saturday night.

Understandably, Saturday began with some Hammock Time. Followed by some White Sangria Time, some Sierra Nevada Time, and eventually some Paella Time. And then of course some Playing Until 5am Time. The cumulative effects of which completely negated the positive effects of the original Hammock Time.

durian day one.

Friday began innocently enough, with an admirably responsible number of beers at Charlie Mopps, which will always be known to us as Taco Mac, because back when it was called that, we were some of their most regular customers of all time, personalized mugs, brass nameplates on the bar, etc.

It's easy to see how it happened: for eight years Taco Mac was right down the road from our office, they had 300+ beers to choose from, and so understandably this is the bar where I spent most of my twenties, and where much personal drama occurred, but almost exclusively the good kind. Here's kind of what it used to look like:

















+++

Returning to The Present: For some reason, after successfully reaching the idyllic back porch, manly amounts of Scotch were consumed by some members of our party. By 9pm Steve's Panamanian wife Mary had whipped up something I'm pretty sure she can make in her sleep, pollo asada with black beans and rice (eaten with generous pours from a bottle of habanero sauce), and then we spent the next couple of hours trying to revive a miscalibrated Steve (bottom left), miraculously succeeding around 1am and then playing for several hours, until we were all quite miscalibrated.

eight seconds later.

Add to this one cup of hot coffee, and you have a Breakfast of Champions. Though it was more like 10 or 11 seconds with our microwave.

+++

cosa nostra.

If this is supposed to be some kind of summer break, I'm failing miserably. Could we please bring on the quiet time?

I'm quite far behind on posting pictures, but please bear with me: I just got back from a Weekend With The Boys, and you probably know what those are like.

+++

So, skip ahead to tonight: pictured above is a relatively imposing-looking posse that I am somehow related to. We have a Big Adventure planned for this coming weekend in which we are all going to get dressed up and wreak havoc upon yet another cousin who is the bar manager of a "hot" "club" downtown. I imagine that once all of us sizable dudes are all dolled up we will look like not much more than Mara's security team.

+++

Tonight, however, we were all about cooking. Chris (above left) is an actual chef, and he made seared scallops with a beurre blanc and a pomegranate reduction, served with a pretty perfect salad: arugula, bacon, cherry tomatoes, and a truffle vinaigrette. Mara and I made Chinese pork ribs, red food coloring and all, from this Saveur recipe, our only modification being a halving of the hoisin sauce, but in retrospect I think the original recipe may have been a better idea.

the good side.

The semi-mangled piece of BBQed chicken in this picture is not really the point. The point is the corn salad directly north. I could eat this all day. It's from a now-gone restaurant (or perhaps there was more than one?) called Stringer's Fish Camp, that used to specialize in fried fish and this awesome side dish. This recipe comes from here, below is my slight modification/Europeanization.

+++

stringers corn salad.

1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream or crème fraîche
1 to 3 tbsp cider vinegar, depending on your vinegar and your corn
2 biggish (400gr?) cans of corn, drained
1/2 cup minced sweet onion
1 jalapeno or other hot green chile (Holland or Thai would be fine), seeded and minced
salt and pepper to taste

Combine and chill for an hour before serving. Serves 4 I would imagine.

+++

back on buford.

Finally had banh mi today, and, well...I've got some good news and some bad news. Actually they're both the same news: it's a nice sandwich, but I'll take a broodje pom hands down, any day of the week, etc. I really don't think it's that I had a bad one (or two)...I'm pretty sure I get how it works. It's just really no competition for Amsterdam's Indo-Surinamese sandwich trade. Sorry!

alligator, mole.

More detail to come, but for now: what we have here is a pretty OK Gator Taco, a not-so-great Cajun Egg Roll, and a perfectly delicious Abita Turbodog from AJ's (we just wanted a tiny bit of food, and these were the smallest things on the menu...turns out they were also the least impressive things we've eaten there).

Then a few hours later we made a series of small plates for the family dinner: some Monterey Jack and mole quesadillas (yes, mole from a jar); some shrimp satays with peanut sauce + some of those reliable quick Surinamese pickles (because there we are overwhelmed with cucumbers from the garden), plus a watermelon-feta-mint-balsamic salad that I've been wanting to make for a long time, very good.

Sorry for the oversaturated photos, I'm not using my computer, and the image-tweaking software I'm currently using has no patience for my normal shenanigans. It's also a Mac keyboard, and so my typing isn't what it should be. Typos abound.

q.

So, we're in Atlanta, staying with Mara's parents in the house that used to be "ours" (and in fact still feels pretty much like "ours" because almost nothing has changed about it: same old billiards table, same old couches and beds, same old custom-osity of furniture, same old creative room-to-room paint jobs, ect ect ect).

A side effect of this is that, for better or worse, we are in our old stomping grounds: by car, there are only a couple of ways in and out of this neck of the woods, and each of them involves passing one or more nostalgic landmarks. Today's case in point: Sonny's Real Pit Bar-B-Q.

+++



If you're looking for guitar strings in East Cobb these days, your options are few and far between: I headed down to the Big Chicken, turned south on Highway 41 (yes, that Highway 41), and was looking for the now-defunct MARS Music (which I then remembered had already been gone the last time I looked for it) when I realized that A) I was hungry, and B) I was right in front of Sonny's.

Now, if you're a real BBQ person you'll cringe at this, but I used to eat at Sonny's all the damn time back in the 1990s. I knew that it wasn't the best BBQ in the world, but it was right on my way home from work, that's the only excuse I can offer.

After reading tons of negative reviews about Sonny's on the Google wire, I have some disturbing news: I think it used to be worse than it is now. In fact, I think I'm happy to report that either it has improved significantly or I have been so unbelievably BBQ-deprived for the last 7 or 8 years that I am under the illusion that it has improved significantly, either of which is fine by me. Today I had a pulled pork sandwich with their new hot sauce, which I thought was a solid improvement over what I remembered (if you click on the bottom picture you can check out the list of highly unnatural ingredients).

This sauce compels me to highlight the fact that Sonny's is a chain, and their BBQ sauces are very obviously not the result of some grizzled old pitmaster hunkering down over a hot stove, tweaking his decades-old recipe into perfection: these sauces are straight from the laboratory. Nonetheless, considering my recent lack of BBQ, this was a satisfying sandwich experience overall.

I'm planning a few more BBQ excursions while I 'm here: since Mara is ostensibly on a Pork Hiatus, I've got to get some pig somehows. So for the sake of comparison, I'll call this pulled pork sandwich a good, solid 6.0/10.0, with the strong caveat that this is my first BBQ sandwich in a long time: absence has almost definitely made my heart grow fonder.

noodlehat, cups.

Above: five years ago I would've stolen this hat from Big Dog. Below: why don't we have these in Amsterdam?

welcome to scimmieland.

Bet you're wondering what happened to me, or maybe you're not. I'm guessing you're about to find out regardless: I'm in America.

One of many reasons that I haven't been blogging is that my visit here was a surprise to a few of the primary recipients of my presence, and I was very afraid that I would blow the surprise.

But now I'm here and can blow any surprises I want to, which I will begin doing imminently. Until that shining moment, I shall pepper the hypothetical you with random fun facts from the last 2 months of my life. Here goes:

1) I believe I have exhausted Facebook's ability to hook me up with my friends. When I go to "Suggestions" now (the feature that suggests people that you should probably be friends with), the only people left are people that I actively avoid in social situations. Clicking on the "Suggestions" button is a little bit like a terrible nightmare, or like a gig I went to a couple weeks ago where all of these UnFriends were in attendance and I spent most of my time hiding behind a large ornate column. Not really, but I wanted to hide behind a large ornate column. BTW, posts like this are the reason that I won't be hooking this blog up to Facebook anytime soon.

2) Monday morning I awoke to find a large black dead dog in my hallway. No blood, no one else around, just me, my full bladder, and Death. This is no way to start one's day. As I explained to Klary in email shortly thereafter, my next moves were to A) go back into my room and then go back into the hall a couple of times to make sure that the dog was truly dead, which it was. And then B) begin to stress out because my brand-new catsitter (who I've just met for the first time a few days ago) was showing up for duty in less than 24 hours, and, really, how do you explain any kind of large dead animal sitting outside your apartment door? "Oh don't bother feeding that one, hahahahahahhaha"? Long story short, the answers to your unasked questions are: the neighbor; epilepsy; shortly thereafter; I don't know.

+++

out in the streets.

Start the presses: I'm planning to go out to dinner, finally hitting Fenan Klein Afrika on Thursday with a whole pile-up of homies.

Other than that, no plans for forseeable future, and that sounds great.

+++

REVIEWETTE: I thought the food at Fenan was sufficiently interesting, diverse, and inexpensive to easily warrant one or more return visits. Certainly one of the better Eritrean/Ethiopian restaurant meals I've had, primarily due to the distinctive spicing across a range of 10 or 12 dishes: nothing really tasted like anything else on the (large) plate. And as always seems to be the case at Ethiopian places: lovely people.

+++

wankie? yanked.

I think that this last little while here can be called the longest unscheduled VDuck outage in history. Several intriguing forces combined in a sort of Perfect Storm of blogging demotivation, and I was cast as the Andrea Gail. But, you know, in a significantly less deadly or even dramatic way.

So, yes: the theatre/er experience speedboat left me spinning in its wake, and it took some time to get used to the placid pace of "normal life" again. Still not there yet: this little duckling's eye continues to scan the horizon for a glimpse of the receding speedboat speck as it continues to speed on its merry speeding way, speedily...

I obviously haven't written in some time, bear with me.

+++

The summery glimpse we opened with is the kind of weather that I was talking about in my last post: a perfectly sunny, breezy 70F that made you want to be outside all day. Sadly, those days are gone, which makes total sense because well, now I have a few weeks off.

+++

Above: Pacific Parc. I actually had a nice time there a week or so ago...the service problems that made it such a drag before seem to have been totally cleared up.

EDIT: totally not true. Went back with Klary and Dennis and experienced the good ol' comedy of errors that is their trademark. And Klary had the worst-looking tosti I've ever seen.

And below: This is the view from our window onto the street where a departing Sweet Mooperbird heads off to Omerica for a month. That's the bad news. The good news is: she is going to send us some pictures.

More in a bit.

+++

full stop.

And then suddenly...it all stopped. Well, not all of it: I'm dreaming about it now, and still hearing the music when I'm awake...

But instead of being inside a theater talking about HQIs, megaphone directionality, or the Glitterbush, I am outside in the amazing Amsterdam sun, which offers a bit of consolation.

+++

i love a parade.

This is Groningen, where I just spent an exhausting but thoroughly enjoyable week with my two Good Collaborators. It was kind of like a vacation with 12-hour work days. Very new and creatively disorienting stuff, this whole theater business, but everyone and everything about the Grand Theater was just awesomely supportive and so it was OK.

More detail perhaps after tonight's Showdown With Destiny.

festiveheads.

When we're not being Serious Artists upstairs (pictured above), we're debriefing downstairs in the restaurant, which is called Lab 111.

This is the most frequently I've eaten out in a long time, say 4 times in the past couple of weeks, and thus far I really have no complaints about this place: the space is relaxed and fun to look at, friendly people behind the bar, mostly decent music, etc.

The food? I don't really know, I eat the same thing every time, and it's great: a sort of steak salad with red lettuce, truffle oil, thick shavings of Parmesan, and some kind of very light soy vinaigrette. Accompanied by a glass or two of red before and/or during, it's an excellent way to spend 20 minutes (and 9 euro).

+++

disappearer.

I'm going away for a couple of weeks, nothing's wrong, it's the homestretch of this theatre piece that I've been working on, my first. It's been a generally/genuinely fun and educational experience with exception of any point at which I have to interact with or rely on the worthless curator/promoter, who is at best possibly stupid and a definitely thoroughly incompetent annoyance. At best. At worst, she inspires me to the concoction of atypically irrational revenge schemes, which I will share with you all in the event that I am forced to deploy any of them.

But whatever. Take a deep cleansing breath. It's about the art, right? Above is a photo of my Good Collaborator's poodle happily relaxing in the refuse of our opening procession.

See y'all in a bit.

Oh yeah, and this:

+++

medianoche.

Actually, it's quite a bit later than that. In lieu of sleeping, I'm making lists in my head, so I thought that writing them here might make them go away for a while.

Before I jotted down This Morning's 5:14 Obsession, I did some Googling on what a "safe" amount of melatonin would be. I normally take 0.3 mg per night, which is three of these tiny tiny pills. People with chronic insomnia can be prescribed doses of up to 6mg (60 of my tiny tiny pills). So it seems that another one shouldn't hurt me right now.

After I jotted down TM5O, I combined some mozzarella and harissa in my mouth (wrapped in a bit of lavash), and I was reminded of this thing that I once wanted to make but forgot about.

+++

Today's shopping list:

1 jar roasted eggplant
1 thing of yoghurt
check to see if our garlic is still alright
2 lemons
1 cup of walnuts
3-6 red peppers or a jar
pomegranate molasses
mint
cilantro
kalonji

baguettes

+++

The above was all for some birthday party cooking I'm doing, any guesses as to what I'm making? That was rhetorical, I'm making Syrian muhammara and Persian borani e badjeman, those are my spellings without Googling, now let's see how close I was to the generally accepted spellings: yes and oops.

Does that ever happen to you? You think you learn a word in another language, and pronounce it in your head enough to where you "learn" the pronunciation, only to find out later that you've made some sort of gross transposition of elements? Nope, just me? Coooool.

+++

white on white.

To further illustrate how far blogging has fallen on my list of priorities: I've been waiting to accept a certain dinner invitation for two years or so, and yet on Tuesday when it finally happened I somehow managed to not bring my camera. Luckily, the cook is an excellent photographer herself. As well as being an excellent cook.

And me? I'm reduced to posting pictures of my cat. This is a current look at the reclusive Jo3n Kitty.

+++

downtime: fried.

The title of this post just keeps getting more relevant. Last night's 40th birthday party (not mine) has left this duck with a case of the Sleepies. Luckily my plans today can all be accomplished while laying down.

In other news: I just found out that I'm an INFP, which according to Wikipedia is something that only 1% of people are (or maybe as high as 4.5%...less notable). Regardless, I'm special. I'm...so very special.

+++

Made a great piece of salmon for the first time in forever last night, coated liberally with Mara's homemade saag paneer curry powder from yesteryear, pan-fried in walnut oil, and topped with a salad/relish/salsa of cucumbers, tomato, raw onion, and lime with optional fresh basil (the photo above is from a subsequent version with different accoutrements).

UPDATE: I've made it twice thrice now and it's Thoroughly Repeatable, recipe to come as soon as we can remember how we made the curry powder.

There's not really a recipe for the salmon: pan-fry it for 3-4 minutes per side. After liberally coating it with this here homemade curry powder and a bit of salt:
+++

coriander-centric curry rub for steak and salmon

2 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp whole cloves
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp cardamom seeds
1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
1 tbsp turmeric

Toast everything but the turmeric, grind, then add turmeric. Store covered for a month or two.

+++

steak break.

Yes. As we know, not much cooking going on, but tonight I treated my lonely-ass hermit-like self to a steak, and I did something to it I've wanted to do for a while, which is experiment with Mark Miller's Beef + Smoked Oysters thing.

It was perfect for what I wanted, supergood and in fact also perfect for the next truly manly dinner I want to cook. The gist of my simplified version is: take a steak or two, crust them with cumin seed and black pepper (no salt was necessary in my case, but it could be in yours), pan-fry for 4 minutes a side, then throw 6-8 smoked oysters (yes, from a tin) in the pan for 30 seconds or so, spill the whole thing out on a plate and scatter minced chives or scallions across the top and serve with cilantro-rich pico de gallo.

Really good. Mr. Miller adds thyme and wraps his steaks in bacon and does several other time-consuming fancy things in the process, but really this quick and dirty version was plenty good enough for this mufka.

+++

all natural.

It's official: I'm having some kind of food apathy crisis, nothing sounds good except pizza.

Although I'm not actually eating any pizza. I wisely stocked the fridge full of vegetables earlier this week and am now forced to make my way through them: yesterday I roasted this fennel in a Sicilian way with olive oil, orange, lemon, saffron, almonds, and raisins and threw it on toasted bread for Mara with fresh basil and mayo, that was pretty good.

Maybe I'm just busy. But what's my excuse for somehow not noticing that Wendy and Lisa were gay?

+++

in the cradle.

I am currently working on Double Headphones Project II,  a side effect of which is that I have a fully-functioning recording studio in my bed (a very small portion of which is pictured here), complete with an easily-startled, computer-fan-blocking calico sister. 

Actually the nicest thing so far about DHP II is that it only involves one set of headphones, thanks to the device in the foreground. Yay technology! And yay me for finally buying some that increases my efficiency instead of vicey versy. 

+++

summer breeze.

Etc.

+++

Summer is here, or at least spring is here, or at least the 6-month block of non-winter weather from April to September has begun. Or, to sum: I'm wearing shorts and everybody in Amsterdam is in a much much better mood all of the sudden, though probably not because of the shorts.

Every year, the transformation of the city at the beginning of April is sudden, dramatic, and somehow always exceeds my expectations. Is it the mythical Hollands licht that's responsible? Could be. Or is it just the regular-ol' sun, finally nudging temperatures over the 60°F/15°C mark, thus allowing me to bare my calves without appearing thoroughly insane (Dutch people still think this is relatively insane, or at least in poor taste, but their scorn is delivered in a generally non-hostile "Oh, look at the silly American" kind of way).

I will readily admit that I am on the bleeding edge of short pant technology adoption. The first day of my own personal shorts-wearing season finds me generally alone in this regard unless I go into the center of town and see a couple of brave/foolish tourists. And yes, sometimes it feels a bit early: it was just Sunday night on the roof of the OT301 that found me shivering a tiny bit after the sun went down.

What I don't understand is why no one else seems to understand my eagerness to dress for summer. Shorts mean sun, sand, terraces, extended vacations, road trips, white beaches, cactus-y deserts, refreshing breezes, azure skies and azure swimming pools, tiki bars, tan lines, late sunsets, crashing waves, all-day barbecues, fancy cocktails with lime and/or mint, ice-cold (or not) six-packs of unfancy beer, scantily-clad womens, coconut-scented suntan lotion, frisbee chasing, pigskin chucking, and 75 other Good Things that signify festivity (a loaded word these days but yes that's what I mean), renewal, and/or relaxation. You cannot blame a brother for trying to make this part of the year last as long as possible.

+++