Tag Archives: mo

post waylaid

on the day after Thanksgiving i wrote a post about our dinner (crispy skin duck, brussels sprouts, sour cream apple pie, bottle of Chinon) and a highly intellectual conversation regarding narcissism, psychosis, and the Peter Pan Complex, or Puer Aeternus in Latin (meaning Eternal Boy). unfortunately our guest asked me to please refrain from posting it until after Friday the 2nd, and now that date has been pushed back further, so in lieu of narcissism, psychosis and Puer Aeternus in Latin, i bring you more Canine Sherman!

surgery

Canine Sherman’s fentanyl patch…

this week surgery is definitely in the air. the coffee grinder needed fixing…

the WOPR got checked out, and i swapped out my laptop’s old hard drive for a new crazy fast solid state drive. wowee! it’s like driving a Prius. no moving parts. silent. the only thing i will miss is being able to iron the placemats at the same time as using the computer on the dining room table, since the new drives run a lot cooler than the old ones.

as expected, it’s really lovely inside a mac… plus notice how nice and smooth the placemat is.

the screws are really small though…and you need a good goose to keep them all corralled.

but there’s always the Apple to let you know everything is back to normal!

next up, putting this piggie back together.

reflected vs. reflection

Light arriving at an opaque surface is like me arriving at a buffet. it’s all about which dish will be rejected and which dish will be ingested, since the color of something is determined by which wavelengths of light are reflected and which wavelengths are absorbed. turn away all wavelengths and you are a big white light, eat everything and you are a massive black pig.

sometimes the question is exactly which colors are not being represented.

of course the quality of the buffet matters, and the last time i was faced with a tray of smoked salmon at a breakfast buffet in Hawaii i took the advice of a friend’s father, who suggested a special way to use the tongs. he told me to open it up and run it parallel along the bottom of the platter so you pick up the entire half of a wild salmon in one stroke. he said “you get some looks, but hey, they’ll bring another one out for the other guests.”
one alternative to this is to make your own gravlax, which is perfect if you are tearing down your deck and have some bricks handy to press the fish with. the great thing about making your own is that you can eat it like a burrito and no will give you “some look.” incidentally, fish scales are not opaque surfaces, they are translucent, which means they transmit light as they scatter it, as opposed to plastic wrap, which also transmits light but absorbs the transmitted light.

sea foam

just spent a week up in Mendocino County, tooting around on the beaches and in the fog. there were tide pools full of mussels, apparently the third tallest redwood tree in the world (i couldn’t say for sure because a) i couldn’t see the top of the tree, and b) there were conservation guys who had climbed up the tree with a measuring tape, but they left the end that said 0″ down on the ground), and the largest wood sorrel i’ve ever seen. eat a few leaves and that’s a large salad.

it’s the best time of year to be up there, less tourists, more sun, and plenty of sea foam. what i really wanted was a big ladle to skim the surface of this green soup, then add to it a few bones from Roundman’s smokehouse in Fort Bragg and call it a night. ok, maybe sprinkle some salty feta from Willetts on top and drink with a bottle… a bottle of French wine. (sorry Anderson Valley!)

sea foam vs. MO:

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self portrait in caramel

joy comes in so many flavors these days, and here’s Canine Sherman’s favorite way to express it:

joy also comes in the form of salted caramel ice cream. the recipe calls for 5 egg yolks and a shitload of milk/butter/cream. turn the orphaned egg whites into pizza dough, top with salami, avocado and fall tomatoes and pretty much the day is done.

here then, is my self-portrait in caramel, and yes, that’s a really thick layer of caramel. i’m working on the technique, obviously, but the ice cream? it’s really intense and absolutely amazing. plus a little goes a long way, which goes with the current trend of “doing more with less”, or “more with the same” type of corporate-speak.

dear Eli, thanks for the beach and i heart bacon

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.