received a wonderful packet of music recently from friend battle bend in austin…

enjoyed a tape by spirit of space (tenth release from natrixnatrix– i’ll be sure to check in on what they are up to from time to time) on repeat all day long yesterday. listened while i cooked up a pot of lentil soup (which was unexpectedly–but delightfully– shared on about one hour’s notice with an old friend who happened to be in town for a minute on business), listened from the patio with a chorus of distant trains, planes, and wind through trees and neighbor’s chimes, listened with bradley when he got home from work, even he (though loathe to–he doesn’t like anything current almost as a rule) had to admit how very much he liked it.  not tolerated it… liked it.  a lot.

also immensely enjoyed the offerings from battle bend, especially a duet with emily called “how’s the world treating you”… this is gonna sound silly maybe, but the only way to describe the feeling i had listening to these songs (again, repeatedly) is to say that i’m really proud of andrew. he does good.

and speaking of talented young friends, sayla shares her music with the web wide world, too, these days.  were you writing and recording songs that good (or at all) in high school? i wasn’t.  can’t wait ’til portland can count her as one of it’s own and we can count her as one of our neighbors (and, possibly, collaborators?).

all you naysaying old man people, shaking your heads and muttering about kids these days, inspire yourselves. the kids are alright.

you might be wondering about that new album…

we and mushpot have agreed that the new album shall be released this coming spring.

expect an ep in the interim.

we’re working on what promises to be the best stuff we’ve ever done… can’t wait to share it!

i remember one time, when my dad and i went to the store to pick up the ingredients for this soup, the one he always used to make us when the weather changed and we started to feel it a bit, he told me to eat turnips, always. my eyes rolled into the back of my head whenever my dad would say something so ridiculous. “they clean your blood,” he said, “they make you feel good.” and you know what i know now? they do.

so, i’m feeling this cool weather, my lips are dry and my throat is, too. here’s what i do:

start about a cup and a half of brown rice (or any grain) soaking in a bowl of water.

preheat a big pot over medium-low heat while you chop an onion. drop it in with some olive oil then get to work washing and chopping a leek (choose leeks with long, white stems). add the leek and stir every once in awhile as you wash and chop your greens.

the easiest way to wash a bunch of greens is to fill the sink (or a big pot) with water, drop them all in and swish them about. all of the dirt sinks to the bottom! the greens i usually use for sick soup are swiss chard, turnip greens (if you’ve got turnips with the greens, that is) and flat leaf (also called italian) parsley. you could use spinach and cilantro, though, it really doesn’t matter. use whatever is fresh and abundant.

chop the greens (after taking the parsley or cilantro leaves off the stem), add them to the onions and leeks, put a generous amount of turmeric in with them, and watch them cook down while you set the kettle to boil.

add the boiling water to the greens, add the soaking rice and a couple of cubed turnips, cover, and let the whole thing cook on low for an hour or so. at this point, add some cubed potatoes and chunks of carrots, salt and pepper to taste, and let continue cooking ten minutes or so.

serve this soup with lots of lemon juice (essential to help your body absorb the iron in the greens, right?) and a large dollop of yogurt.

the first weekend that bradley and i spent together in san francisco (a year, a thousand miles, and over 500 emails away from our first meeting in a sacramento record store), we lived off nothing but knob creek and nicotine for two days. sunday night we ate our first meal together: sick soup that i had in the freezer. i guess that in all those e-mails and phone conversations we’d used to get to know each other, i never did tell him how i was with food.

he found out that night. two days of not eating or sleeping, the emotional intensity of our first meeting, the warmth of sick soup and its goodness… it isn’t any wonder that i broke down that night, smiling and crying at the same time, and told bradley about the waking vision i’d just had while we stared at each other after dinner. i had seen flashes of myself in a variety of different futures, as a teacher, a mother, an old woman, a homemaker, a professional. in every situation, i had been perfectly content, a radiantly beautiful woman.  all of a sudden i realized, and exclaimed to him, “i am going to have a happy life.” ahh, sick soup.

the entire album is now available for free download from lastFM.

sweet deal, huh?

if you send me $7 (shipping included, oh yes), i’ll send you the cd with the original, handmade cover.

email boolar.org@gmail.com to find out how.  i think i’m even ready to take paypal.

kheili mamnoon (thank you) ali (my new half-iranian friend, neighbor and customer), for the beautiful home-grown yellow summer squash. i made that soup out of them. here’s how:

after working two nights in a row until 2 am, but still getting up at 7 to make my lover his breakfast and pack him up a lunch, i found myself (forgiveably) tired late yesterday afternoon when i realized that i didn’t have anything for bradley to take to work for lunch (it is my sincere goal now that he is working that he will have a hot breakfast, home-made lunch, and dinner ready when he gets home every day).

so i got to work scooping the seeds out of the biggest two specimens. i chopped them into large, rough pieces and threw them into a pot on top of sauteeing onions, added boiling water from the kettle and all of the ripest tomatoes you gave me, including the split ones (i ate the grape tomatoes while i worked. gorgeous.).

left that to simmer on low and then fell asleep.

when i woke, i pureed the soft mess i found, added some salt, my own garam masala spice blend, turmeric, cayenne, fresh grated ginger, garlic, and a can of coconut milk. then i chopped carrots, dino kale and broccoli and added them along with frozen peas.

at this point, i turned off the heat, let the veggies cook a bit while the soup cooled and i got ready for bed (again. this time for good).

sent bradley off this morning with a nice container of it, but when i heated a bit for my own lunch, i wasn’t quite pleased with the taste.

added a bit more salt, which helped, but then racked my brain thinking of what else i might use to good effect. could have added honey, but i shy away from added sweeteners. it was just too thin, not in texture, but taste… the spice was right up front, but it didn’t have anything to sit on, if you know what i mean.

fat certainly wouldn’t hurt, so i added a pat of butter.

and then i got it. sage.

i love love love love sage in curries. what the heck are you putting sage in a curry for? you ask? because i’m crazy, and the smoked woodsy astringent menthol of sage works so goshdarn well with spice. and it was just right!

kheili khoobeh, i do say so myself.

that salad is a bit of lettuce, another of those beautiful tomatoes, and a bunch of my cultured turnips and beets (like sauerkraut, but way rootier. in fact, this batch of fremented veggies doesn’t actually taste good, but makes me feel so fine that i’m addicted!).

here are the records (off the top of my head) that i always want to hear this year:

the beach boys “love you” (actually, each and every album. “today” is right before “pet sounds” and shows every bit of what’s to come, “friends” is late 60’s and one of my favorites, “love you” is brian’s 1977 comeback… weird, maybe, but seriously good songs, “little deuce coupe” has “no-go showboat” and “custom machine,” worth the price of admission on their own, i can’t say enough about “farmer’s daughter” from “surfin’ u.s.a.” and “good timin’” off “l.a. light,” which is not only my favorite song right now, but probably the last great thing brian put out until he presented “smile” earlier this century)

randy newman “sail away” (if you don’t love it, you aren’t human)

genesis “the lamb lies down on broadway” “selling england by the pound” & “foxtrot” (take note: phil is in fact a fantastic drummer (and back-up singer)… check out the extended crazy-time breakdown on “cinema show” for proof of the first)

r.e.m. “chronic town” (it goes by way too quickly. check out that jangle.)

wendy (walter) carlos “switched on bach” (not.just.a.novelty.)

the beatles “sgt pepper’s lonely hearts club band” (it’s never too late)

hans joachim roedelius “selbsporttrait II” & “wenn der sudwind weht” (he even has a myspace these days! what a hip old man)

his name is alive “home is in your head” & “mouth by mouth”

young marble giants “colossal youth“

place tomatillos (pulled out of that papery shell, washed, and halved), garlic cloves, and jalapenos on a baking sheet and stick ‘em under the broiler for about ten minutes (see the picture for proportions, add more jalapenos for more spice) until they are blackish.

stick them in the blender with a bunch of cilantro leaves, salt (i’ll do a whole post some day on salt– just know that i only use light grey celtic sea salt) and some lime juice (i used two limes for as many tomatillos as you see in the picture, but i like it sour).

add finely minced onion (don’t even think about just blending raw onions with the rest; it adds a sulphur flavor. it’s worth the extra work to chop them up!).

eat with chips, on top of beans and rice, or over corn tortillas filled with cheddar cheese and baked! delicious.

had $40 when i got to the farmer’s market. had $0.75 when i got home with (all organic or wild):

*2 huge asian cukes ($1 each!)

*4 yellow zucchini ($0.25)

*3 leeks ($1 each– and just look at the size of them!)

*large bag tomatillos (couple bucks a pound)

*2 jalapenos (quarter a piece)

*bunch cilantro ($1)

*3 large red sweet onion, fresh ($1 each)

*1 fennel bulb ($2)

*1 celeriac root ($2)

*bag of yukon gold potatoes ($0.90/lb)

*1 round fressen caraway rye sourdough ($4)

*1 bunch purple(!) carrots ($2.50)

*4 seriously funky-shaped carrots (but the sweetest ever) from the old german guy ($3)

*1 hunka cancer-preventing maitake mushroom ($4)

*1 buncha dino kale ($1.75)

had grilled raw sharp cheddar cheese, onion, and mushroom sammies with the tomato soup i made yesterday (from the huge box of amish paste tomatoes i got from thursday’s farmer’s market) for lunch with armando, who stopped by to get a tutorial from bradley on using his new tascam eight track.

as you can see, some things are more expensive than the store (most notably carrots, but they are well worth it!), but most things are a frickin’ steal.  and you can’t buy this kinda flavor in the store!

made roasted tomatillo salsa for tonight’s dinner: enchiladas. the recipe is in it’s own post.

stay tuned this week for “potato leek plus” soup (the plus being fennel, celeriac, and carrots).

and, hey! persephone farm is offering five pounds of garlic for $18. does anybody want to go in on some with me? the deutschess and i split 5lb last year… my half lasted me the winter!

today is the first day since i bought this house, nay, since i have lived in this house, since i have lived in portland, perhaps, that i have the house to myself. yes, really.

what, then, have i done with my day, you may wonder.

*thought about what i wanted to make today as i walked to the co-op shortly after waking. definitely yogurt, hardboiled eggs would be nice for breakfast/lunch, bread (perhaps i could begin work on my own sourdough starter?), and miso soup is definitely what i want for dinner on a rainy day like this.

*didn’t find any stupendous deals in the produce dept so i decided to wait for the farmer’s mkt this afternoon, but took some shitakes for my miso and grabbed one of fressen’s sourdough whole wheat rounds.

i had a major shopping crisis when i turned to dairy and eggs. why? in the absence of the premium, local tipping tree or geer crest orange-yolked beauties i usually go for, i had to choose between chino valley’s decent-in-taste-but-shipped-from-california or steibr’s local-not-as-tasty-but-less-expensive eggs (both overpriced, as far as i’m concerned). chose local.

then i turned to the milk, for my yogurt. they now have strauss whole milk non-homogenized milk in the glass jar! i was so excited to see. but i immediately felt guilty about the fact that it comes all the way from california, and it costs a dollar more than the local organic valley pasteurized/homogenized in paper carton. finally decided to go for it, both because of the health and taste benefits and because it does come in a reusable (even better than recyclable, in my opinion) glass jar.

popped by bulk. bee-ront was excited to find a notecard on which i had written a recipe for a homemade soda that not only contains both sassafras and sarsparilla, but burdock and dandelion roots as well. i was excited that he was excited because that blend of spices is good for cleansing the liver and will help him in his quest to avoid alcohol. picking up the makings for that added at least ten, twenty minutes to my shopping excursion. what the heck for, you ask? cause i certainly couldn’t just use five little plastic bags (and five twisty ties) for the bulk spices! i had to go to the back, find reusable containers (and their matching lids), weigh them, label them, and then grab spices. thankfully, the alberta co-op has finally gotten a scale at the bulk station, so i don’t have to bother the cashiers for my tare weighing any longer!

*once home, i put on randy newman’s sail away, which had been in my head on the walk, started my eggs a-boiling, my soda spices a-mulling, my oat groats (for tomorrow’s breakfast) a-soaking, my milk (for yogurt) a-heating, a few veggie scraps that i had saved (carrot top, onion skins and tops, ginger, and garlic) a-brothing, and a generous hunk of the loaf a-toasting (which i burnt because i went to the internet to find the obituary for bee-ront’s childhood best-friend, brade, who died of undisclosed causes on september 11th).

*after my harby wegg and burnt toast (i actually love it that way–and it is easier to digest) with butter, i walked down a block to grab some windfall apples off the side of the road. once home, i washed the ants and worms (that i could see) off, used my paring knife the way god intended it to be used (cutting off rotten bits of apple & the worms that rotted them), juiced them and added the juice to the “mother” in the bottom of what little vinegar i had left. those of you who make kombucha should be familiar with the term “mother.” it’s a euphemism for slimy sludge made of fungi, yeasts, and bacteria living together in a symbiotic relationship. yum. apple cider vinegar is the only vinegar i use. i’ll do a post only on vinegar soon.

discovered in the process that my copy of wild fermentation is missing. i.can’t.find.it. how can this be possible? i reference that book more than the dictionary. something must be done.

*my lover came home for lunch. put some toast on as soon as i saw him through the window and whipped up an egg salad before it was done. tomato and onion slices completed his sandwich. had my first cup of coffee with him after his meal.

so here i am. my soda syrup is reducing (and smells fabulous), my yogurt is culturing, my broth for miso is steeping, i’ve written about it all, and it isn’t even three o’clock.

lovely.

(click here to open in new window or right click or apple-click to open in a new tab or ctrl-click to download)

my dad is having some heart troubles. difficult for me, being thousands and thousands of miles away. so i’ve decided to try for a visa to go see him in iran.

i’m not afraid. i know that the people of iran are incredibly welcoming, perhaps the most hospitable in the world. i know that it’ll be the best food i’ve ever had, as every bit of it is organic and non-gmo by default, and persian cooking is, well, the best. i can’t wait to visit persepolis and see the amazing mosques in esfahan and to go shopping at the bazaars. i’m excited to learn some farsi, finally.

but, there are some buts. as the daughter of an iranian-american dual citizen, i am considered (as is my dad) and iranian citizen and iranian citizen only. this means that i will not be given the same leeway as a western tourist by the government and police (with people, of course, i will be excused for not being competent in their intricate game of politenesses).

it also means that i will be considered an unmarried woman unless my husband and i invite a muslim cleric to our home and get him to sign a muslim marriage certificate (which means that we have accepted islam as our true faith).

i am also at risk, not necessarily great risk, but it is there nonetheless, of having my us passport taken from me upon my arrival.  or of being refused exit documents.  or of the united states dropping bombs on top of my head.

i’m still more excited than afraid.  and yes, i’ll have to wear long sleeves and long dresses or pants and i’ll have to cover my head with a roosari, but a quick google image search of “iran women” proved my dad’s assertion that women are only half covering their heads, hiking up their skirts and wearing form-fitting pants and jackets these days.

anyway, i like wearing things on my head.

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

“adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience”

forethought, follow-through, and ooh ooh ooh good timin’

if you’ll promise not to leave me

and if you’ll promise not to tease me…

good morning/happy birthday


 those was tales. i particularly enjoyed the brill

building/big stone lion movement. ok, here's the

obligatory stupid question: what album were you

listening to when the evil cat did knock knock?

 actually, stephin does live in brooklyn. how would i

know? because he's only five-foot one. so, yes, the

joke is on me.

 about being horrible to snores, i find that hard to

believe. you've been kind and patient with me, and

i've been known to put people to sleep before i'm

through introducing myself. so, for the sole reason

that we're still communicating is proof of your

humility and benevolence. yours is a machete to my

butter knife...

 i had a dream two mornings ago, wherein everyone had

fish for hands and the sun was upside down. because

they all had fish for hands, they couldn't remove

their mirror shades. the moon was much bigger than the

sun. i think they were catfish. long fish-whiskers.

anyway, the part that struck me most was that i

received a letter from you in the japanese language. i

don't recall not understanding what you had written.


 "i'm suggestable, it's true, but only by you."