City of Angels

Los Angeles is amazing. For my entire life I have always had negative thoughts and feelings towards LA, but I had never actually been there. That all changed a month ago when I traveled to LA to visit my friends Ivy and Sierra. As the pilot came over the intercom to tell us that we were descending towards the Los Angeles metropolitan area, this was my first view. Already I was feeling more positively towards LA than I had imagined I would. Who knew LA had mountains? I didn't.



Of course as we descended further, I saw the inevitable rows upon rows of houses and buildings. However, after having lived in rural Vermont for the past 10 months, the sight of all those buildings, freeways and concrete was surprisingly exhilarating. It felt like you could fit the entire population of Vermont, and all of its buildings in one square mile of LA. Who knows, maybe you can. My friend Ivy picked me up from the airport and we spent a relaxing evening eating thai food and reminiscing.

The next morning my friend Sierra came to pick me up and we spent the afternoon at The Getty Museum. Sierra had a conference call that she had to be on for work, so The Getty was the perfect place to wander around while she took care of business. The original museum was run out of J. Paul Getty's house, beginning in 1954. An oil tycoon, he had purchased many works of art that he wanted to share with the public. Eventually his collection became too big and in the early 70's he built a replica of an Italian villa on his property to house his art collection. The Villa opened in 1974 and is still open today. After Getty's death in 1976, the museum was turned over to the Getty trust. In 1983 a 110 acre site was purchased in the Santa Monica Mountains, surrounded by 600 acres of untouched land. A 24 acre campus was designed by architect Richard Meier and took 13 years to complete, finally opening in 1997. My four hours there were barely enough to scrape the surface. I spent a large portion of my time wandering around the artfully landscaped gardens. After months spent starting out at 4 feet of snow, flowers were a sight for sore eyes.

A shot of The Getty from the freeway.

The central garden.

Oooohhhhh.....bougainvillea!

Friends!

Cactus and succulent garden.

Our evening was spent going to Sierra's work meeting, hitting up a happy hour in downtown LA that gave you a token for a 35 cent(!) first drink, walking around Little Tokyo and stopping at a super tasty restaurant for a dinner of ramen. Rest assured, this is no 25 cent grocery store ramen. It was brothy and delicious and involved pork. Yum.

Day three in LA dawned gray and rainy and our plans for a hike in Griffith Park were foiled. Fortunately, Sierra always has back-up plans. We wandered around a Mexican market where the main language spoken was Spanish, then headed to a local place for amazing fish tacos. After throwing out a few ideas for afternoon activities and hemming and hawing for a bit, I finally asked Sierra if there was anything she'd been meaning to do since moving to LA but hadn't gotten around to and she immediately thought of the Watts Towers.

The Watts Towers, also known as Simon Rodia's Towers were built by Simon, an Italian immigrant, over a 33 year period, 1921-1954. On these 90 foot towers he used no ladders, scaffolding, bolts or welding. The entire structure is made from metal and concrete and covered in mosaic from re-claimed and found materials. In a short documentary film we watched about him, it shows him climbing up the towers with a bucket and some tiles to work on the top of one of the towers. The structures were amazing, every square inch mosaiced and beautiful.

Sierra and our tour guide, Howard.

After our tour around the towers, we went into the Watts Towers Arts Center where artist Dominique Moody was having an exhibition. She happened to be leading a small tour around the gallery, so I latched onto the group while Sierra made a quick work call. After the tour, Dominique invited us down the block to the house where she is doing a 2 year artist in residency.
A 3D artist, she is legally blind and only sees in 2 dimensions. Her next project is to build an 8x20x12 foot cabin on a trailer bed which she will then, with the help of her brother, pull around the country, stopping at various art spaces and communities. She is an amazing woman with incredibly warm, positive energy and both Sierra and I felt lucky to be able to spend a couple hours with her.

After our adventure in Watts, we sped down the freeway to Norwalk, where Sierra's boyfriend, German, lives. The evening was spent eating incredible Peruvian food and catching a late night movie at the $2 theater.

Sierra and German sampling my tasty Sangria.

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny and though both Sierra and I tried valiantly to sleep in, we only made it to 8am. Luckily, it was the perfect day for a hike in Griffith Park. Griffith Park is gorgeous, a lovely oasis in the middle of the madness that is LA. Originally when Griffith J. Griffith gifted the 3000+ acres of land to the city in 1896, the city council was reluctant to accept the gift as they weren't convinced that people would travel all the way to the park, which at that time was a mile outside of the city limits. Of course, as the years went by, LA not so slowly crept towards the park and today it is smack dab in the middle of the city. Good thing they took a gamble and accepted the gift as it is now a major center of outdoor activity in LA. The park has over 53 miles of trails and is a beautiful place to hike, jog or ride horseback. We saw a boyscout troop at the top learning "wilderness skills". I thought it was funny and tried to snap a photo, but then felt creepy, so unfortunately there is no documentation. Sierra and I had a lovely hike and I, of course, took a billion photos. Here are a few of the best.

Nature.

It's windy up here on the hill...

Birds of Paradise!

There was snow on the tops of those mountains. People were excited.

The Griffith Observatory with the LA skyline in the background.

After our hike, we met up with German and headed to Hollywood! We were there the day before the Oscars and got to see all the preparations. German had worked security for the Oscars in the past, so he had the inside scoop and gave us a great tour. The next day he and Sierra were actually going to be in the bleachers outside of the Oscars. You can read all about it at her fabulous blog Soooo....Cal. Here's a photo record of our day in Hollywood:

The setup begins.

Of course Cher wore stilettos!

Marilyn was super chill about having her picture taken with us. She didn't say much, though.

This gentleman was outside Ripley's Believe It or Not, letting people staple money to him.

With a staple gun.

What this photo doesn't show is the finale when someone stapled a $20 to his forehead.
Ouch.

Of course I knew he was an actor before he became president
(mainly due to Back to the Future III)
but I was awfully surprised when I came across his star.

After our adventure in Hollywood, Sierra and German took me to In-N-Out Burger, which is as great as everyone says it is, and then we stopped by Roosevelt High School in East LA to check out this awesome mural. It wrapped around the wall under the fence surrounding the school and the whole thing was 2 blocks long. Amazing. Here are a few photos:

There were some pretty intense scenes in it and it was refreshing that it was on a school. Often the school system tries to sugarcoat history and in this mural, there was no sugarcoating.

After our mural viewing, they drove me to Hermosa Beach to meet up with Ivy. After bidding Sierra and German farewell, I settled into the beach house Tom and Anna, Ivy's parents, were renting for the month. It was in a great location and I spent the next 3 days eating, walking on the beach, biking around, playing dominoes and generally just having a great time. We rode the ferris wheel on the Santa Monica pier, checked out the scene at Venice Beach, wandered around the Venice Canals and took lots of long walks.

The Miller's at the beach house.

Venice Beach. The guy in white was dancing up a storm.

Ivy and I on the Hermosa Beach pier. It's good to see she's representing the home state.

Ivy and Josh at the Venice Canals.

The view inland from the Manhattan Beach pier. Those houses go all the way back over the horizon.

The lovely Pacific.

Ferris Wheel!

My trip was far too short and so much fun. I can't say enough thank you's for the wonderful hospitality from Sierra, Ivy and the Miller's. I also now appreciate why people live in LA.

It's fantastic!

Of Snow and Soup

I have a confession to make. I don't like X-C skiing. I want to like it. I've tried to like it. But I just don't think I do. Here's how I wish x-c skiing made me feel:

Here's how it really makes me feel:

Granted, I've only been twice, both times at the same location and with the same type of skis. Perhaps if I went out in the woods on some super fat, well-edged skis, I might feel differently. One thing I do know is that super skinny, edgeless skis made for speed are not my bag.

Here's why I want to like skiing: Mark loves it. Most of my friends love it. When I tell people I'm still a little apprehensive about winter, they all tell me to go x-c skiing. I like to exercise and be outside. It's a good way to get out into the woods in a season that I normally stay locked away inside.

Here's why I don't like skiing:
I can't steer myself. I definitely can't brake and my current stopping method is to just fall over and/or try to steer myself into deep snow, hopefully avoiding trees. I don't like things I'm not good at and skiing definitely falls into this category. Everyone else loves it and I still have a bit of my contrary teenage nature buried not so deeply inside myself that wants to not like things that everyone else likes.

Fortunately, something I do like is snowshoeing. It's slow, I don't fall over and I can definitely steer myself and stop on a dime. Granted, it can be kind of a drag when I'm knee deep in snow and Mark goes gliding by on his skis, but not being miserable far outweighs any fleeting jealousy I may feel as I watch him cruise downhill. Last weekend we skiied/snowshoed to Cheever Falls. I hadn't been there since this summer and it was fun to see the falls frozen in place and covered in snow.

Here's something else I like. Making soup. Last week I made a giant pot of Black Bean Soup with sweet potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, corn, lemon juice and cilantro. I made it up and it turned out even better than I had hoped. We ate a quart and there are 4 more in the freezer waiting for those nights that neither Mark nor I can be bothered to cook. Two weeks ago I had an incredibly productive day that involved finishing my book club book (more on that later), doing laundry, writing a letter to my grandma, washing my hair, deep cleaning the kitchen, baking cookies, co-facilitating a Mother-Daughter group through our local Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault prevention program AWARE, and baking bread and making soup from the cookbook 'Love Soup'.
Love Soup is a great cookbook by Anna Thomas that my Mom bought for her friend and then wished she had a copy for herself, so I bought her a copy for X-mas last year and then wished I had a copy for myself so she bought me one for my birthday this year. It focuses on soups, but also has some small sections devoted to side dishes and baked goods. On my super productive day I made a loaf of her multi-grain bread and 5 quarts of her Orange Ginger Carrot soup. Her recipes are easy to follow and taste great. If you can get your hands on a copy of this book, I suggest doing so.

Other news.....I started a book club! Our first meeting was January 22nd and we read the book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. I hosted and made collard greens and black-eyed peas. Katie made cornbread and Lindsay made buttermilk biscuits. Amy brought over her and John's projector and we watched the movie on the 'big screen' which was a somewhat crinkled bed sheet nailed to the wall. Though we didn't do much discussing of the book and only 3 of the 6 people in attendance had actually read it, it was a good excuse to get together with friends to share a meal and a film. Our next book is Like Water for Chocolate, hosted by Katie.

In future endeavors, Mark has decided to work at Harvest Hill this upcoming season in a more managerial role. We'll be moving off the farm to an as of yet unknown location in April to make room for the 3 interns Bill will be hiring to work with him and Mark. I will continue working at the Co-op as well as working for Maggie McGuire and hopefully picking up some other odd jobs here and there. I've also started volunteering with AWARE, so that'll keep me busy as well.

In beer news our first beer was a success! The Chinook IPA was full bodied and bitter, but with a pleasant, flowery after taste. We brought it to a number of gatherings and people appeared to enjoy it. We're storing 5 bottles to taste at various intervals to see how it changes as it ages. We bottled our second beer, a Scottish Ale last weekend and it should hopefully be ready in a week or two. Here are a couple bottling and capping pictures.

Bottling.

Capping.

Our next brew is a Black IPA. Mark and a co-worker ordered some kits from Northern Brewer the place we ordered our starter kit and Chinook IPA kit from and it should be here by Monday. Though all the sanitizing can be a bit of a drag, brewing beer is fun and it's awfully rewarding to pop the top off something you made. There's also a great local brew store in the area, Local Potion that we have been frequenting. The owner made up a Scottish Ale kit for Mark and in the future we hope to buy grains from them and start to head away from the kits and more into the DIY realm.

Tonight we're heading to Barre to see the Carolina Chocolate Drops. They're a trio of 20-somethings that trained with an 80+ year old fiddler named Joe Thompson who taught them how to play in the style of the southern, black string bands. Now they've taken that training and blended it with their own, modern style. It's bound to be a great show and I'm pretty stoked. Other adventures include my trip to LA, which is rapidly approaching, Mark's trip to Austin in March, and hopefully a shared trip to NYC in the not too distant future.

I hope you're all doing well.

Heart.

The Joy of Cooking

For the past 4 or 5 years, one of my New Year's resolutions has been to cook more. Each year I plan to cook one new recipe each month, and in ambitious years one new recipe each week. I would always start out all gung-ho, making shopping lists and browsing through my cookbooks for new exciting things to cook or bake, but inevitably, my resolve and excitement would soon wear off and I would be back to either:

A. Not cooking ever or

B. Making pasta with red sauce and pesto every week or two and calling it good.

I could always get away with it because I tend to live with people who both like to cook and are very good at it.

However, it looks like things are changing. For Christmas this year, my parents gave Mark and me the 'Joy of Cooking' and it turns out, cooking can be a joy. So far this year I have made: Banana, walnut, cranberry muffins; Hoppin' John (for good luck and a prosperous New Year); apple, cinnamon, walnut muffins and chutney turkey burgers. Currently, I am making Hoppin' John soup, as I made a ridiculous amount of Hoppin' John and it's time to diversify its flavor profile. Maybe, just maybe, I actually like cooking.



On the list of things I thought I didn't like but am actually starting to, right underneath cooking, we can add Winter. Much to my surprise, I'm kind of digging it. Perhaps it's being surrounded by people who moved to Vermont because they love winter. Perhaps it's the beauty of a snow covered landscape. Perhaps it's because, as Mark has told me over and over, Winter isn't that bad if you dress appropriately, get outside and keep moving. Whatever it is, I'm glad it's affecting me. I just got back from an hour and a half long walk with the dogs out in the woods and I was reminded of one of my favorite childhood winter activities: walking on top of the frozen snow for as long as possible before falling through to the powder underneath! I love the challenge and anticipation of avoiding a boot full of snow.

The next thing I hope to add to my list of things I thought I didn't like but actually do is Los Angeles. I've never had a desire to go, but now 2 close friends, Ivy and Sierra live there and it seems like it's probably time to check it out. I've always bagged on L.A. but until I've actually been there, I guess I don't have the right to. Though I'm a little wary, I have complete faith that Ivy and Sierra will both show me sides of LA I never knew existed. Plus, the idea of sitting on a beach in February and all the amazing Asian and south of the United States food Sierra has promised to take me to leads me to believe that this trip will be awesome. Granted, it may not be warm and sunny in February, but I bet it will be a hell of a lot warmer than Vermont!

Hey 2010, it's been real.

Not too much has happened since my last post. We do, however, have a new member of the family. Everyone: meet Hank.


Hank appeared on the farm sometime in July. He skulked around for a few months, living off our trash and probably some small animals, but never getting close enough for any of us to catch him. Mark started feeding him in November and in December, when it got really cold, we finally lured him inside. Turns out, he's a super affectionate, super friendly cat. I'm not much of a cat person, but I am a Hank person. Maggie is still getting used to not being an only pet. Most of her time is now spent staring at Hank, either from across the room or an inch from his face. Hank doesn't seem to mind. We're currently dog sitting for our friends Therin and Ellick's dog Ruby. Ruby has jumped right on board with the cat staring and she and Maggie spend quite a bit of time trying to herd Hank around the house or staring at him from the couch.


On the 11th, Mark and I brewed our first ever batch of beer. It's a Chinook IPA and should be ready sometime in February. On the 25th, we siphoned the beer into a carboy to begin the secondary fermentation. In 2-3 weeks we'll bottle and then about 2 weeks after that, it'll be ready for the tasting. Here's Mark siphoning the beer.


Another exciting late December event was a visit from our dear friend Katie. She was here for about 5 days and we did our best to convince her to move to Vermont. Though I don't think we succeeded, we did have a good time trying. Key persuasion techniques involved long walks in the snow, a visit to the Fairbanks Museum, watching 'Love, Actually', a trip to her cousin's bakery 'Elmore Mountain Bread', a giant Solstice bonfire, a trip to 'The Alchemist' a great brewery/restaurant in Waterbury where we ended up running into her cousin just hours after we left the bakery, a Christmas tree lighting (with real candles) and carol singing event at a co-worker's house and lots of reminiscing. The night before Katie left, our buddy Jake flew into Burlington and made the hour and a half drive to come see us here in Walden. It was great to have some of the old crew back together.






Though Mark and I don't really celebrate Christmas, I have still hung onto the idea of homemade raviolis with red sauce and pesto on Christmas Eve. For as long as I can remember, that's been my family's tradition and I have no intention of giving it up just because I'm not big on Christmas. The past few years I've made do with homemade pasta, but as a Solstice present this year, Mark gave me a ravioli press. The filling I made was from a little cookbook that my Great-Aunt Ada gave my Mom year's ago. It involves a number of different animals, lots of garlic, egg and cheese and it's delicious. I also made red sauce and we broke out some of the pesto that I made back in August. Here's a photo of Mark with some of the finished product. I made both spinach and regular dough. The dough was a little sticky at first and it turns out that a wine bottle, though it does work, is not quite as efficient as a rolling pin, but everything turned out tasty in the end.



One of my favorite presents this year was a lovely, felted bag, made by my very own mother. It was her first felting project and as far as I'm concerned, she did a fantastic job! Thanks Ma.



In closing, I'd like to share some of my favorite things I experienced in 2010. In no particular order:

1. Purple viking potatoes.

2. Music. More specifically: Gorillaz-Plastic Beach, The soundtrack to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Pete Bernhard-The Things I Left Behind, Langhorne Slim, The Devil Makes Three, Grateful Dead-American Beauty, Broken Bells, Of Montreal, Old School Freight Train.....and so many more, but those are definitely some of the top faves.

3. Visiting Nic and Sarah in Bozeman, MT.

4. Both writing and receiving letters. Having pen pals is one of the best excuses to buy fun stationary and note cards.

5. Farming.

6. Road trip! Montana to Oregon to California to Colorado to North Carolina to Virginia to Vermont. Why not? Even better than the freedom of the road were the lovely friends and family we got to visit along the way.

7. Spending a few months in my hometown. This involved being in Annie (that's right, the musical), working at Chapter One Bookstore again, spending time with friends, having Katie, Audrey, Nic and Sarah come visit, walks by the river, darts and drinks with Ryan and Britany, some winter hikes and lots of crafting.

8. The Pacific Ocean.

9. Hiking. East Coast, West Coast, No Coast, it was all pretty.

10. Finding a new/another place to call home, full of friendly, like-minded people, a gorgeous land base and opportunity. Vermont, I see some good times in our future.

I hope all of you have as good a 2011 as I did a 2010.
Happy New Year.