Short walks in the Big Bear Valley

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We’re not crazy climbers or munro baggers like quite a lot of people we know, but we enjoy walking. The longer the better, so long as there is chocolate in the bag. And while there are many possible hikes around LA, the ones we prefer were shut due to the wildfires last autumn, and have stayed closed because of potential mudslides. Also, while it may occasionally snow (or, more accurately, hail) in Malibu, it’s unlikely to stay on the ground. So, for some winter walking, we had to head to the mountains. The San Bernadino Mountains. More specifically, Big Bear Valley.

Getting out of LA is one of these things you have to do after you’ve had a serious breakfast, for you never know how long you’re going to be stuck in traffic. Especially when on a holiday weekend. Getting out of the lab is even harder when your boss has forgotten that you’re taking a long weekend and arranges for lab meeting on the morning you’ve planned to leave. Kicking him in the heid doesn’t seem to be an acceptable practice here, but I was sorely tempted. But, we got lucky and no one else seemed to have Martin Luther King day off, and the 10 was remarkably clear:

Choices, choices
The 10. Jam-free.

We stayed in a lovely cabin about 20 min downhill of Big Bear Lake. I quite like the all-mod-cons cabins of California. Some will pff and scorn the decadence of hot running water and warm, raised beds of our choices, preferring to huddle together in 2-man tents with all-season sleeping bags that smell like you forgot to air them since your last camping trip, which you probably did. I laugh. And get out my mug of hot chocolate and let my walked-out legs relax in a warm bubbly bath. The major selling point of the Cienaga Creek cabins was access to dog-friendly trails on the property. Second-highest on the list of amenities that swung favour its way was the in-room jacuzzi. The most awesome1 thing about the cabins we have stayed in to date has been the hot tub. There really is nothing better than having a good long soak after a day of running about in the woods2. And the third selling point for me: a swing. All cabins should have a swing. If not, at least a hammock.

Having a nice cabin to retire to at the end of the day allowed us the luxury of getting dirty, muddy, slushy on the trails. And so we did. The cabins were surrounded by acres of forest, some of which hooked up with the Pacific Crest Trail. If you’ve ever read Bill Bryson’s Appalachian adventures or any account of hiking American long-ass trails, you’ll understand when I tell you I was on the constant lookout for bears. But in the end, tigers were all we came across3. Around Big Bear Lake were littered a dozen or more Forestry-managed trails. Walking paradise…

And they're off
Butt view

shiva, eat your heart out three-headed monster shadow ballet
shiva monster pas de deux

i heard something
Chase?

There they pose again
Top of the Cougar Crest Trail

Negotiating
Negotiation

Snowchild
Snowchild

P and D
Alpine Pedal Path (pedals not included)

Tundra
Lakeside tundra

Flare
Flaring up

Many more photos here. But no answers to life, the universe or anything.

1 If I may be permitted Californisms on this weblog.

2 I shall save photos of semi-naked people swanning about in hot tubs for a naturist site instead. I’ve already had to scour my eyes out this week.

3 Dog anecdote. First night. It’s dark, it’s 5 deg under, we both have frozen butts and she’s refusing to “go to toilet”. We’re headed back in when we hear the most ferocious roar. It’s blood-curdling. Evil in its intent. It means: “Prey. This is all the warning you will get. I’m coming for you.” It repeats several times. The dog pisses herself. Literally.4.

4 I find out later that there are lions, tigers and bears half a mile from our cabin.

Almost oatcakes

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One of the things I missed the most on arrival in LA too-many-years-ago-now were oatcakes. Just plain old oatcakes.

[Backstory. Ignore and skip down a page for photo and recipe]

About 5 years ago, in a spurt of healthiness (i.e. I felt like creeaap and decided to do something about it), I caved in and consulted a nutritionist, who spotted a hole in my daily diet: the lack of regular breakfasts. This had been a perennial problem since childhood. There are only so many bowls of cereal and slices of toast I can stomach before the taste buds go into meltdown and my tongue seizes up and refuses to help me swallow any more. Growing up in Asia, there were options for the weekend: char siew bao, dao huey, dao suang, roti pratha, nasi lemak, kaya on plastic bread, dim sum; all usually eaten at our local wet market or kopi diam. These weekend breakfasts made jam on toast bearable for the other 5 days of the week; almost.

As an undergrad, I just never woke up early enough to have any breakfasts, and pretty much survived through lectures on water until that mid-morning pint. Ha! Only kidding; almost. As a post-grad, I lived on mid-morning ramen. The kind you stick in a bowl and pour hot water over. ‘Nuff said; I don’t eat that anymore; almost. And, more recently, as a post-doc, I’ve had a slightly more stable life with very slightly more regular hours (as in I get home before midnight almost 300-and-something days of the year), and hence have lost the ability to survive on one or two meals a day.

Oat porridge was what the nutritionist recommended. (Yes, the nostalgia tangent is finished with for now.) And failing porridge, at least 3 oatcakes, preferably slathered with some nut butter. Nairns and Patersons sales shot up that weekend. And we became regular customers of the cut-oats stall at Edinburgh’s twa-weekly Farmers Market. Nut butters since tried have included cashew (meh), hazelnut (not as good as Nutella), almond (ok, but not quite right) and peanut (it’s always the one worst for you that tastes the best). But I could eat oatcakes plain.

So, it was a bit of a shock to the system to find that oatcakes were not stocked in every corner shop, delicatessen and supermarket in LA. They’re endemic not just in Scotland; my parents find them with no problem in Singapore. The only places within walking distance or on a bus route that stocked Walkers oatcakes were Cost Plus World Market (one on Westwood Blvd) and Monsieur Marcel at the Third and Fairfax Farmers Market. Imagine going to a French store to buy Scottish oatcakes! At $6+ a box! Oh, the horror! Of course, now you can get blahdy Nairns oatcakes in Whole Foods, but that was nae use when I was going through cold turkey, now was it?

Anythehoo, the whole point of this blether was to announce that I’ve finally tried out a recipe for an oatcake-ish end-product that I can live with and not be constantly out of pocket to keep my stomach happy in the morning. It’s a classic back-of-packet recipe, off Arrowhead Mill’s Oat Flour. They’ve gone and called it a cheese bannock, which jars with my preconception of Selkirk bannocks, which are kind of like a giant fruit-but-unhealthy big bun thing from the Borders. Failing some misinterpretation of the recipe, I reckon the final product comes out more like cheesy oatcakes, or at least, the commercial oatcakes. Almost.

[/backstory. Sorry about the delay…]

Cheesy Almost-Oatcakes

Cheesy Oatcakes

Recipe (uses US cups)

  • 1 cup quick-cooking oats
  • 1 cup quick-cooking oats
  • 1 cup oat flour
  • 1/4 tsp sea salt
  • 1/4 tsp mustard powder (substituted with paprika and cayenne in this instance ‘cos P threw out the ancient handed-down-through-2-postdocs Coleman’s mustard powder)
  • 1/4 cup (equivalent of 4 tbsp) softened butter
  • 1 cup of grated sharp cheddar cheese (used Parmesan cheese in this instance ‘cos that’s all the fridge yielded)
  • 1/2 cup warm water
  1. Preheat oven to 200ºC (400ºF).
  2. Mix the oats, flour, salt and spices well.
  3. Then cut in the softened butter (I cheat and microwave it on defrost for 10-20 seconds) using a fork or a pastry cutter if your kitchen drawers are well-equipped1.
  4. Stir in the cheese. Add 1/2 cup warm water and mix, kneading when the dough gets stiff2.
  5. Divide the dough in two and roll each half into circles that are 1/4 inch thick.
  6. Transfer to a lightly greased baking tray. Cut each circle into 4 wedges (made 8 in one which gave a more manageable farl to handle).
  7. Bake for 20min at 200ºC (400ºF).
  8. Hide from oatcake thief. If you don’t, as soon as the oatcakes are cool enough to handle, they’ll disappear off the tray, never to be seen again. I pounced and got a photo of the 3 remaining farls out of 8 (above) just in time. Just wait till I find that oatcake thief… It’ll be the spatula for him/her…


1 There’s innuendo there for anyone who wants to see it.

2 See 1.

Max’s of Manila

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Photo- and grease-heavy post. Look away now if you’re on a diet, plan to go on a diet or have ever been on a diet.

The C/W mega-lab had its inaugural Cheap-and-Cheerful Dinner Club meeting this Sunday past at Max’s of Manila in Glendale. To which Chotda replied:

why

Why indeed? It came recommended by a friend of the organiser, and good words were said about its deep fried chicken by our very own Pinay expert, whose family hits the joint when the cravings kick in. We were warned that there isn’t much competition in terms of Filipino cuisine in LA-ish area, and the classic dishes could be somewhat lackadaisical. No matter. Apart from our very own Pinay expert (OVOPE), myself and another European-of-Pinay-descent, no one else at the table had anything to compare it to.

First impressions of the place were pretty good; they allowed us to sit at our long table even though we were half an hour early and half our party hadn’t arrived yet. I suspect this laxness resulted from a slower than usual evening. I’m reliably informed that it’s heaving on Fri/Sat nights, with the karaoke bar being exceptionally popular. On Sunday, the karaoke bar was taken up by the appropriately named Melodie’s birthday bash, which was a good thing given these labs’ propensity for bursting out into song. Enthusiastic, but tuneless in a couple of instances.

Kalamansi juice Banana Sauce

Righty ho, enough back story; now to the food. The drinks menu was short but tropical enough to amuse all: calamansi, mango, coconut, pineapple, guyabano (soursop to me, which I often mix up with custard apple/chirimoya – a sweeter cousin), and sago gulaman (which I now find too sweet, but would have fought off all-comers for as a child). All the fruit juices tasted as they should, but with a liberal hand on the sugar. I suspect these weren’t freshly squeezed, but waddya expect thousands of miles away from the fresh fruit? And as expected, the sago gulaman was ghastly sweet, which pleased its drinker no end. Not for drinking unless you’re a bit quirkier than quirk itself were the ubiquitous bottles of banana sauce instead of ketchup. I don’t understand the need for condiment manufacturers to colour their products some ghastly and unnatural shade, but E-number the otherwise innocuous banana sauce they did.

Lumpia

Without anyone else at the table willing to split some piggy snout (sisig) with me, we settled for lumpia. The “shanghai” version of ground pork was delivered in a cute fried pastry skin basket, but without the atchara I was expecting. Personally, I prefer the fresh lumpia with julienned hearts of palm and other fresh and crunchy veggies. Verdict: 2/5 – close but no cigar.

Max's Famous Fried Chicken

A much better impression was gained from the signature dish: deep deep deep fried chicken. Fried to crispy perfection on the outside, but still moist and lovely jubley on the inside. Two whole chooks for a table of 12 was about right. I don’t remember it arriving with any special sauce, but we probably all had it with lashings of banana sauce. Yum! Sweet banana-ness. The only thing tomato ketchup could have added was a hint of tartness, but we had other supplies of tart for the night. Verdict: 4/5 – whisky and a cigar.

Garlic rice

Garlic rice.Fried garlic in rice. ‘Nuff said. Verdict: 4/5 – whisky and a cigar with garlic on top.

Tamarind soup

Tamarind soup. Tart sour. Tongue scruncher. I think you have to like tamarind to like tamarind soup. And speaking as someone who does (this is an Asian woman thing), it was pretty good. Not too greasy, not too sour. A light broth with some vegetables thrown in for a touch of sweetness. OVOPE gave it a thumbs-up. Verdict: 3/5 – hits the spot.

Kare Kare

Kare-Kare, which is an oxtail stew made with a peanut base. While I like peanut-based sauces, sometimes it can get a bit too rich. This version was thick and rich and on top of all the other dishes, it was an over-kill. We should have ordered another light broth to counteract the deep-fried platters on the table, but the temptation of oxtail was too much for us. Perhaps we can try it again another time without grease-lined mouths. Verdict: 2/5 – a bit thick.

Chicken adobo

Chicken adobo. As one colleague put it, the simplest dish in the world to make. But little does he know, it takes more than a recipe to make it right. It’s all about matching the vinegar content to the salt and sweet, plus the chicken has to be cooked to fall-off-the-bone perfection. Best results come from years of cooking it and hence, years of complaints from your family until you get it right. This chicken adobo was OK, but I still hanker for the adobo of my childhood. Verdict: 2/5 – not left on the stove for long enough.

Crispy Pata

The outright winner of the evening: crispy pata. Pork knuckle deep fried to give a crispy yet chewy skin that hid succulent pork juiciness within. And as a bonus, the chewing around the jointed parts of the knuckle revealed mochi-like cartilage and fat that was good a several minutes of happy, contemplative chewing. While I’d like to say we cleaned the plate, there were only 5 of us able or willing to dig in. I think we gave a good account of ourselves (see evidence below). Verdict: 5/5 – was 4.5 but jumped up an extra half point because it looked so good that knuckle-sceptic, Mr P, was enticed into eating a hefty portion of it. Two drams of smoky whisky without a cigar indeed.

Crispy Pata. Done.

Besides, we had to leave some room for dessert. Choices weren’t many, but like the drinks menu, sufficiently Filipino to give us a taste of tropical flavour. There was plain ol’ ice cream, but in coconut and ube and Buko Pandan (lower photo of the two), which to me is chendol in disguise. But I think I prefer the buko pandan because it lacked the aduki/red beans that I’ve never fully enjoyed in my chendol. But anything with coconut milk in it has to be good. Both weigh in at 3/5 – tongue cleansers.

Ice cream
pandan something

And finally, the classic halo halo. So good they named it twice.

Halo-Halo by framboise, on Flickr

Overall normal person rating for Max’s of Manila: great for deep fried anything, might want to leave off the adobo and work on it at home, desserts best shared between friends.

D+P (what? drive on a crazy LA freeway?) verdict: We’ll go back for the crispy pata when we’re given the all-clear by the cardiologist. I dreamt of that crispy pata. Gnomed gnomed in my sleep and all…

Max’s of Manila – Glendale outpost
313W. Broadway Glendale
California 91204
(818) 637-7751

Here’s another thing to complain about, S’poreans

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Singapore: a clean, tropical island state that has strongly discouraged1 public performances of the fairly innocuous Complaints Choir (the original Birmingham version, in the home country of the bright sparks who thought it up-Helsinki and elsewhere in the world). (via the ever on-the-ball Elia Diodati)

Copied and pasted from the choir’s website, an explanation of the brouha from the choir’s point of view:

ATTENTION! UPDATE: “All public performances of the Complaints Choir of Singapore have been cancelled. The Singaporean authorities did not want to issue a permission for public performances if foreign choir members wouldn’t leave the choir. The choir has few members who are permanently living in Singapore but who are not Citizens. The Malaysian born choir conductor and the artists Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen weren´t given a permission to perform either.

The choir decided that they did not want to perform under these circumstances and hence all public performances were cancelled.

Complaints Choir is a project, where people are invited to complain about anything they want to and sing the complaints out with fellow complainers. The individual complaints are transformed into a cheerful choir song within a workshop process, which unites participants coming from different backgrounds.

The humorous complaints choir performances have been popular all over the world. This is the first time the Complaints Choir project created negative attention due to the reactions of authorities.

The lyrics contain mostly daily irritations like “People put on fake accents to sound posh” and “My neighbour sings KTV all night”. In the chorus the choir sings: “What’s wrong with Singapore, loosing always makes me feel so sore, cause if you are not the best then you are just one of the rest. Oh my, oh Singapore, what exactly are we voting for. What’s not expressively permitted is prohibited”. The relation between daily complaints and political ones were in average the same than in other countries where the project has been realised. The authorities did not come to follow the rehearsals before making their decision.

It was a strong provocation for us to hear that the authorities wanted the Non-Singaporean choir members to be excluded from the choir performances. This would have spoilt the project’s intention to create a strong sense of community, a community that is based on shared complaints about life in Singapore here and now.
We are disappointed that our prejudices against Singapore have been affirmed. We find it irritating that foreigners – people that built this city, nurse Singaporean kids and bring in their knowledge – are not allowed to complain.” – Tellervo + Oliver Kalleinen

I honestly can’t think of a country where the inhabitants complain more than Singaporeans. It’s part of our cultural identity. Even if the government was the most benevolent in the world (which they would have you believe), Singaporeans would still find something to complain about. Amongst the physical complaints the Complaints Choir lists are the humidity (geawd the humidity hits you hard when you land), the population density (everyone is stacked over someone else, even when you’re dead) and the lack of natural resources. Cultural complaints include the kiasu and kiasi mentality (it follows you out of the country; i should know). There are maybe one or two sly comments about the governing body, but nothing scandalous and a common complaint the world over.

According to the choir, the government’s main complaint2 is the inclusion of non-Singaporeans in the choir. While the choir could well choose to perform with a cast of only Singaporeans by birth, but that would be, um what’s an un-sue-able word, overly nationalist? Ah, these meddlesome foreigners – teaching innocent Singaporeans how to complain, making them dissatisfied with their lot, encouraging them to find their voice (wot they already have, albeit only when they’re sure the room isn’t bugged).

Some even-keeled local response3.

1 I want to say banned here. It has been all-but-banned, but technically, they’ve just made it impossible to get a performing licence without the choir losing its conductor and some of its performers.

2 fully intended sans apology.

3 It’s appropriate how the link has been auto/deliberately truncated to “complaints-choi”, “choi” being a dialect (Hokkien? Cantonese?) word exclaimed when you want to negate the possibility of something happening. Kinda like “touch wood”.

Update: For fear of the lyrics and the youtube video disappearing into the ether as sometimes happens, copied and pasted below.

THE COMPLAINTS CHOIR SINGAPORE LYRICS

We get fined for almost everything
Drivers won’t ‘give chance’ when you want to ‘change lane’
The indoors are cold, the outdoors are hot;
And the humid air, it wrecks my hair
Those answering machines always make you hold
Only to hang up on you

When a pregnant lady gets on the train
Everyone pretends to be asleep
I’m stuck with my parents till I’m 35
Cause I can’t apply for HDB
We don’t recycle any plastic bags
But we purify our pee

*chorus:
What’s wrong with Singapore?
Losing always makes me feel so sore
Cause if you’re not the best
Then you’re just one of the rest

My oh my Singapore
What exactly are we voting for?
What’s not expressly permitted
is prohibited

“Ooh”

When I’m hungry at the food court, I see
People ‘chope’ seats with their tissue paper
To the aunty staying upstairs:
Your laundry’s dripping on my bed sheets
Please don’t squat on the toilet seats
And don’t clip your nails on MRT

Stray cats get into noisy affairs
At night my neighbor makes weird animal sounds
People put on fake accents to sound posh
And queue up 3 hours for donuts
Will I ever live till eighty five
to collect my CPF?

*chorus

Singaporeans too kiasu! (so scared to lose)
Singaporeans too kiasi! (so scared o die)
Singaporeans too kiabor!(scared of their wives)
Maybe we’re just too stressed out! (even the kids)

“Ooh”

Old National Library was replaced by an ugly tunnel
Singaporean men can’t take independent women
People blow their nose into the swimming pool
And fall asleep on my shoulder in the train

Singapore’s national bird is the crane (the one with yellow steel girders)
Real estate agents’ leaflets clogging up my mailbox (en bloc, en bloc; en bloc, en bloc)
Why can’t we be buried when we die?
No one wants to climb Bukit Timah with me

*chorus

“Ooh”

There are not enough public holidays
My neighbor sings KTV all night
Wedding dinners never start on time
My hair is always cut shorter than I want
Channel 5 commercials are way too long
Why do men turn bad?

*At first it was to speak more mandarin
Then it was to speak proper English
What’s wrong with my powderful Singlish?

People sit down during rock concerts
We have to pay for tap water at restaurants
ERP gantries are everywhere
But I can still see traffic jams on the road
All the bus stops have tilted benches to keep you off balance

*chorus

A gas station cake where no gas is to be found

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I’m a bit of a sucker for the “dump everything in” school of baking, given that I spend every day dealing with micro-volumes of nasty chemicals in multi-step, multi-day techniques dans les labo. So whenever Santos recommends an all-in-one-no-washing-no-hassle recipe, (see here for prior eg.), the baking pans come out. The timing of the recent blog-bake coincided perfectly with our Big Bear BreakTM. What better than to stash all ingredients in one tupperware and head out to the mountains where we could piss off all the neighbours by wafting the scent of chocolate home-baking of an evening?

So, we give you the not-exactly-“Polly Garilao gas station1 chocolate cake” that Santos made and we butchered2:

There’s nae after-shot because we ate it all. Yes, it’s that bloody good. Try it yourself.


1 Gas station [US] = petrol station [the parts of the world where i’ve lived]

2 Editor’s note: Watch the baking temperature. Our cabin’s oven was running hot and we had to shorten the baking time to just over 10 min.

Nail SOCPA before it nails you

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Just a quickie while I grapple with iMovie to make yet another dire home video and struggle with the RAW files off the beast.

In the run-up to the public consultation on the authoritarian SOCPA laws, various liberal-leaning folk like Curious Hamster and Tim Ireland have been discussing looseness of such laws and the potential for abuse of power in interpreting said laws. As a generally liberal-leaning person, it’s a given that I agree. Furthermore, having lived in an authoritarian state, I urge you to think about what would happen if the no-demo area was extended further. You would soon end up in a situation not unlike Singapore, where even Critical Mass rides require prior police permission, and even then may have caveats (via). Even worse, it breeds an entire generation that dare not raise its head too far above the parapet1. Chilling, no? Best do something about it then.

1 Something like that Japanese proverb: “The nail that sticks its head up is the one that gets hit.“