Crawfish / Crawdads / Crayfish / Yabbies

Last night I attended a Crawfish boil at Magnolia Brew Pub here in San Francisco. The little crustaceans were flown in for the event that day and boiled up for $9/lb. My friend and I easily finished 3 lbs with cornbread, mushrooms and potatoes on the side.

My friend, who has spent some time in Lousiana, informed me how to consume the crawfish. First you snap off the head, then you squeeze the head and suck the juice out. The flavor of the brains and the boil comes through. Then you take your thumb and squeeze the bottom of the tail, and continue squeezing up the tail to release the pinky sized meat inside, which you can then bite off. Wikipedia says "A popular double entendre laden phrase heard around crawfish season in Louisiana derives from this practice: 'Suck the head, pinch the tail'" They are fun and messy. I got some yellow crawfish juice on my white shirt and had to use the spray n'wash when I got home.

The spiciness of the crawdads will depend on the boil used, which will often contain ingredients like salt, cayenne pepper, lemon, garlic, and bay leaves. My friend says that few people in Louisiana make their boil from scratch, and most pick a favorite brand like Zatarain's depending on if they like a little more cinnamon or hot spice.

When the crawfish are prepared, they come in big barrels and they have to be rinsed many times because they live in the mud in the water, which earned them the title "mudbugs." This is often when crawfish escape. My friend says she once saw a crawfish crawling across the floor of the restaurant trying to escape a steamy fate. This reminded me of a story I heard about a group of lobsters in Berlin who escaped from an Asian Supermarket and were seen walking together down the the street.

Cold weather style inspiration

I'm really inspired by this cold weather white ear muffs/gray scarf/red beanie/sad face with mascara look. I love how soft her face looks, bundled by the soft fabrics with her sad eyes about to cry, streaks of mascara about to appear.

Leaving with more than a pack of gum . . .

I bought this bag, the Alabaster Crackle Bag, today with my Anthropologie gift cards. I had two stacked up, and it made buying something bigger than a candle easier to qualify. I've had these gift cards burning holes in my wallet for awhile now. Anthropologie is like going to the supermarket of frilly girly clothes. You have everything to choose from, and sometimes you only leave with a pack of gum, if that.

I figured who doesn't need a white handbag? The leather is weathered so it has that crackled white leather appearance. I'm down for anything that looks old.

Shopping their online store, and comparing it to the items in store was eye-opening. So many of the items I admired online were seriously lackluster in person like this purse, the linked spectrum purse,



and this bag,

the essential washed hobo. I had seen the Alabaster Crackle Bag online and was unimpressed. The crackled quality of the leather didn't really come through online, but it was so much cooler in person.

Also, I tried on this dress, the skywriter dress.



It wasn't much on the hanger, but was really pretty in person. I would have to take a few inches off the bottom. It swept the floor on me, but I'll think about it . . .

Oh my god! The eerie-ness continues!

Woman who missed Flight 447 is killed in car crash

This is like how Daniel Faraday's Mother, Eloise Hawking tells Desmond about how the universe "course-corrects" to prevent people from straying too far from their fate right before he is going to buy the ring for Penny. She tells him that a man with red shoes is going to die, and even he isn't killed one way, he will die another way. The "course correction" happens with Charlie on the island, where Desmond is plagued by constant visions of Charlie dying.

Thoughts on the Air France Crash

I'm sucked into the drama of the Air France flight crash. Each piece of debris found sends a shiver, the bright orange life vest, the kerosene can, the 21 ft cylindrical metal piece they found recently. The span they are desperately surveying is huge, nearly 300 square miles, with a 12 mile long oil slick in the middle of it.

I try to imagine the thoughts of the passengers as they went down. I also, somewhat perversely, immediately think of the TV show Lost. I wonder if anyone on the plane was a fan of Lost and had twisted thoughts as their plane descended, "Hey, this is like Lost except it's not, I'm really dying." The plan allegedly went down in a huge flash of light that was witnessed by some. The debris "was found about 650 kilometers (400 miles) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha Islands, an archipelago 355 kilometers off the northeast coast of Brazil. It included an airplane seat and an orange float." (CNN.com) The details are so eerie.

Turbulence and lightning should not have brought the plane down. This is not Lost, but this crash is so mysterious, so ripe with questions.

Letting Go of Electromagnetism

I stared up at the aiwa boombox on the top shelf of my closet today. I thought, "you haven't pulled that thing out in a really long time, you should get rid of it." Then i remembered the tapes.

The cassette tapes.

Tapes were the format that you received mix tapes in, the junior high form of the love letter. I scoured record stores for the right tapes to give myself credibility among my friends, I kept myself entertained on long and sometimes tortuous bus rides home with them. Cassettes were where my love of music really began, listening to them by myself on my bunkbed with a giant grey boombox shoved between the mattress and the wall. Should I completely give up on this outmoded form of audio playback? The boombox I have now still has a functioning cassette player. I don't think it records, but memories could be had.

I know I should let it go, but I feel the need to give my cassette tapes some kind of eulogy, some homage.

Help me decide if I should let go or hold fast:

Beck - Mellow Gold
Detestation - Unheard Cries
Black Sabbath - Greatest Hits
Smashing Pumpkins - Pisces Iscariot
Smashing Pumpkins - Gish
Reed College Orientation Tape
Beck - One Foot in the Grave
Tom Waits - The Early Years
Nirvana - Bleach
The Psychedelic Furs - Talk Talk Talk
The Best of Judas Priest - Living After Midnight
Ramones - S/T
Nina Simone - Best of
The Velvet Underground and Nico - S/T
The Clash - S/T
Wire - 154
Slant 6 - Sodapop Ripoff
The Cure - Wish
The Cure - The Head on the Door
The Cure - Seventeen Seconds
Sonic Youth - Live Recording
Billie Holiday - Billie's Blues
The Smiths - Meat is Murder
The Smiths - Strangeways Here We Come
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
Belly - Feed The Tree (A CASSINGLE!!!!!!)
Crass - Penis Envy
Submission Hold - Veterans of the Cola Wars

I can't do it!! I just can't bear to give any of these away! There are also a few mixtapes in here that I gotta keep around. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll find a smaller tape player to help me relive the memories with. This all really makes me wish I had this colleciton on my ipod :( . . . .

27

Lunch at Absinthe in the sunshine. Beginning with a bloody mary, ending with a plated candle. One of the drinks on the cocktail menu "is Juanathan's homage to the intricate relationship between whiskey and horses." Amazing. In the bathroom, I thought about how you are supposed to sing Happy Birthday twice when you lather the soap to wash your hands. I made the bubbles and thought, "It's true."

We strolled down the street, discovered a tiny park between Haight and Page, and hopped onto the 71 to go to the Academy of Sciences. When I thought about what I wanted for my birthday, one of my thoughts was I want to see something beautiful, which brought me to the fish. The new museum is really nice despite my memories of the previous version, that I visited for so many weekends and school field trips. Looking at the upside down jellyfish, the tree frogs, the chameleons, the anemones, it all makes me feel so small in the good way, a humbling happy smallness. No matter what happens to me, there will always be lionfish, octopi, and penguins, and all they need to do is breathe.

From the park onto another bus downtown for sushi before the Show. VIP seats at Wicked! Fabulous costumes, great music, epic scenes. Being up close was really a special experience. A criscendo to a fabulous day, the first day of being 27 . . .

As of late - part 2

As of late

From before - part 2

From before

Look What I Made

Look What I Made

Puking, vomiting, upchucking, rolfing, ralphing, yawning in Technicolor, blowing chucks, losing your lunch, spewing, barfing, bringing up, driving the porcelain bus, disgorging, dry heaving, expelling, gagging, heaving, hurling, kecking, losing it, regurgitating, retching, throwing up. It has many names.
My friend Jarred said that his favorite thing in the world was vomiting. His least favorite thing: the feeling before and after vomiting. All pleasurable things in life involve tension and release. Puking is no exception.

Food Related Blunders: Oh God, Why Did I Eat That?

Yesterday: I almost vomited all over a banana. I prefer slightly unripe bananas with a light green tinge around the edges. I underestimated the tinge and selected a banana I thought would be just perfect with sweetness and firm texture. Upon taking the first bite, shivers went down my spine. I tried to chew the dry pasty banana. It tasted like aspirin. I forced myself to eat the mouthful. Bad idea. The banana triggered my gag reflex, and if it had not been for a nearby trashcan, I would have splattered little banana bits all over my shoes.

Once I ate 2 cloves of raw garlic, because I thought it would be good for me. My roommate was of the health conscious variety. Everything he ate was vegan, organic and possibly local. Henry would pick up raw cloves of garlic and pop them in his mouth while eating a bowl of pasta. Imitating his healthy gesture, I ate one and then two cloves of garlic with my food. All was fine for about 5 minutes after finishing my meal, when I suddenly had to race to the bathroom, where my body made evidence of its strong disagreement with my healthy gesture.

Booze: Highway to the Toilet Bowl

16, at a Halloween party, dressed up like the Saint Pauley Girl, eight beers too many. I strolled out onto the patio, and found an unassuming bucket. I released the contents of my stomach, and then picked up the bucket, shouting confidently, “Look what I made! Look what I made!” I put the bucket back down, sat on someone’s lap, and began to kiss him with my unrinsed lips.
After a bit too much at a different party, I escaped to the bathroom. Lamenting the rejection of some forgettable fellow, I began bawling while I was vomiting. Really, crying while vomiting is one of the most awful things ever. You feel as though you are leaking from every corner of your face.

“I think I’m gonna hurl”: One more puke related memory

I used to not believe that anxiety had the power to affect your gastro intestinal system. Then I fell in love for the first time. I hadn’t been sleeping regularly. The butterflies of novelty had my stomach in knots. Eating was difficult. A road trip to San Francisco with friends put 4 days distance between my new love and I. Now this may not seem like a long time, but in new lover time, this is ages, eons. It’s like exponential dog years. I couldn’t stand the waiting. Finally back in Oregon, after a 10-hour drive, we made plans to see each other that night. While I waited I forced myself to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and did the only thing that would put my anxiety to rest. I took a nap. An hour later, I shot out from under the covers on the couch, where I was sleeping and ralphed into another conveniently placed bucket. (They seem to appear for me)
Waiting for him could be equivocated with the moment one clutches the toilet bowl, groaning with nausea, or Jarred’s least favorite moment. In the moments in between our meetings I was often dizzy, stupid, weak in the knees, and glazed with an expression of euphoria. When we were together, I vomited fireworks into the air and all the little sparkling remnants fell down around me as time passed. My heart released without hesitation.

Pants are like love . . .

. . . a different pair is right for everyone.

Act Four of this week's This American Life podcast hits upon this exact idea. I never thought this sentence would be actualized in story format and lo and behold.

Act Four. Pants Pants Revelation.

Joel and Kate were both working in a psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. They both like each other, and she tries to impress him by always wearing her favorite pair of jeans. Little did she know, the jeans were maybe the only thing about her that he didn’t like. (8 minutes)

Don't Go for the Food, Go for The Toilet

I'm kinda obsessed with bathrooms.

There's nothing better than excusing yourself at a restaurant to go to the bathroom, waiting in a long line to use the restroom, and being pleasantly surprised when you get into the can to see that the owners have taken creative license to make the experience of passing fluid in their establishment an interesting and memorable one. I can't count how many times I have been disappointed that a fancy restaurant hasn't gone to any measures to make their bathroom an either memorable or luxurious experience. If I am paying $60 for a meal, I want their john to be one that I could never afford or imagine myself peeing in at home. It's annoying when you are paying so much for a meal and you get in to relieve yourself to find that the toilet seat is loose, the soap dispenser gives out neon pink industrial soap, and all the fixtures are everyday stainless steel. I remember eating in one fancy restaurant on my birthday, where the soap had run out and they put out a plastic squeeze bottle with a broken cap to pour soap out of. Sad.

I had two seconds of fame once for my Yelp list, "The Best John's in SF" that was featured in a weekly email newsletter. In it, I describe some winners in the category of making peeing interesting. You can make it pretty like Pauline's Pizza (whose black throne in a pink tiled room with chandelier and flamingo light switch cover can't really be topped), pictoral like Minako sushi with a tropical fish mural, luxurious like Rose's Cafe in the Marina (with lilies and wooden toilet seat dispenser) or entertaining like B44 or Pizzetta 211 (with mini televisions looping footage of interesting and culturally appropriate footage in line with the cuisine served, like B44, a Spanish restaurant whose bathroom has reels of a festival in Spain where people make human towers every year at a festival, the paramount being when they send a six or seven year old child up to the top to climb over five stories of people to add an additional 48 inches or so to garner a win) or to the truly wacky bathrooms like the hot toilet water at Sushi Groove. I am still waiting to find a restaurant with a real life bidet or a Japanese Toto installment.

Until then, I will continue to pee pee like a plebeian . . .

Quote from Russell Brand on NPR's Fresh Air

"I don't know if you've ever smoked crack Terry, but it makes you do some very eccentric things." -- Russell Brand

Adventures in Adult Disneyland - Day One

Reporting from the land of sin, prowess, and confidence.

Our day began early very early, 5 am to be exact. When you are at BART at this hour, pretty much everyone on BART is going to the airport.



You can see the casinos when you land in the airplane, the Luxor and the Wynn are basically backed up against the landing strip. On our way in, we were all thinking the same thing, "Wouldn't it be weird to live in Las Vegas, a town full of visitors?" I asked the cabby if he lived in Vegas. He did for all of his 45 years.

I took photos from the cab like a cheesy tourist. Vegas really does feel like a theme park at certain moments, and the roller coaster and miniature buildings of New York, New York fit right in with that.



Unable to check into our hotel, we grabbed some breakfast at the Starbuck's in the casino. The pastries there were not normal pastries, they were huge and all covered with inches of thick icing. The sticky buns were the size of baseballs. They must have gotten them from somewhere in the area.



We then headed to the jacuzzi, mind you, it's probably about 9am in the morning. The desert had yet to heat up the strip, and it was really cold. I kept my knit cap on while cooking in the bubbles.





We ate at Diablo's, a Chevy's-esque Mexican food restaurant in front of the Monte Carlo. We ordered some spicy mojitos that contained jalapeno seeds. I was doing fine and then one of the seeds lit my tongue on fire. I pleaded the waiter for an ounce of milk and he obliged me with a whole glass.


Still unable to check into our hotel, we wandered the strip and checked out the interior of the Bellagio with the Chihuly ceiling and botanical butterfly house installed in the front area. The Bellagio was definitely my favorite hotel of all the ones they visited. I loved the waterfall/waterworks that happen every hour in front of the hotel in their giant man made lake where spouts of water erupt from the lake to the tune of popular songs. It's a big, glorious, beautiful use/waste of water. We wondered what it would feel like to be on top of one of those water jets when they go off, to which my response was, "That'd be a hysterectomy."



We also went into the Venetian with it's faux-canals, replete with gondola rides and clouds painted on the ceiling inside the casino shops. The cloud motif, I later discovered continued in most of the shopping areas within the casinos, including Paris, Miracle Mile, and Caesar's Palace. Vegas is all about simulation and the being outside while you're inside feeling makes sense, especially in a city where temperatures top one hundred degrees on a regular basis.



Vegas is full of vacation items that are temporal and useful only in their gratuitous celebration of the moment and one's ability to push that moment to the limits of it's ostentation for a relatively cheap price. I am speaking of the mardi gras like necklaces that are sold and the yard long margaritas that you can drink in public.



Finally getting back to the hotel, we napped, got dressed to go out and went to the Paris hotel for the dinner buffet. Having long heard about the Vegas buffet, this was an event we were looking forward to. We arrived and I was both surprised and disappointed. Disappointed that it looked like a regular buffet, no ice sculptures or gold, but surprised that things like crab legs, bouillebaise and cod were available in an all you can eat format. Even though my peeps weren't as crazy about this buffet, it still was the first evidence I had that Vegas has some of the best buffets anywhere. We ate to the point of bursting and were comatose afterwards.

Hoping to earn some free drinks, we played the penny slots at the Paris. The food expanded, the wine they gave us was awful. My friend who played the Kenny Rogers machine had the hot machine. I realized that the old slot machines are better odds-wise than the strictly video machines. It's funny to me that all the casino's look different inside, but their slot machines and tables all pretty much look the same.

Everything in Vegas looks so close, but is actually far away. Space and time are distorted. This is especially true when you are full and trying to get back towards your hotel. Having finally made it, we decided to check out Diablo's. Inside, a cover band playing 80's and 90's rock, a la Lynard Skynard and Pearl Jam, with additional hot pants clad gogo Dancers offering shots in your mouth.



And then we went to sleep . . . .

Chinotto Cocktails

If you haven't had Chinotto, it tastes like sweet orange rinds, like Campari without as much bitterness, an almost licorice flavor. The drink gets its name from a bitter sort of orange. I don't like Campari, but I adore Chinotto. I love that it comes in little glass jars that are really the perfect size for a sweet lunch beverage.

I think it would be really delicious to make cocktails with Chinotto. At first I thought about a good vodka, but a nice bourbon would be better, because the bitter flavors in Chinotto are a lot like the flavors in a Manhattan.

When I googled Chinotto Cocktails I came across this article by Eric Felten in The Wall Street Journal about using Italian sodas to flavor your cocktails which includes two chinotto cocktail recipes that include tequila and apple brandy:

Il Diavolo

2 oz blanco tequila
¼ oz fresh lime juice
1 to 2 tsp crème de cassis
3 to 4 oz chinotto soda

Build in a highball glass with ice and stir gently. Garnish with a slice of lime.

Della Mela

1½ oz applejack (apple brandy)
½ oz Benedictine (optional)
3 to 4 oz chinotto soda

The article also mentions the rise in bartenders making their own sodas from simple syrup and carbonated water. I was recently at The Orbit Room and they had some old fashioned selzer water dispensers behind the bar, which was not only cool but extremely stylish, making the $10 cocktail price tag seem like that much more of a deal if I got to see those kind of antiques on display. Way cooler than the soda "gun" you get at most bars.

5 Days of Sentinel Sandwiches

Day One Smoked Salmon Sandwich



5 days of Sentinel Sandwiches begins. Day One features Salmon salad with dill and pieces of lox on top, butter lettuce, and seeded bun. The Sentinel is a small lunch kiosk with daily changing amazingness. Chef Dennis Leary of Canteen barks out orders and slings out sandwiches in the teeny tiny kitchen.

Day Two Veggie Sandwich with Curried Raisins



Day two featurees the veggie sandwich with mushrooms, swiss chard, golden raisins, curried raisins with sun-dried tomato spread and goat cheese and topped with butter lettuce on seeded bun. I enjoyed the cooked leafy greens, which added extra texture to the sandwich. The goat cheese was spreadable like cream cheese or marscapone. www.thesentinelsf.com/

Day Three Corned Beef



This may be the swansong of the Sentinel, the corned beef with sauerkraut, carmelized onions, gruyere cheese and russian dressing on ciabatta. It has the most bravodo of all the sandwiches and the corned beef was not too salty. I might have gone for a little less meat, and a little more dressing, but that's picking nits. It was a pretty damn amazing sandwich. www.thesentinelsf.com/ Oh and let me also note that all of their sandwiches come with a homemade dill pickle. I have never liked dill pickles before in my life, but I think I may have turned a corner. I really like their dill pickles. They are so refreshing and so crisp, and it was the perfect note after the corned beef sandwich.




Day Four, Meatloaf and Meunster



Meatloaf and Meunster sandwich with mayo and butter lettuce. Wow, this was some serious business. The meat loaf was thick and soft, and cooked with a touch of pink on the inside, so that puddle on the paper in the bottom half of the photo is a mix of mayo and bloody meat juice. Today, I received an Andes mint as opposed to the usual butterscotch.

Day Five, Deviled Ham With Meunster



While remarkably similar to the meatloaf sandwich, the deviled ham and meunster sandwich was distinct in texture and flavor. I looked up the ingredients in deviled ham and it entails mined ham that has been mixed with scallions, sour cream and spices like cayenne, taragon and mustard. It is not as spicy as it sounds. This deviled ham tasted mildly of tabasco and there was a bit too much ham for my taste. The sandwich also had butter letturce, cream cheese, and the occasional walnut.


Bonus Day - Chicken Salad Sandwich



Chicken salad with lemon, sesame and chili. A surprsingly light and very meaty chicken salad sandwich. Shredded pieces of chicken breast are tossed in a light aioli with lemon juice and a touch of sesame and chili. I would put this right behind the veggie sandwich for lightness. Thus concludes the Sentinel's Winter menu. Amen.

BreadxBread

BreadXBread

Sandwich love in full force with poems, carbs, and more. Bloggers after my own heart.

I claim this chest . . .

Classic.