Life Begins at 30

Great Nike Ad

Check out this great Lance Armstrong ad by Nike. (Thanks to Norlinda for pointing it out!)

Technical Difficulties

Remember netiquette, and how we all paid close attention to the rules of email when we first all became net-savvy? I really believe that we need to adopt and agree to a new set of rules when it comes to our new tech toys. Here are some to start it off.

1. Don't update your old blog posts every five minutes. It just sets off my blog notifiers, and I get annoyed when I go check and find an old post.

2. Don't cut and paste long articles, or political tirades into my instant messenger, especially when they are completely off topic. I will happily read them in my own time if you use email instead of instant messenger.

3. When beginning an instant messenger chat, ask me if I have a minute before getting into a big conversation ... work or personal. Sometimes it takes those of us over thirty a minute to switch our slow gears.

4. Don't answer your cell phone while you are in the middle of something (a store transaction, a meal, a meeting, peeing), and then make me feel guilty that it's a bad time. The magic of cell phones is that you can choose to answer them or not ... it is not a requirement that you answer them at all times (unless your initials are JSM).

5. Please don't use your cell phone when you are checking out of a store, or being helped by someone at a fruit stand, department store, supermarket, or anything of the sort. It's degrading and just really rude to the human beings that you are dealing with.

Anyone have any additional tech-related annoyances lately?

Leftovers

I have a bunch of "leftover" pictures from the past few weeks that don't exactly fit into any specific categories. Here are the pics that I am enjoying:

This is a picture of the Bay Bridge that I shot one day coming into SF.

Here's Alcatraz on that same day. The pelicans are in town, and I never tire of watching their formations in the bay. You can see them here in the top left.

This is just a funny sticker we found on the street. Remember The Littles? Maybe it's a sign for them not to enter this small porthole.

This is my grandmother. She's still going at 84. She just renewed her driver's license and asked me what I am doing in 2009, when she needs to renew again.

Here's grandpa. He's 83.

Here's grandpa's tomato plant that is taking over the world. It was his idea to plant it, but my grandmother is the one who takes care of it.

San Francisco rooftop that was being re-tarred.

Here's my feet.

Mom's Caesar Salad on Father's Day

Went to Southern California this week, and had father's day with my family. We had an outdoor barbecue and my mom made a caesar salad. She prepped it tableside, and you can see the pictures of her preparation here. The recipe that she has been using lately is based on Melinda Lee's Classic Caesar Salad recipe -- I would highly recommend it.

You can tell that I am a chip off the old block when it comes to cooking. Although she doesn't tend to take pictures of everything she eats, she definitely gets an A for presentation here.

Hard Addictions: 24

A couple weeks ago, I posted discussing "Soft Addictions". Well, I didn't really know what one of my not-so-soft addictions were until this week when I sat down to watch the last four episodes of 24, season 2 and realized that the disk I received from Netflix was broken. Yup, hard addiction.

(I tried to find an image for this post but was so worried about finding out what happens on the show that I had to stop my search)

The Polycultural Farm

On Sunday, I took a farm tour that was sponsored by CUESA. The theme of the tour was the "Polycultural Farm" -- focusing on farms that grow a multitude of different crops, and are bucking the national trend of one or two crops per farm.

We visited two farms - Highland Hills Farm run by Ted Fuller and Eatwell Farms run by Nigel Walker.

Highland Hills is a livestock farm specializing in heritage breeds. Ted raises grass-fed highland hills cattle, and also has some pigs, turkeys, goats, and lambs. One of the very cool things about Ted's farm is that he is continually talking to his neighbors and convincing them to let his cattle graze on their land. Everything that Ted is doing runs completely counter to the corporate-feedlot method of raising livestock. His cows are never put on a feedlot, they breed like cows are supposed to breed instead of via artificial insemination, give birth on their own rather than needing aid because their overbred traits cause problems in birth, and have tons of room where they wander around and graze. When we were there, most of the cows were seeking shade and were under a large grove of trees relaxing and grazing.

Eatwell Farms is the polycultural farm to the max. Nigel Walker grows so many different types of crops that he loses count. When he spoke to some people about crop insurance a couple of years ago, they decided that his farm insures itself -- there are enough crops that whenever one fails, there are others to take it's place. Many Bay Area people know Nigel for his "Tomato Wonderland" of organic heirloom tomatoes at farmers' markets throughout the summer, or his lavender.

Both of these farmers were amazingly generous with their time, and so patient with the millions of questions that we threw at them. If you read this blog regularly, you can probably imagine how excited I was to be able to ask unlimited questions to the farmers. I see them all the time at the Farmer's Market, but this gave me a forum where I felt comfortable asking and asking and asking.

When I got home it was a long time before I even gave Jason a brief report because I didn't know where to start with telling him what I saw. All in all, it was a fantastic day.

View photos of the farm tour here.

The Price of Cherries

It's cherry season in California.  Which means that in San Francisco at the peak of the season, I can buy cherries at any price point between 59 cents and $6 a pound. So, why such a huge difference in the prices of cherries? And does price have anything to do with taste? And if it does, where should I go for the best tasting, largest, plumpest California cherries? 

I already knew that there is always some price variance in produce, dependent on the farmer, the locale of the fruit, the varietal, and the farming methods — organic vs. conventional, how farmers treat workers, and other variables. 

But the TENfold difference seemed very out of whack.

And apparently others thought so too.  This year, more than ever, I've heard many people talking about the price of cherries. This thread on Chowhound shows the great difference of opinions.

So I set out to find some answers.  I asked a lot of questions of people associated with cherry crops in one way or another, and did some online reasearch. And unfortunately I still don't have an official, singular answer to my cherry questions.

But here's what I did find.

1)  Cherry crops are finicky.  They have a very short growing season, and as one farmer put it, "one rain at the wrong time can wipe out the whole crop."  My understanding is that this year has been one of the better years of the past few.  This explains the high prices, but doesn't explain the price difference.

2) The Japanese love cherries.  An average of 30% to 40% of our California cherries are shipped off to Japan every year.  And these are no regular cherries — they are the top of the crop, the biggest and the best conventional cherries that we have to offer (see cherry sizing standards here). The Japanese are willing to pay big bucks for them — enough bucks to be able to demand — and get — our best.  While the U.S. markets will pay an average price of $36 per box wholesale for California cherries, Japan will pay an average of $80 (before shipping costs)!

What happens to all the cherries that don't go to Japan? The bottom of the barrel looks-wise end up as seconds in small markets throughout the City where we purchase them for less than a dollar.

These are usually the cherries with funny formations, or that look a little less than stellar.  The taste of these vs. the top-of-the-line are debatable.  Many people are fine with these, while others contend that the local organic cherries taste better.

3) Exporting cherries excludes organic farming. While the large farms participate in exporting, the local organic farms don't.  From what I could figure out, Japan won't allow the organic cherries into the country — they are very concerned about importing parasites.  So the organic and no-spray farmers sell the full spectrum of their cherries at the farmer's marketw.  When buying the cherries that are over $3 at the market, you are usually purchasing the really beautiful cherries as well as the ones that are more middle of the road.  You can pick out the not-so-great ones, or if you're lucky the farmer ends up doing that for you.

4) People are dedicated to their cherry varietal.  From what I was told, people are more picky about their type of cherry than they are with most fruits.  Some of the cherry types such as Rainiers, are just more expensive than others because more people seek them out.

Given all this information, where am I going for the best tasting, largest, plumpest California cherries?  I am going to find the least expensive of the local, organic lot.  That will mean buying cherries at around $4 a pound if I'm lucky. 

Since cherries are on the high pesticide list I would prefer for them to be organic or no-spray, and raised using sustainable methods.  I personally think that they taste better and, as one person told me in an email, "It's important to factor in the price of land and labor as well as the costs of paying workers decent wages.  It's not always about ecological versus toxic forms of farming, it's also about the economies of scale of different sized farms, the location of the farm and land prices in that location, and how labor is treated."

Thanks to the following sources (and others) for their help in my quest to solve my cherry quandaries:  Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, California Cherry Advisory Board, Washington State Fruit Commission, multiple farmers at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market and the Marina Farmers' Market, chowhound.com.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment here or email me if you have anything to add to the great cherry quandry!

O Britney ...

If this is true, then you're getting a little big for your britches, Britney. There are just some people who you don't snub.

Pop princess Britney Spears snubbed rock legend Bono after a gig in Ireland last week, by refusing to meet his kids.

The U2 frontman took his four children to Britney's sell-out concert in Dublin and they were desperate to meet the star backstage.

But an insider tells British newspaper the Daily Mirror, "Britney was having none of it. She just point-blank refused to meet them and they were very disappointed.

"She made some excuse about being too tired. It's ridiculous if she thinks she's too important to meet the offspring of a legend like Bono."

Credit: Daily Dish, San Francisco Chronicle

Biotech, Biotech Everywhere

After several days of hearing about the Biotech conference here in SF, I am a little maxxed out on discussing and hearing about Biotech and GMO ...

Nonetheless, here are a couple of interesting articles and resources that have come out of this week:

* "Seeds of Doubt", The Sacramento Bee. A great series all week about biotechnology.  Well done.  Admitedly, I haven't gotten through the whole thing, but am looking forward to reading it.  , Sacramento Bee.

* Interesting article here about a brunch featuring GMO foods. 

* KQED did an hour-long show about biotech this morning.  I heard about half of it, and am looking forward to hearing the rest.  You can listen online by finding "Biotech 2004" on this page.

Spring Reading

I have been reading a slew of interesting food-related articles lately. Here's a list of highlights.

The Virtue in $6 Heirloom Tomatoes, New York Times, June 6 04. An interesting article about the CEO of Whole Foods. More than anything, I appreciated getting more information about John Mackey. Didn't exactly leave me with warm fuzzies, but made me aware of his business approach.

Grass-Fed for the Greater Good, San Francisco Chronicle, February 8 04. This article is about the proprietor of Marin Sun Farms, a local grass-fed beef provider. The cool thing about this article is that he comes from a family of cattle ranchers and he is in the middle of the industry trying to change it.

Wholesome Heart, How consumer foods reinvented American culture, San Francisco Examiner, April 21 04. In this article, Patricia Unterman reviews the new book "Something from the Oven" by Laura Shapiro (which is now on my "to read" list) and adds an interesting anecdote about raising children in a no-processed foods household.

As Satan Scrubbed my Toilet, San Francisco Chronicle, May 28 04. Not exactly about food, but a great article about all those new throw-away cleaning products that are coming out these days.

Swanton Strawberry U-Pick

Yesterday, we drove about an hour down Highway 1 to Swanton Berry Farms where we were able to pick ripe, fresh, organic strawberries for $1.40 a pound. If you are a Bay Area resident, I would highly recommend this activity. The Swanton Farm is a pretty astounding place -- for reasons varying from their fantastic berries, their seaside location, to the way that they treat their employees (see "Human Values" on their site linked above).

The U-Pick was a few miles south of their farm buildings, and afterward we drove back to the farmstand to inhale amazing baked desserts. The farm stand is a self-serve shop with wonderful delicacies. You drop your money in the cash box and can pick up a Scharfenberger chocolate dipped strawberry, jams, strawberry gelato, shortcake, or blackberry streudel -- everything freshly baked and prepared. Both Jason and I had been before, and I was hoping that we weren't talking it up too much to our friends Ken and Tricia ... but they seemed to love it as much as we do.

My original plan was to freeze the berries for smoothies, and I probably will still do that, but I'm also looking for a good strawberry dessert recipe ... don't say strawberry pie - I don't think I can handle making my own crust. Last year for Jason's birthday I made a pound cake with a strawberry and balsamic topping, so I may have to do a repeat of that dish. Of course, sometimes nothing beats the whole fresh berry.

Click here to see more pictures of our adventures.

The National Spelling Bee

The National Spelling Bee is on ESPN today. I had it on for a few minutes this morning (while working hard, of course) and watched one kid get up to spell his word, PASS OUT in the middle of his turn, GET UP AGAIN and spell his word correctly. The Drama!! I think they recognize that they have a lot of new attention due to the movie Spellbound, and have done things like set a time limit (which was not the case in the past).

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