Pepper, Cucumber, and Chickpea Salad

This is a great end of summer salad, when peppers are abundant and there are still a lot of herbs in the garden. Really delicious!

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Zest of 1 large lemon
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 pound bell peppers
• 1-2 cucumbers
• 1 can (15.5 oz.) reduced-sodium chickpeas (garbanzos), rinsed and drained
• 1 cup loosely packed flat-leaf parsley, chives, mint and other herbs

Step 1

Toast cumin in a small frying pan over medium-high heat, stirring often, until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Pour from pan into a large bowl. Stir in oil, lemon zest and juice, garlic, salt, and black pepper.

Step 2

Seed peppers and cut into 1- to 1 1/2-in. pieces. Slice cucumber into 1/4-in. rounds and cut in half again if large. Add peppers, cucumber, and chickpeas to salad dressing and toss to blend well. Let stand about 1 hour, then stir in parsley.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017)

It is hard to say just how great this Amazon musical set in New York City in the late 1950's.  Midge is who you might wish your mother to be like at core, although maybe not to reveal it to you until after you left home.  She is flat out hilarious in a way that was very risqué in the late 1950’s and when her husband reveals to her that he is having an affair with his secretary and is leaving her, she takes his spot at a walk on stand up comedy club and just nails it.  So well that the manager singles her out and starts to groom her for the stage.
All the while she has prim and proper Jewish parents that she is forced to move in with, she has to take a job at the make-up counter in retail, and while you would think it would be killing her to do so, she really thrives on it.  This is technically a musical, in that there is music that conveys the story as well as the mood, but it is everything that you would hope for in the genre and I can not wait to see Season Two.

Boquet of Violets, Camille Pissarro

I am not a huge fan of Pissarro's flower paintings but I love this one.  The detail of the wall paper and the rug on the table remind me of another favorite painter from this era, Édouard Vuillard.  The whole painting pops for me.
Pissarro participated in the first independent exhibition of the Impressionists in 1874 and remained the most loyal member of the group, contributing to all the subsequent exhibitions. Although Pissarro specialized in landscapes, he also painted genre scenes, portraits, and still lifes. His wife was extremely fond of  flowers and always grew masses of flowers in their garden. She often gathered bouquets for her husband’s still lives, which regularly featured various types of flowers (most commonly peonies) of various shades, but she especially like pink.  The other thing I didn't know about Pissarro is that he was born to French-Jewish parents in St. Thomas.  He came to France as a child to study, and his relationship with his wife was somewhat of a scandal in his family, as she was both a servant in their house and a Christian.  He rebelled in many realms, it seems.

Pan Roasted Pomegranate Salmon

We got a who;e box of pomegranates from Costco, and so now we are using them every chance we get.  The pomegranate molasses is the bomb.

• 1 pound brussels sprouts, halved
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• kosher salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
• 2 tablespoons sweet chili sauce
• 2 tablespoons pomegranate juice
• 1 inch fresh ginger, grated
• 1 clove garlic, minced or grated
• 1 pinch red pepper flakes
• 1 pound wild caught salmon
• fresh basil for serving

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
2. On a large rimmed baking sheet, combine the brussels sprouts, olive oil, and a pinch each of salt and pepper. Toss well to evenly coat. Place in the oven and roast for 15 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, combine the pomegranate molasses, pomegranate juice, sweet chili sauce, ginger, garlic, and a pinch each of red pepper flakes and salt in a small bowl.
4. Remove the brussels sprouts from the oven. Add the salmon to the center of the pan. Spoon the pomegranate glaze over the salmon. Transfer to the oven and roast for 10-20 minutes or until the salmon has reached your desired doneness.
5. Top the salmon with pomegranate arils and fresh basil.

Chappaquiddick (2018)

The aim and intent of this movie is to chronicle an event in history, one that well summarizes the argument against dynastic political figures (and one that most probably will be overlooked by the electorate).  It is not what you would call riveting, but the message is clear.
The movie plot can be summed up by one of the first sentences uttered by then Senator Ted Kennedy (ably played by Australian actor Jason Clarke) after escaping from a sunken car that he drunkenly and unfortunately drove off a bridge into shallow water on July 18, 1969: “I’m not going to be president.”
Never mind that he was right. At that point, there’s a more pressing issue at hand: A young female passenger named Mary Jo Kopechne is gasping for air and slowly expiring in the back seat of his vehicle. But in his privileged world, saving his own behind and preserving what’s left of the legacy of his family strangle hold on state and national politics in the aftermath of the assassinations of his two brothers is his primary duty. He wouldn’t officially report the accident for another 10 hours or so, more than enough time for Kopechne to have been rescued according to authorities who arrived the next day.  Manslaughter or murder, you decide, but it is an unsavory story told unflinchingly.

Ceramic Wall Art

I was in a hotel in transition in Florida recently, where my room was on the verge of being sad, but the conference center was well appointed.  It was not just me who was struck by this dichotomy; I was speaking with someone else who stayed at the same hotel, and he noted that the key players at his meeting stayed at a nearby hotel, rather than struggle with the brink of decrepitude.
The thing that I like the most about it was the plethora of ceramic flowers on the wall.  They are playful, with some of them quite complex, but the overall effect is that this is an art installation, which looks different from different angles. 
So I really love these, and I am pretty sure that I could afford them (after all, my house has very small rooms and therefore covering a wall is a minimalist endeavor even if you went hog wild), but the  I am sure that if I had them at home they would be a cleanup nightmare, and one that I would be unlikely to wake up from because obsessive cleanliness is not something that anyone would associate with me.  So much as I really like them, pursuing

Chili Verde a la New Mexico

This is almost as good as a trip to New Mexico.

• 3 pound pork loin or pork shoulder , trimmed of fat and cut into 1’’ pieces
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 Tablespoon oil (vegetable or canola oil)
• 1 large yellow onion , chopped
• 3 clove garlic , minced
• 1/2 Tablespoon ground cumin
• 1/2 Tablespoon dried oregano leaves
• 2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
• 4 fresh poblano chiles , seeded and sliced in half
• 2 fresh jalapeño peppers , seeded and sliced in half (*see note)
• 1.5 pound fresh tomatillos , husks removed
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro , coarsely chopped

Instructions

1. Season pork pieces on all sides with salt and pepper.
2. Heat a large stock pot over high heat. Add oil. Once hot, sear the pork pieces until browned on all sides.
3. Remove the pork from the pot. Add a little additional oil to pan, if needed.
4. Add onion and saute until tender. Add garlic and cook for 30 seconds.
5. Stir in the cumin and oregano. Return pork to the pot and add the chicken broth.
6. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer for 2-4 hours.
7. Meanwhile, make the sauce.
8. Place rack on second to top level of oven and turn the oven to high broil.
9. Lightly spray a jelly roll pan with cooking oil. Wash the poblano peppers, jalapeños and tomatillos.
10. Slice the tomatillo and both types of peppers in half, and remove stems. Seed the peppers and remove the white veins inside if if you do not want the chile verde to be very spicy. (See my note below about spice level). Do not seed the tomatillos.
11. Place the poblano peppers, jalapeño and tomatillos on baking sheets cut side down. Broil for about 7-10 minutes or until browned.
12. Immediately place peppers in a plastic bag and tie the bag. Allow them to steam for 5 minutes, and then peel off their outer layer of skin. (It should come off easily)
13. Add the peppers, tomatillos and cilantro to a blender and puree.
14. Add mixture to the pot with the pork and cook everything together for an additional 30 to 45 minutes.
15. Serve with tortillas

12 Strong (2018)

I watched this movie after attending a meeting where Afghanistan War veterans noted that this was the movie that they thought best captured their experience in theater better than anything else on film.  Twelve men go in, twelve come out, under difficult circumstances and overwhelming odds.
The producer of this is Jerry Bruckheimer, who is not known for his subtlety and understatement, but that’s surprisingly what “12 Strong” ends up being.  That’s not to say it’s completely restrained, by any means. In telling a tale of real-life heroism against staggering odds, this is a rousing war picture, meant to stir equal amounts of excitement and patriotism. Set soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,  the movie is packed with protracted battle sequences, full of deafening bombings and seemingly endless amounts of gunfire. The cumulative effect is draining; you’ll walk out of the theater with the feeling that you, too, have gone to war – and an appreciation for those who are brave enough to do so themselves.

From the Lake No. 1, Georgia O'Keefe

 I recently went to the the Des Moines Art Center, which I highly recommend, because it has a wonderful collection, and the admission is free, which is even better.
This painting by Georgia O'Keefe is from her time at Lake George in upstate New York.  Long before her four decades in New Mexico, her life included a period in the considerably lusher climes of upstate New York, on Lake George, the glacial Adirondack lake near here where she spent a series of summers — creating scores of paintings — while staying with Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer, art promoter and her eventual husband, whose family kept a small estate there.

She usually came in April and would stay sometimes as late as November or the first snow, whichever came first.   While staying with the Stieglitz family — a large and sometimes boisterous clan — O’Keeffe would hike, row, garden and generally take it all in. “I wish you could see the place here,” she wrote in 1923 to the novelist Sherwood Anderson. “There is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees. Sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces — it seems so perfect — but it is really lovely.”  It is clear that she was well on her way to abstraction from nature from this time.

Keeping Up With the Garden

Things are starting to slow down a bit, and so it feels safe to breath a bit easier.  There is no doubt that we will miss the days of endless tomatoes and cucumbers and summer squash. 
It has been a pretty long time since we last had a truly abundant garden on our property.  We have been avid aficionados of our CSA, which gives everyone a reasonable amount of perfect vegetables, and then  has the extras, the things that are slightly blemished, or have grown bigger than is strictly ideal, or sometimes they just have quite a few of them, and if you want more you you are welcome to them.  In addition, she has allowed people to come out to the farm to get tomatoes for canning once the season is at an end, but there are still quite a few tomatoes on the vine.
This summer we have had dozens of tomato salads and dozens of cucumber salads, and sometimes we have had cucumber tomato salads, every day getting a little further behind, sharing the bounty with others, and making quite a few pickles as well.  It has been a wonderful ride and as the days get shorter I know that the end is near.  Until next summer.

Pacific by Simon Winchester

This is a book about the history of an ocean and the countries that border it.  To encompass this vastness in one book, Winchester selects a series of key moments in the Pacific’s recent history. He starts in 1950 with a bravura chapter, The Great Thermonuclear Sea. It is not a pretty story. Places recently ravaged by bloody war faced a new outrage: the multiple detonation of atomic bombs. Far from the Berlin Wall, the cold war was rehearsed in blood-warm seas. Islands, and islanders’ bodies, became test sites for the apocalypse.
Not all of Pacific’s scenes are so dark. A chapter on the transition of surfing from Hawaii to California and the birth of the Sony Corporation in Japan are upbeat.

But the greatest power of the Pacific is elemental. It is where our weather is born, and in a chapter on  climate change, Winchester shows that the placid ocean is becoming steadily more stormy, wreaking indiscriminate havoc from the Philippines to Australia. At the same time, those waters have become witness to “a sudden and wholesale redistribution of world power”, from America to China. Far from running scared at the notion, Winchester wonders if it might not actually be a good thing if we were to allow the east its turn, rather than falling back on our old notions of racial superiority. The Pacific is our future ocean.

Battle of the Sexes (2018)

As one of my kids correctly stated when I said that I had watched this movie that with Emily Blunt and Steve Carrell it would have to be at least a decent movie.  Throw on top of that the timing (it was set in the early 70's, in the midst of the attempt to pass an Equal Rights Amendment), so the past juxtaposed against the present (women still not paid equally, a body of largely male legislators determining what will be appropriate care for women, a president who admits to sexually assaulting women, and what happened just this month with Serena Williams, well, it may have been awhile ago, but not all that much has changed.
This chronicles the rise of women's tennis, which was a story that I did not know, and the much viewed tennis match between Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs.  He was a showman and a gambler who fanned the flames of sexism to grab attention while she was earnestly trying to carve out equal rights for women in tennis.  After Margaret Court got bamboozled into playing him and lost, King felt that she had no choice (this jives with the story at the time), and the rest is history.  It is a reasonable docudrama, with a better cast than script, but enjoyable.

Corn Palace, Mitchell, South Dakota

This is a very short stop if you are traveling across South Dakota on I-90.  The Palace is redecorated each year with naturally colored corn and other grains and native grasses to make it “the agricultural show-place of the world”. We currently use 13 different colors or shades of corn to decorate the Corn Palace: red, brown, black, blue, white, orange, calico, yellow and  green corn.  A different theme is chosen each year, and murals are designed to reflect that theme. Ear by ear the corn is nailed to the Corn Palace to create a scene. The decorating process usually starts in late May with the removal of the rye and dock. The corn murals are stripped at the end of August and the new ones are completed by the first of October.
It all began in 1892 (when Mitchell, South Dakota was a small, 12-year-old city of 3,000 inhabitants) when the World's Only Corn Palace was established on the city’s Main Street. During it’s over 100 years of existence, it attracts more than a half a million visitors annually. The palace was conceived as a gathering place where city residents and their rural neighbors could enjoy a fall festival with extraordinary stage entertainment - a celebration to climax a crop-growing season and harvest. It is really pretty cool.

Winter Landscape by Hendrick Averkamp, 17th century

We saw this wonderful painting by Hendrick Averkamp (1585–1634) at the Wallraf-Richardz Museum in Cologne, Germany this summer. 
These highly detailed paintings transport us back to a time when Dutch waterways regularly froze in the cold of winter. In his landscapes, people young and old, rich and poor, share both the joy and the hardship of the Little Ice Age. This climatic phenomenon, which peaked in the 17th and early 18th centuries, was characterized by extremely severe winters that arrived early and lasted well into spring. Avercamp's earliest dated painting, from 1608, came after a winter in which temperatures averaged well below freezing.
 Averkamp was born in Amsterdam but spent most of his childhood and adult life in Kampen, a small city far removed from that artistic center. His powers of observation may have been heightened by his disabilities—he was unable to speak and probably also unable to hear. His minute details of village life indelibly shape the modern perception of the Dutch winter in the Little Ice Age.

Ordeal by Innocence (2018)

This is an adaptation of an Agatha Christie book, set in the era it was published, more or less, which is the late 1950's.  The sensibilities are still a bit old fashioned, with things like sex before marriage and divorce the sort of things that you wouldn't talk about at all, not just in social gatherings.
Here’s the plot in brief: It’s Christmas Eve and wealthy philanthropist Rachel Argyll (Anna Chancellor) has just been murdered. Suspicion immediately falls onto her son Jack (Anthony Boyle), one of five adopted children that Rachel and her husband, Leo (brilliantly played by Bill Nighy), have taken into their home and raised. Despite claiming innocence, Jack is quickly swept off to prison, where it doesn’t take very long for him to succumb to a fatal beating. The family is just vaguely beginning to recover from this double tragedy 18 months later, when, a shabbily dressed man (Luke Treadaway) arrives at their door with a beat-up suitcase, an uncomfortable, stammering manner, and what he thinks will be good news: He can provide an iron-clad alibi for Jack at the time of Rachel’s death.  That’s understandably unsettling information for Leo and his surviving kids—bad boy Mickey (Christian Cooke), youthful rebel Hester (Ella Purnell), taciturn Tina (Crystal Clarke), and high-strung Mary (Eleanor Tomlinson)—since if Jack didn’t kill their mom, it means one of them probably did.  And so it goes to the end.

The Scenic Beartooth Highway

 No matter how many times I traverse this piece of road, I am forever struck by its astounding beauty.

Cresting at 10,947 feet in Beartooth Pass, Beartooth Scenic Byway is Wyoming’s highest paved primary road. The traveling CBS journalist Charles Kuralt once called it “the most beautiful drive in America,” and once you’ve driven it you’ll understand why. The only National Scenic Byway in Wyoming, this two-lane route was the first and most substantial road to be constructed under the Park Approaches Act of 1931, and is currently in the nomination stage for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.

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This is an excellent example of what you can see right from the road.
Opened in 1936, Beartooth Scenic Byway roughly follows the old Sheridan Trail, laid out in 1882 by Yellowstone protectionist Gen. Phil Sheridan. Coming up from the south, you’ll hit the route almost dead center. And while you may be tempted to turn west and head immediately for Yellowstone, don’t cheat yourself out of some of the most spectacular panoramas in the US. Just a few miles east and you’ll come to Clay Butte Lookout. A four-mile side trip over a dirt road (not recommended for RVs or tow-vehicles) and a mile hike upwards, and you’ll find a 360-degree view of dozens of mountain peaks. In the summer months you can step inside the lookout tower for a talk with forest service volunteers and exhibits of the 1988 Yellowstone wildfires. Back to the main road and a winding drive east will bring you to the literal high point of the drive — Beartooth Pass. The scenery is spectacular, but take any lightheadedness seriously.  
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Köln Rautenstrauch Joest Museum, Germany

First and foremost, if you are ever in Cologne, it is imperative that you buy a museum pass, because not only will it save you money when you go to the highlights.  We bought is for 15 euros each (and if we had two children they would also have been able to come in to) and we got it at the Ludwig Museum, which would have been 12 euros each to get into.  There are two other high profile museums on the pass, but you also might end up at a place like this, because in essence it is a free admission.
The 3,400 objects from the anthropological estate of the geographer and ethnologist Dr. Wilhelm Joest (1852-1897) formed the foundation of the collections of the RJM. His sister Adele was married to Eugen Rautenstrauch. In 1899 the couple donated the estate of Wilhelm Joest to the City of Cologne.  This is really not only a look at how to appreciate different cultures and a lens with which to do so, but also a glimpse into the vast travel experience that an independently wealthy gentleman in the 19th century could amass.

Mary and the Witch's Flowers (2018)

Studio Ghibli, the celebrated Japanese animation studio founded by Hayao Miyazaki, may have shuttered its production wing. But its spirit lives on in Studio Ponoc founded by Ghibli veterans. This is an adaptation of a book "The Little Broomstick".  So the fantastical story at least has a backbone in young adult fiction, mixed with at healthy dose of anime.
This first Ponoc production is a mixed results movie that is on the whole enjoyable, and which combines themes from Ghibli films Kiki’s Delivery Service and Howl’s Moving Castle with a bit of witchcraft thrown in, pre-Harry Potter style.
Mary is a slightly clumsy girl who has been passed to a relative for the time being who finds herself transported by a magical broom to a school of witchcraft and wizardry.  Unlike her performance in real life, her magical life finds her to be extraordinarily gifted, and she and her compatriots manage to save the day in the end, but not without some pitfalls.

Edward Curtis and The Lummi

Edward Sheriff Curtis began his career as a photographer at age seventeen in St. Paul Minnesota, moving two years later to Seattle, where he continued his profession. In 1895, he met and photographed Princess Angeline (Kikisoblu), a daughter of Chief Sealth or Seattle (Ts’ial-la-kum), after whom the city was named. This got Curtis interested in photographing Native Americans and he began to travel to record different tribal cultures. He proposed documenting in a comprehensive publication North American tribes and began to seek funding. He received a letter of recommendation from Theodore Roosevelt, which led to his introduction to railroad magnate John Pierpoint Morgan, who committed to support the project. Curtis took to this project with enthusiasm, taking tens of thousands of photographs of 80 tribes. His intent was to document traditional Indian cultures, so he also recorded information on the languages, customs, and dress of the tribes and wrote biographical sketches of many of the tribal leaders.
The resulting publication, The North American Indian, was published between 1907 and 1930 and it consisted of 20 volumes with accompanying portfolios containing over 2,200 photogravures after his photographs. Each plate was hand inked and run through a press. Most sets were printed on a high grade “Holland” paper, though a few sets were printed on Japanese-made vellum and some on thin Japanese tissue-paper. A complete set of the portfolio eventually had 2,234 photogravures. The series was very expensive and did not sell that well, with only 272 of the proposed 500 sets issued.

Remembrance and Gratitude

Today is the eighteenth anniversary of my youngest son getting his last dose of chemotherapy, which happened while the World Trade Center was crumbling to the ground, and put us on a path of more overt decisiveness as a country.  It is probably just an unveiling of the truth, which is that we were really not all that united to begin with, we have a civil war in the not too distant past that speaks to the matter, and when all is said and done, Russia didn't have to scratch too hard at the surface to find some pretty deep fissures of racism and misogyny.  The good news is that as the country's youth grow up and most importantly vote, the tide of progression is upon us, so long as we can stave off the wave of autocracy.  We are certainly on the path to see just how much money can buy.
The good news is that my cancer surviving off spring is alive to witness it.  The bad news is that he desperately needs health care to be able to enjoy it.  His life depends on it, in fact.  So while I am thankful to have him here, I also pray that we manage to regain the country that the majority of us voted for, and then try to repair some of the ugliness that was uncovered and then ignored by the Republicans.  One thing is for sure, Lincoln is changing parties in the afterlife.

Jack Ryan (2018)

Yes, it surprised me too that I saw this new season essentially when it came out.  We had late arriving guests for Labor Day weekend, which gave us a big start into the series, and I have to say that while there were things that were too gruesome for me to sit and watch (I have a low tolerance for that), it was well done and well acted as these action adventure things go.

The Ryan character has been played on film by imposing presences like Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford, but in keeping with recent tradition, where a younger actor steps in, John Krasinski embodies a Ryan who’s out of his depth.  This Ryan is assured of little but his own fallibility; he’s aware of his weaknesses — and is able to play against them — in a manner hardly befitting a screen super-spy.

Putting forward his theory about a potential terror cataclysm being hatched in Yemen, Ryan seems defeated but hardly surprised that he’s ignored. More than any big-screen idol one could imagine in the part, Krasinski has practice and expertise at playing a low man on the totem pole. His Ryan stands out for his welcome lack of swagger.

The agent is eventually heard, the story progresses and I look forward to a second season.

Tangy Cucumber and Tomato Salad

This simple salad that highlights what we have oodles of from the garden comes from a Persian cookbook.

• 1 kg English cucumbers, peeled and cut into 4 cm spears
• 300 g cherry tomatoes, washed and cut in half
• 15 g fresh chives, finely chopped
• 15 g flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
• 4 tablespoons pomegranate molasses

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1. Toss the cucumbers, tomatoes, fresh herbs and salt in a large salad bowl. Taste for seasoning and adjust, as needed
2. Drizzle with pomegranate molasses. Serve immediately or cover and hold for up to 30 minutes.

Snap by Belinda Bauer

This is one of the first times that I can remember that a flat our murder mystery was long listed for the Booker Prize.  Wow!
The opening finds 11-year-old Jack Bright and his two younger sisters left in a car on a British motorway by their mother, Eileen, after a breakdown one summer day three years before the action in the present. Jack ventures out of the car in search of his mother only to find a phone booth with a receiver left dangling off the hook and his mother's body with a very distinctive knife nearby. Jack's father abandons the kids, leaving Jack to resort to a life of crime in order to avoid going into care.   In the present, pregnant Catherine While scares off a stranger who breaks into her West Country home; later, she finds a knife next to a birthday card her mother sent her. The message in the card had been crossed out and replaced with the words “I could have killed you.” The plot lines predictably overlap, and come to a united conclusion.

Father Figures (2018)

In my defense, I watched this movie on a plane, using the United entertainment app, and even with that, I had to split it between two flights.  So excuse me if I enjoyed it.  I am almost completely alone in that, at least as far as the critics are concerned.  It has an unusually high number of one star ratings. 
The cast has got a lot of actors with name recognition.  Owen Wilson and Ed Helms play twin sons with Glenn Close as their mother.  When she gets remarried, they discover that she has not been entirely truthful about their paternity, and despite their wildly different personalities and priorities, they take off on a road trip to find their dad.  The candidates include the Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw (who plays himself), JK Simmons, and Christopher Walken.  It is not nearly as good as the cast would imply, but it is what you would expect of an Owen Wilson movie from start to finish, and there were more than one moment of laughing out loud.

Eggplant with Chickpeas and Herbed Yogurt

Here we go, another Ottolenghi eggplant dish, this one with some protein in it for the vegetarians amongst us.
Ingredients:

• 3 large eggplants, cut crosswise into slices 3/4-in/2-cm thick (2 3/4 lb/1.2 kg)
• 1/2 cup/120 ml olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups/240 g soft cooked chickpeas*, plus some of their cooking liquid
• 1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and lightly crushed
• 1 small lemon, rind, pith, and seeds removed, flesh coarsely chopped (1 1/4 oz/35 g)
• 1/2 cup/100 g Greek yogurt
• 1/3 cup/10 g mint, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup/15 g flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
• salt and black pepper

*If cooking with dried chickpeas, you'll need to start with 1/2 cup/100g to yield 1 1/2 cups/240g of cooked, and make sure you boil them to the stage when they just start to fall apart. If using canned, cook them in their liquid, plus some extra water, for about 30 minutes.

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 475 F/250 C. Note: Ottolonghi recommends placing a tray of water at the bottom of the oven to give out steam and prevent the eggplants from drying out.
2. Place the eggplants in a large bowl with 1/4 cup/60 ml of the oil, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and a good grind of black pepper. Mix well, then spread out in a single layer on 1 or 2 baking sheets lined with parchment paper and roast in the oven for about 40 minutes, until golden brown and cooked through. Remove and set aside to cool.
3. Meanwhile, put the chickpeas in a bowl along with the cumin seeds, lemon flesh, 3 tablespoons of the oil, 2 tablespoons of the cooking liquid, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and a good grind of black pepper. Mash roughly using a fork or potato masher, adding a bit more of the cooking liquid if needed to get a thick, spreadable paste.
4. Place the yogurt in the bowl of a small food processor along with the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil, 2 tablespoons water, the herbs, 1/4 teaspoon salt and some black pepper. Blitz until well combined. You need to be able to drizzle the yogurt, so add a tablespoon or two of water or oil if you need to.
5. To arrange, spread the eggplant slices out on a platter or individual plates. Spoon the crushed chickpeas on top, followed by a drizzle of the yogurt and serve.

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

Wow, this is really an excellent book, which in a very unexpected way opens up your mind to a new way of seeing things.  While it is not the best book I have read, it is an unusual one, and it has the possibility of opening up your mind to a new way of looking at the marine world.  You leave the book with a slightly better understanding of how little we really know about our oceans on the one hand and our vast planet on the other.

The subtitle of the book is a bit misleading.  It is definitely surprising, but it is definitely not about the science of consciousness, nor does it explore the mystery of consciousness in a metaphysical way.  What it does do is to go a long way towards debunking the myth of anthropomorphism and make the universality of consciousness the default worldview for the general reader. It persuades the reader not so much overtly but rather by osmosis, telling the story of the author’s many encounters with octopuses Athena and Octavia and Kali and Karma at the New England Aquarium in Boston, and convincing by its very storytelling and ordinariness – by observing and reporting their behavior. Would that this kind of meticulous observation had earned the name behaviorism, rather than what we were stuck with when I was a biology student.

Peter Rabbit (2017)

Yes, my youngest is twenty four.  No, there are no nearby children who I can call over to watch these movies with.  I do have a granddaughter but she is decidedly not interested in movies at this point.  So this is on me.  I really enjoy the children movie genre.

The decision to take a much loved children's story to the big screen using computer animation is a risky one.

Happily, for the most part, Peter Rabbit doesn't flub it up (although there are bound to be critics and those who feel that it doesn't take the original seriously enough or that the story is just too dumb.  To those, I send them back to the original stories--they are not exactly great literature).
For one thing, it’s been 116 years since Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit first appeared on paper, and this is a decidedly modern story.  Out with the old Mr. McGregor, in with a new one, and he is destined from the start to get involved with Bea, the creator of the books to begin with.  So a nice little circling back to where it all started, and the story is easy to follow, all the while marveling at the absolutely stellar animation.  The fur seems so real it is remarkable.
This is a movie that will not only delight kids with its physical comedy and bright palette but one that adults will find surprisingly charming.

Labor Day, 1882

Well over a century after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."
But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday.  What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
The first Labor Day holiday (pictured above) was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

Jory, Newburg, Oregon

I took this picture just before going in the front door of this beautiful restaurant in the Willamette Valley.  I was so wowed by the setting that I worried a bit that the food might not be their first priority.  That turned out to be a foolish concern.
It is located inside of the Allison Inn & Spa, and the dining room is just as nice as the outside.  Even the bathroom is beautiful.  I loved the open kitchen where you could watch the food being prepared.
Jory is one of the most luxurious options in the valley, with an onsite garden with a master gardener specifically designed for the kitchen. Chef Sunny Jin has three years experience at French Laundry, not to mention a stint at Spain's El Bulli, and his dishes tend to offer snapshots of the valley's freshest seasonal ingredients, day by day.  I had a seafood paella that was spectacular.  The location is amidst wineries, so that can be a linked activity as well.

The Pizza Sauce That Jake Makes

Many years ago my eldest son took a cooking class at the local coop.  It was by no means his first foray into cooking, but I think taking a class is one way to learn ideas and techniques in a hands on way that is very helpful.  And if you happen to like what you make in the class then you can take the recipe home and (hopefully) reproduce it.  This is one recipe from that experience:

• 32 oz. can crushed tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
• 2 tsp. granulated white sugar
• 3 tsp. dried oregano flakes
• 1 tsp. onion powder
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 1 tsp. black pepper
• 1 tsp. kosher salt
• 2 Tbsp. minced fresh basil
• Dash extra virgin olive oil

Combine crushed tomatoes and all dry ingredients in a medium saucepan and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in fresh basil with a dash of olive oil, simmer for five additional minutes. Allow sauce to cool to room temperature before using.

Crow’s Shadow Exhibit, Lightcatcher Museum, Bellingham, WA

 This exhibition, organized by the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in partnership with the Crow's Shadow Institute of Arts, chronicles the history of Crow’s Shadow over the past twenty-five years as it developed into an important native printmaking atelier in Pendleton, Oregon. Founded by Oregon painter and printmaker James Lavadour (Walla Walla), who envisioned a traditional arts studio focused on printmaking, Crow’s Shadow is the only professional printmaking studio located on a reservation community in the United States.  Cool, right?

I am a big fan of modern interpretations of ancient things.  These two are just the tip of the iceberg at this exhibit.  Above is Rabbit Dance by Lillian Pitt (Yakima) and to the left is
Raven Heart by Ric Gendron (Colville Confederated Tribes). They have a bit of modernity to them but have a foot in tradition as well. 
There are a number of things that I loved in this exhibit.  One is that there are echoes of old and new.  The other is that there is a focus on things that are made by hand and on animals.  the natural world, and the things that people make with their hands from nature are things that I like in art.