Meme found on the interwebs (not sure where). Totally agree about Trader Joe’s!
On the Origin of the Bass Face
A school for “radical attention”
The rock’s the star: meditative film about a Cornish stone goes global
A Kali Mirch Paneer Pasta Recipe from Pijja Palace
Pentagon’s Budget Is So Bloated That It Needs an AI Program to Navigate It
I took a pizza class at Josey Baker Bread in San Francisco this month and picked up a great tip from the instructor, JB pizza baker Caitlin (sorry did not get a last name!). She told us the bakery keeps a rye starter. This has two advantages: rye is more active so your starter will have a higher likelihood of success and you’ll always be ready to make a rye loaf. If you want a white or whole wheat dough all you have to do is add white or whole wheat flour and a spoonful of your rye starter.
I keep a small amount, like three tablespoons of starter on hand that I feed every day. When I want to make bread I do a build overnight and the next day I’ll have the quantity I need to bake a loaf or make pizza dough. This week I switched my starter over to rye using the small amount Caitlin gave us. I’m baking a loaf today and it’s rising like crazy.
As to the pizza we made in the class it was probably the best I’ve ever had. It’s a quirky pie: the secret is a dark, almost burnt crust brushed with garlic olive oil and sprinkled with Maldon salt. They keep the toppings simple as not to distract from the cracker-like sourdough crust. They have a pizza night at the bakery every Monday from 5 to 8 in case you don’t want to roll your own.
Looking for an easy Halloween display that uses stuff you might have at hand?
In this video Joshua Ellingson shows you how to create the 19th century Pepper’s ghost effect using an iPad, some plastic film and a glass container. YouTube is full of pre-made Pepper’s ghost videos so you don’t even need to shoot anything.
If you want to go deeper there’s a free version of a video DJ type program called VDMX that you can download and Ellingson also has some videos on how to hook up old TVs to a laptop to create bigger Pepper’s ghost setups.
I’m thinking of doing a simple Pepper’s ghost for the huge trick or treat crowds in our neighborhood. How huge are those crowds? Most years we run out and close early at about 300 little customers. Many of our neighbors are in the film industry and put up some truly wonderful displays that likely account for the crowds. It’s always a fun evening.
A mini Red Car at L.A. Train fest
Plant-based meat once seemed unstoppable. What went wrong?
Can We Make Bicycles Sustainable Again?
Pruitt-Igoe residents exposed to government testing seek compensation. ‘What about us?’
‘Rat tours’ boom in rodent-infested New York
Building Myself a Reading Tracker App with Airtable and Deno Fresh, Part 1
With the news that Amazon is flooded with dangerous, AI generated mushroom foraging books, this seems like the perfect time for this blog to point towards the Japanese kid’s show Ultraman Taro, specifically episode 31, “Danger! The Poisonous Mushroom of Lies”.
The episode opens with a giant, ambulatory mushroom, named Mushra, destroying a Japanese city. Ultraman Taro, a sort of size-shifting superhero, defeats the monster but not without a release of spores. After the battle the main protagonist of the series, Kotaro, meets a lonely latchkey kid, Daisuke, and gives him an experimental device that allows him to communicate with plants, as one does. Daisuke uses the device to communicate with mushrooms (I know, not a plant, but stay with me here). Handed such a device, let me just say that my first impulse would also be to communicate with the mushrooms to just ask them, like, what the hell are you all up to?
Daisuke, unfortunately, gets prodded by a bunch of hoodlum teens to eat one of the mushrooms and a seriously bad trip ensues. Daisuke becomes a mushroom monster and, due to the spores, turns the whole town into mushroom zombies.
Ultraman Taro returns to combat Mushra and this time drys up the giant mushroom’s water supply with some sort of zappy laser thingy. The mushroom zombies turn back into normal townsfolk. Daisuke’s mom apologizes for prioritizing work and, this being a Japanese show, everyone enjoys a bowl of mushrooms over rice.
That paradoxical love/hate/fear relationship we have with fungi, an organism that can nourish or kill or create visions thus provides the perfect plot points for this bit of pop cultural symbiosis and, as a bonus, you get an unexpected side plot dealing with women in the workplace in 1960s Japan.
Here’s the whole episode for your viewing pleasure:
