Today in Long Beach....

It was a busy day in Downtown Long Beach.... It was sort of a crazy day actually. There was a bike race in downtown, a cheerleader event at the convention center, the Saturday Farmer's Market in the Arts District and the yearly transformation from beach town to military dmz as they prepare for the Long Beach Grand Prix in a few weeks: tires, wires, and bridges. The community garden was hopping with lots of gardeners planting and harvesting. And I went a little crazy trying out my new lensbaby. But, at least I wasn't the guys drinking on the deck at The Auld Dubliner checking out the cheerleaders!


The Arts District Saturday Farmer's Market was going strong. I bought some organic lemons, asparagus, goat cheese, and some homemade dips.


Not my potato harvest, alas, but inspiration for next year. You can't tell because of the lensbaby effect, but they look almost metallic. Gorgeous!!!


Long Beach is a very friendly bike town most days anyway. Almost all the gardeners use their bikes to get there. This is Sue's bike which is pretty old school compared to the ones that were tooting around waiting for their turns to race!


Coming around the corner at full speed. I'm pretty proud I managed to get something (anything) in focus given my lensbaby isn't The Composer, so I have to manipulate, focus, and shoot all at the same time without locking the focal point in....


**********************The Squid's Eye View From The Loft******************


Finally, the day ended by running into our loftmates Kristin and Ray (on their way to the garden). We met back up for a beer on the patio of The Cellar in the basement of The Loft and watched bikes race past. Later we shared some wine and cheeses at their place before we walked across the street to try out the new restaurant Wokano which opened this week. It's quite an investment in downtown Long Beach and really exciting (or dangerous!) to have a kickass happy hour in a gorgeous place just feet away.... The Squeeze had a gig so missed all the fun!

Spring in the Garden

Spring has definitely arrived in the garden. More pictures to come....

Government Gardening

The White House is about to get its very own "victory garden" (again) on the South Lawn by the kitchen. Part education, part slow food/local food experiment, the garden will be an example of a sustainable table. How exciting! Famed chef and owner of Chez Panisse Alice Waters is quoted in the above linked article about her own fabulous program "The Edible Schoolyard Project" in which, as part of the school programs, kids grow their own food for consumption in their cafeterias instead of processed foods. Lovely.

Reaching for the sun.

Today, I saw three different people reaching their faces towards the warm Spring sun. They looked relieved, peaceful, and happy for life in that moment.

Potato, Potaaahto

or Potata as my Pennsylvania Dutch relatives would say. Any way you say it, I was super psyched to finally dig up my potato plants in the garden. I had planted a variety of new potato and couldn't wait. I'd researched when to finally dig for them and how. My friend Beth came for the big dig and we took the harvest home....


and fried them up in a pan with just some olive oil, salt and pepper. I garnished them with a green onion we'd pulled from the garden, too.


The thing is.... they were TINY!!! The penny scale should help put it into perspective.


So, what was the solution? Eat them with Shrimp Forks! Tiny or not...they were really tasty. The last potato plant left in the garden seems to have bigger ones growing so fingerlings crossed!

Chocolate Festival

The Squeeze was playing the 5th Annual Chocolate Festival down the street in Belmont Shores last weekend. Beth and I decided to check it out. More like conquer it with a vengeance. You can buy a book of 12 tickets for $10 and each chocolate masterpiece is alotted a different "ticket price". For instance, the enchiladas with Mole were 2 tickets (sooo yummy), but a piece of fudge with organic earl grey might be 1 ticket. There were TONS of people and eventually the chocolate ran out...people were giving away their tickets and only the hardy were left standing (no chocolate crepe left? that's fine, the homemade whipped cream with nutella and strawberries in a cup will be fine!) Oh yes, we learned a lot about a strategy for next year. Never again will we be left standing in line for 20 minutes for the best tasting, biggest freakin' velvet cupcake you've ever seen (even if it was in front of the headliner, my squeeze). I meant to photograph a lot more of the loot. But, um, well, we kind of ate it....

An Orange Poppy

Mom Harris' Stuffed Cabbage

Three things happened today:

1. The Squeeze was feeling under the weather.
2. A cabbage was ready for harvesting in the garden.
3. It was rainy.

So all things pointed to it being time to try to make his Mom's stuffed cabbage. It's one of his big childhood memory (seven kids diving into the cabbages, then just eating what was inside of them!). The Squeeze's sister-in-law Peggy was kind enough to send the recipe on. And his brother, Mike, was kind enough to track her down at the mall to answer my questions: did Mom Harris actually stuff these things with raw meat and onions? Um, yes. Well, too late for a two hour cooking session. I pre-cooked everything and just heated it up for an hour. I opted for the twist his Aunt Mary gave it, tomato sauce instead of tomato soup. While I resisted tweaking the whole thing in hopes it would be a comforting child memory, I did add some parsley and oregano from the garden.



Along with the harvest, I had to do some critter wrangling. A family of snails was living deep in my cabbage and I found a squirmy worm in the oregano and parsley. Again, apologies to Buddha, but the rest of the gardeners will be happy to know that at least five snails will not be feasting on their crops!


The (almost) final dish.... I also made two stuffed red peppers and the whole thing got smothered in the tomato sauce. He said it tasted like dear old Mom's, so while it wasn't something out of Julia Child's cookbook, it felt triumphant nonetheless!

Artwork by Emma

Needed a smile today.... So, I thought I'd post my favorite art piece. It currently hangs on one of the big beams in the loft. Right over an orange acoustic bass. Just makes me smile....

What if the mightiest word was love...

On this Amazing Inaugural Day:

There was joy....

There was hope...

There was bounty...


And there was poetry by Elizabeth Alexander who summed up a shift in paradigm, policy, philosophy:

What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.