Valley Photos - May 25, 2008

Perfect Cheesecake

The problem with most cheesecakes is that they are heavy and dense. Not this one. This is a Tyler Florence recipe that I found on the Food Network website, which despite its recent Rachel Ray infestation is still a good source of recipes. I made slight changes only, my approach is a bit more hands on. In my opinion you shouldn't be afraid to get your hands dirty in the kitchen.

Crust

• 2 cups finely ground graham crackers
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 stick unsalted butter, melted

Filling

• 1 poound cream cheese, 2 (8 oz) blocks, softened
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 16 oz sourcream
• zest of one lemon
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Crust first. Preheat oven to 325˚ F. Combine crust ingredients till evenly moist. Easiest to do by hand. Lightly coat the bottom and sides of an 8" springform pan (or pie pan - see bellow) nonstick cooking spray or butter. Pour the crumbs into the pan and by hand press them on the bottom and 1" up the sides. Refrigerate for 5 minutes.

Make the filling next. In a large bowl with a wooden spatula mix the cream cheese till it's smooth and creamy, for about a minute. Add the eggs one a time, switch to an electric mixer and beat slowly till combined. Gradually add sugar and beat again till smooth. Add sour cream, lemon zest, vanilla. Mix it well, but make sure it's not over-beaten. Do not forget to periodically scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Pour the filling into crust.

Set the pan on a large piece of aluminum foil and fold up the sides around it. The foil must be the extra large variety, regular size will lead to disaster. Place the pan in a large roasting pan and pour boiling water into the roasting pan untill the water is about half way up the sides of the cake pan, but bellow the foil edge. The foil must keep the water out. Alternately you can be lazy like me and skip all this trouble and use a regular pie pan. Bake for 45 minutes. When taking it out of the oven it will be still very jiggly. Resist the urge to cook it longer, it will solidify as it cools. Cool in the pan at room temperature for 30 minutes, then chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

Random Old Photo # 2

It's rare to find old photos of working class people in their work attire. Somebody hated the guy on the right enough to scratch his eyes out.

Random Old Photo # 1

I collect old photos of people I've never met.

Happy Mayday!

If I remember correctly, I picked up this postcard in used bookstore in Budapest.

Postcards

In the 1930's and 40's this peculiar postcard style was very common in the US. The pictures are BW photographs that are color tinted, and printed on a textured paper. The resulting image has a mostly, but not entirely photographic look. The reason for their being is technical: The advancement of printing technology allowed printing on high rag content paper that was also cheaper. Hence the textured feel. Color photography already existed at the time but the technology for its easy and cheap mass reproduction didn't become available till the early 50's. I picked up a stack of these cards in an antique mall in Indiana. I got more in L.A. later. I'm pretty sure this set of four is from Indiana however. What made them especially interesting for me is the commentary meticulously typed on the back. It doesn't seem like they were ever mailed, but rather that were kept as a sort of travel diary.

Instead of scanning and post the back of each card I decided to enclose the commentary in type.

"This shows how California irrigates. They are fined if water is allowed to overflow the ditches and waste."

"This shows some of the many kinds of dessert plants. We saw many, but not all of these - the prickly pear, Joshua tree, yucca, Spanish bayonet, the ocotillo etc."

"Looking in from the Pacific Ocean across the Golden Gate bridge in the foreground, with San Francisco pininsula (sic) at the right and center of the card and the San Francisco-Oakland bridge in the distance."

Personally I find these cards much more visually appealing than the "Photochrome" cards that replaced them in the 1950's. Interestingly I haven't yet seen similar cards from Europe - though I'm hardly a postcard expert.

A Lighter Shade of Red

Like Atlantis into the ocean sunk the world of my childhood into history, washed over by the waves of free market capitalism. Yeah I know, no place ever stays the same, but the change that hit the Eastern Block was swifter than usual. I saw an interesting little German movie recently, Good Bye Lenin! It's set at the time right before and after the falling of the Berlin wall. The protagonist is a young man trying to keep the political changes secret from his sick mother, fearing that the shock would kill her. It's both funny and poignant. I think a lot of people in the west seem to think of the former Eastern Europe in James Bond cliches: everything grey and drab. Naturally, like everything, it's more complex. People laughed, had fun, the sun shone. I had a happy childhood, especially the first seven years, but of course by the time I was born things were loosening up, Hungary was on its way to "Goulash Communism." It was my parent's generation who wore the the brunt of hard core communism. I think of them as a generation that was short-changed. Their childhood was occupied by World War II, their youth taken over by an optimistic fervor, just to be squashed by ruthless reality. Hungary was hardly a democratic country before the war. Both my parents were from the country, from families of peasants, small town trades people. They were probably the first ones in their families ever to go to college, and they got their unexpected chance of social mobility only because of the communist regime. I believe they believed that indeed "fényes szelek" (sparkling winds) were blowing, they believed with a naive enthusiasm that a better world was coming and they could build it, not unlike early christians, or the hippies of the 60's. What happened to them was the same thing that happened to throngs of idealist so many times before or since: their fervor was used and misused, co-opted. One of my favorite books of all times, one that I would take with me on deserted island, is Master and Margarita by the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov. The premise of the book is that Satan arrives to Moscow at the hight of the communist era to hold his Walpurgis Night Ball there. From there it breaks out to multiple narrative strands following multiple characters as their narratives criss-cross each others. There is also a story-within the story about Pontius Pilate. The style of the novel is magic realist - something we expect to come from South American writers, not Russians. It is amazing to me how the novel folds together the satire of communist absurdities, a love story, fantasy, allegory. My favorite part is the deadpan portrayal of the society and culture to the smallest absurd details.
A great movie from and about the are is Jirí Menzel's Larks on a String. It was filmed in 1969, but was banned for a long time. In the US it had a very limited release in 1990, but it was shown in Hungary in the 1980's. Menzel is known to every film student for Closely Watched Trains, but unfortnately Larks... is impossible to get hold of even on VHS.
In the end, despite of the resentment and sadness, I can't help but feel a tinge of nostalgia for that lost world. Also, since then I learned that the absurd is integral part of all political systems.

(Photos from my family ablum.)

Poppies

I drove out to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. From a distance it looked like a monstrous chemical spill. The poppies were everywhere, inside the reserve and outside of it. Once I got there I was surprised how many people were there. Fortunately the many windy trails did a pretty good job dispersing the crowd. Of course everyone and their grandmother were carrying cameras. Me too of course: just another camera wielding lemming.

I was pondering about the role of the camera in hour leisure time. There seems to be this pressure to be having "fun" in our free time. The standard monday morning questions in the office are: "What did you do this weekend?" or "How was your weekend?". To the latter I usually reply "short" and that successfully diverts the course, but there is this lingering sense that I'm not utilizing my free time to the fullest, I should have gone bungee jumping, ran a marathon, gone to the beach, to a party, something. Vacations are the same thing in overdrive. If you are out of the office for a week or more you better be traveling or you are a some sort of loser. When we travel there is the pressure to take photographs to prove that we were there, having fun. Sometimes I feel the recording our fun is getting in the way of experiencing it.
I like driving around on little 2-lane highways. It's very relaxing. I saw some sagebrush that from a distance looked like a flock of sheep standing extremely still. Then I realized they were a flock of sheep standing extremely still. They were grazing.

California

More Urban Landscapes

I went out photographing today. It was bad time for it really: bright midday sun, harsh shadows. I snagged a couple ok shots anyway. There is the movie prop/antique store on a little street off Chandler. It does not fit with my landscape project, but it is there, so I took some photos. Thanks to the light and polarizing filter I got this somewhat odd image. I have yet been able to decide whether I like it.