Life Begins at 30

Happy Halloween!

My spider friends and I wish you a Happy Halloween!  Taken by me in Pt. Reyes Station, California.

25 Distractions

 "I need distractions," I told a friend who writes for a wildly popular television review site.  "I need distractions," I told my friend who edits books for a living.  "I need distractions," so I looked to iTunes.  "I need distractions," so I looked to Tivo.

Here are the things that have been distracting me these days.  What's your best distraction of late?

5 Books
Water for Elephants
Tales of the City
The Lost Night: A Daughter's Search for the Truth of Her Father's Murder
Eat Pray Love
Peter and the Starcatchers

5 Albums
Eye to the Telescope
iTunes Originals - The Goo Goo Dolls
You Can Tell Georgia
A Bird Flies Out
We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions

5 Netflix Selections
Veronica Mars, Seasons 1 & 2
Project Runway, Season 1
The Comeback: The Complete Series
Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 4
The Best of Youth

5 Podcasts
Good Food
This American Life (Did you know it's a free podcast now?)
Grammar Girl
Grey's Anatomy Official Podcast
Lonely Planet Travelcasts

5 Television Shows
Prison Break
The New Adventures of Old Christine
Grey's Anatomy
Cold Case
CSI: NY

Need more book recommendations?  Check out all the comments and great conversation on this post last year.  I am still culling book recommendations from that list.

Editor's Note: Remember when I alluded to the fact that my posts may be a little random this autumn?  What we have above is a prime example!

NaBloPoMo - Are you Participating?

"You aren't updating your blog enough" a friend told me via IM last week. 

I know, I know.  I have millions of excuses and most of them are actually quite legitimate.  But I'd love to get back in the habit of posting more often.

So as a way to give myself a blogging kick-in-the-pants, I am going to participate in National Blog Posting Month.  The amazing Mrs. Kennedy from fussy.org is challenging bloggers to post every single day during the month of November.  And there's prizes for doing so!

If you are a blogger, will you consider joining me?  Looking at the list I don't see much representation from food bloggers yet.  And if you are a blog reader, can you commit to checking out participating blogs and commenting as you can?

Thanks, and I am looking forward to November!

Round Table's "Pepperoni Artisan Pizza"

Today on Bay Area Bites, Amy posted to talk about Round Table Pizza's New "Pepperoni Artisan Pizza", which also uses the descriptor "organic" though their only certified organic ingredient is the tomato sauce.   Which brings to mind more questions and pontifications than I have time for today.  When do we give corporations and big business credit for at least acknowledging organic and artisan as worthy goals, and when do we stomp on them for obviously using marketing terms and trendy adjectives to pander for new business?

Head on over and add your voice to the conversation.

CUESA Farm Tour and the Cutest Dog Ever

Guess who I got to see on Wednesday?

Beansprout and his parents and I met at Fish in Sausalito yesterday.  The guys from Fish were invited to go to Terra Madre, which I think is fantastic.  They are doing a fantastic job at promoting sustainable seafood and seasonal ingredients and making it taste damn delicious.  After many trips here, I have finally found my "go to" items on their menu: red clam chowder, and a large salad with grilled calamari.  And if I have room for dessert, I always get whatever they're making.  The bread pudding is delicious.

Have you read about the farm tour that CUESA has arranged for this Sunday, October 15?  There's still room if you're interested in signing up.  From the CUESA website:

Just as chiles reach their peak and hard squash spills from fields, we’ll be touring two farms that grow these autumnal items. That’s right, we are finally resuming our regional farm tours! Join CUESA for a fun fall excursion to two popular farms: Tierra Vegetables and Allstar Organics. The bus will leave the Ferry Building at 9 am and return at 5 pm. At Allstar Organics' farm in Nicasio, we’ll tour the fields with Marty Jacobson and learn about organics, flavor, diversity, and ecological complexity on the farm. Bring a bag lunch to eat under the shade of the packing shed and enjoy a salad made with Marty's tomatoes.

After that, we'll head to Tierra Vegetables in Santa Rosa where we'll get a tour from brother and sister team, Wayne and Lee James. Those who wish will have the opportunity to harvest strawberries from the field, to help shell beans, and to shop at the farm stand. Tickets are $35 and the tour is geared toward adults and youth 12 and over. To reserve your space, email julie@cuesa.org or call 415-291-3276 x106.

Food Politics at Litquake TONIGHT

This information is from an email I received:

Tuesday, October 10
6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program

The Politics of Food looks at what we eat and why it matters. Food is rapidly becoming one of the most politicized commodities in America. From toxic agribusiness to genetically modified foods to Wal-Mart’s push into organics, the subject of what we put in our mouths and how it affects not only our bodies, but the earth, is a red-button issue in the 21st century. This panel of journalists, food activists, and scientists will discuss the politics of food from every angle. The Commonwealth Club (595 Market Street, Second Floor). $12 for Commonwealth and Litquake e-newsletter subscribers (bring a newsletter with you); $20 otherwise

Lineup includes: Ignacio Chapela, Christopher D. Cook, Michele Simon, and Bryant Terry. Moderator: Julie Cummins, of Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA).

Ignacio Chapela is a microbial ecologist and mycologist at U.C. Berkeley, and an outspoken critic of the University’s ties to the biotechnology industry. Chapela founded The Mycological Facility, a facility dealing with questions of natural resources and indigenous rights, and collaborates with indigenous communities in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Ecuador on issues rights to genetic resources.

Christopher D. Cook is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. He has written for Harper’s, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, and other publications.He is a member of the San Francisco Writer’s Grotto.

Michele Simon is a public health lawyer and director of the Center for Informed Food Choices. She teaches at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and has published numerous articles on the food industry. Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back is her first book.

Bryant Terry is a whole foods chef, food justice activist, and co-author of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (Tarcher/Penguin 2006) with Anna Lappé (foreword by Eric Schlosser). Bryant and his recipes have been featured in the New York Times, Gourmet, Food and Wine, and many other publications

For more information, and the full Litquake festival schedule, please see: http://www.litquake.org

Fall at the Farmers' Market

First of all, I'd like to say a huge thank you to all of you for reading, commenting, writing to me, and calling me over the past month.  I know that I haven't written back to the comments on my "September Changes" post, but I have read and re-read (and re-read) all of your words and encouragement.  I am overwhelmed and humbled by the outpouring of support and love, and the fact that it is so constant and unending.  You have helped to make a platinum lining in some very dark clouds.  Thank you all. 

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The first year that the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market moved from Green Street, the south side of the building was host to a vendor who roasted peppers in the fall.  Every year, around this time, I think about that vendor and how that scent would fill the market and would announce the season at the top of its' lungs. 

Going to markets is a type of therapy to me.  It helps me to feel grounded, and assures me that with all the chaos happening in my little life, that food will grow, and seasons will change, and we will be nourished.  Going to the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market in the past few weeks has had special meaning for me.  Forcing myself into the routine of returning to the market, when I hadn't been on a regular basis for a few months, has had an affect that lingers through to the rest of my week.

And it doesn't hurt that the market is in all of its' fall glory.  If you haven't made it to a farmers' market lately, I encourage you to figure out what market you can go to this week, and make a point to take some time out of your day to go there.

Here are some treats that I was able to find this week:

Sam mentioned some delicious sounding cooking apples a couple weeks ago.  While I missed those apples, I was able to pick up a couple of varieties this week.  The lighter colored, Gala apples are from Hidden Star Orchards, and the amazing Rome Beauties are from Dan at Flatland Flower Farm.  Flatland sells plant starts for much of the year, and can be found under the Gandhi in the back of the market.

The Galas have been a favorite of mine since they were put into my CSA box last fall, and the Rome Beauties are a type of apple that make me love this time of year.

Do you all know about the new Blue Bottle Coffee kiosk?  In addition to the main market booth on the south side of the building, Blue Bottle now has a small stand underneath the arcade in the front.  But don't tell anyone else!  I love how uncrowded this secret booth usually is, while still serving up perfect cafe mochas.

My find of the week was these fresh coriander seeds from Tierra Vegetables.  I am not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but they are great aromatherapy as I pick them up and smell them each time I pass through the kitchen.  If you make it to the market next Saturday, be sure to ask Lee if she has any more of this coriander -- it's a special treat (and inexpensive - she charged me 5 cents for a couple stalks which yielded all of the above seeds).

It's almost the end of the line for my favorite Mediterranean Cucumbers.  These thin-skinned, small cukes are available from Happy Quail Farms - the farm that is best known for its' beautiful display of peppers.  David, the farmer, sells these cucumbers in a plastic-wrapped package because they are so thin-skinned that they lose moisture easily.  I have been eating them with salt and sesame oil for several months now.  They will be available for about the next month, or until the weather turns bad.  Get them while you can -- they are a real treat.

Early Morning, San Francisco

I haven't been sleeping well lately.  One of the benefits of being an early-morning riser in San Francisco is watching the city come awake.  The pictures below are of a walk I took last week when the sun was coming up.  That morning, I had woken up at four a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep.  So I got up, made a pot of coffee, and read for a while.  When I noticed the sun rising over the city, I rushed out to walk up and over Russian Hill.  Now if only I could find some breakfast places that open extra early.

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