hmm

I haven't been posting much lately because lately I haven't had much to post about.

Some food stuff

My lunch today:

Rigatoni salad with prosciutto, chevre, and basil, and a side of duck sausage.

Two Spatchcocked chickens:

~Dry rub~

~Sweet chili glaze~

My family went out to dinner to celebrate several notable happenings, including my graduation. We decided to go to LePigeon, a small, open kitchen restaurant known for their daring use of offal, fat, and various tasty bits of the pig not normally served in the States. The dinner was easily one of the best I've ever had.

We began with two starters:

~Jelly donut with seared Foie Gras and red wine vinegar drizzle~

~Rabbit Terrine with eel sliver, avocado, and miso sauce~

I had for my main course a Veal Blanquette over egg noodles with sautéed mushrooms and pearl onions and a healthy chunk of veal. A slim disc of foie gras placed on top slowly melted into the dish as I ate. Devine:


My dad and Stephanie both had steak with potatoes cooked in duck fat and flavored with marrow:


My mom and Niko both had the Duck confit with stewed root vegetables:


For dessert we split dense and delicious chocolate caramel tart. Unfortunately I did not snap any pics of this.



Song of the Day: Sugar Water, Cibo Matto - This video was directed by french weirdo/film director Michel Gondry, and has a very cool split-screen, forward/reverse, palindrome visual mechanic that I just love. It starts with Yuka Honda on the left (on keys), and my future wife Miho Hatori on the right (vox). Apparently copyright holders have chased it off of youtube, which sucks, but I have found it on dailymotion for your enjoyment.

blog blerg

My computer is broken and I've been out of town. Sorry for the absence. I will not have my computer up and running for another week or two, so don't expect any posts for a while. I am writing this on another computer

I've been in Bellingham Washington visiting Tyson. I came up on the train with his brother Rayne on Tuesday and have been having fun ever since. I am back in Portland with some good memories, a bevy of bumps, bruises, scrapes, and cuts, and a passion for three new-to-me games: Settlers of Catan, Dominoes, and Bike Polo. Yes, bike polo.

On Wednesday nights the town's crusty bike kids gather in the highschool parking lot, drink booze, and play fierce bouts of three on three polo. After several three point rounds the rules switch and it becomes strip bike polo, the first team who is unwilling to strip off anymore layers looses. My team got to the point where I had my thumbs hooked in my boxers and ready to drop, but the loan girl on my team decided, perhaps not unwisely, to keep her bra on. Or perhaps she was just trying to keep my underwear on.



I also enjoyed some cliff jumping into the bay. The cliff was probably 25 feet high, and took me a few minutes to will my self over the edge and then what felt like another few minutes to hit the water.

quick update

Let's see here

I've spent five nights in my new place now. It's going well! The other people are quite agreeable, and I enjoy their company a good deal. The location is pretty cool, lots of restaurants and bus lines, two of my living requirements . Yesterday Dan and Alyssa showed me some of the wonders of the nearby East side industrial area, I had never spent very much time in that area and was surprised by some of the cool stuff.

Yesterday I spatchcocked a chicken and grilled it. Spatchcocking involves removing the spine and then the breastbone from the bird and flattening it. This allows you to grill the whole bird at once, yielding astonishingly tender and juicy chicken. I plan to do this at the beginning of every weekend and just use it in meals for the rest of the week.

That is all.


Song of the Day: Flying Birds, RZA - From the Ghost Dog soundtrack. I don't know why the visuals in this are from an old Cypress Hill video.

Lucy Knisley

I found a lovely new comic artist. Well, you know, new to me. Lucy Knisley:


Boing Boing posted a link to a comic about a week long fast she did. I find her simple line work and cute, understated humor to be quite charming.


I was initially drawn in by the Ligne Claire style she uses, but stayed for the wit. The autobiographical nature of her comics is quite appealing, especially since much of her material is about food. Her first book will be all about food, I can't wait to pick it up. Anyway, check out her website



Song of the Day: Can't Tell Me Nothing, Kanye West - I think Kanye West is an amazing producer and beat maker. His rapping could use some work. The reason I link this video is because Zach Galifianakis somehow talked Kanye into letting him make the video. The results are amazing. I saw The Hangover today (starring Galifianakis) and was reminded of this video when the song was used in the sound track.

Metal

In my Metals class I produced a wall mounted vase out of copper. The body was formed by a process called raising. Basically it consists of hammering a metal disc in concentric circles over a stake, gradually changing the angle as you progress. After a bit of hammering, the metal becomes work hardened and won't move under force, leading it to crack or break; This requires constant annealing, which is done by bringing the metal to a certain temperature where the crystalline structure breaks down and reforms into a more malleable state.

Here is the finished product:


The Process

I started with a piece of aluminum, but the alloy was unknown, causing it to not anneal correctly. After a week of hammering on it, it exploded, suddenly forming half a dozen gaping cracks across its surface in a matter of a few hammer blows.

So I switched to Copper:

Here is the first two passes with the hammer on the stake looks like:

Oh yeah, this is what the hammer and stake look like:

A little more raising:

After a certain point I had to planish it over a domed stake to work out the wrinkles:

And then a lot more raising:

And more yet:


At this point I became impatient (each picture represents several hours of hammering) and tried to raise the point faster than the metal could allow and I got a tear in the tip. I patched this up with solder and it worked out in the end:








The final shape:

I then went through a series of tragic mishaps trying to make the base out of bronze, after two weeks I gave up and went with a much simpler design and switched to copper. A closer look:

The entire thing is made of only two pieces of copper, the vase and the rod base. The base is nailed into a wall with only one nail and cantilevers out to hold the vase.

Here is the other thing I made in the class.

It is a brass ring… AND MORE! The design is influenced by a very old Jujitsu weapon the Samurai used, and through the popular mystification of them, associated with the Ninja. The ring is used not as a punching aid, a sort of one fingered brass knuckle, but rather as an aid to joint manipulation and pain compliance with the spikes worn inward towards the palm.

The historical rings are ugly wrought iron things with needle like points, much more nasty and not as easy to wear. My ring is a more modern take on an old weapon. I have tested it out with a few of my martial arts friends and it is quite effective.



Song of the Day: Who Is He And What Is He To You, Bill Withers (Today's song has nothing to do with events in my life, it's just a kick ass song)

End of an era

So today I did the last schoolwork of my life. It consisted of about ninety seconds of torch flame to finish up my metals piece. (pics coming soon). Tomorrow I will have two critiques, the last classes of my college career. w00t! Though, feels kinda bittersweet at the moment. I have spent the last eighteen years of my life in school. It is all that I know. "Life" begins now, dammit.





Song of the Day: Slow Fast Hazel, Stereolab