Real bagels are boiled.

There’s a movie that came out this year called Slither. I haven’t seen it yet, but maybe I should for a couple of reasons. Well A) it has Nathan Fillion in it. Nathan Fillion is better known as Mal Reynolds, my favorite captain of a rickety Firefly class space ship. And of course B) the trailer for the movie features a woman sitting in a bathtub while a creepy alien slug crawls up the pipes and into her bath, ostensibly to possess her and turn her into a zombie (I actually do not know if I’m mixing my horror movie metaphors).

Reason A above is a no-brainer of a reason to watch the movie. Reason B would not be too bad of a reason if it weren’t for the fact that it’s actually hitting close to home. To date, I’ve counted four slug invasions of my bathtub. The fourth one is still going on as I type this. The first one was freaky. I decided to put it out of my mind because I did not want to believe what I saw. The second one was disturbing because I actually scooped the slug up and ran out my door to fling it away, with the hairs on the back of my neck tingling from heebie-jeebies. The third one was an encounter while cleaning the tub. The slug was hiding behind my bottle of shampoo. This could actually have been the slug from encounter one which I decided to ignore at the time. I think I killed the slug in a fit of Ajax powder dumping. And now I have my fourth invasion, noticed while in my morning “habit,” powerless to act from my perch elsewhere in the bathroom.

And all of this is making me think twice about taking baths as opposed to showers now. I do not know where the heck they come from. The drain? The overflow drain? The window? Where? Where? Where?

The Sounds - Slim’s, San Francisco - 5/1/06

Wow. Just wow. I’ve been to many live shows in my life. Big names, small names, unknowns, overly-well-knowns. I’ve seen many great shows. But without fail, The Sounds just consistently put on the most fun shows. Their music is so energetic, you wouldn’t think they could inject it with even more get-down-and-dance power live, but they do. It’s filled with so much excitement and it’s so infectious. I swear the crowded hall (Slim’s is not a very spacious space) was eating up all the energy from on stage and feeding it back and raising it up a couple of bars. Everyone seems to have been dancing their socks off, bouncing off the walls. Usually when moshing starts I kind of slink away (arms up over my head, “not in the face! not in the face!”), but I stayed my ground at the edge of the moshpit between the people who just wanted to dance in place and the people who were really slamming in front. If you haven’t been to rock shows where these happen, there’s a little bit of buffer room between these two groups and I used that space to dance. Good thing too, because the lead singer stage dove and I was there to help her swim…. Ayayayay! I touched her! I touched her! *dies*

On stage, the Swedes were so sexy. Maja Ivarsson, the lead singer, knew how to work the room and was so hot, raunchy and delicate at the same time. She reminded me of an early Deborah Harry. And everybody else in the band was hot too. My companion that evening commented that the keyboard player was so good looking, all the gayboys of San Francisco swoon over him.

Most rock groups have an on stage act. A lot of the modern groups are too cool to rock, too self-conscious about it. This group did not have an on stage rock act because last night, they WERE rock and roll.

Feist - Bimbo’s 365, San Francisco - 03/28/2006

“If only I could show you what’s inside my heart…” So said the guy standing two people away from me, not addressed to me of course. He kind of said it half jokingly during one of those strange silences between songs when the audience waited for the people onstage to to start up again. He was of course saying it to Feist. We all laughed, but I think the entire audience would agree with him because we were all in love with her tonight.

Feist was amazing, a musical geist (as Jordi would say). The Canadian ex-opening act for the Ramones, chanteuse and part time Broken Social Scene member totally tickled the crowd at this intimate venue with her humor, her teasing banter and her band’s easy camaraderie. She jumped seamlessly between gently strumming her acoustic guitar and feverishly rocking out on her Gibson hollowbody electric. She brought the house down with her harder numbers and wooed the crowd with her tactful, tender ballads. Her band was equally amazing. Onstage, she had a harp, an organist (who also played the melodica, the xylophone, the trumpet and the flugelhorn– amazing!), a bassist, a drummer and a tap dancer. Halfway through the set, the PA system fizzled out but the they didn’t skip a beat. They even worked the technical problems into their act. “Welcome to 1962,” she said. That Feist and her band could recover from an unfortunate sound system failure just showed how imaginative and how talented they all were. Many other acts would just thrown in the towel, but they went on unplugged, even mockingly singing like a doo-wop band with their backing vocals, just to return the adoration that the audience showered them with. And when the amplifiers came back on, my lord did they rock.

There were just too many highlights. She did an amazing Mushaboom, a great solo One Evening (with the usual audience participation) and closed out her set with a wonderful and totally unexpected rendition of Nina Simone’s See Line Woman.

I think this was one of the greatest live shows I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot). What can I say?

Feist

Feist with surprise guest Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene

I made this soup on a recent trip to Tahoe. Everybody was snowboarding and I stayed behind at the cabin at Kay’s to write a paper. So I also volunteered to fix a nice comfort food dinner for everybody… some good apres-ski tummy-fillers. I made this spicy tomato soup. I also made a mac-and-cheese-with-a-twist. I might post that recipe later. But this one is for the tomato soup.

2 28 oz. cans of whole tomatoes in juice (organic preferred– you can probably use fresh but as I packed everything for a holiday trip, I chose canned)
1 large onion chopped
6 cloves garlic minced
1 jalapeno pepper minced (with seeds)
2 teaspoons ginger minced
1 tsp cumin
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups vegetable broth
1 tablespoon sugar
salt to taste

Puree tomatoes in a blender. You may want to drain one can of tomatoes of liquid before pureeing.

Stir fry onion, garlic, jalapeno and ginger in olive oil in a soup pot until onion is soft and almost transparent. About 7-8 minutes. Add cumin and continue stir frying a little longer. Add pureed tomatoes. Add chicken broth. Add sugar and salt to taste. Simmer for about twenty minutes, stirring occasionally.

Before serving, puree soup in blender, working in batches, or use an immersion blender in the pot until the soup is relatively smooth. Add some more sugar and salt to taste.

Optional:
Top soup with chopped cilantro or parsley.

The trip was fun. I holed myself up in the cabin to write for a day. I finished a lot but I didn’t finish it all. I also was able to snowboard for like two hours. And I also was able to aid in the construction of the snowgod in front of our cabin. So here I am, still working at the damn writing.

Continuing with our holiday sweets theme, here’s an easy dish I prepared a few nights ago for a party. There’s a Filipino dish called turon that’s usually made with apple bananas or plantains, dipped in caramel, wrapped in spring roll wrapper and deep fried. I couldn’t find any ripe plantains in Santa Cruz so, inspired by a friend, I decided to adapt the Filipino recipe for the season. Instead of plantains or bananas, we use apples and pair this all with a fresh cranberry sauce. This is a pretty easy dish to prepare and I think it’s now made it to my emergency I-need-to-cook-something-for-a-party-pronto list.

Makes about 2 dozen turon.

2 Granny Smith apples
6 sheets square spring roll wrapper
1 1/2 to 2 cups dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinammon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
Oil for deep frying, peanut oil is preferred, but any oil will do

Optional:
fresh cranberry sauce
confectioner’s sugar

1. Prepare the spring roll wrapper by cutting each sheet into quarters. Peel and core your apples. Slice them into 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick slices.

2. Mix brown sugar with the apple slices. Sprinkle the cinammon, cloves and ginger onto the apples, mixing them thoroughly so that each slice is coated with the brown sugar and spice mixture.

3. Start filling each spring roll wrapper square with the spiced apple mixture. Each spring roll wrapper can probably hold one or two apple slices. When rolling the turon, start with the wrapper oriented such that a corner points towards you. Lay a slice or two of apple in the middle of the wrapper. Seal the roll by folding the bottom corner up over the filling, followed by the left and right corners. Finally, fold the top corner down over the rest of the turon. You may use a dab of water to make sure that the top corner sticks onto the rest of the turon.

4. In a medium sauce pan, pour enough oil to just cover a turon. Warm the oil over high heat. When it’s hot enough, start dropping the prepared turons into the oil. Deep fry for a few seconds, until it starts to turn golden brown. Don’t wait too long because the wrapper burns pretty easily. Flip each turon over so that both sides can fry until golden. Remove from oil and let them rest over a rack or a paper towel. Don’t let the turon cool over the paper towels for too long or they will get soggy.

5. The turon should now be ready to eat, but as an added bonus, you may use a fresh cranberry sauce or a sprinkling of confectioner’s sugar as toppings.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been playing with a ginger cookie recipe I originally got from Martha Stewart’s site. It’s kind of been associated with me by my friends because I make them often and I feel bad because I never tell my friends that the original recipe’s from Martha.

Now that it is November and with Thanksgiving coming up pretty soon, this particular recipe is really shining as a great cookie for the season. It’s a very well rounded cookie (ha ha pun intended) that works on multiple levels. You have the spice, the whole christmassy nutmeggy, cinammonny goodness. But the spice isn’t overbearing because there’s also a lot of chocolate in it that really harmonizes well with the ginger. The original recipe calls for chocolate chunks chopped off blocks of chocolate, but I prefer to use semi-sweet morsels to make the chocolate content more uniform between cookies. Depending on your oven, you may also want to preheat your cookie sheet so you’ll have more consistent cookies between batches. I use organic, none-too-refined sugars because I like how the larger granules of sugar look better when baked. If you can’t find this sugar, regular sugar works just fine. This is an aesthetic issue. I also prefer to add just a little more nutmeg than the recipe calls for because I love the stuff. It’s really important to let the cookies cool on a rack for about 10-15 minutes before eating them so that you get just the right amount of chewiness. If you feel like storing them (in case you don’t finish them all up right after baking), I suggest putting them in freezer bags since putting them in cookie jars can dry them out. Nobody likes a dry cookie.

Anyway, here’s Martha’s recipe.

Makes 2 dozen

7 ounces best-quality semisweet chocolate
1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
1/2 cup dark-brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup unsulfured molasses
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup granulated sugar

1. Line two baking sheets with parchment. Chop chocolate into 1/4-inch chunks; set aside. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cocoa.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer,fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and grated ginger until whitened, about 4 minutes. Add brown sugar; beat until combined. Add molasses; beat until combined.

3. In a small bowl, dissolve baking soda in 1 1/2 teaspoons boiling water. Beat half of flour mixture into butter mixture. Beat in baking-soda mixture, then remaining half of flour mixture. Mix in chocolate; turn out onto a piece of plastic wrap. Pat dough out to about 1 inch thick; seal with wrap; refrigerate until firm, 2 hours or more.

4. Heat oven to 325°. Roll dough into 1 1/2- inch balls; place 2 inches apart on baking sheets. Refrigerate 20 minutes. Roll in granulated sugar. Bake until the surfaces crack slightly, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes; transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.