Life Begins at 30

Great Pasta Sauce

Organic Style Magazine had a tomato sauce taste test this month. The first sauce I have purchased off the list is the Seeds of Change Three Cheese Marinara. I just had it for lunch and it is excellent! I was a bit wary because I am so sensitive to sweetness in a sauce - I can't stand it. But this has a small amount of cane juice, and it only seems to be enough to balance out the acidity. The cheese in here is noticeable and gives the tomato sauce a good body. And I appreciate that there are actual tomato chunks in the sauce - it's not just a puree. Highly recommended!

Rancho Gordo

One of my favorite things about going to the Marin Civic Center Farmer's Market is the Rancho Gordo booth. First of all, other vendors should take a lesson from Steve Sando's style of branding. He runs his booth like it should be run - visually attractive, and a great logo that is on all his products.

But even without this eye candy, shoppers are attracted to his wares. Beautiful, heirloom beans that are wonderful tasting and unique. Pozole, fresh tortillas, tomatoes, espazote, chile peppers, tomatillos -- anything you would want for a healthy Mexican meal. I am so enchanted with this company. Hoping that he will be able to open a booth at the San Francisco Farmer's Market soon - it would be a great fit. Until then, here's his market schedule.

Bumpy flight

Flew into a storm today coming home from So Cal.

Animation credit: Jason

This just can't be true ...

New York Daily News - Daily Dish & Gossip

Who could write this stuff? Gotta love that Jessica Simpson. According to The Washington Post, the ditzy star of MTV's hit reality show "Newlyweds" found herself face to face with Cabinet official Gale Norton during a White House tour on Sunday. When Simpson was introduced to President Bush's Secretary of the Interior, she eagerly told Norton: "You've done a nice job decorating the White House."

Sunday Breakfast

Breakfast this morning was prepared from ingredients purchased at the farmer's market yesterday.

Tiny, very peppery arugula. Best I had eaten in a long time. Made with a quick dressing of 2 tablespoons olive oil, one tablespoon minced green garlic, dash of salt. Lightly dressed.

Scrambled eggs, naked and fresh. Purchased yesterday, these eggs don't need anything to help boost their delicious egg flavor. I made these with 1 egg: 1 egg white, butter in the pan. That's it.

Primavera tortillas are a treat I have enjoyed since living in the bay area. Very thick and handmade, some of the tortillas have ingredients mixed into the masa. The tortillas we had this morning were cotija cheese and green chile. I shied away from these tortillas at first because they are PRICEY ($2.99 for 6! Please no one tell grandma.) until I realized that they are so dense you can't eat much more than one per sitting. Salsa from the same Primavera folks.

Under the Weather: Honey-Lemon Ginger Tea

I have had a cold all week and found the recipe for one old remedy that I have used for years. It's very simple & very soothing.

Honey-Lemon Ginger Tea

one 2 1/2 - inch piece ginger, halved lengthwise, and cut crosswise into 1/4 - inch thick slices
juice of 1 large lemon
2-4 tablespoons honey

Place the ginger and 4 cups cold water in a teapot or saucepan, cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Strain the tea, reserving the ginger for use another time. Add the lemon juice and honey to taste. Reheat and serve hot.

from 3 Bowls - Vegetarian Recipes from an American Zen Buddhist Monastery
by Seppo Ed Farrey with Myochi Nancy O'Hara

Food Fighter

It started with a peach. Not just any peach but a Frog Hollow Farm peach, coaxed into its fullness by the rich loam of the Sacramento River Delta. A golden peach suffused with a lover's blush, a hint of erotic give at the cleft, its juice sliding down the chin at the gentlest pressure -- it was a peach that tastes the way peaches once did, the way they should. It was the peach with which Alice Waters, the founder of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, the chef who revolutionized American fine dining, imagined she would transform children's lives ... It didn't quite work out that way. ''They wouldn't touch the peaches,'' Waters recalled. ''They said they were furry.''

Great article in the NY Times this weekend about Alice Waters and her Edible Schoolyard project.

Friday Ponderings

I'm thinking ...

that I am darn glad it's Friday, that I want to be outside this weekend, that I really want to go to the Wizard of Oz singalong at the Castro Theatre (and that there's no way Jason will go with me)

I'm happy ...

that the sun is shining, that I get to see an old friend tomorrow, that I have a bottle of Maredsous Belgian Ale in the refrigerator

I'm laughing ...

at this article, where a boy had to be given the heimlich maneuver by his classmate on the school bus because he shoved a whole sandwich in his mouth in order to get around the "no food and drinks" rule.

Best movie I watched this week ...

Pieces of April on DVD

Best TV Show I watched this week ...

Without a Trace, CBS

Looking forward to ...

Putting together an herb garden! I finally got a location for a planter ...

Blog find of the week ...

101 Cookbooks (Thanks Jeanne!)

Meal of the week ...

Pan Roasted Chicken with Sage and Vermouth Sauce (Cooks Illustrated recipe), steamed spinach, and couscous with pine nuts and dried cranberries. Made by yours truly. Dinner at home with Jason last night.

My picture of the day ...

From the Santa Cruz Farmer's Market a few weeks ago.

Something I've been thinking about

"Though all polls show that only a minority are for gay marriage, that minority is still substantially larger than the one that approved of interracial marriage in 1968, a year after the Supreme Court made such marriages legal."

New York Times, "The Joy of Gay Marriage", 2/29/2004

Loving art of spanking the woman you love?

On this blog I have the ability to check the statistics -- how many people look at the blog, what search engine they use, and what they type into the search engine in order to find me. I get a lot of hits from people typing in "Nick and Jessica" for this post or from "McDonald's I'm Loving It" from this post (I think the "I'm Loving" part comes from one of the blog columns).

But today was the funniest I have seen -- Someone searched "The loving art of spanking the woman you love". Somehow Yahoo! search lists me as #27, due to a strange conglomeration of posts all together (Including the fact I was talking about "Spanking fresh coffee beans" in this post).

At the Airport

When I met Jason, I started doing something I had never done before: hanging out at the airport. At first, I went with him because I wanted to seem like the cool chick who could enjoy his love of planes.

I initially wasn't sure of the attraction -- I understood that it was something he enjoyed, but I didn't see how watching loud noisy planes was that much fun.

And then something happened. I would go to the airport and breathe. And watch. And enjoy. You will often find us there on a Sunday afternoon -- Jason listening to the radio and watching the planes, me reading the Sunday NY Times.

"Look at that one heading right toward us!" he'll say.

"Oh cool - that's a 777 right?"

"No - 747 - it's the only one with a hump" he says for the 1 millionth time.

It's not that I am not interested in the types of planes, it's just that there's so much there to pay attention to.

I constantly watch the birds in the marsh, diving and creating amazing parallels with the planes. Tons of people come hang out in the same area, to do the same thing -- take a walk, or just sit and watch. Parents bring their children and let them run around while they steal a couple quiet moments together. People walk their dogs. Everyone gasps as the large planes take off - wonder at the miracle of flight.

On the busy days, there are planes coming and going on a constant basis. On the not so busy days, I just enjoy the quiet.

Whatever you do, don't tell Jason that I like it. I still get "points" when I go with him because he thinks he is dragging me there!

We saw Chippy!

My sister was in town yesterday and we woke up and drove to Tiburon -- it was a sunny (if cold) day and I wanted to take advantage of the fact that it wasn't raining. After breakfast, we drove out toward Point Bonita in the Marin Headlands -- last time we had been there was on my birthday. It was freezing so our sightseeing consisted of driving a mile, hopping out of the car, looking for a minute or two and running back to the car. Repeat a few times and you have a good idea of what the trip was like.

One stop we made was at the Marine Mammal Center - well known in the Bay Area for their rescue efforts. They are the folks that you call when you see a marine animal in peril. Their goal is to rehabilitate and return to the wild. They don't keep the animals, and only turn them over to zoos and theme parks when there is no hope of their survival in the wild.

It is a very cool place. We saw four animals there yesterday -- including some very loud baby elephant seals that had been abandoned by their mothers. The Marine Mammal Center was working on getting them to full weight so that they could be sent out to live their lives in the wild.

But the star of the Marine Mammal Center right now is Chippy the Sea Lion -- who made news headlines when he swam up the river and very very far away from home. It was later discovered that he had a bullet lodged in his head and he is recuperating at the MMC -- and expected to be sent on his way pretty soon. We only saw him from afar -- sea lions, apparently, take very quickly to humans so the MMC keeps them away from the public in order to keep them wild and easily transition them back to their natural habitat.