Warming Food

This week has been chilly and rainy, so we leaned toward warm, filling recipes to keep us going.

Chunky Lentil Soup
1 1/4 cups green French or black beluga lentils, picked over and rinsed
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 cups diced butternut squash (spoon-sized!)
1 can (28-oz) crushed tomatoes (I used fire-roasted)
1 cup water or vegetable stock
1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
Pinch of smoked paprika or pure chile powder

Torn fresh basil leaves, for garnish
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, for garnish
Good-quality olive oil, for garnish

Bring 5 cups of water to a boil in a large saucepan, add the lentils, and cook for 20 minutes, or until tender.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a heavy soup pot over medium heat, then add the onion and sauté until tender, about 3 minutes. Stir in the squash, tomatoes, and water or vegetable stock, and continue cooking until the squash is tender (about 10 minutes). Drain the lentils and stir them in, along with the salt and smoked paprika or chile powder. Let the soup return to a gentle simmer, then taste and adjust the seasoning if need be.

Serve, topped with the basil, Parmesan, and a drizzle of olive oil.

This made a HUGE pot of soup that we're still finishing off after a week. It's one of those good soups that just gets better with time! It's good with and without the extra garnishes, and I also threw in some zucchini that needed to be used. I had paprika in the cabinet, and I think it lends a really nice, subtle twist to the usual lentil soup formula.


Wheat Berry Salad
2 cups soft wheat berries, rinsed
6 cups water
2 teaspoons fine-grain sea salt

3 generous handfuls spinach leaves, stemmed and well-rinsed
1 cup toasted pine nuts (I used walnuts)
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese (mild is best)

citrus dressing
Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon minced shallot
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Combine the wheat berries, water and 2 teaspoons salt in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer, covered, until plump and chewy (about 1 hour). The berries should stay al dente, and the only way to be sure they're done is to taste a few. Drain and season to taste with more salt. Toss the hot wheat berries with the spinach, to wilt it.

Dressing: Combine the orange zest and juice, lemon juice, and shallot. Whisk in the olive oil and season with a few pinches of salt and a few grinds of pepper.

Toss the wheat berries and spinach with the citrus dressing and pine nuts. Season to taste. Serve topped with crumbled feta.

I made the wheat berries in the morning while getting ready for work, and tossed together the rest in the evening when I got home. We also had a couple leftover kumquats, which I seeded and ground into the dressing with a bladed hand mixer -- that added a great tang!

(Recipes from Super Natural Cooking, by Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks)

We're Just Walkin'

Sunset from Russian Hill

Misty hills of Marin in the distance...

Alcatraz!

A blossoming bush

Clover yard!!!


Another crazy building in the Mission (just down the street from Emily's house)

24th Street in the Mission.. lined with big bushy trees and lots of interesting businesses!




We saw this building along 25th Street.. mixed feelings, because there are a lot of unnecessarily new condos being built in the Mission, and this one sticks out like a sore thumb. But at least it appears to be a 'green' building with plant-filled decks, natural light, solar panels and a wind power turbine on the roof!

A surprising view of Bernal Hill through some crazy trees in Garfield Square on 25th

Yay, SF!

Bernal Heights

The Foxy Lady on Mission Street!

A scary ATM....

This whole walk around the Mission originated with a craving for french toast.. at 5pm on President's Day. We spent 2 hours searching through the biggest neighborhood in SF, and finally landed on Church Street at Sparky's 24hr diner. French toast?

No... but when we left, we saw that the café next door to Sparky's had french toast.. Next time!

And to close... just in case you ever wonder where you can do one-stop video shopping, go to Market and Church!

Scenes from Home

Happy spinach on the fire escape!

Happy lettuces in the garden!
As much of the eucalyptus tree in our yard that fits in the camera frame...

Cute little blooming weeds and potted arugula gone mad in the yard

Flowering vine on the way up the stairs

Giant plants in the "front yard"


This is a striking building on the corner of my block.. An elderly woman named Emily lives here. Apparently she grew up in the house and her family has been there since her grandparents. Emily is always out and about, and she keeps track of what goes on in the neighborhood.. I've heard that she packs heat! I probably would, too, if I lived in a building that looks abandoned in a part of town where people are likely to break in.

WE GOT OUR NEW COUCH!

YAAAYYYYY!!!! We finally got our schmancy new couch...


...as you can see, it is big and cozy. What will we do with all that space?

Saturday Morning with Tartine & TV5Monde

I peeled myself out of bed this morning and stumbled out the door with Vanessa to catch some breakfast at Tartine before her volunteer training.. Leaving the house is always worth it when Tartine is on the itinerary (although if you don't want to wait 30 minutes or more, the sacrifice is greater because the early bird gets the worm faster).

I didn't bring the camera with me, but I wish I could've gotten a picture of the line at 9am -- it was out the door, and smashed inside along with the few tables they've managed to squeeze into their tiny space. It's like human Tetris most of the time! So why do we wait 30 minutes and surrender our personal space? Because here are found the reliably best pastries and edible goods, and no indulgent day is complete without them.

In fact, it's all so good that I was confident ordering before I even saw what was in the cases (too many people in line blocking the goods!). I just asked a server what was ready to go, and went with it. I ended up with bread pudding with apples and caramel, a frangipane croissant, zucchini bread with kumquaats and walnuts, and a chocolate scone (though I ordered a chocolate croissant -- no love lost, I'm sure it will be delicious!) Vanessa grabbed the croissant and zucchini bread and hurried off to her training, so I got the bread pudding and scone.

Bread pudding isn't for everyone, the texture puts some people off.. and we all know there's some sorry stuff masquerading as real food out there, so that doesn't help its reputation. But Tartine's bread pudding is always fantastic, so when I have a sweet tooth in the morning I like to indulge in it.




So, I brought my booty home and set up camp to watch TV5Monde while I ate -- here are some reasons why I watch TV5Monde.. there are SO MANY, but this is just what I managed to snag with the camera in the half-hour or so I was watching this morning. (Hint: It's not just for the language training!)

There's always something completely mind-boggling on French tv! I saw a special on sex toys, some crazy nature documentary showing all the details of cheetah and lion mating practices, a lady drugging a domesticated lioness and gluing long hair around its head to make it look like a male (and her husband teased it by sticking his finger in its ear while it was still drugged up, then gave it a little rub on the nose like 'Aw, I love ya!').... And the movie about how French royalty just had orgies all the time, in costume. Oh, and the cabaret show in which every act we saw was SO TOTALLY GAY but no one said so, and the audience was by turns confused and delighted by the antics. I'll just say that Snow White and Seven Dwarfs takes on a whole new meaning when performed in this fashion.. it's all the little things that add up!

Anyway, I am off to finish the laundry for now but I was inspired to take some pictures on my walk home this morning, so I'll probably be posting some greenery and some great murals later for you poor Midwestern winter hostages who have been robbed of visual stimulus for weeks and weeks!

Yay for Good Art History Lectures!

The cool part about my job is that I get to basically sit in on classes because I run the Lecture Hall, where a lot of Art History courses are taught.  I'm already supposed to know most of the material, but who remembers all the thousands of slides shown in first-year AH surveys?  Well, not I!  Actually, I was sleeping during most of those lectures.. At SFAI, the art history professors are mostly pretty engaging and humanistic, and I find their lectures really interesting.

Today, I've seen several awesome things:

> Anamorphosis by the Quay Brothers to expand upon the method used by Renaissance painters to embed symbolic images into paintings.  

A famous example, Holbein's The Ambassadors, where a skull is found at the bottom.

A still from the Quay Brothers' animated short film, Anamorphosis:

> Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights...

...turned into a metal music video by Buckethead:

> Some paintings I forgot that I love so much by Pieter Breugel the Elder:

The Hunters in the Snow

The Corn Harvest or The Harvesters?

The Tower of Babel

I love the awkward perspective and flatness in the paintings, and the colors (though we have to take internet reproductions with a grain of salt)!

If anyone is interested or wondering, this material was shown in Claire Daigle's ARTH 101 course at the San Francisco Art Institute, Spring 2008.

Lazy Sunday

hanging out the window...

so sunny!

a typical Sunday spread...

Dolores Park, 65*.......

okay, okay, okay...

so what, you may be asking, is my excuse this time? well, to be honest, we haven't been doing very much. the weather's been cruddy, vanessa has work and volunteer obligations 60 hours a week, and I (confession time) have been watching too much Project Runway and Make Me A Supermodel. hey, at least it makes it worth the cost of having cable!

earlier, I alluded to a weekend birthday surprise trip, which we did and I've been unsuccessful in trying to get vanessa to write a guest post about her surprise. the poor thing's just been too busy, and tired when she has a minute to do anything. maybe she'll come through and write something on her own, but I'll spill the beans because it was so fun!

we went to monterey and went skydiving! then we went to the monterey aquarium, which is a really amazing place to visit. it shows what's found in the monterey bay and surrounding marine sanctuary.. stuff you'd never guess is right there, like sharks and jellyfish! we wanted to also go whale watching, but it was rather chilly and we didn't have enough time. so.. i won't ruin the story, but here are a few good pictures from the trip:

big jellies, the size of your head.

lots of jellies that look like coral.

giant kelp, shark, and a swirling school of tiny fish (anyone remember that from the Blue Planet or Planet Earth?!)

white anemones, tiny orange anemones, and a rock fish in the back. rock fish live up to 80 years and don't reproduce until their 20's -- they've been overfished and the population is endangered.
electric jellies! these guys are really tiny, about the size of my pinky.

the past week here has been really beautiful.. sunny and warmer, so I've enjoyed riding my fast bike without rain fenders on my commute and felt a little more in shape. it's ridiculous, but I'm actually losing a lot of strength and stamina because everything is so close here. you'd think that all the hills would make me stronger, but honestly we tend to take the flattest routes because most of the hills are just too freaking big to tackle. my median gear ratio has dropped a few inches and I'm tired after a 3-mile ride -- crazy after my 25-mile commutes on a fixie! my excuse is that the weather's been too gross to do any long-distance pleasure riding for the past month, and I'm thinking that once the weather gets its act together we'll be doing much more riding. I have lots of opportunities to ride before work, too, since 3 days of the week I don't even go in to the office until noon or 2pm. shame!

well, I think I'll be on to other things today.. I hope you're all doing well and toughing out the bleak winter days. I heard the sun's been absent around Chicago lately.. I definitely couldn't have withstood it again!