La Vida Local

Oh, look over there to the right. Yep, I have a new button in my sidebar. I had a hell of a time installing it, so it's making all my blogroll act weird; I'm still working on it.
But! You can click on the button, or you can click here.
You'll be taken to a new group blog detailing the nitty-gritty of a dedicated bunch of people all around the country (and maybe beyond; there are more than 20 of us at that group blog, and about 700 others who have taken the pledge, so I haven't fully investigated) who are stepping up to the Eat Local Challenge this year. It begins tomorrow.
There are loads of tips and other information there if you care to go read, and maybe even participate.
Thanks to Jen Maiser of Life Begins at Thirty for launching the new blog. Oy, what a nightmare it's been to get it going, but hey, that's the 20th Century for ya.
Wait! This is the 21st Century!
OK, let's go get modern by returning to our roots.

Take Your Protein Pills and Put Your Helmet On

Five, four, three, two...
On the day before the Eat Local Challenge began last year, Cranky and I got the bright idea that it might be prudent to pack in some of the sorts of meals that would be off-limits for the next 31 days. We chose to have a last supper of Mexican food.
We thought we might be able to stave off certain hankerings, although we weren't entirely successful. Cranky stuffed an entire non-locally sourced burrito into his mouth one day in August, and I ate a handful of the tortilla chips that came with it.
OK, this is all really TMI, and even TS (too silly).
The Eat Local Challenge is a personal mission, and participants can define it any way they like.
As you may have already guessed, though, I like to define it rather narrowly (although I'm going to be a little laxer this year than last).
So, once again, Cranky and I have been on a binge the past couple of days, snarfing foods we won't see again until June.
Yesterday it was potstickers and Szechuan tofu at a local (hah, local!) restaurant.
Tonight it's going to be a seriously lowbrow, but tasty, pasta dish.
Tomorrow, we're thinking pizza. It might be an upscale pizza from a place that tries to use local foods as much as possible, but I know the white flour isn't from anywhere around here.
It's amazing how you develop cravings when you're on a controlled diet. Last year I was dying for the taste of soy sauce (and I fell off the wagon because of it). I was surprised, though, how little I yearned for white bread — well, maybe a little — uh, yeah — (even though I did bake some local whole-wheat bread, just for the heck of it, but hey, where did that yeast come from?).
But even more amazing is that as Cranky and I gird our loins for the coming four and a half weeks of eating locally, we're finding it kind of artificial to pack in a couple of soon-to-be-illicit last meals. We kinda had to rack our brains to come up with our three days of "pre-cheating." Not that we don't adore eating those kinds of foods, but this just feels fake.
Ah, well. The dried chili pepper is local, and so is the sprig of parsley.

Eating Locally is Populist

I have a rant inside me, but I’m going to tone it down and let out only the rational, level-headed part of the discussion.
I had a comment recently from a beloved reader who thinks the Eat Local Challenge is elitist. Because poor people can’t afford to participate.
First of all, a poor kid could get a scholarship to Yale, and then she’d be part of the elite, but she’d still be poor. So “elite” may not be the word my reader was searching for.
In fact, any form of obsession with food – at the level we participate in blogwise – is elitist, so I guess I’ll have to cop to being elitist myself.
But that’s no reason not to participate.
Last year – in fact, I think it was August, during 2005’s Eat Local Challenge – the New York Times ran an op-ed stating just that: eating locally is elitist. I don’t remember all the arguments, although I recall some flawed reasoning along the lines that poor people are somehow ennobled by their honest, primitive diets.
Reality check: Poor people eat terribly! Poor people are no longer growing kitchen gardens. Poor people don’t have chickens in the back yard. They spend their money – or their food stamps – at the same stores you and I shop at (or prefer to avoid). And in those stores, they buy processed, overpriced crap.
If poor people want to eat a healthier diet, and if they can’t afford to get themselves to a farmers market or roadside stand, they still have the option of buying fresh, nutritious food at their cruddy chain supermarket. Some of that food might be local, a lot won’t.
But, see, I’m not ordering anyone to join the Eat Local Challenge. It’s voluntary.
You can watch me while I do it, you can laugh or you can snort, but it’s just a neat experiment that I find very educational (and rather tasty).
I will never claim that I’m doing it because I can afford to – I was unexpectedly “relieved” of my job three years ago, and at my age, I’m not bubbling to the top of any headhunter’s short list. So money is not easy at my house.
Eating locally, judging from my experience last year, boils down to eating very simply. No imports. No extravagances.
OK, sure, the local eggs are more expensive. But they’re so fresh and delicious you don’t want to stuff yourself with them. One or two will knock you silly, and you’re done. Organic produce often fetches higher prices, but again, the food is so satisfying you don’t want to shove vast quantities in your maw, the way you might with tasteless, lifeless food that has been trucked in from hundreds (thousands, even) of miles away.
That’s the educational part about ELC – and that’s the blissful reward.
I am so grateful for my reader's comment, and for the conversation I hope this post will generate.
(By the way, the farmers markets in San Francisco accept food stamps, and I have observed many a shopper participate, especially at the Heart of the City market at Civic Center.)
Was that level-headed enough?

Going to Food Jail

I just finished reading Julie Powell's book, Julie & Julia, about a young woman in a tiny New York apartment who challenged herself to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking — in one year.
She did it. And she wrote about it most winningly.
Hell, I thought I had absolutely no interest in reading the book, but Cranky brought it home from the library, so I gave it a try. Turns out it is sweet, hilarious, thoughtful, troubling. Well written! OK, OK. I laughed; I cried.
I bring this up now because I'm about to embark on my own food challenge that will occupy a defined space of time: Eating only local foods for the month of May.
Local is defined as a 100-mile radius from my home. May is defined as... the month after our biblical local rainstorms. The kind that prevented farmers from planting crops.
I did the Eat Local Challenge last year (it was in August, if you weren't blogging then, and oh, so many of you weren't). I took it really seriously, partly on a lark, but partly because I believe in the principle of supporting local growers.
I know that if I didn't have a huge bevy of local growers (I'm so lucky to live in Marin County), I might have starved — or broken my vows to keep my diet strictly local. I also know that eating local (here in Marin County) is something I can absolutely do, even if it means a diet of oysters, carrots and milk. As long as I have purveyors. I'm not that good a shot with my Remington Sportsman 12-gauge — although I am pretty good. I can hit an oyster even if I give it a head start.
Eating locally is something we are all free to define for ourselves. Last year I chose to eat strictly from my own county for the first week. That was pretty tight. Then I relaxed my definition to allow food only from within 100 miles for the next three weeks.
That meant no imported spices. No French cheeses. Limited choices of wine. No beer (since there's no malt in the vicinity). No wheat, except for the rugged whole-wheat flour from a local (just barely) farm. No corn at all, which may not be such a bad thing... I'm still working through my thinking on corn, but mostly — evil!
Anyone at all can pledge to take the Eat Local Challenge. And any participant can freely define "local." Maybe for you it makes more sense to choose to eat foods produced within your state, not just a 100-mile radius. Maybe for you a little "cheating," like allowing coffee, chocolate or pepper (all not American-grown) is fine. I think it's fine too. I'm still mulling over how rigid I want to be this year.
Here's the deal. You can eat 100% locally, just by giving up some things, doing without. You won't die. Well... You still need salt, so that's totally allowed, no matter where you procure yours. Or you can tailor your approach according to your locale, your time availability, your dedication.
Anyway, I'm saying it can either be an experiment in complete obedience, or it can be a philosophical, educational experience with a couple of escape clauses.
I don't think it should be house arrest for the palate. I think it should be fun.
I'll tell you what, though. If you do it — however you choose to do it — it will be total rehab for your tastebuds.
It will change your life, I guarantee.
OK, quickly:
1) Zone: 100 miles
2) Exceptions: Tea, wine, the occasional complete failure
3) Goal: More self sufficiency

I Don't Have to Blog Today!

Cranky wrote up a fun post. About us. Not about food, so that's why it's not here.
Anyway. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Over Uneasy

After we dealt with the bank officer this morning — gosh, it took a long time just to sign a lot of papers for an equity loan we'll probably never use, although there may be something silver in our future (check back in June) — Cranky and I decided to grab a late breakfast at a really nice-looking restaurant nearby. I'm not saying I expected grand cuisine, but the place is neat, well decorated, and has the overall feeling of pride of ownership.
So why was my breakfast so mediocre? It wasn't a failure, far from it. I ordered eggs over easy and that's exactly how they came out. Kinda loose. Oops, I meant to order them over medium. My fault.
But they'd been cooked together in one of those funny little diner sauté pans, so the whites all ran together and I was served a perfect disk of fused, oozy eggs.
My question: Would it cost the restaurant one red cent more to cook the eggs separately so the presentation of the food is a little bit lovelier? OK, maybe one red cent: an extra pan to wash.
But this place is trying to be upscale in a charming middlebrow way: framed art, interesting lighting fixtures, decent ambiance. The food is fresh and credible, but — fused eggs?
I didn't like the flavor of the cottage fries, but that's just me and my hyperactive tastebuds. Oh, wait. I didn't like the English muffin either. It had no more character than a circle of dense, dull bread. The butter was local, however (yay).
If you were running a restaurant, wouldn't you go the one extra mile (no, it's only an extra inch, fergodsake) and find a superior English muffin? Of course, if you wanted to be at the top of the ladder, you'd be griddling them fresh, daily, yourself — which I certainly wouldn't expect at this place.
But still.

Oops, I Did It Again

I returned to the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.
Here in this blog, I've often pretended to love farmers markets. Heck, up there in my "about me" I brag about walking to my local market twice a week, and that's just no longer true. (For one reason, it was murder on my left hip; for another, I joined a gym and get my gentle exercise that way now.)
But the thing is, how can you not go to the farmers market? That's where the good stuff is.
In my case, sometimes I just send Cranky on his bicycle, and he comes home with a couple of sacks of produce hanging from the handlebars. Other times — this only works in summer, sadly — we take an adventurous drive to West Marin and feast on the Pt. Reyes Station market. Most weeks now, I drive the half-mile to Marin Civic Center and brave the crowds for 30 minutes or so, chatting with farmers if they're not too busy, checking out the seasonal goodies, choosing favorite vendors.
But when I say "brave the crowds," I'm not kidding. It's crowded, and sometimes it seems like the crowds are only there to push toddlers in strollers and to sample free cheese cubes. Oh, and to drink coffee. (I've finally gotten used to the coffee bar at Whole Foods, but coffee vendors at a farmers market?)
Cranky and I went to the SFFPFM this morning, and again, it was love-hate. I loved buying crepinettes from the Fatted Calf (and since those fine purveyors of tasty meat products don't come to the Marin market... whaddya gonna do?). I hated being shoved by cell-phone-oblivious teenagers. I loved sneaking a glass of wine at 11 a.m. (which, come to think of it, isn't very farmers market-ish, so maybe I hated it). I hated having to maneuver around ridiculously long lines of patrons for coffee stands. I loved buying ultra-fresh cardoons, which I've never cooked before and will have fun trying out.
I had a really great time there, when I wasn't having a bad time.
I know there are other more genuine markets, like San Francisco's Civic Center market on Wednesdays and Sundays. But the produce there is droopier, the patrons are sometimes shove-ier, and I could swear some of the food is trucked in from industrial farms. Then there's the Alemany market, which I'm embarrassed to say I've never visited, but I hear it's the real thing.
Worst, I think, are the evening "downtown" markets in smaller towns, like my own. Nothing more than an excuse for some lousy jazz, carousing, and luring shoppers into restaurants. (Maybe it's me, but I just don't get buying scallions in the dark.)
I value farmers markets greatly and would hate to see them disappear. Heck, I even chose the place I'm currently living because of its proximity to a pretty good market.
I just don't like to see them devolve into self-absorbed-yuppie magnets. With pastries.
I think I understand that these markets need to sell more than dirt-caked vegetables, local honey, artisan cheeses and sparkling meats in order to stay in business. OK, so chapatis and chutneys. Rotisseried chickens. Fresh-cut flowers. Beautiful breads. And coffee! Fine.
I'm not going to get into the elite pricing of the SFFPFM. They accept food stamps, and if that's how you want to spend your food stamps, do it. I also realize that the SF market is a food emporium, with retail shops far beyond what you'd see at a "normal" farmers market. It is what it is.
I'm just not entirely sure I like what it is.
I'm so confused.
Tea at Tea and Cookies launched a great conversation the other day about farmers markets. Currently there are 25 comments; it's worth a visit.
Happy Earth Day.

Somebody Else's Cooking

With the Eat Local Challenge coming up in just over a week, I know I'll be making most of my meals at home during May. I have a few restaurants in mind for those times when I shed my self-righteous robe of purity and pop out for a bite now and then (and they all try to source their foods locally).
But it's such fun to have a project and the enthusiasm to stick with it. That means I'll be buying lots of local goods and inventing all kinds of dishes which won't need pasta from Italy or soy sauce from Japan or...
OK, that said, I am planning to eat both locally and probably not very locally tonight. Cranky and I joined the Jewish Community Center in our neighborhood, and it has a great little cafe catered by Robert Meyer. This is hands-down the closest dining establishment to our house.
So, even if the food comes from Salinas or Iowa or worse, well, we have a great, local eatery. Corned-beef sandwiches, soups and chili, smoked salmon, roast beef, braised lamb shanks. Eat at the cafe (I think that's where I caught my cold, however; the kiddies from daycare swarm the joint when school lets out, begging their moms for frozen treats from the case).
Or take your food away with you. It would be a super place to stock up for a picnic.
And today, since we're not up to cooking, we're microwaving Meyer's stuffed cabbage rolls. $1.50 each. I sampled one earlier: It's made with ground turkey (leftover from Passover?) and rice, and topped with a bright, well-spiced, unsweetened tomato sauce.
I'm looking forward to supper.
(Update: Cranky plated this meal like the true artist he is. The cabbage rolls sit atop some leftover poppyseed noodles, and are topped with some sour cream that just happened to be in the fridge. Man!)
Psst: I'm also way looking forward to May.

Cannibal Chic

Wow. In the space of less than a week, I've been subjected to four tales of cannibalism in just my usual, casual reading. I didn't seek out any of this on purpose! What's the zeitgeist here: Eat as local as possible?
First, I checked out Julie and Julia from the library. After a rather rough start (get this woman an editor!), the book settled into some good fun (and some seriously telling anecdotes about blog ennui). Before long, I came across the story of the German guy who advertised on the Internet for someone willing to be killed and eaten. This nut got his nut, and before he killed him, he chopped off his wiener and cooked it, and they both ate it.
Next, I bought Stefan Gates' book, Gastronaut, in which he not only talks about the same, ahem, "spotted dick" potluck referred to by Julie Powell, he also includes four essays on eating human bits: fingernails, scabs, boogers and even actual human flesh.
He's much creepier about it all than Julie, even confessing his own urges to bite some butt — his wife's.
Then this week's New Yorker arrives with a lengthy piece on the historic Donner Party. Did they or did they not resort to cannibalism in order to survive a snowbound catastrophe in the Sierra Nevada? Good reading.
But can anything top the increasingly ridiculous Tom Cruise's stated intention (later retracted as a joke; funny) to eat the placenta of his newborn daughter? I can see it now. "I thought you said this was polenta!!" Hey, Tom, how about a few recipe suggestions?
Yeah. Well. It just goes on. A couple of weeks ago, I made a spoofy reference of my own to cannibalism.
What the hell is happening?
I'm never gonna make an Aztec picnic joke about Cranky's splendid thighs again.

I'm Not the Only Mad Monkeyface

Hah, Dan Savage. What a sassy bastard. I love the guy.
Dan Savage, if you don't know him, writes a sex column for alternative weeklies. He's brash and provocative and truthy and — well, unimpeachable.
And, once again, today he had me gasping with laughter.
As a result of a game of e-mail tag (try setting up a restaurant date for three households in fewer than six tries), one of our intended party, Jeanne of World on a Plate, tossed in this Easter egg for me: ITMFA.
You know. "Impeach the — um — Monkeyface Already." (Psst. Kids: Don't go check it out.)
Dan has been selling ITMFA merchandise and donating all his profits to the ACLU since only the end of last month, and he's already raised over $10,000.
I'm mad and I'm happy.

Did the Earth Move for You?

One hundred years ago today, San Francisco suffered through that historic earthquake known around here as The Big One.
One year ago today, Cranky and I stocked the larder (the garage, that is) with emergency supplies, including canned vegetables, bottled water and packaged dry pasta. There’s a first-aid kit, some toilet paper — the kind of stuff that'll get you through an emergency for, oh, a week or so.
We're still spotty on our provisions. I don't know if we have a propane stove; we used to, but I think it's missing. I'm not sure if there's a can opener stashed with the cans, so if a major quake came along and crushed our kitchen, we'd have to get very resourceful to actually open the canned cling peaches in light syrup.
Then again, our garage would probably be crushed too, and we'd have to get very physical to actually eat the peaches.
If we weren't dead already.
Oh, it's all so difficult, this preparedness.
And to make it worse, you have to expect your stored supplies to approach their shelf-life dates every so often. Our stuff is supposed to be good for about two more years, but in honor of those who endured The Big One, we're sacrificing our usual culinary meticulousness today for a commemorative meal of San Andreas Seismic Stew.
This takes a little bravery. It's ugly, but it's rather tasty. If you're dining on emergency rations and the water supply is uncertain, you won't want to drain off the tinny water from any can you open. You'll want to consume it. If you can get your hands on some seasonings, so much the better (and we have absurd quantities of bottled salsa; in fact, I'm going to move a couple of them from the cupboard into the emergency larder in a minute).
OK: Take a can of Rosarita refried beans. Add a can of corn, juice and all. Stir together. Add copious dashes of bottled salsa. If you were clever and bought that Rotel on sale at Longs, now would be the time to add it. (But you might want to un-add some of that salsa.) Trust me, you're not going to need any extra salt.
Heat it, if you have the capability, and serve in your finest unbroken china.
Oh. Hell. Did anyone actually starve to death after the 1906 earthquake? Didn't think so.
Darling, fix me a martini. Shaken, not stirred.

He's Cranky and He Eats

Cranky might start his own blog, so I'm giving him a test run here. He's not mad, and not even so cranky, but he definitely eats. Truth is, he does most of the cooking, too.

Me here, Cranky. First, allow me to say one thing: Hooray, it's mayonnaise season.
The sun finally came out here in Northern California, and I unfolded the deck chairs and unscrewed the top of the mayonnaise jar. It was time for the first avocado and mayonnaise sandwich of spring. Of course, it was Best Foods brand, none of that precious, homemade Cuisinarty mayo for me. I like the jar stuff because it reminds me of spring and summer when I was a lad and all it took to qualify as a gourmet was not buying Miracle Whip.
Ah, spring, and I'm entering my own personal fall, if not winter. Here's how I learned that.
Shortly after I took early retirement, I started shopping at Longs, a discount drug store that also sells any foodstuff with a shelf life longer than than those likely to buy it. Seeing in the paper that Best Foods mayo and Chicken of the Sea were marked way down, I headed for Longs as soon as it opened on the first day of the sale. The scene inside was AARP meets NASCAR, with grayhairs banging shopping carts to get to the mayo and tuna.
Ten minutes into the sale, and the mayo was all gone. It dawned on me that old people live on mayo and tuna. My own sunset also dawned on me. After ramming two grannies to get the last four cans of tuna, I managed to escape with what's left of my life, and congratulate myself for being able to buy mayo at full price. It's worth it, if you can afford the avocado. Screw the tuna, avocado is easier on the gums.
Back over to you, Cookie. I'm all blogged down.

Happy Easter!

The Best Egg I've Ever Eaten

I was just a month or two past my 12th birthday and my family was right in the middle of moving to a new home.
Dad was in the Navy, so we were used to uprooting every two years or so, though that didn't make it any easier. My mom did most of the packing and cleaning. My brother and I usually goofed off, and dad continued to work, until we all piled into the car for the road trip to the next place.
But this time I had the worst cold. I had huge, painful, puffy tonsils and one of those fevers that makes you dream incredibly weird, tortured stuff. I can still remember: I had to climb up the little whorls I'd created in the blanket from fitful tossing, as if I were the size of an ant and the wrinkles in the cloth were Alpine. Those kinds of pressured dreams stay with you.
This was my parents' bed, by the way. Mom knew how crappy I was feeling and let me sleep there. (Or maybe it was because the movers had already taken my bed away.)
Finally, mom had to rouse me from my sweaty nap, because the movers were ready to claim the big bed.
I lurched into the kitchen, where the Navy-supplied table and chairs were still in place, not going anywhere.
There were exactly three things of use left in the kitchen, other than those chairs and table: An egg. An aluminum pie pan. And a huge, obscene knob of butter.
Mom melted the butter in the pan on the stovetop, cracked in the egg, and cooked it to perfect tenderness, sunny-side up, with utter motherly love.
I can't remember if I used a plastic fork or what to eat it with, right out of that aluminum pan, but it was the best egg I've ever eaten.
My mom painted this picture of the egg, by the way.

Other Incredible, Edible Eggs:
Chopped warm hard-boiled eggs stirred into buttered English peas.
Eggs baked inside hollowed-out potatoes.
Sexy eggs on asparagus toast.
Salade Niçoise.
Super-eggy potato salad.
"Ooh-la-la, j'ai cassé un oeuf" omelette.

I Hate Cranky

I don't always like to eat. But I'm often mad.
I like food. I love reading about food.
Cranky likes to eat. If it weren't for Cranky, I might not be fed some days.
Truly, I love Cranky. He knows that.
But sometimes I hate how Cranky eats. Fast. Messy. Lots of.
So.
How do I eat? Once in a while, not at all.
Occasionally in small doll dishes.
I'll feel better soon.

Pelosi Push Polls and Panders

I'm sorry. I'm mad and I eat, but I've had a cold and I'm not eating anything worth talking about.
So, I'm just mad.
I got a mass mailing from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It's basically nothing more than a fund-raiser disguised as a survey, and it's idiotically signed by the anorectic House Democratic Leader, in her girly script, as "Nancy."
Come on, Ms. Leader, we have more respect for you than that. We expect more self-worth than that.
"Nancy"? That's a comic book character. You're supposed to be Congresswoman Pelosi. You poofter.
Then, on the page before the "survey" begins, I'm invited to make a financial donation. Sure, I understand that. I expected that.
But there are six boxes that I may check, indicating my philanthropic intentions, from "$15" to "Other $___." One of the boxes, the $35 box, has a fake, hand-written (mass printed) asterisk next to it, and the other asterisk it refers to below has a fake hand-written remark saying "Gifts at this level are urgently needed!"
Whoa. Are the contributions in the category of $100 less urgently needed? What about the meager, but well-meant, contributions of $25. Not so urgent?
I really hate being manipulated by such nonsensical BS.
OK, then we get into the survey itself. Does the Democratic Party really need a survey to discover if its members have a negative "outlook for America during the second term of George W. Bush"? Um, helloo!!
I'm going to spare you the rest of the inane questions. Oh, by the way, one of the questions is about Tom DeLay, who is no longer even in the House. And still, they ask for my money. Well, I suppose there were printing delays and mailing delays.
I would like to quote the snippet on the return envelope, however: "Your first-class stamp on this envelope helps elect Democrats."
Does it help elect first-class Democrats?
Sheesh.
Am I going to vote Democratic?
Yes.
By the way, I searched all over Google to find a picture of Nancy in the vicinity of some food. Nothing turned up. You think she eats?

How Bad It Really Is

At this hour, rescue crews have redefined their efforts in finding a Mill Valley man buried by a mudslide from "rescue" to "recovery."
That means they don't think he could have survived this long. It's been over 12 hours.
The guy went out into his back yard in the middle of the night to attempt some water diversion; it's clear he suspected the hillside might not hold.
I Googled his address. The house was 500 feet from the place Cranky and I sold 13 months ago.
That's how close we can be to disaster.
That's how rainy it's been around here.

Maybe I'm NOT a Tomato Ranchin' Bum

I was doing some off-blog chatting with Dr. Biggles. Sent him today's New York Times food section cover story (about meat, duh!; link expires in a week).
We've been commiserating about the unbelievably incessant rain in the Bay Area. (We are not being wimps; you'd melt too if you had to go through 27 days of drippage in March and as of today, 11 in April.)
It's heavy, cold, wet rain.
Biggles found a red worm crawling on the super-saturated (judging by the photo he sent me) inside of his bathroom window.
Maybe the worm story is just funny.
But the weather is bad news for farmers. Tana at Small Farms spoke to a farmer at the Santa Cruz market who told her tomatoes are already in trouble. The seedlings are mature enough to go into the ground, but the ground is too hostile to take them.
Last year I had my tomatoes in container pots on the patio as early as March, I think. By the middle of June, I was harvesting my first ripe ones, and I had a whole (little) bowlful by the Fourth of July (see fireworks here).
I was so pleased with myself — especially when we dropped by the Marin County Fair and looked at the pathetic little green marbles rolling around on paper plates, over in the Horticultural Exhibit. Then and there, I decided to exhibit my ripe tomatoes in 2006, and I filled out a preregistration form.
Well, the exhibitors' guide arrived in the mail yesterday. And there's no way I'm going to be able to enter.
There's no way I'm going to be able to get tomatoes into the ground soon enough.
So, as I joshed with Dr. Biggles, maybe I'm not a tomato ranchin' bum.
Maybe I'm a mildew ranchin' bum.

Cold Comfort

What if you don't even want to get out of bed?
You're under the weather, the mizz'ble friggin' won't-it-ever-cease weather, and you have to eat.
Well. So I invaded the earthquake supplies. Cranky did, actually. (God forbid we should ever both be sick at the same time.) He pulled out a can of Chicken NoodleO's, a "fun" take on the classic chicken noodle. Kinda seemed like Cheerios Soup there for the first couple of minutes.
It wasn't bad; I might even prefer it to the old-fashioned strand noodles.
But health food it is not. The can is supposed to make "about 2.5" servings. Each serving is 1/2 cup! (Update: I think that means 1/2 cup of the condensed slop.) That's not enough food for a sick adult. So I ate the entire amount, a total of about 20 ounces of reconstituted soup.
And that means I just bathed my internal organs in 2,375 mg. of sodium. That is literally 100% of my RDA.
Eh.
Hey, didja see on the news, Dick Cheney got booed on the ballfield today.
Ahhh. That made me feel better.

Cookiecrumb Has a Crappy Cold

Crap.

Bad Case of Rain Brain

Is Bean Sprout depressed?
It seems that he might be, a little. He knows how to cheer himself up with toys, his appetite's fine, he's getting some exercise... but his internal calendar is seriously messed up.
He's supposed to be playing on the patio! He's supposed to be watching huge scary geese at the lagoon! He's supposed to be sneaking around with me, inside my purse (I drape a nice, discreet scarf over his head when we go somewhere off limits).
But no. Like me, he's feeling emotionally sodden.
He's flopped on the pink blanket with barely enough vavoom to be cute for the camera.

Soylent Night

Rainy day last week.
I was enjoying a glass of wine by the fireplace in the bar area of Boca Steak, one of Novato's nicer newish restaurants. Chef-owner George Morrone has written a cookbook called Simply Elegant Soup, and the host station has a couple of copies on display.
Soup is one of my favorite foods, both to cook and to eat. So there I was, tiptoeing over and sneaking surreptitious peeks at the book, when the executive chef came up and invited me to take a book back to my table by the fire and give it a look-see.
It's a beautiful book, filled with impossible photos of vivid two- and three-color soups in a single bowl. Ultra-smooth, ultra-rich soups. Trick food, restaurant food. Not really home cooking, except for the one recipe for lentil soup, from Morrone's mom.
I decided not to buy the book.
But I've been absorbed by Morrone's approach to soup making ever since, and even though his dishes are elegant and deeply flavored, I have to admit they are still soup. Comfort food. Not quite humble, and yet nothing more, really, than a bowl of warm, nourishing, slurpable goodness.
So today I made a soup of spinach and beet greens. This is serious hard-scrabble eating, or could be. But I thought it would be nice to aim for a little finesse. I sautéed some green garlic in butter and salt, dumped in the washed greens, and threw in some really fragrant vegetable stock.
After the leaves cooked down a bit, I ran them through the blender until they were smooth as velvet.
Meanwhile, back in the soup pot, I melted some more butter and stirred in a little flour. Next, in went some cream and a splash of milk. I kicked up the flavor with a small pinch of chile pepper flakes. Added back the puréed green goop.
Then, for a final touch of simple elegance, I drizzled in a couple of teaspoons of sherry. Which totally transported this soup back to the tortured, beloved fanciness of old-time restaurants: tuxedoed waiters, snooty maître d's, huge gilt-bound menus...
Except that this was still just a bowl of spinach and beet greens soup.

You Say Gaufrette, I Say Potato Chip

I thought it would be fun to sample the hugely exploding world of flavored potato chips, but somebody beat me to it. Taquitos.net. "Serious about snacks."
Whew. Just as well. Thanks, whoever you are. (There are nine collaborators.)
But, jeez, have you noticed the proliferation? Thai ginger potato chips, Philly cheese steak potato chips, dill pickle potato chips, ketchup potato chips, fergodsake!!
(Actually, I think I'd like to try some of those pickle chips.)
That one Web site alone has reviewed over 900 potato chips.
Potato chips are singularly regional, as it turns out. Everyone has a favorite local chip maker. Golden Flake (Birmingham and other areas in the South). Tim's Cascade (Northwest, and — eh, why not? — Hawaii). Utz (Mid-Atlantic coast... and they make — oof — a crab-flavored chip; hope it's "she-crab").
So unless I run across some Lay's pickle-flavored chips, I'm out of luck, because all the other pickle-flavored chips (Taquitos has reviewed 32) seem to be outside my jurisdiction. Lay's, I think I can find. That is, if my local markets have decided to carry so much variety.
All those crazy flavors must drive the supermarkets nuts. (Ooh. Pardon the salted snack pun.) My local mini-market — actually a fabulous stand-alone bodega with an independent butcher, decent wines, commendable produce and the like — stocks a couple of flavors of Tim's (mm — wasabi) and who knows how many other brands. A bunch of Kettle flavors. I'll go count and get back to you.
Remember when you were a little kid and potato chips came in two flavors: Potato Chip and Barbecue? Barbecue was garishly sweet and largely to be avoided, except at sock hops, when nobody was looking. Certainly not something that mother would buy.
Cranky, being a few years older than me, grew up with two much simpler flavors: Potato Chip and Ruffle. Ruffle was new-fangled.
Well, these days we have too much choice.
Cranky recalls the time when visionaries hinted that meals of the future would be mere pills; just add a drop of water, and, voilà — turkey dinner.
Now, all you need is a bag of chips.
Just add beer.

Cookiecrumb's In Print

I know. Another bloggers' cookbook. I have no idea if these things are ever very profitable.
But!
This one's a benefit project for Doctors Without Borders, a huge gesture of support coordinated by one of my favorite *mad* bloggers, Kathy Flake of What Do I Know? She and Ginger Mayerson of The Hackenblog put it together in response to the earthquake in Pakistan last October, and what a heroic effort it is.
It's called And They Cook, Too.
I've got a completely discombobulated recipe in the book, and if you read I'm Mad and I Eat every now and then, you'll know that sounds just about right for me.
It's a recipe for a vegan avocadolemono soup. It was actually pretty good; you might want to try it.
But you might also want to try some of the recipes from other contributors, and (ahem) I find myself in some really stellar company. I'll list a few of the superstars I'm rubbing elbows with in the book:
Jeanne d'Arc of Body and Soul
Jenonymous, guest blogger at Steve Gilliard's The News Blog
Meenakshi Agarwal of Hooked on Heat
Gavin M., contributor to Sadly, No!
And lots more.
Recipes are all over the board: Saltimbocca, Key Lime Pie, Pork Fried Rice, Hot Chocolate, The Platonic Ideal of Sauerkraut — just to name a few.
The writing is wry and spirited, and even if you never cook a dish from the book... Well...
Aw, c'mon. Please buy it.

The Way We Ate

I'm about ready to skip April and move right into May. But realistically, we've got about 26 more days to go, and I'm afraid they're going to be soggy.
I love May. My birthday's in May, and my blog's birthday is too.
Then, we've got the Eat Local Challenge in May this year, and I'm already preparing for that.
I had planned to forage lots of yummy wild greens and buds, and preserve them somehow, but this Narnia-type weather (I bought the DVD today! Er, Cranky did. Early birthday present) has inhibited so many of the tender young shoots. Shoot. Or, perhaps more truthfully, it's inhibiting me from going outdoors. It's still awfully bleak out there.
So Cranky and I have been thinking up other ways to celebrate a month of eating local food. We've hit upon a kind of theme (which we'll probably blow off if it becomes too precious).
This photo is a hint.
That's not beer in the glass, it's fresh-pressed apple juice. Local apples, natch.
But the cool thing is the book. Publication date: 1914.

OK, Fine. Buh-Bye

Tom DeLay, a former pest exterminater who was indicted last September in Texas on charges of money laundering and conspiring to funnel illegal corporate contributions to Republican statehouse candidates, is going to abandon his congressional race and quit the House of Representatives.
Who the hell was he representing?
Oh, I'm not naive. I know he'll still be advising the vermin he ought to have been eliminating.
What a disordered man.

Rain, Rain, Go the **** Away!

I mean, "April showers bring May flowers," and all, but this is just ridiculous.
I want to get some tomatoes planted, but I can't bear to do it while it's so cold and wet outside. Don't wanna put my hands in the icy mud.
When Cranky and I go out these days, we have to leave our little doggie at home, because it's still too miserable to smuggle Bean Sprout onto a patio with us (even though he would probably be warm enough in his jaunty purple fake down vest inside his tote bag-disguised as fancy lady purse).
Wahh!! I'm feeling mildewy. I need to thaw out in the sun.
Oh, well. Yesterday I baked (Cookiecrumb baked??? — yeah, but I cheated). We picked up a blob of fresh pizza dough at the new Trader Joe's in Novato to give it a test run. (The dough and the store.) The store is really spacious and the parking lot wasn't crowded. Quite a difference from my usual TJ experiences.
The dough? Meh. OK, fine, not bad. It hadn't seemed to have acquired any of the desirable flavors that I think should develop with a few days under refrigeration. I would call it "slight of character." On the other hand, it hadn't rotted either. Maybe they use a preservative; I'll have to go dig the bag out of the trash and read the label.
Here's what we were up to: On nice days in the past, if memory serves, Cranky and I used to take Bean Sprout with us to a middle-of-the-road Italian restaurant, where we would park ourselves on the patio and have a "meal" of wine and breadsticks.
Since it's impossible to do that these days, I decided to make my own breadsticks from the TJ dough. We sprinkled the tops with poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and grated Parmesan. Two of the sticks got all three toppings, and they were deemed Best.
Minor mood improvement occurred.

More Stuff for the Freezer

The two-week Ice Harvest came to an official end yesterday, and we observed it with a meal of cauliflower-jalapeño soup, made from almost the last fresh food in the crisper. (Still some carrots in there. That darn celery root, which I love and will get to very soon. A few sprouts of green garlic.)
We have leftover soup of three types in the fridge at the moment, so I won't be talking about My Hypothetical Cheese Sandwich for a while. Move along, folks, nothing to see.
I just want to confess that I have plans for stashing tons more goop in the freezer (now that there's a little more room), and it's not even something you'd want to eat.
Ha, ha, ha! April Fool!
Except I'm serious.
Yes, I am a nut case.
No, I am not going to explain my project. I don't even know if it's going to work.
Ah, well. Even if it doesn't, I'll have lots of fresh juice.