Ah, Citizen Smith; Robert Lindsay's finest hours. I wonder if they've stood the test of time?

Folks who know me, know that I regard sell-by dates as a suggestion. M&S were horrified when my mum once congratulated them on selling a yoghurt that was still good two years after the sell-by date (glad you enjoyed it, but please don't do that!). The man who opened the tins in his wedding hamper on his gold wedding anniversary? Why not - canning is a preservation method. Lea and Perrins being told to put a six month date on the bottles when they have a bottle dating from the opening of the factory that's still going strong? A bureaucrat who doesn't understand salt as a preservative.

Sugar works quite well too. My mum used to buy jam at village fêtes and sometimes pass them on a year or so later. I eat jam in batches, as it were; I'll want jam every day for a week or every week for a month and then not again for six months. I don't keep jam in the fridge once opened (definition of preserve, anyone - although modern homes don't have proper larders at the proper temperature so I sometimes compromise). That means there are a few elderly unopened jars in the cupboard; they crystallise at the top but are usually perfectly fine under the top crunchy inch. I opened one for my PBJ and I can report that while it is indeed preserved, after 15 years gooseberry jam is really more like candied gooseberries in jelly. A little crunchy, but rather nice...

But the glorious sky over Moss Landing tonight is up there in my top ten unrolled carpets of fire and light.

We ummed and ahhed about whether to go to Nepenthe for lunch or Mountain View to sell books and decided to check the UPS store instead (they've moved, but we had no post waiting, which is unheard of the way banks here spam out statements). As it was such a lovely sunny day we thought 'ice cream' and drove over 17 to Capitola. The queue at Cafe Violetta was out the door and there were no tables free and as the first order of business was to check in online and score better seats we went to the coffee shop next door. I'd like to thank whoever runs the free wi-fi in Santa Cruz: it was nice and fast and got us aisle and window seats - a real amenity. We took our ice cream onto the beach - peach and honey and mexican chocolate and ollalaberry and honey and some cheesecake flavour - and perched on rocks and basked and window shopped all the way back without spending any extra money!

I needed a restroom and fancied more sea views so we tootled up and down every coastal side street to Aptos beach, where the house on the beach that looks like a boat has gained a dinghy and a ship's bell and a skirt-up Marilyn on the roof. No drummers but many people lighting fire pits and more sun.

Down the coast to Moss Landing. The yacht basin had three sea otters; one who vonted to be alone, one who wanted not to be disturbed by the fishing otter but would spin around with its paws up to its mouth in an overdose of cute, and the fishing otter who was turning somersaults, diving into the weed and coming up with mussels (and with weed all over its head) and banging them on a rock on its belly, with much noise, splashing and smacking of lips. Fishing otter had found such a good rock that it held onto said rock with both front flippers when diving or turning over in the water. Wonderful to watch.

We headed onto the beach before dinner and took photos of the surf (the surfers agreed with me about the best waves so my moody breaker shots keep having surfer heads in them). The Fuji camera Simon used to use takes good photos but I find it a little slow; I really do want that high-speed Casio I think, for times when I want to use a big camera (which is when we go somewhere specifically to take photos). We had a vast amount of fabulous fish things and now it's our last night - time only for packing, brunch, last minute work and a final attempt to find a battery-powered motion-sensitive LED light without buying one from Skymall...

Thank you all for your kind wishes ;) We're off to dinner at Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc in Yountville; buttermilk chicken! Why yes, it was a spur of the moment decision...

Cafe la Press is nearer Chinatown than Union Square and it's a spot of Europe in the city, with dark wood and magazines and bowls of coffee. Spinach feta omelette is very Californian though. Got to play with the new portable Slacker Internet radio; prrof of concept rather than desirable finished device, but as I;ve been preferring the serendipity of radio to the tyranny of iPod choice this trip, and I used to love Echo Bay, this could be big. Plus the Devicescape integration gives it the most seamless Internet connection ever (beating out every hotel I've ever stayed in).

Out along Van Ness, admiring the Moorish theatre and the carved designs in a store I never remember to stop at and the murals on the WaMu and the flag sale and the Bill Bragg plumber's van (insert working man music joke here); over the Golden Gate in the fog and instead of turning into wine country we picked up the 1 (with a slight diversion because the junction is much too simple if you just do it right...). We wanted to photograph the pink plant creeping over the hills to see if it was heater; turning to find a good place we found Muir Beach overlook instead, where you can look down to the waves or back to San Francisco and feel sorry for the guys in the lookouts triangulating ships for the big guns. Masses of flowers on the hillside and what at the time we thought was a stiff wind. Hah!

I still had work to do so we stopped at Stinson Beach and I sat in the beach hut that's the Surfer's Grill on holidays and weekend to finish writing; very pleasant to do it with a view of the Pacific through sand dunes, though the warning that you can be eaten by a Great White in six feet of water kept my at the keyboard. For the rest of the afternoon, you can picture my laptop and mobile phone attempting to talk to that thar Interwebs to submit copy... Meanwhile, we were driving up highway 1 to Point Reyes. It's a lovely drive past ranches M through A, full of cows and fine-feathered chickens and lazy cats, with the sea hoving into view at the side. As you go through Inverness the houses are on the end of piers, and one is an arabian fantasy in wood with six cupolas. The lighthouse itself was shut and as we nearly got blown right off the cliff while taking photos of a white deer, I'm not sure I'd want to be any further off the ground. The wind is as loud as city traffic and the sea is whipped white in long rolling surf. Back along the peninsula and along the edge of a long mudflat estuary where seals and baby seals bask in the sun. Very green hills and woods compared to south of San Francisco, and then along the sea coast and finally into the hills.

Point Reyes town looks charming and expensive and where they hide the accommodation we do not know. Book ahead, I think. We didn't spot anywhere that looked worth stopping at short of Bodega Bay, where we passed several possibilities and picked the Inn at the Tides because we liked the sign for the Tides, the restaurant across the street. Turned out to be a mix of charming inn - lovely pool and spa pool, terraces on each room, cheese, wine and fruit in the rooms, Ggrich Hills winemakers dinner in the restaurant and some very friendly folks who joined us in the hot tub and shared a couple of bottles of wine with us (the Napa Cellers was delicious) - and high-class motel - beige tiled bathroom, particularly. The Tides - and Bodega Bay generally - is where The Birds was filmed so we eyed eyed all seagulls with suspicion. The Tides has its own dock for fishing boats and steams crabs in huge six-foot square cages in the season, but I went happy as a clam, following clam chowder with linguine alla vongole and stealing a taste of Simon's halibut. It's less authentic but a lot easier when most of the clams have been wrenched from the shell in advance, leaving me only three shells for show.

This morning we stopped for pictures at the Arch Rock and Shell Beach and for coffee at the Roadhouse and had our hats blown off, so we admired the rest of the coast and the breakers from the road until we got to Blind Beach, just short of Goat Rock. Even the seagulls were being blown sideways and we sheltered behind rocks to get photos. As you come down the steep slope into the car park there's some beautiful green exposed rock that could be a jade or turquoise. As you go back up the steep slope and cross the Russian River into Jenner, there's a restaurant called River's End (www.ilovesunsets.com) perched by the lagoon where you can eat rock shrinp with penne and feta and mushroom and concentrated tomato, and pick fried leeks off Simon's burger and watch the seals and the kayakers being towed out to look at the seals - and go outside and get blown away again.

We swooped around the curves of the road and bought smoked salmon and stopped to look out at the sea and get blown away half-way up the Jenner Grade. And then we walked off lunch by walking around Fort Ross, where the Russians did their best to claim California by oppressing the Aleuts and building 7 and 8-sided redwood blockhouses overlooking beautiful coves and selling metalwork to the Californians for grain. The stockade blocks a lot of the wind and the plants are swarming over the millstones. We felt a little like polite time travellers because a group of Russians in historical costumes were baking bread over an open fire and telling stories in the armoury and ringing the bell outside the chapel and straightening their waistcoats in front of the mirrors and taking kasha out of Whole Foods bags... 

At this point I nearly fell asleep in the car, despite lovely curving and swooping roads and lovely scenery and flowers by the side of the road and rather less wind so I don't remember much before Mendocino. This is rather like Carmel on a slope without the big-name shopping, or Capitola without the suburbs and it looked very charming but we didn't spot anywhere to stay apart from Blair House (which was Jessica's house in Murder She Wrote) so we pushed on to Fort Bragg, then realised the redwood elk meadow we're looking for is back in Van Damm state park. How Belgian!

Fort Bragg is not a fort, it's a mid-sized town that mixes tourism and a real town life, so it has a bowling alley as well as a Best Western and a brewery and a train trestle. We had dinner at the brewery, North Coast Brewing, sharing fish and tiger shrimp in Scrimshaw beer batter and a ten-beer tasting for $4. Red Seal and Brother Thelonius and Blue Star and Old Rasputin and ACME IPA were the standouts. Hic. Yawwwwn...

We have seen wild turkeys (wait till Thanksgiving, they'll be livid), llamas, baaaby seals, birds of prey being mobbed by red-winged blackbirds. We saw baby pigeons nestling in a wharf in San Francisco. No whales yet!

Tomorrow we'll look for the glass beach and drive the avenue of the giants and try not to get blown away...



 

We've had a week of work and writing at the RSA conference, an afternoon off to drive down the coast to Santa Cruz (Sam's Chowder House does a great lobster roll and the deep-fried lemon slice in with the artichokes was surprisingly good; tangy and slightly caremlised), a long weekend of socialising and hot-tubbing and running errands and selling more books than we bought at Book Buyers and spending the proceeds on thai angel wings (chicken wings stuffed with minced chicken and herbs) and having brunch at Hobees and visiting the Computer History Museum with rowanf and galileopan and writing, and now we're back up the the city for more work (and I'm writing in the car on the way).

So. Suitcases packed and loaded? Check
Pink Floyd playing on KFOG? Check
Going to San Francisco? Check
Flower in my hair? Check
Know the way back for San Jose for the weekend after next? Check! 

Standing in Fry's car park in Vegas is scarey because the planes really are coming right for us - coming in to land they feel like they're ten foot overhead though sbisson promises a couple of hundred. also scarey; the video slot machine facade - can't work out if you can actually gamble on it but I think you can - and the idiot on 65 north who thinks the cruise control on his Ford means he can take both hands off the wheel. the usual Fry's experience with none of the cameras I wanted to try charged up, but a salesman who was on the ball enough to dig out returned units that have batteries in and to find the Casio EX-V8 everyone else said was out of stock. 8mp 7x zoom and not too dissimilar from the one I dropped, so we shall see how it does on our trip up to the bay area.

We had a lovely day with Pixie yesterday once we worked out that the Ritz Carlton in Henderson is actually on Lake Las Vegas. this is even more ludicrously fake than the strip and more noticeably for being in the desert. beautiful view across the lake to the strip and we had breakfast by the lake, then had a high score on shopping at the Primm outlets, a delicious dinner at Shibuya (tempura crab legs much easier to manage and butter ponzu dipping sauce is yum, as is scallop sashimi in mango mint sauce and sea bass steamed with black tapioca and pop rocks on the mangos sashimi and apricot miso and plum creme brulee; everyone at Shibuya is so sweet and it was lovely to share one of our favourite places with Pixie. we got to introduce her to Cirque du Soleil at O as well, which was as stunning as ever. We went to the early show which doesn't have an interval; worth knowing for next time. thanks to serendipity for putting us both in the same place for the day ;)

So I scored yummy pastries from Bouchon, sbisson scored coffee from Bean and leaf and we're driving straight line roads out into the desert, watching the snow on Mount Charleston and the distant snow of the Sierras and the folded colours of the nearer mountains advancing on us like monstrous fins.

I thought a coffee would wake me up for the phone interview I didn't want to skip because it took a while to arrange and I can talk without coughing today. We use pods that are like coffee teabags in the Gaggia and they usually work really well. This time I let it heat up for ages, I remembered to run steam through it to prime it when I first turned it on, I got the espresso basket in place first time - but coffee was only coming out of one of the two spouts and just as I was wondering about this there was a phut noise and the pressure blew a hole through the bag, sending coffee plus grounds spurting out across the kitchen. And muggins here was making espresso straight into a mug of microwaved milk for speed, so I got a weak coffee full of grains ;-(

How do I work out if the problem was the coffee bag or the machine without distributing coffee all over again? I'm glad I wasn't still peering into the mug when it went phut but it was still a pain to clean up the spatter, especially as I'd cleaned that whole side of the kitchen when I moved the old microwave (and the new microwave and then the old microwave again).

Aided by St Emillion at lunch but I was incapable of holding a  thought in my head for five minutes before that because of the cold that I fought off for days and days and suddenly succumbed to on Saturday; bleurgh. Thus I didn't pack any of the parcels I meant to post, I huddled in bed doing email all morning and managed to bend my knee right out of shape (thank $DEITY for ralgex and a hot shower), I shut the front door behind me and realised I was still wearing furry slippers and after that I still managed to leave my Oystercard behind and had to buy an ordinary price expensive travelcard ;-(

At this point my main thought was 'can has do-over pliz? but I did have a lunch that was both tasty and informative (Alistair Little: v v v good). I may have been a little more outspoken in my opinions than usual (omnes: is that possible?) and the branches of the trees against the sunset sky at 3.30 were incredibly detailed and clear, catching my attention as if it was weed in water.

The plan: turn up the heating, decide between taking a duvet to the sofa and taking dinner and a notebook with the Sling player up to bed, medicate more and early night. Tomorrow I shall be receiving the new microwave (the plastic panel covering the magnetron in the one we've had for years looks melted so we decided to upgrade to one with a grill in - Peter, if you're reading this, John Lewis has a smaller selection than Argos and Currys online but the selection turns out to be A more interesting B more name brands and less low end junk and C cheaper).

My sister and her husband battled the lack of district line to come over for brunch yesterday. Hint; a matched set of cast iron skillets is great for doing griddled and roasted vegetables (mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and courgette/peppers/garlic respectiveley) while leaving the griddled clear for steak but the pan that's been in the oven will have a pretty hot handle.

The plan had been to wander around Portobello but we stopped at Kensington High Street for cookies and boot shopping and wondering at the odd sleeves on the cashmere jumpers in Uniqlo and getting sucked into Whole Paycheck. it's not the full US experience but it is very nice as a place to shop and a place to hang out and nosh. The hot chocolate is Ibarra style mexican spiced, the coffee beer is yummy and the salads are tasty and substantial with a proper slice of protein - griddled tuna for me. Things we like from the US we can now get locally; Dagobar chocolate including the raspberry rose and mon cherri bars, Dr Bronners 18 in one crazy religious liquid essential oil liquid soap (read the label!), JetBlue style blue potato chips, the full range of Anchor Steam and Sierra Nevada including the anniversary ale and fruit puree cocktail mixers. And if they can get a supplier they'll try the smoked halibut pate we adore. Also useful; eggs from quail to duck to blue legbar for sale individually, 10 litre size ecover.

Owing to my travel to Barcelona being arranged on Friday Simon and I are on separate flights so he left this morning and I'm on the platform at Clapham. We meet in a distant city (717 miles) where we shall eat seafood and talk technology. No change then!

I know we're back in San Jose by what you see in the neighbourhood. If I say the guy is rollerblading his huskie, who does it sound like is wearing the wheels?

Took our morning off in Las Vegas slowly as I'm still a little slow myself - and thanks for all the get wells! we'd had dinner with our pr host at Shibuya where they had a whole range of new Hitochino beers - we had celebration and ginger. Not only was the food as excellent as ever but when I mentioned that the day before was our wedding anniversary Jeramy snuck off and came back with sweet little boxes of candy and white chocolate plaques iced with chocolate Happy Anniversary!

I wimped out at breakfast and asked for the peanut butter banana french toast without peanut butter - but we did get to taste the bacon and salt chocolate in Vosges and it's fantastic, as is the wattleberry ice cream. We walked up to the Fashion Show mall and still no iPod Touch - does Apple have manufacturing or just shipping problems? that's five times... Wandered into the Mirage to see the tiger, who thought it was time to go home... Very windy and sunny.

The plane was late and the guy in front reclined so far I had no chance of working, but we still had enough time for a shopping accident at Book Buyers and a double double with the post game crowd at In-N-Out.

It was so warm and sunny this morning that I tried the pool. I came out after two lengths in case something I'll need later froze solid and dropped off. The plan was to head up to Napa via San Francisco so we could take a look at the glass stall Kevin Siggins has on Embarcadero; he has a new torch and he's using what he calls kandinsky glass where the silver forms crystals of different colours as well as making big hoops. Luckily we called ahead and discovered he was at the street fair in San Carlos where we had a great time hanging out, buying neat stuff and eating tri tip sandwiches.

Drove over the hills and past the pumpkin patches and down the coast to San Gregorio beach and clambered precariously over the sand rock to take photos of the beautiful sunset. Which is where we saw the tiny birds, running as smoothly as if they had wheels or skates on, twinned by their shadows and reflections in the surf, rushing into the receding surf and then scurrying along and back onto the beach as the sufficient threatened to was them away like tourists straying into traffic...

Back over the hills on a sweeping road through redwoods, past the accelerator smelling of eucalyptus and ready for a quiet night in.

True believers and knights of the pesto jihad now that there is one true recipe.
Garlic
Basil
Olive oil
Pine nuts
Parmesan Reggiano or at worst Gran Padano
Salt. Maybe.
Nothing. Else.
No cashew nuts. No sunflower oil. No hydrogenated anything. No potato.
There are more sinners against pesto than I care to mention. I'm not criticising rocket pesto or walnut pest or coriander pesto or anything else that confesses on the label that it's not the real thing; I'm dissing what Sacla produces for the UK and what comes in most jars. Sainsburys has done well for several years; the fresh green pesto they do is really pretty good, with few extraneous icky things. Waitrose didn't do a pesto worth the name till last year, but now they have a superb pesto - bright green with extra whole pine nuts in. Sainsburys has something similar but more expensive and in a pot you can't reseal - truly delicious though. The Jamie Oliver pesto in a jar and the own-brand Waitrose in a jar were both true to the recipe the last time I checked, though not a patch on fresh. The deli in Putney still does superb pesto too ;-)

And while I'm on food, a 'too good to live' nomination for lamentables for greeting worn out M40 travellers with not just a welcome cuppa but a delicious chili - thank you again!

A fun article in the NYT proclaims that the best candy cars are English, of course. No surprise there, and it's nice to see many of the comparisons we've worked out - Mars bar and Milky Way are not the same in the US as in the UK - but no mention of the 3 Musketeers bars I find the closest match for a real Mars bar. And it always surprises me as a Brit to be able to explain why a Hershey bar tastes the way it does, but then we did go to Dr Peter Barham's course on chocolate.

When Hershey started shipping chocolate bars around 1900, you didn't have refrigerated trucks; nor did many people know what chocolate tasted like as it was a luxury. So the flavour of what arrived after travelling in a warm truck became so popular that when Hershey started shipping in refrigerated trucks, the customers said 'this doesn't taste the way I remember!'. At this point Hershey opted for backwardly comptible flavours and began pre-oxidising the ingredients.

When it's metal, oxidising rusts it. When it's fat, it's a polite term for rancid. It's that far more than the cocoa beans used in the US that gives a Hershey bar its, well, 'distinctive' flavour ;-)

RIM's Wireless Enterprise Symposium is a smallish conference - 3,600 people - but between interviews, keynotes, sessions, meeting with partners in the showcase and trying to fit in eating, sleeping and writing we've been solidy busy all week. The conference lunches have been excellent - I think the best conference food I've ever had, with, say lasagna and polenta or friid chicken and philly cheese steak and clam chowder or chunks of cold chicken and truly rare beed with tomato pepper mozzarella salad plus extra fixings and two or three desert choices - and the breakfast and snack tables have been lavish - Haagen Dazs ice cream bars and Starbucks bottled mocha just as a mid-afternoon snack. Good think we've been walking the length of the hotel between almsot every session. Last night we dabbled in the hotel pool and then had some rather nice American Italian food in the hotel and decided the downpour made it a very good idea we stayed in. Tonight we met one last company in the bar for a chat about entertainment on the BlackBerry (more of it that you'd think) then headed out for Pirate Adventure Golf where we went round in several over paaarrrr, playing the full nine yaaarrrds of astroturf amidst rivulets, palms and chests of booty. Dinner at Pizza Uno, where the 'skins' are a mashed potato pizza with bacon and sour cream (what is it about Florida and potatoes? two years ago the Marriot put on a potato bar at an evening reception with four kinds of mashed potato and five toppings) and the deep pan pizzas are light, thin, crispy and full of over an inch of topping. The fajita pizza wasn't on the menu any more, but they had Blue Moon, a Canadian Belgian wheat beer served with a slice of orange. We drew all over the napkins with crayons, laughed at press releases* and walked a mile back to the hotel in the humid night discussing how to escape from alligators and wondering why the Holiday Inn is dark, closed and definitively 'out'. Tomorrow it's off to Los Angeles (with a touchdown in Houston - Southwestern is adding Colorado and Texas to our already impressive list of states this trip even before we consider stopping off in Ohio to visit with my sister).

*Press release: IBM is spending so much and moving so many people onto a project to save money in the data centre, called Big Green
Mary: so that's where the people they said they wouldn't lay off are going
Simon: Big Green is people!

After Bryce and Zion and dinner in Springdale at Oscar's Cafe and sunset in the desert with starlight and the neon jangle of Vegas and the utter idiocy that is the rental car center with no taxi rank so you have to go queue with the airport multitudes, I'm too tired for a real post, but I think the photo says it all.

Agua Canyon, Bryce Canyon; our shadows along the fence against the light...

Out of Hurricane and up to Springdale, with a stop at an organic orchard called Majestic View for smoothies and sandwiches and an odd savoury popcorn with soy beans in; and yes, the view like most of the views we've seen was Majestic. We drove through Springdale twice to check out the motels and gift shops and restaurants; this took >5 minutes including gawping time at the rock stalls and wind spinners of fabulous style... we ended up at the Bumbleberry Motel which is a step up from Motel 6, with attached dinner claiming to be the home of the world-famous bumbleberry pie. The propane shuttle runs every few minutes; you get one shuttle up to the park entrance and another into the park itself and once we figured out how to open the windows to take photos we were very happy.

The view from the visitor centre is impressive and there are boards showing the trails and giving you a very clear idea of how long they take and what you see. We started out at the Court of the Patriarchs: 'short hike' is less than five minutes but a steep five minutes. The Patriarchs are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob - and Morone, off to the side. Next we did the lower pool trail to Emerald Ponds; a mile each way of stunning views and green leaves against red rocks, finishing at a curved rock wall with trickles of water cascading over. Weeping Rock is up another short, steep trail with more water seeping and trickling down, set amidst high bluffs and peaks; the water and plants clinging to the rock reminded me of Punakaiki and Fjordland in New Zealand. The last walk we took was the riverside stroll; paved trail a mile long beside the Virgin river through Zion canyon, with high, high cliffs, blue sky, green leaves, dippers in the green swirling river and a trail that ends in the river itself. If you feel like getting wet you can walk up to a waterdall; we'll do it a warmer day.

Dinner at the excellent Spotted Dog. We had cauliflower dip and tapenade on flatbread and hummous with tapenade and french bread with a whole head of sweet brown roasted garlic, pork loin with polenta and stuffing and apple and pine nut sauce (must try that at home), filet mignon with applewood smoked bacon and blue cheese and steamed sweet potato and white chocolate creme brulee and raspberry espresso cappucino mouse and Spotted Dog ale (in a Polygamy Porter - why stop at just one - take one home for the wives glass) and a Yukiah Mendocino Pinot Noir from Parducci, and a nice chat with the couple from Oregon at the next table.

So - tipsy, tired, early night. Night all!

We had antelope for dinner at the local South African restaurant; eland is mid-way between veal and steak and as promised very tender and the kudu was very tasty too. Crocodile tail on skewers was tasy for a starter, milk tart was very Portugese for dessert and with the bill came two shot glasses of creme de menthe and amarula. I'm not going to attempt to explain sbisson downing it like a tequila shot, but I do wonder about the physics and chemistry of the alcohols. I was sipping it slowly but we ended up watching my drink more than finishing it. The amarula is the top layer and it floats on the creme de menthe, but every now and then a hole would appear in the layer and move around as creme de menthe gushed up to the top; after a while the hole would close and the creme de menthe would stabilise. I'd take another sip, another hole would open up and off went the gusher again. Many minutes of entertainment and speculation. Must see if I can get the same effect with something less urgh-that's-sweet than creme de menthe...

Poll #967443 Birthday lunch
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Simon reminded me this morning that it's my 40th birthday this Saturday and I thought it would be nice to meet up with friends for dim sum as a lunch into late lunch into afternoon tea thing. We have tickets for Loudon Wainwright in the evening, though later afternoon/early evening drinking might occur too... Whether you can make it or not, where is your favourite dim sum restaurant in central London?

Somewhere else being...

If you're free on Saturday when would suit you?

If you're likely to come along, how many people will you be? Multiple personalities have to share a chair...

I also like the idea of a one-month-after get-together; we plan to be in the Bay Area weekend of May 19th and I know there must be nice dim sum places there too ;-)

Yo - sushi?
YOSushi is doint a half price thing this month - who wants to go for sushi and when? We'd be up for Bloomsbury one evening... you get up to ten plates at half price and you have to print your own copy of the voucher from the link...

The offer says:
Come and get some YO! Sushi - half price - from Monday 12th March at 2 of our newest and funkiest restaurants - Brunswick Shopping Centre in Bloomsbury and Brent Cross Shopping Centre in North London. Both venues serve the tastiest, freshest sushi all day long and make great shopping pit stops. But hurry as this fabulously yummy offer must end on Saturday 31st March. So what are you waiting for? </span>

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Just sign up here to get your voucher and enjoy!

Next week in Las Vegas we'll be making a detour to a Whole Foods Market or a Trader Joe's along the way to pick up some travelling essentials. I prefer the biscuits on a roll (the cardboard tube refigerated kind) but as the roll tends to pop under hold pressure I pick up the biscuit mix, which also makes up instant pancakes and fritters pretty well. And we'll be after another box of cornbread mix as last night's cornbread in a skillet was very nice. No jalapenos in the house so I flung in some spring onion and frozen corn (as the dehydrated corn kernels weren't immediately obvious). Mix like muffins - ie as little as possible - and bake for 25 minutes at 180; yum. We had it with a Waitrose roast chicken which makes its own gravy in the bag you carry it home it; if not, the box suggests maple syrup to drizzle. Bacon bits would be nice too.

This week I've felt like a ball in a pinball machine, ricocheting from meeting to keynote to dinner to meeting to party bed and back again. I have consumed large amounts of jamon iberico perching at parties or passing through press conferenes. I have had peach juice for breakfast and nothing for lunch and aubergine with a parmesan crisp and sea bream with asparagus and baby squid for dinner. And today when all my meetings were done I found a nice café bar a block down from the fira and had café cortado - like a cappucino without the froth - and jamon iberico and bacalao shallow fried with big thick slices of garlic and crème caramel that they called flan, all served by a waiter playing peekaboo, putting the coffee down on one side of the table while I was reading and tapping me on the other shoulder...

And then I took two metros instead of one because Playa del Sants and Sants Estacion aren't the same, kept a Canadian-living-in-Switzerland off the wrong train to the airport and flew home on a plane that was late leaving, almost on time landing and stuck waiting for an air bridge for a looooong time...

The Sea Otter is across the road from Moonstone Beach so we can see the breakers from the window; we took breakfast out to the pink wooden seats in the garden in front of our room to see more. Pink geraniums, purple lobelia, red flowers on a pohuteweka with a green and gold humming bird hovering and drinking. Cheeky starlings running around our feet. And a gull that dive bombed up and flew off with my pot of yoghurt!

And indeed, things that eat ground squirrels. We saw one running through a field, one poised on a heap of earth and another running across the road, plus maybe a coyote and many birds of prey.

After the mountain pass from Arizona, California quickly gets flat and strip malled, but we cut across the central valley and back into mountains; vast desolate sweeps with cows and oil dippers and pale yellow grass under a blue sky, with every verge and electric wire alive with birds. We climed into the hills on roads that did hairpins around the slopes then zommed out of them on switchback humpbacks with the yellow light warming the grey hills until we escaped the rainshadow and they turned green. Driving towards Morro Bay we saw the volcanic plug sweeping up from the steel blue sea into the apricot pink sky. Naturally the road never went the right way to get a photo but the sky was gold and orange as we reached Cambria, beautiful seen through grass and branches on the cliff edge, with Venus burning silver bright in the last of the light and the sea washing in to Moonstone Beach.

We'd tried the Sea Otter last time we were in Cambria and it was full; this time we got a deal on a kingsize ocean view with a fireplace - gas for convenience. A quick dip in the steaming hot tub for star gazing before dinner (and a very chilly walk back to the room). The Cafe Soleil we ate at before had turned into a wine and cheese for lunch place, so we found the Black Cat bistro instead, which has a very similar menu and sat next to Ron and Julie, celebrating their tenth anniversary and talked geek and wine and travel until they went back to their jacuzzi. Sausage and butternut squash pizza, cheese stuffed marsala soaked portabella , cocoa rubbed rack of elk with a green sauce, five spice duck breast with a celeriac mash and fried spinach (that was the only taste I would have skipped) and peach brandy panna cotta (the chef had gone home otherwise I'd have had the berry chocolate souffle). We're just finishing the last of the Red Zeppelin syrah now; apparantly the wine maker has Elvis as his advisor, and for a lovely day with beautiful if freezing weather, good company, food and wine I'll say 'thank you verra much'.

But two things puzzle me. One, why do so many people here think Wales is in London and two, why do we have to hide the wine in a brown paper bag to bring it home?

So again, we'll aim for Pasa Robles tonight - and maybe San Jose tomorrow!

Four days of gadgets galore, standing in line for shuttle buses back and forth between sites (some of which were Routemasters with the top sawn off), burgers at In-N-Out, gazing down at Vegas from the 32nd floor, gazing down at Vegas from the monorail, sushi at Shibuya at MGM (eventually), meetings, meetings, meetings, gadgets and collapsing into bed.

Now we're on the road to San Jose; we stopped in Barstow for coffee, marvelled at the star-clotted sky over the desert and mountains backlight by moon and we're stopped in Mojave in a motel (America's Best Value Inn) which has that round the world fixed wing glider carved into the mirror frame and headboards! Tomorrow we'll head to Pasa Robles and look for wineries... Good night ;)

Breakfast at Dennys watching the jacknifed lorry straighten out on the snow, but the snow had stopped by the time we headed out of town and over the Arizona high plains. Utterly flat with distant peaks and snow lying between the bushes and the yellow grass. It's around 28 and the windscreen washer jets freeze up. Past the Flintstones rv park where the parking markers are fake mastodon bones. Past the aircraft museum in the middle of nowhere, with a cruise missile parked outside; very Dr Strangelove. The clouds clear and the trees close in as we arrive at the south rim and we head for Mather Point for my first view of the canyon.

It's magnificent; cliffs and cirques and spires and stacks of stone in cream and red and pink and grey, edged in thick snow, dappled by a dusting of snow, carved through by the odd glimpse of the grey green river in the depths. The sun lights up a side canyon as a snow storm drifts silent and magnificent through the canyon. We walk through a young blizzard to the visitor centre and see warning signs about heat in the summer and ice in winter, promising that hardly anone falls off but that if you do fall off hardly anyone survives! Simon avoids the edges assiduously while I crane over to get photos.

There are two ways to go along the rim from here; we pick the longer route to Desert View first, which turns in through the forest for the first few miles, which means the snow on the road is compacted to ice by the gritter and doesn't get enough sun to melt. The road down to Grandview Point is about as scary but the view is grand and the snow beautiful and thick. There used to be a small hotel here but there's no trace. More wonderful views from Moran Point and the road is much better by now. Desert View has a distant view of the painted desert and the Colorado River snaking away into the distance in one direction; in the other the canyon turns back on itself and the peaks and slopes double and repeat. The sky is clear and blue and the warm yellow stones of the watchtower glow in the late afternoon light. This is one of the best pieces of architecture I've seen; designed by Mary Coulter to fit into the landscape, which it does perfectly and to combine Hopi and modern references, which it does with respect for both cultures (having a Hopi artist helped). You don't feel you're in a Disney imitation and you don't feel you're intruding into a sacred space either. The Hopi wall paintings, the sand painting, the glorious roof pictures, the snake dance, the pottery, the rawhide twisted around the stair rail are intriguing rather than mysterious. It uses the wood from the remains of the Grandview hotel. And the lantern at the top with large and small picture windows is a lovely space with glorious views. It reminded me of the way Nepenthe fits into the cliffs and bush, reaching up without towering over anything. The watchtower is the highest thing in the park but you can't see it from more than a few yards away. We did see it in silhouette from a distance looking like part of the landscape.

Cool giftshop too ;)

The afternoon light was beautiful as we stopped at Lipan Point. We saw a raven so big we wondered if it could actually fly until we saw another equally huge on top of a bush. Straight through Grand Canyon Village and out to Hopi Point for the sunset. The sun hovered on the edge of the rim turning the clouds to gold then slipped away, leaving them pink and purple. It was colder than ever and we couldn't manage without gloves, two layers of fleece and coats and hats. Brrrrrr.

Back to the village in the last of the light; we stayed in Maswick Lodge which is a series of two story buildings that look anonymous but are very pleasant inside. The rooms upstairs (second floor in American) have vaulted beamed ceilings and ceiling fans for the summer; downstairs has normal aircon. The décor is simple but stylish though stone tiles in the shower are one thing and another on the floor in winter! The bedside lamp had a mule outline and the shade was painted on the inside; rough cream until you turn it on when cowboys and trekkers ride against a green and rocky backdrop. I want one!

Dinner at Bright Angel Lodge - the posher Arizona room was closed and I want to go back to see the fireplace in the history room - also designed by Coulter - which replicates the strata of the canyon. The Bright Angel restaurant is nice; not too fancy, serves Deschutes Black Butte and Mirror Pond pale ale and good hearty food in enormous portions. The quesadilla starter could be a main course, the chicken and onion rings starter has the best part of three chicken breasts, the steak is a slab and the southwestern creamy chicken is another two breast fillets. We retired defeated to look at the stars over the canyon rim and off to bed (after polishing off a buying guide on gps for me).

The one benefit of UK to US jetlag is waking up early. That's the only way I see dawn. We didn't make sunrise but we were out a few minutes after, driving up to Hopi Point and on to Hermits Rest, with a stop at the Powell Memorial on the way back. We passed a stag and a handful of elk - looking like slouching teenagers in need of a haircut. The early light is beautiful and you feel you have the canyon to yourself except for the mass of ravens wheeling in the sky overhead (a murder of crows, a parliament of rooks - a tower of ravens?). A pair of ravens fly together, tapping wings and playing tag.

Powell is a one way cut along the rim and a footpath out onto a spur, with steps at the end to give you even more view; I think it's the furthest any point goes out into the canyon.

Breakfast at the rather grand El Tovah hotel where the big picture windows make the wooden dining room look dark. The tables by the window have the best view. The food and coffee are excellent but the waitstaff say 'I hope you found it delicious' in a very practiced way; I suppose it's very English to find that offputting!

On the way back we take the route 66 detour at Seligman through Peach Springs to see Cars country - we spotted the Cosy Corner motel, the military surplus hut, the curio stores and the mountains shaped not quite like radiators. Oddest mountains were slopes with buttes sticking out the top of them, waiting for the slopes to erode away.

Over the Hoover Dam; the supports for the new road and bridge are feats of engineering too, towering up from the slopes. And down into Vegas with the GPS battery running out just before the unmarked turn for our hotel, when we discover there's no power to the cigarette sockets in the car ;(

Like chicken tikka masala and chop suey, bolognese sauce isn't something you'll find in Italy (unless it's a restaurant putting it on for tourists). Italians wouldn't normally pair a thick meat sauce with a long thin noodle; it would go with pasta shells or other shapes that would trap the sauce better, or at least flat tagliatelli. The ragu of Bologna has only enough tomato to add sweetness to something that starts with ground beef simmered in milk. That probably makes the versions that use Campbell's cream soup a little closer than you'd think. Many versions I know include liver for richness. But cooks outside Italy have been making spaghetti bolognese for long enough that familes can have their own historic versions. There's a wonderful rant by Robert Farrar Capon about how much he dreaded telling people he was a cookery writer because each and every person would want to reveal their personal recipe for bolognese sauce, each of them with ther own 'secret ingredient' - soup, carrots, vermouth, anything you can think of. My mother's recipe doesn't have a secret ingredient that I think of as a secret ingredient; it's more about what you don't put in (soup, carrots and vermouth all being on the list and to me this is just the way the sauce should be.

Fry the beef and drain off the fat (if it's lean mince I tip it all it into the simmering pot together). Fry the onions until soft. I often use a little pancetta or shredded bacon but she never did. Into a big pot with a quantity of tinned tomatoes, much concentrated tomato puree and some ground pepper. I add balsamic vinegar, which she never did, and red wine, which she did if there was any around which wasn't often. She would simmer it for hours; impatient, I usually give it 20 minutes though today it's getting hours. Sliced mushrooms go in for the last ten minutes (I often put some in far earlier then add more at this point). Originally she'd make extra meatballs and add them with the mushrooms although often she didn't bother; Italian ragu recipes switched from taking simmered whole meat out to slicing the meat in to the sauce as meat became more available.

To serve she would chop a whole handful of curly parsely and stir it in to fleck the whole sauce with green; I seldom have parsely around so I tear in basil instead. My sister started grating cheddar over her bowl; that works nicely if there isn't any parmesan and the cheddar has flavour. It's hard to get full length spahghetti now; it used to be twice the length, come in a roll of blue greased paper and take ages to bend into the boiling water. Over the years I've gone from salting the water (as she did), to adding olive oil to stop it sticking, to using a pasta insert in the pan instead, and now I boil the pasta in the water for only two minutes, then turn off the heat and let it stand for the original cooking time (ideal for not turning tortelloni into soup). Sometimes I recreate the dish I remember; sometimes I get something nice and remember the taste of what I really wanted.

Yesterday we took some mince out of the freezer to get some milk in, so I decided to make bolognese today, and as we were frying bacon for breakfast (tip when griddling bananas or frying them in the bacon pan - fry the cut side first before the banana gets soft enough to stick on the pan and become banana caramel then tip onto the skin side), I chopped up some onions and shallots, fried off the meat once the bacon was done and left the sauce simmering. By this evening we'll have a thick jammy sauce, and enough to freeze for another day. I do feel domestic...

We stooped at Te Aroha for a soak in the soda water hot pools; the water comes from the geyser (4 minutes every 40 minutes) piping hot and they pipe it into wooden tubs where you can soak for half an hour. You can't not float - the minerals make it very bouyant and you come out somewhere between molten and melted.

On to Paeroa, where we saw the giant bottle of L&P (lemon and, though it's not the local water now) and decided not to stop. The main road veers off half way down the high street having made the same decision. A very pretty drive to Thames through rolling green hills with the sun throwing rays of light through the clouds over a backdrop of multilayered misty mountains.

Thames sprawls along the coast hiding the sea very effectively behind a shopping mall. Checked into a pretty motel that's by a brook (the Brookby in fact). Dinner at The Old Thames, which looks like a slightly tacky diner but has excellent food. Rare steak was rare, garlic king prawns were enormous and redolent of garlic, Andrew Harris Mudgee Shiraz was smooth, rounded, fruity and chocolatey as promised and the vegetables were quite different. Broccoli, cauliflower, lyonnaise potatoes, carrots with dijon honey mustard - and kumara mashed with pineapple under a sour cream egg mouse. You have to taste it to believe it, and it's delicious!

We weren't up as early as the helicopters and planes already doing circuits at the Air Force museum down the road. Excellent coffee from the expresso hut in Bulls, with a tiny square of velvety chocolate fudge. Hunterville home of Huntercasting also has a taxidermist with a weird sense of humour and stuffed deer on his lawn, a yellow and black shark fin in the pond, superb moist lemony sultana cake from Annabelle's cafe and a line of humpelty bumpelty army trucks. Also sheep that ricochet down the hill bouncing off one another...

Flat Hills has a jet boat on a stick. The road marches straight at a respectful distance from the sheer cliffs across the valley (cliffs of insanity). The plane cafe at Mangaweka is now covered in cookie print and the corrugated figures start here with a man playing golf with a chainsaw blade...

A lilac cadillac and peach pontiac pass us: the metallic red roadster 34 Oldsmobile is still behind us. Then a turquoise Buick roadster, a red mustang... They catch us up, show off in the passing lane then move on.

Through the desert to the Army Museum (restrooms and stickers of a kiwi in uniform and pack). Nothing in the desert but tussocks, sand, pylons, snowy volcanoes peeping out from the clouds - and trucks following the state highway. 1074 metres at the summit and a glimpse of lake Taupo in the distance. Scallloped colour slices of sand beside the road - and the occasioanl tumbling river in the desert.

Lake Taupo stretches and stretches and stretches along the road. Cormorants hunch like vultures on every rock or hang their wings out to dry. One large rock is a miniature island, with grass and a sapling. A line of rocks run out from a corner of the lake studded with cormorants. Stopping by the lake to gaze across: grey blue water, a tree with yelllow flowers, white pumice pebbles that float when you throw them in. A cacophony of birdsong: croaking, thumping, booming and cawing before a tui flies out.

Warnings along the road of overconfident drivers with heads too big to fit in the car gaily proclaim 'locals crash too' and 'I can crash anywhere' as well as 'I can't TXT and drive'. We see our first mynah bird on the way into Taupo, just before a line of parachuters descend. Lunch at Villino (asparagus risotto, griddled aubergine/kumara/polenta/portabella that goes very well with the aioli from the pesto bread and a perky sauv blanc called secret stone).

Spotted in Taupo: Scottys Electrical Xpertise. The van says 'PHONE for SEX' and the licence plate is IMKUMN.

Rolling green hills north of Taupo, with gleaming steel pipes in the valleys from the hydrothermal plant and a plume of steam jetting from a hill. A very impressive volcanic plug and forestry warning signs with lines like 'trees growing: do not disturb'.