Serge the Concierge

Sweet Tooth, Can't Get No Gluten or Dairy, Sweet Alternative Saves the Day

Don't get mad at me if you think this is old news.

OK the book originally came out in 2006.

Some might have missed it and its content is as relevant as ever.

For those of us with a sweet tooth who can't get no gluten or dairy (or soy) or choose not to, Sweet Alternative by Ariana Bundy saves the day.

Ariana shows us how to make caramel with fructose, pancakes with (?) chestnut flour plus deep chocolate muffins made from rice flour, creamy vanilla-studded pastry creams made with rice or almond milk, chewy chocolate chip cookies without gluten...

As Sweet Alternative is coming out in paperback (cover, my illustration) in the UK (Conran Octopus Publishing) on August 3, 2009, it gave me an opportunity to share it with you.

Doesn't it look yummy?

Scan 800 Barcodes Per Hour, Give 500 Thank You A Day, Ready for Checkout

What started as a way to pay your way through college might have turned into a dead end, that's the feeling one gets from reading Kiss and till: What the checkout girl saw (The Independent, July 13).

I learned from this bittersweet piece that the top three questions asked at the till (the cash register here in the US) are:

Where are the loos?

Don't you have any bags?

Are you open?"

As for the answers, here is a sample of possibilities offered in the piece:

Customer: "Are you open?"

Polite checkout girl: "I'm not but my till is."

Sarcastic checkout girl: "Beeeeeep!"

Or if the Customer is good-looking: "Try me and see."

Checkout girl with her best smile: "Are you?"

The Independent piece found its inspiration in Checkout - A Life on the Tills (Gallic Books) by French caissiere Anna Sam (to be published in the UK on July 31).

I will let you read the rest of Kiss and Till for more insight on the life of a Checkout Girl or Guy

Let's not be sexist for Monday Work Etiquette # 98

Previously: Is Vagabond Life the Answer to No Vacation Nation Conundrum?

Be a Dog with a Bone, Get some Wednesday Uplifting with Peggy McColl

I am not that big on motivational speakers and the latest secret sauce on how to fix everything.

I do appreciate the accent on the positive put forward by Peggy McColl on weekly radio show Attracting Abundance (Wednesdays).

Her book, Be a Dog with a Bone shares some of her recipes on how to make your dreams realities. She seasons them with a healthy dose of humor.

Here are some of them:

• Teach an old dog new tricks; the tricks of success
• Bark for what you want
• Stop chasing your tail
• Be a little dog with a big-dog attitude
• Lap up your success

A little Wednesday uplifting

Take a Break or Be Broken, Ready for Right to Vacation Act? No Vacation Nation No 2

Even though I have been following Seattle enlightened man John de Graff of Take Back Your Time Day fame for a while, I completely forgot his related campaign for a Right 2 Vacation act as I was writing about our need for vacations and lack of it in the US.

In March 2008, he shared his thoughts on the topic for Experience Life Magazine with powerful pointers such as Take a Break or Be Broken, More than Fond Memories and A Month of Sundays under the banner of health and wellness.

Funny coincidence as I noted in my previous No Vacation Nation piece that vacations should be included in Health Benefits.

Under Take a Break — or Be Broken , John de Graff quotes the author of Work to Live (Perigree, 2003), Joe Robinson, a former Los Angeles Times outdoor writer who is now a life-balance trainer  stating that:

“Men reduce their risk of a heart attack by 30 percent and women by 50,” he adds, citing data from the ongoing Framingham Heart Study and a State University of New York at Oswego study. “There seems to be no positive effect when you just take a day off here and there. It may help you de-stress a little mentally, but it doesn’t reduce your risk of heart failure. You need a block of time to do that.”

 

Many of us know from personal experience that it often takes a week to decompress and another week to get meaningful rest at a snail pace (hence the illustration above, a 'grapesnail' from Wikipedia)

As Slow Planet puts it "Slow is not about doing everything at a snail's pace; it's about working, playing and living better by doing everything at the right speed."

Have a relaxing moment (or two) if not a relaxing day!

Related: In No Vacation Nation, She Wants 6 Weeks Summer Vacation, These Americans Settle for 3

Tokyo Sanpo, Sketches of Tokyo Life through French Eyes

Illustrator Florent Chavouet turned his 6 months in Japan into sketches of Tokyo life as seen through French eyes.

It became a book, Tokyo Sanpo (Editions Philippe Picquier).

Get a feel for Tokyo Sanpo with this 12 Page Sample.

He continues the adventure on his Florent Chavouet blog with a Daily Sushi illustration, the latest being Suchirurgien (June 24, illustration below from his blog). Chirurgien means surgeon in French.

You can find more of his creations on the Florent Chavouet site (in French).

If you are in Paris, his sketches are on display at the travel bookstore Itineraires at 60 rue St-Honoré until June 26.

File under Culture Clash for Tokyo Thursdays # 93

Previously on Tokyo Thursdays: Eatrip, People, Food and Rituals, A Japanese Film by Yuri Nomura

Harlem comes to London, Jazzonia & Harlem Diaspora at Chelsea Space (July 1st)

The people at Chelsea Space were kind enough to invite me to the pre-opening party for Jazzonia and the Harlem Diaspora on June 30.

I doubt I will have a chance to hop on the plane to London though.

A program that takes its name from a poem by Langston Hugues has to be great.

Here's what's it's all about (in their own words):

"In a Harlem cabaret Six long-headed jazzers play. A dancing girl whose eyes are bold Lifts high a dress of silken gold.

This stanza from Langston Hughes' paean Jazzonia(1923) is a poetic riff on the vitality of New York's Harlem and an ode to African-American cultural history during the ‘Jazz Age'. Harlem, real and imagined, challenged boundaries, racial, sexual and indeed musical. Throughout the inter-war years a diaspora of black artists arrived in Europe, epitomised now by Josephine Baker at the Folies Bergère in Paris. By the late 1930s London was the next gig.

In this show at CHELSEA space the London legacies of singers Adelaide Hall and Elisabeth Welch, who both had been in Paris with ‘La Baker' are re-united with Jazz Tap legends Chuck Green and Honi Coles. George T. Nierenberg's classic film "No Maps on My Taps" (1979) was the catalyst for a renewed wider interest in artists originally from Harlem.

Vestiges of lives and of performances, a syncopation of the highs and lows of the 20th century against a backdrop of the Modernist movement reverberate from a variety of archives and reminiscences. The genesis of this exhibition was in a conversation with David Gothard. In the 1980s Gothard re-introduced these stars, by then in their 80s themselves, to live and film audiences during his artistic directorship at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith.

Archival footage, photographs, correspondence, posters, programmes and recordings ‘perform' around what is absent and what is present: ‘freedom' and improvisation with the voice and with the feet offer an aural history of African-American Modernism."

Jazzonia and the Harlem Diaspora opens on July 1st and runs until August 8, 2009.

Opening Time
Tuesday - Friday: 11am - 5pm
Saturday: 10am - 4pm

The exhibit is curated by Diana Rodriguez and Judith Waring and unless I am wrong the Event is Free.

Riverwalk Jazz Jazz Notes offered a radio program on the same topic in 2002.

Since I have no illustration yet for the show, I chose the cover of Langston Hugues book 'The Best of Simple' as a stand in.

Related:
Mick Jones (Clash) Aladdin Cave turns into Rock'n Roll Library at Chelsea Space (London)

40th Anniversary Exhibit of John and Yoko Bed In for Peace in Suite 1742 at Beatles Story (Liverpool)

Remember 'All we are saying is give peace a chance', well as The Guardian reports with a Photo Gallery, we are marking the 40th Anniversary of John and Yoko Bed In at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Suite 1742 to be specific as the hotel's history notes.

The Guardian pictures by Gerry Deiter are part of of an exhibition, Give Peace A Chance: John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Bed-In For Peace, a traveling exhibit showing at The Beatles Story in Liverpool until 15 August, 2009.

Another example of music tourism

A book under the same Give peace a chance title by Joan Athey was recently published by Wiley (cover above).

Related: Ian Hunter (All the Young Dudes) Turns 70, Almost Fell Off My Rocking Chair

Nose to tail a la Fergus Henderson versus Head to tail Cooking, What's the Difference?

Maybe I do not follow the international restaurant scene enough, I thought after reading about London based architect turned restaurateur Fergus Henderson and his Perfect Weekend digs.

I did not know know the guy or his "nose to tail" eating-cooking philosophy which he couched on paper in his book The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating (Harper Collins).

I went looking for more on this school of cooking and by mistake typed 'head to tail' and what came up was Chris Cosentino who likes to stir up the pot on Offal Good.

Should I have written 'head to toe'?

It might then have been fashion meets food.

In any case whether it's articulated by Fergus Henderson or Chris Cosentino the Head-Nose to Tail concept has been practiced for longer than I can think in local cuisines such as the comfort food of Bouchon Lyonnais which R.W Apple painted prefectly in The Bouchons of Lyon (Saveur, Issue #23).

Think Blood Sausage with Apples in Butter Sauce or St Marcellin Cheese.

Maybe I should ask Fergus Henderson about the parallel via Nose to Tail at Home which gives its readers a chance to ask the Chef what he thinks?

Not everyone's taste I guess but who said everything should be crowd pleasers...

Goat, Pastured Poultry or Yogurt Saint Benoit, Food Made in California

Over the past 10 to 20 years, we have grown a bit too used to eat whatever we want whenever we want.

With the revival of farmer's market and home grown growers. eating local and in season is making a comeback of sorts.

I remember going to the local cheese or produce shop in France and being asked if what I was purchasing was for today's meal or later. The owner or the salesperson wanted to make sure it would be ready, the word ripe would be used for cheese as well.

One big difference between Europe (then) and the US (now) for me is that the produce offered for purchase was not refrigerated. It did affect the taste of things. I guess I have gotten use to it by now.

Reading Divine provenance by Tracey Taylor (FT Week-end, June 6) brought all these memories back.The piece looks at California's food experience and some local purveyors worth trying.As she mentions, listing the origin of every item on the menu at restaurants might be an overkill.

Let the food do the talking as Russell Moore of Camino in Oakland suggests.

He tells Tracey Taylor that since November 2008 is stopped serving chicken and switched to fowl from Soul Food Farm in Vacaville which specializes in 'pastured poultry and eggs'. See their flock napping in picture below (from their site).

 

I do see "Grilled chicken with farro, peas, new garlic and fried herbs, $24"  offered on his June 5th dinner menu though.

Did she sense the beginning of a trend in braised goat (from BN Ranch in Bolinas) being offered besides their famous wood fired pizza at Pizzaiolo also in Oakland.

Bill Niman Ranch African Boer Goat meat is also on the menu at Grange in Sacramento as their executive chef, Michael Tuohy announced on his blog Frontburner in February 2009.

One thing I need to try is the Quinoa from Rancho Gordo who are all about beans.

They even turned their celebrity into a book Heirloom Beans (Chronicle Books).

Want a quick guide to what's hot in California check The Producers bix in Tracey's article.

She does mention a few people we met and/or covered like Charles Chocolates, Ritual Coffee Roasters and St Benoit Yogurt by a pair of French brothers based in Sonoma.

Absent from her list is Fraiche Yogurt (Palo Alto), no silicon wafers...

Time to eat lunch now, I am getting hungry.

Sharing The Guardian Guide to Green Travel, Thanks to Issuu

I discovered Issuu thanks to a publisher mentioning the service for a peek at Woodstock, the book, one of them I mean.

What Issuu is, does?

They allow professional publishers and amateurs alike to let the world know about their magazines, books and other writings in digital form.

Since Travel and Green Issues are regular topics on 'Serge the Concierge', I decided to use Issuu to share The Guardian Guide to Green Travel (below) with you.

Enjoy!

Related: Green Mexico for Cinco de Mayo 2009