Rick Geary

looky

Rick Geary is another artist I saw at APE- he did some small comic books on the Lizzie Borden and Jack the Ripper murders, as well as the assassination of President Garfield. Obscure but cool.
Web link of note: Rick Geary
(At http://www.rickgeary.com/)

Mamey Sapote

looky

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been following a certain exotic fruit tree nursery for a while, and made a list of fruits from there I had never previously heard of. The fruits were listed in an issue of “Spirit of Aloha,” which I read exactly one year ago, on our honeymoon. (Yay, we made it to one year…)

One of the fruits is the “mamey sapote.”

Yesterday we were at Berkeley Bowl, grabbing some supplies, and I ran into a friend with his baby in tow… after we spoke I was sort of meandering around, in that post-conversation state where I think about what was just said, and ended up in the little exotic fruits nook they keep there.

A man was there, looking at the fruits, and we had a brief conversation- he remarked how there was some pretty random stuff there, and wondered aloud what these brown football things were. I said, I know, wow, I have no idea- oh wait!!! This is a mamey sapote!!!

This poor guy must have thought he was on Candid Camera… I excitedly explained how I had been looking for one of these for years, and I had expected I would have to buy an entire tree just to taste it… he was appropriately afraid.

So, we ate part of it this morning. It wasn’t cheap: over $3 a pound. We bought a 3 pound one… the flesh is indeed pumpkinlike. I’m not sure I’d call it chocolatey though. It has the mild flavor of a pumpkin, with a cool firmness that is softer than an uncooked pumpkin. The flesh is fairly dry, so we found it was best with a little coconut milk. Its flavor would probably be overpowered by lime juice.

Later today we will attempt to make a custard or even a tart out of the rest.
The big list, summarized from the Spirit of Aloha article by Ray:

  • mabolo, or velvet persimmon
  • durian (an aphrodisiac fruit that smells like a toilet)
  • mangosteen
  • Baccaurea sapida, Burmese grape, mafai wan in Thai, or yaow in Vietnamese
  • Keppel fruit
  • Sapadilla, salak, or Indonesian “snake fruit” (“tart and astringent” flesh? yum?)
  • dark-purple mango, found only near Banjarmaisin, Borneo
  • Abiu (Amazon, melon and caramel taste, persimmon texture)
  • young leaves and shoots of pak wan, or tropical asparagus
  • Peanut butter fruit (texture is like Skippy’s)
  • Marang (a breadfruit, Phillipines, vanilla ice cream)
  • Mamey sapote (tastes of chocolate, pumpkin and almond)
  • Sawo (tastes like a honey-flavored peach or pear)

What is kind of weird is Berkeley Bowl also had a “sapote” a few months ago- it was a small green thing, an tasted a bit like a pear.

Steps to Success

looky

step one: tell everyone “core” hours are 10-6
step two: wait a few years
step three: tell team there is a meeting at 8 am
step four: break brian’s car
step five: don’t show up to own meeting. Laugh maniacally.

Damn I’m wiped. I took public transportation for the first time to this job to get to a meeting that even the manager who called it was late for. Whee!

Too bad I’m broke; normally I would treat myself to something today.

DGIES: step six: head mounted on a pike as a warning to others

SOWINGS: step seven: profit

DGIES: that’s a different plan

DGIES: 1. steal team’s underpants

DGIES: 2. ???

DGIES: 3. profit!

SOWINGS: maybe step 2 there is “don’t show up to your own meeting”

Grove Street OG

looky

I was looking for an address in Oakland recently, and I realized it was fairly close to where I remember my parents said they lived when they were students in college. So I looked on Google maps and Yahoo maps, trying to find “Grove street,” where I know they lived.

What’s weird is in Palo Alto, we also lived on Grove Avenue. And in GTA: San Andreas, the gang you start out in is called the Grove Street Families. I guess I’m part of the Family.

But what’s weirder- I couldn’t find Grove Street on a map. I found a bunch of businesses though… then I realized that when my parents lived there, it was the late 1960s. Grove Street is now called Martin Luther King Jr Way. The Grove Street Market and the Grove Street Body Shop are both on MLK.

DOC BROWN: You’re not thinking fourth dimensionally Marty!

MARTY MCFLY: Yeah I know, I have a real problem with that.

Our cat Snorkel was from there; she was an older streetwise cat who grew up in the ghetto. She was a bossy mama cat; she actually belonged to a neighbor there who gave her her horrible name (she was a black cat). He got a Dalmatian puppy, and shortly thereafter during a rainstorm Snorkel adopted my parents, scratching at the door and carrying in her new litter of kittens one by one.

They named them Spanky, Sparky, and Spud, and for a long time Spanky lived with my aunt, the remaining cats being given away. Snorkel was definitely the mother type; she was the first cat I knew and she was extremely bossy. If we cried as children, she would meow at us until we stopped, and she would fetch my mom to address whatever it was we were complaining about.

Now when she is long gone and we are grown adults, when we do impressions of her (“you take care of your kids!”) we give her a older, bossy African American accent- she’s a mother from Oakland, the kind of mom you don’t mess around with; if she was a human she’d grab you by your ear while she yells at you. “Yes ma’am.”