New Acquisitions

These are 2 new books I just bought. Time to get out and start exploring, I think.

60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of SF: I had a version of the 60 Hikes book for Austin, and I liked it, but it looks as if the hikes around here mostly beat the pants of the hikes near Austin (if only because the weather is much more cooperative). Mountains! Lakes! Mountain Lakes! Waterfalls! Mountain Lakes and Waterfalls! Oceans! Vineyards! This one divides the hikes up into useful categories like Geographical Area, Dog-friendly, Accessible by Public Transportation, Waterfalls, etc. It’s how I found out I can go out and hike Angel Island in the Bay, and how I suspect I’m going to like late winter and early spring flowers.

The Slow Food Guide to San Francisco one isn’t exactly all slow food, but it indicates what is, and it is a good start on the area if you’re a newbie and a wee bit picky about your food and where it comes from, like I am. The SF food scene is just bewilderingly large. I doubt it is very illuminating for old timers. It has everything from restaurants to grocery stores to farmer’s markets to farms themselves. I was pleased to see I’ve already figured out a lot of good stuff. I’m a good food researcher!

I’ve also been thumbing through The Wine Lover’s Cookbook lately. I have to do the magical vegetarian transformation with many recipes, but the food I’ve had from it is good. My lovely cousin Cindy and her husband who live here gave us a copy and well, it’s not as if I’m going to turn down a book on how best to pair food with wine! Since I live within shouting distance of Marin County, I figure it’s not long until I start haunting vineyards, right? I’ve already been to three with Jeff and my brother …

See everyone tomorrow … I seem to have gotten slightly sick, and am eagerly anticipating an 8 pm bedtime. Ow.

Goodnight

Looking out over San Francisco Bay at sunset, coming back from hiking in Tilden Park in the hills above Berkeley. I live somewhere in the area below. Maybe I’ll hike the island in the bay next? That’s Angel Island.

Busy weekend. Went to a concert last night, hiking today. Made three pots of soup, a Mediterranean pie and some chocolate-cranberry-oatmeal cookies – won’t have to cook much this week! Worked on getting my hexagon sets up from sets of 16 to sets of 20. Bought a pattern for my yarn. Quiet now. Hope everyone has had a good weekend too .

Poor decisions, food and other tales

I don’t know how this is going to work out, but I’ve decided to do NaBloPoMo(Fo) again. See? Poor decisions. However, I said yes because it’s kind of a tradition on my small corner of the internet, so I’m going to make an effort to do it again. Even though I’m less than an hour from missing day 1.

Now for food matters. I’ll start by saying that I didn’t I realize until I got here that this is such a spectacularly good place for food. Which means I didn’t realize that my first month living here would turn me into a lunatic.

It’s not just that it would take months to go to all the farmer’s markets around here, but also that the area borders significant farming areas: the San Joaquin valley and the Pacific coast. Berkeley is the home of Alice Waters, who is one of the most influential people in the local food (and artisan food) movement. She’s also the VP of Slow Food USA, which is rather active here. Michael Pollan of The Omnivore’s Dilemma fame lives here too, and teaches at Berkeley. North Berkeley is home to an area called the “Gourmet Ghetto,” quite appropriately named. Berkeley’s city council and school district have food policies that reflect a local + healthy + sustainable goal as well. Most of the restaurants I’ve looked at or been to here talk about sourcing their ingredients from local, organic farms, as if they couldn’t get clientele if they didn’t. Maybe they can’t.

What that mostly means is that in the last month or so I’ve had a really good time with dinner. I’ve managed to buy all my produce from local markets, entirely organic local produce. Often for cheap (if you shop at the end of the day you can get great deals). I always wanted to do that, but it was difficult to do in Austin. Do you know people avoid Whole Foods here because they don’t sell enough local produce? Anyway, it turns out that when I am faced with farmer’s market vegetables all the time it sends me into a total recipe-and-cooking frenzy. I visited upon myself a month of such exhaustive cooking that I ended up getting tired and burning the grilled cheese at the end. I used very few short cuts (pasta and a couple of cans of canned beans), no boxed or frozen food, just the power of insanity.

• Fried Rice and Egg Drop Soup (I can only have this soup now if I make it. Chicken broth boo).
• Kung Pao tofu and egg rolls (ancient recipes I have).
• Quinoa cakes with ragu and mozzarella and chopped apple salad (these were a new hit, the salad is work-intensive).
• The dish in the pictures: Mediterranean veggie-cheese pie (fabulous crust idea for this quiche-ish dish, great dill flavor, fairly easy) and bulghur, garbanzo, etc. salad (simple, a favorite of mine).
• Tofu rigatoni casserole (an excellent lasagna substitute, not as heavy with a great use of tofu).
• Polenta and black bean casserole (I edited the recipe heavily – too heavy, too much corn/starch).
• White Bean and Vegetable Cassoulet (a decent but boring cassoulet interpretation) and warm sweet potato salad with chutney (excellent, on the sour side, good for those of us who like sour German potato salad).
• I made the Cassoulet and some White Bean and Pasta Soup (very good) with this sage-garlic cannellini recipe.
• I also madea turban squash and white bean soup with those beans, but I made that recipe up. Turban squashes … meh. I think they’re nicer to look at than try to cook, but I wanted to try.
• My old standby Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato soup, always good.
• Some lovely warming jalapeno chili with mexican corn bread. This is the earliest in the year I’ve ever made chili (it’s cold here!).
• Then later on my second batch of cannellini I made white chili and more mexican corn bread (mmmm).
• I cooked a Brussels Sprouts and Caramelized Onion Hash with a Celebration Roast. That brussels sprouts recipe is very good and sweet but holy cow it’s fussy.
• Made a random curry one night with spinach and paneer and baked some spicy chips from lavash bread. I like making curry at home because I’m somewhat allergic to coconut milk.
• Avocado, cheddar and chipotle grilled cheese sandwiches (this is me getting tired, but they’re tasty), a version of an NPR recipe.
• White pizza with spinach, mushrooms, onions, roasted potatoes and balsamic reduction (got my wind back a bit). The idea for this came from a specialty pizza I had at House Pizzeria in Austin, which of course I can’t get again!

So … that’s about 24 meals there, give or take. At some point I also turned chili into Frito Pie and made veggie burgers and sweet potato fries. It really was an epic month of cooking, and I tried a lot of new recipes. I’d also like to note, to all the people who wonder what there possibly is to eat if you don’t eat meat – HA. HA. There’s plenty! My goal was to make food that had decent proportions of protein, veggies and starch, so I did things like substitute a quinoa/kamut pasta in the white bean soup for regular pasta. I’ve found that if I shop in the gluten-free foods I can find interesting protein-rich substitutes for starches. It’s all mostly healthy, except for those times I crave Frito Pie or stuffed potato skins or something.

My goal for November is to not kill myself again, but also come up with a good set of recipes like this so that I can continue this trend. I’m not sure how long the growing season is here, but given that the weather is pretty much always the same, I’m thinking it’s really long. There are still apples on trees in my neighborhood and grapes on the vines. I even saw local strawberries the other day. If we weren’t nearing a water crisis the amount of produce would probably be even more staggering.

Well, not a bad first NaBloPoMo entry. We shall see if this turns out to be like the cooking extravaganza of last month – a decent idea until you try to actually execute it!