Camera-less in the Urban Jungle

My camera's not exactly out of service, but it is currently in a state of limbo as I'm trying to figure out the best cleaning method for the sensor. I first started noticing a fair amount of dust on the sensor (which, at apertures from about f/8 and up, aka "landscape apertures", shows up in the pictures) after we returned from the Brace family vacation to Yosemite over a year and a half ago. I used the least invasive method for clearing the dust, which also turned out to be the least effective: I used a non-compressed-air blower to "redistribute" the dust inside the body of the lens. This is the only kind of "cleaning" that won't void Canon's warranty but it was totally and completely ineffective. Had I known better, I would have driven an hour North to Irvine and walked it into the Canon Service Center to have the sensor cleaned for free. Alas ... I was lazy. And the dust wasn't make-awful-noises-at-the-computer-screen frustrating AT THE TIME. But then we went to Alaska, where I changed lenses four or five times a day (seriously). And then we crossed the country through the high desert, where I also changed lenses four or five times a day (again, seriously). And lo and behold, I ended up with dust specks all over pictures, even those taken at apertures wide enough that you'd NEVER expect to see dust specks (um, f/4.5). After extensive googling and reading recommendations on my favorite photography forum, I decided to buy a third-party kit that uses special brushes to "grab" the dust from your sensor. Of course, Canon in no way endorses using this product, but a lot of pros use it, it seems fairly intuitive to use, and I couldn't find a bad review or anyone screeching "THIS RUINED MY CAMERA!" or anything to that effect. So I bought it. And it's been sitting in our apartment unopened for a week now while I work up the nerve to perform open-heart surgery on my camera.

You can say it. I'm a pussy.

But in my defense, it's not like there's anything to take pictures of around here right now anyway. We had a bad windstorm that pulled down most of the leaves and those that are left on the branches are brown and disappointing anyway. I've been keeping myself busy by painting our apartment (yes, we're allowed) and finally getting some pictures hung on the walls. And I've been e-window shopping for new couches (finally!!) and some inexpensive decorating touches handmade by the wonderful living room entrepreneurs on etsy.com. Those will have their own post someday, maybe once they're acquired by me. =)

On a little bit of a tangent, I know I've had some recent rants about paint on facebook, but since this is a totally separate and public forum unrestricted by character limits, can I just say that I feel incredibly dumb for buying Behr paint for the last seven years? At some point in the past, it had occurred to me that non-home-improvement-superstores sold paint and maybe those specialty paint stores might be worth my time ... but then I read a Consumer's Report that said Behr was highly rated, and I didn't think twice. Even when I needed three friggin' coats. Even when their eggshell paint was so shiny it was practically a satin. Even when it was so thin the roller left streak marks on the walls.

When we moved here, I noticed there was a Sherwin-Williams contractor store just a block from our place, and there was a normal retail store two blocks from our favorite grocery store. Convenience? Check. Then I remembered that S-W sells ~quart-sized samples for $5. Samples? Check (we have a lot of windows and the light is constantly changing, so giving the colors a test run was necessary). But the clincher? S-W sells a no-VOC paint, their Harmony line, that actually got good reviews online (most no-VOC paint is really thin and doesn't cover very well). The no-VOC thing was important to me this time around because a) we have adequate but not great ventilation in our place and b) we were going to be living in the space WHILE painting. So for the sake of the cats and our own bodies, and because I'm practically transluscent and being environmentally conscious is Stuff White People Like (if you think that's an off color remark, I'm referencing the linked-to blog. So click on it. And shut yer yapper.), "green" paint was important to me. And you know what? This paint ROCKS. It covered like a dream, even on our incredibly patchy "historical" plaster walls, and despite painting in shades 3 and 4 (down from the top on a standard 7-shade color card), I only needed one coat. That's 300 sq ft of wall covered in one gallon. Needless to say, I'm so pleased I've turned into a one-woman Sherwin-Williams ad campaign.

But the painting and such isn't even the point of this post. The point of this post WAS to tell you all about the shopping odyssey on which I embarked Monday. Nick and I are in the market for new furniture, but furniture shopping options are rather limited in Dayton. Cincinnati, on the other hand, is just 35 miles South of us and has many options, so I mapped out an itinerary and headed down for the day. But the REAL genesis of this journey was to scout out an international foods store that was described to me as a "Foodie Mecca." Yes, being without gainful employment and without PROSPECT for gainful employment has left me with some free time, and I have truly enjoyed being able to get back into the kitchen and actually ENJOY cooking again. To clarify: I've always liked cooking, and I will even admit that I have spent my fair share of stolen moments during grad school dreaming not of science but rather of what I would cook up for dinner that night. And then ... somehow ... over the years, cooking dinner became an obligation, something that had to be done out of necessity, and even though you want to make something tasty and good for you, you resent the time and energy that it takes to make a nutritious meal every damn day. So to suddenly have free time to shop farmer's markets and cook around the season's produce, be able to plan out meals, etc, has been wonderful, inspirational, and energizing. And it's also gotten me thinking about cuisines that I never bothered attempting in my own kitchen in San Diego, mostly because I could run down the street and get excellent take-out. One such cuisine that I miss greatly is Thai. The best Thai food I ever found in San Diego was Antique Thai, just down the way from our place. Nick and I would typically get a soup and two entrees, and Pad Thai was almost always included in the take-out spread (although THE BEST Pad Thai in SD was, in our opinion, at the Red Pearl Kitchen downtown). Now, despite the fact that many people assured us, upon leaving San Diego, that we would always be able to find good Asian food around military bases (and other iterations of the same theme), we have yet to find or see decent Asian cuisine in these parts. Air Force bases apparently attract a different variety of international cuisine than do Navy bases. There ARE Thai restaurants here: we're mere blocks from two very popular Thai restaurants, the first of which, Thai 9, has gotten mixed reviews but appears to be the best choice in the Miami Valley and our other Thai experience has been at a place called (I kid you not) Yummy Burger - also named White Lotus - that is quite literally spitting distance from our front window and serves breakfast 24 hrs/day plus American fare such as burgers as well as the owner's specialty, Thai. Despite all of the charm of the place - its only seating is the 10 stools at the counter, and the delightfully funny owner flits about the place making all of the food in front of your eyes - the Thai was just okay. It's disheartening to watch your chef use the same curry paste from a jar that you yourself have in the fridge ... but it also convinced me that, if I were willing to use a more liberal hand with the peanut oil and source out some fresh exotic ingredients, I could probably do it better myself. So I scoured the internet for a Pad Thai recipe that was a) authentic and b) in English. And I quickly realized that the probability of finding a key ingredient, fresh tamarind, was 0.00000001% in Dayton. And I basically figured I was out of luck (I even looked into getting freeze-dried tamarind shipped here, to no avail), when I struck up a conversation with another military spouse at the local British tea shop (I'm all kinds of international, folks), and I learned of a place down in Cincinnati called Jungle Jim's. All the woman told me is that if I could find it anywhere, I'd find it there. So I hopped online and checked out this Jungle Jim's place ... only to find that HOLY HELL this might be my second or third favorite place on Earth. And, as luck would have it, Jungle Jim's is located not far from the last furniture store that was on my list of places to hit in the 'Nati. Thus it became my last stop of the day.

My experience went something like this:

- I was greeted at the entrance to the parking lot by a sign reading "Welcome to FoodieLand" in big Disney-esque (or, more accurately, National Lampoon's Wally World-esque) font.

- Huge signs pointed me toward the shopping carts, and then a series of big blinking NASCAR stoplights screaming GO in green led me through the entrance and into the "normal" grocery store portion of the EIGHT ACRE food wonderland.

- Passing through the "domestic" portion of the store, I entered heaven. And by heaven, I mean Land Of Cheese. Kind of indescribable. The cheeses were sorted by country and were subdivided by cow vs goat milk. All I kept thinking was "I can come back. I don't have to buy it all now. I can return to this place. It's not that far away." Except all of the willpower that I consumed during my passage through Cheese Fantasy Land left me weak and vulnerable in the wine and beer section, which was the size of a proper Binny's or Sam's or Bev Mo and had a huge selection of craft beer in addition to wine from every part of the world. Whoever designed the layout of this place, with the cheese and booze sections near the front of the store and with their own quick checkout stands, deserves a standing ovation. Except that ovation would have to exclude clapping, as my hands would be filled with cheese and/or a wine glass.

- On to the Asain foods section, which itself was maybe 8 or 10 aisles plus refrigerated cases ... I picked up some basics that had been on my list, like oyster sauce, seaweed, and dried mushrooms. I was disappointed, though, not to find freeze-dried tamarind pods, and I resigned myself to having to resort to tamarind paste, which is much more widely available but doesn't have the same punch as the "real" thing. But c'mon, it's the midwest. And the freeze-dried things are supposed to be hard to find. No big deal.

- I turned the corner and saw the produce aisles, and in addition to the usual suspects, they had a separate section containing international / hard-to-find produce items. So ... many ... unfamiliar ... names ... and I thought I was pretty well-versed in Asian veg, what with the plethora of Asian supermarkets in San Diego. But GOOD LORD, this place blew my mind. I picked up some fresh lemongrass and chayote squash (also called mirlitons - pronounced "Mella-tons" - in the South) and THEN. I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT. There was a box of FRESH (not frozen, not freeze-dried, not pasted) tamarind pods. For, like, three bucks. For a POUND. If Nick had been there with me, I probably would actually have done a little dance in the aisle. Okay, a BIG dance. That may have had more to do with the realization that civilization was closer than I thought than the actual find of fresh tamarind itself.

- Past the Asian foods aisles, I was greeted by a talking animatronic Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest at the entrance to the British foods section ...

- and a Bindi-adorned plaster elephant at the entrance to the Indian foods.

- The Mexican section (Mercado Gigante!), just as big as the Asian foods, had eight bajillion kinds of dried beans and spices, plus a whole aisle of prepared sauces. I was already feeling overwhelmed so breezed quickly though the Mercado, and then just past this section was the ...

- Fresh fish. Fresh. As in, swimming around happily in 1000+ gallon tanks of constantly circulating fresh or salt water. Pick out your tilapia! Watch them fillet it for you!

- I ran out of steam before I could get through the Eastern European or German sections, and I ran through the Middle Eastern section (to get some good quality Tahini so I can make my Erin-tested, Erin-approved hummus).

- Just as I thought I was done, I had to pass through the organic / health foods section to get to the registers. Doh. That sucked another half hour of my life. (Rennet! Nutritional Yeast! Liquid Amino Acids! Tempeh! A whole WALL of olive oil!)

And after spending two hours in this store, I felt like I'd just been through eight hours of day-after-Thanksgiving mall shopping. But. Mission. Sooooo. Accomplished. And as I was leaving, I noticed a group of school kids gathering at the front of the store for a guided walking tour! Of a freakin' GROCERY STORE!

I actually have a ton of recipes I'm thinking about posting, most of which DON'T use these crazy ingredients that I picked up at Jungle Jim's ... but I sort of want to be able to post them with pictures, which requires me to bite the damn bullet and get to work on my camera cleaning. And as I cook my way through some of the dishes I have planned with my tamarind, chayotes, lemongrass, miso, etc, if I find some real winners I'll be sure to post them, just in case you stumble across an Asian food market and feel adventurous.

Off to make dinner (a version of potato-leek soup with mustard greens) ...