The tikis are watching...

Hey, so, remember there was that thing, that new thing, that new thing I was working on, and I didn’t feel ready to talk about it yet? I’m talking about it now.

My big project is this: I’m taking my existing site for tiki mug collectors, Ooga-Mooga, and making it better. It’s getting re-written from the ground up. Still not ready to blab about it completely, as I think it’s best to wait to talk about new ventures until they’re done and real and you can poke them with a stick. But OH CARP it’s already so much fun, and it’s time to get the Ooga-Mooga users excited about what’s coming (and help them brace for the changes).

I’m going to be honest with you, it’s nerve-wracking making this announcement. I’m on pins and needles. I hope folks are able to set aside the very natural (and very understandable) BUT I DON’T LIKE CHANGE reaction. So far, the response has been warm and good and supportive.

Read my announcement in a post on the embarrassingly stale Ooga-Mooga blog: Ooga-Mooga is Ooverdue for an Ooverhaul.
(Seriously—there’s a “Ooga-Mooga on MySpace” link in the sidebar. Ow, my 2005 is showing.)

Pier 9, home of Lab Zero, photo from noehill.com

I’ve not been able to say much about my work for ages now, because all of my work has been under pretty tight non-disclosure agreements. Most of you probably know that I work on Pier 9 on San Francisco’s waterfront, at Lab Zero, and not much more. Lab Zero is a group of consultants: product designers, graphic designers, scrum masters, content shapers, user experience folks, and most of all, software developers. We’re a sort of strike team of professionals who can drop into a company and make a product or project happen. It’s a smart move for lots of different kinds of companies, a sort of turbo-charged ramp to the future, a just-add-water team that can make a concept reality (where “water” = “money”). Much faster than trying to hire a whole new team of people, much safer than distracting an existing team of employees with an untested concept. And dammit, we’re good.

It’s a lot of fun… we have great and diverse clients, and the folks who work here are some of the most intelligent, talented, interesting, well-rounded people I’ve ever worked with. (No small feat; I never thought any place could top working at the Institute for Systems Biology.) I’m proud to say that Lab Zero does good work, and I’m lucky to get to be a part of it.

For the past year, my own work slate has been dominated by one Megaproject with one Megaclient. It’s been fascinating, and has had lots of new and intense challenges, but it’s also been a lot of very focused-in-one-area work and long hours. My strength is as a generalist, and I needed to stretch my legs a little. So a few weeks ago, I made arrangements with Lab Zero to shift off of the Megaproject for a while. When discussing what my next step should be with Lab Zero’s CEO, he said he’d understand if I want to step away for a bit and “have a life”. My instant reaction was to point at the Pier and say “This is my life, I don’t want to be anywhere else.” He high-fived me.

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers

Consulting work can be rather feast-or-famine, and thankfully it’s been much more of the former than the latter for a while now. I’ve found myself smack dab in the middle of a unique opportunity: I have enough savings in the bank to support myself while I work on my own project for a while. It’s the sort of thing I’ve daydreamed about for years and years. Right this moment, I’m not only able to make it happen, but do it from Pier 9, surrounded by the best danged coworkers I could imagine, with Lab Zero work as a safety net should my bank account start creaking. So for now, and for a squishy amount of the future, I’ve hired myself. I’m making a New Thing. It feels so good. And getting to do it from Pier 9 is… god, just pinch me.

Rich has continued to do what he always does: believe in me, stand by me and root for me. That guy. He’s incredible.

So, I still can’t talk about what I’m working on. I’m under my own NDA now. But hopefully some time in the next few months I’ll have a New Thing I Made to share with you. I can’t wait. In the meantime, the clock is ticking, and I’m a coding, designing, planning, creating fool. And I have a big dopey grin on my face.

#29: Chrysanthemum, with Curried Cauliflowerettes

The Select-O-Matic says:

#29: Chrysanthemum, with Curried Cauliflowerettes

I do very much love chrysanthemum the flower, and it’s a pretty fabulous word; I would be disappointed if it got used for a lame cocktail. Disaster averted: the Chrysanthemum cocktail is perfectly pleasant. (Further reading: Erik Ellestad’s Savoy Stomp take)

Chrysanthemum

2 parts dry white vermouth (Lillet Blanc, Noilly Prat)

1 part Benedictine

absinthe rinse (Kübler Absinthe)

Rinse cocktail glass with a small amount of absinthe, discard excess. Stir vermouth and Benedictine with ice and strain into glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually tasted Benedictine before. Oo-de-lally, that’s some sweet stuff. Tastes sort of like a horehound candy. I tried making the Chrysanthemum cocktail with both dry vermouth (using Noilly Prat), and with Lillet Blanc. I often find that Lillet acts like sandpaper to drinks, smoothing out the rough edges. Here I found it too sweet, and the vermouth did a better job of balancing things out, I think. Even so, it’s a solidly sweet cocktail, but not so much that the sweetness is clobbering the horehoundy, absinthey, orange oily good stuff. Also: my orange peel game could use some work, I think if I did a better job of getting the oils on the surface of the drink, it would have made a more interesting contribution.

Curried Cauliflowerettes

1 med. cauliflower

2 tbsp oil

1 tbsp curry powder

1 med onion, chopped

1 med green pepper, chopped

1 cup water

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp cayenne

1/2 tsp ground cardamom

1 c plain yogurt

(salt to taste)

Cut up cauliflower, set aside. Heat oil in a large, heavy skillet, brown curry powder for a minute, then add onion & green pepper and sauté until onions are translucent. Add water, tomato paste, ginger, cayenne and cardamom. (I chose to add a pinch of salt at this point; the recipe doesn’t call for it.) Simmer uncovered for 20 minutes. Stir in cauliflowerettes and simmer while covered for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat, and stir in yogurt. Let stand at room temperature for an hour to let the cauliflowerettes absorb the flavors.

“Cauliflowerettes” sounds like a dance squad at a San Joaquin Valley high school. I say this with admiration; I think “cauliflowerettes” is more efficient and adorable than “cauliflower florets,” which is an admirable speck of the English language to begin with. This is very easy to eat, and I’ll happily gobble up this batch… but there has to be a better interpretation of curried cauliflower out there. I opted to skip the scraped-together chutney made out of marmalade, vinegar and raisins… it’s 2012, and thank goodness, we can get actual chutney at the store.

#290: Salty Dog, with Trout Barquettes

The Select-O-Matic says:

#290: Salty Dog, with Trout Barquettes

A Salty Dog is just a Greyhound with a salted rim, and a Greyhound is just vodka with grapefruit juice. Salty Dogs are my go-to in venues where I have reason to think the juice will be good, but the drinks won’t, which means I order them approximately never. It’s just as well, as this exercise has reminded me that it’s really just a rather dull drink, even with freshly-squeezed juice.

Salty Dog

1-1/2 oz vodka

grapefruit juice

salt

Moisten rim of glass and dip in salt, fill glass with ice, add vodka, fill with grapefruit juice, stir.

Barquettes are a style of French pastry cup, so called because they are shaped like little boats (a barque is a sort of ship). You will note that neither the pastry cups in the recipe card photo nor in my photo are boat shaped. This is because that is a pain in the ass, and no one is going to go out and buy little boat-shaped tins for this when a mini-tart pan works just fine.

Trout Barquettes

canned trout fillets (Trader Joe’s canned trout, looks like a sardine tin)

barquette shells (Pillsbury pre-made pie crusts)

tarragon aspic

black caviar

sour cream

Cut trout fillets to fit in the cups, pat dry with paper towels. Top with semi-jelled tarragon aspic, chill until set. Top with a dollop of sour cream, rim with caviar.

Tarragon Aspic

1 cup clam juice

3/4 cup white wine

2 tbsp tarragon

1 envelope gelatin

Bring clam juice, 1/2 cup of wine and tarragon to a boil in a saucepan, then reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes. Sprinkle gelatin over remaining 1/4 cup of wine to soften, then stir into the clam juice. Remove tarragon leaves and chill.

This tastes about as good as it sounds, which is to say, not particularly. It wasn’t as awful as I’d feared, but it was not a hit with me or anyone else. Rich called it “a face-full of fish” and spit it out. If I were to try to make a tastier variation, I’d use fresh or frozen fish instead of canned, and I’d cut way back on the caviar by just putting a little on top of the sour cream instead of ringing the whole danged thing with the stuff. But let’s just not ever make it again.

#210: Between the Sheets, with Pere Ripiene

The Select-O-Matic says:

#210: Between the Sheets, with Pere Ripiene

If you like to think that the Universe plops down little signs that one is on the right track, here you go: Between the Sheets. This could not be more in keeping with what I like, and specifically what I like about this recipe card set. My favorite classic cocktail is the Sidecar, and my favorite spirit is rum. Between the Sheets brings those two things together, with an “Oh, Seventies, what are we going to do with you?” name. While the name seems to scream “Hey baby, what’s your sign?,” it actually dates back to at least the ’30s, when the drink appeared in the Savoy Cocktail Book. (Further reading: Erik Ellestad’s Savoy Stomp take, Kaiser Penguin’s Between the Sheets recipe comparison)

Between the Sheets
1/2 jigger brandy (Hardy VSOP Cognac)

1/2 jigger light rum (Mount Gay Eclipse Silver)

1/2 jigger Cointreau

1/3 jigger lemon juice

Shake & strain into a cocktail glass, garnish with lemon wedge.

I skipped the garnish, because I am a naughty little minx. In addition to the Mount Gay Eclipse Silver, I tried making this with Banks rum. While Banks is a rum I enjoy, it brought too much funk; I’d stick with a straightforward silver rum. Of course I like it. It’s a Sidecar with a bit of rum. I wasn’t going to not like it.

Pere Ripiene (Cheese-Stuffed Pears)

12 small Seckel pears (Comice)

2 tbsp lemon juice

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1 c Gorgonzola cheese

1 c crushed walnuts

Peel pears, cut in half lengthwise, remove seedy guts. Blend butter & cheese together until creamy, spoon into pear halves. Place pear halves together, and cover with crushed walnuts.

This was good! Really quick to throw together. I learned that the way to check the ripeness of a pear is to press your thumb into the neck, right against the stem. I wouldn’t know a Seckel pear if it bit me in the rear, so I went with Comice. I ground up the walnuts in a coffee grinder. I liked this quite a bit. Rich doesn’t dig Gorgonzola, and this was not the magical dish that converted him. I liked it enough to save it in Cookooree. While we didn’t agree on the tastiness of the pears, we did both agree that the pairing with the drink was a good one.

The 2 in 1 International Recipe Card Collection for Mixed Drinks and Hors d'Oeuvre

Here’s a thing that has my attention lately: The 2 in 1 International Recipe Card Collection for Mixed Drinks and Hors d’Oeuvre, which was published by Random House in 1977, with Michael Dorn (not that one) credited as author. It’s a set of 300+ recipe cards, each one with recipes for a cocktail and a paired hors d’oeuvre, with full-color photographs.

I learned about it from my friend Rochelle, who recently bought a bar & restaurant in our neighborhood, Doctor’s Lounge, with her partner David. They plan to use the cards to decorate the men’s room walls. When she showed it to us over brunch a few weeks ago, I fell in love instantly.

It could not be more of its time; it is the Regal Beagle in a box. It’s a perfect Technicolor snapshot of how things were changing, cocktail-wise, in the ’70s. A great example is the recipe for the Clover Club cocktail: that it’s here at all is a pleasant surprise, and the recipe looks right… but what’s that floating in it? Is that a… no, it couldn’t be. A green cherry. Oh, dear. On the whole, the set seems to fall more frequently on the good side. Naturally the first recipe card I checked was for the Mai Tai, and it is spot on, right down to the credit given to Trader Vic. The paired hors d’oeuvre have all the charm of midcentury appetizers, only they look more edible. Sold! I had to have it, and thanks to eBay I’ve got one of my very own.

The first conversation that I ever had with Rich, beyond “nice to meet you,” was about his Joy of Cooking project. Our first date was a double date with Erik Ellestad and his wife Michele; Rich’s Joy of Cooking project was a major inspiration for Erik’s now-famous Stomping Through the Savoy project. I briefly dabbled with making all of the salads in the Marysville United Methodist Women 1979 Church Cookbook, but mixing lime Jell-O with things like canned corned beef, cream cheese, asparagus and horseradish is just too gross to be sustained for the long haul. Maybe this could be my project?

The Trotts love a system, and here’s mine: I’ve whipped up a little Ruby program, which I’m calling the Select-O-Matic until I come up with something better, that keeps track of which cards I’ve already made and randomly selects one for me to tackle next. If I’m not in the mood for what the Select-O-Matic has suggested, it’ll pick another one until I settle on one I like. If I want to select a card on my own, it’ll keep track of those, too.

This recipe card set needs a better shorthand name, though, because “The 2 in 1 International Recipe Card Collection for Mixed Drinks and Hors d’Oeuvre” is downright terrible. Suggestions?

So, we’re working on adding another Trott. Two Trotts is an awful lot of fun, and we figure three would be a kick. And can you imagine what a darling, spazzy, gangly little creature we could create? We can’t either, so we’re gonna make one and see what we get.

Or rather, we hope to make one. We’ve been trying for a bit more than a year, and we’ve been Really Quite Seriously Trying for about 10 months of that. Daily temperature taking, graphs, the whole nine yards. It’s been slow, and obviously… unproductive. We first started working with our lovely primary care physician oh, nearly a year ago. We got bumped up to the infertility big leagues this past spring, and have been working with a really wonderful OB/GYN, whom I adore.

I’ve gotten pretty darned acquainted with my inner equipment. Between my own daily tracking and the slew of diagnostics, the data says I should be an OB’s dream. Periods are like clockwork, always have been. Ovulation is similarly Germanic in its precision, with temperature bumps associated with convenient mittelschmerz and spotting confirmation. Uterine lining is nice and cushy (“luscious!” per my OB). Progesterone levels are totally baby-friendly (“gorgeous!” again says beloved OB). Ovarian follicles are plentiful (ultrasound tech says I “have the ovaries of a woman ten years younger!”). Morphologically speaking, my uterus looks right out of a textbook, a nice uterus-y shape, no signs of endometriosis. Rich also passed his tests swimmingly (BAH DUM BUM!).

This is all well and good, and nice to see and hear, except for that it paints a picture of a woman who really should be pregnant right now, and I’m not. Based on the tweaks, twinges, temperatures and tests, our best guess is that everything is working right up to or around implantation. We’ve definitely had some near misses, including one confirmed pregnancy that didn’t quite stick.

One itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, 7mm possible culprit is an endometrial polyp found smack dab in the middle of my uterus. Studies between small polyps and infertility have been inconclusive, but anecdotally, some people have had luck getting pregnant after having small polyps removed. (Also, my periods have been gradually becoming more painful, and the polyp is a likely contributor.)

So that’s our next step. I’m going in for surgery next Tuesday. If that doesn’t do the trick, next round is fertility drugs.

Infertility is a funny thing. It’s a nearly universal experience, yet pretty underrepresented when we connect with our friends and loved ones through conversation. There are a lot of factors there, I suppose. For me, the experience of having people ask “so, what’s new?” on the same day I had a miscarriage, and my replying “oh, nothing really!” just amplified the surreality of what was going on, in a way that was deeply unpleasant. These were people I loved, some of our dearest friends, and I felt like I was lying to them. And heck! I’d had a miscarriage, but it also meant I had been pregnant! I’d finally had a chance to take the old V8 out for a spin! So the pregnancy didn’t take… it still was a pretty significant First in my life. That’s not worth some discussion? “Oh, nothing really! Nothing is new! Nothing at all!” Fuck that.

So, I tried the silence route, and it’s not for me. Not that I’ll be blabbing about it left, right and center, because that’s snoozeville for folks who find it irrelevant. But with the folks who are really close to me, I’m more likely to talk about it now.

The song was written by Anu Kirk and Rich Trott with a line or two (and the whole idea of writing a song for the contest) suggested by Jessica Forys. The song is performed by Palace Family Steak House and features the Final Frontiersmen. Performers on the recording are: Anu Kirk, Rich Trott, JP Lester, Joel Primer, and Ted, Kelly, and Greg from the Final Frontiersmen.

The word glögg appears in a chapter title—no joke!

This can only mean one thing: I will embark on an attempt to cook every recipe in the book in the order in which they appear.

Stay tunes.

Today, at City Hall, she was sworn in as a Deputy Marriage Commissioner so that she could legally perform the wedding.

Sorry about not getting her face in the photo.

This past week, our invitations finally started making their way across the country to their new homes.

We made them ourselves. (Technically, Rich’s contribution—very valuable—was to keep me watered & fed, and to not bat an eye when I wanted to be driven all over town to make sad attempts and printing, and then to not bat an eye when I wanted to just buy a printer. He was a champ.) It was a lot of work, and already there are a few things I wish I’d done differently, but overall I’m quite happy with them.

The envelopes and folders are from Paper and More, the typefaces are from Font Bros—I heartily endorse both of these companies, they offer extraordinary products and service at disproportionately affordable prices.

My previous secret shame of glue gun ownership has ballooned into a literal embarrassment of crafting supplies.

The first question everyone asks is “Which islands?” Oahu, Hawaii (“The Big Island”), Maui.

The next question is usually “Where did you stay?” Waikiki, Kailua-Kona, and north of Lahaina (which were the fancy accommodations of the trip–it was a Westin resort).

“Have you ever been before?” Nope.  First time for me.  (Humu lived there as a child for a year and had been there once before as an adult.)

“What did you do?” Too much to answer, but some highlights were:

• Volcanoes National Park: hiking, driving, pit craters, caldera, lunar-like lava, all of it
• seeing the sun set over the ocean from the patio at Don The Beachcomber’s in Kailua-Kona
• watching ridiculously large waves at the beach near Mama’s Fish House on Maui
• seeing a whale…from the window of the inter-island flight
• seeing college friends who live on Oahu, seeing a friend who used to live in San Francisco who now lives on Maui, and meeting a childhood friend of Humu’s who now lives on Oahu
• spending time with Humu somewhere where we (mostly) weren’t thinking about work, what needs to be done with the house, and wedding planning

“Where are the pictures?” Alas, I’m not much of a shutterbug.  The only picture I took was of a display in one of the airports.  It was about macadamia nuts and the display prominently featured a recipe.

“Did you have a good time?” It was amazing!  Thanks, Humu + Schmama!

Picking something else that’s appropriate is daunting.

The music that’s played while people wander in, the music that’s played for the processional, and then the music that’s played as the bride walks down the aisle—it’s the shortest but most important mix tape of your life. Each piece has to be perfect but also has to fit with the other pieces.

Pachelbel works, and everyone knows it, so they go with it.

No disrespect to Johann, but ours will be a Pachelbel-free wedding. Humu has her music picked out. I’m working on selecting mine. And it’s a lot harder than I anticipated.

It’s actually a big treat for me, because I don’t get many opportunities to do graphic design in printed form, and it’s really my first love when it comes to design. Thankfully, I have done enough printed work over the years that I know where all the pitfalls lie, and I’m not really worried about making any tragic errors. My main worries are about creating a design I can be happy with.

Erm... no.

The invitation sets the tone for our event; every element—from colors to typefaces to language to layout to the paper it’s printed on—sends a subtle cue about what to expect. It’s a little bit tricky. We want the wedding to be casual and intimate, and most of all real. But at the same time, we also want it to have some weight and formality, some solemnity. As Linus would say, it needs to be sincere. If the Great Pumpkin were invited (he isn’t), we would want him to see the invitation and RSVP in the affirmative without hesitation.

I’ve been browsing through invitations online to get some thoughts on design, and many invitations out there are far too girly for my taste. Too many flowers, too many swirls. Sure, most of them are lovely, and well-executed, but they also look like maybe the groom isn’t invited.

I have a design underway, and I’m mostly happy with it. The wedding colors are orange, brown and cream, which keeps it gender-neutral and matches the goofy-but-I’m-keeping-them orange dining room curtains that came with our house. Also matches Trottomatic, which is doing double-duty as our wedding website.

However, I can already tell that if I let the invitation design sit for a day and come back to it, I’m not going to be happy with it. Plus, once I have it all printed, the assembly is going to be no small feat. There’s still lots of work to do, but it’s fun work. After the invitations are completely done, I’ll post the design, along with a blow-by-blow of the invitation creation.

It only looks like a gray alien tree in the photo. In person, it's lovely! Like the nice parts of Dickens!

Our first Christmas in the new house has been slow and quiet. I’ve had a couple of weeks off from work (SLAC shuts down for two weeks every winter), and Trott’s had some extra time off thanks to the University of California furloughs. We stayed home during the holidays. We saw most of my family during a Seattle trip in early December; Rich’s family is Jewish, and “Hanukkah” is short for “Hanukkah Is a Minor Holiday.” I did make some rookie-grade latkes (too wet), and some professional-grade wassail (too much). We went to a few friends’ parties, and I put a solid dent in the Smuggler’s Cove menu. We’ve also made a little progress on some of our house projects, but—whoa nelly—do we have a ways to go.

But we have made some solid progress on the wedding, which is a relief. I met with my friend Thayer, who is going to help me with some alterations to the vintage wedding gown I found on eBay. Rich and I finalized our guest list, and have started getting out Save the Date information.

We discovered that our neighbors across the street got married in their house, too (on May 15, no less!), and they even saved the tent they bought for the occasion, and have offered it to us. The layout of their house is nearly identical to ours, and they gave us some great logistical ideas. The list of reasons we love our new neighborhood keeps growing and growing.

Next step: invitations.

Oh, no, wait… next step: pupusas. Then invitations. Mission Terrace is the bee’s knees.

Here’s what we have figured out so far for the wedding:

• The Time: the evening of Saturday, May 15, 2010
• The Place: Our house

Venues in SF are stupid-expensive, we quickly learned, and hey, didn’t we just BUY A BUILDING IN SF? Our house holds way more meaning for us than some rental space we’re not likely to step foot in again, and doesn’t come with time limits or restricted catering choices. The critical next step, which needs to happen about a month ago, is getting invitations out.

Which brings us to that guest list trouble. There are two immediate problems: 1) we don’t have any idea how many people our house can hold, and 2) we know it’s not nearly big enough to hold everyone we want to invite. By a long shot. Spreadsheets have been employed, with elaborate flags and tallies and round after round after round of ever-more painful cuts.

Oof.

Thankfully, we have a lot of understanding on both sides of the family. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories from friends about pressure to add distant second cousins only met once, or parents’ business associates, or vague “family friends” no one seems to actually know. We know we have it easy, overall. It’s still really rough. We just have to man up, get over it, and remember we’re not throwing a dinner party. Just because we don’t have room for someone doesn’t mean we don’t adore them, and I think everyone will totally get it (especially those who have been through this before themselves).

But man, this is rough business.

It’s probably not very hard to figure out which one of us carved which pumpkin…

Okay, here’s a quickie guide to our initially scant content: If you’re new to either Rich or me, then the About Rich or About Humuhumu pages may be of interest. If you’d like to hear about how we came together, then How We Met is worth a gander. If you already know all that and are dying to hear details about the wedding, well… right now we’ve got bupkis. Rich did take the time to write up the story of The Proposal, though.