On the timing of a quiche...

I've been without a husband these last few nights. Neil has a critique seminar today that he has been diligently working hard towards all week long, which means that I went to bed before he got home last night, and he was gone before I woke up this morning. A critique seminar is where you hang your paintings up on the wall, and a class full of students plus the professor all critique your work. Pretty high stress, and needless to say, you want to bring your A-game to something like that. So, I understand why Neil has been M.I.A., although I do miss him.

However, there is one thing I love about having my husband away and that is the opportunity to cook things that I love to eat, but that he turns his nose up at. Last week it was crepes, because Neil is very suspicious of eating things that I haven't cooked before and crepes were a new item that I wanted to try out. So I whipped up a batch while he was out one night, and they were fantastic. Lo and behold, the next morning when Neil had one for breakfast - he loved it. Imagine that. I also try and cook things with shrimp every time Neil is gone, because I adore shrimp - tasty little buggers - and Neil pooh-poohs them.

So, I plotted last night to make a quiche. (I know, you are all scratching your heads and trying to figure out how Neil could dislike quiche!) Actually, it was more like a frittata, because I decided I just didn't have the patience or the energy to make a pie crust last night, so I went with a crustless quiche. Another fantastic reason for making the quiche was that there is just simply no meat at all in the house right now, and I'm very much a "meat as main-dish" kind of girl. It's been a long pay-period, and I've been scratching some fairly creative meals together the last few days as my wallet sits empty. There was, however, some eggs, some bacon, some potatoes, some cheese and two green onions. Which just screams "QUICHE!". Plus, a brand-spanking new recipe for souffled quiche that I've been drooling over ever since I read a blog post about it over on "Orangette" - my new favorite cooking blog.

So quiche it would be. I made my first mistake of the night, however, when I decided to make some cookies first. Becuase we just ran out of oatmeal-chocolate-chip, and I'm on a new kick where I feel that it is very important to always have cookies in the house. So, priorities - cookies first. Plus, there was no timeline for dinner - I knew Neil wouldn't be home and expecting to be fed, so it didn't matter if I ate late. So I started the cookies around 7:30. And they started baking around 8:00, which is where I ran into problem #2.

I have a deep dark secret to confess, and it's ugly. I'm so ashamed. I LOVE America's Next Top Model. It is my secret obsession, my major vice and I just can't stop watching it. I know it silly, I know that it's fluff - but I love to see the pictures at the end of the show. And the way the photo shoots are set up, and the costumes and makeup and whatnot. So, I figured that I would watch my program and make the quiche during the commercials. Hmmm... Okay.

While running back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, and back to the living room to make sure the show wasn't back on, and back to the kitchen to try and squeeze a few more preparations in, I accomplished watching the show. All of it. But I did not accomplish cooking a quiche. I got everything prepped and ready - the potatoes microwaved and the bacon thawed and the green onions chopped and the egg/milk mixture all beaten, but no quiche was actually in the oven at any point during the hour from 8:00 - 9:00.

Okay, no problem, I thought - I'll just eat later than originally planned. Dinner at 9:30. So I cooked up the bacon (yum) and poured it into the pie pan. And then sauteed the softened potatoes in the bacon fat (yum) and added them on top of the bacon. Then sprinkled the whole thing with the onions and grated cheddar cheese. Oh my stomach was starting to growl. I poured the egg mixture over everything, and placed it in the oven to cook. At 9:30. Okay, well dinner will just be pushed back to 10:00.

Well, this has already been an overly-long story to tell you about a simple quiche and I think you all know where this is heading, so I'll just wrap it up quickly. The quiche came out of the oven at 10:05 and by that time, my appetite was gone (you know how that can happen when you wait too long to eat) and I was falling asleep on the couch. :( My beautiful, puffy golden quiche sat uneaten on the stove while it cooled and I headed off to bed.

I finally had a slice of it this morning and I have to say, it was simply heavenly. There was quite a few potatoes in it, so it wasn't quite as "eggy" as quiches usually are. It was nice and hearty and the bacon flavor was just the right level. The recipe will be stored in my keeper file. Perhaps I will even be able to convert Neil. But I'm not holding my breath...

Souffléd Quiche with Potatoes, Bacon, and Cheese
(adapted from Jimmy's Souffléd Quiche with Ham, Cheese, and Asparagus on Orangette's blog)

1 pound of red potatoes, cut into ¼ inch cubes (I used 4 red potatoes)
3 slices of bacon
2-3 green onions, chopped
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

¾ cup heavy cream
¾ cup 2% milk

4 large eggs

1 Tbs unbleached all-purpose flour

A small pinch each of salt, cayenne, and nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.Place the potatoes in a microwave safe bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap and microwave 5-7 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft.

In a medium bowl, combine the cream, milk, eggs, flour, salt, cayenne, and nutmeg. Whisk together for 2-3 minutes. Set aside.

Cut the bacon in to small pieces, and cook in a skillet over medium-high heat until just barely crisp. Remove from the skillet and scatter into the bottom of a pie dish.

Drain excess bacon grease from the skillet, leaving about 1 teaspoon. Saute the potatoes in the skillet over high heat for 4-5 minutes, or until browned. Pour the potatoes into the pie dish with the bacon. Sprinkle with the chopped green onions and cheddar cheese. Make sure the potato mixture is spread uniformly in the pie dish, then pour the egg mixture over the potatoes.
Bake the quiches for 30-35 minutes, until the filling has puffed and the tops are lightly golden. Allow to cool on a rack for a few minutes; then unmold and serve.

seasonal musings...

I'm sure you are all dying to know, has the wind stopped blowing yet, like weather.com predicted it would? And the answer is, no. No, it hasn't. I tried to go sit outside and enjoy the sunshine on my lunch break today and the wind blew the soup off of my spoon. Needless to say, I packed it in pretty quickly... It's such a shame, too, because it really has been lovely here, lately. Day after day of perfectly sunny, beautiful weather - all ruined by the gale-force winds.

On another weather-related note, I was reading another blog today, and there was a description of a Seattle fall day. Specifically, "The nights are starting their long, slow stretch; the mornings grow cooler and cloudier", which just immediately set off a twinge in my heart and a memory of seasons, which I still miss so much. I miss that subtle, almost-unnoticable shift in the weather that signals, instantly, that the seasons are changing. The kind that you wouldn't notice if you hadn't experienced a place for a long period of time. And I think when you have lived with seasons your whole life, you associate those little shifts in weather with specific memories and experiences. That description above immediately set off 10,000 memories in my mind that I associate with fall. With just a description, I can almost feel the crisp air, feel the leaves crunching under my feet, taste the change in the air - it's such an intense feeling, association. And it makes me wistful, and long for those days. I have these kind of memories and these feelings about every season - spring, summer, even winter. Each season has it's own feel, and it's own batch of experiences.

Right now in Portland, would be about the time that the tiny, subtle shifting towards spring begins. Just a fraction more warmth in the air. Tiny green buds on the trees, reaching towards any hint of sunshine. There is hope in the air - of warmth, of growth, of summer. It's a season of shaking off the cobwebs, of renewal, of stretching out limbs that have been trapped indoors for too long. Of getting out and digging in the dirt again, just being outside, feeling the cool air on your skin.

I'm sure it is because I haven't experienced San Francisco for long enough, that I can't sense the seasons here. It's too subtle for me still. I had no sense of a spring ever coming here. If there was a shift, it was completely under the radar for me. Temperatures remain about the same, every day is sunny. I almost welcome the fog that is supposed to come in the summertime, because at least it would be different. Something close to, or at least somewhat resembling, a season.

And yet, it is hard to say if even if there were seasons down here - if tomorrow I felt that subtle shift between winter and spring in the air, somehow - would it be the same? Because of all of my seasonal affections, memories, are tied to a different place. I have a feeling that I would feel the days shorten and cool in fall and wish to be home at mom and dad's, helping Devin make apple cider. Or smelling freshly cut grass and seeing a break in the rain showers and heading out for a quick walk, avoiding the puddles. So I don't think it is the seasons that I miss - I think I just miss my home.

Peter Saul Art Lecture

There was a really great lecture at SFAI by painter Peter Cole that Neil and I went to. Mr. Cole was one of the most entertaining speakers that I have heard in a long time. What made it even more remarkable is that he is 74 years old. The guy has been involved in the art world since the late 1950's! He was refreshingly honest, and not at all caught up in the "myth" of himself, as some artist's can be. And he was pretty kooky, to be honest. I haven't laughed as much at an artist's lecture in a long time. The NY Times has a really good article about Peter Saul, and I'm going to just put it up here for the 1-2 people who read this blog. :)


"NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Peter Saul, who turns 74 on Saturday, is a classic artist’s artist, one of our few important practicing history painters and a serial offender in violations of good taste. His career, while long, steady and admired, has never exceeded cult status. It’s an example of can’t-see-the-tree-for-the-forest visibility.

The influence of Mr. Saul’s paintings, with their cartoony figures, lurid-lush colors, splatter-film expressionism and contrarian take on topical subjects, pervades recent art. It has contributed mightily to major careers, like those of Carroll Dunham and Elizabeth Murray. And it has paved the way for the neo-Surrealist noodlings of countless student painters spilling out of art schools and straight into the arms of a ravenous market.
Yet his own welcome by the market has been, until fairly recently, less than avid. His reception by museums has been marked by indifference, if not avoidance. That the retrospective of his work at the Orange County Museum of Art here in Southern California is not scheduled to go to New York City, where Mr. Saul now lives, says much.
True, the Museum of Modern Art, with its white-box politeness, is not a natural home for his visual perversities. Nor is the Metropolitan Museum, despite its vaunted embrace of “challenging” new art. But why hasn’t the Whitney, which owns one of Mr. Saul’s grandly scathing Vietnam War paintings, stepped up to the plate? And where is the new New Museum? Totally lost to painted prettiness these days? (The Saul show of 50 works is organized by a former New Museum curator, Dan Cameron.)

Mr. Saul’s art is not pretty, though it has many eye-catching pleasures. Nor is it polite. Indeed, the artist makes zealous efforts to ensure the opposite. In America today, he says in a catalog interview, “there’s a tremendous need to not be seen as racist, not seen as sexist. So I want to make sure I am seen as those things.” He succeeds. What museum would be the right one for a painting of a knife-wielding O. J. Simpson strapped down for execution as a buxom blond angel points to a blood-stained glove and intones, “This is why you have to die”? Or for a picture of Christopher Columbus slaughtering New World natives who themselves hold platters of chopped human limbs in their arms? What is the appropriate place for art that stirs together John Wayne Gacy and Angela Davis, Mickey Mouse and Ethel Rosenberg, Stalin and Willem de Kooning, Basil Wolverton and George W. Bush, then spikes the broth with prickly references to capitalism, Communism, homophobia, feminism, Black Power, racism, pedophilia and art-world politics and — last but not least — to the aging, decaying, self-lacerating artist himself?
Depending on who’s looking, Mr. Saul might be seen either to embrace or revile individual ingredients in this stew, though when his art is pressed to declare its loyalties, it gives no unequivocal answers. Indeed, it seems to be answer-averse, a species of painting as agitation, picture-making as button-pushing.


Mr. Saul, who was born in San Francisco, started pushing buttons in the late 1950s when he discovered that although he liked the way certain Abstract Expressionist artists painted, he couldn’t stomach the Existentialist mumbo-jumbo that surrounded their work. So he adopted the brushy style but dumped the pretensions. Instead of spiritual depths, he painted icebox interiors stocked with soft drinks, steaks, daggers, penises and toilets. In the process he created a painterly version — Larry Rivers did the same — of what would come to be called Pop Art.
During this time, from 1956 to 1964, he was living in relative isolation in Europe. In Paris he met a few career-shaping figures, including the Surrealist painter Roberto Matta and the American art dealer Allan Frumkin, who would represent Mr. Saul for more than 30 years. He also had transformative encounters with Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” and Mad magazine.


In the mid-to-late ’60s, after he returned to California, Mr. Saul produced a series of paintings prompted by the war in Southeast Asia. In “Vietnam” (1966), done in a sleek, linear but oozy graphic style, figures embodying racial whiteness, blackness and yellowness twist together in a kind of apocalyptic gang rape, with all parties violated and violating.


Other paintings in the series — what an amazing and timely show they would make on their own — push a vision of universal defilement even further. In their unchartable moral compass, their disdain of humanist solace and their alarming formal beauty, they are among the benchmark art images of their era.


In 1975 Mr. Saul moved to New York. But by then painting, or at least his kind, was out of fashion. So in 1981 he relocated, this time to Austin, Tex., to teach. He stayed there for almost 20 years, once again removing himself from the mainstream, and at a time when political art, including political painting, was finding a new audience.

Actually, Mr. Saul had long been doing some of his work for an audience of one, himself, specifically a series of self-portraits that he began in the ’70s and continues to add to today. The images are, almost without exception, of the body caught in the grip of mortifying instincts and erupting emotions while under assault from a hostile world.

In “Oedipus Junior” (1983), the artist simultaneously stabs himself in the eye with a paintbrush, castrates himself with a buzz saw and offers a beer to a female breast that sprouts from his neck. In a 1997 drawing, a vomiting woman pushes through a man’s forehead with a placard reading, “Your sexist jokes make me sick.” In several paintings, heads are shown in meltdown, dissolving into fat and sweat, eyes and teeth swimming around in a puddle of fleshy goo.

Such images — Rembrandt’s late self-portraits are not all that far off — have increased in number as Mr. Saul has grown older. Yet his work continues to look youthfully of the moment. And for young artists he is, for several reasons, a worthy role model.


He has kept himself more or less clear of the art world, so owes it nothing. He has also kept clear of fashion — having a longtime supportive dealer was, naturally, an enabling factor in this — and, with scant critical encouragement until recent years, has gone his own masterly realized hideous-hilarious way. And that way has been based on taking a fundamentally facile genre, Surrealism, and loading it with purposeful, critical content.


If his work has softened and broadened with time — a few of the later pictures in this otherwise sterling selection feel undercooked or overstated — its essence remains tough and firm. This is an art of combative moral ambiguity that looks as if it’s coming from some laugh-riot lunatic fringe but is, in fact, a sane and realistic depiction of the world. What’s wrong with this picture? each Saul painting asks. And each one answers: Everything."

Here are some pictures of his paintings...








The main theme that seemed to run through his whole talk was to stay true to yourself, don't paint something because you think it will please your teachers, or please the critics, or please the buyers - paint what you are truly interested in. In an art school setting, where most students are striving to do exactly that - please your teachers especially - it was an important message, I think. He has also refused to buy into the idea of the art "world". He said that if someone told him that an idea would never sell, or would never fly, it pushed him even more strongly in the direction of doing something. He was always the opposite of the establishment, of what common sense said to do...

Overall, it was just a wonderful, outstanding lecture - and I really wish I could find a clip of him on you tube to put up - he is simply hilarious. Again, I've never laughed so hard at an art lecture.

After the lecture, we headed to Rico's Restaurant, for some of the best burritos in the city, IMHO. Finally, our bellies were full and it was time for bed...

The answer is blowing in the wind...

Well, something is blowing in the wind, that's for sure. The wind has been absolutely brutal in San Francisco for the last few days. Ever since we had that 80 degree heat and NO wind last Tuesday, I think the wind gods are trying to make up for lost time. It makes it completely miserable to go outside. Waiting for the bus is absolute torture and the wind creates a completely new hairstyle for me as I wait. It's not pretty... 

Down on the Embarcadero this evening, waiting for the bus, I was watching a flag on the cruise ship that was in port, and I swear it was about to be torn off of its flagpole. I do not approve. Any day that the wind would like to be gone, is fine with me. The current forecast for today was winds at 28mph, gusting up to 33mph. Not a hurricane, I'll give you that, but just generally unpleasant all together. AND with the wind chill effect, it effectively feels like 42 degrees out right now. That's cold for San Francisco, folks - especially when an ocean gust blows right through your thin jacket! A brief glance at weather.com says that it's supposed to die back down to the regular 12mph in a few days. One can only hope.

We might be attending a Giants game on Sunday, which will be fun, even if we have to sit in the nosebleed seats. We actually tuned into a game the other night on the telly and watched Tim Lincecum pitch. Quite entertaining, actually, although I've never truly been much of a baseball fan. 

Well, that's all for now. Just trying to get back in the swing of blogging. Nothing exciting to report, but just thought I would write and record my dismay at all the wind. WIND BE GONE!! (We'll see if that works)...

It's baaaaaaack...

Back by the popular demand of...one person, I decided to start the blog back up. Since no one really reads it, and that's okay, it is still a great place to record all of what's happening here in San Francisco. I'll look back and be really glad I did this, someday.

Anywhoo, when I last left you, there were some goals to be achieved. I am only going to say that only one of those three goals is currently anywhere near being achieved - you can figure out which ones that might be. That's life, I guess... Good intentions and all that. I have definitely learned something about myself in the process - I love to prepare, plan and look forward to things, and I'm really bad at following through and actually seeing those things happen. So that might be the next goal - pick just one thing and actually finish it.

So, now that the goals have been dispatched, what's currently going on here in Frisco? Well, yesterday was Earth Day, which is organized and put on by the State Parks Foundation (where I work, in case anyone has forgotten). Volunteers came out to 29 different state parks across the state to clean up, perform maintenance, and pitch in however the park needs them. The state parks just don't get the funding to do all of the deferred maintenance that they need, so this is a wonderful opportunity for the public to get out there and volunteer, and for the parks to get free help completing simple projects that they just don't have the time or funding to do/finish.

I was assigned to Angel Island State Park, with my co-worker Eleanor. Even though Angel Island is just right across the bay from San Francisco, I had to rent a car, to drive to Tiburon which is where the only ferry to Angel Island leaves from. So I picked up my Zipcar at 7:30 and headed around the bay. Tiburon is a very wealthy community across the bay from San Francisco, in Marin county. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and perfect weather for working outdoors. We couldn't have asked for better.

We met at the ferry terminal, and headed over to the island, via a private cruise on the state boat. The volunteers would all register at the Tiburon dock, and then come over on the 10:00 ferry. We were heading over early to help "organize" out on the island.




It was a perfect morning to be out on the ferry - with pristine views of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the San Francisco skyline in the distance.

We pulled into Ayala Cove out at Angel Island, and basically just enjoyed the view and the weather and waited for the volunteers to arrive - the park rangers had everything perfectly organized and ready to go. 

Angel Island really is amazingly beautiful. It is referred to as the "Ellis Island of the West" - Chinese and Japanese immigrants coming to the west coast were all processed through Angel Island, and many of them were held on the island in quarantine for certain diseases and other reasons - sometimes for months on end. The immigration station and some of the barracks and the hospital are currently being restored for visitors to come and see how conditions were while the island was operational. There is also miles of hiking and biking trails around the island, and 9 camping spaces. Neil and I will be heading out there again to spend some time on the island sometime soon.

As we were there as representatives of the Foundation, we were supposed to be supporting the state park staff in putting the event on. However, they had everything so under control, and so well-planned, that, after the opening welcomes and thank-you's, we were able to head out on a crew to help with beach cleanup. We took a tram out to the south side of the island to a beach where we were picked up trash. The amount of styra-foam on that beach was absolutely astounding. I picked up so many pieces of cups, trays, packaging - none of it bio-degradable. Such a shame. It was really a wake-up call, to see it first hand, to be more aware of the stuff that I use on a daily basis, and how it affects the environment that I live in. 

It was quite a nice view from the beach we were working at, as well:

We finished up with quite a large pile of garbage - kind of sad that this much garbage shows up on beaches, but very good that we got it all picked up! We hopped back on the tram to go back to Ayala Cove where we were served a lovely lunch of pasta, Caesar Salad and garlic bread. With a dessert of oatmeal cookies. I was kind of upset to have to give up a weekend day "working", but it ended up being a truly lovely day, with perfect weather and really nice people. I am glad to have participated. 

And, on another tangent, I may have also found Neil and summer job! YAY! Working for the Foundation, helping out in the membership department. They are looking for some part-time, flexible help that they can pay as an independent contractor - Neil fits that bill perfectly. The membership manager, Eleanor, was my co-worker out on Angel Island, and so we got to talking about how over-working they all were and how they needed help, and what they were currently looking for. So it ended up being a very fruitful day, in more than one way. 

I made a really great soup for dinner last night, as well, and thought I would share the recipe with you all. It was nice and hearty and filling after a long day on Angel Island.

Bortlotti Bean Minestrone: (taken from the March 2009 edition of Cooking Light)

1 1/4 cups dried Borlotti Beans (you could also substitute 2 cans of white beans and skip step #1)

1/2 cup coarsely chopped bacon

1 cup chopped onion

1 cup chopped fennel bulb

3/4 cup chopped carrot

3/4 cup chopped celery

1 tsp dried basil

3 garlic cloves, minced

3 cups chopped Swiss Chard or Kale

2 14.5-oz. cans of chicken broth

1 14.5-oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

1. Sort and wash beans; place in a large bowl. Cover with water to 2 inches above beans; cover and let stand 8 hours or overnight. Drain beans.

2. Place beans in a large saucepan, and cover with water to 3 inches above beans; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer 1 1/2 hours or until tender. Drain.

3. Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add bacon to pan, cook 6 minutes or until crisp, stirring frequently. Add onion and next 5 ingredients (through garlic); saute 4 minutes. Add chard (or kale) and saute 2 minutes or until chard wilts. Add broth and tomatoes; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes. Add beans; simmer, uncovered, 30 minutes. Stir in salt and pepper; sprinkle with cheese. 

It's quite tasty!