Tag: California

An Excursion into My Backyard

I have lived in Ventura County for a long, long time, and have watched changes come about, as is inevitable.  Mostly it is the loss of open space and farm lands, with houses replacing fields.  Traffic congestion has gotten considerably worse.  Certainly we all see this.  However, there are some things which do change for the better.

One thing which has changed is our level of discrimination.  Overall, we recognize it as wrong.  Years ago, people of different races and religions were buried in sections of cemeteries reserved just for them; other times, the dead amongst given ethnic groups were refused the right to buried at all.  In Ventura County, and throughout much of California, Asians were denied access to cemeteries, public or private, and as a result, were forced to create their own.

The Japanese community was one group, and so they had a small one for their own community.  In 1908, out in the middle of nowhere, they laid their dead to rest.  Some were Christian, some probably Buddhist or Shinto.  Only a few years ago did the historical recognition come, and some funding to help rebuild the cemetery.  Throughout the past century, the Japanese community has maintained it, but over the years, vandalism and age have taken its toll.

I have long been coming to this cemetery.  It is small and mysterious, with stones with kanji only, others in English, and others with both.  Years ago, photographs were attached to some of the more grand stones, but these have disappeared with time.  Other markers were simple white posts with faded writing.

There is another cemetery nearby, only a few hundred feet up the road, and probably dating from the same time.  It, too, has fallen into disrepair, but nothing has been done to renovate it.  More than obviously, it was once a going concern, probably well maintained.  The layout shows this, with clearly marked concrete borders for family plots. There are more fancy headstones, yet none except one has any flowers in front of it.  Instead, there is litter and debris.

Interesting how differently two communities remember their members.

The Little Luxuries of Summer

I love simple food in the summertime.  Fresh vegetables, fruits, breads, grains, yogurt.  There is a richness in flavor that is best at this time of the year because the world is full and abundant.  Self-indulgence in these areas is not a bad thing.  And when one is recovering from a cold, and the mere thought of handling food or eating is not at all interesting, it is a good time to go out and buy unusual and wonderful things.  So I did . . . and ended up with:

  • yogurt from St. Benoit from Sonoma County, CA
  • Wensleydale cheese with blueberries
  • organic rolled oats for granola
  • a custom-made sandwich with, among the ingredients, red onion marmalade and arugula
  • Firestone Wookey Jack Black Rye IPA

I’ve never heard of St. Benoit, but did a bit of research on them, and think they are really onto something.  You can learn about St. Benoit and see what you think.  Dinner tonight was a bit of their yogurt, a nectarine, and chopped almonds.  Very satisfying.

I used to make my own yogurt.  I’m rather tempted to again.  Yogurt is especially good with granola, too.

And, at the moment, I am baking a batch of granola in the oven, as I love the crunch of granola and the sweetness of fruit for breakfast.  The biggest problem with most granolas is they are horribly sweet if boughten.  I prefer to make my own.   Formerly, for sweetness I chose real maple syrup, but my husband doesn’t much care for maple.  I don’t like sugar in granola.  One day I ended up with some agave syrup and a craving for granola, and used the syrup.  The result was a bit of sweetness without a maple flavor (I like maple, personally . . . ) nor the intense flavor brown sugar can give foods.

Granola Recipe

6 c. organic rolled oats
2 c. walnuts
1/2 c. dried cranberries
1 1/2 c. raisins
1/2 c. agave syrup
1/4 c. canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix together all ingredients in a dutch oven, and bake, stirring every 15 minutes, for about an hour, until toasted to your liking. Let cool to room temperature.

You can substitute or add whatever you want. This is what I had available.

Looking for Organic & Local

All this self-indulgence started making me look for what is around here in Ventura County.  Agriculture is a big industry in our county – the history of the county is tightly bound to raising crops, such as avocados, berries, citrus.  We have a couple of excellent producers of organic produce –  McGrath Family Farms and Underwood Family Farms are two with whom I am familiar.  I looked up local honey after reading about the potential that a lot of honey may be tainted and illegally imported.  Not a good thing.  Locally, it looks like we have a good source nearby at Bennett’s.  Meat is another issue.  We have free range beef from Watkins Cattle Company.

At heart, I’m a backyard farmer.  I would love to have the time to produce more of what we eat, but I have to work, and our backyard is too dark and shady at present for any real crops.  Instead, I try to support the local farmers rather than the large chain stores.  We also try to cook most of what we eat from scratch, but of course, not everything can be done this way.  When we go shopping, we never cease to be amazed at all the packaged foods people buy as the mainstay for their meals.  Our baskets are filled with very few boxes or frozen foods.

Kind of snobby, huh?  I guess I literally put my money where my mouth is.

Discernment

Well . . . I think I am past the point where every picture I take has to be trotted out and uploaded.  Yesterday the Photo Troupe went out to the beach behind the Ventura Marina, late in the afternoon (3:30 pm to be specific), parked itself at a jetty, and got to work.  I took gobs of photos, but only a few were any good, or worth editing.  Some pictures I edited in different ways, from subtle color movement, to dramatic HDR, and finally black and white.  My main focus was composition of ocean and rocks; for the birds, I just ran around chasing them with a long lens.

My first attempts at really long exposures on water, using an ND10 filter, ended with my camera toppling into the sand – luckily not the ocean! – and getting a lot of sand on the filter.  The filter was saved, set aside, gently brushed off, and cleaned with lens cleaner.  However, the one picture I did get, while not particularly dramatic in contrast with the roughness of the rocks and the smoothness of the sea, was worth saving.  The lens I used was the Tokina 11-16mm, which is wonderful for taking dramatic shots – but hard to use with refinement, simply because it is so wide.

One thing I totally forgot was I can change my iso settings on the Nikon!  It does a really good jobs at high iso, so as the sun went down, I pushed the iso from the 100 I used earlier in the day, to 1600 toward sunset, and using a Tamron 70-300mm lens at that – but it was a grrr moment that made me remember that, when all my pictures were horribly dark.

Although I live in Southern California, the coast is damp and chilly, oftentimes very windy.  The salt air clings to everything, and I end up feeling sticky and damp, even if I am not.  All of us were shivery, with fingers capable of doing very little.  Luckily, there is a rather nice cafe that serves excellent hot chocolate, so we ended up there before returning to our lives elsewhere.