Furlough Day Ride

Last Friday, my dad and I took a ride to the S.F. Bay Area.

A photo from "The Wall," a popular stop for motorcyclists that overlooks U.C. Berkeley and San Francisco in the distance. It's generally pretty hazy, but we could see the city fairly well.


After pausing for photos and to chat with some other riders, we headed down into Port Costa. As far as I can tell, Port Costa was home to a few houses, a brothel (maybe) that's been turned into a "hotel," a post office, and a huge bar called The Warehouse Cafe. The main attraction on Friday was the road in to Port Costa, but only because I had to get home somehow. Were I spending the night, the main attraction surely would have been the bar's outdoor seating area and selection of microbrews.

But the road, ah, the road. It was quite scenic, and also quite curvy. Observe:





The most interesting part about Port Costa (to me, anyway) is its location in relation to the Carquinez bridge. I've been over that bridge a million times, but never gave much thought to the idea that there might be civilization down where the C&H plant sits. Of course, if the Yelp! reviews of the Burlington Hotel are at all accurate, my original assumptions may very well be correct. I am simultaneously (and quite inexorably) drawn and repelled by the idea of this place. Part of me thinks the dirt and riffraff sounds scary and gross, part of me thinks it would be ten kinds of awesome to put Devendra Banhart on a boombox and just get weird. Anyway, I had never seen the bridge from this angle:


While I was taking a picture of the bridge, my dad spied a benchmark. I had never seen one of these in my life before I started riding a motorcycle, and now I've seen two in the last six months. Coincidence? Probably.


After Port Costa, we did a whole lot of splitting traffic before making a run around the Berryessa GP (Hwy 121-128), which made for a satisfying end to a great day.

The stories of the last few weeks, Part I

Since a portion of my blog is supposed to be about riding, I finally took my camera along with me on a ride a few weekends ago. The weather was lovely, and my friends were up from LA, so I invited my dear friend Lauren to come along with my dad and me. She rode on the back of my dad's VStrom, and we had lunch in Georgetown (there's a deli there that makes killer vegetarian sandwiches). We met about four young riders at the deli, invited them to come along with us. We headed over to Placerville by way of a road that features unbelievable elevation changes around hairpin turns, and a one-lane wooden suspension bridge. All in all a beautiful day, and the best part was being along for Lauren's maiden voyage by motorcycle. She had a button that allowed her to talk to me, and was able to chat with my dad and hear music via the intercom. I could see him in front of me, talking to her while pointing out the sights. It was fantastic.

In the driveway of my place, my dad helps Lauren get geared up.


On the way to lunch, we paused at the Bear Creek picnic area... two tiny picnic tables tucked away down a dirt road next to a babbling brook. It's very "enchanted forest."

My dad and me:


Lauren and me:


We stopped after crossing the bridge on Mosquito Rd., and I couldn't pass up this shot:

One of the views from the bridge:


On the way back to Latrobe Rd. and Hwy 16, we paused at Brandon Rd. The girl on that adorable pink and black R6 had some mechanical trouble and, unbeknownst to us, stopped to fix it. One of the group caught us and we all waited for everyone else. Brandon Rd. has the kind of scenery that seems like it shouldn't exist so close to a northern california metropolis.


All the food is on its way in the next few posts!

Shepherd's Pie, Pot Stickers, Cleaning out the Crisper Drawer

Last Saturday (1/17) I knew exactly three things when I got up.

1. The weather was positively amazing. Amazing enough to run errands on my lipstick red, 1000cc, pack mule. I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with my bike since my car died. Commuting to work in the morning by motorcycle is at best inconvenient (what with gear and luggage considerations), and at worst a little scary (what with half-asleep, idiot drivers yakking away on cell phones and trying to balance coffee and bagels in their laps). Carpooling with my roommate has been a godsend, but during the winter it leaves my bike alone and lonely, alternating between being under a cover and in the garage. I have felt guilty, even while taking the occasional weekend ride. It was when I looked outside on Saturday that I realized my problem was not with my bike, but with winter in general. Gearing up and strapping on my saddlebags was more pleasure than hassle, and I zipped around my neighborhood running errands and had a grand time.

2. I wanted to invite my mom over for homemade pot stickers. She loves pot stickers, and I love hanging out with her.

3. I wanted to make shepherd's pie and blog about it.

I didn't photograph the pot stickers, unfortunately. I was too busy actually making them, and they are fairly labor intensive. I used Lolo's recipe(ish) from Vegan Yum Yum (can you tell I love her blog?), though I made the filling a little different. I did make the baked seitan, but opted for cabbage, carrots, green onions and garlic for the filling. After all those things took a spin in the food processor, I put the whole lot in a pan and cooked it up a little, just to soften the vegetables. I added soy sauce, sesame oil, seasoned rice vinegar, ginger and black pepper, all to taste.

The best part about making those is that 1 package of potsticker wrappers is never enough to use all the filling, which means I have a delicious pile of well-seasoned, parcooked vegetables mixed with ground seitan in my fridge. This led to a thai-inspired sort of pasta salad.


The cauliflower is just sauteed in olive oil, salt, and chili flakes. The pasta is (of course) whole wheat orzo. The dressing for the salad consisted of about a half cup of peanut butter, a Tbsp of soy sauce, 2 Tbsp of seasoned rice vinegar, and just a tiny knob of red curry paste. This would have been better with cilantro and fresh lime juice, but no way was I making a special trip to the store just to dress up some leftovers.

I guess this has always been my philosopy when I cook. Making what I can with what I have. This is not to say that I don't buy anything special for certain things, but I really try to understand the essence of what I want to eat, and use the things in my pantry to make it happen.

A good example of this is shepherd's pie. The things I know to be absolutely true if I want to call something shepherd's pie are that it must contain vegetables and some kind of protein, it must be a bit like a thick stew, and it must have potatoes on top. Given those guidelines, I can go nuts! I wanted to try treating some seitan like stew meat, frying it up and then adding my veggies during the braising stage. I thought about sprinkling flour in with the seitan as it was frying, but then I felt sort of weird about that given that seitan is more or less made of flour. My filling ended up being a little soupy as a result, but was still delicious.

Here's the seitan, ready to fry:


Also, if I had it to do over again, I would not turn my back on the stuff! Stirring constantly is the order of the day!

Here it is as I added some of the veggies and prepared to let it simmer for a while:


Cabbage is a pretty traditional ingredient for shepherd's pie, and it's also a vegetable I feel i should eat more often, so I pretty much always use it. Don't feel any pressure, however, to use something just because it's common. Again, the most basic components of this dish are vegetables, stew-like consistency, protein of some kind, and a potato topping. It need not be any more structured than that to be absolutely delicious.

Here's the pie with the cabbage in:


You can also see in this shot that the seitan has gotten much paler. It increases in size a bit and gets springy as it gets close to being done. I think the texture is wonderful, but it's probably not going to fool anyone into thinking it's actually meat. Since that is never my goal, it's not really a problem.

A word on the potatoes: normally, it's mashed potatoes that go on top of the pie. I prefer my potatoes skin-on, and with a little bit of crispness. As such, they're chopped into quarters, boiled, and drained.


Then some oil is heated, and they're fried until they're a little brown and crispy on whatever side happens to be touching the pan.

Meanwhile, my vegetables were as soft as I wanted them, the seitan was delicious and springy and chewy, so I added some kale to wilt just a little before the whole thing went in the oven.

The potatoes are smashed while they're frying (no need to go for perfection, rustic is just fine), and then put on top of the pie.


The whole thing is baked for about 30-45 minutes, pretty much until the potatoes get a little more brown on top. I like the challenge of cooking vegan, but there is no reason this couldn't be finished with some shredded cheese like Gruyere over the potatoes.

I made some broccoli to go along, first sauteeing some leeks, onions and garlic until the leeks were translucent.


Then I added lemon juice and a little bit of water and some broccoli florets. I covered the pan to steam it, and probably overdid it a little, as the broccoli didn't have that beautiful green color when all the water had evaporated. Oh well. It was still tasty.


No pictures of the finished product, as this was not a spectacularly photogenic meal. The best part about shepherd's pie is that the leftovers are dynamite for lunches!!

For a special treat on Friday night (1/23), Mari made vegetarian onion soup out of her "Vegetables Every Day" cookbook. It was INCREDIBLE, easily the best french onion soup I've ever had. I just had to get a picture of the cheesy, crouton-y, brothy goodness:

I have to say, it sure is nice to have someone make dinner for me!


There's also been knitting (as usual!), I finished the Bell Curve skirt from Knitty. It turned out beautifully, and I'm very happy with it, even though it could NOT have been more boring to knit!



Holy macro focus, Batman:

And last but not least, my plans for Tony Harrison:

Stay tuned for more, and as always thank you for reading!!

Pashnit Potato Salad

This salad is so named in honor of the Pashnit Girly Ride- I made it for the barbecue we had the night before embarking on our epic journey. I am new to food photography, so this presents an interesting challenge.

I don't like potato salad with lots of mayonnaise, and so I was inspired by Heidi Swanson's grilled potato salad recipe. Instead of grilling, I roasted. I live in a tiny apartment with no patio to speak of, and so setting up the grill on strip of grass by the sidewalk and praying noone's dog gets too close as they walk by is so much effort that I'd rather just sweat with the oven going full blast. Before roasting, I toss the potatoes in olive oil and season them with salt, pepper and rosemary. I also chopped a few onions into big chunks to roast alongside the potatoes. Onions are amazing when they roast- sweet and caramelized and they make the place smell amazing to boot.

I'm working with an HP digital camera, it's not an SLR but it takes very hi-res images. I'm learning the features, but if anyone has any suggestions on lighting, etc. to make my food look more appetizing, I would gladly accept it. Please keep in mind that I pretty much always cook at night, and my apartment gets no natural light whatsoever. Bad for photography, worse for plants.




While the potatoes are roasting, I like to get the dressing made quickly, allowing the flavors some time to mingle. This particular dressing consisted of olive oil, orange muscat champagne vinegar, organic sun dried tomatoes (not re-hydrated- I always figure the vinegar will take care of that), and about 7-8 cloves of roasted garlic. When I roast my garlic, I get as much of the papery stuff off the outside as possible, chop off the top, put it in some aluminum foil, drizzle with olive oil, and then salt and pepper it. I guess most people don't do the pepper thing, but i really like the way it tastes with the garlic.

The dressing is pretty simple-

1. Put all ingredients in small bowl.
2. Whisk the holy hell out of it.
3. Take several photographs from different angles featuring different ingredients, all the while moving the bowl to a more and more precarious perch in the name of getting a good shot.
4. Knock entire bowl of dressing on to the kitchen floor.
5. Curse loudly and creatively while trudging through a large planter box, avoiding snails and getting stabbed by tree ferns in order to turn on the hose and clean kitchen floor rug.
6. Repeat steps 1 & 2.


This is the last shot before the ingredients were mixed together, after which it became significantly less photogenic. Beauty contest aside, it was a hit at the party I went to. I mentioned that it was vegan to anyone that seemed interested, and even a few that weren't. It's a shame that a word as innocuous as "vegetarian" conjures up images of jiggly, gross tofu that someone is trying to pass off as "meat."


I wonder about these people... is there a vegetarian terrorist camp somewhere, kidnapping omnivores and forcing them to eat tofu and seitan, all the while telling them that it's meat? "yessss, yessss... eat up, it's a delicious burger!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

Seriously, vegetarians... have you EVER lied to anyone about the contents of a meal, except for that one time you made pie with tofu but it was totally undetectable and your dad liked it so much you just didn't mention it?

The ride itself was an awesome time, about 24 women came along for an epic journey of northern California's greatest hits- Even though our destination the first day from Folsom was Murphy's (only about an hour and a half away by the most direct route), we took the long way 'round and rode Salmon Falls, Wentworth Springs, Icehouse, Volcano, Hwy 26 and others. It was incredible to ride with girls for the first time ever. The chaos on the trip was not associated with gender, but the simple fact that riding with that many people is always a little messy. The second day we rode Hwy 26, Pool's Station Rd, Hwy 4 over Ebbett's Pass, Hwy 89 and the Monitor Pass to our destination in Walker. The place couldn't have been cuter, and the staff that ran the place could not have been nicer. They got us tons of delicious food- all we had to do was throw in $10 and there were burgers and chicken and fish and veggie burgers and salad of all kinds, not to mention all the soda and beer one could drink. It was great to just get to the motel, peel off our gear, get into our jammies and hang out for the rest of the night. Nothing finer than parking the bike and leaving it until the next morning. A few shots from the trip:

Stumpy Meadows Reservoir, our stop for a break to regroup on Wentworth Springs Rd.

On the way up narrow, windy Ebbett's Pass.

Roxanne and her little buddy Diesel, who rides with her everywhere. Our chase vehicle and the Antelope Valley are behind her.

One of the greatest parts of this ride was the pace. I spent most of the second day with two other women, all of us riding briskly but not so fast that I couldn't focus on technique. I learned a lot about my riding that weekend. I have the capacity to execute perfectly and be very smooth as long as I am not trying to fly! It really helped me be content to slow down and remind myself that this is the journey of a lifetime- I only recently started and have so much to learn! I was able to put to work all the things I read about delayed apexing, and improved my left turns by leaps and bounds. It was a wonderful, productive feeling.

Introductions.

This blog represents my first foray into photographing food and writing about cooking. What I intend to offer here will be less about recipes that one can follow step by step, and more about getting inspiration from the things I cook. Cooking is one of my passions, and I always do it by the seat of my pants. I don't think I've ever made the same thing twice, really. I tend not to measure ingredients unless I'm baking, but try to use relatively little fat when i cook.

I am technically a pescatarian. I stopped eating cows, chickens, etc. because I know that faced with the prospect of killing such an animal just so i could enjoy its meat, I wouldn't be able to pull the trigger (swing the hammer, wield the pneumatic bolt, whatever). I don't like the conditions present in factory farms. The idea of slaughterhouses turns my stomach. These facts combined suggest to me that I don't have the right to eat those animals, and I am lucky enough to live in a place that is so bountiful that I can freely make that choice.

I still eat seafood because i like to fish. I like to eat what i catch. For now, at least, i can justify that to myself.

Some of the food you see on here will be vegan, as I really enjoy cooking vegan meals. It's definitely not every day, but i like the challenge, and i love to tell people that what they're eating is vegan. so many don't know what it means, or that it can be delicious. I enjoy opening people's minds to that idea.

Riding a motorcycle is my other passion, the one that makes me daydream all day about twisty back roads and threatens to take all my money and every second of free time i have. I love it, I can't get enough of it. I will do it for the rest of my life, or at least as long as my motor skills hold up. There will be discussion re: riding throughout the blog, but I will do my best to keep it interesting to people not involved in the sport. So far, even people that don't ride have enjoyed the photos I've taken of all the incredible natural beauty I'm privileged to enjoy on two wheels. Hopefully my new readers will as well.

Enjoy, and feel free to comment with any feedback or suggestions!