Candyhog blog

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Working hard and hardly working

Time to cry myself a river.

This has been an amazing — and I don't mean that in a good way — couple of years. For me, the recession has meant:

Too much work. Having to do a lot of side jobs even when I have full-time work, so that I have work when the full-time stuff dries up. Working with startups is fulfilling in some ways, but so insecure.

Too little work. Working with startups is fulfilling in some ways, but so insecure. Too many hours I could be working, when I am not working.

Too little predictability. Sometime too much work, sometimes too little, no ability to look ahead and plan accordingly.

Too little play. No money, no predictable time to set aside for play.

Sorry about the complaints. My cheerfulness will return.

PNW weekends are action-packed in the summertime

The weekend was spectacularly sparkly, kicked off with a divine dinner at Chez Shea and closed with the 9-year-old's wanderings leading to the discovery of a homegrown John Denver Tribute Concert at the bottom of the hill. No, I didn't go.

(Wrinkles flies in the ointment: Stupidly missed the fabulous annual Hyla Chili Cookoff with its middle school carnival, and Bloedel Reserve too busy to get a reservation to stroll.)

Gorgeous day

Perfect setting

Jalapenos with the crudo

Perfectly dressed

It's all about the snail butter

Dessert!

Patience rewarded!

After a long break — sorry about that, folks — I'm back with a very serious issue with which I need help. Richard made us a scallop lunch today and plated it two different ways. Can you believe that?!

It's like Who Wore It Better all over again.

Please vote and let your voice be heard by at least 7 people!!!

Things every young lad should learn

Thanks to his father, Walter Thompson, 9, of Bainbridge Island now knows how to open a bottle of wine, offer a taste while displaying the bottle, and dispense a sommelier pour of 3 ounces. And cook a steak perfectly à point.

— Abigail

The somewhat beaten path

Anyone who's visited us in the past year or so will recognize many of the activities included in the New York Times' 36 Hours in Seattle. It's a good round-up of fun things to do.

The dining choices were as sensitive as the activity recommendations, selecting neighborhood haunts that are easy to get to and fairly central, as well as a flashy market-view restaurant that happens also to be a longstanding locals in-the-know favorite: Matt's in the Market. It used to have just 23 seats, so you had to be pretty judicious about not trumpeting its praises, if you ever wanted to eat there again. It was exclusive but neither pricey nor precious.

That's one of the really neat things about the Pike Place Market: It's a co-op or nonprofit or whatever (just the facts here!), so the cold arm of capitalist commerce is kept at bay and restaurants don't have to be mega-sized million-dollar enterprises to pay for the water view locations that are so fun.

In terms of dining, the Times also mentioned Quinn's Pub, which I've enjoyed visiting on two occasions, and Café Presse, among our top three destinations when we're dining in town. Who doesn't love a cold half chicken with mayo and a salad?

— Abigail

Update: replaced the photo with this one of Jordan taken on November 26th at Matt's, proving the point that it's the place to be. He and Pat took my recommendation to have dinner at Lark and loved it as much as I do.

The weekly YouTube addresses are great but...

How much more impressive is the idea of a "craigslist" for community service?! For everyone who workd full time and has a busy family life besides, here is a way to volunteer in piece-work fashion, finding things that you can do and are interested in with ease and without a lot of advance notice or ongoing commitment.

Genius! Our first Internet presidency is going to rock.

All this said, of course, I'm not knocking the presidential YouTube addresses.

— Abigail

Joe the Unkind-to-eyeballs

When I read that Joe the Plumber had an awful website built upon his stupidity and the style trends of the fetal Net, I had to hie over there. Wow! It's worse than a bad report can prepare you for, but I encourage you to read them anyway: there are some very, very good writers out there practicing ethical savagery.

Try HuffPo  and Wonkette ... or if you prefer a drier approach in French, Le Monde serves it up well in its Americana blog, tagline "Choses vues en Amérique."

— Abigail

The secret to my moderately fat physique

I will not waste your time an mine by trying to represent myself as other than overweight and in need of more exercise. However, I would be absolutely gargantuan if it wasn't for the last several years having seen me naturally gravitating toward appropriate portions. As in, 50% of what is normally served in a restaurant setting.

When chefs were asked to estimate a typical portion size of penne pasta served in their restaurant, for instance, half of the chefs suggested portions that are six to eight times larger than the U.S.D.A.’s standard 1-ounce serving.

Not only have Americans increased their food intake over the past 20 or so years by at least 30%, but they, like me, have become much more sedentary and thus in need of fewer calories. Note to Americans: Most of us don't need farm food anymore! We don't work gruelling days in the fields!

I think the explosion of portion sizes starts with a single important factor: Americans eat prepared food more often (As of 2006, fewer than a third of Americans were in the habit of making home-cooked dinners from scratch). Prepared food must be marketed and sold. To appear to be a "value" it must give you "more" for whatever the market-will-bear pricepoint is...and the "more" is not likely to be organic, fresh vegetables or high-fiber or high-protein elements. A marketable alternative to (and a relative of)  value is the need for a wow factor, which is likely to be size. A big, bountiful packaged or restaurant meal sells better than a lean, efficient, high quality meal in a small package. 

All that said, I do not subscribe to the idea that there is a correct portion of red wine. Wine is not a food, it's a necessity.

— Abigail

PS > Can we just call me phat insteada, well, you know...

Please no more of this

It takes Walter to be impressed by this unfortunate branding:

Wow, and BTW, nice cover

This week's entire New Yorker is online FREE this week.

I know, you all subscribe (I couldn't live without the New Yorker under my pillow for when I wake up and want to read, doze, read, doze, etc.) but remember also to visit the online New Yorker for the online-only content.

I love Hertzberg's blog as much if not more than his perfect and addictive Talk of the Town pieces, and there's tons more online that you can't get in print. In fact, the New Yorker seems to have used the past year to make its Web site suitable for visitors (which it really wasn't up until the overhaul) and to very successfully differentiate its print and online brands despite their large overlap.

Hurray for them, and welcome to them  as a polished player in the online age.

— Abigail

Michelle Obama is her own personal stylist

I love that she is not using a professional stylist. She gets a lot of love for wearing J. Crew and Gap fashions, and she wears them very well. But when she chooses things for high-profile events like, say, election night things get very fun and interesting.

 

Narciso Rodriguez is a fairly edgy, sophisticated American designer, whose current collection has many new and exciting shapes, colors, constructions, and looks. Compare the runway version and the dress Michelle chose to wear as her family became the first-family-elect. The design has been reworked to suit the more conservative venue — perhaps not entirely successfully. I am among those who thought it was a little weird-looking.

So, I hope in her closet for less high-profile times, Michelle has the "real version" which I think would be ab fab on her.

I was afraid as the campaign season began that she'd hew to the Jackie-O-esque solid-color-a-line dresses and pearls. A kind of uniform. But I was delighted as we began to see a loser and more expressive fashion sense revealed. I loved, loved, loved the yellow J. Crew ensemble (the love, love, love that she wre it too!) she wore for her appearance on Jay Leno's show. It actually reminded me that J. Crew often ventures into eye-catching and innovative realms: very nicely mixed textures and patterns, not safey-safey.

I am actually not an inveterate style-watcher (despite my addiction to Project Runway) but I was first alerted give Mrs. Obama's style a good look when I heard that my very fashion-forward aunt in Portland has the same Thakoon dress Michelle wore on the night of the first presidential debate. Sure the dress was in the pricier realms, as is appropriate for a big night, but the LAT looks at the designer more closely and sees some interesting very Obama-friendly themes:

Thakoon Panichgul — pronounced Tie-koon — is an up and comer with a textured past. He moved from northern Thailand to Omaha with his family when he was 11.  Also, he has been tapped to design for Target, so expect his collection to arrive there in December.

Anyway, I hope she never gets a stylist so we can continue to see what she wears as an expression of her taste and ideas.

— Abigail

I read this reader post at TPM about why/how someone chose not to vote for Obama today, ready to be schooled in some fine point or contrarian rhetoric. What I got was so much better!

 — Your pal Abigail

Panini

I have always been among the most enthusiastic sandwich appreciators. I do not think of sandwiches as lowly.

As part of the 2008 Slow Food conference in Turin, Jordan signed us up to attend a talk-with-tasting featuring the owner/sandwich maker from storied sandwich shop Schiavoni at the market in Modena.

Also present were a winemaker who makes small amounts of all-natural (no added yeasts, for instance) Lambrusco wines which were DELICIOUS and a Modena maker of aceto aromatico. We heard more about the sandwich maker than we saw of him, because he is the only one who makes his sandwiches and there was a roomful of us to feed...an astonishing four sandwiches each.

1. Smoked duck with warm arugula and sautéed pine nuts

2. Smoked swordfish with orange salad, aceito aromatico, capers, riasins, and olives

3. Ham, pumpkin puree, aceito aromatico, parmesan

3. Cooked cotecchino with mayo, parsley, and carrot and aceito aromatico

I liked hearing that the sandwiches are devised to feed office workers and market workers according to their different nutritional needs.

The gentleman has 300 sandwich recipes which customers have acclaimed, one of which was originally served to a dear young customer on a very hot summer day. Mineral water to drink and the sandwich were left out in the sun for a period of time before being served, and then the young man and his friends were pelted with water balloons after they were finished eating.

The sandwich is no longer served with water balloons.

— Abigail

Reading as thinking

I am guilty of reading for the pleasure of words going by, sometimes (in the wee hours) failing to absorb much or ponder as I sail along. Even so, when reading is reduced to its least influential state, the shape of words, the choice of words, the contrasts between sentences give a meaning that can't be gotten from speech (just as speech gives something unique of its own).

That's why I was so irritated by the poetry trend in the 90s whereby a poem didn't have life until or unless the writer performed in front of a group of people. Those poor audiences got to see a spectacle but they never got to see how the words related to each other as they were recorded, a reproducible record of the writer's intent.

These are the sympathetic prejudices I bring when I read this wonderful piece by Stefan Suricek about Ms. Palin and her reading habits and got a lot of mileage out of it.

And I should note:  If I'd seen these thoughts presented in a YouTube video, I wouldn't have understood them as clearly and powerfully.

— A

My ignorance

I thought/worried for a moment tonight that the flag behind Obama was an Obama-branded version of our national flag, and thought the license it would take to design & produce such a thing, especially one kinda-sorta not-really on-brand, would be unwise/would backfire.

Of course, Obama would do no such silly/unwise thing.

Little did I know, the Ohio Flag is "monogrammed" with a big sans-serif "O." The coincidence is like the coincidence of Oprah breaking with her own tradition and endorsing a candidate, Obama. Yes, she's the owner of the "O" brand, but she's not endorsing  — or not endorsing — Obama for that reason.

The question is: With Ohio so important to electoral success, did the Ohio flag design serve as an inspiration element when they were designing the Obama logo that has been so consistent throughout the campaign? It's sure handy now that the message to Ohioans and the rest of Americans is so cohesive, visually.

And of course, substantially.

— Abigail

Time to do something for a change

Andrew Sullivan posted a graph showing American's satisfaction with the "way the country is going" and it's eye-opening.

 

No, it's not really eye-opening that only 9% of people are satisfied, the lowest ever. It's eye-opening that though Clinton provided increasing satisfaction levels, we the people have seen fit to  re-elect Bush despite his abysmal performance (which many saw coming, which is why we actually elected Al Gore). And now I hope we are seeing that we do need to elect someone with skills and qualities we can trust and believe in.

Vote Obama/Biden.

And I hope people have learned that in general, Democrats are, at least in this era in history, the party that despite its flaws, cares about collective wellbeing.

— Abigail

Understanding the Palin debate performance (and why the Couric interviews went so poorly)

Every time I hear Sarah Palin speak, I see a pageant contestant with more ambition and brains than this year's Miss South Carolina, but a pageant contestant nonetheless. Her famous non-answers to questions are the stuff of ballsy gals who power through on a wink, a perky shrug of the shoulders, and an unwavering smile no matter how much at a loss for substance they may be.

Does it surprise me that the Miss Alaska Pageant is advertising itself as great Vice-Presidential training? Not really (though it's hilarious). It accounts for Ms. Palin's notable self-confidence; she comes from that culture.

It does surprise me that people think Ms. Palin is more complex than a talented pageant alumnus.

Typical pageant scoring categories include:

Beauty, Poise , Overall Appearance , Stage Presence, Talent, Swimsuit , Evening Gown, Private Interview, Onstage Question

To do well in these categories in a pageant venue, Palin is qualifed.

— Abigail

Showing up is...

Even though he's up against, um, uninformed sentiments like this in Central Florida, Obama is showing up to ask for the vote. It's working for him in Southwest Virginia and it's working in Florida, too.

It's not exactly the stuff of genius (he's showing the Dems how it's done when you've seen the power and mechanics of grassroots community organizing).

Open offices and hit the pavement — or the astroturf if you will — and give people something to think about besides what they've always been used to doing. Which, it's easy to point out, isn't exactly working for them. Thinking about this really gave me a richer understanding of the power of the legitimate "McSame" label.

— Abigail

Update: Thought I'd throw a poll or two in here for good measure (Thanks, Pollster!):

I hate to do this

It's neither fun nor fair to just go rip someone's genius material off their site and plop it here. But, what can you do? This from Boing Boing is just too good to resist.