Life Begins at 30

book sale

If you are in San Francisco this weekend, get to the Big Book Sale if you can.  I bought all these books for $18.  If you go on Sunday, all books are $1 each.

Take patience.  Take water.  For goodness sake, when they offer you a basket don't be stubborn like me - take it.  Let me know if you find anything fun.

Birthday dinner at A16

My birthday and my mom's birthday are on the same day so there's always some sort of celebration or other.  More often than not,  I end up going to Southern California.  This year, I lured family and friends to San Francisco with the promise of an amazing birthday dinner and a small amount of pleading.  It worked, and it was fabulous.

Dinner at A16 started as an idea in the back of my head last year when I was describing the restaurant to my mom.  "You would just love it," I said.  "It's the kind of place I want to take everyone I love, and order everything for them."  Yes, I am a control freak.  But I felt that I had been there enough times to be confident about the "correct" things to order from the menu.

The restaurant has a back atrium area that you may have noticed if you have been there.  Jason and I have sat there by ourselves before, and it has a benefit of not being anywhere as noisy as the rest of the restaurant.  If you have a large party (we had 17), you can have the entire atrium for the duration of your event.  All food was ordered family style, and shared between all.

The execution of each dish, and the service, was exactly the same as if there were two of us -- it was everything I expected it to be.  I am a worry-wart, and there was nothing for me to worry about at this dinner.  Everyone was happy, everyone was taken care of.  The restaurant even did a great job of taking care of some "special needs":  One person who doesn't eat pepper, a vegan, and a couple vegetarians.  When I walked in a few minutes early and the server asked me to point out where the vegan would be sitting, I knew that I would be in good hands.

One of the highlights of the trip was that my grandparents came too.  I conspired with my mom to not tell them that we were going to an Italian restaurant.  This is because the second they hear that it's Italian, they look for spaghetti and meatballs, and are disappointed when they don't get it.  My grandparents raved throughout the meal. My grandfather had been complaining all weekend that "all you people do is eat" and he inhaled three pieces of pizza, and a lot of other food.  My grandmother who said that she "never eats lamb" is still talking about the lamb dish.  I knew that I had succeeded when, toward the end of the meal, grandma asked "What kind of restaurant is this anyway?"

Every dish that was served was delicious, and my friends and family all were blown away by the meal that they had eaten. And as someone who has been there at least every other month since the restaurant opened, I felt like I had as good of a meal with 17 as I have on any other night.  It was the best birthday gift I could have asked for.

The menu:

starters
Zucchini salad with parsley, mint, green olives *
Mozzarella burrata with olive oil, sea salt and crostini
Fennel Salami (cured on premises)

pizze & salad course
Margherita pizza - tomato, mozzarella, basil, olive oil
Funghi pizza - mushrooms, grana padano, garlic, oregano, parsley, olive oil.
Romaine & chicory salad with lemon and olive oil

main course
Pork shoulder braised with red peppers, onions and rosemary
Roasted Napa Valley lamb with garlic, herbs and lemon
Eggplant parmigiana with tomato, fresh ricotta*

sides
Blue lake green beans with garlic and anchovy
Roasted potatoes with marjoram and celery
Cannelini beans with garlic and oregano

dessert
everyone chose their own dessert

* the asterisked items were modified from the menu due to vegans and vegetarians at the table.

Some additional details if you are considering having an event there:  I scheduled this meal about three months out.  They are very clear about all of their restrictions - I didn't feel like there were any surprises that I wasn't previously aware of.  If you have a certain number of people, you can have people choose from a limited menu.  I suggest family-style serving if at all possible.  I chose the dishes, and then they chose the amounts of each to serve, and did an accurate job of the amounts -- there was enough to take home doggie bags, but not so much that it felt wasteful.  If you are interested in the cost per person, feel free to email me, or you can estimate by knowing that it was about average for a meal there. There was not a room fee, but I had to guarantee the number of people two days in advance.  Our dinner started at 6, and the contract stated that we would be asked to leave at 9.  We were finally asked to leave at around 9:30, and there were groups of people waiting to be seated -- so unless you have a very large party, or rent the area for the entire night, you have about a 3 hour window.

 

Life Begins at thirty(-two)

I was tagged for the 23rd post meme at an interesting time: This week is the two-year blog-birthday of Life Begins at 30.  Two years ago, I was just a naive thirty-year old who decided to find a place on the Internet to keep track of my adventures ... it has been a fun two years.  I feel like this blog has really evolved in that time into something that I am pretty proud of.  And without sounding too cliche, the blog community that I have become a part of overwhelms me on a continual basis - you all are great, and uplifting, and supportive, and smart - I have learned so much from you!

Anyway, on to the meme (tagged by Jeanne):

1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions. Ponder it for meaning, subtext or hidden agendas...
5. Tag five people to do the same.

"Every ingredient was fresh and unadorned."

I love this quote (from this post) because I often think of the beginnings of my blog as being very random, and without much focus.  But this quote really made me realize that even at the beginning, when I thought I wrote about nothing really, I was still focusing on fresh food.  Also, of course I love a quote that reminds me of a perfect breakfast I had with my boyfriend in Tuscany!

Thanks, all, for hanging with me through my randomness.  I know I haven't posted much in the past couple weeks, but there's a bunch of stuff waiting in the wings.  I wrote this for Bay Area Bites today, if you're interested.  I don't know that I will always mention when there's something posted there -- I post every other Tuesday, though. 

On a random note, I have a whole day to myself in Sonoma on Saturday.  I have to drop Jason off in Glen Ellen, and then the day is mine.  Would love suggestions, especially if they involve specific farmstands or markets.  There are markets on Saturday in Calistoga, Healdsburg, Napa Downtown, Petaluma, and Santa Rosa (Oakmont and Veteran's Memorial) -- is there a specific one I should attend?

(Oh, I didn't tag anyone for the meme.  If you want to be tagged and haven't been, let me know!)

Local Catering on Sept. 29

From today's Chronicle:

A number of Bay Area catering companies will take part in the national Eat Local Challenge Sept. 29, pledging to only serve foods from within a 150-mile radius. Organized by Bon Appetit Management Co., 200 chefs and food services in 26 states are serving lunch made entirely of local ingredients. (Some are going one better: all meals). The cafes at the de Young and Legion of Honor museums, Acme Chophouse restaurant, as well as the cafeterias of Google, eBay and the University of San Francisco, are among the Bay Area participants. For more information, visit www.eatlocalchallenge.org.

Seasonal Produce Report, Week 38 2005

I am doing a report whenever I can of the produce that I brought home for the week from the farmer's market, along with a couple notes about what's going on at the market.  Rather than trying to be a comprehensive report of what's in season, it will just be a diary of my personal purchases.  I am going to track this by week of the year so that it will be easy to compare over the years.

It was a two-market week.  Ferry Plaza on Saturday and Berkeley Farmer's Market on Tuesday.  We had lots of family in town this past weekend, so our trip the the Ferry Plaza FM was much more socializing than actual purchasing.  I ran over to Berkeley a couple days later for a few more purchases to round out my week.

One of my addictions this summer has been Happy Quail Farm's sweet Mediterranean cucumbers.  They are easy to overlook as this booth has so many beautiful and eye-catching peppers, but seek them out.  They are very small and thin with a thin, edible skin.  My favorite way to eat them is sliced thin with salt and sesame oil.

Ferry Plaza FM (Saturday)
dry farmed early girl tomatoes - Ella Bella
sweet Mediterranean cucumbers - Happy Quail Farm
eggplant - The Peach Farm
corn tortillas - Rancho Gordo
small white carrots - Heirloom Organics
watermelon radish - Heirloom Organics

Berkeley FM (Tuesday)
avocadoes - Brokaw Farm
zuchinni - Full Belly Farm
fresh black-eyed peas - Tip Top Produce
dried wakame + seaweed snacks - Sea Breeze Sea Vegetables
shallots - Tip Top Produce
limes - Guru Ram Das Orchards
fresh tofu - Basic Soy

I have so much to talk about and not enough time to do it in!  I owe you all an Eat Local Challenge wrap-up, and have some other posts in the works.  Hopefully I will get to this soon.  Today, however, I am feeling sick sick sick -- some sort of a cold or something. 

It was an exciting week around here last week as kottke mentioned my "10 Reasons to Eat Local" post.  That was all it took for the post to be mentioned here, here, here and here (Yes, that's in Croatian!) among other places.  Fun!  Just to give you an idea of what that meant -- I received more hits last week that I received my entire first year.  I hesitated to mention this because I didn't want to seem like I was bragging, but I feel that some of you who have been around since the early days when I didn't know what I was doing might be interested.

I have started writing for Bay Area Bites, which is a blog hosted by our local NPR affiliate KQED.  When you get a chance, check out my first post about CSA's.

My adventures at the Hollywood Farmer's Market

A while back, I went to Los Angeles to work on an ongoing recipe project with my grandmother for a few days.  While there, I met up with Sarah from The Delicious Life and we went to the Hollywood Farmer's Market.  Read her hilarious account of our trip here.

If you ever are in the area, the Hollywood Farmer's Market is a real treat.  She has promised an additional report about the great Korean meal she took me to, so keep an eye out for that report.

The farmers, the farms

I have to be honest, until I received an email this week from Willie Nelson and Farm Aid, I hadn't thought about the family farms who have been ravaged by the Hurricane Katrina devastation.  We've all been preoccupied with the "big" stories, and when it comes to agricultural impact, there is quite a bit of talk about how the devastation in the South will affect imports and exports, as an enormous amount of our shipping occurs from ports in the New Orleans area, but there is also the family farm to consider.

When I think of the farmers that I know in this area, most of them are living on a shoestring.  I once overheard a farmer going through his take-home pay at the end of the year, and it was right around $12,000.  For him and his family.  And this is a "successful" organic farmer.  In California.

I can't imagine them having to deal with the effects of a disaster such as this.  Even with aid and insurance - rebuilding, getting back on your feet, and dealing with the devastation to your land would just be an overwhelming task.

And not only that, but the price of fuel is going up which is going to affect farmers throughout this country who need to use farm equipment for harvesting.  The effect is truly enormous.

From the Alabama Farmers Federation:

Alabama farmers are beginning to add-up the losses caused by Hurricane Katrina. Overall, the state fared well -- but along our western border, farm losses range from structural damage to complete crop failures. As Kevin Worthington reports, the difference between damage and destruction can be as little as a few miles.'

From the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation Online:

In the state's Florida Parishes dairy farmers dumped tens of thousands of gallons of milk that couldn't be processed due to power outages. Three days after the storm the Dairy Farmers of America predicted as much as 35 million pounds of milk could be lost among its 312 producers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama who lost power when the storm crashed into the U.S. Gulf Coast. 'The only word to describe it is overwhelming,' said Becky Creel, who along with her husband Russell milk 95 head in Franklinton, La. 'Our generator burned up after two days and we missed one milking. But we've heard of producers how didn't milk cows for three days and those animals are ruined.'

The Creels rented a generator, at a rate of $3,000 a month, to power their milking parlor to keep their animals and milk coolers up and running. On Labor Day a milk tanker was finally able to pick up a load of milk from their farm, said an emotional Becky Creel.

'We're lucky that they can get to us,' she said, standing with her two grandchildren. 'Some farmers are still without power and have no generators or fuel to run them. I don't know what they're going to do.'

From the Mississippi Farm Bureau:

Mississippi Extension officials continue to assess crop and ag infrastructure damage. Worst-hit areas were south of I-20, but crops were blasted at least into parts of the north Delta and NE Mississippi ... 80% of the state's 9,000 poultry houses were at least damaged, with an unknown number destroyed ... Millions of chicks already have been lost ... In some defoliated fields 70% of the cotton blew away. Plants are down or twisted on a wide scale, and boll rot and hardlock will take a toll ... Farmers at least as far away as south Georgia told us this week that they were scrambling to find diesel.

What you can do: Support Farm Aid.  They are already actively helping family farmers who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina.  Sign up for their newsletter, give what you can give.

Seasonal Produce Report, Week 37 2005

I am starting a new feature here at Life Begins at 30 -- a report whenever I can of the produce that I brought home for the week from the farmer's market, along with a couple notes about what's going on at the market.  Rather than trying to be a comprehensive report of what's in season, it will just be a diary of my personal purchases.  I am going to track this by week of the year so that it will be easy to compare over the years.

Today's report:

This week we went to the Saturday Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market.  This market is in the height of it's high season ... a crush of people, but who could stay away with fantastic weather and a huge abundance of produce?  Granted, we didn't get to the market until the late time of 10.30, so it's our fault we were there with the crowds.

I have never seen, much less purchased, fresh cannelini beans - so when I saw them at Dirty Girl Produce, I had to fill up a bag.  I have yet to try them, but hopefully a report will come later this week.  Ella Bella's produce continues to really shine -- we have had the most amazing summer squash from them this year (there is a small, dark green, round squash that they have that is amazingly sweet) -- so I purchased my tomatoes there this week.

As I mentioned last week, my favorite tomatoes, hands down are the New Zealand Pink Paste tomatoes from Eatwell.  Unfortunately, get them while you can -- I have been told that the seed is not being sold, so Eatwell is doing everything they can to save their own seeds, but they really have very few of these beauties.

Since the Eat Local Challenge was over, I bee-lined for Brokaw's avocadoes and Rancho Gordo's tortillas.

Jason bought some random tomatoes and such purely for photographing.  He is doing some fun food photography right now -- check out these beauties.

baby shitake mushrooms - Far West Fungi
watermelon radish - Heirloom Organics
dry farmed early girl tomatoes - Ella Bella
small round brown skin potatoes - Little Organic Farm
charentais melon - Lagier Ranch
avocadoes - haas + reed - Brokaw Nursery
walnuts - Short Night Farm
dried garbanzos - Short Night Farm
fresh cannelini beans - Dirty Girl
lemon verbena - Eatwell Farm
spinach - Heirloom Organics
sage - Eatwell Farm
eureka lemons - Brokaw Nursery
heirloom cherry tomatoes - Eatwell Farm
tomatillos - Eatwell Farm
corn tortillas - Rancho Gordo

Monsanto to Bitter Greens: Cease & Desist

I have mentioned Bitter Greens Journal on this site before, but if you have not read Tom Philpott's blog, you really must do so now.  In his banner, Tom states "This blog will serve as a running critique of industrial agriculture, a clearinghouse for info on sustainable farming, and a working manifesto for a liberation politics based on food."

Tom, a farmer from North Carolina with a gift of writing, started a column some time back called "Roundup, Ready" -- a play on Monsanto's genetically modified crops which are resistant to their herbicide Roundup. His column talks about news of the day in the industrial agriculture world.

Last week, Tom received a letter from Monsanto asking him to cease use of the title "Roundup, Ready" calling it trademark infringement.  His brilliant reply can be found here.  Go, Tom!