watching Vancouver wrap up...cooking Nicaraguan food

...in the background, the TV is on--NBC wrapping up its coverage of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. (Although we are not hockey fans--we did happen to catch the overtime-end of the Canada/USA hockey match: exciting!)

...in the kitchen, S. is cooking something from our days of living in Nicaragua: salsa jalapeña, to go with pan-grilled chicken breasts.

The major thing missing from the recipes below, however, is "chiltoma"--we can't find it here,
but 'chiltoma' is a pepper halfway between a sweet pepper and a bell pepper--S. is substituting small sweet peppers, cut into long strips--adding it to the sauce, along with the onion and jalapeños...

...a photo of some chiltomas, in our pila in our Nicaraguan kitchen:

(note the ridges in the smooth concrete basin--this pila is also where we did our laundry...and the chiltomas are soaking in water with a few drops of bleach...ahh, the realities of la vida tropical...)

Nicaraguan food is not so spicy--so even though this common Nicaraguan sauce has 'jalapeño' in its name, don't expect anything muy muy picante, ok? But it's good...

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Salsa Jalapeña

Nicaraguan Cream Sauce for Chicken, Seafood, or Beef
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes

Ingredients
• 1 cup of crema (substitute heavy cream if you can't find the jar of Mexican or Salvadoran crema)
• 1/2 cup milk (you may not need the full amount)
• 2 medium onions, sliced thin
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 8 jalapeños, sliced length-wise (remove seeds for a milder sauce, or use substitute for spicier versions)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. In a medium sauce pan, saute the onions, peppers, and garlic for about 5 minutes over medium heat until they soften.

2. Add the crema and stir to incorporate all the ingredients.

3. Add half of the milk to loosen the sauce. Allow to simmer over low heat for 10 minutes. If the sauce thickens too much, add more milk. Be careful not to cook over too high a heat otherwise the milk could either boil over or scald. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve over fried or grilled chicken fillets or thighs, grilled steak, or grilled jumbo shrimp with a side of rice and a slice of avocado.

(click here for the original source)
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 and here's another version, in Spanish:

Vancouver to Seoul; 'flowers of geography'...

...a couple more days and the Winter Olympics will be over...S. & I, although by no means 'sports fans,' do enjoy watching the winter games, and with NBC scheduling to air its events for maximum viewership,
we've been staying up late almost every night....So, sleep-deprivation is almost at an end...


Seeing all the shots of Vancouver--aerials, panoramas--has made us somewhat nostalgic for the Pacific NW...inevitable, I guess...So I was looking through some old photos...


Vancouver is one of the most perfectly-situated (and youngest--founded only the 1880's) cities in the world: water and snow-capped forested mountains surrounding a forest of glass towers--on a human scale, though, unlike Manhattan where the 'tyranny of the vertical' can be de-humanizing; it's enough to make even Seattle, one of the novelist Henry James' "flowers of geography" (see below), envious...


But going back through some of the photos, one that truly struck me was one of my first impressions from my first time there--a daytrip, right after I'd moved to Seattle in the fall of 1997:

...a bakery window display in Vancouver's Chinatown. 'Mom and kids?'

BBQ-buns that honestly show what's inside?

Truth in food-advertising:

only in a Chinatown, eh?

(This photo was publixhed in today's local paper, by the way!)

...from that same trip, a faint rainbow over the city,

looking north from Queen Elizabeth Park:

...and a winter view (early 1998), of one of the lighthouses along Stanley Park, looking across the cold cold waters toward the mountains where many of the Olympic venues are located:

...and an 'official' aerial shot, from vancouver.ca:

(click on these for larger views)

...below, from thebeautifulbritishcolumbia.com

So, a bit of "BC-dreaming" on a winter's day, down here in Tucson...our local mountains are snowcapped, too, right now, with skiers on Mt. Lemmon, even! No ocean, though...no cosmopolitan pedestrian-friendly live/work/play skyscrapered neighborhoods here...

During the years we lived in Seattle, we always considered Vancouver like a more sophisticated older cousin--close enough to go for day-trips, but different enough to truly feel 'foreign.' As cool as it was, we did take a bit for granted, though--it's right there, we can go whenever we want...Now that we're in the Desert SW, a trip to Vancouver would be a major and expensive undertaking...Alas...

So, tomorrow, for a day-trip, we'll go visit some friends and a museum in...

(drumroll)...Phoenix.

Woohoo.

Yes, it is the nation's 'fifth-largest city' on paper.

Okay...and?...?

Incidentally, Henry James' 'flowers of geography' were: Naples, Capetown, Sydney, Seattle, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro--all set in geographical settings that seem to have been made for future post-card-perfect cityscapes. When he traveled, Vancouver was not yet really an established 'city'--surely it would have been included in Mr. James' list...Here's a link to an essay by writer Jonathan Raban that appeared in the Seattle Times years ago; this is where I first came across Henry James' description.

So, readers/travelers out there--

what are your 'flowers of geography?'

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In some ways, on my trips to Vancouver, I was reminded of Seoul--the high-rise residential living, the mountains always in view, the many Korean restaurants, even the language overheard on the sidewalks of downtown--although Chinese make up th majority of the city's east-Asian population, Koreans are not far behind...

...a few photos, then, of a city that's one of my 'flowers of geography:'

Seoul, the capital city of South Korea, framed by mountains and a river...

I say it not just because I was born there, but because of all the cities I've visited, its combination of ancient and post-modern, ultra-urban and mountain scenery is one of the best. Yes, it's densely populated, yes it has air-pollution, yes it's one of the largest urban conglomerations on the planet (perhaps even monstrously so)...but the compelling history of the place, along with the ever-present mountains make it a heady mix of non-stop human activity and timeless forested crags...along with the serene, wide Han river curving through it all.

(These photosare from www.skyscrapercity.com:)

(and the following photo is courtesy of this website)

--this is the courtyard of the Throne Hall of Kyongbok Palace,

in downtown Seoul; a smaller version of The Forbidden City in Beijing...

...and from National Geographic, the following photos:

another of downtown Seoul's royal palaces, Tok-su-gung:

...the bustling Nam-dae-mun market--one of the city's centers of commerce since medieval times, now tucked into alleyways behind skyscrapers:

...from silk handkerchiefs to 'exotic' edibles:

...a Samsung electric car in front of one of the city's downtown hotels:

...the old East Gate of the city, dating from the 1390's:

(Yes, I have a bit of free time this morning
to be posting all these images:

a bit of armchair travel via the Internet...

It's a school-holiday in Tucson:
Rodeo weekend,
a world away...)

Monday surprise...

One of my colleagues at work has kindly made a point of noticing when my photographs get published in the local paper; this morning she said she enjoyed seeing 'another one' of my photos published a couple of days ago...I didn't know what she was referring to--I hadn't seen it! ...She said it was in last Thursday's paper, so I was able to track it down:

reflection in Sabino Canyon from last winter

(click here for the newspaper site)

Another cheap published thrill!

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Right now, my wife and I are on the Internet (me: laptop, her: netbook), 'working' during the TV commercial breaks while watching the Winter Olympics. Downhill skiing!! Pairs figure-skating finals!! Quite a bit of Pacific-NW nostalgia, as we see the Vancouver panoramas in between the sporting events...

(Wait--does this sound 'dysfunctional'--that we're both on line, but separately? AND that we're watching TV too?...We are talking...we went for a lovely late-afternoon walk in Sabino Canyon...had home-made food for dinner...Speaking of 'home-made'--lots of that in our lives right now; no restaurant-outings, as Sara was laid off just over a week ago. Yep--with one-day's notice, the clinic where she was working closed! Fun times. So, new adventures for her--applying for unemployment for the first time...At least we have good winter weather to go with her job-hunting, eh?)

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Not surprising perhaps, but so many of my students know so little about the Winter Olympics. This IS Tucson, I suppose, but still...

Today I heard, "So, are the Winter Olympics always held in Vancouver?"

And: "How often do they have the Olympics?"

And, most did not know that the modern Olympics are exactly that--'modern,' 

 as in a revival of the ancient Greek games.

 'They had Olympics in ancient Greece?'

Wow.

Popular-culture 'trivia' that I take for granted

as 'general knowledge'...not so 'general,' it appears.

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A few more Sabino canyon reflections, from recent walks:

...and an afternoon panorama:

...with this morning's coffee...


With morning coffee, this week's "Reader's Photo of the Week" in the Tucson paper:

...a reminiscence of early spring in Paris...from eleven (!) years ago...
For the 'published' source: click here.
(...and from a couple of weeks ago, and a week before that...)

Winter storm, lifting...

Yesterday morning--woke up to snow halfway down our 'backyard'-mountains...
...even a rainbow! ("snow-bow"?):

...just outside of Sabino Canyon

...storm still lingering in Bear Canyon...

...Santa Catalina mountains, covered in snow...

...the last of the rainbow...

...hummingbird resting below Finger Rock

...panorama, looking SW over the Tucson mountains to the distant snow-capped high desert...

...and for the first time in a year-and-a-half, the local Rillito river is actually flowing.

...a rainy week here in Tucson...

...out-of-town friends stayed with us this past weekend; we introduced them to our local Gaslight Theatre, Sonoran hot dogs, the ruins in Tumacácori, the 'artsy village' of Tubac, and local Peruvian food. Hoo-boy.

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Last week, I finally took my wife to go see the film Avatar.
AMAZING special effects--but also remarkable, if you scratch the hyped 3-D surface: its profound pessimism.


How interesting that for the first time in decades,
a special-effects blockbuster does not end up with humanity saving the earth,
but with humans turning on their own kind in order to save something else--an almost-lost paradise of sorts.
So different from humans (almost always Americans) saving the earth from aliens or meteors, or finding a medical way to 'reverse' mutant-zombies.
An uncomfortable result of the film is that the crowds end up cheering against themselves--
against the bad-guys, which are the evil earthlings. The only 'good' earthlings are the ones who 'go native'...

What's the reaction from gung-ho military-types, I wonder?
Yes, yes, there is the irony that the director and studio are making millions (over a billion already!) due to a film with an anti-capitalist message.
No one's crying 'treason,' but...
The film's not subtle by any means...but it's not 'stupid' either; it's rich in allusions to myth, literature, religion, and film...
Anyway. Click here for an interesting CNN article about Avatar 'blues'--seriously.


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This past Sunday--opened up the paper--aha! published again; my cheap photo-thrill: click here for the link to the local Tucson paper's 'outdoor' feature with my photo...

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...can't post without mentioning last week's earthquake in Haiti, and the continuing chaotic suffering down there...Here in Tucson we know a couple of Haitian families who've been glued to their phones,
trying to contact relatives and friends...
''Disaster-fatigue" can sometimes set in, but, man...
wordless.

(...click here for a partially insightful NYTimes column on Haiti;

I don't agree with everything in the column, but such questions should be asked...)

...from Joshua Tree National Park...& instant language

As I said in yesterday's posting, here are a few photos from this past weekend's drive through Joshua Tree National Park:

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...Joshua trees framing Mt. San Gorgonio (11503 ft.), highest pt. in southern CA.

...driving through...

--view over the Coachella valley and the mountains behind Palm Springs,CA, looking SW from Keys View overlook in the National Park. The superimposed arrows show the movement of the San Andreas fault, which is visible in the middle of the photo as a couple of darker low ridges between the arrows. The peak on the right is 10834' Mt. San Jacinto.

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Have any of you seen Avatar, the recent 3-D blockbuster? I was a bit reluctant, but then I saw it during the school-break. (I went to a 9:30 a.m. matinee to avoid seeing any of my students at the mall...) Not since Jurassic Park first came out in the early 1990's have I seen a film's special effects be so visually engrossing.

Incidentally, a linguist from USC was hired to invent a new, linguistically-sound 'authentic' language for the 10-ft-tall blue humanoid dwellers of the moon Pandora. (Remember 'Klingon?')

This L.A. Times article was fascinating.
My wife's not yet seen the film, so we plan to go tonight.