Anise Seed Wafers

I came across a recipe for Tortas de Aciete y Anis in the cookbook "Food of Spain". I am always looking for recipes where the fat in the cookie or biscuit or bread or wafer is olive oil and there seems to be some tradition of this in Spain because Mark Bittman has a great orange cookie recipe that he says is an ancient Sevillan recipe. So I tried this recipe and it is quite good - I of course added the part about whole wheat flour and I like a little less sugar. The totally weird thing about this was that the liquids are all alcoholic - beer and anissette - except for the olive oil. Easy to make and fun, they remind me of my friend T., an epicurean dandy who used to mix hash and tobacco into roll your own anise papers. Ahhh, the days of youth.

Speaking of which, I have started to notice that some people in LA have an abundance of statuary. This house has many many many replicas of David.

Tortas de Aciete y Anis
3 cups all purpose flour (or half and half all purpose and whole wheat pastry)
1/2 Cup Olive Oil
1/2 cup beer
1/4 Cup Spanis Anis Liqueur

1/2 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Sesame Seeds
2 Tabls. Aniseeds

Preheat oven to 400 - line baking sheet with parchment.

Mix flour, 1 teas. salt in a bowl and make a well. Pour in beer, olive oil and anissette. Mix into a dough. Knead for about 4 minutes. Make into a ball. Divide dough in half. Divide each half into 8 portions.

Combine sugar sesame seeds and aniseeds.

Make a pile of seed mixture on your work surface, put a piece of dough on it, roll out on top of the seeds, embedding the seeds into the top. You want a six inch round. Put the rounds on baking sheet, seed side up and bake for about 5 or 6 minutes, until bases are crisp. Then broil until the sugar carmelizes about 60 secs in my case in my oven.

Drink with coffee and a little anisette.

We have been stressing out about the election and so ....

We garden.

Here you can see the central part of the driveway, which we dug up, removed the bricks and then planted with dymondia - a non-native plant that is drought resistant. The sides were dug up as well and California Fescue, which is native was planted. You can see the arch of the lemon tree that the beloved C. has been shaping.

The Rev. Auntie L got us started on this kick by giving us a garden center gift certificate. So off we went to purchase plants and to labour in the yard. The side garden here is coming along, soon we will plant bamboo mumbly and purple manzanita and then we will espalier meyer lemon and kaffir lime against the fence.

Here is the front of the house, with about a five foot square of evil grass dug up and planted with dymondia, and the front planter under the kitchen window having the weeds replaced with Allodia and some weird round ball stuff we had lying around in a pot with a distressed cactus. So we planted them in the planter as well and then took the stones that we had used on the back patio that we dug and really wasn't working because Beso was digging them out and eating the stones.

And here is a top - down view of the planter

Here's a close up of the Allodia.

And here is a photo of Beso looking like the flying nun.

Things I wonder about

The New York Times reported that in Georgia, the Georgians count in Base 20 and have
consonant clusters like “gvprtskvni”. And that maybe the closest language is Basque.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/weekinreview/24barry.html?ref=weekinreview

What does this mean? How can you have a base 20 counting system in 2008? Do the children have to go to school barefoot so they can use their fingers and toes to do math?

In the markets do people say “gvprtskvni” while waving their fingers and toes about meaning I'll have DA20 cows and you can pay in .D6D6D6D6D6D6D6D6D6D6D6D6D6D6D6D6D6D6 payments? I mean the Brits got rid of their base 12 monetary system years and years ago leaving us mystified readers when we have to read Dickens or Austen what's a shilling and why on earth do you need a ha'penny?

Further, isn't it interesting that Georgia has break away Republics like Ossetia, with the Ossetians speaking a Farsi like language, while the Basques are trying to break away from Spain?

I know we're all supposed to be appalled that Georgia is being invaded by Russia, and it's a democracy - but can you really be a democracy when you count in base 20? I don't think so.

This begs the question, why can't we all get along. As long as you do things my way, in Base 10.
Really. Counting is only useful when you can use just your fingers.

It's not like I am obsessed with garbage cans

I am really not possessive and think that many things are little things that one shouldn't get gray hairs over. But imagine my surprise when - on a completely clear street, some tubby blonde from Lodi parked her Ford on MY TRASHCANS. Seriously these huge trucks are a hazard when knocking over three garbage cans and PARKING on top of one isn't noticed. And we know the tubby blonde didn't notice, because if she had she would have backed up and parked on the other side of the street so that it didn't look like the person who actually wrecked the garbage cans was around, right? People do hit and runs all the time, leaving people on the street bloody and dismembered, so why wouldn't the tubby blonde have giggled and driven on, leaving the wreckage of my garbage strewn on the streets for me to pick up? She certainly didn't pick up after herself when she left. Do we have statistics on how many children and chihuahas have been flattened by these trucks since cars have become so inflated? I bet the number of fling chihuahuas has increased by 450% in the past ten years.

The New York Times Freakonomics blog asked the question, Can we Shame Drivers into better behaviour and used the web site, PlateWire as an example. So I signed up and put the tubby blonde's plate in the database. You can see it here --> http://www.platewire.com/viewrate.aspx?rid=34558

Anyway, all I'm saying, is if you are a tubby blonde stupid enough to live in Lodi you need intervention because the crystal meth you are getting is a hazard - and it isn't making you any thinner and it's ruining your teeth. So just stop driving and hope that you haven't run anything over that matters.

An old friend of mine, Dorit Naaman, did an email blast yesterday about being targeted by a right wing Israeli group that monitors Israeli academics and defames them. An idiot who knows nothing about Dorit's work named Lee Kaplan from isracampus.org is incensed that Dorit is an Israeli who supports Palestinian independence as a way to peace in the Mid East. So he called her a pornographer and now when you google her name his hate-filled rant shows up. However, if you would like to help out, click on the links below and those real articles that Dorit ACTUALLY wrote and what she ACTUALLY stands for (hmm, academic articles about cinema - heavens!) will sort higher than this scurrilous attack.

Oh, and the photos, figs are in season again. They look nice on the new counter top.

http://www.publicjournal.ca/submissions.htm

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2342/is_1_36/ai_89985880?tag=artBody;col1

http://www.jff.org.il/?CategoryID=547&ArticleID=553

http://www.wbez.org/audio_library/od_ramar03.asp

http://www.yorku.ca/crs/Refuge/refuge_-_volume_22,_issue_no__1.htm

http://www.unescocenter.gr/programm.htm

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/512624?prevSearch=Dorit+Naaman

http://www.digipopo.org/content/

http://www.film.queensu.ca/Dorit.html

http://www.ir-amim.org.il/Eng/?CategoryID=274&ArticleID=309

http://www.rabble.ca/in_her_own_words.shtml?x=58505

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/cinema_journal/v040/40.4naaman.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/nwsa_journal/v018/18.3naaman.html

http://inscribe.iupress.org/doi/abs/10.2979/HYP.2008.23.2.17

Yee Ha - It's a Sign!

So I was up in Central No Cal hanging out with a bunch of sound engineers and I found this fabulous sign out near the edge of the slough. It was a beautiful day and I had just had a fabulous breakfast at the local greasy spoon which opened at 5:00 am for the fisherman crowd.

I don't know, but is it just me - I keep on hearing these pop culture references to "80's music" - the last time was in the promo for the sisterhood of the pants, or whatever the hell that movie is and all these pretty girls are preparing for a wild (tame) time of sisterhood and they're going through a checklist of what they need and "80's music" is on it. And last year there was that movie where Hugh Grant plays a washed up 80's pop star. Huh? Is the Clash safe now? What happened? Where am I? What happened to retro ironic bowling and poodle skirts? What decade am I in? How co-opted can co-option get? Is there nothing sacred?
Of course I LOVED when they played Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World in Stranger than Fiction last year, but I just thought that the music editor had good taste.

Squirrely!

Here are the hounds, exhibiting hound behavior, treeing a squirrel in the fig tree. Here is the squirrel, eating a fig.

Sex Organs - the flowers and the bees - Oh! My!

So we planted some Zucchini and I promised myself that I would never, ever let the zucchini get overly large and watery. Too small and they are bitter, too large and they are ridiculous.

But really look at this flower - don't you just want to crawl right down it and never come back up? Check out the bee in the photo as well. Wow - it's drunk on orange pollen. This is some orgy of a flower. It is as promiscuous as the fruit of the plant. It wakes up golden in the morning and says "Honey!!!!!! Let's Make LOVE! And bring your FRIENDS!"

Dear me, I was practically fainting every time I walked out. And if the Zucchini sex extravaganza out back wasn't enough look at what I have out front. Yes the fried egg plant. Who knew?

These Matijila poppies are a big bush of white flowers and orange organ centers - dripping pollen all over. It's amazing that people ever paved anything with all this riot of flowering sex all over. And yes, Georgia O'Keefe was painting flowers and sex. Notice it, you know?

Today I made Zucchini bread, because I let some get too large. Sometimes it is just too much to keep the flora in control.