Counting Down to Lemony Goodness

Eating seasonally is one of my favorite parts of living in California.  I'm not a big fan of fleeting pleasures, however, which is why I love preserving today's produce for enjoyment tomorrow.  With citrus season upon us, it's time to make limoncello (and marmalade, of course, but that's a topic for another day).  Six months from now, there will icy, tart, sweet, lemony goodness burning down my throat and reminding me of winter's bounty. For today, zesting.  

I follow, with a few modifications, the recipe from Limoncello Quest, a fantastic blog by a true aficionado. I use Meyer lemons and Everclear 151 (stupid CA laws prevent me from using higher proof juice) -- about 10 lemons per bottle.  A microplane would make zesting quicker, but I prefer using a vegetable peeler, because it will make filtration easier later on.  Any pith will make the limoncello bitter so I use a vegetable peeler that shaves thin and scrape off with the tip of a paring knife any pith that comes off along with the zest.   Into the alcohol go the glistening shavings - all to be stashed on the pantry floor until March, when it will emerge for filtration and addition of simple syrup.    

                                          This year, I'm making a couple of experimental batches too: one with sweet lemons, nearly as fragrant as the Meyers, and one with Buddha's hand.  I'll keep you posted on how that goes.  

Second Time, No Charm

Serving on a jury in college motivated me to pursue a career in the law.  No joke, that's not just something I made up for my law school admissions essay.  The case was silly, a fender bender that only ended up in court due to a brief period of uncertainty around CA auto insurance recovery rules following Prop 213.  The trial was short.  Damages low.  Nonetheless, the judge's stirring words about the importance of civic participation resonated with my experience.  A comprehensive cross-section of my richly diverse neighborhood reported for duty.  From Cal professors to community college students, nurses to engineers, retirees to college kids, and of course the full spread of race, color, and creed that you could hope for.

If my September jury experience had been my first, I probably never would have considered law school.  The disrespect shown for people's time by the San Francisco Superior Court was both astonishing and insulting.  In the final equation, I lost more than three days of work for less than seven hours of courtroom time on voir dire for a simple burglary case.  A competent court could have seated the jury by the afternoon of Day 1, and maybe even fit in opening statements.  That's two days stolen from the lives of 100 members of the Jury pool.  Outrageous!  And it's no mystery where the inefficiency was -- the judge.  He rattled on at length about how much he respected our service and promised not to waste our time (while wasting it, of course).  He let the attorneys ask countless questions of the jurors that were clearly designed to prejudice them to the law and evidence in the case rather than to determine bias.  And worst of all, he used maximum 4 hours of the day for courtroom proceedings.  On the final day juror call was 9:30, proceedings started at nearly 11, our 90 minute lunch begun promptly at noon, and court ran for twenty minutes after lunch.

I have worked for other courts, and I know there is no reason to run things this way other than incompetence or lack of interest in using the time of jurors efficiently.  It's no wonder that so many citizens disregard jury summons when the system they're being asked to participate in has such disrespect for them.

BookClubSF

The book club I co-founded has been going strong for nearly three years now.  Turns out, my friend has been keeping a nicely documented list of the books we've read.  Contemporary fiction seems to dominate, though we've worked in a good deal of diversity here and there.

Minty Fresh

I like to keep busy even when I'm not off gallivanting, so I figured I'd take a stab at blogging about some of my hobbies, interests, and opinions.

If you know me, you know that I like to make jam.  I prefer making flavors that you can't just go buy at the store -- peach-ginger, nectarine-orange blossom water, cherry cabernet, peach cardamom.  Last week, some plump blackberries and crisp mint caught my eye at the farmers market.  The internet's best suggestion for combining the two seemed to be stuffing mint into a tea ball  and throwing that into the pot with your fruit and sugar.  That sounds like a hot sticky and inefficient mess to me!  I thought about using cheesecloth instead, to let me squeeze all the flavor out of the leaves.  I burned my fingers enough in my early jam-making days to reject that option too. 

And then it hit me -- jam already requires a ton of sugar, why not add some of that sugar in the form of a simple syrup?  That way, I could infuse that syrup with my mint, strain out the soggy mint leaves, and get just the minty goodness into my jam.  It worked marvelously.  Flavor is great.  Softer set than usual due to the added liquid used for the sugar syrup, but well within acceptable jam range.  And no finger burns or sticky tea balls to clean out.

My other experiment that evening didn't turn out so well.  While nectarine-basil sounded like an intriguing filling for an Italian polenta cake, the jam ended up with a displeasing wilted greens flavor by the time it was done.  The basil-infused simple syrup actually tasted perky and green, but by the time it had boiled a second time with the fruit and pectin, the bloom was off the rose.  Still brainstorming options for avoiding that overcooked basil flavor next time.

Call from the Wild

Back from the big TREK, alive and well and in one piece (a piece with very very sore legs, but whole nonetheless). In 4 days we: climbed up and down about 8,000 feet; lived free from motorized vehicles of any kind; got soaked to the skin by monsoon rains; saw countless wildflowers of yellow, purple, white, blue; hiked along green-on-green-on-green ravines with rivers fed by waterfalls cascading down the rocks and streams that often ran right along our path; and stood beneath towering peaks covered in snow, wreathed in fog, lit by the sun's setting and rising. All in all, it's the hardest that I can remember pushing my body in years, and some of the most striking scenery I've ever seen.

Tomorrow it's back to Kathmandu for a night, then on to Hong Kong for a day, and then home, which feels awfully far away at the moment!

Ups and Downs

As it turns out, visiting Nepal in August may not have been the best idea ever. The monsoons turned the streets of Khatmandu into ankle-deep rivers at least once a day, and when it's not raining, the heat and humidity are difficult to take. After a day of pessimism on the bus to Pokhara today, worried about the weather and visibility issues for the five day trek we start in on tomorrow morning, Kevin suggested that we go out for a rowboat ride on the lake. Pulling out into the lake, the trees on the shore shrank to reveal a truly stunning ridge of mountains behind. At less than 3000 feet here, we were staring up a string of peaks between 20,000 and 27,000 feet high. It was breathtaking. And as the sun set, the sky lit up fiery red and gold. And with that, my excitement for our trek rekindled. I'm taking that image to bed with me, rather than my worry about the heat and clouds. I'll update when I get back next weekend!

Some Diary Entries

Thursday, 5 Aug. 2010, 10:09 PM, Rombok Monastery, Tibet

Unfortunately, Images of Everest's peak are nto yet burned into my mind. Clouds and fog obscured the upper 2/3 of the mountain today. Still, just being in the presence of such a looming force of nature made my eyes water a bit.

We've seen many monasteries so far, but only one nunnery. And that one packed a real punch. Just three nuns sat in the assembly hall on the hill overlooking Sakya. Two older ones read scriptures under a single bare bulb, while a younger one tidied up the altar. All seemed to welcome our visit, though they freaked out when one of my tour-mates began to circle the hall counter-clockwise. Their concern for her well being was serious. More than the monasteries with monks loitering around and pilgrims stuffing money into the glass in front of statues, this place seemed like one of genuine retreat and meditation. Outside in the courtyard, a team of 15 worked to move a massive rock up the hill to its future home in a rebuilt corner of the convent yard. Old women, young boys, and everyone in between pulled mightily on ropes looped around the white stone. Sometimes they managed to bring the stone one more turn uphill, other times the ropes slipped and went slack in their hands.

The monastery in Sakya also felt more mystical than average. A holy conch shell blown by a monk upon request (and donation) for ailing or dead relatives sounded in the ancient assembly hall supported with pillars made from whole hewn tree trunks from Tibet, India, and china. Through the layers of smooth red paint on each column, you can still make out the crevasses and twists of the tree. Some are adorned with
an elephant tusk or tiger skin. And then there was the library, a wall of sacred texts 50 feet tall and four or five times that in length. The long rectangular volumes are each placed in cloth and wood containers and slid into shelves lengthwise. Stacked on top of each other in rows and columns, they stretched nearly as far as the eye coud see in the dim light. They gave off a palpable energy. Old. Serious. Profound. Inscrutable. Mystical. Magical.

Friday, 6 Aug. 2010, 7:12 PM, Zhangmu, Tibet

Our head to head battle with the aqua Dong Feng has passed the 20 minute mark. Here in Zhangmu there's only one street, carved into the side of the gorge, and our bus's attempt to squeeze past the truck has brought all traffic to a standstill. The police are here attempting to direct things. A soldier stands by watching. A parade of locals squeezes past on the narrow sidewalks, tilting their colorful umbrellas to get by. The Chupa Chups in the grocery store window a few feet away are looking more and more irresistible. The burnt rubber smell from our breaks, already taxed from our 2500 m. descent from Everest, has become intoxicating. All the shopkeepers have come outside to watch the show, some bringing goods displayed on the sidewalk in out of harm's way. Our guide just climbed out his window to join our driver, who's outside having a smoke. Minute 25 and half of our tour group is shouting directions from inside. Outside, five or ten locals are directing the drivers as well. The man with the pencil mustache has taken charge. Finally things shift, and we're side to side. Clearance looks dicey, and Dong Feng refuses to move forward. Eventually the yelling crowd eggs him on, and he pulls forward enough that we squeeze past with three inches to spare. Another half hour winding through the remaining traffic snarl, and we're at our guest house. What a show!

Off Trekking!

Having finished up our group tour, we're off trekking in Pokhara for the week. It's the heart of the Himalayas, and it promises to be absolutely spectacular as long as we don't get poured on the whole time. Fingers crossed! Will update more on what I've been doing and seeing when I'm back in computer range.

All Natural

Forget the people here, the topography and natural beauty of Tibet is just unreal. From Lhasa to Gyantze we drove over one measly 4700m pass, a fertile valley on one side, the insane switchbacked road we'd driven up visible all the way down, and a snaking blue lake on the other that reflected the sky as the sun peeked in and out of the clouds. Along the lake, vivid crayola yellow plots of flowering mustard contrasted with the water, green hills, and blue sky above in striking blocks of color. And then it was on to the big pass of the day. At over 5000m, glacier covered peaks lay on either side -- at least I assume they were peaks, as they disappeared into the clouds above, slopes of crinkled snow disappearing into the ceiling of gray mist. Then through more arid valleys beyond, fewer herds of sheep and yaks clinging to plunging slopes on this side of the pass. The violent thrust of the Indian subcontinent into Asia has done some crazy things to the layered rocks here. Looking around valleys carpeted with waving barley stalks, the lines in the surrounding mountain-ettes run in every direction: upthrust at a uniform 70 degrees on one, swirled on its neighbor, and zig-zagged on the one next to that. These layers of red, tan, brown, chalk, made for subtle and beautiful scenery out the bus window or from the top of the Gyantze fort, built on a tall hill in the middle of a vast valley. Add in the cloud shadows on the ground and shifting light across the valley as things went from rain to sun, and it was truly magical.

Many Monasteries

Day six in Tibet, and I'm still not monasteried out. Despite the shared iconography, monks in red and saffron robes, stupas, assembly halls, and butter lamps, each one stands out with its own personality. Ganden, perches two thousand feet above the valley below. Almost entirely rebuilt after being shelled to rubble by the Chinese, it looks like every Hollywood home for powerful Tibetan mystics -- think Batman Begins without the snow (though it has that too for much of the year). With the crowds of Lhasa left thankfully behind, Ganden gave me the first chance to really savor the over-stimulation of colorful wall paintings, golden Buddhas dressed in many layers, decorative ribbon circles hanging from the ceiling, and altars heaped with small bills, fruits, and prepackaged cups of jello with fruit. Walking the Kora around the mountain behind Ganden provided stunning views of valleys ribboned with ice blue rivers, green barley terraces, deep high-altitude (14,000 ft) blue skies hung with still white clouds, and mountain peaks in all directions. Squeezing through a hole in the rock along the way, I was reborn.

At Gyantze, with it's tiered Kumbum featuring 73 chapels and 100,000 images of the Buddha, three different sects co-exist in harmony. Walking clockwise circles around each successive level of the Kumbum, peering into the chapels to be met with images of wild eyed protector demons wreathed in flames or the peaceful face of one of Buddha's many forms, I began to grasp the power in the repetition of iconography and ritual that seems to be a central part of Buddhist worship.

Tashilhunpo, seat of the Panchen Lamas, brings you face to face with the Chinese efforts to interfere with Tibetan religion over the past decades. I should amend my previous post after doing a bit more reading -- while the 10th Panchen Lama, a cute chubby-faced guy with smiling eyes, was indeed picked by the Chinese government, the atrocities of 1959 turned him around and his criticism of China earned him 14 years in jail. So the ubiquitous photos of him at monasteries throughout the country tell a story whose meaning may largely be in the eye of the beholder. The current 11th, however, is unambiguous - China keeps the first-identified Lama imprisoned and the second, chosen at the government's command, kept tightly under wraps in Beijing. His picture, while largely absent from other monasteries, was all around Tashilhunpo.

One thing that unifies all of these monasteries (and the others I've passed over here) is the devotion of the pilgrims and the diversity of their ages. Many many parents bring their children, praying together at the altars, leaving small bills, and filling lamps with ghee. Adults bring aging parents, helping them up and down the steep steps. Outside of Poland, I haven't seen evidence of this level of religious commitment anywhere else I've traveled. Tomorrow we head off to smaller and smaller towns. Two nights from now, I should go to sleep with images of Everest etched in my eyes. Then to the Nepali boarder and into yet another land.

Up Up and Away!

Forty-five hours on a train, and I'm in Lhasa. There's no question that this is a city under military occupation. Chinese soldiers guard most intersections, perch on rooftops (including that of the city's mosque), and parade around the plazas in front of the Potala Palace and Jokhang Temple. Photographing them is strictly forbidden, and since they're hiding all over the place, taking snapshots can be a little stressful. This morning I saw a Chinese tourist being escorted away under vocal protest after catching some soldiers in her frame. Presumably they'll just confiscate her camera's memory card, but she may be in for some serious questioning. And the occupation goes beyond the military, into the religious. Photos of the Dalai Lama that used to lay cradled in the arms of the Buddhas in the Jokhang have been replaced by images of the Panchen Lama, hand picked by the Chinese government.

Putting politics aside, Lhasa charmed my heart from the start. Sharp mountain peaks tinged green with vegetation ring the town, and in the meandering streets of the old quarter around the Jokhang, Tibetan pilgrims outnumber foreign tourists many times over. Stooped old women do the Kora around the Temple spinning prayer wheels. Others exercise their devotion by chanting and prostrating themselves every two steps all the way around. Inside the Temple, grease from the ghee lamps slicks the floors and makes the wall sticky. The air is close, the passageways crowded. I spotted fewer than twenty monks inside, some praying, some eating lunch, and some chanting and beating a giant drum hanging from the ceiling (one while sorting the money left by pilgrims). Worshippers stuff small bills through the glass cases in front of sacred images of Buddhas and historical leaders. They touch their foreheads to the cases, and many carry thermoses of molten ghee to add to the amber pools fueling the devotional flames.  At the heart of the temple lies a seventh century Buddha brought by the Chinese wife of Tibet's first king (he also had a Nepalese and a Tibetan wife). Dressed in robes and crowned with jewels, this image is the only one still to be illuminated by authentic yak butter. A monk was giving him a touch-up paint job as we walked by. The Jokhang feels deeply rooted in the past, the physical site of so many generations of worship, and at the same time, it's unmistakably alive, vibrant with current prayers, ringing with the sound of two dozen workers singing and pounding on the roof as they repair it.

The train ride here was spectacular. On day one, we went through hundreds of miles of "small" cities, each with multiple clusters of thirty story condo towers sprouting from the fields and low buildings below. I realized that what had struck me as big on the outskirts of Beijing the day before was actually a sleepy neighborhood, for in these outlying areas, whole cities are being grown from scratch. On day two, the natural beauty kicked in. Sharp snowcapped peaks, vast expanses of scrubby plains, full of tiny antelope, sheep, yak, and the occasional tent city or tiny village. The muddy rivers flowing by dozens of quarries that we'd seen on day one were now icy gray glacial runoff, bounding quickly over rocks between heathery green banks. We hit altitudes of nearly 17,000 feet.

Inside the train, the passengers were uniformly friendly and quite boisterous -- almost everyone headed to Tibet on holiday, most with digital cameras much fancier than mine. An 18 year old student about to embark on his freshman year in a dance program at university talked to us about love, life, dreams. He'd just seen a play in Beijing that made him cry till he had no more tears. He was headed to Tibet out of respect for life's journey and in the hope of advancing along it. 18 year olds are 18 everywhere.

Tomorrow we visit Potala Palace, the only building Frank Lloyd Wright had on his wall that he did not design, and hit some more monasteries.  In a week or so, Everest Base Camp. I'm savoring the present, and eagerly anticipating what's to come.

Size Matters

Forty-eight hours in China, and I've learned one thing for sure: China likes to build things, and to build them big. The new Beijing Aiport Terminal 3 dwarfs you with a half-mile long wing-shaped terminal, with an up-swept metal roof supported by insistent columns overhead and a seemingly endless stretch of moving walkways to take you to the immigration check.

After traversing the airport, express train to the city (and getting past the airport train station, which was an unfortunate greenhouse of a place at 32C, though the air conditioned benches helped a little), and shiny new subway, we arrived at our hotel. Grand when it was built, with marble floors, monogrammed towels, and the AC set to frigid, the Harmony Hotel still feels slightly threadbare and forgotten on a side alley near the Beijing Railway Station. Still, it's been a chilly and welcoming spot to call home for the past two days.

Yesterday was a morning trip to the Great Wall -- a section two hours outside of town that was mercifully minimalist in its hawkers and souvenir shops. The climb up to the wall was steep, and at 9 am it was already pushing 90F. I was soaked through within minutes. The climb up was well worth it, though, with each gatehouse on the wall a charming variation on the one before. Between the humidity and smog, the snaking views will never reproduce in photos, but peering into the mist to make out the tan line of wall creeping across the wooded hills had a romanticism to it.

And why the title, you ask? Not really
for the Airport, or for the Great Wall, but for the roadways. Driving out to the Wall, we left the heart of the city behyind for a strange no-man's land, the Brentwood of Beijing. A mix of corn plantations, fields with drying bricks, the odd strip of rund down single story apartments mixed with an auto repair shop. Road repair crews had a paving machine or two, along with a handful of men and women weilding twig brooms to clear the area of pebbles before the pavers came through. And, of course, you-pick-it resorts, though in China you can go you-catch-it fishing in concrete pools as well as plucking peaches from the trees. Through this uncomfortable mixed-use landscape, massive clusters of tracked homes are sprouting up, with no apparent rhyme or reason. These are not your Central Valley single families, though. Styted to look like the stucco homes you can find from Brentwood to Windhoek, these are actually 6 story mega-homes, with room for ten or twenty apartments each. Clearly in 5 years the area will be home to tens of thousands of new families, and they're building the roads for that influx now. On the way to the Wall, we passed a pristine expanse of black asphalt off to the left, stretching into the fields and shrubby trees as far as the smog would let us see. With room for eight or ten lanes, it looked more runway than roadway. On the return journey, they'd already begun painting in lane lines and turn arrows. When you know millions of people are on their way in, I guess it's best to set enough spots at the table for them at the outset.

Eager Anticipation

Pacing. Packing. Racking my brain for anything I might want over the next three weeks. Savoring the anxiety of cutting down my access to *things* from a whole apartment to a single backpack. Takeoff in four hours. Shower, shave, zip, dash.

More Mangledfont in the news

I've gotten caught up in the way-back machine with Kagan's nomination to the Supremes. She's let herself get near exactly two controversial issues in her adult life: executive power and the Solomon Amendment (it remains to be seen if affirmative action in hiring during her tenure as HLS Dean will become a third). With so little to sink their teeth into, the press has started delving. Each news outlet seems to have found a different set of alums to talk to about the Solomon Amendment issue, and the Daily Beast reporter stumbled across me. Technically, I guess two reporters ran across me; one found my name, the other, my picture.

What Really Happened at Harvard
by Samuel P. Jacobs, May 10, 2010

For those who were involved in the fight to keep recruiters off campus, however, this line of attack comes with a good deal of irony. Kagan was not in the vanguard of this battle; she disappointed allies who thought she didn't go far enough. Boston College's Kent Greenfield, who led the plaintiffs in the case, FAIR v. Rumsfeld, that challenged the constitutionality of the Defense Department's threat to withhold funds, said that both Harvard and Kagan lagged behind other faculties. Harvard refused to join the main challenge against the government.

“Their absence in the litigation at the time was noted and hurt the litigation,” Greenfield said. (He noted that Kagan was an eloquent spokeswoman for opponents of “Don't Ask, Don't Tell.”)

That inaction bothered those within Harvard as well.

“It was frustrating,” said Sam Tepperman-Gelfant, a San Francisco attorney who was a leader of Lambda, the Harvard Law School LGBT organization, when Kagan was dean. “We were aware, for better or worse, that where Harvard comes out on issues like this makes a real difference. The fact that Harvard wasn't stepping up by participating in the FAIR suit or otherwise leading the fight was very frustrating.”

more

News Update

Concord Approves Naval Weapons Station Plan

. . .

Twenty-nine people spoke to the council before the vote. Many represented the Coalition for a Sustainable Concord, which includes environmental, labor, housing and neighborhood advocacy groups.

The coalition had submitted a list of additional mitigation measures they wanted the city to include, on such issues as affordable housing, environmental protections and rules to require hiring local workers for construction projects.

Council members said they supported many of the ideas presented and wanted more information on local-hire rules, but that they would consider them later with the general plan amendments. They said they believed they were approving a strong and legally adequate plan and environmental review that could be tweaked later.

It was disappointing that the city did not take the coalition's suggestions, said Samuel Tepperman-Gelfant, an attorney with Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm that is a member of the coalition. The environmental review they passed does not meet legal standards, he said.

(full text)

Mangledfont in the news

Planning for the Concord Naval Weapons Station has reached a critical juncture, and my work with the Community Coalition for a Sustainable Concord has really heated up. Here is some recent coverage from the Contra Costa Times.

Your Turn: Advice for the Concord City Council: Don't leap without parachute 02/06/10

Concord stands poised to take an enormous step that will shape the East Bay for generations: creating a community on the long dormant land of the Concord Naval Weapons Station. Whether this is a leap to a better tomorrow or a plunge to an uncertain future depends on the environmental and social safeguards built into the project now.

Later this month, the Concord City Council will consider a Reuse Plan and Environmental Impact Report for the Weapons Station, an area larger than Pleasant Hill. The Community Coalition for a Sustainable Concord urges the council to deal with key outstanding issues necessary to create a truly world-class project before approving the plan.

. . .

(full text)

____________________________

Concord takes weapons station testimony as plan heads for approval 02/10/10

. . .

Environmental groups said they were glad the city had agreed to make a climate action plan to reduce greenhouse gases, and to work on restoring Mount Diablo Creek sitewide, rather than working on it one parcel at a time.

But environmentalists said more details are needed and that the regulations need more teeth.

"Significant impacts are identified but the actual mitigation is punted," said Samuel Tepperman-Gelfant of the nonprofit law firm Public Advocates, Inc. "Some things should be dealt with at later stages in the process, but (the problem is) it's deferred without guidance in the (environmental report), so basically we're left at this stage with a giant question mark."

. . .

(full text)