How to Date a Milkshake: The Orange Inn and Me

Back when the Pacific Coast Highway was a long narrow strand of paradise running between tawny yellow hills on one side and the sparkling ocean on the other, the only stops of any note between Long Beach and Dana Point were funky, weather-beaten "shacks" of all kinds: bars, liquor stores, fish joints, crab cookers, boat chandleries, dive shops, the world's first surf shop (Kanvas By Katin) and, best of all, Shake Shacks.

Shake Shacks were also part of an agricultural tradition that defined early California. The palm groves, the fruit orchards, the orange groves, all funneled their produce to the shack, which often was run by the family who owned or worked the fruited plain and hill behind it. You could count on them being there all over the state, on 99 running up the Central Valley, in the desert behind Palm Springs, even in Hollywood at the base of the canyons. The mystic vegetarian-yoga-Buddhist-etc religious fads that have come and gone in the Golden State were all served up with a sprout sandwich and a date milkshake.

On the way to and from Laguna Beach there used to be two, the Shake Shack on the bluff overlooking Scotsman's Cove, and the Orange Inn on the inland side a couple of miles north of it. So you stopped at one if you were going south and the other if you were going north. It was a perfect ecosystem.

We used to argue about which shack was better. A perfect exercise in teenage connoisseurship. As we got older, we tended to favor the view at the Shake Shack, but never doubted that the Orange Inn made the superior product, Southern California's most emblematic product, for me anyway: the date milkshake.

Then the cold-hearted thieves on the board of the Irvine Land Trust sued their own selves in order to break up all that open space and turn it into cookie-cutter developments. A chapter in criminal malfeasance, if nothing new. The thousands of homes added killed off most of the aquatic life and made water quality testing a part of every swimmer's routine. And traffic. The traffic became murderous, demanding more and more lanes and toll roads for the affluent and there you have it: our American Achilles Heel: we love to death what we love best.

The Irvine developers were determined to get rid of the Shake Shacks, of course. There was a battle. People rallied. They liked the idea of a little shack standing up to the big guys. They just didn't care to stop the original re-zoning of open space.

The Shake Shack on the ocean side of PCH was saved. The Orange Inn was forced to move, and found a home on PCH just south of Main Street in Laguna Beach. The orange groves and fruit orchards vanished, and houses took their place.

Private enterprise having done its worst, it was now time for government to step in. The Shake Shack sat on state land, donated by Irvine, like a dollar tip thrown on the table after a feast at a five-star restaurant. When Scotsman's Cove was turned into Crystal Cove State Park, the bureaucrats had their revenge on the owners of the Shake Shack. Their 50-year-old lease was put out to bid and Ruby Tuesday's took over the operations. You can imagine the depth of soul of the operation now, although they try to fake a date shake and a sprout sandwich -- the same way these places put doo-wop vinyl 45s on the wall and pictures of Elvis on the menu.

The Orange Inn, however, has hung in there, and not only has it survived, it is thriving. It's the most soulful place in Laguna Beach, which in the love-of-all-things-retro mood of the world, is keeping them in business. They serve home-made soups and turkey-avocado sprout sandwiches -- the surfer classic -- and a dozen other things, all terrific. The ambiance is sublime, the photos of old Laguna and the Original Orange Inn worth pondering.

Best of all, they make a date shake that is straight out of 1930. But it's not on the menu. You've got to ask for it. Although the proprietor, John, knows his clientele so well that when we walked in the door yesterday he took one look at our sunscreen-streaked faces and salty hair and said, "Date shakes? Four?"

Do One Green Thing's Mindy Pennybacker: "N0 MORE SHARK FIN SOUP!"

At the Honolulu Book Festival, author Mindy Pennybacker, aka My Green Goddess, got a chance to strut her stuff. Shark fin fisheries kicked off the riff, but there's a nice overview of the power of the consumer to drive green change.

As we all know, for years big pompous people said that small people didn't make a difference. The Green Man even heard a few big pompous green people -- Bill McKibben and Michael Pollan, anyone? -- turn up their noses at the idea of consumers making a difference. Look at the titles of their recent books and you'll see they've changed their tunes. Great writers, both men, but they got caught up in their own hype.

Keep drivin' the change, folks. Everytime someone tells you that conserving water, gas, air or resources is a waste of time (and let's all go nuclear instead!) look them in the eye and say: "You're the problem. I'm the solution. Now get out of our way while we change the world."

Yeah, the Green Man used to be a rabble-rouser in his youth. He still is. Young, that is.

The Return of the Green Man: A Recipe for Fiery Hawaiian Lamb

The Green Man began his blog and viral life in concrete canyon Manhattan. It was a world full of foodies and a great Greenmarket at Union Square and as a cook and a home-style chef it was a nice place to spend 26 years.

Now this Green Man lives in Hawaii. The home of The Green Goddess, need we add? In the interim she has done well with her book, Do One Green Thing, and we found a Farmer's Market up on the backside of Diamond Head at KCC. I shop there every Saturday and spend about $60 to fill two large recyclable sacks with produce, bread, sustainable red veal, wild-caught fish, and fruits of all kinds.

Mindy, aka The Green Goddess, keeps asking when I'll put on my green leaf mask again and hit the chitlin circuit. It's coming, darling. For now, I'll just drop in a photo and a recipe now and then.

The Green Man's Fiery Hawaiian Lamb with Green Greens

2 lb boneless leg of lamb
fresh ginger, cut in slivers
fresh garlic, cut in slivers
white onion, chopped
fresh jalapeno pepper, chopped
some powdered cumin
some powdered garlic
some coarse black pepper
a half cup soy sauce
fresh or dry thyme, preferably picked from a neighbor's bush above dog-piss level

insert the ginger and garlic slivers in the lamb
dust with dry spices and rub
pour in soy sauce and bath the lamb like a baby in a tiny tub

cook at 375 for 15 minutes, then 25 minutes at 350

Serve with steamed baby bok choy and Chinese mustard cabbage

Brown rice, a nice red like a Douro, and a lightly dressed green salad.

How Obama Won the War Against BP and England

Time for a recap of the fun of the last few days.... But first, remember all the criticism of Obama for his strangely passive speech and all of its "inappropriate" war metaphors? Turns out they weren't metaphors. We went to war, briefly, virally, against the United Kingdom and won. In less than a week we started collecting $20 Billion in reparations.

Here's the timeline:


1. GOP and Tea Party demand less regulation, plus chant with Sarah Palin: "Drill Baby Drill!"

2. BP rig blows. Sarah blames it on regulation.

3. Turns out Minerals Management Dept has been indicted during Bush administration for partying with oil lobbyists: sex, cocaine, porn, payoffs.

4. Turns out MM Dept invited BP and 4 major oil companies to "write the regulations." Good enuff for ya, Sarah?

5. Turns out Obama is to blame for the BP blowout, according to conspiracy theorists Beck, Limbaugh.

6. Obama and govt let BP try to fix what they caused: i.e., as Ronald Reagan said, "let govt get out of the way."

7. BP fails to fix, fails to cap, fails to report correct spill amount (off by 90%), tries to arrest reporters photographing oil spill damage. That's the private sector, right?

8. Obama appoints Coast Guard Adm to oversight.

9. Led by Louisiana Gov Bobby Jindal, aka Mr Private Sector, Tea Partier Extraordinaire, the GOP and Tea Party attacks Obama for not stepping in immediately and taking over for private sector sooner. It's government's job!

10. Democrats attack Obama, too. Everybody into the pool!

11. Obama points out we, the people, and the government, are not in the oil business, thus have no experience or expertise in capping 5,000 deep offshore oil geysers. Best we can do is hold BP's feet to the fire.

12. Haley Barbour, gov of Alabama and former head of GOP, says there is "no oil spill."

13. Sarah says it's all a plot to deny deepwater drilling in Alaska.

14. Major crude pipeline in Alaska's North Slope breaks. No fix in sight.

15. Cap is revealed on damage payouts for oil companies--$750 million, no matter how much damage BP does. The law was passed immediately after Exxon Valdez disaster.

16. Turns out Exxon never paid its fine or damages in Exxon Valdez disaster. 20 years later, their court appeals won in the Bush Supreme Court: any damage and payments to fishermen, businesses, and environment was "excessive." Nobody got anything. The 20 years delay meant everyone slimed by Exxon was ruined.

17. BP announces it will pay billions in share dividends to shareholders.

18. Obama says wait a minute. Don't do that.

19. British Govt complains of US interference in British Petroleum, a valued company in the UK. It is revealed that the British Govt holds 12% of its wealth in BP shares.

20. Obama holds Oval Office press conference, speaks in generalities about making BP pay.

21. GOP, Tea Party, Dems all roundly criticise speech.

22. Next day, Obama meets with BP CEO and gets $20 Billion damage payout guarantee, with no lawyers or appeals process to string it along. This agreement is unprecedented and BP did NOT have to agree to it, as their offshore rig was flagged as a ship from the Marshall Islands.

23. Today, the Gulf Coast people who are suffering an almost complete economic shutdown are lining up to receive emergency payments.

24. Today, all the GOP and Tea Partiers have "no comment." Except for head of the GOP, Boehner, who says the "US, not BP, should shoulder the burden for the cleanup," and GOP Rep Joe Barton who says Obama making BP pay up is "illegal and wrong."

25. Tomorrow--a prediction--the GOP and Tea Party will be too busy having sex with interns and little boys to answer any questions about the Oil Crisis.

26. Day after Tomorrow--a prediction--GOP and Tea Party will take credit for everything Obama did, and blame him for making Boehner and Barton speak out, claiming he is a Satanic ventriloqist.

A handsome young fan of the book

while visiting a Barnes & Noble NYC

did find Do One Green Thing

bursting out with the Spring

and let out a scream: Take a look!

--thanks to Thomas Hutchinson (and his sharp eyes)

Alice in Wonderland premiere offers girl a chemical-laden shampoo as a promo: Drink Me!

The author of just-out Do One Green Thing lands a post-Oscar knockout punch: the so-called organic shampoos Disney gave out at the Alice in Wonderland premiere are packed with chemicals and hormone distuptors, exactly what young girls don't need. Go see Alice?

It's on Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mindy-pennybacker/greenwashing-emalice-in-w_b_489256.html

Nothing surprises us anymore. We just have to keep on calling em as we see em.

Mindy on the Huff Post re: tsunami and my response

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mindy-pennybacker/coming-next-hawaii-tsunam_b_479704.html

Increasingly likely that the tsunami, while serious in Chile and in theory, was highjacked as an excuse for the media and hotel folks to cook up a huge one-day shopping event that would boost the sagging local economy, raise TV ratings (and hence ad rates), mention all the stores and gas stations (advertisers) where you could stock up, and virtually force the tourists to order room service food in the expectation they'd be marooned for a week.

To be clear: the threat was real, but the Pacific Center knew by 6 am it would not be a major event, yet they and the Hawaii powers let an entire day unfold at crisis tempo.

The relationship to green living and Do One Green Thing: How our society handles disasters is being increasingly turned into a "how can I profit from this?" mentality. The lowlying areas of Waikiki that would've been most hurt by a tsunami are exactly where the tourists are kept penned up, like cattle. They're also where the Native Hawaiians, who understood the sea and its moods, had built a vast system of fishponds to practice sustainable aquaculture. The moi they grew, caught and ate were part of a food cycle we'd love to emulate--but now it's all concrete and hotels and imported sand for the beaches.

As for the other disaster, the tsunami that didn't happen for Hawaii, we know how media works: it's exactly what happened with The Weather Channel in the two years following Katrina. Expecting an increase in hurricanes and preparing to get bought out, TWC turned every weather event into a catastrophe. And then sat there mumbling while no hurricanes hit the US for the next two years.

The plantation mentality in Hawaii is to just say, "Thank God nobody was hurt," and ignore the flaws and scare-mongering. Unfortunately, the odds of a free press shedding any light on the subject just went down a lot, given the fact that the day before the Tsunami alert the two Honolulu papers, The Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin, merged. The latter paper buying out the former and closing it--and this six months after all four local TV news stations merged.