Happy Holidays and Baby Horsies!

A real baby horse was born at the farm yesterday. I promise to take a picture and post it soon :)

For your consumption

I thought this would be cooler than it is. However, I am still very fond of the idea.

Tipo Roja or Hop To It

Shea and I have brewed our first beer. The idea being that, by brewing our own, we can add a little American-style hop to our beer-drinking routine. We went ambitious on our first try and did an all-grain batch. (Read: the beer will probably be flawed due to the increased opportunities for contamination). This means that we started with the malted barley, ground it ourselves:



(Goodness... I look like a f*&#ing hippy, don't I?) mashed it ourselves:



etc:



I had spent the day making Paneer and Ghee because I was craving Indian food (vegetarian, of course) which we ate while we crafted Christmas cards and waited for the mash to wart (or something like that.)


all to the soundtrack of Nina Simone and The FIRST Mariah Carey Christmas Album.

In short, I should probably move to the Pacific Northwest... but then, that would just make me a cliché, wouldn't it?

An afternoon ride

I'm fresh off the heels of a terrible bout of the stomach flu but I won't disgust you with the details of that episode.

Last Saturday Shea and I scouted a bike trail for a trip that LAT42's going to guide with a company called Sacred Rides out of Canada. Going in to this, i knew I was signing up for 12 to 13 miles of biking. I also knew that mountain biking would probably be more difficult than road biking so, I set my brain to challenging mode, all the while comforting myself in knowing that, though the path may be a bit rocky, it was relatively flat and skirted a pretty river. Right.

Anyhoo, as an illustrative point, I present you with some pictures of Shea riding bikes:





And then let's remember what happens to me and my accessories when I engage in downhill sports:



So, keeping all this in mind, I'll now tell you that the first half of the ride was beautiful and very nearly flat featuring waterfalls, wide meandering rivers, horses running free and the occasional families of sheep and cows.

The first time I fell I got up like a champ: laughed it off and patted myself on the back for attempting to follow Shea who had bunny-jumped over a log in the middle of the trail.

About a half-hour after later the trail started to get hilly. Then I fell into a pile of shit/mud and could hear it squirting in my shoes. At one point we got lost and went down (and up) two large and rocky hills we didn't need to. It was cold, I was sweaty and Pissy Princess made an appearance. Shea handled things as best he could: waiting at the top of every hill with a cookie extended in my direction and helping me get my bike across the bigger stream clearings. He was noticeably wary of the looks I was cutting him and fell into startled silence when, upon turning another corner that revealed another hill, an admittedly terrifying scream of anger gurgled out of me. (The cookies were his saving grace.) Luckily, my extreme frustration and tantrum only lasted about a twenty minutes and we popped out of the park at a Parilla where i was fed mountains of sizzling meat and all was well. (Until I got some sort of Giardia from the shit/mud puddle episode and was laid up in bed for three days cursing my fate!)

So, that was that. Did you have fun laughing at me? Here's a nice shot of a battle wound on my thigh... a week later:



On that note, I'll leave you with some food porn:






my sourdough skillz are getting pretty legit btdubs.

Stay tuned for the brew blog.

CMC

Thanksgiving

Check it out here.

yucka yucka

A few moments of forgotten comedy: 1) buying a cerveza casero from the refugero at Lago Natacion and listening to, over pleasant conversation and a refreshing brew, the soundtrack of a barn cat crunching through the skeleton of the "raton" it had presented us with a few minutes earlier. Neither shock nor embarrassment showed the faintest glimmer of registration on the faces of our host (of a PUBLIC DINING establishment) or my hiking partner. I handled the situation by pouring myself another. 2) helping Shea take a couple of clients rappelling down a 60 meter (about 180 ft) cliff. The clients were two buxom, Argentine, 20-somethings with long flowing manes and a shadowing cloud of perfume two-feet thick. The comedy here is that perfume attracts bugs and December is the season of the horse-fly: a nasty and persistent, not-so-little bug that swarms around your face and rings in your ears until it doesn't anymore... (at which point, you can be certain the sucker has landed on you and is biting you through your clothes.) Needless to say, our ladies had a tough time of things. The bugs wouldn't leave them alone and the second they started to rappel down the big mountain, they forgot everything we had taught them on the baby bolder. One smashed her hand in to a rock and the other rappelled directly in to a tree at the bottom of the drop. They wined, giggled and smoked their cigarettes for the rest of the hike down. I'm pretty sure they were actually proud of their battle scars in the end and no one was sued or yelled at. phew.

Wowllaus

So, I have some updating to do.

First and in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I would like to say that I am very glad mummy’s back surgery went well. I wish her a speedy recovery!

Here, things are busy. We’re revving up for some new clients tonight and said goodbye to the last set on Monday past. They were doctors fresh off their residency and in a sort of gap year/fellowship in B.A. They were very in to food and I allowed myself some American-taste-bud liberties (Let freedom RING!) and threw in some spice. (Have I mentioned that Argentines are gigantic sissies when it comes to things piccante?) Here are a few pics:



For some reason I only took pictures of the brown things but they also ate fresh salads with things like pea shoots and llaullaus in them. “What’s a llaullau?” you say… Why, let me show you.

The day before Thanksgiving, Shea and I went on a ridiculously long and vertical hike up to Lago Natacion


(Only later in the day--about the same time that my back and knees spasmed and I collapsed going up the steps to my room--did I find out that people usually take two to three days to do this loop. Son of a….!) Anyhoo, the point here is that, at some point in our journey, we stopped to take some pictures of llaullaus (say the double L like you would the “g” in “ménage-a-trois” and the "au" like you would the “iao” in “ciao.”) Llaullaus are gorgeous and tasty fungi that grow on the trees here and which you eat raw. They are juicy and slightly sweet with a crunchy (by virtue of it’s juice-filled taught-ness) exterior.



They’re pretty darn cool if you ask me.

Thanksgiving, itself was a pretty over-the top affair presided over by nine Americans, most of whom know their way around the spice cabinet. It was delicious and excessive and I will be eating leftovers for days to come. I don’t have pictures of it but I know someone does, so I’ll get on it.


XO from the end of the world,
C

One of the reasons it's cool to work on a farm

Pan (That's Español for Bread)

We have more guests scheduled to arrive tomorrow and I've been working on my bread recipe. I think I may have perfected it:


Id'nit cute?

uff

Much activity on this end. On tuesday of last week I went rafting down the Rio Azul with Shea and his fellow raft-guide in Colorado, Casey. Shea and I were in a "mini-me" which is a two person inflatable raft and Casey was kayaking. It was fun but also very cold (the water we were running had been a glacier earlier that day) and involved a twenty minute hike uphill (carrying all the gear and boats) at the end of the trip.

On wednesday, the last pregnant sheep gave birth. I didn't get to see the actual birth but I did get out there in time to see some of the placenta hanging from the mom's tail and the baby still wet from having been licked clean. There was some doubt as to wether or not the sheep would be able to carry the pregnancy to the end because she has gas issues... (her diarrhea is so bad that she doesn't get enough vitamins) but all was well. I've been watching the new addition over the last few days as he figures out what his feet do and whether or not he likes the other lambs (who hang out in intimidating little cliques). For the first few days he seemed to think he only had two legs: one in front and one in back. The effect was such that he galloped around like a floppy-eared, fuzzy horse and always halted abruptly with a full-body teater: his back legs forming an obtuse triangle from his little butt.

Watching the lamb could provide hours of entertainment and I allowed myself at least one, but I had other things to do. Like ride around in a Unimog:


That's the model they have here and the thing is a monster. It has no shocks whatsoever, asphyxiates passengers with its fumes and you have to hold the roof on as you ride. It's a total nightmare and Shea and I took it in to town to pick up a bunch of lumber and visit a local cervecero to check out his operation. All of the roads around here are dirt: covered in boulders and potholes a foot deep. I was about to kill someone at the end of our hour-long excursion and informed Shea that I would never be riding it it again. The beer guy (Marcelo) was very nice and he was hanging out with an Italian friend so I got to speak in a romance language I am actually proficient in.

As far as romance languages in which I am not proficient are concerned, I had ample opportunity to crash and burn practicing my spanish this past weekend when the first guests arrived. They called at five PM saying they would arrive at eight and panic set in: nothing was defrosted, there was no bread, what about dessert?! In the end, it all worked out but the part where I had to do the serving and answer their questions was a little shady... some serious lost-in-translation moments. I guess I didn't realize that I was signing up for such a customer service-type position. Anyhoo, only room to improve.

Here's what they ate:

Friday night: house bread, garden salad with candied walnuts and rasberry vinny, cheesy polenta with steak and red wine mushroom sauce, pear galette.
Saturday morning: Apple strudel muffins, house bread, various jams, yogurt, granola
Saturday lunch: Asparagus and cheese quiche, house bread, garden salad with balsamic vinny, raisins and sunflower seeds, raspberry sherbet.
Saturday dinner: Sweet-tea brined chicken with brown butter and sage-fried squash gnocchi and stewed rutabaga greens with leeks and apple cider vinegar; apple and cognac crepes
Sunday morning: cinnamon-walnut rolls, toast, various jams, yogurt, granola, tea.

It was a lot of work and the stress level was compounded by having to do the serving as well. I'll be spending this week doing things like making fresh pasta and freezing it for the next time unexpected company arrives. The good news is that today is my first complete day off in seven days so I'll be sleeping in and reading novels all day... glorious.

Nightmares

Mom: I had a dream the plants i potted outside the front door died. Tell me it isn't true!

In the swing of things

Today marks the end of my second day of full work. Yesterday I organized the pantry (a crammed disaster). This involved carting 50 kilo bags of seed from one corner to another and throwing away bottles of chimichuri that had turned an alluring shade of brown--we'll be making our own from now on anyhoo... I also started cooking: pine mushroom and cheese quiche, greens with goddess dressing. The freezer turned off in the middle of the night so we're trying to cook through all of the stuff that thawed out. One of these things was a crust I made and froze LAST year... still tasted pretty damn good (point being don't toss out that empanada dough just yet, Courtney!)

Today I got back in on the garden action which felt good. I mostly made compost but was also fortunate enough to chase after baby lambs and feed rutabagas to my favorite group of cows. The lambs are younger and cuter than last year and the cows are bigger and sassier. Mica, for instance is a huge fan of intimidation by horn-toss and lets you know just how many shits she gives about whatever treat it is you are using to buy her affections (she literally laid a stupendous turd mid-feeding.) After work, we went out looking for Morel mushrooms which are supposed to be sprouting up under the ceder trees here, but our efforts were met with little reward. So, all in all, a great day: fecundity making followed by cuddly animal time and topped off with treasure hunting.

I'm all settled in to one of the currently unused massage rooms up at the spa. It's nestled in a little arboretum and smells like cedar, vanilla candles and the fire place. One thing that has been unexpectedly difficult for me to deal with is how COLD the buildings are here. There is no central heating, just fire power. And the problem with fire power is that feeding the fire (making what little heat a tiny stove in the corner can muster) involves coming out of whatever cocoon you have created for yourself and exposing your fingers to the biting reality of the air outside the blanket. I'm thinking I'll have to buy some fuzzy gloves.

So, that's the news on this end. I didn't bring a camera (what was I thinking?!) so no pictures, but I'm going to fix that situation soon.

xo,
C

Layovers

I'm here. Here being La Confluencia Lodge fifteen minutes outside of the town of El Bolson, Argentina. It took me almost exactly thirty hours to travel from Austin, TX to this place and I could not have been more grateful for a bed when I was offered one. Before I gave in to a desperate fatigue, however, I had the pleasure of a window seat at sunset while landing in Bariloche, the ski-town an hour north of here. The slanted sun reflecting off of numerous lakes and pink clouds with the snow-capped Andes in the background reminded me of how UNREAL this place is. When we flew over green pastures dotted with grazing sheep, I was struck with an intense desire to gallop in the grass and immediately pictured myself doing so from the eye of a spinning areal camera--just like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music... but better.


After the obligatory welcome-to-Argentina-now-you-will-eat-steak dinner in Bariloche, Shea and I drove back to The Confluencia. We walked into the lodge at 12:30 am and I was immediately sucker-punched by a Pavlovian response. The smell of the cedar and the root-cellar-like climate of the building reminded me of exactly what I was getting myself in to. Part of the "what" is the romance of the place: the earthiness, my hands wrapped around hot cups of tea, the sound of the river, and the incredible clarity of the stars but the other part feels a bit like loss and anxiety. (On Loss: I'm back here, but the previous generation of WWOOFers that defined my experience the last go-round are not. I am also no longer technically a WWOOFer and as such will be missing out on the community it creates and the benefits of shared living spaces. On Anxiety: Well, for one, I'm going to have to get used to the country again which is to say I'll have to start taking responsibility for my own entertainment, artistic stimulation and education. And, for twos, I was struck with the feeling that, as an employee, I'm going to have to start behaving--cleaning up after myself, making a schedule and not losing it, being in charge... the sorts of things for which I am universally recognized...)

Today the anxiety increases as I find myself with no real tasks and everyone else around me with something to do. Yes, I know I should give myself a day to rest and that that is exactly what my employers are thinking as well, but I’m just not good at that. Hence, this blog-post, which I am hoping will help me reconnect with the style of life at which I had become so practiced in Hawaii—this is to say, a life lived through a lens of inner-contentedness.

Anyhoo, all of that business aside (concentrating on it, I’m inviting a panic attack), I’m REALLY excited to flex my culinary muscles. I have SO many ideas and projects I want to get started. I can promise that the food here is going to kick butt if not only because of the variety and quality of the produce and food-stuffs produced in a very small radius. They’re growing barley, rye and wheat (beer me?); any type of vegetable you can imagine; and sheep (sidenote: the lambs are friggin’ cute and they’ll make for great sweaters). There are honey bees to be taken advantage of, salmon waiting to spawn, walnut, apple and pine trees aplenty… It’s an Omnivore’s Delight (see what I did there) over here!

I guess that’s enough for now… I can feel you, reader, losing interest so I’ll report back after this layover is finished and I am in the swing of a new routine. One final note however: it goes without saying that I miss you all terribly. It was unusually difficult for me to leave San Diego this time because an unexpected new job, a pleasent armistice with my parents and wonderful friends were working to make me a very content person. So! Please keep in touch and I will do the same.

Xoxo,
C

Growing Tomatoes in October.

Two days ago was the hottest day on record (ever) in LA: 112 degrees farenheit. In San Diego, it topped off at a paltry 108. Though I would relish describing the full-body-sweat-drench experience of working on a glorified roach coach in these temperatures, I'm going to direct my energies towards the anomaly of growing tomatoes in October.

Towards the end of August, San Diego-centric garden guides suggested I nip off the flowers on my tomato plants and allow the already formed fruit to ripen because fall was upon us and cooler, non-tomoto-growing-friendly weather was encroaching. Seeing as this summer was overwhelmingly fog-ridden, I held out hope that maybe, just maybe, summer was late and poo-pooed everyone's advice. One month later my little cherry tomato plant is finally ripening up (helped along by the plastic I cover it in at night to up the temperature even further) and today was the first harvest with much more on the way. Finally.

The weekend I made fire like a real woman

On Saturday I smoked a hunk-o-meat for my first, semi-annual, farewell-to-summer BBQ to be held the next day.


The good news: the sun came out for us between 3:30 and 5:30 and, in that time we were able to shoot this awesomeness:


The better news: In preparation for the BBQ, and with the lighter fluid nowhere in site, I was forced to make fire like a real woman. Having never been a girl scout and because I insist on barbecuing with mesquite charcoal and not those unsettlingly-square briquettes, this took me upwards of an hour. When I finally bit the bullet, got on my hands and knees and blew smoke and ashes in my face for ten minutes, I was rewarded with roaring flames and red-hot coals. Very satisfying and very womanly. (If I ever get lung cancer, it will not be from my brief romances with nicotine, but from the amount of ash and smoke I inhaled in those ten minutes.)


The bad news: my brioche buns were not up to my expectations. Next time.


As per usual, Gus knew where the party was. I literally saw a string of drool drip from his jowls during a particularly concentrated begging session.


We finished the day with a drunken parade to the roof for the sunset. Very safe.


Not a bad weekend.

not knowing what to do with myself

Today, I was called off work at 6 am. This left me not only neurotically insecure--Don't they love me anymore?!--but also without a daily activity (something I really can't stand). So, I brushed aside my hurt feelings and decided to take advantage of the slight nip and crystal clearness of a Fall morning in San Diego and drive up to Julian for apple picking/eating/subsequent-pie-making. On the way, we stopped at the waterfalls at Cuyumaca State Park: the falls were lovely and hummingbirds followed us around while drinking from the more nectar-like drippings of the creek (no exaggeration). Some pictures:

Emperial Apples


4 parts butter 5 parts flour pie crust


makes a giant pie


and a lot of peals (for the wormies--who I thought I had killed but are still alive!)



Tonight is The Jer's Birthday so the pie is (mostly) for him.

pictorial evidence of my gustatory existence

Here are some pictures of what I have been up to over the last five months.

In May, I briefly resurrected the Cream Queenz for MIHO


In June, I was drinking Micheladas with Lulu in Austin


Later in June, I had picked and salted olives from trees in the central coast and marinated them with thyme, lemon zest and chili flakes


July was busy. First I went to the fair with Allie and ate this piece of American artistry:


They called it a Texas Tater Twister. Mid July saw the advent of cupcake city when I started working full time for these guys: chocolate cake with cherry-marshmallow frosting, coconut tres leches cake with lime and pistachio frosting, lemon buttermilk cake with peach tea frosting and candied spicy pecans...




Late in the month, I got my first taste of Ensenada in the form or a stegosaurus-sized clam filled with every type of sea food imaginable, including slug.


Needless to say, this clam convinced me that I need to go to Mexico more often and did just that in August for the grape harvest festival in the Valle de Guadelupe. This is when I ate fried cricket tacos and loved every bite of them (picture forthcoming). By the end of August I was eating at Nobu Las Vegas with a certain Argentine permanent resident to see how their version of an Alfahor stacked up.


Not pictured is the part where we ate barracuda with miso powder and milk poached garlic chips. YUM.

The end.