May in South Lake Tahoe

Great weather for a walk down to the lake!

Good lines from terrible movies

I was struck by this fairly hilarious quote from a fairly horrendous movie, Baseketball.

Narrator: Soon it was commonplace for entire teams to change cities in search of greater profits. The Minneapolis Lakers moved to Los Angeles where there are no lakes. The Oilers moved to Tennessee where there is no oil. The Jazz moved to Salt Lake City where they don't allow music. The Raiders moved from Oakland to LA back to Oakland... no one seemed to notice. 

Especially since the last line playes well with my geography of despair theory of sport fan fanaticism.

Some good ol' fashioned FOOD PORN!

A bunch of traveling done, and a bunch yet to come.

A1 and I made a rather extravagant breakfast in Berkeley the other day, with a bunch of delicious ingredients from the new Republic of V, a new-ish vegan specialty shop.

This is a delicious vegan breakfast sandwich, with cashew cream cheese, breakfast sausage, and hot sauce on a salt bagel (yum) pick up around the corner at Local 123.

Today's lunch started as toast and leftovers, and then I decided that it was a great day for a fancypants grilled cheese. This is caramelized onions, jalapenos, and Daiya mozzarella, and slow pan fried in Earth Balance. It was delicious.

I posted this Mediterranean style quesadilla the other day from my phone, but the image got cut off. It's dry cured black olives, and preserved Meyer lemons.

Gotta finish up packing up the Tahoe apartment to move out on Monday, and I'm reading several great ebooks from the library, a couple of which have expired (so I just haven't turned on wifi on my tablet to allow it to sync.) And I need to keep up my perfect streak of seeing the lake every day that I'm physically present in South Lake Tahoe, so I'll probably go do some reading at the public library.

Western Burger

At Flaming Icecube,  Boardman, OH. YUM.

Pittsburgh: PNC Park

Really pleasant stadium: feels cozy, and empty.

Giants already up 2-0 after one half inning.

Overheard in restaurants

I'm in Pittsburgh. I just heard some brodude scumbag explaining to his British colleague that where it all went wrong in the United States was that originally only landowners could vote, but then we changed that.

Jackass.

What's more,  from their conversation, I think they work in fracking.

Pirates game tonight!

As my brother said, why the hell did I come all the way to Pittsburgh to see a Giants game?

Vegan enchiladas!

With tofu, poblanos, ONIONS, and Daiya.

Car packed for adventure!

If the adventure is driving to Sacramento...

On being a ski bum

Yep, the season is basically over. I'm headed back down the hill today, and Sunday is closing day for skiing at Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood. I did some late season skiing on Monday (Kirkwood), Tuesday (Heavenly), and Wednesday (Heavenly). While I'm glad I did, it wasn't great skiing: a lot of heavy, wet, sticky snow at Heavenly, and relatively few options (although a few good ones) at Kirkwood. 

Total stats for the season (not counting four days & nights at non-Vail Management resorts) are:
32 days at Vail resorts (Heavenly, Northstar, Kirkwood, Canyons, Breckenridge)
(36 days grand total: including Mt. Rose, Brighton, and Snowbird) 
376,593 vertical feet

I definitely progressed from being a high green (beginner) skier who could negotiate basic blue (intermediate) runs, to a solid advanced intermediate skier who can confidently go fast on most blue runs. By the end of the season I was choosing some black diamond (advanced) runs.

Several friends gave me basic pointers (square to the slope, hands up, lean forward, carry a tray) which definitely improved my skiing. I still never got around to taking any formal lessons, and perhaps the biggest impediment in my becoming a true advanced level skier is my lack of formal instruction. (I've had one "lesson" ever, an hour or so with J's father about eight or nine years ago.)

I have to admit: I have kind of fucking loved being a ski bum for the season. Not that I haven't continued working, and the fantastic snow of March was essentially lost to me due to a ton of travel. But it was a pretty damn lucky, privileged life to lead for a season.

Now I'm starting to pack up the apartment in South Lake Tahoe, moving stuff back to Sacramento, and waiting to hear on a couple balls that remain up in the air. The future remains wide open.

View from the Heavenly Gondola

What the hell am i doing on my device?!?

Shades of Blue

Lake Tahoe. About five different shades of blue, even if they don't turn up in the picture.

Forgot my phone

When i went skiing today at Heavenly. It was a lovely four hours offline.

Reclamation

Under the pavement, the forest.

Getting older

Isn't all bad. Sometimes you're awfully cute.

HERB GARDEN!!!

Just planted.

From left: basil, sage, lemon balm, rosemary. (Japanese maple providing the fork in the road background.)

Another singlespeed as cargo vehicle!

I love loading up bikes with random shit and riding it around.

The Great Brussels Sprouts Massacre of 2014

Longtime readers of this blog know that brussels sprouts are one of my favorite foods.

So I was really excited to grow some.

And they bloomed, from seed, with impressive vigor, and lasted through Sacramento's cold snap, and dry winter.

 But then, didn't do a damn thing except look pretty. No fruit whatsoever.

So today I finally tore them out.

Going to plant some stuff today: random extra seeds I had in the garage, and an herb garden out front.

Grill and fry extravaganza!

Singlespeed as cargo vehicle!

Res ipsa loquitor, no? (Well, res ipsa loquitor if you click on the picture to see the whole image.)

After

See "Before", posted last week. Pulled out the pretty but non-producing Cavolfiore cabbage, and the prodigious but dry and fibery radish.

 

Not sure if I'll plant a summer garden to speak of or not: too many balls in the air.

Fresh OJ

c'mon: who doesn't like a nice glass of fresh squeezed orange juice?
The Valencia tree in the yard is just now sweet enough to juice and eat (the navel tree was good around Christmas.)

Hot salad!

This is the dinnertime food spread that J and I refer to as "hot salad" since most of the ingredients get cooked first. J has a Burner camp buddy in town, and we're feeding shit up!

Clockwise from bottom left:

• pan fried cauliflower with fresh lemon juice from the back yard
• caramelized onions
• pan fried zucchini coins
• flash fried red bell peppers (with almost a full head of garlic) 
• fried salt and pepper tofu (with almost another full head of garlic)
• lettuce from the front yard garden, three different kinds (baby oakleaf, red sail, and one I don't remember) 
• dressing
• fresh roma tomatoes, with fresh basil from my mom's herb garden
• leftover shishito peppers from Mother restaurant, a delicious new vegetarian restaurant in downtown Sacramento

A damn fine meal, if I do so say myself.

Construction debris flying about in the garage, family detritus in the neighborhood, and a future full of possibility. Big times!

Before

 

See followup post "After".  

This is the last shot of the "full" garden before I pulled a bunch of stuff out. For a look back at where it came from (these plants were all from seed) check out this post. 

Black bean tofu artichoke heart roasted red pepper stew!

Confidential to Room 318

The person getting minimum wage to clean up your room service tray from the hallway doesn't give a shit what you thought of your burger.

 

(click on the image to see the whole note if your browser view cut off the right side.)

And we'll all flot on okay...

On a Horizon Air Q400 from SEA to PDX. Only one more flight to go today, back to SMF.

Board Room SEA

That's a triple espresso with a shot of vegan dark chocolate syrup. GOOD MORNING!

Adventures in P-traps!

A new installment in the plumbing chronicles:

I've cleaned out literally hundreds of P-traps. This one (at my otherwise delightful friend H's house) is definitely in the top ten nastiest I've seen.

That's a solid halfpipe of gooey smelly soapy gel-y hairy foulness. The sink now drains great -- woo!

Amazing skiing yesterday at Breckenridge, but today my back is sore, and the road conditions sucked, so headed to Watercourse for lunch, and then probabl ywander Denver a bit.

Ohhhhh, City, O City (POST # 1,000!!!)

City, O City in Denver: still the absolute best damn vegan buffalo wings on the planet. (sample size =/>75)

HOLY CRAP, after posting this, I realized that THIS IS MY 1000th POST!!! (Only fitting that it should be food porn.) 

Sacramento gardening porn!

Living in an apartment in South Lake Tahoe has made me miss gardening. A lot.

Blowing back through Sacramento to fly out (three back to back to back trips in a row) but took some time to prune the citrus, and harvest a bit from the winter gardens:

This is the front yard: fennel, three kinds of lettuce, and some (unproductive) broccoli in the back. 

Same bed, from the other side: three varieties of kale, and (already harvested) broccoli. 

Back yard: from left (along fence): fava beans, cabbage, radish, and in far right near the other fence, brussels sprouts (which unfortunately don't look like they're going to produce.)

To get a sense of how the garden is progressing over the months, take a look back at this earlier post of the back yard and this earlier post of the front yard.

Tahoe

I'm not especially sorry that my season pass is blanked out this weekend for the holiday weekend: Heavenly is largely on wind hold, so what few lifts are open are likely going to be jam packed.

Did some great skiing on highly variable conditions yesterday with friend Z at Kirkwood. Including skiing my first (intentional) black diamond run, and going off piste for the first time (intentionally) except for some easy tree skiing long ago at Alta.

An upshot of the consistent high wind is the beautiful scent of Jeffrey pine it brings in the windows, which I have every one of wide open in my apartment. Nature's air freshener!

excitement!

Dearest readers,

How is THIS for a scintillating, edge of your seat, come back again and again blog post ?

===
TEDIOUS KEYBOARD TESTING:

why did some keys suddenly stop working on my crappy little Acer Aspire One netbook?


Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

does my Q key work? how about r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z?

e? e is a really important key, as any wheel of fortune fan can tell you.

123456789
!@#$%^&*()
QWERTYUIOP[]\
ASDFGHJKL;'
ZXCVBNM,./

okay, the stupid little piece of shit seems to be working better.

seems that unplugging it, removing the battery, holding down the power key for more than five seconds, then letting it sit for a few minutes without plugging it back in worked.

i wonder what will happen when i plug the battery back in. we'll see. trying that now.

the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG.

now with with a/c unplugged, and running on battery power.

a/c is unplugged. can the quick brown fox still jump over the lazy dog? yes, evidently, it can.

now i'll restart and try this whole annoying bit of testing again.

Festive tofu!

I bought some Christmas-themed cookie cutters for $2 at Grocery Outlet, mostly because I wanted the star one.

Here is the unexpectedly festive (super firm) tofu that resulted in their first use!

Tofu stars!

Bluebird Kirkwood!

Curry in a Hurry!

SLC second dinner, after a long day of skiing and walking.

Unquestionably:

The absolute fucking worst Whole Foods hot bar I've ever seen. In Park City, Utah.

Fortunately, the skiing just down the road at Canyons was pretty great. Tomorrow is Snowbird, last night was Brighton.

Now getting hopefully delicious vegan food at Vertical Diner in SLC. WIZARD is WEAK!

French fries and peppers

Seems like a theme lately. Maybe it's winter comfort food?

food porn!

Time for some good ol' fashioned food porn. And, um, other stuff.

Chocolate dipped candied Meyer lemons (which J made.) Yes, we've decided that we do indeed think they are Meyers, or at least a hybrid with Meyers.

A tofu breakfast scramble at Orphan Breakfast House in Sacramento, with my mom, after my derm appointment. (All good!)

Skies over Lake Tahoe (on the Gun Barrel lift coming down from Heavenly.) Vertical feet skied today: 9,163. Vertical feet skied this season: 113,043.

Homemade vegan onion rings! (There were also delicious poblano pepper rings.)

Burgers at Simple Bliss vegan cafe in South Lake Tahoe. They were very tasty, but very little food for the money ($15 left, $14 right.) Lovely little place if you're eating out and vegan in South Lake Tahoe, but the prices are steep.

Chocolate dipped candied lemons!

The birds are blue!

Swamp soup!

And since i had an extra small half head of green cabbage, sauerkraut!

Skiing and sandwich!

I rarely make the images in this blog "extra large" but even doing this doesn't really show the gorgeous view you get at the top of the Ridge Run at Heavenly. The snow is a mixed bag, as it's been almost a month since a decent snowstorm, and it was somewhat crowded, but it was a solid day of skiing. I went up the California base lodge side, and skied all over the mountain, including the Stagecoach (Nevada) side, and the Gondola.

When I got home, despite the fact that I'm way early for National Grilled Cheese Day, I decided they probably don't much care about veganized versions anyway. This is open faced, but it ultimately got folded and cut. That's homemade sauerkraut on top, and fried anahiem peppers, veggie pups, daiya cheeze, and toasted sourdough. Solid comfort food for a ski day lunch!

eighteen years, seven months

The rope bracelet I've had on my right ankle almost nonstop since May 1995 finally broke last night:

I tied it on while about 75 feet up in a tree in Idyllwild, California, hanging parachutes for shade. Some of you know the whole story, some of you probably don't. I'm going to write more about it, but not here. You can ask me if you're interested.

The only time I took it off for any extended period of time in the last eighteen and a half years was a couple weeks in Fall 1995 when I had really bad poison ivy on that ankle. Since then, I've taken it off fewer than ten times, and then only to wash it / decontaminate it. (Many readers know my long, difficult history with poison ivy and poison oak.)

When I ski, I had to loosen it completely to get it up above my ski boot, so the knots didn't dig into my leg. When I went to do a court appearance or somewhere else where formal dress was expected or required, I made a calculated decision whether I was going to wear it on the outside or inside of my sock. Almost every time, I decided to wear it outside of the sock, the few exceptions including job interviews, and jury trials. I wore it on the outside of the sock for everything from outdoor activities to weddings to being in court.

Normal wear and tear, showering with it, getting it filthy hundreds and thousands of time, and loosening and tightening every time I took socks on or off finally did it in.

J and I are considering what kind of special end it might get. Suggestions are welcome!

Seems apropos that it would break now, up here in South Lake Tahoe.