Category Archives: the day lee

dear Eli, thanks for the beach and i heart bacon

the day lee, why artists need math, , , ,

a messload of legal hubbubery between the California Coastal Commission and David Geffen has resulted in a little coastal access pathway leading from the PCH to the nice stretch of beach in front of some expensive houses.
despite the security guy (who takes long lunch breaks in between taking advantage of people who aren’t sure of the legality of what they’re trying to do) it’s public land, as long as you stay on wet sand.
this being high tide season it’s a great place to wander, and get a glimpse of Eli Broad dressed in white on his white chair sitting for his morning tan.

we forgot to wear our “I heart MOCA” pins and refrained from partaking in his outdoor shower, but we did scavenge a nice piece of shale or something that must have come from his bathroom or pit o’ fire BBQ.
in the hopes it came from the latter, we’ll serve up some foie gras or stinky cheese on it soon, in honor of public access.

the real best coast

coffee sameness, the day lee, writings

my new favorite band, Best Coast, has the sweetest beach-fuzz sound i’ve heard in a long time. and that’s an earbuds-on-fire-i’ll-coo-with-you, long time.

having spent many years on this best coast, one thing i thought i missed from the east coast were these swirly things that came down from the trees every fall. the few that i found in northern california didn’t have the nose adhesive that i remembered from my childhood.
but, two weeks ago at the amazingly fun Tin House Workshop, i discovered that Portland is full of these things. ah!!

Portland is home to many other great things, including a barista that offered me the extra shot of espresso that he was “going to throw out anyway,” my buddy Too Much Coffee Man, the literary duck that came and sat at your feet as you read into the sunset, and a donation-based service that pays for your taxi home if you’re too cocktail-ed out to do otherwise.

commie pizza (part 2)

food, the day lee,

i realized that i had a brain melt the other day and forgot the most important part of the commie pizza story.

we stood in line for a while waiting to order, but when it was our turn, the pizza guy said “we are out of cheese…but i don’t want you to wait, so can you come back in an hour?”

apparently, commies must think that there are different ways of waiting. my friend suggested we “go get martini drys” which i agreed was a marvelous idea, since we had just waited in line for bupkis, and had perfectly stomach empties.

i wondered if i had ever seen an actual martini in Italy before, and whether my friend got that line from James Bond. being a jazz musician, many of his phrases in English come from reading jazz lyrics, like “the girls were working the streets!” or “Oh, to live in Frisco.” turns out he was talking about the Italian brand of vermouth called Martini, which is drunk in Italy as an aperitivo, and is actually what he thought the rest of the world was talking about when they said “martini.” though the name of the cocktail is probably taken from the Martini brand, it’s not quite the same, especially when it comes to packing a punch.

my brain melt might have been from my recent PBJ on a hamburger bun. i was in an office and one of the girls offered me a PBJ. when she looked in her fridge she realized she didn’t have any “normal” bread (and she didn’t want me to wait)…

commie pizza

food, the day lee,

many years ago we were in Florence, Italy, and a friend of ours took us to a Communist Pizza Party. it was outdoors and there were old communists square dancing and young communists eating pizza. on offer were three different pizzas: one with marinara and cheese, one with marinara, cheese and mushrooms, and one with marinara, cheese and salami. i found it hilarious that the price-for-a-slice was not the same. my italian friend looked at me disgustedly and said, “of course not, mushrooms and salami cost more money.” my asinine viewpoint was that the labor to make the pizzas was the same, and since they were Communists, then the price should be the same. to this day my friend does not find this even remotely funny.

so here’s to you – dear square dancers:
pizza with salami, parmesan, cheddar, tomatoes, zucchinis, zucchini blossoms stuffed with St. Andre, and avocado bonanza…

and yes, it’s gluten-free – and simply delicious!

tiddlywinks

food, the day lee, why artists need math

this year there’s a debate that cooking has supplanted knitting as the “new yoga.”

but most of this cooking stuff is really about High Chefery. we have Chefs with Designer Footwear, Chefs Undercover (writing “tales from the trade” novelettes, with titles such as “Under Hot Water,” “Hung High and Dry Like a Cold Cut,” “Kept in the Dark and Fed Shit – My Life as a Mushroom in So and So’s kitchen”), Chefs as Celebrities—full scale photos of them in their pearly white outfits on the walls of their establishments or previously mentioned mugshots on said assorted condiment labels—and Chefs That Are Too Busy to Care, by far the saddest and the most pandemic of the lot.

real cooking, to me, is a matter of keeping relativity in mind—comparing what you start out with (or what’s in your fridge) and what you end up eating. a chef once told me the reason he loves baking is because the end product is larger than the dough. meat, he said, “always tends to shrink.” (“unless you eat it raw,” says the sheepherding-is-the-new-yoga members of this family.)

cooking is also a matter of scale. i’d rather have a really small piece of something fabulous than a million pieces of something half-assed, because the “ever-wanting” feeling is way more satisfying than having had my fill.

here’s a professional of the “ever wanting” group.

the road ahead

the day lee, things i worry about

somedays (and some recessions) there isn’t an easy way to avoid taking a Los Angeles freeway at an absurd hour, and by absurd, i mean, absurd to me, since a lot of other people think it’s a totally fine time to get on the freeway. for all the knee-numbing stop-and-go i do appreciate one thing that comes out of being stuck on the asphalt: freeways—unlike most things in life—provide a clear picture as to which way i want to go, and whether or not it’s the same way most people want to go. you pretty much know where you stand, as you, er, stand.

why dentists like suction

coffee sameness, food, the day lee

my teeth are in really great shape (“only floss the ones you want to keep!”) but i do make a point to see my dentist at least three times a year. mostly it’s because my visits include drinking coffee out of his vacuum pot with his freshly roasted beans (kenyan, usually).

there’s a whole rigmarole with the coffee production that assures me that he’s a fabulous dentist, (he even weighs his grind out before putting it into his 3x espresso basket) but my favorite is that when it comes down to cleaning out the coffee roaster, he’s really just performing dentistry with a shop vac. can you open up a little wider?
[qt:/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/dentistry.m4v 480 400]

things that make my brain go bonkers

coffee sameness, food, the day lee, things i worry about

just a short list for today:

–a bonanza of fava beans. god, there’s never enough. lucky for me it’s also green garlic season so sauteing the two together in butter makes everyone lick their plates so clean there’s no dishwashing here until tomato season!

–indecision:

–crazy assed yet beautifully designed Chinese coffee tins:


yes, i did try a packet of “cappuccino,” and no, it was no cappuccino. frothy, maybe, but definitely on the “mild dimensions” side.