Raw, adjective: 1. uncooked, as articles of food: a raw carrot.

Bundt Cake Saturday! (on Wednesday)

Morning: crisp
Mood: squashed
Music: Bright Eyes

Aaaand here we are for another [delayed onset] addition to the Bundt Cake Saturday canon. It's a cool morning here, bright, clear, crisp; hardly feels like Thanksgiving's around the corner, other than the telling lines at the grocery this morning. I'm happy to avoid the traveling masses and be quietly ensconced at home, where Chocolate Peppermint baby bundts bake in the oven and my newest vinyasa sequence downloads for a quick practice while they cool.

But we'll save that holiday recipe for another time. Here's a new fall cake that I discovered a few weeks back; after making two solid gingery variations, I've decided it's one for the Top 10 list. This one's a great way to bake with the seasons while venturing outside the usual apple/pumpkin/spice suspects found in autumn.

When my sisters and I were in elementary school 4-H pursuing the illustrious South Dakota State Fair Purple Ribbon (don't tease), we used to bake with zucchini fairly often, usually because my father's huge garden plot in the backyard produced obscene amounts of the green squash and we could never find enough ways to use it all up. It never failed to surprise me that such an ostensibly savory creature could produce such moist, sweet variations of breads and cakes. That in mind, I've been looking for a good squash recipe in the last few months, even though my zucchini won't come from the backyard this time around. I finally found it in this

BUTTERMILK SQUASH CAKE WITH SPICED VANILLA ICING

Insane, no? It is seriously as good as it sounds. If you've procrastinated on finding a recipe to take to your annual Thanksgiving gathering tomorrow, this just might be your guy.

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1-1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 Tbs. distilled white vinegar
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. table salt
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
3/4 cup buttermilk
2-1/4 cups peeled and grated butternut squash

Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease and flour your bundt pan. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar on medium speed until well combined, about 1 minute. Add the oil and beat until combined, about 15 seconds. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well on low speed. Add the vinegar and vanilla and mix again until just combined. Add half of the flour and the baking soda, salt, ginger, and nutmeg, mixing on low speed until just combined. Add half of the buttermilk and mix until just combined. Repeat with the remaining flour and buttermilk.

Grate the squash and fold it lightly into the batter. Pour into prepared pan and bake until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes; then carefully invert the cake onto the rack to cool completely.

Ok, just a few things on this: the instructions above are taken from the original, which admonishes you to oh-so-carefully stir the ingredients together. Let's be real. I just dumped that shit in and beat it with an electric mixer until it was well-stirred. Feel free to do all that fancy mixing and folding and whatnot, but your cake will still rise if you don't. Just sayin'.

Also, in terms of your vegetables: the first time I made this, I used three kinds of squash, just to mix things up. The blend of zucchini, banana squash and yellow squash made for a colorful and interesting, texturally-varied cake. I definitely recommend giving that a whirl. The second time around, I picked up an organic butternut squash from Whole Foods and grated that in, raw. It turned out a cake with a particularly butternutty flavor, and was more monochromatic in color. So go with whatever you've got, and trust that it will be fine.

(And on that note: if you're short of time and don't mind keeping a dirty secret, switch out the flour/sugar/soda/etc. for a yellow cake mix. I won't judge. And they'll never know.)

Now, on to the icing and garnish. You'll need:

2-1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar
3 Tbs. buttermilk; more as needed
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp. table salt
1/4 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

In a medium bowl, whisk the sugar, buttermilk, vanilla, nutmeg, and salt until smooth. Add more buttermilk, a few drops at a time, as needed, until the icing is pourable but still quite thick. Pour the icing back and forth in thick ribbons over the cooled cake.

I left out the table salt in my icing and it turned out just fine. Don't worry so much about the exact proportions; just add your buttermilk and sugar until the icing is your preferred consistency. Maybe add a little powdered ginger, too, if you're especially fond. It's intuitive, baby. You know.

The magic ingredient here really is the chopped crystallized ginger. I can't tell you how many people remarked on how much they loved that finishing touch. Sprinkle the ginger on top, before the icing cools. Let it set for a few minutes before serving or transporting the cake.

The second time I made this recipe, I chopped up some organic unsulfured dried cranberries and sprinkled them on top with the crystallized ginger. The vibrant red berries made for a pretty autumnal addition. Get on with your fall color palette already.

And that's it. Enjoy. And know that you're getting your daily veg serving along with plenty of ginger (digestif!) in this recipe, as well.

Recipe courtesy finecooking.com

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

It's that time of year again: Buy Nothing Day rolls around this [Black] Friday, which means that for you more rebellious spirits it's time to put those shopping bags in the closet and bask in the beauty of a quiet, simple, Wal-Mart-free post-Thanksgiving Day.

I've never been a fan of the institutionalized cultural binge that is the traditional American Thanksgiving feast. It always seemed absurd to me to fly across the country to gather with my family just to stuff our faces for a few hours before succumbing to the obligatory food coma and then passing out in front of the TV. (And that means we're consciously grateful, how?) It's always seemed more appropriate to really practice gratitude by observing a day of fasting, which can be a conscious reminder of how much we take our usual nourishment for granted (and not to mention a shout-out of solidarity to the damages done to Native Americans when their lands were co-opted by frontier-minded Puritans, but that's another story).

Adbusters and its ever-expanding Buy Nothing Day campaign have stepped in to provide that kind of cultural "fasting space" on the day after Thanksgiving, the time when the consuming hordes descend on the mega-malls to pillage the aisles for cheapie Christmas bargains. In the interest of subversion, not to mention aparigraha (non-grasping, living simply, etc.), I say: ditch the sales, skip the crowds and marinate in the long empty hours of a life made of your own wild volition, sans unnecessary consumption. Use your day off, in the words of Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn, to "live without dead time."

Now that's an idea to be thankful for.

Buy Nothing Day Headquarters (Adbusters)

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

This morning's NYT takes on the oxymoron that is "competitive yoga." Read the quick article for an understanding of the elements at play in the Choudhurys' attempts to make yoga an Olympic sport.

Richard Rosen of Oakland's Piedmont Yoga Studio is quoted in opposition to the idea of competition; he, like many, finds the concept "silly" and antithetical to the tradition's emphasis on self-transformation and acceptance. Fellow detractors can breathe easily, though; it doesn't appear that Bikram and Rajashree will break into the Olympics anytime soon. The piece really highlights the ways in which this push for competition remains steadfastly stuck in the Bikram tradition.

I'm glad for that, in spite of my Bikram roots. I don't think competition has any place here. The article's headline says it all:

Is the Spirit of Competition in the Soul of Yoga? (NYT)

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

Variations on a Theme
~
Bird of Paradise

They grow, unaided, in the front yards of dark-shingled Berkeley Craftsman homes. They turn the most generic bouquet into a wild tropical spread. They balance on one [shaky] leg while the other [shakily] extends to the sky, breathing, bound. They inhabit unassuming little spaces on Polk Street. One less-fortunate version will probably hold court on your dining room table a week from tomorrow. I wish the Broadway musical version would go swiftly, unceremoniously away, forever. And, back in the day, more Continental types used the term to describe a cute chick.

Hello, little birdie.

Meet my newest favorite asana: Bird of Paradise (more formally known as Svarga Dvidasana), which is kicking my ass on a regular basis these days. It's a balancing asana in which, arms bound, you essentially haul your heavy leg up and extend it (ideally) somewhere near your ear, while you're just chillin' on one foot, trying not to fall on your face. Check out this YouTube demonstration for a killer example of the crazy strength, balance and flexibility required here - and then grin when you see the flock of birds flying at the end:



Pretty great, huh?

In less bendy topics: I've strolled up and down Polk St. countless times over these six years now and have always been intrigued by the little music-slash-yoga studio perched on the slight incline between Jackson and Pacific, charmingly called Bird SF. It seems like a quiet little space, usually uninhabited, but they advertise yoga and music and jazz bands for teens and rock and gee-tar lessons for kids, and I can't help but smile and nod and send a gazillion hopeful vibes that it's still there every time I pass. You just want this kind of place to succeed.

Check out their excellent website for more; it's a periwinkle-colored, multi-use space that seems to have really found its own niche. What a great combo of the embodied arts, and all in one space. Makes me wish I had kids so I could take them to some badass rock guitar lessons, followed by a yoga class, followed by a recording session. Although I'd probably just want to leave them there when it came time to take them home again.

Finally, pick up a stem or two of Bird of Paradise next time you're at the flower shop. They'll last for days and brighten a room with a decidedly exotic kind of vibe.

Bird of Paradise Asana
Bird SF
Bird of Paradise ~ The Flower Expert

Raw, noun: 13. unrefined sugar, oil, etc.

A warm welcome to any of you who've found your way here via my recent article in Yoga Journal on baking as meditation. I'm so glad you're here.

If you'd like to read more about my Bundt Cake Saturdays, just click on the "baking" tab below; there, you'll find a year's worth of photos, recipes and stories at your fingertips. I hope you'll enjoy perusing them as much as I did creating them.

A few personal favorites: maple pecan, sour cream walnut streusel, caramel apple, rhubarb pecan, and blueberry cream. (And, of course: don't forget the buckled-in bundts, and the baby bundts, too - and, for the strong of heart, the bundt Barbie.)

Recipes are always welcome! I've got a backlog of the last few months' cakes to blog, so keep checking in for new creations. Yesterday we shared Mocha Frangelico; the week before, it was Buttermilk Squash. So stay tuned for those new autumn recipes, and in the meantime: Bake. Breathe. Bundt.

(P.S. Did you know that today - November 15th - is National Bundt Cake Day?? No joke. Enjoy.)

Raw, adjective: 4. painfully open, as a sore or wound

Let me introduce you to someone.

I'm lucky enough to be studying intensively with Rusty Wells for the course of these autumn months, and what a total pleasure it's been (perpetually sore muscles and all!). If you're not familiar with Rusty and his charismatic blend of vinyasa and open-hearted philosophy known as Bhakti Flow, you're really missing out.

Head on over to Yoga Tree Castro for a taste of Rusty's radiant, energizing teaching style. Not only is his work steeped in rich yoga philosophy, it's also buzzing with athleticism and bumping with great beats. Rusty is one of the best examples I've ever experienced of a yoga teacher who really lives his art. Talk about praxis.

You'll no doubt be hearing more from me about Bhakti Flow in the weeks to come, as I spend my waking hours studying the ins-and-outs of this particular vinyasa style. In the meantime, wander on over to Rusty's site and check out the wealth of information there. You can read up on Sanskrit terms courtesy of the Feuersteins, ogle the gallery of jaw-dropping asanas, and pick up a DVD or two while you're at it. Then, head over to Yelp for a few more testimonials from other devoted students. This guy is the real deal.

Bhakti Flow Official Site
Rusty Wells ~ Bhakti Urban Flow (Yelp)

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

Interesting profile of professional surfer Darryl "Flea" Virostko in this morning's Sunday Chron. The story reads much like you'd expect in the case of a humble-kid-done-well; in the face of vast success and sudden wealth as a surfing prodigy, Virostko stumbled down the same dark path that so many professional athletes do, nearly losing his life to a dysfunctional drug addiction.

Following a last-ditch family intervention and a stint in rehab, Virostko has been sober over a year now, and he credits the time spent on his board for keeping him so:

[Flea] surfs twice a day. It helps him forget his troubles on land and tires him, helping him sleep. When he was asked to find a higher power during his rehab, he thought of big waves.

"I just referred back to every time I got worked over at Mavericks," he said. "I would look up at this whitewash and pray to the ocean, and it worked every time. The ocean is bigger than me."

In my studies of the yoga sutras, we've so often compared the quiet mind that's a product of yoga practice with the same stillness of being that's often the result of similar moving meditations: rock-climbing, marathon-running, and yes, even surfing. The one-pointed focus mandated by such extreme physical undertakings renders the monkey mind quiet for a few blessed moments. Whether your yoga mind comes from balancing on a surfboard or a mat doesn't matter so much; that you're there in that moment, away from the struggle for even a brief respite, does.

Darryl 'Flea' Virostko - Back to Mavericks (SFGate)

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

How have I managed to be alive without knowing this book existed until today??

Anneli Rufus's Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto just fell into my lap, and geez, if it isn't a godsend of the greatest kind. Just when I was feeling hungry for another Jonathan Rauch-style introverts' manifesto, this book appears. And by god, I'm in love.

Here's a blurb:

Apart.

Such a simple concept. So concrete. So easy to represent on charts or diagrams with dots and pushpins either in or out. Yet real life is not dots. Some of us appear to be in, but we are out. And that is where we want to be. Not just want but need, the way tuna need the sea....

We do not require company. The opposite: in varying degrees, it bores us, drains us, makes our eyes glaze over. Overcomes us like a steamroller. Of course the rest of the world doesn't understand.

Someone says to you, "Let's have lunch." You clench. Your sinews leap within you, angling for escape. What others thrive on, what they take for granted, the contact and confraternity and sharing that gives them strength leaves us empty. After what others would call a fun day out together, we feel as if we have been at the Red Cross, donating blood....

Amen, sister. And that's just the introduction.

It never ceases to be a revelation when I come across writers who have the rare ability to describe this feeling. It's introversion, yes, but it's not just some psychobabble; it's that deep-seated need for silence and solitude that only the loner understands, the dread of the telephone, the pit of weariness in the stomach at the prospect of social plans already made. As Rufus writes, "Maybe we're not holed up in caves all day, or in submarines like Captain Nemo in his Nautilus. But alone we feel most normal. Most ourselves. Most alive." So true. And the vast majority of the world seems so heavily extroverted that finding someone who can articulate those feelings is always this great relief.

I haven't had a single conversation today. I had a solo lunch, a blessedly quiet lunch, at a blessedly quiet off-hours cafe with my newspaper and my thoughts and my phone set to vibrate. I go to the opera, the symphony, the theater, the movies, once a week, often more, 90% of the time by myself. Not because there aren't 16 people I could call up and invite along. But because the thought of someone else being there is so goddamned exhausting. And when you're by yourself, you can go to the pre-show lecture, and read the program notes, and people-watch, and listen closely to the chords and the diction and the swells of the orchestra, without having to worry about making trifling conversation once intermission hits. That, my friends, is called being a loner.

As Rufus points out, it's hardly surprising that Newton and Einstein and Michelangelo and Dickinson and O'Keeffe were all loners. I'm astonished that anyone who's not a loner can ever get anything creative done, can ever read, write, compose, build, paint, anything. I wish I didn't feel the constant need to justify this loner-hood. And I'm grateful for authors like Rufus who put that reality into words.

Anneli Rufus: Party of One

Raw, adjective: 1. uncooked, as articles of food: a raw carrot.

November means brussels sprouts and bourbon season. I've been eating brussels daily since about mid-September. Sweet jesus, so good. Inspiration struck some weeks ago whilst standing in the deli aisle at Whole Foods (shocker, I know).

Try this little recipe next time you've got some on hand. So simple. Just lightly saute or steam your sprouts per usual in a little olive oil; but this time, include shallots, pecans, parsley, and a little salt and pepper.

Delish. Sans dairy, wheat and sugar, too - though you'd never notice.

Raw, idiom, 14a: in the natural, uncultivated, or unrefined state: nature in the raw.

Cancel your plans for Wednesday night and haul yourselves over to the Herbst Theater instead. Wendell Berry's going to be in conversation with Michael Pollan as part of the City Arts & Lectures series, and this kind of rockstar pairing doesn't happen very often.

Here's the blurb from the event site, which encapsulates Berry's radness better than I can:

Wendell Berry is a writer, a poet, an essayist and a novelist but first and foremost, he is a farmer. Berry is an original American prose voice and he writes with a calm and compelling vision about our sense of kinship with the land. He is the author of over 40 books of fiction, poetry and essays and for over 30 years he has farmed a hillside in his native Henry County, Kentucky. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the T.S. Elliot Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the John Hay Award of the Orion Society, a Lannan Foundation Award and grants from the Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts. In his latest work of poetry, The Mad Farmer Poems, Berry rages against the depravities of contemporary life wrought by mismanagement of natural resources and our willful ignorance of the lessons of the past. The poems, given voice by The Mad Famer (a character Berry has been employing in his poetry since 1967), are at turns politically committed and humorous, and always revelatory.

The dude's work reliably makes me swoon. It's a heady balance of populism and poetry, activism and anger. Seriously inspirational. What I'd give to be the chick version of him someday.

I can only imagine the foodie fireworks that will come into play at the meeting of these two minds. Be there.

Wendell Berry/Michael Pollan (City Arts)

Random shit I wanted to post that has no feasible connection whatsoever to any defintion of "rawness"

I've been remiss in mentioning two big HUZZAHs for my favorite two younger brethren:

~ the little bro, who is glowingly profiled in this month's Classical Singer magazine, on his fabuloso singing career heretofore and his forthcoming success in the land of maple and moose (and, we hope, in the land of tea and biscuits, as well).

~ the little sis, who gave expert commentary in an interview in Wisconsin Woman magazine's September issue, as dance/movement therapist extraordinaire and general Very Smart Lady.

Clamoring readers can find Classical Singer at major media outlets now, and WW's online archives here.

This big sis is boasting of you both at every opportunity. XO.

Raw, adjective: 5. crude in quality or character; not tempered or refined by art or taste: raw humor.

I was on the bus the other day when some dumb chattery girl started yapping on her cell phone. This is a distressingly common occurrence and generally breaks the unspoken public transport rule that, when riding the train/bus/streetcar/trolley/cable car, one sits quietly and remains silent for the duration of the ride out of consideration for fellow passengers, even when friends or comrades are in tow. That's just how it works.

Said chick kept yapping, gratingly going on about her meaningless day-to-day bullshit. SO. RUDE. I was seething.

The dude next to me, a middle-aged professorial type wearing eyeglasses and tweed, pulled out his New York Times and started reading aloud. To himself. And the entire bus.

It was amazing. God bless the motherfucking culture jammers. Especially the ones wearing tweed and a bald spot. May the cell-phone-yammering twentysomething Marina girls someday figure it out.

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

Tuesday night I snagged some killer last-minute tickets for the SF Opera's production of Salome. And - whew. Talk about scandalous.

The opera is Oscar Wilde by way of Richard Strauss by way of the Old Testament. It's a melange of lust and violence and incest and erotic torture and well, just plain ol' regular torture. As in: beheadings. Let's just say the show is perfect for Halloween week. In the course of an action-packed hour and 45 minutes, you get seduction, prophecy, sacrifice, nudity, and - wait for it - necrophilia.

Yeah. So girlfriend Salome - Herod's sexy and scandalous stepdaughter - ends up dragging (her unrequited lover) John the Baptist's severed [bleeding] head around stage, singing to it, spooning with it, and yes, eventually making out with it, until Papa Herod, dirty and leering as he might be, decides she's loony-tunes and needs to get taken out by the bloody scythe that just separated ol' Johnny-Poo from his noggin. And that's just the last ten minutes.

It's a wild ride, and yes, certainly a scandalous one, but also one not to be missed. This ain't yer grandma's opera. That John has quite the baritone, and that Salome, well, I've never seen another mezzo-soprano who a) looks so hot in scantily-clad white chiffon, and b) can dance her socks off like any good musical theater pro.

Get yourselves to the opera house. The show runs tomorrow night at 8 and Sunday at 2. Much better than throwing on your hastily-made duct-tape Balloon Boy costume and hitting up the neighborhood bars. Sexier, too.

San Francisco Opera: Salome

Raw, adjective: 1. uncooked, as articles of food: a raw carrot.

Somehow I managed to miss the NYT Magazine's Food Issue a few weeks back, and along with it, Jonathan Safran Foer's excellent article offering his case for vegetarianism.

The piece is an excerpt from Foer's upcoming book, Eating Animals, and it's worth a few minutes of your time. In contrast with some of the irritatingly holier-than-thou veggie activists out there, Foer's writing translates as self-deprecating, funny, and refreshingly rational. He's self-aware in a defusing kind of way; even the committed meat-eater can read Foer's writing and relax, knowing that he doesn't have to feel attacked, that he's in sympathetic company. Foer writes from an admittedly ambivalent background; he acknowledges the reality of intangibles like taste, memory, and pleasure as challenges to the effort to go veg.

It's interesting to me that after years of wishy-washy flirtations with vegetarianism, it was the birth of Foer's first child that really brought him and his wife into a committed meat-free lifestyle. I'm not surprised. The swaggering faux-masculinity with which people usually boast of their meat obsessions strikes me as embarrassingly naive and unconsidered; the empty shell of a case for eating meat (taste! pleasure!) is quickly punctured when real-world considerations like the destruction of the environment and the consumption of feces and free drugs become realities in the lives of our own offspring.* Suddenly the idea that yer own kid might not have clean water or fresh air someday, or might be consuming cow shit or chicken brains, makes the reality hit home in a new way.

Read the article. It's as charming and non-combative a call to vegetarianism as you're going to find. I'm glad to call Foer a fellow comrade.

Against Meat (NYT Magazine)

*Matt Hearn, I still love you, in spite of - or perhaps because of - your unwavering commitment to bacon. And I don't think you're naive or unconsidered, though definitely a paragon of swaggering masculinity. (Duh.)

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

prana ~ Vital air; life breath; vitality; the upward, expanding, blossoming movement characteristic of inhaling. From the verb root "an," meaning to breathe, plus "pra," meaning forth.


pranava ~ To be new, again and again. See also: Om.
See also: beginner's mind.

Raw, idiom, 14a: in the natural, uncultivated, or unrefined state: nature in the raw.

Throwing up a few self-indulgent photos on this insanely sunny late autumn afternoon. An attempt to give a little sense of the lush GREEN here in my new private jungle. Talk about a muse! Prana oozing out of every corner.



A little garden sanctuary. So quiet. Birdsong outside. In the heart of the City. The cable car clanging out front. Strong perpetual light. I'm hooked.



Digging the great 1920s period details. My plants like them, too.



View from the yoga mat. Hardwood floors meant for early morning yoga practice. Kind of a modern-day yogic Rothko, eh? (Ok, it's a stretch. Har har.)



Dahlias. Blooming in season right now. Up there with peonies as some of my favorites.



First attempt at breaking in the new kitchen. It only took me 10 minutes to figure out how to light the damn oven. After that, smooth sailing. The coffee pot above left played a key role in making that happen.



Since it's autumn and this is an easy recipe - one of my never-fails, I whipped up a Maple Pecan cake yesterday morning for the clamoring masses. Thanks to TJ's killer tunes and a bright quiet morning and the late addition of a few pothos leaves and a broken-stemmed dahlia from the bunch, it turned out well. I couldn't help but notice how the dahlia looks not unlike a lotus flower. Just sayin'. Lotus = bloom, change, growth, life. I dig the symbolism.



Orange polyester, agave nectar hardwood, spray-painted burgundy flats. Hello, autumn.

Raw, adjective: 5. crude in quality or character; not tempered or refined by art or taste: raw humor.

I've been reading Steve Martin's autobiography, Born Standing Up. The man is, of course, as interesting and shy and thoughtful and artistic in this particular piece of writing as he is in his other novels, plays and screenplays.

The photo at left is included in the book. Um. Amazing. (And unrecognizable.)

Any comedian who can at once throw down on the banjo, rock some badass turquoise jewelry and a long 1970s shag 'do, and unself-consciously toss around the words "existentialism" and "ontology" while discussing modern art and classical philosophy is fine by me. How can you not love the man??

Raw, adjective: 8. brutally harsh or unfair: a raw deal

Saw this the other night, and to say the film left me sick to my stomach wouldn't be doing it justice. Ugh.

You can always count on Michael Moore to pull out a few tried-and-true tricks in his films: lots of charming archival footage, lots of good music, lots of in-yer-face confrontation attempts with powerful people, and plenty of populist sentiment. I've gotta respect the guy and his ever-expanding body of work. My little commie heart warms a little every time he rants about workers' rights and the peoples' revolution.

It's certainly not an uplift of a film, that's for sure; in spite of the fact that Moore ends on a "power-to-the-people" kind of note, you walk away feeling heavy with exhaustion at the overwhelmingly complex institutionalized framework that has allowed for people like Goldman Sachs's Hank Paulson to run the Treasury Dept. with an eye toward corporate profit.

Favorite part? When Moore ties in the progressive Christian element, arguing that the conflation of profit with spirituality (a la the conservative evangelical juggernaut that preaches good ol' capitalist values as somehow at all related to a Christic model) is fundamentally flawed. Good on you, Michael Moore. We need more people like you who aren't afraid to say this out loud.

Stay for the credits, more sobering statistics, and some excellent Woody Guthrie action. And then march yourself right around the corner for a stiff drink to counter the disenchantment.

Michael Moore's Capitalism Goes for Broke (Time)

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

Once again proud to be living in one of the most progressive cities in the world. (You should see our cute little individual composting buckets.)

Food Recycling Law a Hit in San Francisco (NPR)

Raw, adjective: 9. disagreeably damp and chilly, as the weather or air: a raw, foggy day at the beach.

This foggy morning seems as good as any to tell you some exciting news: my first Yoga Journal article will be published in the next issue, December '09, due on (national!) newsstands any day now. Really!

The piece draws together themes from yogic philosophy and Ayurvedic theory, interwoven with bits and pieces of my own narrative experiences with baking over the last year and a half. Thanks to this humble little site for being a bit of a contributor, via its early Bundt Cake Saturdays, which encouraged my regular baking (read: meditation) practice.

We'll leave it there for now. But please do keep your eyes peeled for the December issue, which can be found at any major bookstores (but especially your local indies), and pick one up to read my little story. I'm pretty chuffed.

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

Stevie Sondheim's going to be in the 'hood again this weekend. Yesterday's Datebook had a quickie round-up of his recent goings-on. Did you realize the man - the legend - is pushing 80?

Kicking myself for missing him when he was at the Herbst last year. Can't wait for the upcoming Trevor Nunn revival of "A Little Night Music" starring CZJ and Angela Lansbury (mentioned at the end of the article). Talk about a dream-team.

Sondheim Takes the Stage (SFGate)

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

I knew I liked Don Draper, but then I read this brief Q&A with Jon Hamm over at Reader's Digest (erm, I know) and realized how very much I like him. Hamm lost both parents young, seems mellow, grounded, low-maintenance. And I love, love his take on fear/worry toward the end of the interview:

Q. You seem very well adjusted for a Hollywood guy. What's your secret?

A. I have a low-impact way of approaching life. I don't mind heights. I love flying. Bugs don't freak me out. If you're worried about something like, say, hair in your food, it ain't the hair that's going to kill you—it's the worry.

Amen to that.

Q&A: Mad Men Actor Jon Hamm (RD)

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

There's an obese cat that waddles around in the garden outside my new window. Birds, too. Let's start there.

I've been listening to Neko Case non-stop this weekend while taking care of the busywork of moving: the address-changing (online magic!) and the unpacking and whatnot. She's killer, of course, and you should know her stuff; I was so disappointed to miss her set a few weeks back at Hardly Strictly Blueglass.

Case's "Magpie to the Morning" is one of my favorites. The whole thing's good, but there's a line in particular that runs on repeat in my mind, toward the beginning, when she wails that

He laughed under his breath/
Because you thought that you could outrun sorrow

What spot-on poetry. How often do most of us try - one way or another - to foolishly "outrun sorrow?" Oh, the ways I could count, both what I see in the people around me and what I know I'm guilty of myself. That's why yoga's patient reminder to "just stay" has always felt so radical to me: "just stay" in a leg-shaking asana, stay in a difficult feeling, stay in an uncomfortable moment. Ride it out. Instead of trying to outrun it.*

Listen to the whole thing. There's a live version floating around on YouTube somewhere. Google it up. Neko's great.

* Yogic theory's everywhere, if you just keep your eyes open for it. Wouldn't you say?

Raw, idiom, 14a: in the natural, uncultivated, or unrefined state: nature in the raw.

Welcome to my new little jungle!

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

It is late on a Tuesday night and the rain's finally stopped outside and the air is balmy and I am trying to remember how to breathe. I am a big bundle of anxiety. I am racing heart and whipping mind and short inhales and twisting gut. I am all that yoga is supposed to make me not.

In the span of 24 hours I've seen a place, sold my soul for its garden view, slept fitfully, marched to the bank in galoshes and yellow raincoat, and signed the next year of my life away for a little patch of hardwood and city just off the cable car line. For six years now I've hovered here in a warm wooden red-colored art- and antique-filled bay windowed flat on Sacramento Street, right on the down-slope of Nob Hill, and now, suddenly, I'm packing up and sorting and consolidating and tossing, preparing to trade these old boards for new ones.

It's so much more emotional than I expected. I turned 30 this year, knew from this experience and that that I'm an Official Adult now, grown-up and all that shit, IRA and renter's insurance and what-have-you, and part of that shift has been realizing an urgent need for a space and a silence all my own, a nook of a place that I can fill with plants and books and music and do yoga in the early morning sunlight and drink coffee and write trite inflammatory bullshit that no one will ever read.

It's different in the city, this searching for a place to lay one's head; the rates are sky high and the possibility of owning a pipe dream for anyone but the very well-off, and I've been reasonably resigned to renting for the duration of my life here, in spite of waste and the frustration. But rents are relatively low now and supply high and it's time and this little gem of a garden flat kind of fell into my lap unexpectedly on a blue-skied Monday morning in October and so today in the midst of torrential rain and hurricane gales I hauled my grown-up lady coat and cloche over to sign the papers. And now the next few days will be a whirl of phone calls and movers and boxes and whatnot.

And god, the clinging. The attachment. The unexpected yogic lessons coming out of my ears. I sat in my new yoga philosophy class last night and Chase talked about one-pointed focus and calming the mind and directing the thoughts and being here now and very ironically, of course, all I could do was sit there and make checklists and think shit, will all my shit fit in this new place and what about the sunlight and what about my yoga mats and where the hell did I get so many books and where will I stash the picnic basket and the piano? And on and on ad infinitum while my body sat in one room and my mind in another. And that mind today clings to memories of this place that has been my home for so many golden years, that has seen thesis chapters and Ford Festivas and afternoon sunlight in the bay window and whores underneath in the wee hours and earthquakes and most of all, most of all, my father for a very brief moment, my sick dying father who was here for a half a day, long enough to eat dinner in Chinatown and climb Nob Hill past Grace Cathedral and walk through my empty wooden apartment and turn to me understatedly and say, "Well, Rach, it looks like you've got a good little home here." And just for that my heart breaks on leaving this place, this place whose floors that absent father once tread, knowing that it is the last home he will ever see or smell or approve of.

Clinging. We're not supposed to cling to things or people or places or concepts or ideas. Buddhism teaches it. Yogic theory teaches it. You have to let go, release, detach. I thought I was so good at this. Non-materialistic, anti-consumptive, living simply, blah blah blah. What a smack in the arrogant face this anxiety is to that. Clinging to hopes and holiday parties and men and memories, all in this space that held so many before me and will hold more after I leave it. Strange to think others will live here, here in this space that feels so much my own. In the city somehow there is a more transient sensibility about homes; you get used to trading up and trading down according to whim, and somehow I've managed to avoid that heretofore; but now it's new light and different street sounds and the clanging of a cable car bell outside and palms in the morning and a new slant on things, a new wooden floor to get my bare feet accustomed to.

How easy to try to cling to the status quo. How interesting that excitement over new beginnings can so quickly morph into sorrow for the abandonment of what was. As if the physical presence could ever promise permanence of what has long disappeared anyway, old selves and old goals and old versions of our lives.

Perpetual flux. Quantum physics affirms it. Why do we resist it? Because of the way it reminds us of aging and the passage of time? Because of the strange sorrow that comes of sorting through old things, decade-old clothes that smell of outdated perfume and expired paramours and the knotty whiff of people and places so long gone?

The cable car keeps running back and forth, endlessly up and down California Street, on an endless track going nowhere. And the hair greys. And the joints ache. And people who were once present are now only apparitions. And the sky stays. And the light stays. And there is a sickness to all of that perpetuity that curdles the stomach and wets the cheeks.

It is harder than I expected.

Raw, adjective: 9. disagreeably damp and chilly, as the weather or air: a raw, foggy day at the beach.

Sheesh, what a busy time in the City right now: Fleet Week, Litquake, Italian Heritage Festival, Oracle Convention. Let's just say it's hell getting a cab.

Much afoot here in spite of the cold and the chill; the weather dudes are calling for a big winter storm system to hit this evening, and while of course that's very relative - a joke of a little wind and rain compared to what most of you call "winter" - it'll mean grey and wet for the next few days. I like. Feels like autumn.

Been on a serious raw stretch for the last week, 100% gluten-sugar-dairy-free, which has naturally meant mad energy, glowing skin and otherworldly placidness. The revelation of this latest bonanza has been the Go Hunza* Raw Pecan Pie. It's obscenely overpriced, at $4.99 a pop, but it's also obscenely delicious. I never thought I'd be able to forget the culinary bliss that is the traditional cinnamon roll, but these totally unprocessed raw approximations are dead ringers for the heavy old soppy cinnamon bun that sticks to your teeth and then your gut.

Ingredients: pecans, dates, almonds, agave, apricot kernels, cinnamon, himalayan salt & vanilla.

You'll note the lack of sugar. Key. The Chron ran another scathing anti-sugar article yesterday. It's worth a read for a reminder of WHY THE HELL DO WE PUT THIS SHIT IN OUR BODIES? Seems to me it's less a matter of moderation and more a matter of just cutting it out completely. Really not worth the taste, when bad skin, depleted energy and mood swings are the trade-off.

Experts Set Sugar Guidelines to Fight Obesity (SFGate)

*Just make sure not to enter your email address if you check out the Go Hunza website. I made that mistake and now am the lucky recipient of approx. 82 Viagra and penis-enlargement emails every day. Sigh.

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

Last night I saw the new French film, Coco Avant Chanel. The morning after, I still feel steeped in little black dresses, fake pearls, Alexander Desplat's melancholy score, and Audrey Tautou's dark sad eyes.

Didn't expect anything from it in the way of revelation, certainly nothing approaching social commentary, and was surprised to find both in this ostensibly run-of-the-mill biopic. Chanel's life was tragic and charmed, her style a product of her no-nonsense sensibility, her unapologetic unsentimentality, and her practical eye for found art.

Naturally, I enjoyed the period aesthetics, the austerity, the flapper bobs, the minimalism; but I was also surprisingly taken by the nuanced portrayals of Chanel's career-enhancing love affairs, and the ways in which she was able to make a career out of her craft, applying her innate intuitive senses of style and of self toward a self-sustaining artistic profession as a woman in the 1920s and beyond. (Not to mention the melancholy portrait of a doomed love affair that endured and yet, was not meant to be.)

Read Mick LaSalle's Chron review here; then traipse over to the Guardian for a more disturbing look at the conveniently-untold story of Chanel's Nazi love affairs. (Erghh - that's awkward.)

Coco Meets Her Match in Tautou (SFGate)
Coco Chanel: Enduring Style, Fairytale Story - Just Don't Mention the Nazi Lover (Guardian)

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

I've rediscovered pin curls.

You know what I'm talking about. That vintage/retro look sported by stylish dames from the 1920s on, but particularly in the 1940s and 1950s. All those old photos of women with their curls wrapped up in a scarf and tied in a knot on top of their head? Yeah. They were waiting for their pin curls to dry.

A mother of a friend taught me how to do these on my own [boring, straight, thin, mousy] hair back in like 1995 on some dance line trip, and since then, I've fallen back on the natural boingy-boing method for theater productions and costuming. It's amazing what you can do with just a little damp hair, a few bobby pins, and a couple of hours.

Last week I was headed to a show and wanted something wild(er), so I grabbed my box o' pins and wrapped up my limp hair. Within an hour: immediate personality! Have been doing pin curls nearly every day since. And it's ever-so-much more fun than the usual blah crap.

Google it up for any number of instructions on how to do pin curls; they're incredibly easy, much easier than any of the directions would have you believe. And then revel in shaking out your Rita Hayworth vintage movie star curls. They'll last all day.

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

Ok. Interested to hear your thoughts on this whole David Letterman thing. I, for one, can't be bothered with all the media fallout and accompanying drama.

Letterman always struck me as comfortably iconoclastic. Married late, after being partnered for 20-odd years; had a kid out of wedlock a few years prior to that; remained his acerbic self and just kind of did his own thing. I can respect that. Always have.

So all of these cultural commentators are talking about the "power dynamics" implicit in his romantic liaisons and how "sexual harassment" was potentially involved and will he get fired? and blah blah blah. And I don't know exactly why, but I. Don't. Care. People have flings. Stop acting like it's an aberration. Long-term sexual monogamy is unrealistic and unsustainable. It's not a power thing or a coercion thing or some big dramatic hoo-hah. It's a matter of two people being attracted to one another and acting on it and Dave wasn't even necessarily in a closed relationship (do any of us really know the intricacies of his arrangement with Regina?) and that's life, my friends, and maybe this, along with the John Edwards scandal and the John Ensign stuff and blah-di-blah is just more and more evidence that our cultural model of long-term sexual monogamy is obsolete. Hmmm? (Have you seen Mad Men? There was no golden era of monogamy. This is no modern development. People were cheating on their spouses hundreds of years and myriads of cultures ago. And isn't it about time that we separate the biological urge to copulate from the admittedly very necessary socio-economic unit that is the nuclear family based in long-term partnership? Why can't we have both? Is sexual monogamy really so intrinsic to the successful stand-alone economic unit that raises the next generation while providing a realistic semblance of tribal structure for children and a means of caring for the elderly?)

That said, there's also this very irritating interview over at Salon right now with the authors of a new book on why women have sex, who have purportedly done all this revelatory research to answer that question. The article reads very generically, I have to say; I didn't find anything there that I haven't read a million times before, and the whole thing left me with a sour taste in my mouth, particularly the bit about how hookup culture ostensibly looks consistent across gender lines but maybe it's really about women having someone to call when they need a lightbulb changed. Ahem. Excuse me? What planet are you from?

Read the article. Not sure why it rubbed me the wrong way, but I guess I'm just tired of these attempts to explain culturally-constructed, complex sexual behavior. It's not all biology, it's not all culture, it's a messy mix of the two, and that's why we end up with drama like Dave's: because we try to impose socially-constructed frameworks on biologically-ancient drives.

And that is all I have to say about that.

Why Do Women Have Sex? (Salon)

Raw, adjective: 1. uncooked, as articles of food: a raw carrot.

Bundt Cake Saturday! On Friday.

Morning: bright
Mood: determined
Music: Verdi

Last night I spent a few charmed hours at the opera house for the SF Opera's Il Trovatore. Anvils hammering, gypsies spinning, a few bare chests strutting, and a rotating stage - the same one used a few years ago for their Barber of Seville. Long, but nice.

First weekend of October already, and things are afoot. Burbling. Apples are back in season, have been for a few weeks now, which means I've been pretty much living on them. Discovered the tangy revelation that is the honeycrisp apple a few weeks ago via a characteristically overpriced display at Whole Foods, and a large portion of my paycheck has been funneled that way since. Organic, Washington-grown, crispy, fantastic. You'll never look at a Fuji or a Braeburn again after trying one of these guys.

So I had a stash of honeycrisps in my fridge and not a lot of time to plan a recipe last weekend. The result? This pseudo-original creation that melds some of the good fall flavors out there right now. I tossed in two of my favorite fruits, added a few old reliable spices, and came up with this

CRAN-APPLE SPICE BUNDT CAKE

Easy, quick, seasonal. Delish.

INGREDIENTS

1 yellow cake mix
1 box instant vanilla pudding
4 eggs
1 container vanilla yogurt
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup water
1/2 teas all spice
1/2 teas cinnamon
Pinch nutmeg
Pinch cloves
1 honeycrisp apple, diced
6 oz dried cranberries

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees; grease and flour your bundt pan. In a large bowl, mix together cake mix, pudding, eggs, yogurt, oil, water, and spices. Beat with electric mixer for 2 minutes until well-mixed. Chop up your apple into small pieces (leaving the peel on); fold chopped apple and cranberries into batter and stir until decently-mixed. Pour batter into prepared bundt pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool for 10 minutes in pan; invert on wire rack and cool completely.

Most recipes using apples will recommend that you peel the apple. I say: fuck that. Leave the peel on for added color and crunch, not mention a little extra fiber. It'll save you a lot of time and effort, as well.

I intended to add ginger, too, but couldn't find mine, so went without. Trust your intuition on this and run with your favorite spices (or toasted nuts, as well). You can't really go wrong.

You can easily get away with just some powdered sugar to finish this cake. I went the other route, being short on time, and drizzled some warm cream cheese frosting on top. Finished it with a few clippings from the bouquet of Cosmos on the coffee table.

And voila. There's your spice cake. Happy fall.

Raw, adjective: 9. disagreeably damp and chilly, as the weather or air: a raw, foggy day at the beach.

Monday Morning Stream of Consciousness

I can't believe how much people can talk about themselves.
And for how long.
Ceaselessly.
Obliviously.
Saying nothing.

The notion of urban anonymity is a myth.
It's just an organic balance of blending quietly into the crowd and being called out on the sidewalk on a Monday morning in your hoodie and hangover hat. (Thanks, Ali.)
The world is small. (Good thing I brushed my teeth.)
And any neighborhood can feel like Mr. Rogers' when you've been there long enough.

People are exhausting.

Mad Men is one of the more excellent discoveries I've had of late. Smart, sorrowful, sharp, stylish. I understand why so many are hooked. Add me to the list.

Organic Honey Crisp apples for the win.

How do you read and write if you have children? How do you have any mental space at all when you have small creatures tugging at you and needing you from the moment you walk in the door? How does anyone ever produce anything creative in that context?

Avocado-cheddar-salsa omelet, hello.

It's astonishing and vaguely depressing how on autumn Saturdays my Facebook news stream is completely dominated by old NE acquaintances commenting/posting/lamenting/celebrating about Nebraska football. Sigh. (Isn't there more?) Amazing how you can not live somewhere for, like, 12 years and still find this old regional subculture thrust in your face, just like you're there in Lincoln and the streets are quiet and the stores are empty because everyone's wearing NE red and watching the game.

(I repeat: the world is small. And football is the unifying factor in all of it, it seems. Just ask the Cal fans, or the Penn State fans, or the crushed 49ers fans, from last weekend.)

There is so very much more world out there than we will ever see. Or can.

Neon green frosting, whether used to approximate leaves or not, is totally inappropriate.
As is smiling at un-smiley moments.
(Seriousness is underrated as an aphrodisiac.)

It's remarkable how tiny personal qualities can make you flush with a crush on an unknowing person. Witness this dude at the bar the other day, who was

1. dining solo (hot)
2. eating a veggie burger (hot)
3. wearing a Stanford gymnastics shirt (hot)
4. reading a dusty old book on art history (hot)
5. ostensibly straight, and floppy-haired (hot)
   

You can learn a lot about someone just by paying attention.

Browsing at the little mom-and-pop bakery on Polk St. this morning, I scanned their list of available cakes, and then saw, in the far bottom left corner, in tiny italics: gay-owned bakery. Why the strange stealth placement? Love the shout-out to solidarity. All of our purchases are political. Support the businesses that endorse the values you share.

Did Berlusconi really call Barack and Michelle "tanned?"

It's grey and cool here today and I'm glad.

God I have a lot of bundts to blog.

Who are these Kardashian people with the trashy "K" names and the bad hair and why are we paying attention to them?

Raw, adjective: 1. uncooked, as articles of food: a raw carrot.

"Eating is an agricultural act."
~ Wendell Berry, by way of Michael Pollan

Excellent short piece by Michael Pollan in yesterday's Insight section. MP touches on the post-1970s history of the present-day food movement (symbolized in part by Michelle O's White House vegetable garden), the politics of sustainability, his own "lover's quarrel" with nature, and the role of Thoreauvian wildness in all of this. You'll find throwbacks to many of the names you've come to associate with the early movement: Frances Moore Lappe, Wendell Berry, etc.

Good shit. Read it.

Eating is an Agricultural Act (SFGate)