My ongoing love affair with San Francisco grew stronger last night as I made letters and shapes with light sources and other photography enthusiasts in Dolores Park.

Organized by the great online photography community of JPG mag, the cult camera purveyors Lomography, and my inspiring friend Amit Gupta and the wonderful Photojojo newsletter crew, fifty people arrived at dusk to paint the park with lights of varying sizes and shapes.

I freestyled for a bit on my own (hidden behind the light above and below),

and then Amit took this of me,

before writing his name (this is difficult to do and Amit, of course, managed it on the first try).

A little later, as the sky darkened further, Kelly of Photojojo (she’s great) came over and wrote her name,

and then more people I had just met stepped in front of my camera, forcefully writing pi,

gracefully scrawling a nickname (Crystal is my friend David Sasaki’s sister and this is his nickname for her),

and carefully drawing the three letters in Crystal’s friend Zon’s name.

LED lights were shared; ambitious group photos were attempted; small groups clustered across the park, helping each other tweak camera settings and exposure lengths, appreciatively admiring the results of the photographers around them.

The streaks of light last night made visible the way I see the beautiful energy of this city—swirling above and around those who live here, who also make space for those of us who pass through as often as we can—

More photos in my Flickr set; explore more Flickr photos on lightpainting and thanks again to Amit for letting me borrow his tripod and generally bringing the awesome—

Friends came over last night, and drinks at the magic cottage turned into small plates of dinner. I stirred this tomato pesto into sautéed corn and annelini pasta, little ring shapes sometimes found in soups or salads.

Smaller pastas are often reserved for children, but why should they have all the fun?

Like green pesto with basil, this tomato version comes together quickly and lasts for a week or so in the refrigerator; a snap to make, it can be prepared in any season and excels at amplifying fresh tomatoes.

Recipe: 1/2/3, 4: In this order, process one peeled clove of garlic, 1/2 cup of sun-dried tomatoes, 1/3 cup of pine nuts, 1/3 cup of grated Parmesan, 4 tablespoons of olive oil. Serve with extra Parmesan.

Listening recommendation: Feist “1 2 3 4” (and the Sesame Street version)

tomato pesto wallpaper on Flickr

drink pairing: a young red

salt recommendation: sel Gris (and extra Parmesan ups the salt factor)

What is your favorite kind of pesto?

My friend Pilar has just opened an empanada shop with her husband Juan on Washington Avenue (right next to Lincoln Road) in Miami’s South Beach called Half Moon Empanadas.

The food is as satisfying as the great typefaces in the logo, and Pilar tells me everything is made in the restaurant:

My favorite is the “americana” empanada—smoked panceta, mozzarella, and plum—and Pilar and Juan’s mother both approve of my choice, as it is a traditional Argentinian combination.

The empanadas can be ordered baked or souffléd; cleverly, each is stamped to distinguish the type.

I think my regular order will be two empanadas (an americana and an onion) and a dulce de leche pastelito. As I’ve discovered, the only way to improve the caramel-like goodness of dulce de leche is to warm it inside a crispy pastry shell.

Many congratulations to Pilar and Juan on their new restaurant and being small business owners.

I now plan to bring all my Miami visitors to Half Moon so I can order dulce de leche pasteles—er, so they too can experience this heavenly empanada shop.

Half Moon Empanadas, 1616 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL 33139, 305.532.5277 (delivery in South Beach)

What’s your favorite empanada? Any you’d suggest as new flavors for Half Moon?

Skirting the storms about the magic cottage this morning, I began thinking about seasons in Miami.

Humming Nico’s “The Fairest of the Seasons” (on last.fm here), I thought about how difficult it is to measure time when the leaves are always green.

Other leaves near the magic cottage have small tears, holes, but these have exposed threads—

the equivalent of the detachment of oak leaves as their chlorophyll drains?

Is the undernetting the fragile future, the ephemeral present, or the threadbare past of the leaf?

Were I to be scrupulously honest, I suppose I might admit this is less a salad and more a deconstructed guacamole.

But as I’m not so inclined, this recipe is a light dressing, a sharp uppermost layer for soft, green flesh encrusted with red salt that sparkles like garnets on top of the fruit Jenne and I found at Bee Heaven Farm this weekend.

Suitable for a quiet dinner for one in Paris, London, Miami:

Recipe: Very thinly slice one medium-sized shallot ~1.5 tbsp, put in bowl and cover with 1.5 tbsp oil, 1 tsp vinegar (of your choice, I used olive oil and Cabernet Franc vinegar), leave for five minutes. Halve avocado, remove the seed, ladle shallot mix into the hollow, squeeze lemon over the top and sprinkle with salt.

reading recommendation: The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy (excerpt)

listening recommendation: Madeleine Peyroux, “Dance Me to the End of Love”

avocado salad wallpaper on Flickr

drink pairing: Vinho Verde

salt recommendation: Hawaiian red

What is your ideal avocado salad?

My beautiful friend Jenne drove with me to the end of the world today–or, at least, what felt like the end of the world as the road ended and we got out to look around.

She smiled as we heard the sounds of things uncivilized approaching…

and an ATV trio rumbled past in their mudded glory.

We stopped for local fruit on the side of the road (more on that when it ripens),

and continued on to Bee Heaven Farm in Homestead where Jenne gracefully shook the avocados.

We tested the farm’s raw honey (wildflower was my favorite), I procured fresh bee pollen that will keep well in the freezer, and on we drove to the Homestead flea market produce area.

Two girls were taking pony rides together, and shortly, saddled with bags of local vegetables, we two drove back to the magic cottage to toast our adventure into the Miami afternoon…

In late morning, the light through rippled glass dances, lines appear for a moment and reappear, reminding me that we only see the parts of light filtered into wavelengths we can comprehend. And the rest? Whimsy just out of sight…

Most mornings, I pause briefly to admire the leaves of a plant just outside the magic cottage–some are green with red veins, some red with green veins.

As though woven by chlorophyll artists, I noticed the slight tears and small holes in many of the leaves the other day. Perhaps part of the tropical storm weather, perhaps an inevitable consequence of their longevity.

They seem to tell stories–this one bruised by an old memory, that one letting parts be eaten away.

And then, I started to look through the gaps, thinking about the leaves as the negative space surrounded by the light.

It is the tears of these native leaves, then, that I’ll lean in closer to see, that beckon me into the end of the week…or is it the beginning?

My younger sister Kassandra (she’s the youngest of the three of us) is an incredible, fierce dancer who just moved from San Francisco, where she was training with Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet and posing in front of walls of graffiti. (Stunning, isn’t she?)

I’ve just freshened her personal site kassandrataylor.com;

you’ll see new Flickr images, a new review page, and what’s known in the dance world as a “reel” (a composite video of performance highlights) that a friend of hers made.

Here’s the reel in case you can’t wait:

Told you she was fierce.

Kassandra has also begun a tumblelog (a blog species with brief posts including images, audio, and video and without comments). You can visit that blog for more about her thoughts and follow along as she settles into Salt Lake City.

Thoughts for Kassandra? What do you think of the site update? Let me know in the comments, please–

The wild winds of Tropical Storm Fay are whipping around the magic cottage today.

So we’re making my favorite breakfast food, pancakes, with crispy edges (more edges in HD version here):

Recipe: 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/4 tsp salt. Stir. Crack one egg in middle, add 1 cup buttermilk. Stir. Drop 1/8th cup circles in pan with 1/2 in vegetable oil over med-high. Cook until bubbles begin to pop; flip. Cook 45 seconds more. Take out of pan; repeat. Serve with (a dash of truth and) honey/syrup + butter or crème fraîche + salmon eggs. Or eat straight out of the pan.

reading recommendation: A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L’Engle

listening recommendation: “Pancake”, Tori Amos

pancake wallpaper on Flickr

drink pairing: mimosas, darlings

salt recommendation: peruvian rose

What do you put on your pancakes? (At breakfast, lunch, or dinner…)