monday canning dates

For the last couple of weeks I've been having Monday canning dates with Ace. We fell into canning together sometime at the end of last summer when I was trying to preserve some peaches and made an excellent plum rose jam, and then we gained a windfall of apples and pears from the Apple Farm last September. Last week we made a nice plum chutney that came out okay -- not to my tastes but Ace was pleased with it.

Today she made a dapple dandy pluot jam and kept the skin on all her pluots. The flavor was nicely apricot-y and not too sweet.

I bought a bunch of white nectarines for a white nectarine-cardamom preserve. I don't love the flavor of white stone fruit (because usually, it has NO flavor, just sweetness) but I'd made something last season with white fruit and cardamom and remembered really liking it. I added half a lemon juice and peel with the idea of having to add more because the fruit was really sweet. It took one and a half lemons but I'm quite pleased with the results. The flavor is complex, though in a far different way than the pluots. The first taste you get is lemon juice, bleeding into cardamom. The peaches and sugar come through at the end. And the color is just beautiful! I left them at Ace's house to finish sealing but I'll try to get them and post a picture later.

I'm trying to find recipes for low-sugar no pectin jam that features stone fruits, but so far I'm not having much luck. Most of the low-sugar recipes call for lots of pectin and the standard recipes of equal parts sugar and fruit. This one is pretty good and does manage to taste sweet without tasting exclusively of sugar. I used about 10 ounces of sugar for 4 lbs of whole fruit. The pluots by contrast had a little less than three cups of sugar and tasted less sweet...but then, they're totally different than nectarines.

white nectarine-cardamom preserves
nectarines, whole 4 lbs.
cardamom pods 10-12, lightly crushed
sugar 1-1.5 cups
lemon 1.5, juiced and rinds thrown in pot
makes 4 8 ounce jars

peel and chop white nectarines. combine all ingredients in pot and let sit 30 minutes. bring to boil and let cook 30-40 minutes or until jam-like. this will be a loose mixture. taste as it gets thick for acidity, sweetness and spice. when the preserves are thick enough, you should can them (you can do a freezer test if you wish. i did.) or you can store them in the fridge for a good month or two.

stuff that's keeping me happy lately

I've been so busy traveling. There's a lot that I want to tell you about but it's going to take a while. In the meantime here's a teaser of stuff that I've been into lately:

• pilot books, seattle
• amazing apricots
• breaking news: harvard lays off 275 employees --> THIS IS NOT SOMETHING I LIKE
  
• molly moon's, seattle
• finding a gay friendly bakery in eugene or
  
• inner sunset farmers market, sf
  
• modesto jr. college egg farmers
• being so close to the end of chapter 3, phew!

photo by James Callahan

canning sundays

The last of the Apple Farm apples (and pears) made their way into a pear-apple chutney today after a lazy Sunday spent walking on Ocean Beach with the dogs.

Finally checked out my closest convenient local farmers market, on Divis near Alamo Square. It was tiny, but they did have some organic growers, a flower guy, some boutique olives and spreads, and a bread stand. I came home with some extremely aromatic basil, tomatoes, snapdragons and poblano peppers. The basil (and tomato) made their way into basil simple syrup and into bruschetta as part of an improptu dinner with chicken salad. As much as I adore the big markets, like Berkeley and the FPFM, lately there's a part of me that feels like I really need to get to know my community markets to the extent that my schedule allows. Sometimes I feel like certain growers get this huge rep around town cause their on everybody's menu and every time I automatically nab a peach from this guy or that guy, there's some newer farmer or equally worthy farmer getting ignored because his stuff isn't on the menu at Chez Panisse or wherever. And it's hard because there's so many great farmers, and I'm not about to trip over myself buying hard stone fruit from some random orchard just to go against the grain. There are always products not worth buying (and a particular example sticks heavy in my mind) from the most established and most obscure vendors. I am also ridiculously spoiled in getting my hands on excellent produce. I may not be able to make it to the FPFM Saturday market for some Knoll figs, but I'm eating the occasional fig at work...am I splitting hairs? Am I alone in this issue?

Anyway, after the market, and after the beach, and after a trillion loads of laundry, C convinced me we needed to make the chutney we'd discussed. So she peled and sliced apples and pears while I mised the brown sugar, garlic, lemon, ginger (fresh and crystallized) and golden raisins. Having never made chutney before we were going by a pretty basic recipe. When everything barely fit in the stockpot we added some of the Apple Farm's extremely potent cider vinegar, and a dash of water, and let it cook. We tasted it halfway through for seasoning and added a touch more vinegar and a couple handful more salt but otherwise it was delicious. When the chutney finally cooked down it was this amazing combination of caramelization-sugary and vinegar-spicy that I don't know I've ever appreciated in chutney when it's service temp. Pretty much the first thing I thought was, damn, this would be really good with apricots.

this is just to say

I am entirely guilty of eating plum crisp for breakfast today. Made with delicate italian prune plums purchased from Blossom Bluff. The man at the market noted my beat-up arms and wanted to know, was I a cook? This of course led to an interesting conversation about where I work and what is going on there. Such a small town, this is. The fruit vendors try to engage you in gossip. Also at last week's market I picked up some of my favorite discovery from last year, Alfieri's Summer Royal grapes. Deliciousness. Of course, once I decide I can manage stopping by the Tuesday market once a week for some produce I'll want to eat and some reconnecting with my favorite farms...ye olde schedule changes again. I can still stop by in the early morning for a manageable load-up, I spose, and carry my goods with me to work. Or I can just start commuting outside the city Sundays to a non-SF market. I do have lots of choices, sometimes I just need to be reminded of that fact.

smells like fire

A weekend (more or less) of bbqs and birthdays.

First with work people/new friends. With absolutely tons of food (burgers, chicken, kebabs, chips n salsa n guac, pasta salad, rice n beans) and a delicious enormous birthday cake, a sunny afternoon, lots of beer and good conversation and marshmallow madness.

Then with old friends and wood foraged from John McLaren park and a giant fire in a backyard fire pit.

Sporadic conversation but mostly silence, in the way that things settle between people who have known one another for a long time and have complicated histories. No food except for meat and soda, which I guess is what happens when you let the boy plan the bbq.

This morning we took Jes back to the FPFM for one last trip (kumquats, strawberries, dried kiwi, dried hachiya persimmon) and now she is almost home, and though she admits that California has some nice things I know she is glad to be there.

un-chocolate?

I am really curious how you can have a "chocolate" flavor of something that tastes absolutely nothing like actual chocolate. This is something I haven't experienced in my life until tonight. Like...

a brownie that tastes nothing like chocolate.
hot fudge that tastes 2% like chocolate.
chocolate ice cream that tastes nothing, but nothing, like chocolate.

See, tonight I went to Maggie Mudd for an enormous banana split brownie sundae with caramel and hot fudge. I shared it with a friend. We got three flavors of ice cream-espresso, pecan praline (which come to think of it had no nuts, hmm) and chocolate. The chocolate was incredibly dark, more the color of chocolate sorbet than actual ice cream. All the ice creams were in general entirely too sweet, which I'd suspected they might be from what I'd had there before. What baffled me most about the whole experience was the utter lack of chocolate flavor of any kind. When I asked the scooper kids what was in the chocolate flavor, they said it was "some kind of chocolate chips and cocoa powder." I'm gonna try to find out, cause it was completely bizarre. Since they do a lot of dairy-free products I'm wondering if they don't use actual chocolate at all in any of their products.

Enough complaining. In the morning one of my best friends ever comes to town. I am going to take her to the farmer's market, because she is a farmer, and I am really curious to hear what her take will be on the FPFM.

happiness is a warm...

what if someone could give you everything you ever wanted?

or, better yet, what if you could create it together?

Make all of those things you talked about when you were wee Vassar students be more than great and wonderful and crazy dreams(things that later click into odd sorts of sense as scientists become farmers become stagiares and writers become cooks)? One day is what we always said...we shall see what we shall see but somehow we keep pushing and growing closer together toward something. tangible becomes intagible. i'm betwixt and between. meet me here, at the borders?

Just got off the phone with my favorite person in Po-town. Who may come visit me here in the next couple months, oh I hope, because she would adore the FPFM and everything else.

a promotion of sorts

Yes, my view is beautiful. Yes, this city is gorgeous, and the day reminded me of it. A perfect day for a bike ride, even up the hills to Golden Gate Park. Afterward there was much lying in the grass, and laziness, and conversation. Sandwiches from Dolores Park Cafe, too many attractive women, and a deliciousness to the air itself, how it felt against my skin biking the last few blocks home.

I haven't been talking about work much but that doesn't mean it's not good. At the market this week I bought Pineapple Guavas from the avocado man, Fuyu persimmons from Knoll, apples from my man in the cowboy hat. And while walking around with my lil bag of fruit I ran into my coworkers, so they collected me at the market even though I was due at work in 15 minutes and we puttered around the market collecting the produce they'd picked out and convincing the head chef to buy us lots and lots of doughnuts from Boriana's. My first time eating those delicious spheres. I sort of want to make a black-and-white cookie version of one, with half nutella and half custard...

There's so much delicious excess at the market...all this wonderful food we carted around, and all for the savory chefs I think except a couple crates of persimmons from Blossom Bluff. I left in a flurry of adrenaline after spending the night working on tiny projects (juicing, dicing, chopping) and running up to the station to help my coworker bust through a mass of tickets and there was only half an hour, really, of exhaustion, which was good. I like our menu. I like the new desserts. I like what we're doing and there's a contentment to the quiet buzz of small tasks.

The cryptic offer I alluded to last week? Details are in and it appears that now I will be an editorial assistant for Fringe. I'll have all-the-time access to our submissions inbox and will be responsible for weeding out submissions, deciding what to recommend for consideration by our readers, rejecting authors who don't make the cut, and so on. I always wanted to be an editorial assistant, or ea as we say, but I always thought it's be for Penguin Putnam or Random House or Simon & Schuster. Vintage Contemporaries would have been my preferred house.

It is very exciting to be able to peek one more layer behind the curtain. There's such mythology around publishing. How does it happen? When you send something to a journal, where does it go and who reads it and what happens to your carefully crafter cover letter? If you are taking the time to remind a journal they liked your last submission, does that somehow get you special consideration? If you are highly published or not, do you land in a separate pile? How long is the slush pile, and what does a virtual slush pile look like? How does a non-linear piece or an experimental piece jostle for room next to a screenplay, am illustrated poem, a piece of short fiction, a full length story? Does longer work have a place in online journals? Who reads the journal, anyway? Do we have a sense of place, of the here-and-now, and if not then what replaces place?

I've been reading for Fringe for some time now and I know some more than what I used to about the grisly process of deciding. Sometimes the first comment on a submission, good or bad, taints its journey through the reading process. It becomes hot or cold. Does it get a fair reading if I know three voices before me were not interested and even if I like it, there's not much chance of it going anywhere?

I know that it isn't right to consider audience when writing but still those considerations creep in. I feel a lot more secure, paradoxically, when sending out my work because I can think, oh this or something much like it is what will happen to me. Probably, the person reading my work is on a computer in a cafe, or at their desk job, and is not devoting a lot of time or attention to this. They are engaged initially, or not, they make their decisions based on their sympathy for my tone or subject. They are only reading, after all. {How my boss would likely criticize me for using "only" here, the cousin of "just"...for reading is one of the finer things in life, but still, it is not always done with full attention}

I'm going to get on that writing-thing for the night and will post a word count and first sentence later. I've been thinking so much about stories lately. For any writers out there, a call to submissions for Fringe. Details on the submission process can be found at their site.

We're seeking submissions in all genres that explore the role ethnos plays in viewing the world, in writing, in living. We want to read literature that fosters understanding, that intelligently navigates the complexities of ethnicity, race and identity. Send us your interpretation! Hurry, the deadline for submission is December 15, 2007. Please mark submissions with Ethnos in the subject line.

CUESA Sunday Supper: the pear tasting

I was in a room in the top of the Ferry Building last night and everybody else was there, too. Well, almost everybody. The first and last course were prepping in the same room and the main course chefs were somewhere else. Fifty plates per team. I had no idea what my new boss was doing, but I met her by the FH shop, and ran into my old boss on the way. She was dropping off cupcakes, and acted quite happy to see me, but she must have gotten her table partners to plate them up for her because she never returned.

How's Your New Job Going? my boss asked. Your Chef Is Kind Of A Minimalist.
Really? I wrinkled my nose, reflecting on it. I wouldn't have picked that word.
Upstairs, as we unpack the coolers and I see the extent of what we've got to plate, I laugh and say I Understand Why You Think She's A Minimalist. We served the following eight components:

Vanilla-Tokaji poached Warren pears with pear sorbet, plum-raspberry sauce, raspberries, gingersnap cookies, candied fruit (lemon and orange), FH figs and frozen muscat grapes. The figs and grapes were FH; the berries were Ella Bella.

We lent some figs to the Slow Club boys who were prepping a salad. I watched Mourad Lahlou slather cheese with tomato jam and Elizabeth Faulkner work the room. Dessert got pushed back. The CUESA volunteers and assorted chefs kept stopping by to pop frozen grapes into their mouths. They were so sensual and a blessing in that hot room. My boss got all tense. I started plating. I've done enough banquet FOH stuff that they don't really make me all that nervous...I was more nervous-excited to be elbow to elbow with all these wonderful chefs.

When my boss oohed over the Aziza plates and said how she wanted to go I told her she needed to. And Go Somewhere Else For Desserts, I said, after explaining the loveliness of the food.
You've Been To Aziza? How Have You Been To Aziza? she asked, slight frown.

When the apps went out, we reclaimed the table and got to work laying down plates, taking the grapes off the stems. Apparently my boss put the recipe in the Bay Guardian and she was telling me about her process. Very funny how they wanted that recipe because it was basically: 1. wash grapes, 2. freeze them. I said she should have lied about a fabulous technique. But they were good. Really good. Reminiscent of those Alfieri grapes I got for about a month, the ones that were my reason for living.

The plates went from crowded but orderly to fairly cluttered what with the addition of more sauce, more grapes. The dessert time got pushed back and then pushed up. Clusters of assistants trailed behind chefs quenelling frantically. I tossed grapes. We lured the Slow Club boys into helping us because when someone tells you you've got twenty minutes and they says you've got five, well, what do you do? Sauce, wipe, grapes.

Afterward when the chefs went out to greet the public, the CUESA volunteers, the expediting chef and I conducted a dessert tasting. Almost everyone turned to pears. Elizabeth Faulkner's were poached and then bruleed with a sexy sugar crust. There were some tasteless components and then a nice, surprisingly salty pistachio pesto. Someone else's pears were poached and set on insanely dry cake. It just exuded moisturelessness {yeah, not a word}. Downtown Bakery had poached them and set them in a lattice crust but there was something unsatisfying about the texture of the pear, and something salty and not sweet enough about the overall dish. The Ritz placed apple compote in tidy squares on cake, the covered the whole thing with a pink peppercorn meringue {they used a foam cannister and I missed it}, huckleberry compote and a dried apple chip. Gorgeous but the flavors didn't mesh. Rubicon had large quenelles of mousse? pudding? chocolatey goodness, with the smallest eights of pears poached in honey syrup and orange peel.

The cupcakery, plain old chocolate cupcakes with a mint leaf garnish. It made me sad and it surprised me--because my friend had been telling me they were going to do an apple cupcake and they'd been testing it all month--but not entirely. They talk a good game on using sustainable ingredients and locally sourced everything. It's what attracted me to the job. But in the end it's a decision between which is more expensive, or expedient, or whatever. They were supposed to make the apple, but they got the apples too late and it got lost in the shuffle or a normal day. The Sunday Supper was a celebration of harvests, food, farmers. We didn't just all do pear desserts because we love them. We did them in the spirit of the event. The chefs at the Supper didn't need the publicity. They're already the top game in this town. Will the cupcake shop move slowly toward seasonality and using farm-fresh goodies? I don't know. But it's time to let go of them. Good things this new job is taking all of my time.

Sometimes you put what you want out there in the universe and it comes back to you in all kinds of ways. Saturday night there were fresh doughnuts, warm and adorable and redolent of my doughnut plant love.

how i got my new job and other stories

It's all starting to come full circle. It rained today in San Francisco. At FH, we've still got the gamut of summer pastries but the winter staples are starting to trickle in...pear frangipane instead of peach. Get your stone fruit while you can. Today at the market I bought quince from Farmer Dan with the two apple trees, Black Missions figs from Knoll and dry-farmed tomatoes from Ella Bella, and was given an onion by my coworker. The last two are getting turned into tomato sauce tonight. The quince, I'm not sure yet and the figs are just for eating out of hand.

Last night I went to Chow, where the waiters are just all so cute. It helped that we were starved after a day of eating only desserts, but my wood-oven spinach and cheese lasagna was yummy, and then I polished off my friend's mashed potatoes as well. We split and analyzed dessert: a ginger cake with whipped cream and pumpkin ice cream. The ice cream was appealingly orange but not properly pumpkin, the cake was dry, the caramel made it slightly better.

I have such an uneasy relationship with writing and cooking. One is always being done at the expense of the other. I told my friend last night that the day I opened up my secret shop would be the day I was never going to write a book. It Doesn't Need To Be That Way, he told me. Sure, I'm getting lifetimes of great material and I've already used some of it. Sure, I'll one day be too old to cook. I Would Love To Go On Book Tour In Like, Three Months, I told him (an impossibility for sure). Y'Know, Just Take A Break From Work.

Would You Give Up Cooking In Three Months? he asked. And Never Go Back To It?
I sighed. I pouted. His question was an impossibility it seemed. Something laughable and off the map. No, I said.

You know you're in it when you come home from working your sixth day in a row and cook dinner and make sorbet. You know you're in it when you read cookbooks for fun, and when you order more than one dessert after dinner. When you get up before dawn and everyone asks you how you do it, and you don't know how you do it, but you don't even complain about it anymore really. It is what it is. When you let kitchen words seep into everyday life and suddenly you want to yell Behind at all those slow walkers. When another burn on your arm is just that: another. When you agree to spend your one day off helping your boss plate desserts. When the farmers at the market know your name, give you the good stuff, when you know their names.

I have a new job. This means I'm now working six days a week, since I still have the old job. Details? Not tonight. Tonight I want to tell you about how my job offer came to me.

Last month I was in Marin working as a prep cook. I was at George Lucas's ranch. I was dealing with meat and cutting up vegetables and pretending I knew how to make sauce. I worked with these two guys who started campaigning for me to get a job there. The head chef was filling in until the current pastry chef could find a replacement for her position and move across the hill to the other ranch. Maybe I said on day one. On day two I started getting the specifics: when would I work, what would I do. It was tempting to work making muffins in the middle of Marin County for Mister Star Wars and his people. Even though I *still* have not seen Star Wars. It would have been Monday through Friday but I would have had to get up every day at 430, and quit FH. We were still all just talking--which is usually nowhere near getting a kitchen job--when I got the phone call. Let Me Think About It. I'm Working Right Now is what I said. The rest of the afternoon I floated around plating food, breaking down the barbecue, busting out dishes, having the guys urge me again to please apply, thinking all the while about the new thing that had come my way.

When I got back to the city I called back, said yes, and quit my job the next day. I'm still in that post-relationship phase with the cupcakery. I miss certain of my coworkers. Occasionally I miss the cupcakes. I don't miss the screaming, the tension, the back and forth, the one who lied. I sort of want to visit but only at certain times. I want to hear the news. I wish them all well, certainly, and I didn't really get to say goodbye since my boss basically gave me most of my last week off. The weight of it all is still on me. While I worked there sometimes I'd wake up in the morning and my hands would be frozen. Clenched open. I'd force them to move and think about what I was doing to my body with all the piping and with only eating cupcakes and perhaps a carrot during an eight hour shift (and I didn't even pipe that much).

The new job is new and exciting. I get the feeling it's all ready to burst right open. It's giving me all this writing energy.

But I got sidetracked and what I wanted to say was how it's nice to have people to talk to. Especially when you can't stop talking--and you get going on a half hour digression from the original question so that by the time you think you might be done you're still so far away form the original point so you've got to talk your way back. So you walk around some, eat a horrid cookie, resist telling the cookie-seller that you know it's underbaked because you're a pair of bakers, dammit. Then you've walked everywhere and you're still not done talking so you go up to Bernal Heights. You point out the landmarks in the city below, map its geography. You stay up past the hour when you should reasonably be in bed and then you get up in cold darkness, bike to work, stand in the rain and buy quince and tomatoes and muscle through the exhaustion because what else is there to do.

My flash fiction is up here. The editor says "the piece sure does have atmosphere." Tell me what you think about the ending.

Oh, & hell yeah. Baseball. Postseason. Do you know what I"m talking about?

back, and back to work

I'm back...writing from work.

San Francisco is doing her best flirting with me now...it's sunny and I just bought prickly pears from Yerena. I got a ride from a friend last night and seeing the FH people wandering in at six thirty this morning was like getting back to my kitchen family.

But what I wanted to say is this: I love New York. Again.

{I never thought that I would. I'll tell you why, and what I ate, later.}

after all my crazy dreams, everything was beautiful

The Tenderloin is the perfect place to go when you feel like you're in a noir. Everyone is addicted to something and you're only addicted to coffee, and you wait for your friends and then you talk about work and what the gossip is and you are careful not to talk about women. You think about how the Tenderloin is kind of like Downtown Crossing kind of like Roxbury, and how many times you walked through the Common at night, and how familiarity breeds comfort but it's always a little weird to be queer in places like this.

SF is finally starting to feel like home, at least a little bit. I drive around on autopilot and I am beginning to have lil rituals here. I mostly love the view from my neighborhood, whenever I leave my house. I can see the whole of downtown right before I descend into it and it always feels so inviting. Like I'm about to be hugged (except, I don't really like hugging). I love that view almost as much as I love being down by the FB, with its perfect rows of palm trees in front and amazing sunrises over the Bay Bridge that almost making getting up at 430 worth it.


Was down there today for the Tuesday market today--the man at Alfieri told me I could freeze those grapes I can't stop buying. Got eggplant, cilantro, tomatoes and salad greens. Then a Flavor Heart pluot from FH that was delicious and drippy. And from Blossom Bluff some august red nectarines and tiny prune plums that I thought were gong to be wonderful but were in fact kind of mealy. I tried their peaches and I was super not impressed. Good thing my nectarine fan club is growing.

I'm super excited about going to the Berkeley Saturday market the Saturday after this one. I'm dragging my friend's ass across the bay on BART and we are going in search of the fresh zaatar that La Tercera is supposed to sell and then we are going back to SF so that I can work for a few hours, and then back to Berkeley to Chez Panisse, and I think she is really excited about getting to see it. I'm a little looking forward to it, too. There's something about paying for a nice meal yourself (or at least part of it).

And on the subject of food, I have figured out (or re-remembered) that I want to go to Prune when I am in New York. And after reading the spread on pastry chefs in Bon Appetit I kind of want to go to Room 4 Dessert (because who can resist a man tonguing an offset spatula?) or p*ong...and of course I need to put a bakery roundup together. Because certainly, if we're walking off a really nice meal, we might as well be searching out snackies for later.

I know how the story goes!

She hasn't been telling it to me very well. She's shy, a little passive, good at hiding things, and working too many doubles for something like sanity. It was meant to be a story about food and power and how you might do something you don't want to do (because you are a nice person who doesn't have the bad habits many people in this industry do, and because you are in a committed relationship you don't really realize you're fucking up by working as hard as you do) for someone you respect a lot. A story about how fame fits into a knife kit, about unintentional sex (if that isn't an oxymoron), about two good people making bad choices for different reasons.

(It's not a good story, yet. The chef is too flawed and she has no redeeming qualities. I should reread Kissing in Manhattan and see how he makes Patrick Rigg a likeable character. Because if she isn't at least a little desirable there's no story.)

What it ended up becoming, thus far: a story about how you cover up love as it's leaving. About how you might have to let go of what you never thought you could lose. It's still about the impossible choices, the recklessness of desire, but it leaves the kitchen a lot, with hands smelling of garlic, and it sleeps on the sofa conflicted between two woman. I'm relieved, because at least I know now where it wants to go, and it's just a matter of following it down those dark paths.

I'm going out in a bit. I think. If the cupcake slinger calls me. Until she does I'm going to work on finishing draft 1. Then another story to get out to the writers group next week, dios mio, I just want to take another look at it before I send it, and by that time my writing buddy should be finished with the story I want to submit to Bloom next. Writing versus the real world.

I bought more of those sensational grapes today (and I found out what kind they are). The tiny green ones (early muscat? something muscat) remind me of the most wonderful dessert wine I've ever had (Naravvo late harvest riesling). I'm taking a friend to Chez Panisse (the cafe) when she comes and I'm hoping they'll still have it on the menu then, so she can taste it, although by then the grapes will be gone, probably. Can't have everything. But will I EVER have decent plums again? Last year they had my favorites at the time when I came to SF. And that time is almost here. I'm growing impatient for my favorites.

my best private moments are in public ...

The FPFM was hopping today as usual! Cardoons, stinging nettles, purslane, lemon basil, heirloom tomatoes in all stripes and colors, figs, peppers sweet and hot. I intended to go shopping for some tomatoes and maybe some greens, lemon basil perhaps.

But then I was seduced on my way to the secret bathroom, where all the chefs and otherwise cool kids trot off to. I found a man sampling grapes, and when I asked to try one he handed me a cluster. I knew they weren't Concords but they looked similar in color. I smiled my thanks and ran off toward the bathroom, absentmindedly plucking a grape off the stem, popped it in my mouth, and came to a stop. The flavor of that grape jolted me, and I didn't move, didn't sway an inch except for the slack-jawed expression on my face of disbelief and thrill, but I felt naked in public. Had I known that grapes could taste like that? Or rather, that grapes could taste so purely and sweetly and not be the thickly fleshy, sexual kind where you work your tongue around the seed, the sort of grapes the Hudson Valley recalls though surely they are everywhere? I promised the man that I'd be back and then I continued my trek to the bathroom, pulling grapes into my mouth and almost laughing, bursting in on strangers in the bathroom, disrobing from my uniform, becoming a person again and not the white uniform.

I bought the grapes (I got them at Alfieri, and I'm planning a trip back Tuesday to see if there are more). And some Green Zebras, some lemongrass for coconut ice cream or sorbet), some spinach from the very expensive Star Route. Two things more on the FPFM: I really love the berries I've been getting from Yerena. They're organic. The blackberries last week were the best I've ever had. The strawberries are prime flavor this week. And best of all they give me heaps of berries (24 baskets between three kinds) for 44 dollars. And second, the Apple Store place in the FPFM had a large bundle of apple sticks tied together and a sign saying Faggot for Hearth or Bonfire. Technically a faggot is indeed a bundle of sticks, but cmon, I think its usage has evolved past that point and I really don't think the farmers market is the place to question your relationship to sexuality.

Cooking tonight for social events. The THINGy ice cream, for the cupcakery. And a grape-rosemary focaccia with my amazing grapes for a potluck in Oakland tomorrow night. Pictures when I can find the digital camera cable.

Body memory tonight while preparing the focaccia. It came time to stretch the dough, and so I oiled a half sheet pan and slowly got ready, not looking forward to this part. I lay my ball of dough on the half sheet pan and then I remembered how I'd done this twice a week for six months (and before that as well in another position). That it was in me, the method to stretch the dough was something my hands knew, even if my brain was nervous and out of practice. So I let them go at it, pulling and stretching and that dough just poured through my fingers out to the edges of the pan like it knew I was the master. It's baking now and I can just begin to smell it. Got to check if the ice cream base is cold. I'm sleepy. Cupcakery was intense today. I hauled my ass for three hours, busting out two 30 quart Hobart batch size buttercreams start to finish in an HOUR while depanning cupcakes, whipping frostings and then on to the decorating frenzy. Left me exhausted. I've been very tired this week. Lots of things on my mind, mostly women and work, and writing.

I want someone to come shopping at the farmers markets with me. And I want someone to share these private moments in public with. Then I get cold when people call me {well, people who haven't had the balls to call me in a year} and say I'm busy like in the middle of five different things gotta run. I want to say that the door closed, and you lost the right to be my friend when you treated me like such a stranger. And you mostly lack the cojones to question that. But is that really the right thing to do? Sometimes I miss these people but they act so much like children. I miss Somerville tonight. Cambridge. I'm on a quest for sahlab and other things appropriate to middle eastern ice creams. Tell me, Bay Area, that someone somewhere is making ice cream with sahlab. Somewhere there is dondurma, somewhere the strange ice cream with noodles that my manager wants. Because, really, are you gonna let Boston have one up on you?

local eating 2

I went down to Rainbow last week to get some supplies for locally-made pizza. Really just an excuse to play with some yeast. It was actually my first time using active dry yeast so it was a little intense and I ended up throwing out the first batch because I wasn't sure why the yeast wasn't blooming. By the second batch my internet was working enough for me to understand it really would take ten minutes, but anyway, the groceries...

organic heirloom tomato (cherokee purple)
organic scallions
bulk bread flour at last (and you'd think the Berkeley Bowl would have gotten on that long ago)...which may or may not have been local but I went with it anyway cause I've been wanting to play with breads for a while.
It was the cheese that posed the problem. I intended to just go to the FB and hit up Cowgirl but they were closed, so I wandered in the Rainbow cheese aisle for a while reading the little signs and trying to gear myself up because I don't even like cheese anyway. I try it raw and it makes me gag. I was sad and frustrated in the cheese aisle knowing there's all these little Sonoma county cheese maker people and wondering why Rainbow didn't have more of an emphasis on their products. Thinking whether I wanted to go with goat cheese, which I tend to be ambivalent toward or not like at all, or non local fresh mozzarella. I had the mozz in my hand and was going to leave, but rounding the corner of the cheese aisle I caved and went back. I picked up some Redwood Hill goat cheese that looked oozy and unappetizing and said fuck it. I'm buying heirloom tomatoes and I don't like tomatoes really. I'm making pizza dough. I ate goat cheese last week in the new Frog Hollow turnovers (summer squash, corn and goat cheese, yum!)This is the only night I have to give this project this week and I'm not pussying out in the cheese aisle.

I can't pretend anymore about food. I can't claim any relationship to vegetarianism when I eat fish and fowl and just had bacon and foie. No matter how much I love tofu. I have to own up to it now:I eat mushrooms and I eat tomatoes in things and I make grilled cheese and zaatar sandwiches and I can't speak anymore about the way that I eat in those terms that I used to, which is to say: egg whites only, all vegetables except mushrooms and olives, no tomatoes raw, no meat except for chicken, no cheese except cooked and then only some kinds, no food cold that could or should be eaten hot. No cold pizza, no cold leftovers, no picnics, no things. Oh! And no sandwiches, except pbnj.

Why? I didn't really have a reason, except "I don't like it." And still cold cheese makes me gag and un-warm food I'll choke down if I HAVE to but I won't like it. But those rules are all bent.

I moved out here for food (yes, it's ridiculous, but it's also true). I want to eat locally one time a week because it's a commitment to the culture of food and the values I try with my meager income to support. It's easy to say that you support farmers and farm markets. It's easy to tell everyone you love about the farm bill. But it isn't easy for me to go to the market once a week and put a meal together out of food that's traveled to me in an hour or less.

How, incidentally, was the pizza? The dough was ok. I used my recipe from school because it was in cups not ounces. It wasn't amazing but it was fine and I've got three balls frozen for later use. The goat cheese smelled bad in that funky cheese way. It wasn't great alone. When mixed with the tomato, the scallions and some parsley I had kicking around from the Berkeley market the week before, it tasted very good indeed.

On Saturday I stole ten minutes to shop the FB market. I zipped around in my Sox hat and got nods and smiles, picked up a few more heirloom tomatoes from Eatwell (Pineapple, Green Zebra) and some divine looking leeks and basil from Ella Bella, bread from Acme, and was back to tend the ovens without too much chaos in the Frog Hollow system. A little chaos, of course. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing my job.

Tonight I cooked up a sauce with the tomatoes and basil and some shallots and ate it with the remainders of my local vegan whole wheat pasta (sheesh).

How do you support the things you value? The things that are so entrenched within you that you don't quite see how other people don't hold them close the way you do? I've worked at farmers markets and I work for farmers now. I've worked on farms. I still hope one day to own some land in the Hudson Valley where my best farmer friend can farm and grow me some fruits and berries for pies and such, even though at this rate we'll never be able to afford to live there unless we live in the boondocks reaches of Ulster County.

Tonight while I made pretty use of the things that smelled of summer, I cut three tomato pieces and reserved them from the sauce. As a child I'm told I used to eat raw tomatoes, but never (and quite vigilantly) since, except in salsa (and just now I'm making the connection that it's rather odd to eat salsa, or pico de gallo, and not tomatoes, but if you know me then you know how I'm often odd that way). I popped them in my mouth to taste the difference. Green Zebra, you win. I'm taking you home again one day soon.

On my mind:
thyme-ginger shortbread
peaches...and rosemary? good or bad?
divine soft nectarine cake
whether the panna cotta should stay or go
what to do with rose geranium
when shall there next be good plums
why my dreams have been so intense lately
cinnamon ice cream, or oatmeal, if i can find some freezer space to chill the bowl

Keeping lots of secrets at the moment. Went back to Oakland tonight and going back again next week, I believe.

there was indeed birthday pie

There's a story in it somewhere. How Leah and I drove down Route 1 after work on Monday with vague plans to camp somewhere between Santa Cruz and Monterey, with a car full of cupcakes, one dog, and no gas. How every campsite was full until darkness hit halfway to Big Sur. How I told her of Kerouac's nighttime arrival in the book of that name and said I don't want to be driving this road in the dark. As the fog rolled in, grey upon grey, I asked the gods (and yes, I don't believe, or know what to believe) for a sign of this next year.


How we drove some time more and found an empty campsite and a store to buy groceries (hummus+stoned wheat thins for me, beer, smores stuff, tuna sandwich for Leah). How we brought the dog into the no-dog campsite hiking in darkness and me in flip flops but he wouldn't stop barking, so we stopped trying to set up the tent and hiked back out. How we ate in the car and brought beers to the hood to watch more shooting stars than I've ever seen before. How I slept in the car and Leah slept on the car and we woke five hours later bleary eyed, starving, and stumbled up the road to a diner where I ordered not one but two breakfasts (huevos rancheros, homemade cinnamon bun) and the coffee was good.

How I wanted to go to the aquarium but instead we went wading in the cold and dark blue waters with sea anemones and otters.




How that entire day we kept stumbling into scenes of freakish beauty. How I had so many things to think about, but found the time to get away and stop thinking so much about everything, but only about the important things.

How there was, after all, birthday pie, and strawberry picking in fields that kissed the sky.


Swanton's berry farm just happened to be on our journey home, so we picked strawberries, which Leah had never done before, and bought a big ollallieberry birthday pie for me.

How we ate sweet sweet strawberry shortcake, but it wasn't as good as mine at the FB.


How we arrived back to SF and didn't' get to go to Aziza. But had marvelous beauty, deep fog, and undertones of fiction I'd written when moving to the Bay was just a dream in my writer's mind.

That's the sort of story I want to write about food. A story about how food is sustenance when you're starving and haven't eaten in 24 hours, but then again food is a sign from above, and a sign you're doing something right {for once}, how food is a gift you give someone else, a memory, a key. I will write the story of that trip south. I may have been tasked to write it in longhand, in the shadow of the Maritime Museum down by Ghirardelli Square. In the place where my characters would have fished.

It was a very literary trip, as well.Good for the mind.

Things are afoot but no time to explain.

local eating part 1

Wow. To my newest reader and oldest friend {like, ever, seriously}, welcome! Zaatar, wicked addictive, so tell me where do you get yours and what do you do with it? I live in California now...my accent blends right in.

My oldest friend and I used to make cookies at my house, and answer the phone as if we were the only bakery we knew in the next town over {Quincy} making cookie orders for people. And we used to write books together too. And here I am, still baking and still writing, though not as much {of the latter} as I should be doing. Holding off for one more week until the visitors leave.

Today my mother and I went to the Tuesday Berkeley market and got fresh whole wheat pasta made with Vital Vittles flour, crimini mushrooms from the mushroom people, and a whole of of vegetables (summer squash, zucchini, salad greens, tomatoes, shallots, parsley and garlic) from the farmers (including Dirty Girl and Full Belly, though I'm not sure who else because we were in a foodie haze).

We were actually looking for that new heartthrob of mine, lemon verbena. In the July Gourmet there's a special section on ice cream and it features lemon verbena, and my mother became enamored with the idea of making lemon verbena ice cream...which of course I supported because lemon verbena is my new reason for getting up in the morning, and because this meant I'd have some birthday ice cream, which is half of the ice cream + pie equation. So after we stalked the market unsuccessfully for lemon verbena, I discovered she actually thought we were looking only for verbena leaves to blend with lemon flavored ice cream! Which made sense, after all, because she was seriously after this taste experience she'd never encountered and I wasn't sure how to react to that. How do you decide to want something you've never had? How does the initial obsession take root, and is it really worth the bother? Like foie, for me, or now, like the idea of making violet ice cream (which in reality would probably not taste like much of anything at all unless mixed with other ingredients, or would probably just taste flowery in that lavender sort of way, but which right now has got me craving).

After the veggie explosion, we went to the Berkeley Bowl for some Acme bread, morel mushrooms and more unsuccesful attempts to get some lemon verbena (the produce guy we asked had actually never HEARD of it and wanted to know if it was the same as lemon thyme).

We made a salad with the salad greens, shallots, parsley and carrots from an earlier Berkeley market trip and used some of that Stonehouse aged Balsamic and olive oil to dress it...their Balsamic doesn't have that syrupy pine tree taste that,come to think of it, mastic has. So I like it. Then we sauteed up the veggies, added some red wine from an earlier Napa trip and read about the farm bill while we waited for the whole thing to come together. It was tasty. Not very adventurous or unusual, but local and quite seasonal and easy.

Ici this afternoon was crowded. I got one scoop of the Santa Rosa plum sorbet and a scoop of the rose pistachio. The pistachios were candied, which was a nice touch, and the ice cream was very much rosewater...but were there actual roses, and if not, what made it pink? That one evoked a comparison, of course, to the Oleana days and the mastic ice cream, and the nougat glace. The Santa Rosa plum sorbet was a little tart, perfectly plummish, and the ideal consistency. The kind of sorbet I am never able to make myself. I made my happy ice cream eating face for a very long time, on the way there, and on the way home. I think I'm beginning to accept that ice cream is my thing. Perhaps at times I wish chocolate were my thing, or cakes (and I always thought cakes were more my thing than they seem to be),but I'm okay with it. Cookies are not my thing. Muffins, no. Pie, sort of,although fruit is not my thing. Ice cream, though? It always inspires.

my mother used to call it "piggy meat"

Yeah that was me this morning at Cafe Flore. EATING BACON. just a bite, but oh, I'm slipping, I'm not me anymore, I'm down the rabbit hole.



There was SO MUCH foodie gossip at the cookout last night in an East Bay suburb. FB gossip too. My boss gave me some more background information on market stuff, the Slow Food fight was discussed, chef ventures rated, farmers markets in many towns discussed. We had many offers, for instant reservations at Quince, job hookups for me at ice cream joints, vacations, dinners, whatnot. Wild times were had.

It was really great to see the family of a dear family friend, which so happens to include my boss (whom I never see) and her husband. And it made me want to be the next Jonathan Franzen so I could write about how an interest seeps its way through one generation of a family, how its roots grow. How the children marry cattle farmers and fruit farmers and become the sort of people who covet reservations at The French Laundry, how the generation after that becomes chefs and bakers and coffee-makers. My own family is fairly small, and no one is quite sure where I got my passion for sweet things or voracious appetite for bookishness.

I'm not doing a very good job of keeping out of the East Bay. Chez Panisse two nights ago (upstairs, this time). Rocket salad with pickled onions and warm figs on toast. Morel ravioli in pea sauce. Warm fig and raspberry tart with honey ice cream (the most well matched flavors I've had in a long time in dessert, though it could just be I'm in a figgy mood). Tomorrow we're walking cutie pie at the Albany shoreline, going to the Tuesday market, hitting up the Berkeley Bowl and stopping by Ici so we can compare it to Bi Rite. In other words, doing all the day off things I normally do.

Bi Rite tonight was better than the Bi Rite we had at work (honey lavender, salted caramel, cookies n cream, all with those Michael Recchiuti fleur de sel chocolate things). The honey lavender was too much lavender for my taste. And I don't like honey ice cream unless it's that amazing honey lavender candied pistachio ice cream I made for my Chez Panisse dinner party. And their salted caramel ice cream is not Claudia Fleming's. Ici, however, does not inspire me to make comparisons to recipes I prefer. It only inspires me to eat ice cream and lots of it. Tonight, though, was a banana split with vanilla ice cream, caramelized bananas, hot fudge sauce, lightly whipped cream and walnuts, made slowly and carefully just for me!

It's my birthday soon and I really want some homemade pie and ice cream. Perhaps the rosewater mastic ice cream, or sweet corn, or oatmeal to go with something yummy and fruit. However I don't actually think I'll have time to make myself something for candle-wishing and growing older. I may very well be in Santa Cruz looking for the most perfect beach ever or in Monterrey communing with the fish

(my last birthday actually was also spent at an aquarium and, ahem, if you were with my on the last birthday, this one is sure going to be better). Should we make ice cream next week? If so what kind? Pie? Or would you rather just hit up my favorite spots, go zaatar tasting and remember those perfect desserts?

a damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw

...except it wasn't a dulcimer, it was a Leica. And she gave it to me.

And since then I've been seeing things differently.

The size of the chocolate chunks in the scones has changed, and so has the color of the cherries. The sugar feels like salt in my hands, its grains square.

Back in the city, but still not really around.

notes on the market

The FB was crazy on Saturday! Crazy with crying babies, crazy with too many people shuffling through the halls, crazy, just...crazy.

The smiling woman from Knoll Farms hurries over and hands me top-secret a large plastic bagged brimming with my lemon verbena. I don't know what you guys are going to do with it she said. But it just starts to go after you cut it
Not ten minutes later she came by to make sure it was all right and since I'd only chucked it into the fridge without looking I went to go verify that it was perfect and it was.

In the morning I went with my manager to get eggs and berries. Standing in my still-spotless chef's coat in the calm between 7 and 8, getting eggs from the guys at Petaluma and raspberries from Yerena's, blackberries from someone else because they're neighbors of our farmers. All of us hunkered down and shooting furtive, smiling glances, having ingested one cup at least of coffee and risen in the darkness in Brentwood or Watsonville or Winters or plain old Oakland. Walking down the aisle toward the safety of the buildings (lemon meringue tarts half-=decorated and un-torched inside) a woman calls out to me, to us What are you going to do with all those eggs?

What indeed? "Raspberries: would have seemed a more logical choices. Lots of things I told her. But right them my manager wanted to throw them at people and so did I. People who don't understand that half a case of eggs is kinda heavy and definitely fragile especially when resting on half a flat of berries, and when you're just a girl who's got no muscles even though she throws her weight around a kitchen, well...dios mio.

Inside toss berries in fridge, go back to work. Work like a maniac, like a dog, work in a trance. Finish up one item (lemon tartlettes with raspberries on top, lemon meringue, chocolate souffle, linzer cookies, peach leaf panna cotta) and move the next thing one step along. It helps to see the big picture, to think if I chop all the strawberries now I can let some macerate in the lavender cream and some macerate with the lovely lemon verbena and then I'll be done with strawberries and can move on to filling the fresh fruit tarts, get those out, bake lavender tarts, whip cream for shortcakes.

Shortcakes. Still working on the recipe. Saturday I used the Frog Hollow cream scones since I'd run out of time Friday to make the biscuit recipe I'd planned on trying, and though I'd liked them before with cream scones this time I was not enthused. Last week's David Lebovitz biscuits would have been perfect with BBQ, but were too crisp and savory and just wrong. Settling on the mix of flours: AP, cake, cornmeal. Still like my totally all-wrong attempt at theeggbeater biscuits best so far, but at least I'm starting to understand why.

But in the middle of all this normal sounding plating and making and baking frozen ham n cheese turnovers is the market, the market. Lines out the door and there may be a breeze out there but it's getting kinda hot in the kitchen. I'd get more coffee but I can't get through and when I go out to bring a plate of something just finished and survey the damage I'm drawn to the breeze outside, the market. People are selling things I want and I'm stuck in here and it's hard to hold on to perspective when you're sweating and you haven't had a proper meal in a couple days, you only got four hours of sleep in the first place, and the caffeine you jacked yourself up with for the morning bake is wearing off plus you have to pee. Only you can't leave.

It was early in the market by the time we got both ovens cranked up to 400 spitting out frozen pastries. The asst. manager came over apologetic and sleepy with a list of new things to bake and I was mincing something for shortcakes. The girl bent to sniff my cutting board-apricot pits, strawberry tops and scone crumbs--to ask what IS that?

l e m o n v e r b e n a , clearly. Or should I say my new favorite thing? I only used a tiny sprig but it made the shortcakes taste so so good. And I got the lemon verbena bag out and made the girl sniff it. Cmon just stick your head in the bag. Heaven, Heaven in a bag. Knoll Farms should visit me every week.

Finally escaped to pee for just a minute, tripping down the hallways slightly dirty from roughing up blackberries, up the steps, through the people, back downstairs to negotiate the complications of buying things from the FB market or who gives you discounts and who does not, tried to find out how much a former friend's mission figs were, was treated rudely, back into the building in time to flip the pastries over, back to the grind. Turn, switch, repeat, try to ignore callings of food, hunger, down some water even though caffeine is wanted but it's too hot. Cranky people trying to take away our only chair. So they can sit in it. In the crowded hallway outside Boulette's don't I pleaded. We'll never get it back Eggs we whisper, eggs, and we get the asst. manager on our side, who can we egg and when? where? within reason? are we too mean? can we get fired, well what are we doing wrong we're just talking? but would you want your friendly farm market people to be like us whispering eggs eggs while whipping your cream, mauling stone fruit with dull dull knives that have never been kissed by a sharpening stone, carrying out pastries that make you speak in a hushed voice WHAT is THAT. you need to know yes you do. Sweet upside down cakes glistening like stained glass windows. And of course the babycakes made their debut--I never thought I'd be the kind of person making something called a babycake but I am and it's so cute and so what I want to do and I need to tell all about it but first I want the picture to show it off properly

. Enough to say it's vanilla with roasted apricot and the vanilla cake is Hi Rise Renee's which means the best damn teacake/pound cake you ever tasted so good you'd beat up schoolkids waiting for the bus just to use their lunch money for a piece from the end with the crust and all the syrup soaked in. So good you'd turn shifts in someone's kitchen just for a chance to steal that recipe, only you don't have to because the best chef you know up and gives it to you, she's so generous. So all that with roasted apricots (which need to be darker. earthier. winier. sexier. ) and a crunchy caramel glaze that shines and beckons you all sweet and monochromatic and makes your mouth wonder what is under there and how is it going to feel, yes all that in the size of a cupcake now we're talking hot DAMN why are there only ten of them really nine. Not quite perfect. But the way the apricot slides under the caramel buoyed by the cake, well, it's worth it.

But the market all the while children screaming now and you're tired, still hungry, realize you did not make custard base yesterday and you have to make it bake the bread pudding and you've still got four hours worth of work across town plus you'd really like some food and then there's a last round of pastries for the oven. Remember the bag of Knoll farms lemon verbena when your manager gets loopy and take it out. Make her hold her head in the bag. Sniff. Breathe deeply. This really works. The lemon verbena is magic and you remember to put it in the freezer because it's all you've got time to do but really you're thinking now what else can I do with this magic? Pastries in the oven. Bread pudding in the oven. Meanwhile you forget, you all forget, that you're in an open kitchen and all those people can see you. S l a p the counter with your wet rag cause the child's been crying fifteen minutes, go in the back and eat a snack, whatever you can find. Girls approach you and point to peaches asking if they're your nectarines and you correct them, hustle out to see what's needed, what is done, and then somehow it's all over again.

The logistics of flan, better apricots, making it through another weekend of doubles and falling asleep at 8 pm dreaming of morels and other mushrooms for a past a dinner and going to a party at the house of one of your crushes, having a very intense phone conversation with a friend when the crush stepped into the room. When you wake try to remember what really happened (none of it), where you have to be and when, resolve tonight to make your bed because you haven't put the clean sheets on it in almost a week and you're getting cold sleeping on the comforter.

As you are between places, remember how alive you feel doing this work and being here and how hard you worked to come here and how you are doing exactly what you hoped beyond hope would be your most longed-for job situation, and how the craziness of it all is always okay and the products make it through. Feel more alive that you have in a really long time (is it the writers group, the weather, the crushes, the fact you're moving to SF very very soon, what is it, if is it at all important to know?)




And Happy Pride. My coworker recalls his first pride parade in the late seventies in St. Louis MO. Some of the marchers, and some of the participants, were wearing paper bags over their head. To let their bodies count but to not be seen. And while I and my queer colleagues were working all weekend long, I'm so thankful for the now (we *did* get to educate our colleague on the symbolism of the pink triangle so some pro-pride work was accomplished at the cupcakery today). Of course there's still some uphill fighting left to do, but I"m always spoiling for a fight. Wouldn't be a lil punk baker otherwise.