raspberry picking at snow-line orchards

| heather parlato
raspberry patch in the mountains of oak glen, california
raspberry patch in the mountains of oak glen, california

last week, my friend seth and i took a day trip to oak glen above yucaipa for some apple & raspberry picking. i highly recommend this area for some good-time harvest season fun [but fair warning: the whole area is packed on weekends]. we were hoping to avoid the weekend crowds, but alas, there is no self-picking on weekdays save for raspberry picking at snow-line orchards. i had been looking forward to berry picking anyway, so we split a mini-pack of fresh cider donuts, bought our cartons [12 bucks will get you an empty 3-pack to fill yourself] and got to work.

grasshoppers in the raspberry patch
grasshoppers in the raspberry patch

there’s a lot more than raspberries going on in the raspberry patch though. it’s an entire microcosm of activity with grasshoppers jumping around, bright green leaf beetles going about their business, little brown frogs croaking from somewhere in the bramble, and not least of all, BEES! they’re everywhere! i thought they might be pollinating flowers, but upon inspection it seems that bees are little vampires when it comes to raspberries, gently puncturing each individual drupelet and drinking the juice. if you’re allergic to bee stings, you might want to steer clear of raspberry picking, but seth and i never got stung. the good old rule of don’t bother them & they won’t bother you still stands.

cartons of fresh raspberries from snow-line orchards
cartons of fresh raspberries from snow-line orchards

it took us about an hour to make our way through a few of the rows and fill our flats. picking raspberries is a pretty simple technique of searching out those of the deepest color, gently pinching the berry and pulling it away from the stem. if it doesn’t come off easily, chances are it’s not ripe. unlike stone fruits, raspberries do not continue to ripen once picked, so it’s best to only pick the ripest fruit. you can save time by searching out clusters of ripe fruit, cupping your hand and picking several berries one after the other, letting them drop into your palm as you go, rather than placing each one individually into your basket.

despite all the delicious-sounding baked goods i found starring raspberries, i have opted to eat most of them fresh, to get the most of the raw nutrients. i made up this raspberry parfait that uses more fruit than i’d ever normally use if i’d bought them locally [this recipe would easily use a whole small carton]. what a luxury to have this much fruit!

raspberry parfaits
raspberry parfaits

raspberry pepita parfaits

1 cup fresh raspberries
1 cup whole plain yogurt
2 tbs pepitas
1 tb vanilla extract
1 tb honey
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp cinnamon
a splash of rosewater

place everything except the raspberries & pepitas in a small mixing bowl and mix until you reach a uniform consistency. taste and adjust flavors if necessary.

depending on the glass you use, you can choose how to layer your berries and yogurt. i chose these martini glasses, so i put a heaping tablespoon of yogurt on the bottom, then a layer of berries, then split the remaining yogurt, and sprinkled the remaining pepitas and berries on top.

event calendar: september 25 – october 2, 2011

| heather parlato

happy monday

i’ll be co-working at kleverdog in chinatown all week. eating lots of raspberries we picked last week on our excursion up to yucaipa! and this saturday is the LA printer’s fair at the international printing museum in carson. come down & get your annual fix of wood and letterpress type!

veer’s educational video about fonts

| heather parlato

this video is super-cute, but let’s get one thing straight here … FONT just describes the electronic file that activates any one TYPEFACE. most of this video should be talking about using typefaces for their different styles—all you do is install & activate fonts on your computer to use each typeface. think of it like music and then every different format on which music is sold. sure you can say you’re listening to records, cds or mp3s, but essentially those are just delivery devices, what you’re listening to is the music they hold.

got it? now enjoy & have a lovely first weekend of fall!

michael pollan + maira kalman

| heather parlato
food rules cover by maira kalman
food rules cover by maira kalman

i’m fine with admitting that i’m a pollan convert, having read most of his food-related books before food rules. at this point, i figured i probably didn’t need to buy this latest one, since i do know what to eat. however, throw maira kalman into the mix, and i might have to buy this illustrated version for all her fantastic style. i love it when great people work together!

creative inspiration

| heather parlato

Just My Type from Pentagram on Vimeo.

take a high-speed spin through the new book just my type, video by pentagram! see more of a profile on fastcodesign.com.

branding

many point lake
many point lake, image: branding10000lakes.com

i already think undertaking a logo a day is a pretty big deal, but branding 10,000 lakes is going to brand one minnesota lake every day for longer than most of your parents’ marriages … or try to at least! take a spin, they’re really sweet.

design industry

so, look, it’s not like i’m trying to tell you what to do or anything, but there’s a reason i spend so much time getting to know you and doing research before whipping out your next logo or web site. embrace design strategy is written from one designer to another, but it’s also a great look for clients into why we do research, why we interview you with lots of questions, and why we might sometimes seem like we’re spending too much time getting to know you. it’s all in the strategy!

echo park

awesome innovations in echo park include a very recently-unveiled solar-powered trash & recycling can at sunset & echo park avenue. get the full story from echoparknow.com.

food

some fun summer foods have been profiled for Seasonal Eats on LAist lately, here are the most recent:
Seasonal Eats: Capture the Spice of Summer with Jalapeños!
Seasonal Eats: She’s a Peach
Seasonal Eats: Crunch into Sweet Corn!
Seasonal Eats: Melon-Tastic!
Seasonal Eats: Summer Plums!

is it really impossible?

| heather parlato
colleen wainwright
a freshly-shorn colleen wainwright, image: josh ross creative

i don’t know what you were doing two months ago, but i was checking out my friend, colleen wainwright’s, bold venture to raise $50k in the 50 days leading up to her 50th birthday. it seemed like a tall order, indeed, but i do remember thinking that if anyone could do it, colleen could. once the fundraising efforts got underway, it was off to a great start, which was my first indication that maybe, despite the obvious hurdles of time constraints and recession, this could really happen. we refreshed the page early and often. even though it lagged at times, she always stayed at least at her $1000/day average amount, if not ahead of it. but then, a great surge happened, and the $50k marker was reached 10 days early. this gave colleen even more fuel to continue to $60k and start talking matching funds with bigger organizations. at last count she was up to $130k and i don’t think she’s stopping there!

at day 50, we found ourselves at the much-awaited head-shaving party ready to celebrate. colleen has this great way of pulling a string of events together into a powerful story. she talked about this journey and all the amazing energy that crawled out of the woodwork to make it possible, and how its main lesson was that you really have to ask yourself if your crazy ideas and big plans are really impossible. they may seem that way, but you’ll never know if you don’t give them the life they deserve, shout them from the rooftops and tell everyone you know how much you believe in them. she did so much more than achieve this goal, it’s like the original idea of raising $50k was the starting fuel needed to really go big with it. i’m very proud of her and very interested to see what’s next in this ever-evolving work with writegirl.org.

i watched the pitch video after the party was over, and it’s amazing to me how much it’s changed now that we know how this part of the story ends. there is this exuberance for the unknown, this little engine that could, and she says “we will do this great thing!” with very little attachment to the done part and much more to the doing. reaching goals, milestones and markers are really brief moments in time, but we give them so much more weight than where we spend most of our lives, in the doing of things on the way there. it’s a great reminder to mind what you’re doing, every day on the way to wherever you’re going.

if you’re free tomorrow and want to learn more about this whole crazy process, colleen will be at the apple store on 3rd street promenade talking about fundraising on the mac with indiegogo!

my friend and colleague, josh ross, set up this awesome photo booth at the party, and shot many fantastic photos of colleen and friends. he does really wonderful work, if you are looking for a photographery, i highly recommend him.

barlow respiratory hospital cat

| heather parlato
barlow hospital cat
resident cat at the barlow respiratory hospital

this is a cat that lives on the barlow respiratory hospital grounds in elysian park. i see her around when i’m walking through the park to chinatown. she is super-friendly, very healthy, talkative, and has 7 toes on her front paws just like my cat, motor. i’ve never been able to ask about her name, so i nicknamed her thumby. i was told that some of motor’s siblings had this coloring, so i think of her as a distant cousin. for awhile i didn’t see her around and feared the worst, but i was really happy to have a little thumby visit last week.

co-working at kleverdog

| heather parlato
kleverdog co-working
co-working at kleverdog

i’m jumping back into co-working with a jelly meetup at kleverdog. so far it’s just a few people, but the space is fantastic and very comfy–and so close to my house, right in chinatown. sign up for one of the meetups through jelly to try it out. now if i could only figure out how to walk here with my laptop, my lunch and my bag o’ tricks.

live the language – los angeles

| heather parlato

EF – Live The Language – LA from Gustav Johansson on Vimeo.

this is one in a series of live the language videos pairing locations with activities and typography that captures the fun of both. see more on their vimeo feed.