Blog Day

Blog Day is almost over, but I've become a delinquent poster, so sometime around four or five on most days, you'll run into my latest thoughts.
OK, it's 4:49. Hurry.
Blog Day is an opportunity for us to introduce our regular readers to other bloggers, folks that might lie outside our normal milieu.
Some of my choices for today are into food, and I've learned about every one of them because they've taken the trouble to drop by I'm Mad and I Eat and leave comments.
But, oh, the new perspectives they can bring you. I'm not going to try to describe the blogs here individually, because you might decide you don't wan't to visit a blog about — er, see, it would be mad for me to describe them, because you might decide you... Ooh, infinite regression.
Go! Visit! Enjoy.
May I introduce:
SFMike
Laughingrat
Sculpin
Moonbear
Stacie

Is It Hot in Here, or Is It Just Meme?

Food blogging is like an alimentary canal. Stuff goes in, and stuff goes out.
Last year, it seems we couldn't meme enough. Until a certain point of meme exhaustion set in, and we all sort of "forgot" to respond to being tagged for new memes.
Then, apparently, we got hungry again. Melissa at Traveler's Lunchbox kickstarted our appetites with her "Five Things to Eat Before You Die" meme.
I was salivating. I didn't even think I would wait to be tagged before blurting my own list, but happily, Monkey Gland at Jam Faced and Kalyn at Kalyn's Kitchen both tagged me.
My only problem is that I can't imagine there are even five food bloggers left who haven't been invited to play, but I'll do what I can.
Anyway. Does "Five Things to Eat Before You Die" mean food you'd want served to you on your deathbed? I hope not, because not all of my choices are sickroom meals. They are challenging. Not everyday food, but definitely items I truly intend to stuff in my mouth (again) before it's too late. While the going's good, you know what I'm saying?

1) Difficult Flavors. Sea urchin — a concentrated, insanely pure taste of the ocean. Imported licorice — dark, nasty, sweet, minty, salty (and don't settle for cheap-o vines, no sir). Truffle — kind of obvious, but I will never not want that volatile, gaseous, dank odor and flavor in my mouth.
2) Difficult Textures. Jellyfish tentacles (I was served some in Japan, and I honestly didn't know what I was eating, but boy. Wow. Crackly, crunchy, noodly...) Tripe — I'm too old to admit I've only tried tripe once, but it's... so soft! Ooh. Tree ear fungus — just like jellyfish tentacles, but vegetarian! Pig ear — it's on my "to-do" list.
3) Wild food. A tomato I grew myself; a squirrel my brother shot (true story, and my mom gamely — pun — skinned it and stewed it); pickleweed I pulled from the marshes down the road; rosemary from the hedge, even.
4) Comfort food. I can't go off this mortal coil without a buttery scrambled egg. A bowl of creamy, goopy mushroom soup. A faceful of cottage cheese. (Are we seeing a dairy theme here? Yes, I like white food.)
5) OK, this is my deathbed wish. A glass of Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise. A cold, sweet drink of rosebuds.

All righty (and forgive me if you've already been tagged):
Jennifer at The Novato Experiment.
Passionate Eater.
Michelle at The Accidental Scientist.
Cyndi at at Cookin' With Cyndi.
Dagny at Dagny's Empire.

One Flash of Light But No Smoking Pickle

Usually when I'm invited to a special party, I worry about what I'm going to wear.
For yesterday's special party, the Second Annual Bay Area Food Bloggers' Picnic, I worried about what I was going to cook.
Was I in a pickle? No. In a flash of light, I solved my problem by deciding not to cook.
I pickled.
And considering that the party guests were People of Palate, I decided no ordinary pickles would do. I needed to challenge taste buds. I wanted to break rules. I had to respect my own Cookiecrumb nutcase personality.
So I made Strange Pickles.
I won't say they were entirely successful. In some cases I think I could have used a little more restraint. A little more finesse.
But I'm proud of my crazy attempt, and a couple of the finished pickles were really good.
So: Top row, left, is green beans marinated in blackberry vodka, vinegar and bay leaves. They were a little too crunchy, and the cut ends of the beans sucked up berry stain, which is pretty if you know what you're looking at, but maybe not so pretty if you don't.
Center dish holds fresh blueberries marinated in an exhilarating syrup of vinegar, sugar and black pepper. A couple of cloves, too. The berries only bathed for a couple of days, so not a lot of infusion occurred, but the flavor was right on.
Right top dish holds okra pickled in vinegar, fennel-infused vodka, chili peppers and fennel pollen. I think that came out plain weird.
Things get really good on the bottom row, though.
Left dish holds locally foraged pickleweed, aka seabeans, samphire, glasswort, or salicornia. When they were freshly cut, the aroma was surprisingly nice: sort of greenish, floral, a tad marshy and utterly new-smelling. I tried to imitate that with a pickling brine of vinegar, salt, and the 3 C's — coriander, caraway and cloves. It was just right. Pickleweed is crisp and tender, all at once, and it grows right down the road. Heaven.
The center dish was my second-most ambitious attempt, and possibly the most successful. I immersed Rainier cherries in a blend of sage/mint-infused vodka and vinegar, and tossed in a few sage leaves, bay leaves and a handful of lavender buds. It sat in the fridge for a couple of weeks, and emerged jewel-like and exotically perfumed.
Finally, in the last dish is — well, maybe these are the smoking pickles. They were kind of smoky-tasting, anyway. They are mushrooms briefly warmed in olive oil, then marinated in vinegar mixed with coffee-vanilla infused vodka, with a few sprigs of rosemary. Our generous party host, Owen, tried a cherry first, then a mushroom. Pretty soon he went back and ate another cherry.
Maybe he just needed to get that taste out of his mouth.

Update: This is such a cheap trick, and I resorted to the same cop-out last year, but for a super-duper report on the picnic, go read Sam's gorgeously redesigned blog. And she links to a whole slew of other reports and photos that are graciously less self-centered than mine.

Weekend Clog Blogging

Careful readers may have noticed that a lot of the food Chez Cookie- crumb is prepared by Cranky. Especially the short-order stuff; he's really fast and efficient.
Cranky used to work as a Salad and Sandwich Man in a hotel restaurant. (He brags that he was paid rather well for his services in that particular economy: $5/hr. And considering that the federal minimum wage then was $2/hr., he was.)
Cranky isn't as enamored of slow cooking: stewing, baking, roasting... though he's very handy with the all-day water smoker as long as you ration his access to wood chunks.
So standing on his tired old feet in the kitchen for hours at a time is not a huge issue. (And in case you didn't know, smoking ribs all day requires a lot of sitting in lounge chairs, with bottles of Budweiser, and not too much standing.)
Even so, today Cranky is test-driving a pair of soothing, cheffy clogs.
I don't think he's laboring under any self-delusion. He doesn't own a white jacket or black-and-white-checked blousy trousers that I know of — although he was required to wear them at the hotel restaurant in those pre-rock-god-status days. I'm certain there's no toque on his hat rack; that's a firing offense in our pre-nup.
But he's clogging around on the carpet, indoors. If these nifty shoes pass the toe-cramp index (about four hours should be enough time to find out), he's gonna keep them.
Cute!
By the way, Cranky: Mario has dibs on the orange clogs. Don't even think about it.

Easiest Jam in the World

This isn't going to be a butter and toast jam. It's too tart.
But that's fine. The yellow plums it was made from are very tart, and it would be artificial, I think, to sweeten them up too much.
So let's respect the fruit's natural flavor profile, assume the vajrasana, and let it be.
Besides, it would take a lot of sugar.
I understand that a common metric for jams is to use equal proportions of sugar and fruit. I don't think I used even one-third that amount of sugar for the (admittedly small) amount of plums I had.
I also understand that it's common to use an envelope of powdered pectin to help thicken the jam. So would somebody explain why jam recipes call for added water, if the goal is to get a concentrated result?
Anyway. Ew. Powdered pectin. I mean, I think. I don't know.
My recipe calls for halving and pitting the plums (messy, sexy, delicious summer high jinks), running the fruit through a food mill (throw away the skins), and then stirring some sugar and a pinch of salt into the pulp. Taste it to see if you like the balance; the flavors will all concentrate equally, so you can't go wrong. Bake uncovered in a heatproof dish at 300°F for a long time. Depending on the quantity and wetness of the fruit, and the desired outcome, you could be baking for as long as five hours — but I don't think I've ever let it go that long; maybe half as long. Stir the pot now and then, nudging the gently browning outer portions back toward the center of the dish.
OK. That's it. That's it!
Easiest jam in the world.
It's not sterile-canned, so you'll have to store it in the refrigerator. (I think I want to learn how to do shelf-stable canning, but — I'm scared.)
As for what I plan to do with such a tart jam, I'm thinking meat. I might doctor it with additional flavorings (sake, sesame seeds, black pepper, maybe even ginger, which, darn it, I could have added while it was baking; that would have been grand). Slather it on fish or sausage, something like that.
Is that crazy? Would I be just as happy with a simple salsa of fresh fruit?
Oh well. It was fun.

Lost in the Supermarket

Cooking has been sporadic at best, chez Cookiecrumb, this summer. I don't know why.
Nourishing still happens, but even grubbing for grub at the farmers market has dropped off noticeably. The larder is not as full as usual.
So yesterday I needed to eat. I processed my primitive cravings through the mental menu-o-meter and came up with "Vegetables." But all we had in the house was some local apples, local onions, and some super-super local foraged pickleweed (more on that later).
I think there are a few carrots in the crisper drawer too, and some rapidly aging figs... but I was not in the mood to concoct a meal, however clever (I mean insane) a compote I might have been able to come up with.
So I did something I have never tried before. I went to the salad bar of a nearby grocery store.
I didn't even know how to "work" the salad bar. I stood back and watched the patrons for a few minutes. Seems you just grab one of those clear plastic "clamshell" containers and start filling it with the ingredients of your choice. Help yourself to a napkin and plastic fork. Take it all to the checkout, where it is weighed, and you pay.
This grocery store even has tables and chairs out front, where other patrons were enjoying salads out of plastic clamshells.
How many people, I wonder, believe that "salad" is something you eat out of plastic clamshells?
I made a few rookie mistakes filling my clamshell. Well, I didn't try to completely fill it, which was a smart move. Also, I resisted the heaps of spinach and lettuce, which although they weigh less, bulk-wise, are just green fluff. I was hungry.
In fact, I'm mostly pleased with my choices: Fresh sliced raw mushrooms, chopped hard-cooked eggs, shredded raw carrots, cucumber slices... But the sliced canned beets were so pretty! OK, oops. And that little pile of chopped peperoncini, mmm! Uh-oh, too many. Final boo-boo: The salad dressing.
Dressings at salad bars come in "White" and "Italian." White includes Ranch, blue cheese, and... uh, I think there was a third "white" but I didn't read the label on the ladle. Italian, in this case, was a sweetish, gummy, semi-translucent fluid, and by golly, that's the one I picked.
I'm not saying my choice of dressing was a mistake (although it was). The mistake I'm copping to is slopping too much of it onto the vegetables. That ladle holds too much goop, and I merrily scooped it up and splashed it on. This not only makes for a wet, overdressed salad, but it adds to the weight at the checkout stand. Hell, I could have saved eleven cents and had a better meal if I'd been thinking.
But even though I drowned my salad in — well, I don't know, let's not guess what it was made of — I could still taste the raw vegetables.
They tasted manufactured.
I could taste the flavor of factory farm in my mouth: chemicals.
Eating locally grown food almost exclusively for the past year has so reconditioned my taste buds that there's apparently not enough hideous salad-bar dressing in the world to blot out the flavor of industrial agriculture.
I can no longer shop happily... at the supermarket salad bar.

If It's August It Must Be Ratatouille

Since I'm no longer growing my own tomatoes this summer, it hasn't bothered me quite so much to eat fresh tomatoes cooked.
Last year, my own babies were devoured raw, in sandwiches, salads and gazpachos, as well as directly out of hand.
This year — yes, raw tomatoes in all those forms have already graced my summer table. But I'm less sentimental about cooking tomatoes somebody else grew, so even though it's only August, I'm cavalierly applying thermal science to the seasonal bounty.
Which doesn't mean I'm eating hot food.
Ratatouille, the Provençal summer vegetable stew, is better 1) the next day (if you can wait), and 2) warm — not hot, not cold. You may disagree. Ça alors! Eh, bien, do it your way.
I've done it a zillion ways, and the simplest way is best. Simple means treat the vegetables nicely, don't cook the hell out of them, and if you started your stew early in the day, you can just leave the pot on the stove with a lid on, and at mealtime you can tell yourself enough time has passed to count as "next day"; very brief rewarming will bring you a bowl of Melted August Garden.
Recipes vary, but only in proportions — not choice — of the basic vegetables (tomatoes, zucchini, onions, bell peppers, eggplant), amount of garlic, and choice of herbs (tarragon, basil, thyme, etc.). Zut! No problem, just keep tweaking ratatouille formulas until you know what you like. Oh, then there's baking vs. simmering. Do I look like an idiot? It's August. The oven is off.

Technique: Since this is not really a recipe blog, I'll be brief. My formula is to take roughly equal portions of the chopped (not minced, not strips) vegetables, a little more garlic than you think you'd like, and a little more fresh basil than you think you'd like.
Heat a bit of olive oil in Dutch oven and sauté eggplant until it takes on a little color; remove eggplant to a dish. Add a little more oil to the pot and begin to soften the onion; next add the chopped, peeled garlic. On top of this, throw in a tightly bound bundle of basil wrapped in kitchen twine, still on the stem (guess at the proportions; I used one-third of a bunch yesterday for four tomatoes plus the equivalent of everything else — and could have used even more). Stir gently to distribute juices. Peppers and squash go in next, allowing some time to simmer and soften and ooze out tasty liquids. (You are salting and tasting as you go, yes? Try black pepper or crushed red chile flakes, too.) OK, now it's time to throw in the tomatoes (don't bother peeling or seeding them). Simmer about 10 minutes, with the occasional stir, and finally add back the eggplant. Mix gently and allow to cook, uncovered, on low heat for, oh gosh, up to an hour, though a half will be fine. Lift out the basil bundle, pressing out any lovely essences, and discard.
Turn off heat, cover pot, and go weed the garden until dinnertime.
Rewarm ratatouille and serve with slices of crusty bread.

Super-fun footnote: I was inspired as much by Béa's (La Tartine Gourmande) recent post on ratatouille — and especially her photos — as I was by the seasonal harvest at the market. Cuter still, Kalyn at Kalyn's Kitchen followed suit with a "Ratatouille Wanna-Be" of her own. (At which point I almost decided not to write about my version; oy, the glut!)
But then Sam of Becks & Posh blogged about bloggers inspiring bloggers inspiring bloggers to re-create recipes in a kind of delicious and irresistible chain-link effect.
So I thought: Hey, voilà, y'know?

Steaks on a Plate

What is all this fuss I've been hearing about "Steaks on a Plate"? That's just silly. What could be so scary about steaks on a plate? Steaks belong on a plate!
Now, steaks directly on the tablecloth, that would be quite scary, I imagine.
I, I... uh... What?

Oh. That's quite different.

Never mind.

I Met the Butcher!

Just emerging from a not quite so foody phase, I'm sitting at my local boîte, enjoying an iced tonic. Bean Sprout is with us, happy in his dog tote; not fully tucked inside, but half in the bag. Heh.
(I swear, if it weren't for Bean Sprout, we would never meet new people. He is a social magnet.)
An unfamiliar couple comes onto the patio of our boîte and spots the cute pooch.
"Oh, come on over and give him a pet," we implore.
The Mister obliges. He's got an intelligent, lined face, and one of those huge brass belt buckles that rodeo winners wear, not only to advertise their prowess, but to lure the "buckle bunnies" ... however it's clear this guy is devoted to his wife, whom he introduces, both to us and the puppy.
The buckle says "Cookin' U.S.A."
I can't resist.
I ask what the buckle is all about.
He tells me it was a television cooking show out of Nashville.
"Were you a contestant?" I ask, stupidly.
"Aw, no," he says. "I was the star."
I'm chatting with Merle Ellis, "The Butcher"!
He tells me he has since worked at Mill Valley Market — most likely in their really decent butcher department — and he lives in toney Tiburon.
We tell him we're wild about charming foodie stories like his... and we love Mill Valley Market... and we're — oh, so pleased to meet him.
And he says, "That's why we're here today" ... gesturing to this modest boîte, this place where I've never had a lousy steak... Where I hope to run into Merle again.

Did Everybody Go to Spain Again this Summer?

I'm not naming names, but recently I have noticed a few bloggers jogging off to the salty coasts of Iberia.
I will also withhold Cranky's jealous observation that maybe, since they are tourists in España, they have found themselves slogging through soggy meals in tourist traps.
No, I say, these fine eaters know where to go.
Though there's a fine possibility we won't be joining them.
Keep your Schadenfreude fantasies mired deep within your envious psyche, Mr. Crumb, and enjoy a simple supper of Hispanic-inspired snacks at home tonight: aquí, en la casa de La Galleta, aka the Tapas Trap.
Nothing fancy on the menu, but I'm not a fancy cook (and I went to great effort to keep that a secret from you when you married me). Also, since I'm just emerging from a few days on a bland diet, all of a sudden I wanted skyrockets in my mouth. But easy skyrockets. I'm so not a fancy cook.
Here's how the tale unfolds: Not long ago, Cranky and I peered into the new Spanish Table in Mill Valley's Strawberry Village — open only a few months, I believe, and still lacking a permanent storefront sign. It has an unfinished, warehousey look on the walls inside, but I'm sure things are coming along. There is plenty of gorgeous merchandise to get lost in.
I didn't really have time to get lost in the merchandise, though, because I was immediately attended to by the nicest employee. We chatted. I sensed a kindred spirit.
I said, "This is the goofiest question in the world, but do you know the Patty Unterman vinegar?"
"Yes. Here."
She handed me a bottle of Toro Albalá Reserva 1980 wine vinegar. I flipped.
Weird way to shop for groceries? Oh yeah, but she was implaccable. I, on the other hand, was so placked, I figured I owed it to her to buy the bottle.
See, Patricia Unterman really likes this vinegar, and according to my Spanish Table source, "buys it by the case for her friends." I already knew Unterman was partial to Toro Albalá, having copy edited the Christmas Gift-Foods story she once wrote for a paper we both worked at in the past, the one where she praised this particular vinegar. (I don't believe the story is available online anymore, because somebody out there wants us silenced!)
It was during this frenzy of me being an incredulous idiot and my purveyor being a cool character that I might have misheard her say, "It's just vinegar."
Maybe she didn't say that at all.
Worse, a part of my brain keeps wanting to remember that I might have heard her say, "It's a sour vinegar."
Whatever. We are talking faulty memory. Hearsay. Schadenfreude fantasies deeply mired within my... This will never hold up in court, Mr. Sifuentes.
Wait a minute. I LIKE Patty Unterman, that can't be it. I'm sure I heard wrong.
So I bought the vinegar.
Then! At the cash register, I noticed a pile of Pimientos de Padrón, the culty, locally grown, Spanish wannabe green poppers from Happy Quail Farms that I sorta-semi dumped on earlier this year. Truth is, I really did like them better than I let on at the time. They grow on you. And we hadn't seen Dr. Pepper at our local farmers market for a while (he's back now, however), so we thought — whoa, we can get them here at the Spanish Table any time!
Long story short. (What? Too long already? I've been ABSENT! I've missed writing.) Dinner was fried pimientos de padrón. Loads of fun, especially when you get a hottie. Accompanied by roasted almonds and a slab of Manchego cheese.
When I roasted the almonds, I thought I might really kick up the Spaininess a notch by coating them in a mixture of olive oil and anchovy paste. The addition of dried Greek seasoning from a jar in the cupboard was, if not exactly Iberian, at least inspired. It wasn't until this morning that I realized the anchovy paste was Roman, but the effect was still — to this New World-bound couple of whiners — so Spanicular.
And in a final inspiration from Recuerdos de la Alhambra (though I've never been to Alhambra so there's nothing to recuerdo), I seized upon the little bowl I had used to mix the oil and anchovies and dried herbs... and poured in a splash of vinegar.
It was the perfect condiment to swirl our smoky pepper poppers around in: a little flavor, a little armchair travel brisk enough to transport us out of our deeply mired psyches...
But it wasn't the Toro Albalá Reserva vinegar.
Too sour. Just really too sour.
We used Lustau Vinagre de Jerez instead.

I'll Be Back

Democracy

Tofooey

It's not Daniel Patterson's fault that the New York Times Sunday Magazine decided to publish his article about an Asian soybean product after Saveur ran its feature on tofu. The more, the better. I like to read 'em all.
It's really not even his fault that he'd never heard of or tasted yuba, essentially the skin that forms on the surface of boiled soy milk as it cools during tofu-making. There's a lot of food out there in our world to try, and it's good to see Patterson approaching it with an open mind.
Whoops. Cancel "open mind."
Patterson delights — much to his avowed surprise — in his first experience with yuba, admitting, "To my American mind, tofu meant dull, bland hippie food."
Wait. This guy is a professional chef? And he's getting paid to write about eating?
I just don't see how you can go into either occupation without attempting to settle your own personal misconceptions, your distrusts, your prejudices about food — or at least lying about it.
And yet he comes out with this inane remark?
Jeffrey Steingarten made a similar confession (and OMG, I think it was in the Sunday Times magazine too) about not being able to stomach some food or other. At the time, I thought he was shredding his credentials by saying so.
Now, ditto with Patterson.
I really don't want to open a can of worms, but this is the Patterson who tinkled all over San Francisco restaurateurs last year with his snarky article (in the Sunday Times magazine!), arguing that Alice Waters keeps them from being brave in the kitchen. The same Patterson who hasn't been entirely successful in running his own restaurants here in the Bay Area. (Link, third item.) That's water under the dam, or over the bridge, or however that cliché is supposed to go. Fine.
But I was finally ticked off enough to get bloggy wit it when he described the making of yuba in Sunday's article:

Know how milk forms a skin when it’s heated? Same idea. Soybeans are processed with water to make soy milk, which is then warmed; the skin that floats to the surface is carefully removed.

"Floats to the surface"? Ew, double-big Shrek-in-a-hottub Ew! What does Patterson think is going on down in there?
The skin does not float to the surface! It develops on the surface, right on top! Ever had chocolate pudding?
However, there are some things that do float; ask any plumber. Patterson's article is one of them.

Hm!

Just slumming today. I came across a link on Boing Boing to a "quiz" on images of faces in the throes of ecstasy. You get to guess whether food or sex is the inducement for these grimmaces of pleasure, these private plummets into le petit mort.
I'm a little embarrassed to say I got most of them right. But that's not because I watch a lot of porn. It's probably because I watch way too much Food TV.
Also, would I ever in a loser's lifetime want to associate a picture of Alton Brown doing the "Ooh yeah, ooh yeah" face with anything sexy? P'tooh!

Oh, Bloody 'Ell's Kitchen

I watch it. I do.
Oh, yes, and I hate it.
I do not have control over the TV remote at my house, so I watch what Cranky wants to watch. (Which is perfectly fine with me. If Cranky goes out of town for a few days, it always amazes him to come home and discover that the TV is still tuned to whatever channel he left it on.)
Anyway. So there you go.
I watch Hell's Kitchen, a most completely phony, fabricated, fake show about "cooking."
Do you like to watch?

This Post Brought to You by the Marin I-J

Bless the Marin Independent-Journal. I have resisted subscribing to it, on and off, for years, but this dandy local paper happens to hire the most irresistible phone salespersons.
However, my most recent lapse into subscriberhood happened about a year ago on the main sidewalk of San Rafael, when an overly glib guy talked me into taking a year for a mere $19.99. What a playa: When I flipped him a crisp twenty, he pointedly refused to give me back a penny. Penny = worthless; $19.99 one-year subscription to hometown paper = Meh, $20.
So. Today's edition. Rich with food items.
First up. "The Novato Senior Citizens Club has scheduled its annual chicken barbecue at 12:30 p.m. Aug. 28... The menu for the event will include barbecue chicken." D'oh! Oh, best part: "Guests are encouraged to come early." (Insert earlybird special joke.)
OK, next. A beloved local baking team which has sold its wares at farmers markets for the past several years is opening a bricks-and-mortar shop in Novato. These beloved bakers call their operation FlourChylde (which is very Marin; Marin squared, even). But the copy editor of the Marin I-J wrote a cutline for the huge, above-the-fold photo leading off the story with a misspelling: "Flowerchylde." Not the end of the world, but oh, such a punch in the guts for a couple of hopeful, dedicated entrepreneurs. Hang tight, guys, we'll find your new place.
More cutline cutups: a feature on Bing cherry recipes included a photo of a dish using "balsmatic" vinegar. No, I don't even think Ronco makes a "balsmatic." Yowch.
Another photo in the cherry series showed an "elegrant" dessert. Words frail me.
But it's not all dissing and hissing here at I'm Mad and I Copyedit.
The estimable Leslie Harlib managed to get the skinny on a Japanese restaurant recently opened in the space of the former Tomoe in San Rafael, and her writeup has me salivating for a visit to the new place, Sushi Lin. F'rinstance: "Wafu-burger, a Japanese-style beef burger sauced with soy, sake, Japanese brown sugar and honey, and served with rice." All that and sushi? I am so there.
Come to think of it, I'm all done ragging this rag for its paltry (not "paultry" — wait, that was supposed to be "Falkner," not "Faulkner") misspellings. Eh. There were a few others as well.
But not enough to wreck my appetite.
Not for that well-spent $20.

Too Much Meat

Heh. Speaking of too much meat. First, I'd like to shake a stick at my blogmate Dr. Biggles, because although he's more fun than you can shake a stick at, I guess I just like shakin' sticks.
Biggles' blog, Meathenge, was mentioned yesterday on Boing Boing, prominently featured in a roundup of meaty fun sites to gawk at. (Boing Boing is fun, too, if you don't already know.) Biggles says he's had a slew of visitors since the latest hot spotlight of fame flashed his way. Of course, it's just poetic justice that his most recent two posts were not about meat.
As for me: This post is about meat. And Whole Foods.
Although I seem to have a propensity for stepping feet-first into politically charged subjects — just call me the red cape in front of the bull — it is not my intention today to raise the topic of Should We Even Be Shopping at Whole Foods.
I shop at Whole Foods. Occasionally. Wisely, I like to believe. I'm following the debates about locally provenanced items, corporate bullheaditude, "wimping" out on the lobster tanks, yadda yadda. I remain unpersuaded that Whole Foods is the devil. I will, with a clear conscience, buy a jar of spice or a sack of stone-ground grits or a bag of dried seaweed there.
But I keep running into one big problem with the meat. Too Much.
Now, Biggles will tell you there is no such thing as Too Much Meat, but what if all you want is a hot dog?
You don't want an entire plastic-wrapped pack of fake-smoke-juice-enhanced Little League Sawdust Chubbies from Safeway, so you go to the meat counter at Whole Foods and ask for a couple of individual frankfurters.
And you get Log Dogs. Big thangs. Spicy, tasty, yeah. But utterly beyond the scope of a reasonable bun.
I've found that it's not just wieners that are too big at Whole Foods. If you ask the nice butcher for a couple of chicken breasts, first of all he'll try to sell you two double breasts — a pair of pairs. And even when you pare down your order to just the two poitrines, you are given a couple of D-cups, I swear. Way too much meat.
This is meat sold by the pound, by the way, so Whole Foods tends to benefit from fobbing off gargantuan gobs to the unsuspecting.
Anybody else have this problem with meat at Whole Foods? I've inadvertently come home with massive slabs of fish, too, but as I am not the usual meat-buyer in this household, I may have had a few oddball experiences.
But man. Those dogs were just too big.