Chestnuts, or, Dude, you are so Asian

  

  
I found a chestnut tree! The kind that makes nuts you can eat! The other day I spent an hour stomping nut jackets in the  gutter outside somebody I don't know's house! It didn't seem like nearly such a dodgy behavior at the time; I think my roots were showing. My crazy chinese roots, that is. In my defense, urban foraging is a very Portland thing to do. At least scrounging a bagful of fallen chestnuts on a shiny October morning is not like scrubbing around in the grass on your hands and knees looking for ginko nuts that smell like poo in the dark and the rain.

Plus, everybody knows that chestnuts are a thing you eat, providing that you get the kind that are edible. So how do you tell the difference? Wikipedia of course! But really, it's easy to tell. The edible kind is on the left. They have zebra stripes that go from top to bottom, and a little fuzzy tassel on the end. The tassel can get broken off, so the important part is the stripes.

wood grain = wouldn't eat that

Stripes = sounds tasty to me.

The ones that you can't eat are on the right. See how they have this subtle wood grain pattern? Also, no tassel. Not even a place where the tassel would be. Smooth as a baby's butt. Those are the kind called horse chestnuts. The jackets also look quite different. Horse chestnuts look like the head of a mace, with just a few big points on them. Sweet chestnuts look like a little green hedgehog. They have a dense covering of amazingly prickly spines, which is why you stomp them gently to get the nuts out. Wear stout shoes, and be careful not to bounce one up onto your ankle. Gloves would be a good idea too.

AKA 'conkers'

imagine if that fell on you.

Chestnuts are unusually low in fat and high in water and starch for nuts, making them vulnerable to dehydration and mildew. Unless you are going to eat them right away, you should freeze them. I put them in ziploc bags.  Later, I'll investigate some recipes.

w00t!

  

  
I came home today and there was a bag left at my door in my building, which made me alarmed, because it's a locked building, and I don't know anybody who should be leaving things propped in lumpy bags at my door, but then I saw the tag.

I have received a present from the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation!! It was a present I had asked for, but I had stopped expecting it because they sent me their mailer about 2 months ago. There was a questionnaire about what I do to get around town, and the leaflet said that if I mailed back the envelope with my preferences checked off they would send me some free loot. So I asked for all the stuff I thought sounded neat. The envelope was postage paid, so why not? Then I forgot about it after a while.

But but but! They actually did send it after all, and there are lots of nifty things in the nice blue bag, including a little digital pedometer that I just dropped off the balcony. Excuse me while I go root around in the grass.

(Imagine a time lapse.)

But what else is in there? A calendar, slightly tardy. (It's for this year.) A bunch of pamphlets about all things bicycle, TriMet, & pedestrian related, 2 different Portland street maps (the one specifically for bikes is especially good but the one of NE has more detail), a book of cupons for eastside neighborhoods (lots of free coffee!), a shopping list notepad/refrigerator magnet (idiotic, but still neato), pamphlets explaining Oregon bicycle laws, helmet laws, and pedestrian laws, a flyer with a list of community gardens and pools, 

a shiny reflective pants-leg band (shiny), and a Portland bike map bandanna! Yes, an actual bandanna, that is printed with a useable map of the bike lanes in Portland. I love this dorky town.

I've been to the Zoo!

  

  
There was a steam train! And naked mole rats! And baby turtles, and polar bears, a rhinoceros, a zebra and some otters and some other stuff!

The steam train was the main object of my field trip today. I went during my vacation week before last, and it was too early in the season for them to be running it. I was quite disappointed, and vowed that I would ride the tiny locomotive at the earliest opportunity. The very nice man at the ticketing booth told me they would start running it this weekend, so in spite of the chilly weather this morning, I got up and went off to the zoo.

At the ticket booth by the train station I asked if the next ride was the regular train or the steam train. I felt a little sheepish. No, it was the regular one, the Zooliner, said the ticket agent. The Oregonian would be another half an hour, he said, would I like to wait? I said yes, I only came to ride the steam train. Well, I think that's great! That one's my favorite too, he said. Nerrrrrddds.

By chance, I had arrived just in time to catch  The Oregonian's first run of the day. The Zooliner, which dates from some time in the early sixties I think, was already running. As they loaded it with passengers, I could see these two guys in stripey engineer's overalls messing around with the steam engine, which was parked on a siding. Once the Zooliner left the station, the engineers backed the steam train up to the platform. Sorry about the jiggly camera angles, there were a bunch of us milling around watching.

I hope the station attendant didn't think I was really annoying. I was the first person in line to board. Maybe the engineer's cap was a bit much? He's probably seen worse. One benefit of riding the first train of the day is that you get to watch the engineers perform a couple of maintenance tasks that aren't done at other times. One of those is sanding out the engine. They drive the train to a section of track with a slight downward slope, then blow a large quantity of (I think) steam out through the smoke stack while backing the train uphill. The steam essentially pressure washes the guts of the engine stack and flushes out all the accumulated soot and grit. They back it up the hill so that all that stuff will fall onto the tracks in front of the train rather than back onto the passengers. When they're done, the train starts rolling forward again. I didn't get a very good shot of it; it's quite dramatic, and I was too busy gawping.

The other thing they do is blow down the boiler. I imagine this serves a similar purpose, but for the tanks of water to make steam which powers the engine. Much of the Washington Park loop of the track is laid in close proximity to the sides of the hills, so they have to drive the train to an area that has a large ravine on the left side so they can safely vent the steam from the boiler.

After that, it's just a very pleasant little ride through the woods and around the bottom of the zoo. The last part of the track before the station is a miniature tunnel. It's probably only about 50 feet long, but there are no lights in there so you can see the reflection of the boiler flames coming off the bottom of the engine, and the smoke billows around the ceiling in this very spooky-cool way. Is a bit stinky though. If you want to get a good view of the engine working, I recommend riding somewhere in the middle of the train. If you ride right behind the engine, you have to stick your head way out of the car to see anything, which is frowned upon, and if you ride at the end of the train, you will be too far back. Sit in the middle, and you will get very nice views of the engine every time the train goes around a curve in the track. Also, the train stops above the rose test garden for a photo op, and you can get a re-boarding stamp if you want to get off and mess around in the park. Next time!
 

Of course, I did wander around the zoo for a while. I missed the naked mole rats last time, and it was a particular object of mine to see them. They are so beautifully horrid looking. Does anybody know if they even have eyeballs? And then there were polar bears, and the hippos, and a tiger, and african wild dogs, plus gazelles and bunches of things I didn't get pictures of. That'll teach me to wander off without a spare set of batteries for my camera.

Still, for me it was all about the little train. On Friday I heard somebody say that they rode the train for zoolights a couple years ago and didn't think it was anything to get all excited about. Dude. Some people are crazy, that's all I'm saying.

More pictures on my photostream!  

Did I tell you about my bicycle?

  

  
This is the first time I've had a bicycle since about fourth or fifth grade. It was a corporate holiday gift. Which is cool, in one respect, because who hasn't thought "boy I sure would like a new bike for Christmas!" at one point in their life? So I decided to be all Portland-y and keep the bike, instead of donating it to toys for tots (which was the other company-approved option), or trying to sell it on craigslist (not an approved option). I thought, "Great! Cheap transportation to places the buses don't go!"

Here's the thing- I'm naturally a rather timid and unadventurous person. So I've only ridden it 2.5 times. It came dis-assembled, of course, so it sat in Pete & Cynthia's garage for a while, until I finally asked him to put it together for me. Then I nearly crashed into the woodpile/hedge in his driveway the instant I first got on it. That was in February.

Then there was about one sunny day early in March. I rode it to Fred Meyer. In retrospect, this was a bad idea. It really was too nippy to be pleasant, and I was trying to figure out how to use the gears, and the brakes, and manage my satchel and bike lock. I felt like a tortise on a highway. The experience was unnerving, and made me start looking my gift horse in the gears.

It's awfully ugly, isn't it. It didn't come with fenders either, I had to buy those. And a lock, and a light, and a helmet... To tell you the truth, though, it's the ugly factor that has put me off the most. This is a town full of bicycle people, and I am a bit embarrassed to be seen on it. It's a perfectly good starter bike, as Pete put it. But really, if you're going to design the frame to accommodate a seat suspension, wouldn't it be best to, well, put the suspension in it? This feature has been pointed out to me as a glaringly silly characteristic by a couple of people who actually know about bicycles. Subjectively, it is just a rather inelegant machine. I don't know much about bicycles, but I know a good bit about ugly when I see it. So it sat on my porch for the last couple months.

But I'm on vacation, and have been doing lots of things all week that I don't usually do, so I took this thing out for a spin today. Here's what I think now:

1. It's still bloody ugly.
2. Don't try to remember how to ride a bike in less than perfect weather. No good will come of making the initial learning curve more unpleasant than it needs to be. By the end of my first trip to the store, I was freezing, and sweaty, and shaky-kneed nervous, and I still had to shlepp my groceries up to my apartment.
3. On a related point, don't make the initial attempt have an object other than tootling around. Today I gave myself the option of creeping around the block one time and then deciding that I didn't like it. So I left all the excess crap at home and wandered around in circles for about 45 minutes. It was pretty cool.
4. It's very possible to exceed the speed limit on downhill residential streets. This is scary, and a bad idea.
5. Whoever this thing was designed for, they were not shaped like me. And they must have a much more cushiony butt.
6. On the other hand, I have returned to the idea that maybe using a bicycle is a good idea, at least some of the time.

Over all, I'm not completely sold on bicycles, but now I can see that it is true that I ought to make sure that it isn't just this bike that I don't enjoy, rather than all bicycles universally.
 

Some things are alright

Riding MAX every day is usually an eye opener of one kind or another. I believe it is a salutary experience, but not always enjoyable. I have a grim determination to believe that human nature is basically neutral, if not good. Sometimes I have to fall back on statistics to convince myself of this. I think something like "Look at this train full of people. I find some of them obnoxious, or repulsive, or think they smell bad, but look at them: none of them are biting each other, threatening each other with death or bodily harm, and none of them know each other. If this was a room full of strange baboons, the carnage would be indescribable. Humans really are pretty nice, for primates."

So there I was on the Red Line from downtown. Usual assortment of people, usual assortment of critical-overshare types of converations buzzing around. At Lloyd Center, a little black girl, about seven, gets on the train with a white lady who is clearly kin to her, but it isn't clear in what relationship. The lady is totally unremarkable, and since I'm not at all motherly, the girl is pretty uninteresting too, except that she's wearing a plaid skirt I kind of like, and looks cleaner than most children that age do by 6:30 pm. They take a seat, facing this sullen looking late thirties-ish white dude with his black T-shirt, messenger bag, head and chin shaved to an identical stubble, 1-inch ear plugs and giant lip ring. He's reading a book.

The train starts moving, and I overhear the little girl say "Want to see my new earrings?" A man says "I would, please!" I look around, and it's Earplugs dude, who has happily put his book down, and is watching her pull several cards of cheap earrings out of a plastic bag. The train is noisy, so I don't hear everything they say, but I got the impression that she'd just had her ears pierced. He is clearly a guy who likes kids, and hangs out with them a lot. They compare the size of her dangley earbobs with the size of his earplugs, I hear her say "We were shopping at Claire's, and they were buy 2 get one free!" and he says "Claire's is good- I've bought earrings there too. Not in a long time, but, I have."  I decided not to stare at them, because I was grinning like an idiot, and then it was time to get off the train. They were talking about how how far it was to Gresham when I left.

There are so many things right about those 2 minutes on the train that it's hard to even think them all out.  But yes, it seems to be true that humans are really pretty nice, for primates.

#100: carrots in june, just like I said

Very small milestone. This is about a year worth of me, my lunch, and my things growing in pots. Today it's carrots. Plus, it's strawberry season at market. They're very shiny.

Spicy Chicken and Basil (with Spinach)

My fella took me to this Thai restaurant on Alberta and now I can't remember what its name was. I got a beef noodle soup which was pretty good, he got a fried catfish which was A. Mazing. It had this dark red chili sauce on it, and some bell peppers, and sauteed basil as a vegetable. I reminded me of some of the few positive experiences I had when I was living in Taiwan. I don't think I had any Thai food there, but some of the stuff I ate there was similar in retrospect. Basil used as a vegetable rather than a seasoning is one of those things.

This makes 2 dinner- sized servings for me.

Prep about 1/2 lb of chicken tenders with salt, pepper & oil. Leave them to sit in the fridge a few days. The day of, you need:

1 T oyster sauce
1 T fish sauce
1 T sesame oil

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon minced lemongrass- I use a chunk of pre-minced lemongrass that came in a little vacuum sealed packet out of the frozen section at Fubonn.
3 or 4 green onions, tops & bottoms minced. This is optional because the 2nd time I made this dish, I forgot to put them in and it didn't really matter. Up to you.
1 large bunch of basil, leaves only
a double handful of fresh spinach leaves

If you want to eat it with noodles like the picture, put on a pot of salted water. The chicken takes maybe about as long to cook as the noodles do. Start the chicken at the same time the noodles go in the pot. That's if you like your noodles pretty firm.

Chop up the chicken and stir in the sesame oil, oyster sauce & fish sauce.  Heat 2 T cooking oil in a frying pan, and when it's hot enough to almost smoke, put in the pepper flakes, garlic, ginger and lemongrass, plus the onions if you've got 'em. Stir a bit until the seasonings brown and get just a tad crispy then dump in the chicken and stir really fast for about 2 more minutes. When the chicken is looking maybe half done, put the greens in the pan and keep stirring until everything is cooked through and the liquid that comes out of the greens has pretty much evaporated.

On a totally unrelated note, the hummingbirds like my sage plant.

Happy May Day!

Today was the first day of the Hollywood farmer's market, and here's my loot. I had 'em take the tops off the carrots, which makes them look less amazing, but I swear those are the best carrots I've ever eaten. Theyare sweet. They are crunchy. They are tender. They taste floral, and earthy, and herbal and almost like licorice. And they are juicy. HaHA! I bet you never thought of carrots as juicy either. I'm sure their total deliciousness is a fleeting thing, but I had to tell you all about it right away. Yes, I am growing some carrots on my balcony, but I wanted carrots today, not in June.

I got basil, because I miss warm weather. I'll probably make a bit of pesto with it. And I got the beets because the greens look so good. My plan is to braise the greens a bit then make a pie with them.

And here are my plants: the forest of spinach, the enormousness of the poppies and a pea flower.

I should have staked the peas this year, but I was feeling lazy and didn't get around to it. They will just have to sprawl over the railing, I guess.

Edit: "they are taste floral" Christ on a crutch.  I think not, oriental-syntax-man.

Workin on it...

Dove Vivi has this super yummy cornmeal crust pizza. I had some on Friday and now I'm jonsing for their crust. It's like focaccia but with little crunchy bits, both chewy and crispy, and it oozes with olive oil. I'm not trying to replicate that crust, I'm just going in that direction. It's a pretty small recipe, here's what's in it:


1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
1T flour
3/4 tsp instant yeast

Mix these things together and let them sit until they're all foamy, then mix in well:

Another 1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/3 cup olive oil. Use something nice and fruity.
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp minced fresh rosemary

Let the batter sit in a warm place for at least 4 hours. I bet overnight would be better, it would get really well fermented. Then mix in about another 3/4 cup of flour. I wasn't really paying attention to it, I was really just trying to get the texture right. After about 10 minutes of kneading, it should be somewhat soft, but not gooshy, and shouldn't stick to your hands. Oil it well and let it double in bulk. I usually put my dough back in the mixing bowl and cover it with a plate; saves a dish that way. When the dough has risen, pre-heat the oven- I did 425, but now I think it should have been hotter. Then oil a thin, non-insulated sheetpan and sprinkle a little more cornmeal on it. Dump the dough out onto the pan and just sort of poke it down a little bit. You aren't really trying to deflate it, you just want it to have some dimples to hold another splash of oil, a generous sprinkle of salt and pepper and more rosemary if you want. I really liked the way the fresh rosemary got all crispy on mine. But then, since the oven wasn't as hot as I I think it should have been, after about 15 minutes I turned the oven up to broil, moved up the rack and browned the top for about 3 more minutes.

This is my first round, next time I won't stretch it out so thin. It does make really good salami and tomato bites though. Ah, fermentation, I love it.

Spinach with Pink Grapefruit & Pecans

I don't like to eat salad in the winter, because eating cold things in cold weather makes me feel dreary. I think that when the weather has gotten warm enough to actually grow leafy things outdoors, that's time enough to eat them. This year the growing part wasn't just a theoretical guide; this is my first spinach crop. After I grew a bunch, I read the seed package; apparently it isn't really spinach (spinacia oleracea), it's New Zealand Spinach (tetragonia tetragonioides). Who knew. Who cares. It looks and tastes the same, as far as I can tell. And it went extremely well with the pink grapefruit I had sitting around.

a handful of spinach
a few pink grapefruit sections
pecans
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
salt & pepper

The thing about salads is that every item in it should be something you'd want to eat on its own. Keep it simple. For this one, use very fresh spinach, a very ripe sweet grapefruit, and a lashings of  olive oil. Mine has a medium amount of both fruity and peppery flavors to it. The grapefruit has enough acidity that you don't need a lot of balsamic, but it adds something, so pick a kind you really like. Plus, it makes it more fun to look at before you eat it, and who wouldn't want that?

To completely change the subject: inappropriate workplace conversations.  My manager at my retail hell tells me this story. It is useful to know at the beginning that his dog is a pug.

Him: So, my dad sends me a text message and asks me if you need a USB cable to play your ipod through the car stereo. I texted him back, and said no, you use a receiver because an ipod doesn't have a standard, USB port. Then he texts me back and says so, your ipod doesn't play through the car stereo?

(slight pause, with roll of eyes)
 
Him again: So I texted him right back and said No, it plays through my dog's vagina. I waited a second, then texted him again and said, Of course it plays through the car stereo, it's an ipod. Then a minute later my mom calls me and she says "I don't know what you said to your dad, but he was laughing so hard he had to pull over and stop driving." So I told my friend what I said, and he starts laughing, he goes, Yeah, it sounds a little tinny coming out of there, but other than that... (mimes small surprised dog)

Me: Tell him he needs to trade up to a St. Bernard, you get better woofers in those things.

I've been pre-occupied

I have not been cooking anything photogenic. Potato Leek Soup is still just a bowl of grayish goop, no matter how tasty it is.

Sunchoke chips are pretty yummy too, but they look just like potato chips, in any case, they didn't sit around long enough to get a picture. It's the weather. It has been so lovely out, and my plants are doing lots of interesting things.















I have figured out a couple things since last year:








Mustard grows very quickly, but is no fun to eat. Radishes are at least as fun to grow, and the eating part is much more satisfying.


These were the sweetest, tenderest radishes I can remember ever having eaten.



Cilantro starts slowly. Very slowly. But you better give it its own pot, because it gets enormous.

Does anybody know what is making my spinach do this? The ones on the right are looking strangely anemic. Spinach is also very satisfying to grow; it starts early and grows vigorously. Hopefully, I will like to eat it more than mustard.












Speaking of vigorous growers, here are my borage plants. I read that "you won't need more than one" and boy, they were right. On the left, you see that in an optimistic spirit, I planted five.

Five. Seeds. The lefthand picture is from the 18th, the righthand picture, from the 26th. I had to pull out 2 of them, I'm calling the lettuce in the same pot a loss. Borage is very spiny, we had a windstorm and the prickers on the borage leaves savaged the lettuce while flapping around in the breeze.


But that's all right, because lettuce is another of the things I realized that I don't care enough about to bother growing. Some people say that you should grow things that are unusual or that would be expensive to buy. To some extent, this is true, but I think that one should grow the things that one is likely to eat. Yes I could buy spinach, and radishes, but it's also true that I actually do buy them sometimes. Which means that I like eating them enough to go the effort of growing them.  I never buy lettuce.

And this is my tea plant. I don't guess that I will ever be able to harvest any amount of tea from it. But I like the idea.

It's spring

Yes, yes, it is not even President's Day. But I have proof. Pictures, even.

My strawberry started blooming around the first of the month.

So did my rosemary.

 

And it looks like my tarragon plant is going to look really respectable. It was pretty undersized last year.

Yup, I got spring fever. Feels nice.

Yup, this is me.

I'm gonna put my recipes here, and maybe some other stuff.

Because I am a mad scientist out to conquer the world.

With cheese. Or maybe just yogurt.
Cheese could be a little ambitious, my kitchen is tiny.

Chinkypin Sez: be an omnivore.