¡Mira!

Last day of the month! Actually, I'm a little sad because it means winter is passing and I love winter. In our mediterranean climate, winter means rains and green hills and flowers; summer means heat and no rain at all. I will miss the rain.

But onward:

» This is for Txvoodoo: Iso the Puppy takes a bath. Seriously, how cute is that little guy? VERY cute.

» My birthday isn't until April but I already have my gift: we're going here, to the Sonoma Canopy Tours! I am so excited! Imagine soaring through the air amidst giant trees and experiencing nature from a different perspective. After strapping on a specially-designed 2-piece seat and chest harness, ziplining lets you zoom from platform-to-platform, high in the sky. Attached to your harness is a caribiner, a metal loop that secures you to a wheel on a cable that's strung from one tree to another. Together, this high-flying equipment allows you to glide effortlessly through the forest and take in the beauty of Northern California's Coastal Redwoods. Eeeee!

» This is a gorgeous photograph and, though I'm in no way a photographer, I was fascinated by how he took the shot, a 24-hour shot in Greece.

» The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a very cool interactive map that lets you track education in specific parts of the US for the past sixty years: Adults with College Degrees. I have Opinions about this, but they are both boring and predictable.

» I saw a lovely talk on TEDxDubai today -- remember that gal who wore the same dress for a year? The Uniform Project? She spoke; I found her inspiring: Sheena Matheiken

» I wanted a way to track my G2 in case I lost it or if it were stolen. After much googling around and reading reviews, I bought (a whole 99 cents) Seek Droid. I chose it because it doesn't use SMS, doesn't show up in the app drawer, doesn't live on the SD card, and it has great reviews. And it works! Blew my husband away when I showed him. Lifehacker said You can also hide the app from the app drawer and keep it from being uninstalled, so you won't ever lose its location. You can even grab your recent calls so you can keep up to date with your contacts while you work on getting your phone back. Setup is extremely simple—you just install it, set up your code, and that's it! The rest is done from the simple web interface, which requires minimal registration to use—you don't even need an email address. There's no reason you shouldn't have this on your phone. I hope I never, ever need it, but I feel better knowing it's on the phone.

» And because this is the last day of the month it's also the last day of my Post a Recipe Pretty Much Every Day of the Month. Today's recipe is one I haven't actually made in over ten years: first, we thought Webster had celiacs and then we discovered he couldn't eat dairy. This has both wheat and dairy in it, so problematic for lots of people, but oh my god, it's delicious. It's from an old and much-loved cookbook I've mentioned before, Anna Thomas's The Vegetarian Epicure.

Spanakopita
2 pounds fresh spinach
1 pound filo (also spelled phyllo and fillo)
7 eggs
1/2 pound feta cheese
1 onion
olive oil
salt and pepper
oregano
butter

To prepare the filling: Wash all the spinach well and put the leaves into a large bowl. Sprinkle them heavily with salt and then rub it into the leaves with your hands as you tear them into small pieces. After a few minutes of this, the spinach will be reduced to a quarter of its former bulk. Rinse the salt off thoroughly and drain.

Beat the eggs, crumble the feta cheese, and mix together. Add to the spinach. Chop the onion, saute it in some olive oil until it begins to brown, and add that to the spinach. Season the mixture with lots of fresh-ground black pepper and a little oregano (I don't like oregano so I skip that).

Now choose a large, oblong casserole or baking dish, about 9" x 13" should do. Butter it. Melt about 3-4 tablespoons of butter in a little pot and stack the pound of filo on a flat surface. Brush the top sheet with melted butter and fit it into the baking pan with the edges hanging over the sides. The pastry sheets are very large and should extend quite a bit over the edges, even after being fitted against the sides of the pan. Continue in this fashion brushing each sheet with butter and fitting it into the pan on top of the others. Turn each sheet slightly so that they corners fan out around the pan rather than being stacked on top of each other. Do this until you have only two or three pastry sheets left.

Now pour the filling in and then fold over the ends of the pastry sheets to cover it, brushing with a little more butter. You should have sort of a strange-looking wrinkled crust on top when you finish. Butter the remaining sheets and place them on top of the whole thing, folding them down to the size of the pan. With a sharp knife cut through the top layers to the filling in about three places. Brush the top with butter and bake at 375F degrees for 50 minutes. Cut into squares and serve very hot. Serves 8 generously. Excellent left over.

BRILLIANT food. I adore this. Much work, yes, and the amount of butter is ridiculous, but what a crisp golden treasure it is.

Shit. Now I'm hungry.


*From Nigella Lawson: "What I'm doing here is seeking to offer protection from life, solely through the means of potato, butter and cream... there are times when only mashed potato will do."