The Very Spooky Night

So there we were, watching a DVD of Corpse Bride, and it's raining and blustery outside, and I didn't know the wind could blow that hard, but we don't live on a treacherous hillside with 60-year-old electric wires anymore, so I figured we're safe, and... suddenly...
Darkness.
Power out all over Marin.
100-mph gusts. Hail. Sheets of rain. Tree branches blowing into the patio.
And we hadn't had supper yet! Dang, I had plans for that shrimp stock in the freezer... a little angel-hair pasta... Well, maybe later.
So Cranky opened a couple of cans and groped by flashlight for the nice vinegars and oils, far nicer than this salad deserved, but it tasted so good in the darkness (power didn't come back on until this morning).
I had to use the flash attachment to get this impromptu picture. Heh, there's a spare flashlight.
(Oh! What is that book she's reading?)

Worth My Salt

This weekend Northern California is experiencing a minus low tide, meaning that vast expanses of shoreline that are normally underwater are exposed. I thought it would be perfect conditions for gathering fresh kelp.
I didn't want to collect any sea life on protected beaches, because it's against the law, so Cranky and I went to a beach in a town noted for fairly casual policing (and I don't think it's a state preserve or park). But. Darn. Even though we were able to walk out on the wet sand for yards and yards, there was no seaweed.
I met a woman there who informed me I'd have to hike about a half mile to the north to find specimens. But it was growing cold and late, and I decided "another time."
However. I did fulfill one of my long-standing fantasies. Some of you may remember that last August, I tried to boil down Pacific sea water for salt. And I was stymied.
I vowed I'd try again, and yesterday, I hit pay dirt. Er, ocean.
Scaling down our ambitions a bit, we gathered a mere three liters of water. I filtered it through cheesecloth and then set about boiling it on my gas range in a stainless steel pot. Two hours later, I had about three ounces of handmade fleur de sel!

Salt is what makes things taste bad when it isn't in them. ~anonymous

OK, maybe not fleur de sel, but definitely Sodium of the Sea.
It has a slight beige hue, is still a bit moist (I stopped the boiling before it got bone dry), and clumps in lovely little flakes.
It tastes like salt. I'm very proud.

Off to the Beach

Bean Sprout is helping us forage today.

When You Don't Have Enough Bread

A few years ago, when I got booted out of my job (along with about 80% of the editorial staff; nothing personal, eh?), I began looking for economic tricks that would allow me roughly as happy a life as I'd lived when I was actually making money.
I sold a huge amount of used books that I was never going to reread (many of them cookbooks). I stopped buying work clothes, because I didn't have to work anymore (duh). I restricted my movie-going to bargain matinees. I took advantage of free-admission days at museums.
And I jumped head-first into the library.
I put my name on waiting lists for popular, just-published books. I prowled the stacks for oldies but goodies I hadn't yet read. And I got into the habit of browsing the shelves of new acquisitions.
This is such a great resource for cookbooks. You actually get to bring the book home, try it out for a few weeks, and then decide whether you hate it, didn't feel particularly one way or the other about it, or just have to own it.
I thumbed through Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World and was not stirred to stir anything up. It may be a good resource, but I'm suspicious of a huge grab-bag of international recipes gathered up by one (lazy) guy, and then run through the Americanifying filter.
I thought John Ash's Cooking One on One was interesting, especially the section on oven-drying fruits and vegetables. But I didn't think I'd use it much.
I seldom bake, so it was only with passing curiosity that I brought home Damon Lee Fowler's New Southern Baking. I'd never even heard of him. What captivated me, though, were chapters on quickbreads and stove-top baking. I could manage that!
I picked out a recipe that sounded yummy, but apparently I didn't manage it soon enough, because last night Cranky baked the Herbed Skillet Rice Bread all by himself.
It was a solid hit. The recipe worked perfectly. We did a post-mortem this morning and decided we might change a few flavorings next time, but see, we're already talking about next time.
I also have my eye on some griddlecakes, sweet-potato waffles, creamy chicken potpies with golden cheddar biscuit crust... and maybe some day I'll actually bake a loaf of "real" bread. I'm buying this book.
I can't afford not to.

Back Yard Foraging

My grand plans for foraging today ended with a huge splash of sunshine on the patio.
I am addicted to sitting on my patio, with a stack of magazines, newspapers, and sudoku books, any time the temperature is above 60 and the sun is out.
(I've just read Lewis Lapham's impassioned essay, "The Case for Impeachment," in the March Harper's; I'd link to it but it's not available online at the moment. Go find it in print — don't wait.)
Anyway, since the days have been lengthening at Olympian speeds, we enjoyed a good few hours of sunlight today.
So, no. I did not go on the field trip I had planned.
But when I took my doggie out to the grass for a break, I saw a perfect dandelion. It was a bit past ripe, and my new field guide book says dandelions are only palatable before the flowers appear. This one was so mature, the flower had already turned into a puff ball.
However! Cranky and I sampled a leaf, and we pronounced it "tasty." Kinda like arugula, kinda like miners' lettuce. Not bitter, not peppery. Good! (They have bins of disturbingly similar leaves for sale at Whole Foods; $6/lb. Dandelions are free and fresh.)
I am aware that dandelions are also known as "pis-en-lit," French for "wet the bed," due to some diuretic properties of the plant. So I guess we don't want to eat too much of it at once. Er, too far from the loo.
But damn. I wish I had known that those weeds I was dutifully pulling at my last address were purslane. Oh, we had dandelions and miners' lettuce there too. Wouldn't that have made a nice salad?
I contemplated a batch of dandelion wine, to have on hand during Eat Local Challenge month in May. But it takes six months — and it takes a lot of (non-local) sugar, something that has largely fallen out of my diet ever since last year's Eat Local Challenge.
Even so, I couldn't resist photographing the dandelion leaves in a wine glass.

I'm Hungry, I'm Confused

It's not quite spring, even though I've been willing it to be.
I'm craving vegetables, even though the market is full of lovely beets and kale and squash. I want "fresher" vegetables.
I still haven't eaten all my winter menus, like braised this and that, or pots of stewed beans, but I'm dying for summer salads.
I want to start planting tomatoes and herbs in the patio garden, but we're due for more rain this weekend.
What a mess.
On the upside: We're going foraging tomorrow.

Service With a Simile

I'm gearing up for spring, as the daylight hours grow visibly longer and my mood, once as dark as the moonless night, brightens like a dog who hears the treat bag rustling. I'm making plans for meals in the months to come the way Martha Stewart must have been scribbling menus in jail, waiting for the day she'd be sprung free as a lark and hungry like the wolf.
Shortly before Valentine's Day, Cranky and I went foraging, more avid than Euell Gibbons on cheap absinthe, for sour grass and miners' lettuce. I blogged about the sour grass, and received assurances from a couple of knowledgeable food people that I'd be just fine using it in soup... but I chickened out, and the bag of (oh, let's be honest here and call a weed a weed) weeds went out in this morning's trash, so wilted it was pathetic (well, it was picked more than a week ago). Surprisingly, no more wilted than most of the slime in my crisper drawer — but hey, that's why it's a weed. It will probably survive global warming and nuclear meltdown, same as Velveeta and cockroaches.
However, we did make good use of the miners' lettuce, and since I've been as busy as a ho' on nickle night learning little new CSS and HTML secrets, I haven't been active in the kitchen (or using my camera much), so I'm going to put up the old picture I took of it.
We served the miners' lettuce dressed with a beet-vinaigrette, and watch out, because I learned the hard way that beet juice stains clothes worse than Mrs. Macbeth's dog (and keep it far, far away from your raw oysters). Alongside the salad was a simple soup based on pork broth (I just swiped a bone and shreds of meat from an uncooked pork chop, and stewed it in water for a while — easy as hell); the soup was tinted red, as you can see.
The best part, at least because of the holiday it was meant for, is that miners' lettuce has beautiful little leaves cuter than any old valentine.
Darn, my mind has more holes in it than Harry Whittington's face. I wanted to talk about this new book I bought yesterday, "Edible and Useful Plants of California," by Charlotte Bringle Clarke, a little guide more useful in the field than a pack of tissues in ragweed season, especially if you're hungry (and no, ragweed is not edible or useful, and is not in the book, and don't forget to take your Claritin). I learned that miners' lettuce is in season possibly through May — which happens to be the Eat Local Challenge month — so that's better than learning (in the new book) that even though wild celery looks and smells like domesticated celery, I probably better avoid it, because it also resembles poison hemlock, and you can never be too sure.
(Count the similes, and call my mom if I don't post for a few days...)

My Day. And I Did Have One.

I'm so illiterate in HTML and Web design. But I'm stalwart. And I've got all sorts of tricks, plans, up my sleeve for tweaking this site. I just don't want to go too fast. (Um, wait. I meant "cheapo tricks." "Flaky plans." I know nothing.)
Also, my day was consumed by visiting a blogger friend for lunch. (Bay Areans: I recommend Medicine Eat Station in San Francisco. Dumb name for a restaurant, but: The food is soothing, healthful, vegetarian Japanese cuisine in a beautiful, airy space.)
Then, there was the trip to the bookstore, where I picked up (and paid for! hummphh...) a book on California wild edibles.
So, there's some behind-the-scenes work going on. Can't promise much. But I'll fill you in shortly.

Pardon Our Dust

We are going through a slight refreshing of the graphics here. Something about New Year's resolutions and joining a fitness/cultural club. Image makeover. That kind of stuff. (I must have done a solid four minutes — not a typo — on the elliptical climber this morning, and my hair started sweating.)
Plus, I was getting very fed up by the gremlins I had inadvertently introduced to my header code, every time I changed banners.
So, back to square one, more or less.
I apologize to everyone on my blogroll; you were sacrificed to cyber-oblivion, but I will rebuild a list soon.
OK, enough technical faking it. Here's that tomato soup I dreamed of yesterday, and doesn't it look lovely with the type colors I've chosen for the blog?
You should really try this; it's easy and a midwinter miracle in your mouth. (Uh, you did freeze up some roasted tomatoes last summer, didn't you? If not, grab a can of the best tomatoes you know of.)
Proportions are Up To You. I started with about a cup and a half of tomato sauce (note: completely unflavored except for a drizzle of olive oil). Added it to a petite mince of onion and celery (about two teaspoons of each) that had softened in butter over low heat for five minutes, and had a spoonful of flour (about as much as the butter you used) stirred in. Dumped, oh, maybe a cup of decent chicken broth in. Heated for about 10 minutes, correcting seasonings (a minuscule pinch of habanero powder was nice). And finally, smoothed with a big glug of heavy cream, rewarmed, and served with a tiny sprinkling of fresh rosemary flowers.

M-m Not Good

What do you do about tomatoes in the dead of winter?
For a tomato ranchin' bum who can't stop talking about the things, I've surprised myself by discovering I don't crave them now.
We have bags and bags of frozen, roasted tomato sauce, and we've barely made a dent in them.
Even though my cherry tomatoes were still ripening on the patio as late as January 1, I had already begun to lose my lust for them.
Today I had a bagel with cream cheese and Nova. Now, I'm not even going to begin to complain about the quality of the bagel, because in Northern California, my expectations in that department have been dashed permanently. Like an abused dog, I've come to believe I deserve beatings crappy bagels.
The salmon was good, though, and the cheese and paper-thin red onion just right. But why on earth were there slices of tomato on that thing? The tomato was your typical pale-orange, watery, odd-textured Out Of Season variety, with a special twist: It tasted simply terrible. One bite, and I yanked all the rest of the slices out of the bagel. The flavor was like bug spray: chemical-y, sickly, frightening.
Without hammering on the poor counterman who assembles the bagels, or the store manager, or even the owners of the bagel chain that this outfit is a part of, I will make one assumption: People expect a fresh tomato in certain preparations, no matter what the calendar says. They will ignore all physical sensations of revulsion while devouring it. Because they want it.
There are better and there are worse representatives of out-of-season tomatoes. The bite I had today was surely the worst.
The better representatives are probably imported from the Southern Hemisphere, or else hothouse-grown.
Last year I enjoyed some early-summer hothouse tomatoes, grown locally. They were good. It was almost real tomato-harvesting time, so it didn't seem weird to be appreciating an incubator-bred cousin of the real thing.
Right now, though, mid-February, I just don't feel the need to satisfy a craving for a fresh tomato. The craving is not there.
But. Damn! That crappy tomato stirred something deep inside me. It made me twitchy for the return of spring and summer foods. Asparagus is already in the markets, as well as new onions. I'm beginning to dream up spring egg dishes, made with young cheese.
Tonight, however, the temperature is expected to go down to freezing. And I have half a carton of cream in the fridge. Add that to a bag or two of frozen tomato sauce... Gosh, I guess a whole week of cheese-sandwich-blogging put a little bug in my ear: I want tomato soup!

The "Cheese" Stands Alone, But Not the Bloggers

It's true. This package of individually wrapped "slices" of "cheese" made its way into our house. Cranky was all revved up about the Cheese Sandwich Wars, and came home with a variety of real cheeses and this junk.
We unwrapped one "single" and each took a bite out of it. The texture was like the skin that forms under the lid of a can of paint. The taste was not quite as bad as the fake cheese on an Egg McMuffin, but still highly industrial, sort of like the skin that forms under the lid of a can of paint. In a really bad color.
It went out into the trash the next morning.
But I thank Cranky for his participation and sense of cranky, pranky glee.
For a superb overview of this whole cheese-sandwich business, head over to Kalyn's Kitchen. I think Kalyn does a good job analyzing why the food blog community came together as a sort of cyber flashmob yesterday (well, most all of this week, actually), after a writer for Food & Wine magazine hurt some of our feelings. It's because we are a community.
In fact, I had planned to blog about the generosity and usefulness of this community, based on a recipe I got from Passionate Eater. Cranky made PE's Ma Po Tofu last night, varied slightly by the addition of some pork.
It's a simple recipe, but it uses one ingredient I had never tried, hot bean paste. It's not black bean paste; it's red and spicy. I learned this from communicating (community = communicate) with PE.
The dish came out fantastic!
I have eaten this in Chinese restaurants, but never even knew its Chinese name — it's usually listed on menus as something like "spicy tofu."
So. Big thanks to Passionate Eater. Big thanks to Kalyn. Big thanks to Cranky. And a big howdy-do to all of you, my mad, eatin' homies.

Lunch

No, not a "cheese sandwich." A "raclette sandwich," OK? I'd like to say I was clever enough to use potato bread (since boiled small potatoes are traditionally served with raclette), but this was rye.
Toast bread lightly. Spread with a little bit of whole-grain mustard. Top with grated cheese (this is Emmental, so sue me). Run under the broiler until cheese is bubbly. Accompany with cornichons, cocktail onions and a caper berry if you're so inclined.
Final step: Blog about it!!!

Cheese Sandwich, Here We Come!

But now, a brief time-out, while we bring you the results of that slap-happy meme that has taken the Internets by storm, "What This Loser Food-Blogger Had for Lunch Today."
I will deconstruct for you. It had bits of meat. Some spreadable sauce-like ingredient. Fresh greens. And a supporting platform of a wheat-based product.
Let's guess! Bits of meat. Could it have been tuna from a pouch?
NO!
Well, then, a spreadable sauce. We're thinking mayonnaise, but. Scratch that. We'll go with mustard.
NO!
Oh dear. Hm. Fresh greens. Um, that would have to be lettuce. Right?
NO!
Anyway, at least we know the last item. Bread! Hah.
NO!
Dear readers, Cranky and I had Chinese roasted duck, shredded and separated from the bones (and fat). Cranky bought a whole, cooked duck in San Francisco's New Chinatown (the Richmond) for under $10. The counterman hacked it up on the spot.
We split lengths of scallion into fine ribbons. We steamed fresh flour tortillas (cut in halves). And we stirred a little rice vinegar into some hoisin sauce (on a whim, because the duck was so fragrantly seasoned with five-spice powder and we thought we'd need to cut the sweetness a little).
Procedure: Smoodge, put, add, roll up. Eat. Bliss.
Seriously, this would be terrific party food. Drop-dead easy to assemble the ingredients, and guests can roll their own. Unbelievably tasty.
It was the best SANDWICH ever.
Until tomorrow's.

Not Feelin' Romantic

I had planned to blog about a sexy dinner for two, where all the food was in shades of pink, white and red.
I had, in fact, already made three of the dishes on separate occasions, photographed them, and eaten them.
Well, one of them I didn't photograph or eat, and it is my civic duty as a food blogger to warn you solidly against ever trying to stain raw oysters with beet juice. They ended up looking like spleens. So creepy, we threw them out.
Beet juice is a good stain for other dishes, though, like the pork broth with tofu cubes and scallion slices. A pinch of hot pepper and a couple of minutes with a dried red jamaica (hibiscus) blossom for some tartness (I had hoped the jamaica would also tint the broth red, but it got a little purplish, so beet juice to the rescue). The soup was served with a salad of wild miners' lettuce, perfect little heart-shaped leaves...
Then there was the shrimp in a pink sauce, served over a melange of red and white rice. The rice needed some rethinking; probably should cook the two varieties separately. But I was thrilled with the sauce (I used coconut milk with the tomato sauce instead of cow cream).
However, no. Maybe later.
This whole cheese sandwich thing has got me into a state of less-than-thrilled-ness with food blogging.
Even so! It is Valentine's Day. And I do have cheese on the mind.
So. Feast your eyes on what we feasted on for lunch:
Cypress Grove Amour Chevre. We thought it was just a gimmick, but it turned out to be very, very good, with a mild rind, oozy-buttery interior, and a surprise of a tangy, cakey center (where it wasn't as ripe as the outer part). Three flavors in one. Recommended.
With bread.

The Loneliness of the... Oh, Cripes!

Ah, the lonely life of the solitary blogger. Poor, pathetic us.
As columnist Pete Wells opines in the upcoming March issue of Food & Wine, "The term 'cheese-sandwich blog' quickly became Webspeak for all the dear-diary scribblings that don't acknowledge, let alone describe, life outside the author's dorm room."
Well, not to get too deeply into Mr. Wells' disdain for most of us casual, yet fervent eaters (and scribblers), I'd love to point out that food blogging has become, for me and I assume for many of you, a social networking device. And as food writers, we certainly don't just plunk ourselves down in front of the keyboard and talk about lousy eating. We go to restaurants, markets, conferences. We join up with fellow food bloggers. We talk, we learn.
Just the day before yesterday, I enjoyed the most wacky, rollicking gathering of food lovers (and bloggers) at the home of Jack and Joanne (the visionary pair behind the truly, madly, deeply wonderful Fork & Bottle), for a tasting of — oh, holy jeepers — about 30 hot chocolates. I had not met Jack and Joanne in person before, though we had communicated by e-mail and had forged a tentative friendship. It is now fully forged.
The party was attended by — well, I'm gonna keep some names secret just on behalf of my new friends. No need to spill all the beans. There were ten of us.
No, Jack and Joanne are not cheese-sandwich bloggers. Hardly. However, their Web site is complex and wide-ranging. There is, in fact, a huge emphasis on cheese. But not sandwiches. Though Joanne makes some killer sandwiches.
Mr. Wells prefers that food bloggers focus narrowly on a niche. Hm. Tell that to J & J. They'd hate to sit down at the computer every day and talk about the elusive qualities of the ephemeral (just to invent an absurd example) Miners' Lettuce inasmuch as it impacts the world shortbread market. Every day. No thanks.
So. We're an eclectic bunch. We're new; we're developing.
And we don't want to be told what we ought to be blogging about. Simply for the pleasure of Mr. Wells. Who rudely said, "First, a good blog needs to communicate passion, and a really good blog will make the reader feel passionate as well. This should be easy when the subject is food, but it does rule out cheese sandwiches. Listen up, bloggers: Nobody cares what you had for lunch today!"
I think he's wrong.
But I'll bet he likes a cheese sandwich now and then.

Weapons of Massive Incompetence

Vice President Cheney shot a lawyer over the weekend. In the face. While hunting quail.
The guy's gonna be fine, but he's 78 years old, fergodsake.
It happened in Texas, so it's probably legal.
For the record, Cheney was really sorry.
Kiww the wabbit!
Kiww the wabbit!

I Got Your Sandwich Right Here

You want sandwiches? I got sandwiches. Good ones. Bloggable ones.
Here is a sampling of some of my previously blogged sandwiches.


You got your Avocado sandwich with mayonnaise, garlic powder, salt, pepper and cilantro.

You got your classic BLT, no explanation required.

You got your end-of-summer basic tomato sandwich with cucumbers and mayonnaise.

You got your criterial turkey sandwich with iceberg lettuce, mayonnaise and a smudge of cranberry sauce.

Oh, yeah, there's other kinds of sandwiches too. Cheese sandwiches. Good ones.

If Only I Weren't Mad

Just look at what I might be able to accomplish if I were rational. The Cook Not Mad is capable of "Embracing not only the art of curing various kinds of meats and vegetables for future use, but of Cooking, in its general acceptation, to the taste, habits, and degrees of luxury, prevalent with the AMERICAN PUBLICK." (Click picture to see more.)
This book is one of many explored by the Feeding America project, "an online collection of some of the most important and influential American cookbooks from the late 18th to early 20th century."
You'd be mad not to go check it out.

Born With Il Cucchiaio d'Argento In My Mouth

Last month when Cranky and I sneaked out of town for a couple of days of solitude on the Sonoma coast, I schlepped along an unlikely book to page through by the firelight.
First of all, it weighs a ton. Our cabin was at the top of a flight of rickety stairs, so that made for one heavy duffel bag.
Second of all, the book has no discernable plot, it covers a dizzying assortment of characters, and lots of the words are in a foreign language.
Well, enough being coy. Yes, of course I'm talking about the new English translation of The Silver Spoon, a 50-plus-year-old treasury of home cooking that has been called "the Italian Joy of Cooking." We bought it for ourselves with Christmas money from my mom and dad.
I still haven't made anything from the book yet, but I couldn't stop bookmarking pages as I stumbled across recipe after recipe using combinations of common foods that had never in a thousand years occurred to me, but sounded logical, inevitable, kind of "Why Didn't I Think of That?"
Or more like "Wait, Are We Even Allowed to Do That?"
For instance: Milk and Onion Soup. That's it; that's all that goes into this soup, other than salt and butter, and a finishing grating of Parmesan cheese, plus croutons.
How about Rice and Potatoes. All right, that one's a little more complex, with the addition of onion, prosciutto and meat stock, but didn't mother always say rice OR potatoes? And there they are together in a yummy-sounding dish.
Here's one Thomas Keller might have dreamed up just for the name, Eggs with Eggplant. But instead of some labor-intensive statement on a plate, this is simply fried eggplant slices in a baking dish, dabbed with tomato paste and then baked with four fresh eggs broken over the top.
The dishes are so simple that some pages in the book hold up to four recipes. The food is homey, comforting and largely inexpensive. Some of the recipes sound like, "Quick, Pappa will be home soon; what can we make from our meager larder?" Spaghetti with Anchovies. Roast Turnips with Leeks and Pumpkin. Bread Soup (aka Stracciatella, with eggs and cheese). The sort of real food that results from desperation and imagination.
True, there are chapters on seafood, all the meats you could think of (a chapter on Heart, another on Brains, and Frogs, and Sausage). There's also party food, cheeses, desserts. Lots of what the average American would deem "real Italian" dishes like lasagne, minestrone, octopus in red wine — though this book doesn't scream "Italian!!"
I haven't gotten halfway through all the pages yet.
And I don't think I'll try a Julie & Julia adventure and attempt to make everything in the book. For one thing, I wouldn't know where to get an ostrich egg.
But the thing that has captivated me the most is the number of kooky, easy amalgams of everyday ingredients I have never before put together in one dish.
Rice Gnocchi. Oatmeal Soup. Savory Cabbage Pie (with hardcooked eggs). Apple Risotto. Strawberry Risotto! Green Beans in Egg Cream. Eggs baked inside scooped-out tomatoes. Meatballs in a creamy lemon sauce.
Are we allowed to do that? Where do I start?

Lazy Luncheon Lunchin'

I'm *thisclose* to writing up the cookbook that has me so interested in a new take on food. I want to really do it justice, and right now, I'm lacking energy to do that. I'll get to it soon.
Meanwhile.
Today Cranky and I returned to a local seafood restaurant that a lot of Marin bloggers are talking about, Fish, in Sausalito. We dragged along the camera and the doggie.
Marin has a secret underground of dog-friendly restaurants, and Bean Sprout was one of four pooches at lunch there today. The hobo-code marking on the wall was a cluster of dog water dishes right outside the entrance. All of us dog diners sat outside at wooden picnic tables, in the unseasonably warm 70°-plus air.
Just so you know, this restaurant is unpretentious but the food is well thought out, locally sourced whenever possible, impeccably created for the most part (my complaint: clam chowder is too herbaceous). It's expensive, and you must pay in cash. It's also self-service, so there's nothing fancy going on, especially at those prices. It's upscale in a lowdown, preppy way. Money, but money that whispers.
So, for a $50 lunch for two, we enjoyed house-made clam dip with house-made potato chips for starters. Then I had a psychedelically delicious couple of fried gingery toro rolls in wonton wrappers, with a syrupy dip of candied, jalapeñoed orange rind, grated carrot, scallions, and a cacophony of white and black sesame seeds. It was really good. Cranky had a plate of house-smoked sturgeon, really tender and not over-smoked; served with croutes and a salad of beets dressed in, um, maybe sour cream or crème fraîche — it had turned totally Day-Glo. And we had a couple of glasses of lousy wine. Gotta think that part over, or order water next time.
One conceit of the restaurant (besides the bothersome cash-only thing) is that drinks are all served in Ball jars. So a glass of (crappy) white wine looks, unfortunately, like a specimen. Of. Not. Saying.
Besides the incredible weather and the good food, I was having fun exploring the "aperture" setting of my camera. Meh. Better results may be forthcoming.

Best. Chili. Evar.

We have a food backlog at our house. From drooling over recipes in books, and from haunting the nearby farmers' market twice a week (though we have cut back), even from foraging simply because certain things are in season and must be gathered — we have too much food on hand.
Add to that the pressures of this darned blog — with the cooking events, holiday meals and general show-offiness of the food blogosphere — and I've got too much in the pipeline to bother with Cranky's manly annual yearning for something as trite as chili for the Super Bowl.
And yet. And yet.
There we were in the kitchen together yesterday, performing dual culinary pyrotechnics, side by side. Creating completely different meals, at the same time, on the same stove, in our little (but apparently well-laid-out) space.
And then we got to eat the results! I prepared something for blogging about later (I'm a prisoner of this business, I tell you!) and Cranky cooked up a perfectly logical, temporally relevant pot of the Best. Chili. Evar.
And the good part (aside from the fantastic chili) is that he decided to make a Small Recipe, so we wouldn't be burdened by extra stuff that needed to be consumed, when silly Cookiecrumb is clamoring after the next new thing to try, leftovers be damned.
He started with a reasonable chunk of pork from one pork chop, about 1/3 pound. You can buy one pork chop; the butcher doesn't think you're weird. But then Cranky had to cajole butcher into giving him an appropriately small quantity of beef. And once Cranky explained that "It's just the two of us and..." the butcher kindly offered to lop off a hunk of chuck, again about 1/3 pound. To that, Cranky added a slightly smaller quantity of Mexican chorizo (at our store it's sold in little sausage casings, so two tiny nuggets was just right). The chorizo itself is so well-spiced that not a lot more seasoning was needed.
I'm not going to explain the procedure. I just want to brag about the ingredients Cranky used. In addition to the meat, he cooked up some chopped onion and garlic, hacked tomatillos, lots of good ground dried chilis (various types, blended in the pan) and a good bloop of our own frozen local tomato sauce. The beans, tender pinks, cooked separately. Once the beans were nearly finished, everything went together into a slow cooker for a couple of hours. Salt, adjustments, yadda, yadda. Drizzles of beer were added to maintain a good soupiness... and then.
Oh my.
(Jeez, aren't those beans enormous? No. It's just another one of Cookiecrumb's blog addictions: children's cooking sets.)
PS: Blogger will be out of service for an hour this evening beginning at 7 p.m. Pacific time.

Call for Help

I went foraging with Cranky yesterday, as we hoped we would. For a few minutes, driving to our secret trail-head harvesting spot, the sky clouded over and I was afraid we'd be standing drenched in the mud with a plastic bag, shoveling in drippping treasures like hippie-dippy idiots.
But suddenly the clouds evaporated, we found our trove, and all was well. I'll save up that particular forage-i-ness for later.
We also picked (a little closer to civilization) a couple of fistfuls of California wood sorrel (I think that's what it's called). If you're from my corner of the world, you've seen this ubiquitous clover-shaped weed with the ephemeral yellow flowers. The leaves have a pleasant, astringent, sour taste. (Flowers do too, apparently.)
I know I've eaten cream of sorrel soup. I have a recipe for cream of sorrel soup.
Here's the question. Do I dare make cream of sorrel soup from these wild weeds? I know too much oxalic acid can be toxic. How much is too much? If I do steep the leaves in vegetable broth, can I safely puree them and eat them?
OK, thanks.
Meanwhile. Gad! Did you just see the Stones at halftime? Man, they have a lot of energy. They're in a lot better shape than I am. They looked good, and sounded good! I was very impressed (and I got over the Stones a long time ago).
But I just hate watching Mick "dance." Puppet boy! Perform!
Still, he really threw himself into it, probably because it was only a three-song set.
And what did you think of that pastel-clad cast from Up With People, writhing in a tongue-shaped mosh pit? Yeah. Ew.

Cookiecrumb Will Be Right Back

Been having some serious trouble posting and receiving comments. I think we're *thisclose* to being fixed. I'll check back in tomorrow.
For now, I just want to announce: I will never say "ginormous" on this blog.
OK, I said it there, once. But that's it. Gnever gagain.

Time Out

To quote from an old New Yorker cartoon, "I'm tired of food."
I still eat (and I'm still mad) but I haven't been very productive lately. I have been tinkering with some experiments in the kitchen; one was a complete, unmitigated horror show, another is shaping up nicely, the third is a science-lab monster in the making — not sure which way it's going to go.
But for sustenance, we're eating cozy things like leftover Chinese turnip cakes, or turkey-tortilla casserole... or today's lunch of Doritos with Greek peperoncini and chive cottage cheese (don't ask, just try it).
Tomorrow, if the weather allows, we're going to go foraging in West Marin.
But for the near future, I've been sniffing around in a new cookbook. I'm packing my head with ideas. I'm bookmarking pages like crazy. I can't wait to try some of these timeless, homey dishes.
Can you guess what book I've been devouring?

All About Meme

Rose at The Hungry Rose invited me to participate in the 4x7 Meme. It's self-explanatory, and here's mine. When you read the list, you may be horrified, tickled, surprised, sickened... but you still won't have any better idea who I really am.

Four Jobs You've Had in Your Life:
1. Strawberry Picker
2. Phonetics researcher
3. Children's book illustrator
4. Newspaper this and that — editor, reporter, columnist

Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over:
1. Die Hard
2. Annie Hall
3. Basic Instinct
4. Blade Runner

Four Places You’ve Lived:
1. Ford Island, HI
2. Oak Harbor, WA
3. Yokosuka, Japan
4. Winter Park, FL

Four Websites You Visit Daily:
1. Daily Kos
2. Becks & Posh
3. The New York Times
4. Sudoku

Four TV Shows You Love to Watch:
1. The Colbert Report
2. The Family Guy
3. House
4. Curb Your Enthusiasm

Four of Your Favorite Foods:
1. Tomatoes
2. Buttermilk
3. Beans
4. Fresh English Peas

Four Places You’d Rather Be:
1. Tahiti
2. Right Here, But With Year-Round Sun
3. In a Bigger House
4. That's About It

I could swear I'm the last person in the blogosphere to get tagged for this, but let's try bothering ... uh, no. Never mind.

Aw, Isn't That Sweet?

No, it's not sweet at all. It's a bowl of potato-cauliflower soup. I don't have much of a sweet tooth anyway, but I can't resist some pretty colors in food.
Deep greens and browns and vivid reds and oranges are all possible in an antioxidant-rich diet, but with the hint of spring on the horizon, I was hankering for some healthful pastels.
Still, this is no wimpy soup. It's based on rich turkey stock, flavored with salt and sautéed onions, and kicked into heaven with a healthy swirl of crème fraîche, making it deeply wintery in taste, and rib-stickingly hearty in texture.
Oh, the color? It comes from purple cauliflower and purple potatoes.
OK, roughly:

1 purple cauliflower, broken into florets, stems discarded
4 purple potatoes
2 cups turkey stock (or your choice; chicken or veggie would work)
1/4 cup chopped onion, maybe even a little less
A little olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste (maybe the stock is already seasoned; taste it to see)
3 tablespoons crème fraîche (don't measure; just bloop some in)
A few drops of vinegar

Steam the cauliflower and potatoes, separately, until you can pierce them with a sharp knife. Set the potatoes aside to cool a bit, and shock the cauliflower in cold water to preserve color. The cooked cauliflower loses its precious lilac color and ends up more of a gray-blue-mauve. But once you've run it through the blender with half of the turkey stock, you can restore some of the lavender tone by judiciously adding drops of vinegar. Magic! (No, not magic. Science.)
Sauté the chopped onion in some oil until tender; if you are adding salt and pepper (taste the stock first), sprinkle it over the onions in the pan.
Put about half the stock with the onions and cauliflower into a blender. Purée to whichever level of smoothness turns you on.
When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel them by scraping with a dull knife. Cut them into chunks and add to the cauliflower purée in the blender with the remaining stock. Purée. (The cooked potatoes feel sticky when you cut into them, but they will not turn gluey in the blender; fortunately they possess a russet-like grainy texture.)
Now: How do you like the color? Too bluish? Add a couple of drops of vinegar and blend. Still need more pinkiness? A couple more drops; blend. Remember, you are altering the taste as well as the color, and you've still got some mildly tangy crème fraîche to swirl in.
Taste for salt and pepper. Swirl in the crème fraîche.
Reheat gently in a saucepan and serve.
Oh, wait! Garnish with an extra sploosh of crème fraîche and tiny cubes of cooked beet if you're feeling frisky.
Serves two very generously; would easily make four nice small starters. Or, it could be smeared on black velvet for a cool Jimi Hendrix painting.