Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, which depicts the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force in May 1940 from France, is a visual and auditory masterpiece, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Starting from the opening moments, with only the barest of credits to initiate the proceedings, the audience endures just under two hours of virtually …
Each year we host Garlic Nosh to celebrate the glorious garlic harvest! The reigning champion is Sharon T. Ohmberger’s gluten free chocolate chip cookies! On the same sweet note Jenny Carver created some fabulous garlic ice cream. Slacker Dave dipped garlic cloves in chocolate and I think it was Judy Easley Shutts who took it …
Behold the latest from Simon Chong. He describes this fanciful romp thusly: “Bob’s Burgers has crossed over to Archer, but I wondered what’d happen if Archer were to take a trip to Bob’s Burgers. 7 months of animating, illustrating and plucking dialogue from both shows later, here’s the result.”
The year 1967 saw some amazing creativity. The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper, and the greatest 45 RPM record of all time, “Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane.” The Moody Blues fused rock and classical music in their influential Days of Future Passed. Jimi Hendrix burst onto the scene with his appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival and release …
Just talking to a friend about seeing “Dunkirk” tomorrow night. “Reserved seats,” he says. Maybe $18, he says. Is there going to be a merch table, I wonder, where I can purchase a tour t-shirt, maybe a sticker. Take solace in this fact, my friends: Life will never be better than it is right now. …
Tuesday eating from your yard tip~In 2012 rose was the herb of the year. So our local herb society had a speaker come in from the rose society to talk about roses. It quickly became apparent that while rose society people strive to grow the perfect rose, herb society people were more interested in how …
Long-suffering Chicago Cubs fans were finally granted a reprieve in 2016. The Cubs’ World Series victory — considered by many baseball watchers as one of the greatest World Series ever played — was the sweetest gift that the beautiful but troubled City of Big Shoulders could have received last year. As a life-long Cubs fan, …
Eating from your yard tip ~ Lemon balm aka Melissa crushed in your hand and left in a pitcher of water overnight in the refrigerator makes a lovely mother’s little helper tea to calm and brighten the mood of both mother and child. Chop up fresh lemon balm to add to your green or fruit …
Tuesday eating from your yard tip~Purslane has more omega 3 than any other leafy green. Look no further than the crack in your sidewalk to find purslane thriving. While many Americans view purslane as a lowly weed, purslane is eaten all over the world. It is baked in bread, pickled and added to soups, stews …
Tuesday eating from your yard tip~just step outside and odds are good you will find wood sorrel. Gladys Jeurink, an old respected gardener in my town, advised to leave it in my garden because the rabbits prefer it over other plants and will eat it and not your plants. Little did I know at the …
There are few things I love more than garlic. Garlic scapes prime our taste buds for July’s garlic harvest. The scapes are the seed head forming above the garlic plant. By cutting off the scape all the energy is directed to creating the most fabulous garlic bulb. Scapes even come with their own handle for …
I had used lavender to induce sleep, relieve headaches and for it’s anti~bacterial properties, but the first time I remember eating lavender was a lavender chocolate truffle. When I asked about how it was made she referred to lavender flower, but English is tricky and I was born blonde so I heard lavender flour. Ha! …
The elderberry bush produces lovely clusters of white flowers, which later turn into deep purple immune boosting fruit. The trick is to knock the flower heads a bit so the white flowers fall off with a whole in the center (this is the elder blow) leaving a little white part still attached to the cluster, …
Pick the strawberry and eat! Boom. Drop the mic. At our house strawberries rarely make it into the house to make anything with them. We have several kinds of strawberries in the yard ripe and ready to eat. The white alpine strawberry, which is soft and tastes pineapple-ish, is the kid’s favorite. At the top …
Tom Ricks was on Fresh Air this week. (The podcast may be heard below.) I’ve always enjoyed his interviews, but this portion of it, when the subject of Fox News came up, made me sit up and take notice: GROSS: You must be wondering what’s going to happen at Fox News now, especially after the …
Tuesday eating from your yard tip~Mint comes in many varieties all with different tastes to compliment our food and aid in digestion. My walking partner, Maria Baher-Olomi, serves baked slices egg plant with a yogurt and spearmint sauce~pure heaven! Mint is also an important ingredient in the cucumber yogurt sauce served with gyros and falafel. …
If you have any open dirt you most likely have lambs~quarters. Consider it a free gift to fill your tummy. The cooked leaves and soaked seeds are edible. The young leaves are tender, but like all of us get tougher with age so pick them when they are below 8 inches. Roger Welsch in his …
Onion chives are one of my top five herbs. Both the leaves and flowers are edible. The flowers especially have a subtle onion flavor making them both visually and pallet pleasing. My friend Chong Knievel said that in Korea they eat chives in the spring to clean their blood. With that in mind first thing …
Stinging nettles, when prepared properly, are a storehouse of calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron etc etc. Any dish you would make with cooked spinach can be made with stinging nettles. The leaves and stems are picked in the spring when the plants are less than 6″ tall wearing gloves to protect you from the stings. Then …
As expected, the Golden State Warriors rolled over the Portland Trail Blazers with such confidence that a concert was scheduled at Oracle Arena on the same night that a Game 5 would have taken place. The handwriting on the wall was evident after Game 1, when Portland guards Damon Lillard and CJ McCollum shot the …
Tuesday eating from your yard tip~Dandelions are a treasure trove of potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium, vitamin A,C,K and B6. The flowers, leaves and roots are edible. The green parts are bitter, but the yellow of the flower is not. I throw several young dandelion leaves in my daily salad. The bitter of the leaves stimulates …
Violet leaves and flowers are edible giving us vitamin C and A. I add violet leaves to my lunch salad. The flowers make a lovely edible garnish on fruit salads, soups, drinks or desserts. I freeze the flowers in ice cubes to add to drinks in the winter when I long for a taste of …
On March 13, 2017, two former administrators from Pedophilia State University pled guilty to child endangerment after years of maintaining their innocence. Tim Curley, the former athletic director, and Gary Schultz, a former vice president, apparently thought the plea deal and their testimony at the upcoming trial of their former supervisor, former PSU President Graham …
The Gray Lady, otherwise known as the New York Times, posted a photo comparison between the current Sierra Nevada snowpack and that of two years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/22/us/california-measuring-snowpack.html The difference is striking. Not that California’s out of the woods yet. The state used a lot of its groundwater to make up the shortfall two years ago, …
One of the noticeable characteristics of the NBA nowadays is the constant din of music, promotions, giveaways, and dance routines during a game. Hardly a moment, even during time-outs, is allowed to go empty, possibly out of the fear that if fans’ attention is allowed to lapse for even a second, they will lose interest …
Last Sunday I visited the new arena for the Sacramento Kings, the Golden One Center, and what I found made every other NBA venue look like a D League gym. On the outside, the building resembled with its aluminum skin an alien spaceship that happened to land downtown—the roof has enough solar panels to render …
Those of you who have heard about the problems at Oroville Dam in northern California may wonder if I am among the 180,000 people that have had to be evacuated. Fortunately, I live about 50 miles north of the affected area, so I have been able to stay put. It was reported that the Tehama …
This week the awesome Canuck superband Austra released the video for “I Love You More Than You Love Yourself.” The song is haunting. The clip was filmed in Portland during this past holiday season and is based on the story of American astronaut Lisa Nowak. On Austra’s Facebook page, Katie Stepnoski describes the vid in …
Dexter Filkins, the primary Middle East correspondent for The New Yorker, has written a genuinely terrifying story about the Mosul Dam in Iraq. The terrifying part is not that the dam was temporarily occupied by ISIS, but that it sits on a foundation of soluble rock and requires a constant flow of concrete to be …
This marks the third year in a row that I’ve photographed the New Year’s Eve fireworks off the Space Needle, but I’ve shot from three different locations each time. This time I decided to shoot at the source instead of at a distance. I parked my car downtown and caught a bus to the Seattle …