Did  you miss National Bike to Work Week? No problem.

Steve Zdroik is pinch hitting for Slow Dude and has a few thoughts on two-wheel adventures.

I spent the weekend in San Francisco, one of the most urban environs in our country.  I arrived back in my semi-suburban Glendale home, where I was forced to get in my car and drive to a doctor’s appointment on Monday morning before driving to work, which is actually only two miles from my home. While on the 101 freeway in Studio City, I saw a “Bike to Work Week” message flashing on the freeway sign that’s usually reserved for child abductions and sig alerts. How absolutely odd! Hmm, is it just me or have the out-of-control environmentally aware Northern Californians taken over our precious Southern Californian freeway signs? Don’t they realize these billboards are to alert drivers to approaching highway problems, not to coax them off the highway and onto self powered vehicles pulsing through surface streets?

A weekend in San Francisco gives one a fresh perspective on city living. San Francisco was essentially in full swing before the advent of the automobile, and then morphed to accompany the auto sometime after the 1906 earthquake and fire leveled half the city. They seem to deal with pedestrians, bicycles, busses, trolleys, cable cars, cabs, and trains better than most places. But ironically, San Francisco’s suburbs — of which there are MANY– seem to almost completely rely on the auto like every other American town.  I wonder if Bay Area suburbanites entering “The City,” suddenly view their autos as a  liability, while they try to navigate narrow streets, limited parking, and stand-still traffic at all hours of the day.

On past visits to San Francisco, I’ve had the “exciting” experience of bicycling from Union Square to Golden Gate park, up Market Street where bicycle messengers regard slow moving tourists as an obstacle, and cabbies give the minimum amount of room possible to bicyclists. I’ve had the wonderful pleasure of bicycling through the park on Sundays when the main thoroughfare is closed to traffic, and the residents of the city take over different sections of the park. They even offer free big band dance lessons in one area.

I’ve bicycled from the Embarcadero through the Marina over the Golden Gate bridge, through Saulsalito on the wonderful bike bath that skirts the bay all the way to Tiburon, and then took the ferry back to the city. There’s nothing as pleasurable to me as seeing the sights from a bicycle. One does not soak up the ambiance of a place in the same way when they view it through a car window or tour bus. They miss the smells and the nuances of the place.

I also wonder if people commuting to work every day in their cars would have a different perspective if they bicycled to work–at least those who live, say, less than five miles from their place of employment, that is.

The Los Angeles basin has one of  the world’s most perfect climates for bicycling, but some of the most hostile terrain. Whether it’s hills or horrendous traffic with no bike lanes, Angelenos like myself who venture into the fray are taking a definite risk. Even in the far-flung suburbs, I hear bicycling is no less safe. Most Southern California communities simply have put no thought into being bicycle and pedestrian friendly. We have wide roads and scary busy intersections. Ever since I purchased a home only two miles from my place of employment, though, I’ve often enjoyed the experience of taking my bicycle to work. Granted, I’m also lucky enough to have a commute that involves only one major intersection, and a series of tree-lined, fairly quiet residential streets that I’m able to bicycle down to and from my place of employment, which is, as I’ve said, a rarity in the L.A. area. But, I like others, find myself getting lazy on a day-to-day basis, and more often than not I tend to favor my four wheels over two.

Last week I promised myself I would stay on my bicycle everyday and I did it. Hopefully I set a good example for those whizzing by me. Maybe I even caused some to wonder if a middle aged chap such as myself could do it, maybe they could too!

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Desperate Animal Situation

An update from the SFV crisis

By Maryann Hammers

Last week, I told you about animals in the SFV that need help. I know you care, so I thought I’d offer a status update. Bottom line: Many, many, adoptable, healthy animals still need your help – NOW. Here’s the update from a local animal activist:

 

Many animals have been taken in by local rescues. We have also received generous donations of Frontline Plus so all the animals remaining on the property have been treated for ticks and fleas. But unfortunately there are 100 animals still in jeopardy of being destroyed at a city shelter.

On June 11th the court proceedings related to the foreclosure of this property will be judged. The court may require the animals be surrendered to animal control immediately. More than 100 animals must be relocated before that date.

CATS - Most of the remaining cat population are friendly, HIGHLY adoptable, and quite healthy considering the circumstances. Many are really desirable breeds: Siamese, Bobtails, American Curls, Orange Tabbies, and more! Can you take a cat? Do you know someone who can? Click here for photos of cats still in need.

DOGS - The small dogs have been placed into rescues or adopted, but there are a couple of medium and about three dozen large dogs that still need help! There are six Rotties or ROTTIE mixes, a purebred SIBERIAN HUSKY, a purebred DALMATIAN, several PITS and Pit mixes, a few TERRIER mixes, and more! Click here to see photos of the dogs in need.

These animals are living on borrowed time. Animals need foster homes, permanent homes, and donations. Transportation will be provided.

If you can help or if you have questions, please email julianne1030@peoplepc.com or call 323-718-1648.

 

Maryann Hammers is an animal lover, cat owner and freelance health and travel writer.

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Farm Fresh Produce Delivered to You

Last year when I was trying to find someone who delivered farm-fresh produce on an ongoing basis, I came up empty. I knew that nationwide CSAs (community supported agriculture) and other farm produce delivery services were becoming very popular. And, yet, here we were in Ventura County, land of bountiful farms, and nobody knew anything about them. I even asked the women of my yogamoms playgroup, who typically know everything, and still no resources. Tanya Fox, Ex/Urb’s events contributor, who we might now call St. Tanya, has just given me the list below. Of course, this is for LA/Ventura County/Santa Barbara. For other areas check out  Local Harvest, an organization that lists many CSAs nationwide.

The outlets below offer different types of programs. Farmer Fresh To You (the one I just signed up for) scouts various local farmers markets and delivers the best organic fruits and/or vegetables in mini, small, medium or large quantities. Underwood Family Farms and John Givens both grow their own food and offer either delivery (in certain areas) or pickup.

Farmer Fresh To You

Farmer Fresh to You is based in Camarillo but delivers from Sherman Oaks out. The service is the brainchild of two cool local moms who love organic produce. They shop the Santa Monica farmer’s market, Thousand Oaks and elsewhere.

Underwood Family Farms (CSA)

Underwood is based in Moorpark but offers delivery programs for individuals and various businesses in Los Angeles and Ventura County. If you work for a large company and want a CSA for employees, they may be a good bet.

John Givens Farm of Santa Barbara (CSA)

Organic produce delivered in and around Santa Barbara.

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Art Or Porn?

Kinsey Parses the difference

By Brian Alexander

Is it porn or is it art? Or could it be art that also happens to be porn? What if it’s abstract and barely recognizable as anything having to do with sex, but the title uses the word “tit”? (Insert seventh-grade boy giggle here…)

I’ve been writing about sex for awhile now and still don’t have any answers to these questions, at least no answers that don’t sound like some convoluted undergraduate philosophy course. That’s dangerous because aside from one art history class in which I spent two semesters looking at slides of ancient Greek statues, the windows in Chartres cathedral, and post-modern drip paintings, my education in visual aesthetics came entirely from what I could learn by watching late night reruns of the Honeymooners and from Playboy.

So I was especially happy to talk to art historian and museum curator Jennifer Cahn. Cahn was given the enviable task of selecting works of art for the fourth annual Juried Art Show at the Kinsey Institute (yes, the sex research outfit) which starts May 29 on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington.

Cahn claims no special expertise in the art of sexuality or in erotic art or in porn. She knows her art, but she comes to the special purpose of the Kinsey show with the eyes of an outsider. So when she was confronted with 700 entries — the most ever for the show — and asked to pair that down to a more manageable number based on her own criteria, how did she do it?

“I had no limitations imposed by Kinsey,” she told me. “I reveled in that.” As the curator for the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art, in Texas, she does have restrictions often imposed by parents of the school students who tour the museum so the freedom to choose art depicting sexuality was freeing. “I would look at a picture and fantasize what would happen if I showed that here,” she said of her home base, “and how quickly I would lose my job. But to me there was something daring about putting those inner thoughts and desires and anger out in a visual form that I really enjoyed.”

Ultimately, though, she had to choose and she confessed that her criteria were necessarily subjective. Art that seemed commercial, slick, tended to slip into porn in her judgment.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time with people who work in the “adult” industry in the great Los Angeles exurb, and not one of them has ever said they were making art. They’re trying to make a buck. Some try to do it with more craftsmanship than others and skill ranges from expert to woeful, but nobody says they make art. On the other hand, I have seen performance artists doing exactly the same things you can see in your average porn movie — and more — and they say they are making art.

Though I can’t say with any real authority if they are correct, I do think it might be helpful if those school kids who go to Cahn’s museum in Texas could see some art that deals with the erotic and with sexuality. That way, maybe when they grow up, they’ll be better equipped to make the distinctions.

Want to know more about art and sex? Read Brian Alexander’s recent MSNBC Sexploration column.

Brian Alexander is the author of America Unzipped. Looking for America Unzipped? Great! Ex/Urb supports independent bookstores. To find one (hopefully) near you check out the American Booksellers Association store directory.

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Don’t Buy Your Next Olive Oil Until You Read this!

Getting down and dirty in Puglia

By Victoria Abbott Riccardi

A few months back I was invited to Puglia to learn about olive oil. Puglia, in case you’re wondering, is the heel of Italy’s boot. The folks at the Italian Trade Commission in Manhattan invited me on this trip. Years ago, when I was writing a story on broccoli rabe for The Boston Globe, I called the Commission to find out more about the vegetable—was it in the broccoli family, the cabbage family, or some other family? 

“Well, I can’t tell you anything about broccoli rabe,” said a very nice woman, “but I can tell you we have a trip to Sicily coming up to learn about the region’s oil. How’d you like to go?” You can guess what I said. 

Ten years later, the Commission invited me to Puglia to learn about this region’s oil too. It was a fun, tasty, and highly informative trip. Not only did I learn a lot about Italian olive oil, but I learned some dirty little secrets about the industry. 

Okay, first the facts, some of which you may know. When shopping for olive oil, you always want to buy Extra-virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) and, ideally, cold pressed. Here is why. Extra-virgin olive oil is the gorgeous, green goo you get when the olives are pressed for the first time. Since olives dislike heat when being pressed, you want your oil to have been cold pressed, which means there was no heat involved when the olives were squeezed, either in an old-fashioned press (where the olives are sandwiched between two rope-like rounds) or in a metal vat with a granite grinding stone (granite never gets hot). This first cold pressing releases a rich, grassy oil that is loaded, and I mean loaded, with nutrients and disease-fighting compounds, including antioxidants (which fight cancer). So this is the stuff you want.

 

 

Second, the color of the olive oil means nothing! Usually EVOO ranges in color from chartreuse to yellow-green. These variations merely indicate the skin color of the types of olives that were pressed. 

Finally, there are three things that can ruin olive oil—sunlight, oxygen, and heat. They all can turn your oil rancid, resulting in an “off” odor and bitter taste. To avoid sunlight and heat, store your olive oil in a dark, cool place, such as a cupboard in a pantry, and not on top of your stove. To avoid oxidation, buy your EVOO in small bottles, so you can use it up and replace it every month or so.

Now, here’s the down and dirty. Italy does not produce enough olives for all the olive oil it exports. Hmmmm. That means lots of olive oil from Italy is blended with—gasp—oils from other countries! The most common ones are Tunisia, Greece, and Spain, all of which produce excellent olive oil, but it’s not Italian. When you are paying big bucks for a 100 percent Italian olive oil, you want just that. Thus, check the label to make sure the oil is made from olives grown and pressed in Italy. Some sneaky manufactures sell “Italian” olive oil made entirely from olives grown outside Italy. They get away with this by bottling the foreign oil in Italy, so they can say on the label that it’s “oil from Italy.” 

Something else you should know—after that first lovely pressing, the remaining gook (mashed olives and pits) is used again. Companies press it a second, third, and maybe even fourth time, using chemicals (solvents) to extract lower quality oil. You should avoid this stuff.  

So what was Puglia like? Sumptuous. In addition to its rugged coastline dotted with fishing villages, the inland area has a rustic feel and abounds with olive trees and trulli, ancient, conical dwellings that are unique to the region. Resembling upside down ice cream cones, they are topped with crosses and other symbols related to Christian, primitive, and magic traditions.

 

 

And the food—swoon! Because so much of Puglia lies along the coast, seafood also stars in many dishes—garlicky baked mussels, fried sardines with lemon, and pasta with shrimp, chickpeas, and clams. Further inland, you’ll find lots of pork, beans, and wild greens. Orecchiette (priest’s caps) is the region’s traditional pasta shape and usually arrives sauced with olive oil, garlic, hot peppers, anchovies and my little friend broccoli rabe (who is in the cabbage and turnip family, by the way). Toasted breadcrumbs, or poor man’s cheese, top many pasta dishes, since Puglia historically was so impoverished. And, velvety Puglian olive oil moistens and flavors almost every dish in the region. The oil is considered so smooth and elegant, in fact, it’s often sent to other parts of Italy to blend with more prickly tasting oils to soften them out. To give you a taste of the region, here is a traditional Puglian pasta dish from my travels…

 

Orecchiette With Broccoli Rabe

Serves 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some people say you shouldn’t cook with extra-virgin olive oil. This is not true. In Italy everyone cooks with EVOO, choosing bold tasting oils for sautéing and more delicate EVOO for dressing vegetables and fish. 

 

 

1 pound broccoli rabe, ends trimmed, greens rinsed and chopped

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil 

6 anchovies rolled around capers

1/4 teaspoon hot pepper flakes

4 cloves garlic, minced

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 pound orecchiette pasta

 

1. Place a large pot of water for cooking the pasta over high heat. Fill a large saucepan with 2 inches of water and bring to a boil. Add the broccoli rabe to the saucepan. When the water returns to a boil, cover, and cook the broccoli rabe over medium-high heat for 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain.

2. Place the same large saucepan you used to cook the broccoli rabe over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil, anchovies, and hot pepper flakes. Cook the anchovies, crushing them with a wooden spoon, until they sort of “melt” into the oil. Add the cooked broccoli rabe and garlic. Saute the mixture for 5 to 6 minutes, or until broccoli rabe is tender and dark green. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Add the orecchiette to the boiling water, along with a generous pinch of salt. Cook the pasta, according to package directions, until al dente, about 8 minutes. Drain the pasta and stir it into the broccoli rabe mixture. To serve, portion the orecchiette mixture onto four pasta plates and serve with toasted bread crumbs (or grated Pecorino Romano cheese). 

Enjoy!

 

Victoria Abbott Riccardi is author of Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto (Broadway Books, 2003) and a freelance food and travel writer.

Looking for Victoria Abbott Riccardi’s Untangling My Chopsticks? Great! Exurb supports independent bookstores. To find one (hopefully) near you check out the American Booksellers Association  store directory.       

 

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