Monday, September 29, 2008
Head’s Up: New Year New-osity from an Old-School Newbie
(update: photos from the hike are posted under “photos.” There are plenty of them so use the monthly archive to see them all. Collect them! Trade them with your friends!)
This is the good life my friends… I’m sitting on the couch, my feet are up on the padded hassock, I’m in my throwback Warriors t-shirt, I’ve got a belly full of apple treats and now I get to blog from the top of, shall we say, my “lap.” Feels millenial, peoples. Feels like a new day is upon me, and I don’t just mean Tuesday sneaking round the corner waiting to give me a wedgie when I’m looking at my shoe. I mean it’s a new year, jewish-wise, and that’s a climactic time in the ol’ hebraic calendar. It’s a time to take stock, to make amends, to renew appreciation and to reconnect with traditions that seem to have some beneficial effect on me. Let’s take a moment and review what’s so new about this particular little slice of the time pie, such that I have something to think about during services:
* HIKE through the forest last saturday with Kel and little whatzizname, who fell asleep approximately .5 miles into the four mile Bear Valley Trail that runs from the HQ of Pt Reyes (a park comprising a mere 71 thousand acres with 150 miles of trails) out to Arch Rock. The photos are pretty great and I’ll post them later but for now I can report that it is highly salubrious to take a vigorous hike through the dense verdure of the forests, along the slim trickle of a crystal creek that bounces back the green of the canopy above it, the air full of pine tar and laurel spice and oak dust; sound muffled by redwood boughs and spanish moss and the meandering of the stream itself. There was one short section in the sun, at a meadow where we lunched; the lilies there burst through the loam with irrational exuberance and their petals actually shimmered in the sunlight. Then back again into the forest, and along the broad path till the valley grew broader and higher and eventually the trail just ended at a jutting fist of a cliff thrust abruptly out into the pacific, 100 feet tall, surf pummeling its foot so far below me that I could only smell it. From shaded to glaring, from forest perfume to salt and fresh wind; from a view of gentle obscurantism to 270 degree horizons… it was breathtaking to arrive at the destination, but the whole trip was worth every step. Of which there were several, believe you me.
* SUPPER at a local restaurant for Kel’s birthday. We haven’t had a parents’ night out since my birthday, back in april. This time we really cut loose at Aziza, yet another of the good things about our neighborhood. Let me divulge a smidgen: we started with cocktails and mixed appetizers, which don’t sound that amazing as I read my notes but were incredibly fresh and flavorful. The greens on the mixed plate were purselaine - an archaic veggie that was shockingly delish. And I don’t mean to suggest that the cocktails were anything but extraordinary. Kelly really enjoyed her vodka with rhubarb, fennel, vanilla and black pepper, but I think my gin with lavender and orange-blossom honey was even better. Main dishes were chicken breasts with sicilian couscous (much like israeli couscous but substituting vendetta for compulsory military service), a baked (and sugar-sweet) cioppolini onion, and slivered dates; Kel got lamb chops with figs and fried chard, and we shared a big bowl of ginger glazed veggies that were perfectly cooked. (With the meal Kel got a glass of brico blina barbera ‘05 and I had a bottle of Saison Dupont belgian farm ale.) Dessert was the typical: fresh-baked hazelnut madelines, cinnamon ice cream and goat cheese sorbet, with some kind of chopped fruity product (mango? sharlaine melon? I stopped asking) - everything tasted great, especially together, and especially especially with the big glass of Obsello absinthe we shared. We were home by 8:45 to relieve the babysitters, my two lovely nieces - WHO REFUSED HALF THE MONEY WE OFFERED THEM. Two teen-aged girls for two and a half hours, and they wouldn’t take two twenties? THAT is a good way to end the kind of evening that sharpens one’s appreciation for the good things in life.
* NEW MUSEUM: with that great “new museum” smell. We walked all the way to the new Academy of Sciences building, three blocks down and two over, sauntered in with a printout of the receipt my mom sent us when she got us a membership (thanks mom!) in no time flat, and spent three hours gaping at dino bones, jellyfish, a four-story living rain forest (with birds and butterflies, but no pesky flesh-eating centipedes), and innumerable other coolnesses. We can go anytime now. It is an incredible resource, right here in our zip code. New things burgeon, and I am the burgee, with responsibility for appreciating them - not just for their newness alone, though that is one good thing to appreciate about things that are new.
* NEW PROGRAMMING: Survivor and Amazing Race are both back on the air. Shut up. This is good for me. Even as the cycle of programming repeats itself, it has moved forward with a new menagerie of freaks and jerks and disasters-waiting-to-happen. I learn something from every season of Survivor about how to handle myself in a crisis - or not. And Amazing Race is just shamefully addictive. The cycles and circuits of the networks replicate those of the heavens upon which they are loosely based. I’m looking forward to 26 or so hours of sitting on my butt in front of the tube. It’s comforting, just as is the eternal repetition of the seasons. I count that in the “plus” column.
* NEW MAGAZINE: I got Kel a subscription to Cooks Illustrated. I was hoping for a Rachael Ray pictorial but I didn’t even get Paula Deen - it’s the Consumer Reports of food: they take a recipe and tweak it every possible way till it’s at it’s best. They review premium bacons and have a guide to buying and using mushrooms. Pictures are clinical and simple, designed to help you get more out of the kitchen. They don’t try to save you money but often do; they don’t try to make things easier - just better. It’s a fun rag and we’ve got a year’s worth coming our way. It promises to help us find more value and benefit in what we do all the time anyway - cooking and eating. Kel’s already got some recipes picked out for trials. And a year that starts with new recipes and better techniques, is a year that starts out on the right track.
On a related note, for Rosh Hashona on Monday night I baked an excellent apple cake (mix four yolks with sugar, then flour; fold in beaten whites and layer with thin slices of apple) and we had it after a supper of baked chicken (not perfect, though that’s not the recipe’s fault) and brussels sprouts a la juif, which made up for any perfection deficit suffered by any other part of the meal.
* NEW UNDERWEAR: a major restocking. Details on demand, with SASE and reciprocation. Generous only need apply. But it’s a truism that, with a new pair of boxers under your slacks, every old thing seems new again - and that goes double for the new year.
Services resume tomorrow morning so I’d best get some rest. I’ll get to some more essay-like stuff real soon, and I’ll post those pix from the hike too. Meantime, shana tovah to each and every one of you, and let’s take our cue from the way things have been going for me lately and appreciate some newness. It doesn’t last forever, you know, so you’d best enjoy while you have the chance.