Life Begins at 30

"Nobody puts Baby in the Corner"

Salon: Why "Dirty Dancing" is the best girl movie ever

Yes, there are people who hate "Dirty Dancing," or who find it cheesy. But the rest of us not only don't change the dial when "She's Like the Wind" comes on the radio -- we actually turn it up. Such is the excellence of the movie that discussing it reduces intelligent and mature women into effusive seventh graders. "Oh my gosh, it just sings to me," says Ellen. "The music is so fabulous, the romance is so fabulous. It's just such a great thing. I just love it." Says Susanna, an ardent feminist, "I thought it was so romantic that she became a dancer and at the end he came back and rescued her."

Great article about the magic of "Dirty Dancing" from Salon (registration required). When it came out in 1987, I was fourteen years old, and it consumed us in Junior High School. My mom was pretty strict, and I don't know that I was able to see it right away. On the 10-year anniversary of Dirty Dancing, they released the movie again and my friends took me for my birthday. This article does a great job of recapping the craze around the goofy love movie of our generation.

"I want my life to be like the dance at the end," says Ellen who, as you may recall, is 53. "It's got it all: beauty, skill, love, passion, parents begging forgiveness. And she does the jump and he lifts her up, and all of a sudden everybody starts dancing -- the races and ages and classes come together. I want everybody in my life to all of a sudden dance together and to have grace and style and be smiling. Is that too much to ask?"

Rainy Day Split Pea Soup

SPLIT PEA SOUP (modified from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything recipe)

2 cups green split peas, rinsed
6 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
2 carrots, minced
3 ribs celery, cut into small pieces
1 medium onion
3 slices bacon
Sourdough bread slices
Pea shoots for garnish

Heat a soup pot and add bacon. Cook until crisp. Remove bacon and set aside.
Add onion to bacon fat and cook for 2-3 minutes.
Add carrots and celery. Season with salt and fresh pepper. Sautee another 3-4 minutes.
Add split peas, stock and water
Bring to a boil, then lower to a slow simmer and partially cover.
Cook until peas are tender (approx 1 hour)
Puree using an immersion blender, or mash with a potato masher. I prefer my soup pureed completely.
If necessary, cook the soup further until you get the desired thickness.
If you wish, place sourdough slices in a 300 degree oven and cook for 20-30 minutes.
Crumble or cut up bacon.

Serve soup in a bowl with bacon crumbles, sourdough slice, and pea shoots.

Are you watching Airline?

My new favorite show lately is Airline, on Mondays on A&E. It seems to be a fair look at Southwest Airlines -- sometimes they are right, and sometimes the customer is right. Most of the time, the customer rants and raves and is a complete fool.

I have watched:

> Countless drunks be sent away because you can't fly when you are drunk. The best is when they are sent away and go "sober up" at the bar.

> A woman try to convince the airline that it was ok to let her expletive-yelling oxygen-tank-breathing mother fly, because it was so important to the mother. When the airline said they couldn't let an oxygen tank on board, the concerned daughter said "well you guys are going to have to take care of her and get her back to the hospital then". When that was rejected, they all left the airport ... the 10-year old grandson yelling about suing the airline.

> Southwest employees handle re-routing passengers during last year's blackouts.

> I cried as an employee helped a man with Alzheimer's disease clean himself up after an accident.

> Customers berate, yell at, and threaten Southwest employees who are just trying to do their job.

Watch Airline if you get a chance!

Photo Credit: Me & Him

me: ooh! look at that mushroom growing out of a log!
him: cool!
me: i took a picture but they are all coming out blurry! this $%#$@ camera won't work.
him: let me do it.
me: no -- it's my shot -- i want to do it.
him: let me do it.
me: ok, but i get credit for finding the shot. and you get credit for taking it.
him: ok.

Spouse for Life

It just goes to show you what we have to go through, and then you have Britney Spears who just did it in a few minutes," said Garret Villalba, 42, who drove to San Francisco on Friday from Santa Barbara with his partner of 18 years, Robert Kratzke, also 42. SF Chronicle, February 15, 2004

"This is a weekend we will remember for the rest of our lives," I told Jason Sunday as we were driving through Civic Center traffic, and I watched a car in front of us decked out with "Just Married" signs honking and dragging cans.

The vibe in San Francisco at the moment is really electric, and there is just excitement coursing through the city.

I would encourage you to check out some of the wonderful stories that are coming out of the weekend's activities. The SF Chronicle is doing a good job covering stories, and bmwlaguna is keeping a running list of people who have blogged about their marriage. There is a great blog here as well. All of the stories are incredibly touching.

Blue Bottle Coffee Company

"You've had this experience," he said. "You go into a restaurant where they know what bedtime story was read to the veal before it was killed, or where the Belgian endives were grown, but you get to the end of the meal and the coffee is mediocre. . . . They make their own g-- sausages, but there are bubbles on the top of the drip coffee that means it was stored in a Thermos. We're not on a picnic! They wouldn't dream of putting the food under a heat lamp for half an hour." James Freeman, owner of Blue Bottle Coffee, San Francisco Chronicle - 4/11/03

My first hint that something was very different about this coffee is when I saw their booth at the Ferry Building Farmer's Market. Instead of large carafes of already made coffee, customers were standing around for approximately 5-10 minutes to wait for their coffee as it was individually dripped by a woman who poured hot water through a filter by hand. We ordered cafe au laits, and the addiction began. The coffee was full-bodied and wonderfully flavored, and not burnt-tasting, overly roasted or scalding hot. We almost went back 15 minutes later to get another.

A couple weeks later, I returned. Their process is a bit quicker now, and I only waited a couple minutes. "That was quick!" I remarked, to which the owner James laughed -- he said that he doesn't hear that remark often. When I called later in the week to talk to them about their delivery service (more about that later), we got to talking and James said "oh yah, you're the au lait!", remembering my comment from the farmer's market. I felt like I was in a small town of 1500 people, not in San Francisco where there are that many restaurants.

This company believes so strongly that freshly roasted coffee is superior that they donate beans to charity that have been roasted more than 24 hours prior. By this time, Blue Bottle Coffee believes, the coffee has changed too much from the ideal flavor to be salable.

Perusing through their site last week I saw something that made me giddy. For $8 a week, you can get a half pound of coffee delivered to your door within 24 hours of its being roasted. I paused briefly about the price, before I realized that between coffee out and coffee at home, I probably don't spend much less than that in a month (I work at home, and drink a lot of coffee). My delivery is starting next week (yipee!).

Opportunities like this make me never want to leave the bay area (sorry mom). I know that there are unique few places where you could be delivered spanking fresh roasted, locally sold, and organic coffee to your doorstep. I can only hope that trends like this spread as quickly as Starbuck's seem to have. Though I don't know how James would feel if you put his coffee in a non-fat-no-whip-mocha-valencia-with-cinnamon-on-top.

The Salmon Palette

What do you think that is that you are seeing above?

Colors to paint your new bathroom? Child's room? Track home to annoy all your neighbors?

Well hold on to your hats, folks -- it is a palette from which farmed salmon folks choose the color to dye their salmon!

I think I prefer #34 dyed salmon myself ...