A Rainy Sunday Afternoon...

Sat at home today and riffed on guitar, came up with a few things using the loop station built into Guitar Rig 3. I'm please to say that it appears to be working quite well. At one point, I had 5 layers of recorded audio playing back and all manner of guitar processing effects running with no audio glitches, no crackling, no freezing and no crashing. It all comes down to dust and proper computer maintenance. I should be ashamed.

But for now, hurray for productivity. I even began looking for more scripts and practicing some of the ones I have ready for my demo recording session, coming up in about a month.

Earlier this afternoon, I went with a friend to the New Amsterdam Market near South Street Seaport. It was very cool, despite the rain, to hang out underneath the overpass of the FDR with a huge crowd of people, all interested in the myriad of local food and products on sale. I even got to visit the table for Kombucha Brooklyn. Some of you may know, or have heard me rant about how great Kombucha is. It's essentially a Chinese fermented tea that restores vitality and balances the body's systems, contains amino acids and probiotics, blah blah blah. It's really great though but because of the recent FDA shenanigans, I've decided to brew my own. So, I was happy to get a chance to talk to Kombucha people (spoke with the fellow in this video) about getting a SCOBY. The other day I even found a glass jar on freecycle that will be a perfect vessel for brewing said Kombucha. Even has a spigot on the bottom. As for finding a SCOBY, I've been scouring craigslist and have found a few sources but the gentleman at the Kombucha Brooklyn table at the market said they'd have their online store up and running soon, too.

Anyway, In addition to checking out Kombucha Brooklyn's tent, we tried Bellwether Hard Cider, smoked duck breast from the Hudson Valley Duck Farm, Mast Brothers' Chocolate
, and pulled pork sandwiches and sweet corn flavored ice cream from another table (The name of that farm/store escapes me now) among other things. I'm thinking about going back next time they have it because there was plenty of amazing produce there. One local farm, my friend and I are actually thinking of going to visit, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. They're just up in Pocantico Hills, New York, a quick ride on the Metro North train and there's apparently a really good local restaurant attached to the farm.

In addition to their being a myriad of different vendors there, they had a tomato tasting and a sort of ice cream festival. These things you had to buy tickets for so we opted not to partake.

Lately, things like the multiple farmer's markets, drawing produce from Long Island, Westchester County, Upstate NY as well as PA and NJ, and urban farms, even, in the city and the local food movement have been on my mind a lot. It's becoming clear the more I sink into this locavore movement that local eating is becoming the new organic. Or at least become a more important consideration when choosing where one's food comes from. An organic apple from Chile or New Zealand may be organic but it probably took a heck of a lot of energy to get to your supermarket. If I sound preachy it's because I'm currently reading the Omnivore's Dilemma, and just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which is probably the most known locavore tome. Since finishing the latter, eating locally produced food has become even more important to me. Not just for the obvious reasons of favoring food that didn't require so much energy to get to me either. I had an experience the other day involving a tomato that makes me never want to eat them out of season ever again. They just don't taste that good. I was eating at an Irish pub in Raleigh a week and a half ago and shoved an underripe tomato in my mouth to my immediate dismay. Tomatoes from across the country, say from California, are often grown out of season from the rest of the country, picked underripe and then refrigerated, exposed to ethylene gas to make them ripen (or rather turn red). The resulting red rubber ball tastes exactly like a red rubber ball. Why would one eat something like this (or rather, why would a restaurant serve it) in August when properly vine-ripened tomatoes are easily accesible, cheap and incredibly tasty, for having come much more freshly from the plant. I was thinking all this as I gazed on the tomato samples at the table where they were having the tasting. Gorgeous heriloom tomatoes, every shade from red to yellow. Salivating just thinking about it.

Any NYC outsider would be surprised at the availability of local produce in the city. And it's a noble cause, one that I'm proud to align with. Especially the more I read about factory farming and the monoculture mentality that most industrial agriculture is adhering to, which damages the ecosystem. If you're interested, and haven't, I recommend reading both of those books...even if you're somebody who doesn't want to know where your food comes from.

Anyway, I just wanted to check in for a sec, before shutting down this computer so I can unplug it and rearrange the room a little. I'm a busy little bee this evening, aren't I?