So, about that heat wave...
Northern California is generally pretty temperate near the coast, and nobody has air conditioning. In weather like this, things grind to a halt as everybody retreats to shady spots and lies around spraying themselves with water.
I spent part of the weekend at D.'s, since he's close to the ocean and his place was marginally cooler. My own house was a bit of an oven, and it got up to 83F in my living room, but there was enough breeze at night to cool things down, and that was a blessing. Things got so dire that I wore shorts. Shorts! I haven't actually owned a pair of shorts since around 1994, but I do have a large collection of dot-com schwag, including a couple of pairs of cotton boxers with defunct company logos all over them. My legs are so white, I believe you could actually use them to read in dim light.
We're are being asked not to run major appliances until after 8pm, in what will probably end up being a vain effort to stave off rolling blackouts, so I managed not to get any laundry done this weekend. Yes, I could have done it after 8pm, but I have momentum issues, especially when it's this hot.
And there was certainly no cooking, but there was much eating of caprese salad and salade Nicoise and hummus and Acme Bread Company herb slab with olive oil, and other light things that required no stove. Today for lunch, I have hummus sandwiches on whole wheat with Dijon mustard, thinly sliced cucumber, and mixed greens. Mmmm.
Hummus
I adapted this recipe from Joanne Weir's From Tapas to Meze, which is one of my favorite cookbooks and one I strongly recommend. The cayenne gives it a little kick, the paprika gives it a complex hint of sweetness, and both give the hummus a sunny orange hue.
- 1 14-ounce can garbanzo beans, drained, canning liquid conserved
- ½ cup sesame tahini
- Juice of 2 lemons
- 1 garlic clove, pressed or finely minced
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- Salt
- ¼ to ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- ½ teaspoon cumin
- 1 ½ teaspoons sweet paprika
- Dash white pepper
Combine all ingredients in a blender or the work bowl of a food processor and process to form a smooth paste, adding enough liquid from the garbanzo beans to achieve the consistency you want. Serve with warm wedges of pita bread, Kalamata olives, and chunks of salty feta cheese, or use in sandwiches, or serve as a dip for vegetables and crackers.
* * * * *
I just started a book that I expected to be a somewhat abstract and narratively layered piece of literary fiction, only to discover that is it all of those things in addition to being the scariest book I have ever read in my entire life OMG. It's House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, and since I'm only a quarter of the way through, I hesitate to recommend it-it could fall apart later, for all I know. It's a book about someone piecing together a manuscript about a documentary film about a house that is much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and about the family who lived in the house and discovered its secret and shifting hallways, and the man who wrote the manuscript, and the man who pieces it together, and how the house touches them all, and what could be a gimmicky narrative device ends up building the atmosphere of discovery and horror. I don't think I should read it right before going to sleep.
I spent part of the weekend at D.'s, since he's close to the ocean and his place was marginally cooler. My own house was a bit of an oven, and it got up to 83F in my living room, but there was enough breeze at night to cool things down, and that was a blessing. Things got so dire that I wore shorts. Shorts! I haven't actually owned a pair of shorts since around 1994, but I do have a large collection of dot-com schwag, including a couple of pairs of cotton boxers with defunct company logos all over them. My legs are so white, I believe you could actually use them to read in dim light.
We're are being asked not to run major appliances until after 8pm, in what will probably end up being a vain effort to stave off rolling blackouts, so I managed not to get any laundry done this weekend. Yes, I could have done it after 8pm, but I have momentum issues, especially when it's this hot.
And there was certainly no cooking, but there was much eating of caprese salad and salade Nicoise and hummus and Acme Bread Company herb slab with olive oil, and other light things that required no stove. Today for lunch, I have hummus sandwiches on whole wheat with Dijon mustard, thinly sliced cucumber, and mixed greens. Mmmm.
Hummus
I adapted this recipe from Joanne Weir's From Tapas to Meze, which is one of my favorite cookbooks and one I strongly recommend. The cayenne gives it a little kick, the paprika gives it a complex hint of sweetness, and both give the hummus a sunny orange hue.
- 1 14-ounce can garbanzo beans, drained, canning liquid conserved
- ½ cup sesame tahini
- Juice of 2 lemons
- 1 garlic clove, pressed or finely minced
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- Salt
- ¼ to ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- ½ teaspoon cumin
- 1 ½ teaspoons sweet paprika
- Dash white pepper
Combine all ingredients in a blender or the work bowl of a food processor and process to form a smooth paste, adding enough liquid from the garbanzo beans to achieve the consistency you want. Serve with warm wedges of pita bread, Kalamata olives, and chunks of salty feta cheese, or use in sandwiches, or serve as a dip for vegetables and crackers.
* * * * *
I just started a book that I expected to be a somewhat abstract and narratively layered piece of literary fiction, only to discover that is it all of those things in addition to being the scariest book I have ever read in my entire life OMG. It's House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, and since I'm only a quarter of the way through, I hesitate to recommend it-it could fall apart later, for all I know. It's a book about someone piecing together a manuscript about a documentary film about a house that is much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and about the family who lived in the house and discovered its secret and shifting hallways, and the man who wrote the manuscript, and the man who pieces it together, and how the house touches them all, and what could be a gimmicky narrative device ends up building the atmosphere of discovery and horror. I don't think I should read it right before going to sleep.