Old Best Friends and Soul Songs

Had a really delightful, silly time last night with some of my favorite people and oldest friends, two of whom indulged me a great deal by letting me play soul songs and dance around the basement for at least an hour. Of course, then I had to help both of them walk the five blocks to my house and nurse them back to health with offers of a warm den, water, and cupcakes, but I don't mind being a caretaker of debauched people, luckily. Anyway, maybe it has something to do with spring being in the air and all that, but I have had soul on the brain and these are a few things I have been really into lately:

I am working my way through Carlos Saura's flamenco trilogy right now; last night at the Nelson house I stumbled into the first one, Blood Wedding, and tonight I watched Carmen. I hope to see El Amour Brujo tomorrow. Carmen was good (such incredible dancing!), but I preferred Blood Wedding--while I enjoyed the textual interplay and overlapping "realities" of Carmen, the sparseness and subtlety of the set and dialogue combined with emotionally intense dancing in Blood Wedding were totally amazing.

Also, it helps that Antonio Gades is the sexiest communist ever.

Anyway, it's always nice to come across things I like, especially when it sort of happens by accident. And since I've somehow managed to see The Room AND Troll 2 in the past month, it was heartening to watch something that's actually, you know, good.

Bonus: There are a ton of opera references in Ulysses, and the ones about Carmen just got a lot more interesting.

Food

For some reason, wintry weather makes me feel like cooking. Last year I became pretty dedicated to regularly making my own veggie broth and seitan, and to cooking big potfuls of tasty food for the whole house (eggplant and peanut soup, some dal-like thing, delicious miso soup, chickpea noodle soup, chili, some other stuff). Maybe it's because cooking is a comforting, warm activity in the Minnesota winter, getting  to stand over the stove and and thaw. Maybe it's because I get really excited to cook for Thanksgiving and it carries on from there. Maybe it's because I get bored more easily. Maybe it's because our yellow kitchen looks nice in that snowy, white-gray winter light. Whatever it is, I'm getting that feeling again.

I've started out the season with a few mini-inspiration dishes over the past week. Just now I finished off the last of a pasta dish I made; I used up the last of my acorn squash and tomatoes from my garden by roasting them up all tender (roasted some garlic for good measure), and threw that all in the pot with lots of salt, olive oil, black pepper. Super simple and tasty. Then today Joe made a delicious rendition of his ever-delightful beans and rice. We ate it with a perfectly ripened avocado and celebrated the snow by cracking open a jar of the salsa my mom and I made out of garden tomatoes and peppers (we canned it ourselves!).


My family never leaves town for Thanksgiving anymore, and this year it looks like I'll have a few good friends around to share the holiday with too--unfortunately Anya might be included here since she broke her foot and probably can't go to New York, but I will try my best to heal her with scones, chickpea gravy, and squash soup.

For good measure, here's some stuff I from my kitchen that I like.

For instance, my totally awesome vintage blender. I had a cheap blender for a while that was light and flimsy, and the screw-on part on the bottom kept cracking. Stupid! But I found this lovely baby at the antique store up the street from my house, and it's really sturdy. Even better, it's a great kind of pukey-green retro color that this photo does not do justice. I love my blender.

Then there's my beloved pink electric mixer. This little guy came from the vintage store next to Eclipse, and not only is it adorable but it works like a charm!
And while I'm at it, here's a picture of the cats being cute.

SUPER UPDATE

WE'RE FUCKING GOING!

We bought our tickets, now I just have to get through the next eleven days. I grin every time I start thinking about it. My tendency in these kind of situations is to go into hyper-planning-mode, but I think it's for the better that Ezra is pretty much decidedly anti-plan and is keeping my type-A tendencies in check. He pretty much summed up the whole thing last week when we were trying to work out the Columbus trip, and he sent me a text that said, "Do want this pretty bad; the adventure, the camaraderie, being a part of something bigger, the ability to actually feel/see/hear music as the greatest thing there is (as embodied by a phenomenal band). Is that what we've always wanted?!"

Well, yeah. It is.

Like

Tonight I'm really enjoying the spacey, kind of spooky garage-rock-girl-group thing these ladies have going on.



I like finding good bands with women in them, and good bands made up entirely of women is extra points!

Update/Likes

Oh my god! Jonathan Richman has such dance moves! Awesome. I love this song, and everything else on this album, especially side one. What a weird, wonderful, goofy group of people, and what a great band.

I started Leviathan today, and 30 pages in it's so good! Philip Hoare bounces a lot of his own great insight off of already good ideas from Moby-Dick, and he does it in a way that's sensitive and exciting rather than just redundant or unimaginative.

I also have been productive in the kitchen again recently; no pictures, but in the past two days I've made a good pasta sauce, homemade seitan, chocolate chip and walnut cookies (to go in the cat shaped cookie jar I made in Ceramics this past semester!), seitan steak sandwiches which involved homemade steak sauce, veggie burgers, and a roasted red pepper and sundried tomato spread. I've also discovered that avocado with Annie's Goddess Dressing is the best thing on planet earth. I've been putting that damn dressing on EVERYTHING lately, and hopefully Jordan and I are going to try to make it before she goes back to Alaska in a few weeks.

Also, did I mention the butter sauce? Oh. Oh wow. I guess maybe I've been on a fat kick lately (remember what I say about dressing on avocados?) but man, this stuff is so good. I came across the recipe on Yummy Vegan Dinners, and have made it a few times in the past month or so. It is amazing. Like, probably the best sauce I have ever made. I dice my onions, mince my garlic and just leave them in the sauce 'cause I roll like that, I cut down the amount of Earth Balance by a tablespoon or so, and I actually like mine better with just Hunt's canned tomatoes rather than the fancy schmancy organic ones from the co-op. For some reason the fancy tomatoes taste kind of bitter or something? Maybe I'm just unsophisticated. But anyway, this stuff is the best.

That's all for now. I can be more blog-productive now that I am out of school for the summer!

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Right now I really love Maria Martinez and her gorgeous pots. The finish is so rich! The designs are so lovely! Every part of the pot and even most of the kiln comes from the desert.

Awesome.
I've really fallen in love with pottery recently; I never would have guessed that deciding to take an introductory Ceramics class (and only because it filled a requirement for my Art History major) would lead to me to a new interest, something fresh to get excited about. Now, everywhere I go I notice ceramics, and it was really amazing to see ancient, beautiful pots all through the Pitts Rivers Museum and the British Museum while I was in England last month.
I'm still no good at making stuff myself, but I've gotten better and now it's routinely more fun than it is frustrating. Maybe I'll post some of my finished products 0nce the semester is over, if I end up with anything I'm proud of.

The point though, is that Maria Martinez is the bomb.

Mmmm

I will never get over this song. It feels like a lot of early summer nights, sitting my my window in my parents house, alone, at that perfect dusky time in June when everything fades out into soft shades of blue and purple and the hot day cools; I listened to this song over and over again on repeat on my shitty stereo and fell in love with it, and that's always where I am when I listen to it.