again, I am reminded of the miraculous effects of chlorine bleach). They were the sweetest sugary beets I have had in years, rivalling, of course, the fateful beets that I finally tried in Argentina after months of starving myself (few of you will understand this reference, but make no mistake I would still never try the nutria). In order to not let them dry out, and mostly, let's be honest, to experiment with my new ingredient, I drizzled a bit of the truffle oil over them and a dash of salt to boot. Sheer delight, as I snuck, staining fingers with a criminal red, a few slivers of beet. (What is that called again, when you break up and make odd the structure of a sentence for the poetics of its rearrangement? Hyperbatón?)

The following day, off to TJ's again to obtain the weekend Citronage (over the top Sangría has long been my specialty and I find that soaking the fruit the night before in an orange liqueur does just the trick), I remembered that I had yet to restock my freezer with appropriate allergens, that is, walnuts and such, and I found the only parsley packed in an (albeit recyclable) plastic box. Two curiosities: one linguistic and the other gastronomic. In Portuguese, parsley is not, as one might expect, some derivation of the Spanish word, perejil, but rather resembles it in no such way, and in fact acts as a confusing "falso amigo": salsa. What? Any self-respecting foodie of the world will know Salsa as its inescapable incarnation of mexican accompaniment to dishes with corn tortillas (and a host of others). Who are these lusophone renegades that are going to mix our sauces with parsley? Molho? Wetness? I suppose that is what a sauce ultimately is, which may bring new (or old) meaning to saucy, but, again, the point escapes me. Gastronomically speaking, and here is where I must take umbrage, I am not a fanatic of this little green herb, I will skip over it, or replace it 9 times out of 10, and in my crisper you will likely find, at any given moment, fresh basil, or cilantro, but never parsley. And so, I was skeptical, from the getgo as to whether this would really be a worthwhile undertaking, chopped, and chopped, like Dana Carvey chopping broccoli, and mixed it together with the chopped walnuts and beets, drizzled a bit more oil... et voilá.

Truly delicious dish, though I might add that processing the parsley a bit more (I am a texture kind of girl, and particularly picky about what textures touch my tongue) or better yet, choosing a flat over the curly, which resulted a bit too springy for my palate. All that said, I insist, that next time, I will find a nice firm chevrie and crumble it at the last minute just before serving, so the pink stained patterns will spread out in appetizing fans, before being consumed.