Living near the ID has its advantages

Okay, my food loving friends, check out this article: Nine Ideas for Dressing Take-out Duck. shadowdaddy's auntie was very pleased with the prices on the barbequed ducks here (in the International District) and snagged one on their way to Mount Rainier. Given how cheap they are, I'm guessing "mixed-greens salad with duck and blood oranges in a blood orange vinaigrette" and "duck and fig jam on a baguette" could be gracing our table soon. (And I'm looking forward to trying Auntie's filipino cooking when we go to visit the family in May. Yum!)

I'm not getting anywhere with anything today

Hmm. I haven't seen a single one of the Oscar best picture nominees. I want to see Good Night, and Good Luck (still), and I may see Brokeback Mountain some day when I'm feeling really strong, but mostly ... wow, I am out of touch.

The duck salad with goat cheese and orange vinaigrette was fantastic, by the way, and I have leftover duck. Maybe we'll do a risotto on Monday.

Ghostly Goddess and the Sinner Saint

We went to the Northwest Puppet Center tonight to catch some Javanese wayang, in this case The Ghostly Goddess and the Sinner Saint. Kathy Foley, an American who has apparently been performing since the 70s (and reminded me of Georgia O'Keefe), was up from California to run the show. We had a brief moment of panic at the beginning when it looked that the whole thing would be done in Bahasa Indonesia, but fortunately after a few songs they switched to English to tell the story. I was surpised at how the tale was not just some myth or bit of folklore; it was actually a ( spoiler! Let's just say politically relevant, both for the US and for Indonesia. )

(There was also another message about how people "just have to follow their own paths" that really resonated with me personally.)

What with the full gamelan ensemble and a dance beforehand and singing during, I considered my two hours (and accompanying ticket dollars) well spent. There are two more shows tomorrow, one at 2 at the NWPC and one FOR FREE on the UW campus at Kane Hall at 8 PM. If you're the least bit interested, please skip the Oscars and go check this out instead. I studied gamelan for a year some 8 years ago, and to my knowledge this is the first time in the intervening years that a wayang has been presented, so GO GO GO.

Dinner beforehand was at the India Bistro in the U-District, where the guy screwed up and brought Chicken Tikka Masala ("'cause that's what everyone orders") instead of the minty stuff I ordered. The upshot was that, with coupon, we got THREE entrees for the price of one. And with that, lunch is taken care of for the entire week.

As a side note, this show could hardly have been more different than last night's trip to Dina Martina, but, well, all in a day's work, as it were.