Heady thoughts: comfort me with milk n' cherries
remember the dessert Cherries Jubilee? I loved the name Cherries Jubilee more than the dessert, which was always something from canned overtly syrupy sweet cherries.
Cherries Jubilee reminds me of summertime growing up in California. When I was a little older we moved from the Mission District to the 'burbs, a neighborhood that had waterfront canals that was great to for sail boating. I grew up sailing those tiny little sunfish sailboats practically everyday after school. We lived very close to the San Francisco Bay and I recall the winds would strike up often around two o'clock in the afternoon and sometimes even sooner. Now that I think about it, my first bikini had cherries all over....... 
self~portrait: me at the beach last week @surf camp with the munchkins.
We lived in northeast Ohio several years ago for about 5 years. The hardest part for me was not being near the ocean.
It was actually ~ bizarrely devastating. I was at such a loss, as we were quite near farm country and the Amish heartland. Which in itself is quite lovely, but I was longing to return to submerge myself in saltwater.
I remember when we lived there I ran into someone that had never seen an Asian person before, and they really thought I was Mexican. He started speaking to me in Spanish, and left annoyed because I didn't respond back in Spanish. Well I was flattered about the Latina link since I lived in the 'hood (à la Mission!).
A few times we'd run into strangers that asked if my husband (who's a white guy) and I met during the war........the war? The elderly stranger mentioned something about the Cold War era and walked away. The Cold War? Was I born yet? Was he talkin' like McCarthy and like REDS, like Warren Beatty + Annette Bening......no that was Diane Keaton, right?
Aka as if I were on mail order or perhaps a war bride.
sea foam ~ take me away......
We're prepping to leave for vacation to southern California soon. We have family still out in SoCal and the City (San Francisco Bay Area). We have been there often with the munchkins. They're a bit older now and very excited about their new sense of matured reality and looking forward to visiting my homeland.
I told them out the beaches in SoCal and we intend to hit a handful of my favorites. I want them to see the sun set over the ocean. We'll be renting out surfboards so they can experience the Pacific Coast waves vs. the Atlantic.
I'll take them to my favorite beaches in Malibu; like Zuma and Nicholas Canyon to watch the well accomplished surfers strut their stuff in between jagged rocks and the gritty ocean bottom.
May show them some of my old haunts when I was a young thing in my twenties trying to break into showbiz. I mentioned this to a friend of mine and she said (btw, she's a mother too), "So you're going to take your kids to show them where you used to get drunk and party?"
Oh the 19eighties.
Also, my kids want me to coach them to be actors and musicians.
They WANT to go to Hollywood and become stars.
I said no.
Not until your 50.
freshly frothed almond milk. Yes almond milk! I have never been a dairy milk drinker, but with this new thing I've been on I noticed almond milk comes in handy, for guess what......making ice cream.
So far I have made strawberry ice cream, vanilla ice cream, even chocolate pudding and chocolate torte with almond milk. It's also minus the milk, minus anything from a cow really. Thus ample palette time for indulgence without adding to the waistline.
Easy Almond Milk
©2008 recipe methodry + words Ingar Brunnett, TasteMemory.com
2 cups of raw almonds, soaked in filtered water overnight in the fridge
4 to 6 cups of filtered water
Rinse and drain the soaked almonds.
Put almonds in blender with filtered water.
Just *whhhrrrrr* away in the blender. Almonds will become eensy teeny weeny granules and the water will become milky white n' frothy.
Blend away about 1 to 3 minutes depending on your blender until totally milky like.
I use a hand held sifter with a fine mesh screen to drain the milk through into another container like a glass pitcher. Do a little at a time as the almond grounds will gather into the basket of the mesh screen. With clean hands, I press the milk through the grounds. Save the almond grounds in another container to make almond pate with fresh basil, parsley, sorrel + sun kissed olives (upcoming post!).
Repeat milking method.
Cover and store milk + almond grounds in refrigerator.
Can hang well via fridge for about three days.
By the way, Happy 4th everyone. There's supposed to be a little bit of red, white and blue in this post.
The pict of ocean water was supposed to be blue.......but the ocean water in NE Florida is not blue......so it came out looking grey.
Imagine blue.
