by Christina Waters | Nov 11, 2012 | Home |
I know many of you are über home chefs who think nothing of whipping up a killer cranberry dressing from scratch for your Thanksgiving dinner.
But not me. I have suddenly hit upon the obvious, no-brainer and yet under-appreciated alternative to full-on cranberry dressing. In a word — chutney.
Duh. Chutney, the sophisticated version of cranberry dressing that can be spun and re-visited endlessly depending upon your choice of dried fruit infrastructure, spices and flavor intensity.
We’re completely in love with the Tomato Mint Chutney ($6ish) from Neera’s. (more…)
by Christina Waters | Nov 11, 2012 | Home |
The way most Americans envision that first Thanksgiving, through a haze of richly spun sentimentality, it went something like this:
Plucky white Pilgrims–mostly guys–set out across the Atlantic Ocean and were rewarded with an entire continent of untold wealth that was essentially destined by the Almighty for their use. Oh, sure, there were a few unclothed savages already there, shuffling around in the dirt, slinging arrows here and there at equally clueless and equally wild animals, but that wasn’t really a problem. [Journals and letters written by those first settlers contain shameless accounts of plunder and theft of native stores of food, tools, and furs. If the Pilgrims found it, they took it.]
After working, praying, and surviving a bitter winter, the Pilgrim fathers brought in a bountiful harvest produced by careful tending of seeds they had brought from home. Looked on by Providence, our founders needed no help whatsoever from their redskinned brethren in bringing down fat bucks and other wild delicacies. Inviting their heathen neighbors to join them, the Pilgrims gave thanks for their New World and its riches at a meal consisting of turkey, squash, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Afterwards, the men sat around smoking and watching football while the women cleaned up.
Now what might have happened went like this: (more…)
by Christina Waters | Nov 10, 2012 | Home |
It’s Wednesday. You want to go out for dinner. Consider Shadowbrook, where tonight Jim and Judy Schultze will be pouring four of their all-estate pinot noirs, including new 2010 releases.
Sample a flight with complimentary appetizers – starts @ 5pm.
[Atmospheric pinot noir vines on the Windy Oaks Estate just outside of also atmospheric Corralitos.]
by Christina Waters | Nov 2, 2012 | Home |
Long Beach Island’s exquisite coastline as I saw it only four weeks ago.
by Christina Waters | Nov 1, 2012 | Home |
Inside the musings and tinkerings of physics world-changer Albert Einstein, we wander and play thanks to the uncanny simpatico of Robert Wilson, Phillip Glass and Lucinda Childs, who 35 years ago collaborated on an avant-garde performance piece that announced the postmodern domain and then some. Revived this year, the historic—and yes, occasionally dated—piece received a resounding performance at Zellerbach Auditorium last weekend, preceded by informal remarks by the creators themselves.
A kinetic patchwork of non-narrative non sequiturs, Einstein allows us to wander in and out of its magical space/time continuum almost at will. Staged without intermission for almost 4 1/2 hourss, Einstein encourages viewers to come and go as they please. But most sat glued to their seats, ears pinned back by the throbbing variations of Glass’ signature ragas and nonsense chants which utterly and seamlessly interpret Wilson’s poetic vision of sound, words, and temporal relativity along paths cleared by Duchamp, Merce Cunningham,Terry Riley, Brian Eno and then inherited in the 80s by David Byrne et al. (more…)
