marypcbuk | Entries tagged with food

Maker Faire was a little bit more like work this year as we did more scheduled interviews than usual and concentrated a little more on companies we could write about, but there was plenty of just really cool stuff as well.

I wrote up a piece for Tom's Guide that I pitched as the quirky side of tech - robotics (robot plant waterers, robot camera tripods that follow you around filming), DIY hardware, 3d printing, tiny computers like Raspberry Pi, milk jugs that tell you when the milk goes off, conductive paint (so you can literally draw a circuit board), electroluminescent screens you can print like a T shirt and the future of the kind of hardware projects that will show up on Kickstarter. You can read about all that and more over at http://www.tomsguide.com/us/pictures-story/373-maker-faire-diy-projects.html

We interviewed Eben Upton of the Raspberry Pi foundation and reminisced happily about 8-bit computing and game writers who made so much money they bought Porsche's they were too young to drive; that's coming soon on TechRadar.

I took lots more photos than fitted in the feature, many of them of delightful flaming sculptures; we also got to watch the solar eclipse through a handheld safety viewer, a pinhole in a sheet of card, a stretched sheet of mylar, the shadows of the trees and a proper telescope with safety filters that let us see a sunspot.

More pictures on my SkyDrive

The weekend was great fun as usual, very tasty thanks to 4505 Meats whose 'pork; the noun not the verb' T shirt is in my future as a tribute to deep fried mac and cheese with bacon-studded frankfurter & sweet chili pork rinds, and exhausting. It was so nice to tumble into a hot tub afterwards. This whole trip has been fun, informative, tasty and exhausting and we're only halfway through. So far:
- we flew to LA (I met a charming raconteur on the plane who regaled me with stories about mass lobster dinners and the music business), tried a new breakfast place with maple bacon biscuits, drove to Vegas via Barstow and the usual excellent cheap Mexican restaurant
- walked about 4 miles a day and wrapped out heads fairly thoroughly around the possibilities for managing Windows 8 & Windows RT as well as how System Center and Intune will manage iPhone and Android. Dinner at Shibuya, birthday lunch at Olives with a table on the patio to see the fountains, the ever-reliable BLT and lunch with spikeiowa and Tom who were in town for Corflu, at Morel's Steakhouse at Palazzo which is outside on the strip, with a view of the Sirens, excellent Blood Orange margeritas and very nice food but slightly too small umbrellas on a bright bright day. The impressionist garden in the Bellagio and the impressive fountains outside were photographed.
- we headed back to Barstow and on to Paso Robles where we fitted in two new wineries (Looking Glass where they have a lovely garden to taste in and Sculpeterra where they have sculptures and pistachios) and dinner at Artisan (sweet potato bacon tater tots with ramps dressing and rabbit sausage) and then on to San Jose so we could get up far too early for
- the Creative Suite 6 announcement in the de Yonge museum accompanied by inflatable CS logos that were so inflated they nearly lifted the fountain they were tethered to into the sky, and drink-n-interview time on the top floor of the de Yonge tower where you can see out to Point Reyes up the coast and over the hill to the tips of the Golden Gate Bridge. Ritual Coffee and purchasing of my lovely insulated tea glass and then down to San Jose for a week sitting in Barefoot Coffee and writing furiously
- got up far too early to fly to Orlando and talk to RIM about BlackBerry 10; the new CEO has a convincing mien and talks well but didn't have time for the kind of one on one interview where we can really assess how he thinks, but we did have time to talk to Dan Dodge, the QNX founder who impresses us a lot (and laughed heartily when I said QNX reminds me of Plan 9). RIM is working like a startup, with late nights and pranks and more energy than it's had in years. Nice ideas we said to them; now you have to execute. Then our plane was delayed over three hours by potential fog which I hope isn't an omen for RIM. The Virgin America gate staff kept the passengers amused with quizzes (guess the cumulative age of the gate staff) and paper airplane contests and we took off late but in a good mood. Watched Tower Heist which was funnier and more poignant than I expected. Alan Alda continues to rock my world. Landed at 1am SF time, took an hour (an hour!) to get the luggage and the rental car and got to San Jose in hem-hem record time
- proceeded to sleep off the trip, sit in the hummingbird-visited sunny garden of friends writing furiously, enjoy hanging out and catching up, fit in a few meetings with security companies, visit the Facebook campus, visit Parc (a Xerox company), queue for the longest time for a crab/shrimp/crawfish boil that was very yummy, have lunch in the excellent Mayfield Bakery restaurant in the Town & Country (much more than a bakery - fantastic chicken and steak sandwiches and a refreshing pomegranate lime spritzer) and pop over to San Jose to pick up some rose at David Bruce (where we got to meet the winemaker and hear about the chardonnay from the Judgement of Paris he'd tried the previous week). And dinner at Dish Dash (yummy Mediterranean)
and dinner with friends and dinner at Caffe Ricci where the sculptures are screamingly funny - the washerwoman is a woman with a washer-drier on her head
- we decamped to downtown San Jose for the Nvidia GTC conference: virtualising GPUs, learning the reason for locust swarms (can't stop, locust behind me will eat me) which the daily newsletter reported in the style of a con newsletter, and pondering the amateur lunar rover that will launch on a Russian rocket next year. Ate at *all* the downtown San Jose restaurants; Original Joes, Il Fornaio, The Grill on the Alley AND McCormack & Schicks. Do you get points for restaurant bingo? The event party had roulette and blackjack (which I know how to lose at) and poker and craps (which I don't) but we watched the excellent jugglers instead. Nice patter, nice pattern juggling, and chainsaw juggling to the music and pace of The Blue Danube.
- thence a day of writing and errands and on to Maker Faire for the weekend, followed by a two-day drive to Santa Barbara (coffee, cherries, fried chicken and crab and lobster we hammered into submission at Arch Rock Fish) and on to Laguna Beach (scary LA traffic is crazy and scarey) for this week's conference, Future in Review. This is a treat, although a conference that starts at 8am and carries on through conversations and film showing and dinner lectures until at least midnight every night is exhausting as well as fascinating. It covers everything from cloud to the language of prairie dogs, melting glaciers to the uniquely US approach the FTC has to privacy (speedbump to innovation on the information superhighway to how technology could help human trafficking to interviews with Mark Hurd and George Dyson, plus David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson bringing their towels on stage. Chatting to them afterwards turned into lunch talking SF and different cultures and then a walk on the beach picking up shells and testing the water temperature. Special mention to O Sushi in the mall across from the hotel, which has excellent sushi, sashimi and rolls, all made with real crab the way I like them, plus cripsy fried antenna. I feel like my antenna are crispy fried now (we've been writing this week as well) so bed calls.

I found out that the areas of Arizona we passed through around Phoenix are known as the Golden Corridor and the deep orange sunset we saw is a local specialty; sunsets have been paler and pinker since. Scottsdale was also our last urban area for a while. We went back to Solari Square in the daylight and discovered it's a giant sundial, only inverted; the red girder that extends the red walls of the bell-hung gateway also marks the gnomon's beam of light (a bright finger in the middle of a broad bar of shade cast by the bridge supports) at solar noon, the silt-cast panels echo the designs on the bronze bells (which came from Cosanti, the predecessor of Arcosanti) and the whole space must feel scorched in the summer. At 11am on a January morning, the sun was enough to drive us into the shade. First we played inside the giant kaleidoscope formed by three mirror-backed doors tilted in a sculpture and then we remembered The Breakfast Club (a breakfast/lunch place we'd solemnly promised not to forget when we drove past the night before). Eggs benedict with spinach and thin slices of filet mignon steak smothered in mushroom bordelaise? Tasty if different.

Driving out of Scottsdale involves a lot of urban sprawl before you start to climb the slopes towards Flagstaff. We stopped to enjoy the open country at a viewpoint; not sure if the orange jumpsuited convicts working the road gang were enjoying it as much. We turned off the main road to visit Montezuma's Castle; no south american connection at all, this was a Sinagua native American cliff pueblo - 40-odd rooms built into the side of a creamy limestone cliff, starting with a few natural caves and adding supports and walls and ladders and adobe in darker colours to form a vertical village within earshot of the river, surrounded by walnuts and tall trees with white bark that glow in the sunset light. A second pueblo was burned out centuries ago; only the caves remain, with the occasional masonry to firm up an opening - one has a giant honeycomb in. Looking for the holes for support posts I saw the undersides of the overhangs were studded with rock wren nests - darker round mud nests with circular openings freckling the pale rock.

We stopped a little before sunset to catch the red rocks outside Sedona catch fire in the light and drove through the stunning red slopes and the, um, extravagant new age establishments and up the twisty hairpin road that leads out of Sedona and on to Flagstaff. This was cold and dark and anonymous and it was a shock to see drifts of snow on sidewalks and in parks. We stayed in the cheaper outskirts and drove to the historic downtown for dinner; the Beaver Street Brewery is one of (I've heard) four microbreweries ringing the changes on a range of beers. The IPA was tangy and not too sharp, the Hefeweizen was nice but a bit forgettable, the golden ale was a nice lager by any other name, the red ale was rich and pleasant, the stout was a little nutty but not quite smoky enough for my taste and the raspberry ale was excellent - sweet but not to sweet, fruity but not too fruity, not in the slightest bit lambic. The food was good, although chicken fried chicken is not fried chicken and my excellent chicken pot pie was actually an excellent chicken vegetable stew with a pastry hat.

The place I found on Yelp for breakfast turned out to be literally opposite the brewery although we drove right round the picturesque downtown first (the red stone makes the older buildings look very solid and brick like). Macy's European Cafe got good reviews for biscuits and gravy and coffee. The coffee was excellent and after days of drip coffee it's delightful to get a latte. The biscuits were crisp without and fluffy within, the gravy was tangy and could only have been improved by the addition of sausage - I'd found a vegetarian restaurant for breakfast ;-)

We stopped not far out of Flagstaff to wander around Elden Pueblo, which is a community archaeology site; you can't see much of the digs under the snow and at least half of the buildings are labelled as having been put back together wrong by the previous set of amateur archaeologists but it was interesting to wander around what's basically a 13th century village and wonder how they stood the weather - anywhere you weren't in direct sunlight it was distinctly cold.

The signs at Montezuma's Castle and Elden speculated about why the pueblos were abandoned. No such mystery about the much larger pueblo we saw at Wupakti; when the volcanoes that surround Flagstaff started up again in the 11th century, I'd have moved out sharpish. That resulted in Sunrise, which shows up as you drive past a large meadow, looking exactly like a volcano with the top blown off but there have been millennia of lava flows and eruptions here. Some of the slopes have snow and trees on but you can see the other slope of the same volcano is still red or grey cinders with nothing growing. Some cinder cones have developed a ridge of trees on what looks like a sand dune along the top, like the mane on a horse. There's a sea of volcanoes and cones with lava flows that look like Lanzarote or Hawaii drifting across land you expect to be high prairie - quite disconcerting.

There are several pueblo ruins; the most complete we saw was Wukoki, which reminds me of Hopi House in Grand Canyon village - Mary Colter knew the architecture that fits into these landscapes. It was like a small manor house - set on the high ground in an open plain with views into the Painted Desert and across the plain, with multiple rooms and an open area I'd call a deck or a terrace and the signs called a plaza. The rock is dark and red, the same colour as the humps of rock around it but looking darker up against a bright blue sky. You can squeeze into a couple of the rooms or just soak up the sun and enjoy the view.

The road climbs again and we saw the beginning of sunset painting in the cliffs of the Lower Colorado Canyon, with the Painted Desert scarlet and pink and gold behind it. And then we were into Grand Canyon park and at the Watchtower at Desert View just in time for the sunset light to paint glowing gold over the Desert Palisades and the stubby tower and the scrubby trees on the slope. Navajo Mountain was clearer than I've ever seen it and we spotted Vermillion Cliffs looking tiny. The light had left the river, which is full and green, although once the sun was down below the rim of the canyon more light bounced into the folds of rock and the river was brighter. You get a bright yellow and orange edge as the sun drops to the canyon rim and below and a misty pink glow over the Painted Desert as the sky darkens and the moon brightens, and then as we drove into Grand Canyon village the sky kept the sunset glow, lemon and apricot and peach. Oddly, there were 'rays' of blue cutting through the sunset colours like negative rays of light; we think they're the shadows of mountains, where the peaks block the sunset light out.

It was cold but there was less snow here than any year we've visited; the temperature was in the high 50s and we didn't have to clamber and slither over slopes of packed ice to get our sunset photos. The stars were bright in the village, but we were tired; dinner at Bright Angel Lodge and into our cosy room to juggle the CES calender for the umpteenth time before bed. And then up and down the rim for view after view of grandeur in canyons; I'm far more impressed by the Grand Canyon after having seen it several times than when we first visited. Bright Angel canyon was clear, every temple spire was standing out in the bright air and we could see all the mountains and landmarks in the distance across the North Rim, 50 miles and more away.

We stopped in the village for lunch in the lounge at El Tovah; I would have said a great chili and navajo tacos, but while it tasted fantastic, it gave both of us mild nausea and stomach pains and I slept all the way back to Vegas and felt a little subdued for the first few exhausting CES days.

The LA flight is long but pleasant (at the front of the plane, after a nice lunch and massage in the Clubhouse) but it is odd when you take off later afternoon into the murky light and it's dark by the time you reach Scotland and still dark by the time you look out over America and still dark when you land in LA and drive to Santa Monica. Beautifully warm and sunny the next morning, which we spent over brunch in the tunnel of bougainvillea that is Cora's Coffee Shoppe - home of the omelette ask-your-waiter and the tomato jam of surpassing delight. Popped into the Microsoft Store in Century City to get a Samsung Series 7 slate - the thin tablet PC I've been waiting for since 2003 - well, it would need a clip-on keyboard to be perfect and they only had a Bluetooth keyboard for it. I'm going to try to add something to the case with duct tape and cardboard for the times when I need to have the keyboard on my lap, not on a desk. This is the non custom version of the Windows 8 preview tablet we didn't get to keep and it's a good job I really wanted one, given how hard it was to buy.

First none of them were available in October before we came home (missed it by four days). Then the 25% discount the Microsoft Store was offering expired on the 2nd and we didn't land on the 2nd in time to get to the store. And then my credit card wouldn't go through at the store. Ah, I thought; I'm in the US and it's not a cheap purchase - I'll call up and tell them it's me. You're in the US, said MBNA with a note of shock; you didn't tell us! As you can see from my bills, I said, I travel here a lot; I'm not phoning you every month to tell you where I am... Now, about this purchase. The store had to phone their merchant services, he said; they'll get you to do security. The nice chap who'd already been helpful enough to show me all the keyboards and advise me to get the protective case and apply the gift card I earned buying the slate to the keyboard and case phoned them, but they hung up on him. We tried the card again; no. He phoned them back; they weren't helpful. I phoned MBNA, who said they'd approve the transaction. We tried the card again; no. By this time the nice chap had to go to lunch and handed me over to his colleague. By this time we'd demonstrated the Nokia Lumia 800s we're carrying to most of the store workers, including the senior team who kept coming back to check on progress. We tried the card again. Colleague suggested she speak to MBNA; we phoned them, they told her what to say to the people she had to phone, who said they couldn't get through to MBNA, so I told them I'd already talked to MBNA and gave them the number I'd called, they called MBNA and got the security team who spoke to me and asked me even more security questions and said the purchase was really, really approved. We tried the card again. Guess what? I phoned MBNA yet again, they said an approval could take up to an hour. I've been here an hour, I said through gritted teeth. Try in half an hour, they said chirpily. I asked the nice lady at the Microsoft Store if the tea place around the corner was any good because I was going to need a drink soon and she brought us out some green tea and we timed the half hour and tried the card again. Guess what? She phoned merchant services, who blamed Amex and MBNA and she demanded to speak to a supervisor and was put on hold. Original nice chap came back from lunch as I phoned MBNA again and became increasingly and frigidly Polite and suddenly the MBNA person spoke to her boss and said the approval would only take ten minutes more... We waited fifteen minutes - still on hold for someone's boss on the other line - and tried the card again. There was silence for a moment and then 'Listen!' said the original nice chap. 'That's the receipt printing!'

I think it's the only time I've ever high-fived a sales assistant for taking my money.

It was all a little surreal, because we passed the time chatting to the Microsoft Store folk about Windows Phone (including my belief that the Lumia 900 pix are fake; they claim not to have heard anything and to have had lots of advance info about the the 800 and 710), Zune vs Nokia Music vs Pandora vs Spotify, Media Center vs DLNA video on Xbox, whether all-in-one PCs get hot, CES, slates, accents, tea, Dexter and other good TV shows... it was like hanging out with any geeks of our acquaintance, except for every so often I tried to spend money and they tried to take it from me and it didn't work and we all picked up the phone and carried on chatting. They tried everything possible to make the card work (taking a dollar off the price every time we ran the card so multiple transactions for the same amount didn't trigger a fraud alert), they never suggested giving up and it was the nicest time I've ever spent two hours trying to buy exactly what I knew I wanted before I walked in the door...

After that we chugged through minor traffic jams out to Palm Springs and the desert night and a moon too bright to see meteors and the giant hot tub and a rather nice burger bar with a deck and a fire and sweet potato and parmesan truffle fries (not all together) and an early jet lag night and an early morning swim and our traditional corn beef hash at Sherman's Deli. This is a mildly caricatured Jewish deli that serves 6-egg double thick bacon omelettes and has notes on the menu like 'gefilte fish; you'll like it' but the corned beef is about the best I've ever tasted. It took me four visits to work out the convoluted menu choice to get exactly what I want; sliced tomato rather than the thick potato scallop fries, everything bagel not toast, with butter not cream cheese, with one latke on the side (with sour cream and apple sauce). Tangy meat, crispy potato, a vegetable presence, chewy bagel. yum.

Then we took the interstate past the foothills that lead into Joshua Tree - with an unusually bright and very science fictional moon hanging overhead - and past all the cactuses and odd volcano cones and into Arizona where it's an hour later for no readily apparent reason. The sunset was orange and just got more orange as it went on, long after I was convinced it was going to just fade into darkness, although darkness had descended to hide the sprawl of Phoenix from our eyes.

We're staying at the motel next to the Scottsdale Microsoft Store again, on the grounds that we knew where it was. We walked a couple of blocks through the warm evening towards the pretty light-festooned trees of downtown and found a sushi bar for dinner and explored the new Soleri Bridge - either designed by or in honour of Paolo Soleri, the architect building arcologies in the Flagstaff desert that he finds my casting absurd bronze bells. Some of these decorate the bridge, hanging in front of two open-fronted, red-lined metal cylinders that echo the two cylindrical metal supports for the suspension lines that hold the cantilever; a red girder runs down the middle of the bridge like the red lining of the bell gate projecting out through the spacing between the supports - an interesting mix of the decoration emphasising the function. The lights over the Salt River looked like a scene from Tron Legacy, doubled in the water and distant in a dark space with no visible human. Then half a dozen skateboarders whizzed across the bridge to feel it resonate beneath their wheels and we found a sculpture of four enormous wooden Spanish style doors lined with mirrors. I want to see that in the daylight, but I fear walking inside it in sunlight will feel like I'm at the mercy of a Bond villain...

Scottsdale AZ, a set on Flickr.

We Travel. For Work. A Lot. We enjoy it (and as we have neither children nor a daily commute, kibbitz someone else's carbon footprint, mine is offset courtesy of a conference we attend every year). This year we went to...

Ignoring places we visited for a day or along the way (coffee shops in Atascadero and Malibu, or downtown Detroit for example), these are the places I stayed in overnight, in approximate order (places stayed in more than once this year*) (places stayed in for the first time this year)
Santa Monica, CA^*
Palm Springs, CA^*
Las Vegas, NV^*
Mojave, CA^*
Paso Robles, CA^*
Campbell, CA^*
San Jose, CA^*
Willow Glen, CA *
Barstow, CA^*
San Francisco, CA^*
Hanover, Germany
Orlando, FL^*
Passe-a-Grille, FL
Anna Maria Island, FL
Bradenton, FL
Atlanta, GA^*
Santa Barbara, CA
Laguna Beach, CA
Santa Clarita, CA
Dearborn, MI^*
Redmond, WA^*
Anaheim, CA^*
San Juan Island, WA
Bellevue, WA^*
Los Angeles, CA^*
Ojai, CA
Lake Isabella, CA
June Lake, CA
Mariposa, CA
Pismo Beach, CA
Benidorm, Spain (despite claims it was Alicante, it was definitely Benidorm)
St Helier, Jersey

Countries visited: US, Spain, Germany, Channel Islands
US States visited: California, Washington, Florida, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan
US States visited for the first time: Michigan
US States stayed in for the first time that we'd previously driven through: Georgia
Crazy road trips: taking six days to drive from LA to Paso Robles by going over the Sierras and across the Central Valley twice - other road trips sane for values of 'let's go from LA to Vegas via Palm Springs and 29 Palms' and similar.
Craziest commute: LHR-LAX-SEA-LAX-SEA-LAX (yes, we went through LAX six times in three weeks)
High point: I thought it would be 8,300 on Mt. Whitney Trailhead, which might be the highest new place of the year, but it's more likely Tioga Pass again at 9,945
Low point: haven't been that depressed this year, actually....
Airlines flown: Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America, BMI, Delta, FlyBe, Alaska Airlines, British Airways, Iberia
New Ferry journeys taken: Anacortes to Friday Harbour, San Juan Island
New Cirque du Soleil show: Iris in LA
Donuts of the year: Top Pot in Bellevue keeps its crown against the robot donut maker in Pike Place Market and the cafe on St Catherine's breakwater but the specially less sweet Voodoo Donuts recipes at the J Lohr tasting get an honorable mention, as does the robot donut maker at the MAX conference party because it produced possibly the most welcome donut of the year
Best grilled cheese: Virgin Clubhouse, LHR - only on the menu for a month
Bands seen for the first time: Head and the Heart, Slacktone, Pollo del Mar, Ra Ra Riot, We Are Scientists, Weezer
Things 'I've been meaning to do for years' finally accomplished: stopping at the Lazy Daisy in Santa Monica for late brunch, dumplings at Din Tai Fung in Bellevue, lining my purple fake fur neckwarmer with bright green fleece, driving into Yosemite on the Tioga Pass in daylight so we could see it, moving our website to a system where we could make it work (Tumblr)
Things I said I'd never do that I did this year: visit CeBIT - just for a day, not that successfully, although I got work and useful contacts out of it
Things I didn't see the point of that I now really like: the Xbox, which has become a useful home entertainment integration point (still don't get console gaming but I do like Kinect), socks (I always went barefoot whenever possible, now I need arch support and get cold feet), Twitter
Things I used to do a lot that I did at least once this year: interview a science fiction author for publication rather than just as someone to chat to, went to the RFH on the South Bank just to hang out
Articles written: 210 (up from 161 in 2010, both counting all paid blog posts for a month as one article)
Articles linked: a lot more on Twitter than on LJ, which I must fix
Things seen for the first time: fireflies (in the rain!), a forked bolt of lightning (head on not out of the corner of my eye), Detroit
Favourite purchase of the year: lime green fedora hat
Thankfulnesses: too many to count, most of them to friends new and old

Big Sur is all similes and metaphors to me today; the sea glittering like a disco ball, the monarch butterflies swooping along like tiny hang gliders on a schedule, sun baked Artemisia thick along the crest of the path that smells rich and savoury like anchovy as the oils bake out in the sun, great twisted tentacles of kelp like beached kraken or invading alien monsters that landed in the sea and didn't make it through the surf...

We spent the day driving down highway one, along cliff edges covered with pampas, shedding seeds like cherry blossom, around hairpin bends of green serpentine and brown grass and concrete bridges arching beside the blue, blue sea; same colour as the Florida sea, very different temperature. The waves are green glass or turquoise foam the colour of air in ice, which we saw not two weeks ago in Yosemite ;-) The waves are full of the kelp, torn up and spun into tangles and flung on the beach to look alien and sinister...

It's Indian summer here still, sunny and bright. We stopped for crab benedict with the amazing views of Cafe Kevah punctuated by begging jays and the occasional gong, saw the expected elephant seals and some very unexpected zebras and found a nice little diner called CJs for dinner in Arroyo Grande. Tomorrow to LA and home...

Ср, 08:19: RT @ntouk: I keep hearing David Brent's voice in my head .... "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part"
Ср, 08:21: According to Netbiscuits mobile ad platform, Windows Phone share minor at global level, already ranks 4th in N America http://t.co/vRZwcVcC
Ср, 18:44: If I had a million dollars, what would I give a keynote at Oracle World on? Suggestions on a dollar bill please...
Ср, 19:54: Silhouette, contrast, stillness key to graphic storytelling; Pixar is the church of storytelling, it's our religion #adobemax
Ср, 23:42: RT @sbisson: A solution to the Oracle/Google Android impasse: Google pays $2.7B for the keynote at Javaworld 2012. Everyone wins!
Ср, 23:43: roadtrip! with this rain, thankfully just to Santa Monica for the night where we're trying out the Lazy Daisy cafe; awesome pancakes
Чт, 00:03: For once I seem to agree with Ellison; been saying 4 years easy to get yr data out of Salesforce but good luck getting yr business model out
Чт, 00:05: apropos of nothing; the Internet high five page is just a good mood away from 'talk to the hand'
Чт, 00:37: Can Intel save PCs from crapware? http://t.co/Iq4bMX1a #zdnetuk
Чт, 04:01: Watching the musicians set up for Iris. I love cirque du soleil; there's a girl with a zoetrope skirt showing boxers http://t.co/imCShhyX

Having had a non-stop (counts) nine days at workshops, conferences and writing, we sacked out at motel in Renton and slept in, then haded off Saturday morning for Anacortes to catch the ferry, stopping only for donut nectarines and sweet local blackberries from a fruitstand I immediately christened Maslow's hierachy of farms (they sell in order of preference from new farmers, local organic farmers, organic farmers and then just locals) and a coffee from the Perfect Ten espresso hut. The blackberries were small and soft and sweet - hedge brambles rather than commercial I think - like the concentrated taste of every perfect berry form my childhood; when they were done I'm ashamed to say I licked out the punnet for juice...

By that time we were out of the light rain that started the second we got in the car and Anacortes was sunny and just a bit breezy, with some beautiful gardens in front of the houses along the main road. Tempted as we were by the Terminal Buzz coffee hut we checked in for the ferry to Friday Harbour and whiled away 30 minutes seeing what we think was an ermine (neither stotally different nor weaselly identified; russet brown body with a black tip to the tail and cream fur at the throat) and watching jellyfish in the harbour and spotting a baby cormorant getingt fed (looking more like an alien than a bird as it gapes open a soft beak so wide the mother bird can get most of her head inside - the pre-feeding motion is alarmingly like watching a cat about to produce a hairball) and picking up a tuna salad sandwich on wheat bread so sweet it must be sprouted and the obligatory clam chowder. We polished that off on the scenic ferry journey, passing Lopez to see a stream of ferries making the bus-stop route between the islands.

Friday Harbour itself is split between a charmingly rustic area of pretty shops to attract tourists and a practical main town; the friend who is charmingly putting us up for the weekend in his beach house drove down to navigate us to the market, back to his house and on to the retreat - in all three places we sat around and yakked away, over tea and wine and cheese and the most amazing fresh picked blueberries from their blueberry patch - Simon now likes blueberries for the first time. Dinner at Roche Harbour watching the boats bob around and learning about the seven years war over a pig where no-one got hurt - except the pig. Steamed seafood and crab stuffed halibut (and not even a taste of the bacon mashed potatoes with Simon's meat loaf) and berry cobbler.

This morning we slept in and drank coffee and ate blueberries and raspberries and peaches and Dave's Killer Blues Bread with raspberry jam and peanut butter and gazed out form the deck across to Vancouver Island and those Nice Candadians with their Rogers phone network which is all our phones picked up and waved away wasps and giant dragonflies. The orcas seem to be elsewhere; we didn't even see them when we went down to Limekiln Park although we did see porpoises and seals and various sea birds and some impressive sea nettle jelly fish in the kelp. We walked back to the car along the cliff path, enjoying the silver-grey sea and sky without tumbling down to join the kayakers or the divers and then drove up to the tip of San Juan island. The landscape is a mix of typical Washington and Scottish borders; trees and fields and slopes and sky and coast, and lots of islands lurking around looking scenic. Unexpected: deer. Delightful: the whimsical houses.

More gossiping and geeking over more wine and cheese on the desk and an excellent dinner of local sockeye salmon during which even the more aloof cat realised suddenly 'oh, they're cat people' and get to get pettings. Tomorrow we have to work - and work out what to do with the rest of the week - but it's been nice to just stop and do as little as possible ;-)

I've tried saving surplus brewed and cafetiere-pressed coffee for iced coffee; I used to freeze it as coffee ice cubes or just chill it in the fridge, but it always tasted a bit bitter and sludgy. I was looking for something to do with kidney beans that isn't chili and came across an intriguing recipe for cold-brew coffee which led me to discover an entire coffee movement around cold brewing coffee concentrate for iced coffee; in New York you can get it delivered, in New Orleans you can buy it in convenience stores, and making it is easy.

We use the Illy coffee pods that work in most espresso machines (well, the Waitrose own-brand version); they're like a fat round tea bag and they simplify cleaning up. But we have a handful of hotel coffee single-brew, sealed in a filter bag coffee pouches that make terrible coffee in a cafetiere, and there's always a dog-end of ground coffee hanging around in the back of the fridge, so I thought I'd try this out.

Coarse ground coffee is recommended in most of the recipes, and the proportion is 4:1 water to coffee - so a third of a cup of coffee to a cup and a half of water. Use cold water, in a jug and mix the ground coffee if it looks as if it's forming lumps in the water, then leave for at least 3 hours and more likely overnight, especially if you're doing it in bulk.

When it looks ready, strain. I used a tea mesh ball (like a mini sieve) lined with a double folded sheet of tea bag paper that came as packing in an Republic of Tea order; muslin would also work. The woven cotton sock I use for brewing herb teas inside the sock didn't strain quite as effectively (I am comparing a brew of hotel + bagged coffee to all bagged coffee). Next time I'm going to try reusing the filter bag from the hotel coffee pouch ;-)

What you get is strong, cold coffee; a little on the strong side to drink black, ideal diluted 3:1 with milk - US recipes often dilute with cream and water, but cream in coffee is a very US thing ;-)

The cold brewing turns awful hotel coffee into something very drinkable; you get far less acidity and bitterness - either less of the coffee oil comes out or not heating it makes a difference. And there's none of the powdery sludge you get from the bottom of the pot. Straining is fiddly; doing the cold brew in a cafetiere (without plunging) and using a wide mouthed bottle to pour into make it much easier. Other than that, easy and a nice way of getting real iced coffee on tap.

While it's nice and hot we're having a couple of iced tea pitchers on the go in the fridge most of the time; I brew up the more elderly leaf tea we have on the shelf (Republic of Tea Mango Ceylon that's probably five years old, some first flush darjeeling that got pushed out of sight)... we don't usually have lemon around so I often punch it up with a drizzle of pink ginger cordial or just plain cheat with a splash of Republic of Tea chai concentrate and fruit juice. The most successful has been using the lychee green oolong from the little tea shop on Castro in Mountain View; you want to brew two or three pots from that, according to the nice lady in the store (we got to taste about 10 teas while we chose the lychee, including puers), and it's flavourfull and refreshing.

Recently I've been trying to make something like the refreshing Jasmine Lime Cooler by brewing a big pot of jasmine tea, steeping for an hour or two and keeping that in the fridge to add a splash of lime cordial to (Bottle Green rather than Roses, as it has a lot more lime and a lot less sugar). I'm not sure if it needs fresh lime or a bigger slug of cordial to approximate US limeade - or margarita mix ;-) - as it's not quite as tangy and limy as Peet's.

Usually I wouldn't brew jasmine more than a couple of minutes; for drinking hot, long brewing brings out far too much tannin that overwhelms the jasmine. For drinking cold I think it needs the longer brewing to get strong enough to retain flavour in a cold drink; I often brew a second pot with the leaves after I've put the first pot in a jug and it's too light in flavour to stand up to the lime as much, but very refreshing.

Obligatory nugget of incorrect common knowledge ;-) Brits should be called lemonies rather than limeys as Cook used lemons to avoid scurvy in his crew; limes don't have enough vitamin C to help.

>In between writing and running errands and recovering from what I keep thinking of as For(d)ward the Future (Ford's futurist/tech conference this week) we took a run down Highway 1 today to enjoy the views and have my favourite brunch at Cafe Kevah (the sunnier, deck area of Nepenthe). It was grey and cloudy after we did the twistiness that is Highway 17, right down to below Carmel (where the dove-placard peace garden is definitely all stone cairns and pebble piles now). Even in the dimness under the marine layer it's a lovely coast and the grey-white reflection the distant fog bank cast on the furthest stretch of the sea was striking against the aquamarine of the surf around the rocks nearer the coast. Then we turned a headland and the sun came out and the sky and sun turned blue and the headlands went yellow with mustard; some slopes were so crowded with yellow and purple lupines and ice plant and indian paintbrush and magenta flag and that yellow monkey flower thing and other blooms that it was like a patchwork quilt.

It was such a lovely day that Cafe Kevah was busier than usual; the blue and scrub jays kept to the trees - they like to retrieve crumbs from empty tables - and we weren't under an umbrella, so my left arm (not protectively tanned from being next to the car window all trip) is now festively pink. But the fresh blue crab and avocado in the eggs benedict and the superb coffee are worth it (and the sourdough toast and christopher bun - cinnamon, raisins, icing - are nothing to sniff at either).

Back up the sunny coast and across to Capitola; I know it's touristy but it's charming too, with pretty painted cottages and Cafe Violetta had my favourite ice cream flavours back in stock - ollalaberry and honey, and oregon blackberry - so we sat on the sea wall and boggled at the new sandy beach where once was a small river and piles of rock and driftwood, and debated what the distant wake was (canoe rather than dolphin) and toasted a little more before heading back to San Jose. A little work, a little packing (!), a long flight and we'll be back in London and plunging into press conferences and the London summer - joy ;-)

We last left the intrepid explorers in Paso Robles having thai food; the next day we slept in and brunched at Artisan where I still think they should have the chanterelle and egg on brioche toast for lunch but the sandwiches are awesome... Simon had the cuban and I had the poached shrimp BLT with avocado and caper thyme aïoli because that's just brunch food, and then we set off to see if we could reach Highway 1 despite the landslips. That involves a scenic drive out of Paso on the Interlake road - between lake Naciemento and another distant lake on one of those swooping hillside roads, and the hills were green and lovely. The road dropped into meadows as we crossed the army land and then ran between deep banks and them up; slowly but surely we twisted up around blind corners and hairpin bends along the edge of hills that became mountains that gained height and showed off views and vistas then plummeted into deep green depths and climbed again. The disadvantage - apart from doing it in the land yacht (Behemoth, as I have nicknamed our Mercury Grand Marquis) - was the people coming around the corners in the middle of the road looking like deer in the headlights. We crested the ridge and swung around rocky curves encrusted with flowers and pierced with rivulets and accomplished wonderful views of the coast - and realised why the uphill drivers looked so uncertain. They were turning off Highway One onto what was marked as a diversion and most of them didn't realise this was the Scenic Mountain Route...

It was still a mostly warm evening so we stopped at Nepenthe to watch the birds and enjoy dinner and ended up huddled by the firepit; the local pinot noir is nice there and I think I rediscover it about every third visit...

Since then we have been bouncing around Silicon Valley between seeing friends and attending conferences (LAUNCH and Velocity) and having meetings and filing copy (we're both wearing a plethora of personal tracking devices from tweet-your-weight scales to pill bottles that flash when it's time for pill popping and I have more styles of stylus than I can count).

Highlights: wine tasting in Sonoma/Kenwood with spikeiowa and voidampersand and Lillian and the Andrew we keep meeting or almost meeting. I really liked Enkidu for their wide range of utterly excellent wines of all varieties and styles; really, it's all good! The Convict zin from Paradise Ridge was also good. We had dinner at Petit Sirah in Santa Rosa, which does tapas-size and larger plates for a variety of dishes that I should have written up in detail at the time - all yummy.
(low point; food poisoning that night, which I put down to a slice of elderly pizza earlier in the day)

hanging out and eating Laotian Thai food in Berkeley with Iain and Monica: I want to go back for the Vientiane duck but we liked the pressed rice with egg anchovy topping and peanut sauce.

wining with spikeiowa again in Santa Cruz; excellent pressed sandwiches at the bakery near Bonny Doon, tasting 1998 and 1991 wines from Santa Cruz Mountain Winery and from the barrel hedgehog table wine at Sones (and really liking their in-barrel ancient vine Zinfandel).

celebrating national donut day with a wine and donut pairing from J Lohr and Pyscho donuts; between 7 of us, no two people had the same favourite wine or donut! The rosewater pistachio was good, the plain chocolate was - in my opinion - best - but the cab sauv that came with the coconut chocolate donut was the nicest wine.

Mobo Sushi in Santa Cruz and a prowl round Bookshop Santa Cruz and chocolate at Chocolate with elimloth and spiritmoving; Mobo is ecletic - it does trad sushi well, but the esoteric stuff is nicer, including combinations with shiso leaf in with the eel/avocado, a tempura calamari roll and salmon/snow crab/orange/macadamia. Chocolate looks nice for lunch but does a selection of specialty hot chocolates including the honey cardamon ginger one I had, and large chocolate mousse truffles. They all looked good, I had dark rose. Simon had a sundae that was a slice of cake in a sundae dish with ice cream below and fudge sauce and all the whipped cream above.

Too many tasty dinners to count with Jon & Tamzen of the delightful spare room, in return for which we're valiantly helping them plough through their wine mountain (a terrible job, but somebody has to do it..) Including dinner with mr_kurt and saffronrose where Tamzen's cheesecake converted me back to liking cheesecake after all these years.

Between us being busy and her being ill we've still managed to catch up with rowanf twice and we had an evening in San Francisco and saw our lovely friends there... and we still have Michigan to go before we come home.

We've reached a short break in our back to back conferences, nicely coinciding with the long weekend (on both sides of the Atlantic). After BlackBerry World in Orlando and Google IO in SF and Teched in Atlanta and Maker Faire in San Mateo and Future in Review in Laguna Beach and all the writing that goes with them, we marked the end of the week with an In-N-Out burger and a lie-in on Saturday morning and a soak in the pool and breakfast at the bright yellow Egg Plantation, where they have 101 omelettes (and a dozen or so benedicts and other breakfast options). We had corned beef/swiss and crab/avocado/mushroom, and watched the pomegranate seeds in my Pometini bounce up and down in the bubbles from the sparkling wine before driving up the scenic section of I5 and out into the Tejons through Frasier Mountain and Pine Mountain Club. We stopped a couple of times to enjoy the view and just before the Bitter Creek condor reserve we saw a condor swooping lazily overhead. Wait, two condors; wait, three, no four, is that five condors? Amazing sight.

Down off the Tejons and up the coast; I actually fell asleep for much of the drive so I can report only that the sun was bright, the sea shiny and the much-mocked barge of the Mercury Grand Marquee delightfully comfortable. Dinner in Paso Robles at Artisan; the burrata I had as a starter (with peach, prosciutto and almonds) was so rich and soft I practically needed a spoon. Simon's shredded pork trotter cakes on apricot sauce were unctuous and porky, and his hanger steak is the kind of hefty amazing steak you can really sink your teeth into. My lamb was a mix of tender juicy cutlets filleted, sliced and topped with unfeasibly rich lamb (shoulder?) and interspersed with huge mushrooms and tender pea pods (I'm never quite sure about pea pods and pea shoots as the flavour is so pronounced but these were tender enough and small enough that it wasn't too overpowering). The truffle arancini rice balls on the side were so rich I ended up saving them for lunch.

I can't speak for his fried chocolate spring roll weirdness with cherries, but my blueberry crisp/peach buckle/peach creme fraiche ice cream was very excellent (I don't think I've ever eaten anything at Artisan that wasn't excellent, and last time we were in we discovered that the owner knows our next door neighbour by one of those convoluted coincidences that make the world so much fun). I liked all the wines we had with dinner - Tint 'lighter shade of pale' Cinsault/Mourvedr/Grenache rose from Central Coast, Halter Ranch Roussanne/Grenache Blanc/Marsanne/Picpoul, a Toft Syrah/Mourvedre/Grenache - but Tint was the only one I'd want to track down specifically to find out more, and having finally found them (on Facebook) they look to be doing the wine festival circuit and just getting into distribution. You heard it here first...

And today we went out wining with local friends - who again we met by convoluted coincidence - and they suggested two wineries we'd never tried. Hansen is off out along Templeton Gap, where the views are big open sweeping hillsides; the winemaker collects vintage barbed wire and the wines are all varietal and spend up to four years in barrel (moving from one type of barrel to another to get the result he wants). It must be incredibly labour intensive and ends up with enormously flavoured cab sauvs without then becoming too big or tannin heavy - and an old vine Zinfandel that is utterly strawberry. A complete contrast at Epoch wines up at York Mountain winery, on a twisty tree-shaded road: the tasting room is a pre-fab delight of wooden walls and windows with a view over the slopes, next door is the winery they need to renovate (until then they're making the wine at Denner) and next to that is Paderewski's house - he came for the hot springs and stayed to make wine. Again the rose was excellent; the tempranillo gets tasting notes of supple, I think it's just too soft - maybe a few years in bottle will firm it up. The Ingenuity blend is more interesting, but my favourite was the more complex Authenticity syrah/mouvedre blend - olive and cedar and cassis and tannin and fruit as well. Plus we got to drink and chat with friends and enjoy the sunshine and meet Epoch owner Bill Armstrong who was hanging out outside with his family, and pet the new winery cat (a very Jeffrey-like Maine Coone). Excellent thai for dinner at Basil too.

We missed the IE In-N-Out Tweetup last night, which is a shame; In-N-Out is a classic burger that's always a great standby. On balance, I'd say Five Guys is a better burger and there's a slightly wider choice (definitely more toppings) and I like it because it reminds me of the Pony Express burger and fried chicken joint of my childhood (in Southport so we'd either been shopping or to the beach (well, expanse of sand) or the fair) (and we rarely stopped so it was a treat)), but in Vegas the Five Guys is in Henderson rather than not far off the strip (it's Vegas, assume 'not far' means car or cab). I'm quite fond of Steak n Shake - maybe not quite up to In-N-Out but the shakes are better - but that's in South Point, which isn't Vegas either.

Further up the scale, there's a new trend of gourmet burger shake bars. Our favourite is BLT (Burger Laurent Tourel) in the mirage; superb burgers, great sweet potato fries, awesome alcoholic shakes, fun toppings. Last night we tried Holstein's Shakes and Buns in the Cosmopolitan which has about 100 beers. I'm still uncertain about the Weiz Guys light heffeweizen Simon had but my Buckbean Orange Blossom ale (Nevada Brewery) was very nice and almost musky. I had the bacon and aged goat cheese arugula sirloin burger - I'd give the burger patty an 8 and the bun a 6. Shoestring and sweet potato fries both excellent. It doesn't have the fun shirts of BLT (tip waiters not cows) but I'm hard pressed to pick one patty over the other...

We drive some routes through the US quite regularly, but we always seem to see something new. The mountains along the railroad tracks out of Mojave were particularly snowy today, the sun was bright and the SS Minnow in the field was looking sprucely rusted; we stopped for our usual grilled tri-tip sandwich and peach raspberry pie at the Keene Store, which has several new newspaper clippings on the wall but is the same good food in the middle of not much.

The wind was too strong for the reflecting pond on the 58 to be reflecting this time, but the decorated Christmas Stump was still looking cheerful. The rain set in at several points and visibility was down to a couple of feet a couple of times (we were up in the cloud); other times it was bright and sunny and the wildflowers were bright and colourful. Near McKittrick we saw a helicopter with orange punches dangling from a long rope flitting from field to field like a bee putting the pollen back; instead of doing one side of the road then the other, it zig-zagged from field to field, crossing the road (and the power lines!) every time, lowering the pouches to the ground and depositing one in every field in a precise spot; fascinating if a little worrying to watch. Simon spotted a sign about seismic monitoring so we assume instruments.

We turned down the coast near Morro Bay but the rain was heavy, the sea was heaving and the 1 was marked as closed so we turned back along the 46 in more 'I can't see anything' rain which lasted until we climbed into the hot tub at the motel (under cover, once the motel finally found the right key). After steaming for a while we tried a new place for dinner, as recommended by

vgqn (thanks!) - Thomas Hill Organic Bistro, which uses a lot of local food and much of it from the THO farm. It's lighter than Artisan's dishes but just as good; the coconut milk lime broth was delicate and tangy, though I felt noodles and prawns would have gone well in it. Simon's duck three ways on grilled cheese with citrus marmalade was three kinds of duck on the grilled cheese with salad rather than three different piles; his lamb with harissa and chickpeas was hearty, my seared albacore in pancetta with almonds, broiled grapes, heirloom tomatoes, pea puree and shredded basil was full of flavour without being heavy. Wines to remember; the Daou 09 Chemin de Fleurs (it turns out, Daou is the winery we've been waiting to visit ever since our friend Peter went to manage it and told us to wait until the tasting room was built, so we shall go track them down tomorrow) and Vines on the Marycrest (mouvedre zinfandel petit syrah blend). The bacon pannacotta (candied bacon infused in the milk, a slice of warm bacon on the side, huckleberry confit) was an excellent flavour but slightly too firm and gelatinous; pannacotta should shiver, shudder and flinch exquisitely to the spoon...

Small towns in the California high desert are like oases; food, water (pools, that is), shelter for the night... nomads passing through, palm trees and country music in the back of the roadhouse...

We finished our conference asking tricky questions and pinning down a member of the IE team for an interesting discussion about what UX you need for managing privacy and went up to Todd Bishop's Olives at the Bellagio for lunch overlooking the fountains. There was a whole table of Vegas entertainers beside us celebrating someone's birthday - definitely Carrot Top and several others I couldn't identify without harassing them by looking too often, and I think that's just rude - and Vegas had suddenly filled up after being quiet like a small desert town all week, so while the food was as good as ever the service was a bit spotty (and for the first time we had to wait for a table; we wandered off and took photos of the Bellagio conservatory, which is a funfair with floating glass balloons and fields of Icelandic poppies and hyacinths and a stunning version of a David Hockney done from real flowers, as well as the usual butterfly garden). Still the pear elderflower martini, the cauliflower bisque with chunky lardons, the squab and the skirt steak were all excellent, the sun was wonderful and the fountains founted...

We had daylight for the scenic drive back out of Vegas and there were far more landyachts racing by the RV encampment than the couple we saw driving in; dozens of them, doubled by a mirage that made it look like they were sailing on water as they rounded the curves of the course, and one lone kite cart. A lot of the slopes and peaks heading into California look post-volcanic; I don't know if the rocks scattered around are lava or just erosion but it looks as if something blew a few mountains apart. There are veritable forests of joshua trees, the cactus is streaming with orange and the yellow flowers are creeping over the land (flowers like a poppy but plant like mustard). The landscape carried on being dramatic until we pulled in Mojave where we're back in the motel that has the Voyager round-the-world-glider carved into the mirror surround and the bed head and the cupboard (the crew stayed here and the owner is a huge fan); Mike's Roadhouse had boysenberry pie and country music in the back room and I soaked my feet in the hot tub (the water was too cold to soak the rest of me - I am missing the pools at Mandalay Bay that we managed a whole half hour in this week). On, probably, to Paso Robles tomorrow, via our usual stops in Tehachapi for the railway spiral, Keene for tri-tip sandwiches and the back of beyond for scenic photographs. In January it looked like this...

Roughly in order visited, here are the places - other than London! - where we've spent a night or more this year. This misses places when we stayed nearby; we were in Seattle but stayed in Kirkland, in almost every area of the bay but stayed in SF, San Jose and Campbell... * means we spent more than one night there, + means we visited multiple times and underlined places are those I hadn't stayed in before...

Springdale, UT ^*
Las Vegas, NV ^*+
Mojave, CA
Paso Robles, CA +
Cambria, CA
Campbell, CA ^*+Barcelona, Spain ^{*
(we didn't spend the night as we drove through it, but on the way we stopped in Perpignan and Dijon)}Calais, France
Orlando, FL ^*
Cincinnati, OH ^*
Ashland, KY
Lexington, VA
Sparta, NC
Brevard, NC
Charleston, SC
Saint Augustine, FL
Melbourne, FL
Laguna Beach, CA ^*
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA ^*
Santa Monica, CA ^*+
Atascadero, CA
New Orleans, LA ^*
Dublin, Ireland ^*
Bellevue, WA ^*
Kirkland, WA ^*+
Furnace Springs, CA
Palm Springs, CA ^*+
Palm Desert, CA ^*
San Francisco, CA ^*+
St Clement, Jersey ^*+
San Jose, CA ^*+
Mariposa, CA ^*
Lee Vining, CA ^*
Malvern Wells, Hertfordshire
Hay-on-Wye, Powys
Los Angeles, CA ^*+
Portland, OR ^*
McMinnville, OR
Coos Bay, OR
Eureka, CA

Countries: USA, Spain, France, Ireland, Jersey

US States visited: Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Utah, California, Ohio, Florida, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Washington, Oregon, Louisiana, Missouri (just the runway)

US States visited for the first time this year: West Virginia, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri

Airports: LHR, LGW, LAS, SFO, LAX, SEA, PSP, BCN (one way!), MCO, CVG, FLL, LGB, SJO, STL, MSY, PHX, DUB, JER

Airlines flown this year: Virgin Atlantic, BMI, British Airways, Delta, Jet Blue, Southwest, FlyBe, Virgin America (first time and we loved it)

US National Parks visited: Zion, Death Valley, Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky Mountains, Canaveral National Shoreline, Yosemite, Alcatraz Island, Mount Rainier

Highest point: Tioga Pass 9,945 (the highest accessible by car pass in California) (not higher than we've been before, but on a new road to us - the 120)

Places we finally got to after years of going right past: Alcatraz

Adverse weather conditions: stranded in Barcelona (volcanic ash), Tioga Pass closed after we drove over it (early snow), the storm we were a day ahead of all the way down from Seattle, the minor snowpocalypse in London (more iced in than snowed in)

Ferries taken: Condor (Poole-St Helier-Weymouth), P&O (Calais-Dover), Washington State Ferries (Clinton-Mukilteo), the ferry across the Mississippi from New Orleans and back

Craziest road trip taken: a toss up between the week we spent driving back from Ohio to Florida having just flown there - Cincinnati to Fort Lauderdale via the Blue Ridge Parkway and down the Florida coast - and the 13-hour drive from Perpignan to Calais to escape Barcelona after the volcano so we could fly to Orlando.
Saner road trips taken: Las Vegas to Palm Springs (via Death Valley), Seattle to San Jose (via the Willamette Valley, Portland and the Oregon coast)

Wine areas tasted in: Paso Robles, Washington, Willamette Valley, Santa Cruz mountains, Lodi, Livermore

New cuisine of the year: New Orleans (beignet! crawfish boil! better shrimp and grits!). - or food carts in Portland. We also had our first full molecular gastronomy menu at Baume in Palo Alto and sous vide at Republica in Seattle.

Previously unexpected food discovery of the year: good chinese food in Ohio

Previously unexpected alcohol discovery of the year: I like American winter ales and some pumpkin ales (Elysium)

Old favourites that are still as good: Original Joes in San Jose, Tamarine in Palo Alto, Enoteca Turi in Putney

Donuts of the year: Top Pot in Bellevue narrowly beats Cafe du Monde in N'Orleans due to the variety - the robot donut maker in Pike Place Market and the cafe on St Catherine's breakwater always get an honourable mention

Best grilled cheese: tillamook sourdough the bakery in McMinneville OH

Friends seen: never enough!

Pie!

I've been cooking such a wide variety of things for so many years (boned quail in the late 80s when a waitress said 'isn't it nice to order something you could never cook yourself?', salmon mouse rolled in salmon the first time I cooked Christmas lunch for Simon's family) that it's hard to remember what's new in our repertoire but there a couple of standouts from things we tried this year. Roasted butternut squash, first as a side dish with roasted chicken and then as a pasta sauce with a plenitude of toasted pine nuts.Chorizo scramble (first as the contents of a breakfast burrito and then just as breakfast). And pie...

I think of pastry as a nice idea I'm not going to get around to making and I only buy ready-made when I can find the all butter version. The Waitrose in Wandsworth carries it so I tucked some in the freezer and when we were looking at the remains of the roast chicken and wanting something warmer than sandwiches (see: this English winter - bearable but darn cold) I thought 'we have leeks and carrots, we have chicken and we have pastry - pie!' Most of the chicken pot pie recipes say make the sauce in the pan you saute the leeks in; we tipped blanched carrots and softened leeks and shredded chicken into the pie dish and re-used the pan. Simon showed me that the secret to roux is to use more butter than I think and just about the same amount of flour and it browned to the perfect colour for sauce veloute. A few hours before I had stripped the carcase, put it in a pot with water and a couple of chicken and duck carcasses from the freezer and left it to simmer; it did that perfectly but it also condensed itself and we caught it at exactly the moment when we could rehydrate the chicken bisto we'd just made. Stir that into the roux and yum, gravy to pour into the pie dish and top with pastry. Note: you can roll pastry out on a silicon cookie tray but you *will* need to flour it or it will stick. We have a couple of individual pies tucked in the freezer from that, and I feel confident that I can throw pies together in future.

I cooked Christmas lunch again this year, because Simon's mum was feeling rather under the weather, but she'd ordered a frankenbird of turkey, duck, chicken fillets wrapped around prune and rum stuffing and latticed with bacon so I only had to add the juices to the gravy, add sweet potatoes to the roasties, point Simon at the carrots and broccoli, roll the smoked salmon and slice the avocado for starters and enliven the bread sauce with saffron and shredded garlic bread. Assembling blinis isn't quite cooking either, so it was still a Christmas off. We're living out of the freezer until we go away; a delightful dinner with friends tonight will be followed by speedy sausage meatball spaghetti to close out the year in frugal but tasty style.

Chop tinned tomatoes in the tin with scissors, tip into a casserole dish with herbs and whatever sliced peppers and halved chrery tomatoes you can find in the fridge then squeeze chipolatas or even full-size cheap sausages straight into the tomatoes as meatballs; the fat from the sausages cooks into the sauce so you don't need to add oil. I tend to coarsely grate in garlic or slice it into chunks for this, but I skip the whole slicing and sauteing onions step - you can get this in a dish and in the oven in about 12 minutes. cook for 20-30 minutes or until the meatballs look done, serve with pasta - which these days we cook by boiling for two minutes with the lid on, then leaving in the covered pan for the same time you'd normally boil it for and draining. This gives you al dente that you have to leave for a very long time to overcook, it seems to stop the pasta sticking and it saves gas ;-)

Usually my reaction to snow is to want to stay in and enjoy it from the right side of a steaming mug of something special, but we had to go out and enjoy the flakes today. Pebbles hasn't been eating or drinking all weekend, she's running a temperature and sitting like a lump in the warmest places she can find and although we were hugely relieved to have the blood test tell us it isn't either her liver or kidneys (she is 15 now), the vet has no idea what is actually wrong with her and she's dehydrated so Pebbles gets to take an Expensive Holiday with IV fluids and antibiotics.

Also delighted to see that London appears to have got its snow legs; lots of snowflakes but no problems popping in to Green Park to have Nokia explain its enterprise phone strategy to us. Our second meeting was cancelled because it was double-booked rather than because of the weather so we sat in Eat and had pie and soup. Actually, Simon had pie soup: steak and ale pot pie soup is halfway between stew and soup and comes with a pastry lid that gets itself submerged before you get the lid off. I had sweet potato and goat cheese pie (with unexpected but delicious spinach and what I refer to as structural pastry - you can use it to pick the pie up and eat with) which comes with a goodly amount of mash and gravy. Excellent pie that was nice enough to make me think that sweet potato and spinach and lamb pie would be even nicer. And we do have pie dishes...

Talking of snowflakes, I sniggered on seeing the new Starbucks marketing. 'Friends are like snowflakes,' it says; 'they're all beautiful and they're all different.' What it should have also said is'but some of them are just that little bit shinier, like, say a 'special snowflake'...

Portland is all b's and c's

That's b for books; we spent (er, really, that much? I mean lots of time in several Powells), bridges (about every other street). And beer (though we didn't make it to Deschutes we had a couple of local brews. C for coffee, obviously, (food)carts and climate; we fitted in Stumptown coffee with raspberry scones and orange fluffy pannettone style things, book browsing and dinner at the foodcarts around our meetings and it actually got quite bright and sunny - I may have the power to manifest sunshine in the whole of the Pacific North Wet, as the downpour started as we were ready to leave. The poutine truck was closed (boo) so we started with sweet potato fries from Burgerville, which was just as well as Etta (the Violetta truck) had decided there weren't enough customers to keep the fries frying. Even without the white truffle fries, the bacon cheese burgers were excellent - meltingly tender and perfectly medium rare, with micuit sunblush style tomatoes and good bun. Local fruit sodas (raspberry, pear and, by alternating mouthfuls, raspberry pear :).

Then off into the driving rain as far as McMinnville where we made inroads into the Fremont abominable and started the next day with grilled tillamook sandwiches as the local bakery; excellent bread and a very good macaroon. We only made it to one winery, Maysara, where we had a good long chat about the winery and the terroir and the neighbourhood (the fields of baby alpaca - alpaca lambs? Alpaca cubs? - the fact that the moss draped over the trees is a symbiote that produces nutrients for the tree, and the wild turkeys in the vines). They're biodynamic and they have a nifty mutilevel system for steeping and draining tinctures to use on the vines. And the wines are excellent: we had their pinot blanc at the Green Goddess in New Orleans in the summer and their pinot noirs go from dark and smoky to fruity and jammy.

From there we raced ahead of the storm to drive down the coast while we could still see it; the waves were dramatic and the rocks in the water were humps and haystacks and the bridges were deco. We found the same ice cream shop as last trip; mountain blackberry from Tillamook for lunch. We couldn't find a reason to stop in Bend but Coos Bay had a Best Western with a huge tiled spa pool that felt like a turkish bath, a fantastic neon deco sign that must keep you awake if you live in the Tioga apartment block, a fascinating but closed yarn shop and an Italian restaurant that made us feel we should order the shared spaghetti meatballs from Lady & The Tramp. The food was excellent and the pasta was perefctly al dente so we didn't mind that they kept running out of the thing we just ordered. Forgot to note down the source of the very tasty winter warmer ale...

The yarn shop was still closed in the morning so we detoured out to a cape with sight and sound of sea lions then picked up coffee and an awesome orange cookie in Brandon (or Braden or something else beginning with B and having a lovely driftwood beach). Down more coast with more views, bridges etc; tuna and crab melt in Gold River where the Porthole Cafe makes the best pie of the trip and quite possibly the year (inches of blackberries with not too much perfectly short crust). We made it across the state line in daylight and watched the colour of the grass change; still headlands and bays and waves and the most stunning red orange sunset over the line of the oncoming storm.

We haven't stopped in Eureka before but we'll go back; the Best Western has a heated outdoor indoor pool and spa and pool table and pool basketball - and a limo to take you into town and back (a motel with a stretch limo!). We took the limo to the Lost Coast brewery and confirmed that we like the raspberry brown and found that we like the tangerine wheat and the apricot wheat and in fact all ten beers on the tasting menu (decent food too). I want to have the local co-op wrapped and shipped to Putney complete with suppply chain; I have never seen so huge a choice of bulk goods.

This morning we did most of the Avenue of the Giants; majestic redwoods dripping in the mist, scary burl carvings and drive through trees. Along the twisty 1 to the coast and lunch at the North Coast Brewing Company (just the four beer tasting and the beer-battered fish and some of Simon's catfish blt, which meant we were too full for the handmade Cowlick ice cream). Stopped at the glass gallery just outside Fort Bragg to covet the $700 rainbow glass necklace again (by the same artist that made my red heart necklace) and then down the coast. A short pink sunset with much calmer waves, and a fairly speedy run down to San Jose where we should arrive - well, in minutes!
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Tasting wines at wineries beginning with the letter A, eating black food (and buying books)

Breakfast wasn't black; it was hash browns and omelette and scones and spice tea at Zells, after which we drove out into the misty Willamette valley in search of wineries like the Barking Frog. The Barking Frog has moved; in its place is August Cellars (which has space for other wineries, but none of them were tasting today). We drove on to admire the sign and cuddle the cats and praise the wine at Arbor Brook where we tasted some excellent pinot gris (stainless and barrel style) and some 2009 pinot noir as well as one of the fruity style pinot noirs they do so well around here and a dessert semillon that would be Sauternes if it wasn't growing up so high it doesn't get enough mist in the morning for botrytis (but if it was any damper they couldn't leave it on the vine until after thanksgiving). And we finished at Aramenta, where the pinot noirs are also fine and the claret is amusing, but they were the only winery that didn't comp the tasting fee when we bought wine - which always feels mean, frankly...

We turned back to Portland this point to go to the mass SF signing at Powells and trawl the shelves (we're going to need another suitcase at this rate) and drive around downtown looking for somewhere to stay. We wanted to actually be in town for a change and we ended up at the so-hip-I-think-I-dislocated-something Ace hotel; a kind of budget W or premium hostel (shared bath with keys, raw planks in the elevator, slide-across plank shutters instead of curtains, battered trunk for a side table, giant clip lights, custom blankets - the designer goes to college on a budget look, with Stumptown Coffee and Voodoo Donuts opening off the lobby and a nice restaurant on the other side, where we had rye beer and winter warmer and black porter, and I had much Black Food; fideos with squid and sausage and squid ink and aioli (baked - so black and viscous and flavourful with a white dollop) then sturgeon with black rice and bacon and clams (and I think frisee buried under it all). Simon had chicken-fried chicken livers and pork belly with fried egg and chicory salad; alphabetically speaking it should have been an n-dive.

Coffee and donuts tomorrow will move us from A&B to C&D; there will also be more looking at books, of course...