Monday was cold and not so nice, but the weather was supposed to improve during the week. I opened the Chronicle and there was a full-page ad for A’s vs. Red Sox… only time the Sox will be in Oakland this year. Hmmm. My calendar says I’ve got nothing scheduled this week, before the onslaught of SF International Film Festival and AIA Convention. Wednesday afternoon would be perfect.
I went to the A’s website and found a seat in the second deck, dead behind home plate in section 217, row 7, seat 5. A couple of clicks and I’m there.
sweet seat in the sun
I was hoping to see Dice-K but he pitched last night and got knocked out in the first inning of a game played in cold, windy, drizzly weather that consumed over 4 hours in its 12 innings. A’s prevailed 7-5 to threaten a sweep of the three game series. Continue reading “Red Sox at A’s”→
It all started with a phone call from Sarah, “I read in Friday’s Chronicle…”
“It’s the best time of the year to come out, right now,” says Brett Wilson, who oversees the Warm Springs Fish Hatchery, officially known as the Congressman Don Clausen Fish Hatchery, 8 miles west of Healdsburg.
A hatchery steelhead is hardwired like its wild brethren to return from the ocean to its native spawning ground. This provides two advantages over wild steelhead, if you’re looking to see fish in action fighting their way home. The first is you know exactly where to find them. The second is that there are some fish there to see.
They arrive in spurts and the average yield is two or three fish every half hour, Wilson estimates.
Even when holding on the steps or resting after flopping over the top, they are something to see. The anadromous rainbow trout can be 3 feet long. The males are in spawning colors, red stripes up the sides. The females are chrome, or turning dark with the freshwater.
Warm Springs Fish Hatchery: 3333 Skaggs Springs Road, Geyserville. The Visitor Center is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wed.-Sun. (707) 431-4533.
We needed to go to Simi Winery in Healdsburg to pick up our Wine Club shipment, so we could combine that with a visit to the hatchery. Sounded like a plan.
Nestled in the Sonoma hills near the shore of Lake Sonoma, the fish hatchery is a beautiful spot.
We followed the signs through the welcome center, over a bridge, through the hatchery and along a path to the fish ladder. Continue reading “Fishy Wednesday”→
In honor of the kickoff of March Madness today, I donned my appropriate swag. The Rector dudes are participating in the bracket wars on the NYTimes site in the “HilltopGang” Group — email me if you want to join (this year you have to be “invited” from the program to join). Of course, I picked Duke to go all the way, although I’m aware that they’re “not big enough down low” and depend too much on three-point shots to win it all, but Coach K just won the Olympic gold medal with a smallish team, so I figure he knows what he’s doing. And the Big East teams have been beating each other up, North Carolina’s point guard is injured, Memphis has gotten fat on marchmallows in their conference, so it’s not like the four headed monster of top seeds that stormed the Final Four last year. Enjoy the show and play-along if you can.
For Christmas Mom and Dad gave me “A Day at el Bulli” which is a large and beautiful book illustrating (in gorgeous full page color photographs) just what the title says, from dawn over the Mediteranean to early the next morning when the trash is put in the dumpster. Included are details of the entire menu from their 2008 season including recipes with ingredients.
Stepping back a bit for those who aren’t familiar with el Bulli, it’s a small restaurant on the Catalan coast about two hours north of Barcelona, Spain co-owned and directed by chef Ferran Adrià (who also happens to be just about my age…). Almost single-handedly chef Adrià and his restaurant are responsible for the lastest haute cuisine trend of serving food in foams and gels and in many other unfamiliar forms.
These dishes don’t lend themselves to everyday cooking, but the ideas behind them do inspire many dishes, and putting them together is something that could be done for a special occasion. One weekend in January Alison and I invited a few people over to our (then) construction site of a home for dinner, and the opportunity to try out the book as a cookbook presented itself.
Mr. Levy (“The Maggots in Your Mushrooms” 2/13/2009) is dangerously naive to believe that it’s possible to produce food with zero contaminants. I challenge him to grow, store, and process a years worth of any food he eats and show that none of it contained “icky” insects. Then, if successful, to do so for the general population. Insect contamination is unavoidable if our foods are to have any connection with the natural world (something I hope he would not advocate against).
The problem in this most recent food scare is not the insect parts, but that they carried salmonella. The FDA does not overlook salmonella contamination, nor should it. But to link their tolerance for non-hazardous contaminants directly to hazardous contaminant appears to advocate for a food supply that does not, cannot, and should not exist if we want to continue to be able to eat real food.
–Eric Rector
The Times’ letter policy limits letters to 150 words (barely made it), but there is much more to say about this topic, especially about why I think it’s so dangerous. Continue reading “An Icky Idea”→
sun room monolithRemember that big black slab of rock in “2001: A Space Odyssey” that the monkeys flocked around, holding up the bones? Now we can dance with bones in our new sun room.
What seems like eons ago, we poured the slab as the foundation (and floor) to our sun room addition, and we fashioned a form for any extra concrete using plywood and a 2 foot by 8 foot corrugated plastic sheet that Alison found at Home Depot. The concrete for the slab was dyed black, and we wanted to capture any overflow from that batch because it might be impossible to match in a separate batch, and ultimately we wanted to add more solar mass to the sun room in the form of more concrete to soak up the winter sun. Thus, when the State Sand and Gravel concrete mixer still had concrete in the hopper after the slab form was full, we had them fill the additional form about five inches. Continue reading “Monroe Monkey Monolith”→
“Rocky Road” Rector (a bull calf) was born Monday night around 6pm. It was a mild winter evening (28 degrees F), and his coat dried pretty quickly, helped by his mother’s licking. He stood up and nursed within 15 minutes of being born — amazing. He is a day old in this picture, standing with his mother, Raindrop. Alison named him because he looks like chocolate ice cream with marshmallows. Raindrop is half Jersey(via our Jersey “steer” named ‘Chuck’) and half Dexter, so the mash-up must have resulted in the mottling, though his full sister “Red Sox” was pure black when born and grown. Continue reading “Rocky Rector Arrives”→
SONGS FOR ANDY WARHOL’S SCREEN TESTS
February 3, Palace of Fine Arts
Between 1964 and 1966, Andy Warhol — nurturing a career-long fascination with the transience of celebrity — created revealing cinematic portraits of the actors, socialites, poets, drag queens and fresh-faced Gotham arrivals that visited the Factory, his New York City studio. The 2-3/4-minute films — known as Screen Tests — were projected in slow motion so that each lasted four minutes.
13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests comprises a selection of these screen tests, which for many years were rarely seen. They will be screened during a live performance of music composed by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, formerly of the legendary indie rock band Luna and currently making music as Dean & Britta. The duo will perform with a four-piece band in front of large-scale video projections of a selection of Warhol’s silent “living portraits” of his proto-superstars, including Nico, Lou Reed, Dennis Hopper and Edie Sedgwick.
Tickets are $20 for year-round Film Society members and $25 for non-members. $75 VIP tickets are also available and include reserved seating in the theater and a post-screening reception with Dean & Britta in attendance.
MY TAKE – Awesome. The films were mesmerizing, the live band thrilling… very Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground like. Imagine a camera on your face for 4 minutes in harsh light. The first, Richard Rheem, lighted from his right side, didn’t move a muscle, but he blinked and swallowed, that’s the only way we could tell it wasn’t a still. The second, Ann Buchanan, didn’t even blink, but her eyes teared up and a tear ran down and dripped off her chin. Others moved, or chewed gum or smoked. The last, Jane Holzer, brushed her teeth. Yuk. Most were lighted from the front or side, but Dennis Hopper was lighted from both sides, causing a shadow down his forehead, nose and mouth. DVD in March – see it – but it won’t be anything like a big screen and live band in front of a packed house of over 900 committed folks.
Yesterday afternoon I took my scooter to Safeway for a clove of garlic, some thin spaghetti and V8 Juice. The 46 ounce bottles of V8 were on sale – lucky me – 3 for $3 each, or 5 for $2 each… regular price $4.49 each. I drink a lot of V8, so I sprung for 5. Such a deal.
The cloth bag was heavy, too heavy to hang on my handlebar, so I strapped it on the back of the scooter with a bungee cord and started home.
Coming up the Union Street hill, I just made the light. Across Polk and hitting the upslope of the big hill I was going pretty fast. Suddenly I felt the absence of the bag against my backside and heard a thwap! Uh oh… think I lost my load. I stopped quickly, backed against the curb and dismounted. Continue reading “The V8 Incident”→
RectorSite 