Life Begins at 30

Soft Addictions, Part II

Here is my list of current soft addictions - those items I just can't do without. See "Soft Addictions", part I here.

Hearts of Palm sliced, with lemon and cracked pepper. I have been buying these from Essential Living Foods.

Eating Well Magazine. An interesting magazine that has a good balance of recipes, seasonal food articles, and nutritional advice.

Blenheim Hot Ginger Ale. The story is that Blenheim was originally created by a doctor who wanted to make a concoction to cover up the taste of the sulfur-tasting spring water he was recommending his patients drink. The result was this spicy-hot ginger ale that is just delicious. You can get it in hot and not-as-hot and diet. The flavor is given away by the color of the cap. I purchase mine from Yum on Market in SF. For a special treat, try it with lemon and vodka.

Pomo Tierra Apple Juice from Mendocino County. Available at Berkeley FM, Tuesday. I let Jason think that the only reason I buy apple juice is that he likes it. But to tell the truth, I love a small glass of this in the morning. This particular juice is very good. The grower, Bob Bernstein doesn't irrigate his apple trees, which results in a more apple-y, less watery flavor. (Source)

Lucca Ravioli Company, SF. This store on Valencia has a great selection of cheeses, meats, ravioli, and focaccia breads. So delicious, and the guys who work there are just great. I was in there yesterday buying spicy Italian sausages. Yum!

Roli Roti Rotisserie Chicken. This chicken is becoming a weekend food staple when I go to the Farmer's Market. They roll into the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market on Saturday mornings and begin cooking their spiced chickens on the rotisserie. A little while later, and the smell of these chickens permeate the market. They are just delicious, and make for some great meals throughout the weekend.

Giving Blood

I gave blood yesterday.

After hearing several news stories about an extreme blood shortage in the Bay Area, I decided that this was something that I could do, and something I would be willing to do if it made a difference.

Just a recap on the specifics in case you are like me, and haven't given blood since you were in college: You arrive to give blood, and are asked a bunch of questions in order to determine your eligibility. After that, they take your temperature, blood pressure, test your blood for iron (by pricking your finger), ask you a few more questions, and then put you in a recliner-type chair.

Then, they prick your arm, and hook you up to a bag and leave you alone for a while to let the blood collect. For me, the absolute worst part (and it wasn't really even that bad) was not the pricking of the arm -- it was the fact that they take the tube that is collecting the blood and tape the tube to your arm, so you can kind of feel the warmth of the blood that is flowing out of your body. That grossed me out for a minute or two, and then I got used to it. Jason pointed out that I can probably ask them not to tape it to my arm next time.

The blood collection process was surprisingly fast - mine took about 10 minutes from what I could tell. I brought my iPod, which I would highly recommend. It's a lot easier to chill to your iPod (I am listening to The Rule of Four on audiobook) than to try and read a book and mess with turning the pages while one of your arms is immobilized.

I went to the Blood Center of the Pacific here in SF to donate blood. There was a bar area where you could hang out afterward (it is CA State Law that you stay on site for 15 minutes after giving blood) and a volunteer would give you juice or coffee or water and snacks. It was a comfortable place to be for a minute or two.

The whole process is rather painless and quick (one hour from start to finish for me). It is a small part of your day, and means a lot to those who need it.

Quick facts about blood donation:

* Just one pint of donated blood can help save as many as three lives.
* 4.5 million Americans would die each year without life saving blood transfusions.
* Every three seconds someone needs blood
* Currently there is no substitute for blood. In a world that creates synthetic products for many natural things, blood must come from donors.

How to donate:

1) Go to the American Red Cross site to find out where to give.
2) In San Francisco, make an appointment at a Blood Center of the Pacific site. You can make the appointment online, and the locations are convenient - one on Masonic at Turk, and one downtown.

Ice Cream, Anyone?

This is a picture of a friend's niece taken at the San Luis Obispo Farmer's Market last week.

I had a great trip - went to Southern California to a friend's wedding, but was able to spend a couple days in the central coast as well. Had a chance to go to the rockin' San Luis Obispo Farmer's Market - an I'm-not-kidding evening market that seems to be mostly locals. Spanning several blocks in downtown SLO, the market features fresh produce and flowers, along with large barbecues cooking up all kinds of meats, and booths representing every political agenda in the county.

I picked up some small dried white beans in hopes of recreating my favorite speck salad from L'Osteria del Forno here in SF. The folks at L'Osteria del Forno have been insisting that the small white bean in their addictive salad is a cannelini, but I haven't been able to recreate the dish - the beans seem smaller than a cannelini.

If you are ever in the area, I would highly recommend a visit to the San Luis Obispo Farmer's Market - it is a great one. It has a fun party atmosphere that I have only witnessed in early evening weekday markets.

Photo Credit: Me

Away this week

My regular posting schedule has been interrupted because I am out of town this week. I had visions of posting remotely but it just hasn't happened -- look for new posts next week!

- J

Desiree Cafe, San Francisco

I woke up this morning with a start. Sun shining into my apartment, "I'm late!" was my first thought. But I soon realized that we had not slept through the alarm clock, it was just a rare sunny morning in San Francisco. If you live here, you will understand: It has been cloudy in the morning for weeks on end, making waking up in the morning a daunting prospect. Jason has been taking the early train, and yours truly has been dropping him off faithfully at 7.00 in the morning. After a fun trip to the Department of Parking and Traffic to renew my parking permit, I decided that it was a good morning for a breakfast outing ... it was early enough to not cut into my work schedule, the weather out was amazing, and I was hungry!

The first thought in my mind was Desiree, a small restaurant in the Film Centre building of San Francisco's Presidio that serves up one of the best breakfasts in town. Driving cross-town through traffic, I was kicking myself for not being happy just popping into the dozens of places that would have been faster and closer to my location. As soon as I walked in the door, however, those thoughts disippated.

A restaurant that you only find if you are looking for it, Desiree was started by local chef Annie Gingrass once she left a position at a popular high-end restaurant here. This is a restaurant that epitomizes a seasonally-based menu, and an execution of dishes that relies completely on the integrity of the ingredients. This morning was a typical summer menu with offerings of granola with fresh fruit, scrambled egg dishes, Niman Ranch bacon, various baked goods, and an egg sandwich. I chose the "soft scramble" with tender broccoli florets, goat cheese, herbs, and halved cherry tomatoes. The eggs weren't cooked a second longer than necessary and arrived at my table with a side of potatoes and toast. The potatoes were remarkable ... they didn't look like much, but were cooked with herbs and a liberal sprinkling of pepper that made me wish for more after my plate had been cleaned. The egg dish was perfectly balanced ... the sweet tomatoes providing a wonderful counterpoint to the salty cheese and the herbs rounding out the entire dish.

One of my favorite meals at Desiree is a to-go lunch that is pre-made in a box with a sandwich, salad and cookies. This is no ordinary lunch box -- outstanding fish sandwiches, egg salad, and other delights. On a sunny day, pick up a lunch box and go out to Crissy Field for nirvana San Francisco style.

Their baked goods are a single reason that many people in town go to Desiree, and a friend recently told me of the race that occurs for the baked goods in the late morning -- there is a precious amount of time between when the baker brings up the baked goods and when the favorite ones disappear. If you miss the magic time (it varies), you don't get the goods.

Desiree has changed somewhat in the past six months or so ... it has expanded, and probably seats double the amount of customers, there is now a sign outside telling newbies that they should order first and then sit, and there is a refrigerator of to-go items. In my curmudgeonly moments, these are all things that make me suspiscious -- can they still provide the same product? The answer with Desiree is a resounding yes.

All of this ... the elusive location, the short hours (8-4, weekdays only), the mystery baked goods, provide seemingly annoying obstacles in the quest for the great breakfast or lunch. But trust me on this -- just go with the flow and get yourself there. You won't regret it, and you will quickly understand the popularity of one of our local treasures.

Desiree Cafe
in the San Francisco Film Centre
39 Mesa Street
San Francisco
(415) 561-2336

Michoacan Feast, Mariquita Farm

Last weekend, I had a unique opportunity: A benefit barbecue at Mariquita Farm in Watsonville. They were raising money for an employee who was injured in a car accident recently and has mounting bills and is unable to work. To help out their employee, Andy and Julia of Mariquita decided to put together a Michoacan Feast and invite anyone to the farm who was willing to donate.

Talk about direct fundraising -- something that we don't really have the chance to do these days: see someone in need and come together to help that specific person out as a community, in a substantive, meaningful way -- directly and not through a middleman.

I was excited to have an opportunity to go to Mariquita Farms, as I have read Andy and Julia's newsletter for quite a while but had never been able to meet them or go to the farm. This event was at their home farm -- most of their produce comes from another piece of land a few miles away.

And the food! While I was able to snap some shots of the food preparation, there were many things that I didn't take pictures of ... mainly because I was too busy eating. It was a feast that I will remember for a long while. We had: birria tacos, nopalitos salad, King City Pink beans, calabasitas con crema, green onions for the tacos (cebollas), roasted corn, melon and berries (thanks to George @ Slow Food Monterey Bay for the reminder of the menu). The preparation was a team effort, as guests were in the kitchen helping with tomatillos, outside shucking corn, collecting flowers for centerpieces, and flipping tortillas. Jessica (whose has a lot of great things to say over at Stirring the Cauldron) helped oversee some of the preparation over the fire, and a group of people were off preparing the goat. We sat on hay bales, and the generally raucous crowd became much more quiet as we all tasted delight after delight. It was all wonderful, though my personal favorite was the beans.

Weary and full, my friend JB and I said our goodbyes and drove back to the city with visions of the country in our heads.

Please check out my photos from the event - as they tell the story much better than I do.

Pure Abundance

I still haven't had time to scan all my slides from the past weekend of photo-fun. But thought I would give you a new shot to whet your appetite (literally) and hopefully inspire you to hunt down some luscious, plump, wonderful tasting heirloom tomatoes this weekend. Here in the Bay Area, the last week has resulted in an explosion of tomato wonderfulness - available at all of the local farmer's markets. It's that time of year when I start eating tomatoes at every available opportunity. The shot of this amazing platter of naked tomatoes (I am sure that phrase will warrant me some more strange google hits) was taken at a Mariquita Farms event I attended last weekend -- one that I want to spend more time telling you about when I have a free moment. So go forth, and buy heirloom tomatoes! Have a good weekend.

Mario Batali on Locality

As I mentioned a few days ago, eGullet had a Q&A forum this week with Mario Batali. I read it with interest, because I generally like Mario Batali and believe that he is one of the only tv food personalities worth my time. I have to say that I was utterly floored by the great things that Mr. Batali had to say in the forum, and am quickly becoming a huge fan. He just really seems to be a stick-to-his-principles, just-let-me-cook, unaffected-by-fame kind of guy. Here's my favorite post of the week -- his answer after being asked about what makes Italian food truly Italian beyond the ingredients. His answer is a bit rambling, and crazy to read as he doesn't use much punctuation (I was just imagining him coming home from a long day at work pounding out these answers -- putting all his energy into the answer and none into things like punctuation or capitalization). In all his rambling, however, he does a really eloquent job of summing up the importance of locality in cooking.

i think that the most essential component to true italian cooking is its confidence in whatever product it may be whether it is an anchovy from ischia or a spot prawn from santa barbara the issue is not the actual ingredients provenance, but its exaltation, it ultimate saturation of flavor and locale... it existential expression of its place, its own food, its own air its true individuality unobfuscated by chef ego, or crappy oil or mere table salt... the problem in europe in the last 20 years and in america for the last 40 is that the greatest restaurants were always perceived to need to serve the greatest ingredients ie scottish salmon, iranian/rusian caviar, maine or breton lobster, foie gras from the sw france blah blah blah...what that reinforced was a homogenization of the food across the lands the true future both in italy and the rest of the world is the celebration of the exquisiteness of the local and supreme...king salmon and olympia oyster in washington striped bass and montauk lobsters in southhampton, whitefish and teal in northrn indiana and mussels and hot peppers in puglia, or tiny soft shell crabs, sole and little shrimp called schie in the venetian lagoon, or choucroute in alscace the essential aesthetic fo italina food is to appreciate and celebrate these things... the italians just do it better because of their penchant for ligthness in texture and flavor... i may be rambling here but the true itlian spirit is to serve the main flavor as its own self, its own mantra, without apology or even explanation ...

Read the full posting here.

Pauline's Pizza, SF

J and I often having a hard time deciding on somewhere to eat during the week. He tends to like something that is fast, "not drama", and somewhere that we know. I am usually a bit more adventurous -- I think it stems from the fact that he spends his day working at a mega-company with thousands of people, and I work at my teeny tiny studio apartment. We definitely have places we love to go -- noodle houses, sushi, random neighborhood joints -- but I think that we have both been kind of ready for some changes to our regular places. We finally found a new restaurant worthy of making it into the regular repertoire.

Our new food obsession lately is Pauline's Pizza in San Francisco. The other day we were sitting in the restaurant (for about the 5th time in three weeks) and Jason put his finger on it ... "This place is so San Francisco". It's just a pizza place ... but a pizza place with a California spin that I just can't get enough of. The ingredients for the pizzas are seasonal, grown in their own garden, and often organic. Each day, they offer a special veggie pizza, a special meat pizza, and a seasonal salad in addition to a full menu of ingredients. The crust is delicious - medium thickness (though many claim that it's thin), wonderful tasting, and seems to have some corn meal. Our main goal is to figure out how to leave some pizza on the plate so that we can actually get to dessert, but that hasn't happened yet. If you live in the City and appreciate fresh ingredients, I would highly suggest checking out Pauline's. We always get the salad - wonderful ingredients and always holds my interest. Let go of control, and go with one of their special pizzas -- even if you aren't sure you'll appreciate the ingredient mix (ie., lemon zest on a pizza?), the specials seem to be tried and true and have not steered us wrong yet.

The first time or two that you go, I would suggest calling ahead to make sure they're open until you get a handle on their schedule. Generally, they are open Tuesday through Saturday, but they also sometimes close when they run out of dough (Which you've gotta love ... can you say FRESH ingredients?). They are open for dinner only.

Pauline's Pizza
260 Valencia Street (at 14th)
San Francisco
415.552.2050

My regular posting schedule has been stymied by the fact that I picked up my Minolta print camera and set down my digital one -- a Nikon Coolpix 990. It all happened a couple of weeks ago because I ran out of batteries in the digital, and just grabbed my Minolta. I had totally forgotten about the pleasure of holding a *real* camera with some weight behind it, and a camera that responds exactly as I expect it to -- no delay, no weird focusing. Some of this is because I haven't taken the appropriate amount of time to actually learn the Nikon (as Jason constantly reminds me), but a lot of it is also the camera.

The downfall of the print camera is that I had to take my film into the store and drop it off yesterday. And of course, being the obsessive person that I am, I didn't take my film to one place but two -- one for print developing and one for slide developing. Such is my life.

I am LUSTING after the Nikon D70 which seems to be the best of both worlds. I have been reading posts by Heather and Jon which are making me green with envy about this new toy.

If you want a preview of the pics that I have taken and am waiting for, look here.