All posts by Steve Stern

Doing it in the rain

Around home, Local events

 

Farmer's Market loot-1112Over the weekend, a gentle rain –  in reality, a drizzle – fell steadily from the soft gray sky. It has been so long, it seems like magic.

On Saturday night, we had even more magic, going to dinner at Central Kitchen followed by the Kronos Quartet at Z Space, a spectacular birthday present to Michele that I got to enjoy, from Richard and Tracy. Coming into Central Kitchen from the rain, happy customers had already filled the restaurant with damp celebration and all we had to do was join in.

I felt like a young twenty-something again, just starting to go out and explore eating in nice restaurants. My twenties were during the 60’s and besides The Hippies and The Free Speech Movement, the Bay Area was incubating a new food movement that went viral; people as diverse as Cecilia Chiang of the Mandarin Restaurant, and Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, were redefining California food and dining out became an adventure. Central Kitchen, which bills itself as part of the ongoing conversation about what California cuisine means, brought back memories of those adventures. The Central Kitchen was not the best food I have ever had, but it was the most interesting food I have had in a long, long, time. We started with what they called an Orange Wine and it was actually orange – the wine was made as if it were a red, but from white grapes – and delicious.  It went very well with my appraiser of octopus with pork belly, blood sausage, pickled mushroom & almond. 

I grew up with Jazz and  in my late teens and early twenties, Jazz was Chamber Music (we spent alot of time sitting in small dark rooms listening to people like Cal Tjader, Miles Davis, and Barney Kessel). By the late 70’s, I discovered the The Kronos Quartet which has, pretty much by itself, redefined Chamber Music. The program Saturday night was a World Premiere of a work by Mary Kouyoumdjian, Bombs of Beirut, that was commissioned by the Quartet as part of a program called the Under 30 Project which is designed to help nurture the careers of young artists, while enabling Kronos to forge stronger connections with the next creative generation.

So much of my life is habituated and going to Central Kitchen and Z Space reminded me that it wasn’t always so, it also triggered my desire to take more advantage of the adventure of living in Northern California. Central Kitchen’s promo goes on to say  California is a young state, and right now it’s an exciting time to be… That is it, that is all it says as a tagline under the name Central Kitchen, on the Google page. Maybe that is all it needs to say, right now it’s an exciting time to be. 

On the way home from San Francisco, where we spent the night at Richard and Tracy’s, mists hung like cotton sashes in the hills. It was warm – 51°F. – and the trees were heavy with dew, releasing their collected moisture with big drops that hit the ground in hushed splashes. We detoured by the Menlo Park Farmer’s Market because I want to pick up some purple Peruvian potatoes and heritage, Bloomsdale Long Standing , spinach. The drizzle had let up and the farmer’s Market was full; full of shoppers and full of goodies saying Me, me, buy me.

I got some Yukon  Gold potatoes, red Dandelion Greens, baby Collards, and Kai-lan (a sort of proto-broccoli with mostly leaves and stems with yellow flower). Michele got a bunch of  Narcissus Erlicheer, baby lettuces, two huge artichokes, a head of Romanesco broccoli, a couple of lamb shanks from Holding Farm, and a jar of fermented Winter Sauerkraut (cabbage, kale, spinach, carrots, turnips, rutabaga, and kohlrabi, with garlic).

When we got home, we turned on the Olympics and I laid out our loot on the diningroom table to photograph.

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Scarlett Johansson, Oxfam, and SodaStream

Sports, Television

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sodastream

We have a DVR – which we often, mistakenly, call a Tivo – and we watch almost nothing live, guiltingly skipping past the commercials, so it was especially interesting to see the Super Bowl Commercials at Peter and Ophelia’s. I think I saw more commercials in three plus hours than I have seen all year, and I loved it. All the little stories done with such care. As an aside. I know that Ridley Scott and Spike Jonze got their starts doing commercials and I think Ingmar Bergman did also. End aside.

My favorite commercial was the Maserati ad with Quvenzhané Wallis. There were just so many things that I liked about it, the rift  on Beasts of the Southern Wild, the parody of – homagé to? – the GlobalHue agency’s, Imported from Detroit, Chrysler ads, and then the shock that it was a Maserati ad. The New Yorker had it as one of the worst ads while Forbes said it was the best (proof of one of my mother’s sayings, de gustibus non est disputandum). One of the commercials that I didn’t particularly like was the SodaStream ad with Scarlett Johansson.

Scarlett Johansson has a quirky acting style, often she seems to be not quite there, sort of daffily stoned but very appealing; it worked perfectly in her. Among other things, I didn’t like Scarlett telling us how hot she is and that the ad would go viral because she was sucking on a straw (not to say that it wasn’t enjoyable in a prurient way). I didn’t believe that and didn’t really believe that the resulting soda would be any good, but, then, I don’t drink soda.

Later, as I started to read about the controversy over the ad, I began to think that the ad may have actually hurt SodaStream. The SodaStream machinery is made in a factory in the West bank, built on land reclaimed by Israel after it was confiscated from Palestinians, but I didn’t know that. I only know it now because of the controversy over the ad and  Johansson. Johansson had been a Global Ambassador for Oxfam and Oxfam is very strongly against Israel’s West Bank policies. They asked her to leave Oxfam or SodaStream and she left Oxfam.

I have no insight as to why Scarlett Johansson left Oxfam, why she decided the way she did, but the dilemma itself is interesting . As an aside, she does have a Jewish mother and self identifies as being Jewish, she was probably not paid by Oxfam and paid handsomely by SodaStream, and Oxfam is the one who pressed the issue – my theory is that if someone says It’s either me or them, I’ll always go with them – so it might have been some combination of those three. End aside. Acting as  a Global Ambassador for Oxfam works both ways; Oxfam gets more publicity when Scarlett Johansson visits Dadaab, Kenya – the largest refugee camp in the world – than they would if an unknown, non-celebrity, visited and Scarlett Johansson is shown as somebody who cares.

Much of  Bono’s reputation is based on his work with organizations like Amnesty International and it is hard to believe that he would give that up to maintain his commercial relationship with Vuitton – for whom he and his wife have done ads – but Johansson gave up that part of her reputation. It was a very public decision and, in my imagination at least, she did not make it lightly. In the end, I find that a little sad.

 

McCall Winter Carnival

Americana, Travel

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On Saturday, we went on an outing with Ophelia and Peter and the Boise contingent of their family – Ophelia’s son John, his wife Emily, and their kids Lucia, and Maribel – to my first Winter Carnival.  It was a two and a half hour drive, through the stunning country north of Boise. We drove through a long, open, valley surrounded by soft hills and then a narrow canyon carved by the Payette River, then another open valley – all covered with a light dusting of snow that was only sticking to the north slopes – and so on, until we got to McCall.

I have never been to a Winter Carnival before and really didn’t know what to expect. I do like to go to local get togethers – Fiestas, Market Days, Street Fairs or Faires, Auto Shows – it is a great way to see the culture and the Winter Carnival, for me at least, was one of those things that are great to go to at least  once, if only for the novelty. Maybe more than once, if you are young and like to drink beer and listen to music around an open fire…in the cold (it was about 28°).

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Or, one could go to a frozen outside bar surrounded with huge crystals.

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It was also a great place to go to more than once if you are into making ice sculptures. Most of the sculptures we saw were not particularly good – I should put in a caveat here, I have never seen ice sculptures before so my standards may be entirely unrealistic, there was not much snow to work with, and, I have the feeling, that we never actually got to the Idaho State Snow Sculpting Championships in Depot Park – but the winner was excellent (and didn’t photo very well in the flat light).

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After lunch and after looking at some of the sculptures, we  walked out on McCall Lake. I have never walked out on a lake before and it was not as surreal as I would have expected. Part of the normalcy of it was because it is hard to tell where the shore ends and the lake begins. Yes, the shore is sloped and the lake is flat – I am pretty sure – but they seem to fade into one another. The shore is a great place for children to sled and they keep sliding out onto the lake.

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We all had a good time but I think that the kids had the best time.

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Watching the Super Bowl from Boise

Uncategorized

NFC Championship - San Francisco 49ers v Seattle Seahawks

 Richard Sherman  blocking a pass to 49ers’ Michael Crabtree. (Photo by others)

When you’re a public figure, there are rules. Here’s one: A public personality can be black, talented, or arrogant, but he can’t be any more than two of these traits at a times. After Richard Sherman’s outburst, after the biggest game of his career – so far – after the biggest play of his career, the word ‘thug’ had cropped up 625 times on TV. From articles in- on? – Deadspin.

I don’t know very much about Professional Football, I used to, when I was a big fan and followed it on a daily basis but, today, I would describe myself as a lapsed fan . I don’t follow it all season and only start during the playoffs but, this year, that is enough to get me interested again.

It has become a much more complicated game, back in the days when I rabid, it was easier because the different leagues – after the AFL-NFL merger, different conferences –  had different styles of play. The AFL favored wide open play and the defenses often countered with a bump and run pass defense over a zone. I usually knew who to key off of.

But now everybody has evolved – and continues to evolve – and evolution favors the generalists. As an aside, the elephant and the panda do what they do extraordinarily well while the coyote does lots of things pretty well. The elephant and the panda are endangered and coyotes have spread to all 50 states. End aside. Today, nobody runs off of tackle as well as Lombardi’s Packers did but everybody can run off tackle pretty well, run a Bill Walsh type, short pass, crossing pattern pretty well, and go deep, occasionally, pretty well and, for somebody not paying attention until a month ago, telling who is doing it best is hard to tell.

Fortunately, these are good times to be unknowledgeable, the play by play and analysis on TV – for every game – make it easy for everyman to follow, even if you are not sure where the nickleback should be playing or who he is keying off. I used to be very dismissive of magazines like People or Us because they talked about people rather than ideas. However, as football styles have become more universal, the people who are embodying those styles become the easiest way into what is going on. So, like everybody else that doesn’t know the details, I am now following the people.

Following the people , takes me down the road of pitting Denver’s offence, led by Peyton Manning, against Seattle’s defence, symbolized by Richard Sherman or, maybe, the cerebral Broncos symbolized by Peyton Manning, against Seattle’s emotional defence led by Richard Sherman. I almost always go with the cerebral guys over the emotional guys which is why I liked the cerebral Bill Bradley over the more populist Al Gore. As an aside, that is why I think that Obama’s being black helped him in the primaries. He picked up almost all of the black vote which would normally go with the populist candidate plus the cerebral voters, like me. The combination put him over the more populist Hillary. End side.

I started rooting for the AFL – then its AFC descendant – team in the Super Bowl because , if it wasn’t the Raiders, it was a team that had beaten the Raiders in the playoffs and, if they won, I could interpret as proof that the Raiders were, at least, number two and probably would have been number one if the refs hadn’t made all those wrong calls; then it became a habit. So both my habit of going with the AFC and my leaning towards the cerebral should lead me to root for Denver, but I can’t.

During the last two weeks, I have become very fond of Richard Sherman and through him, Seattle. First off, Peyton Manning is from Louisiana and played for the University of Tennessee, while Richard Sherman is from Compton and played at Stanford; I always like to go with the locals. Second, under all the emotion, Sherman is an intellectual – he graduated with a 3.9 GPA – and is a student of the game. He says that he has only mediocre NFL physical tools but makes up for it with meticulous attention to detail.  Lastly, during the last twenty years, or so, the NFL has done everything they can to hinder the defence and help the offence, making the offence the underdog and it is always nice to go with the underdog.

Hopefully, this will end up being one of those games that go to the very end. Before any Super Bowl, all the signs point to it being a classic, great, game; the two best offenses in football going at it, or the two best defenses, or – in this case – the best offence against the best defense. Maybe this year will actually be one of those great games, we will know Sunday night. Go Seahawks!

We are in Boise

Uncategorized

Walking by the Boise River-0926

We are at Peter and Ophelia’s in Boise Idaho – for a very long weekend – for Michele’s birthday. When we arrived Wednesday, on the first commercial prop plane I have been on in – maybe – 49 years, it was snowing but not sticking.

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Yesterday, it was clear and warm – not warm for the Bay Area, but warm for here – so we took a walk near the Boise River. As we were getting ready to go for the walk, I thought maybe I should wear my gloves because I was sure it would be cold in the shade. What I hadn’t counted on is that there wouldn’t be much shade because the trees had all dropped their leaves.

One of the complaints that I read about the Americanization – for lack of a better word – of America is the homogenization of  our culture. Driving down the freeway, every offramp has the same fast food places and Starbucks. The Piggly Wiggly,  National Tea, Skaggs Cash Stores, Devan’s, and their ilk, have been replaced with Whole Foods. We watch the same TV at night and everybody, everywhere, pretty much dresses the same, divided by class – or pay scale – more than region.

All that is true, but the differences are still there, just pick up the local paper. In the Idaho Statesman is an ad for the new Ford – one of the pioneering National brands – Idaho Center featuring Ford Idaho Horse Park, Ford Arena, and Ford Amphitheater; the ad features a picture of a guy on horseback shooting a balloon with a very bright muzzle flash. The last time we were here, on a Saturday afternoon, we went to the Idaho State Capitol building – pretty much in the middle of Boise – and just walked in; no guards, no metal detector, just an open door to a seemingly empty building (although the individual office doors were closed and, presumably, locked).

This morning, it is cold and frosty outside and I have already learned a lesson, never leave your shoes out overnight in Boise, in the winter.

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