eat drink one woman

5/21, Wednesday morning, 9 am



San Franciscans love their pastries.  They're everywhere.  On any given S.F. corner, you can exhale pot smoke in any direction and hotbox a fancy pastry shop.

On my last morning, we hit up La Boulange de Hayes, a kind of west coast Le Pain Quotidien.  The darkly caramelized cannelés de Bordeaux are a little too boozy for me at this hour, but the almond croissant is making me happy (though I think I prefer the buttery, almond paste-overstuffed chocolate almond croissant from Mission Beach Cafe).  My favorite thing at La Boulange is the free condiment station where you can load up on cornichons from a little glass jar.  Like all-you-can-eat.  Like my inner suburban immigrant is doing a happy dance in the frozen party snacks sample aisle at Costco on a Saturday afternoon.  Also, the tuna nicoise sandwich and herb dusted potato chips I pick up for the plane trip are perfectly portable and delicious.

It's been fun, but I leave S.F. knowing that it's not my town.  Not anymore.  There was a time when I thought I'd take root there.  All the buttery pastries and all the produce, all the fragrant flora and oversexed fauna, they're still fun to enjoy as a tourist.  It's weird, I've been in New York for nine years now.  We may not be able to grow Meyer lemons or avocado trees in my apartment; I still wish we had a dishwasher and a garbage disposal; I want to roll out of bed and have a yoga studio across the street instead of a White Castle; but NYC's home for me now, and I'm looking forward to getting back.

I'm so glad that Dunkin' Donuts decided to pull the ads showing that jihad lover Rachael Ray.  But why stop the boycott there?  There are so many unpatriotic, treasonous coffees on the market right now.  Here's a list of java you should avoid unless you want the CIA to know you love terrorists too.










1. Timothy's -- You know those disposable brew-per-cup coffees you like to down before meetings at work?  Those little shots of ground coffee are made by a Canadian company, and you know what Canadians are -- NOT American. Just like terrorists are NOT American.  Therefore Canadians = Terrorists.  Remember, we need to protect our borders from people who put gravy and cheese curds on Freedom fries.



2.  Peet's -- Peet's got its start in Berkeley, CA, aka the Hellmouth.  That's where stoners send their drug-retarded offspring to become Godless Sufjan Stevens-enthusiasts and  The Nation-reading fornicators.  I hope I get to stand by St. Peter when he informs them that there is no affirmative action in heaven.



3. Chock full o' Nuts -- Okay, maybe not terrorist, but obvs gay.










--

...And the one coffee that will let the terrorists know that they can't take away our freedom, democracy, or faith:

Wear your flag pin and only buy your iced coffee from Starbucks.  "Star" like fifty stars in the flag and "bucks" like free market means TERRORISTS KEEP OUT.

God bless America.

5/18, Sunday, 11:00 am

The Lodge's restaurant is ill-equipped to handle the 30-person brunch my cousin and his wife have arranged for the morning after, but it's fun to be seated at a long table with our big Thai family and Alanna's big Irish family. 

After brunch, Sirion and Alex drive me back to Julie's.  We pass the dregs of the Bay to Breakers run, which is basically a cross between a frat kegger, the gay pride parade, a group acid trip, a middle-aged amateur porno without the sex, and a 12K run.  Up by the Marina, we drive by a hot twink rocking an ensemble of short white tennis shorts (through which his American Apparel tighty-fluorescent-greenies are visible), a popped-collar white polo, mirrored aviators, striped headband and tennis racket.  We're not sure if he's for real or if he's in costume.  I hope he's for real.

Back at Julie's, we grill up a feast -- marinated chicken, carne asada (none for me), big gamy steaks of goat, Italian sausages and more.

 

My contribution: a grated carrot salad with plum tomatoes, garlic, sesame oil, and Meyer lemon juice.  (I put those Meyer lemons in EVERYTHING.)  I go overboard on just about everything, but it's the radioactive Cool Whip cake that puts a fork in me.  I ask for a cup of tea while everyone around me gets trashed.  An old friend shows up while tripping on mushrooms.  By himself.  Ladies are making out on the coat pile in the bedroom, nook nook is happening in the laundry room downstairs, flirtations turn into out and out propositions, bi-, gay, and straight sexual intrigue abounds.  But not for me.  I'm hiding out at the top of the stairs, nursing my mug of green jasmine tea and thinking, "Doesn't anybody have to work tomorrow?  It's a Sunday night!"  I am such a grandma.

We end the night closing out The Mint, where Grandma pulls it together enough to kick out a little 2 am "Welcome to the Jungle" before going back chez Julie and passing out on the couch.

5/19, Monday

Julie and I have a most glorious hangover day of yoga and food shopping.  We invite my friends Justin and Jim for dinner, where I cook a bunch of my standards.  We gab at the kitchen table over way too much food.  I keep thinking giddily that this is how I should be living my life every day.  The best part of the meal is dessert -- two ice creams from the Bi-Rite Creamery, salted caramel and orange cardamom.  Very adult flavors.  Be jealous, that shit is CRAZY delicious.  The ice cream is a little airier than gelato or frozen custard.  The orange cardamom is totally for me -- spicy and sunny, yet cold and creamy.  It will have to be another obligatory stop the next time I'm in town.

5/20, Tuesday
We hit a 9 am yoga class being taught by Jehfree Spirit.  His drag name is Freetah B.  I didn't even need to make that up. 

For lunch, we head to the Ferry Plaza market.  Stone fruit and berries have already come in for California, and I'm reveling in the blush-fleshed peaches, fleshy brook cherries, and fragrant blueberries. 



The dried fruit selection is unbelievable -- pluots, tangy apricots or sweet apricots, moist golden raisins the size of june bugs, Asian pear rings, and pretty much anything else you can think of. 

The Ferry Plaza market is like foodie yuppie heaven.  Seriously, if someone locked me up in there overnight, my liver would be foie gras by morning.  Acme Bread, Stonehouse Olive Oil, pastries, meats and more -- it's like Dean and Deluca on steroids.  I love foods that taste like expensive perfume because they make me feel like a lady; these Miette rose geranium macarons are like the culinary incarnation of Nancy Mitford in two crisp-cloudy bites.
 


I especially love the bombolonis we get from the Italian shop.  They make me want to bomboloni someone, or bomboloni all over their bomboloni.  They're round fried doughnuts the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger's fist, dusted with granulated sugar and piped til they're ready to burst with nutella, chocolate, seedless raspberry jam, or our favorite, bombolonidacious golden pastry cream.  You can't see, but a single tear just rolled down my cheek.  If that isn't enough, the bomboloni are being sold by an unbelievably adorable gaysian Gumby with a five inch pompadour and clear braces.



We've missed breakfast at Boulette's Larder, but we sit down for one of the most fortifying, nourishing, lively lunches I've had in a long time -- verdant Japanese turnip soup sprinkled with fried giblet bits, a rich sardine salad with endive, dill and feta, and a poached chicken salad with barberries, pistachios, za'atar spices, tahini, and the most tender bloomsday spinach ever, the arrowhead leaves impossibly sweet.  Most of the ingredients are local; low prices keep it from being precious.  Why aren't sardines on the menu more often?  I will order them whenever I see them.  You can't see, but I am totally pumping my fist and engaging my mulabanda while taking these pictures.





After an easy, digestive walk up Market St., we get back to Julie's house and noodle around on the guitar and piano, singing Carpenters tunes, nipping at wine, cheese, and our fruit booty from the market.  For dinner, we make a Mexican feast, mostly using leftovers from the previous two nights.  I can't remember the last time I ate so well -- a boatload of homemade guac, cumin-scented black beans, fresh, thick tortillas from the Mexicatessen, grilled chicken stir-fried with broccoli raab and leftover red peppers, store-bought salsa fresca spruced up with fresh habanero, and an incredible tart slaw Brent made by mixing my fresh meyer lemon relish with slivered green cabbage -- perfect in a taco with the leftover pan-fried salmon.  Mostly leftovers, but still, one of my favorite meals of the whole trip.  It's kind of a revelation.  This is how I want to be eating, every day -- surrounded by friends, at home, using good, honest ingredients and letting nothing go to waste.  As a California ex-pat, I used to dream about Bay Area burritos all the time, but sometimes I forget that I'm perfectly capable of making Cali-style Mexican food exactly suited to my taste.

to be continued...

5/17, Saturday -- Wedding Day

My cousin Sirion and her boyfriend Alex pick me up in a sunburnt orange compact car.  (Is that the teal of the aughts?)  We snake down Divisadero to Lombard St., which takes us straight to the Golden Gate Bridge.  The wispy fog looks like it's been piped in for a movie set.   It's picturesque and romantic without obstructing drivers' sightlines. 

ALEX: It looks like they've got a fog machine going, doesn't it?



Tiburon is one of those tiny Marin county towns on the other side of the Golden Gate.  Spiny sailboats are moored along every dock.  Multi-million dollar homes cling to the verdant cliffs against a backdrop of blue, blue ocean.  It makes me think of the Hamptons -- the few clothing boutiques mainly sell Amalfi-ready sandals and gauzy cover-ups in pastels and whites, and oysters on the half-shell are easier to pick up than a can of hairspray.



My whole family is staying at the Lodge at Tiburon.  I find that I have become the kind of guest that must find something to complain about.  I get a room for my parents and a room for myself -- can I switch the room on the second floor for one with two queens instead of one king?  Can I switch the room on the ground floor for security reasons and because it smells strongly of chlorine from the pool it's situated by?  Can I get a room with a bathtub instead of just a shower?  Why don't the windows have screens?  I don't really give a shit about amenities, I just don't like thinking that somebody else might have been given something better.

 

But it's great to be with my family, whom I adore.  I love the way my very private cousin  Sakorn endures being the center of attention, and the way his wife's eyes tear up as he reads his vows, which are far more tender than we might have expected.  I love Sirion's speech, which reveals her intimate knowledge of her brother, but also how much his wife Alanna will be able to teach us about Sakorn's character.  I love the way my cousin's baby Sadie lights up when she sees my Mae, her bonus grandma, and the way she stretches her soft little arms up to be held.



The festivities are over in a flash, but in a moment, our family has grown by one.  Alanna has tied her fate to his, thus mooring her life to ours.  The details of the day have already faded a bit, but I'm left with the muscle memory that my heart is full.



To be continued...

"It can't be all that pretty,
when all of New York City misses you."

--The Magnetic Fields

5/16, Friday night, 11pm

It kills me that I've missed the opportunity to have dinner tonight because of a plane snafu.  We head to Home, down the block from the house I'm staying in.  It's close to midnight, and our first choice for casual eats, Chow, is already closed.  I'm staying with Julie, my dear friend of 18 years.  I tell her and her boyfriend Brent that I've given up beef, which seems to really throw them for a loop.  We nosh on mac n' cheese and a veggie burger.   The night air is uncharacteristically balmy, thick with the musk of night-blooming jasmine.  A primary-colored Market streetcar rolls by slowly, easily, its antennae sliding knowingly along the tangle of overhead cables.

5/17, Saturday morning, 7:30 am

JULIE: Gandhi, are you awake yet?

I pull my eye mask off and it takes a second to adjust to the golden sunshine streaming into the room.  My room is a little mug and the light just pours and pours into it.  I'm bathing in it.  Julie is on an astroturf-covered deck right below my window, squinting up at me and stretching her slender arms and legs.  Below the deck, a prolific garden with some of the most ecstatic looking greenery I've seen in a long time.



I know how those plants feel.  That's how I feel.

The plum tree next door drapes fruit-laden branches over the fence in a neighborly way. 


Apple trees and blueberry bushes promise bounty in a matter of weeks. 


Best of all, a squat Meyer lemon tree in a shady corner perfumes the air with its heady gardenia-citrus smell, its twiggy stems burdened with tender, golden lemons.


This is the dream I can't realize in New York, the fantasy of a little fruity Eden in my backyard, of citrus trees, avocado trees, stone fruit trees generously brimming with edible gifts.  It's breaking my heart.

5/17, Saturday morning, 7:50 am

We head down for my obligatory S.F. visit to Tartine at 18th and Guerrero in the Mission.  The doors haven't opened yet, and the line goes down the block, 15 deep. 



Jules and I don our sunglasses and grab a side table to enjoy a sticky orange and cinnamon scented morning bun, a flaky rectangular scone encrusted in fat sugar crystals that is at once light and dense, a cup of eggy, syrupy bread pudding with peaches and blueberries, and a cappuccino in a perfect bistro cup the color of almond skin.



Julie's housemate Carlos rides up with his friend Maurice, leaning their bikes up against a telephone pole.  They've already biked through Golden Gate Park, down to the beach where gray cloud creep persuaded them to return to the inner halo of the Mission's sunshine.

We stroll back to the house, past the tennis courts in Dolores Park, past creamy stucco churches.  I'm full.  It's quiet and warm.  Is this really what life could be like?

To be continued...

A potluck masterpiece -- torn angel food cake topped with Jello instant vanilla pudding, drained crushed pineapple, Cool Whip, canned mandarin orange slices and slivered strawberries. Bad for you, but totally delicious and seductive. Also expands like a loofah in your stomach.  Like recreational drugs, or sleeping with someone knowing you'll regret it the second your crusty eyes crack open in the morning. Not that I would know about that stuff.

Own up to your mad love for RPGs and MTP (the Tim Russert kind, not the digital audio kind) and check this out.

Name: Sarah Raymont

Occupation: Spanish teacher. I also work at The Sweet Life, which is a candy store in my neighborhood.

Borough: Manhattan, Lower East Side.

Relationship status: In a relationship

What did you eat today?

For breakfast I had orange + lemon juice, tea, and a giant bowl of fruit with yogurt and muesli, flax & sunflower seeds and some honey. For lunch I had mettwurst, which I think is a German spreading sausage, brown bread, and quartered tomatoes with olive oil and Maldon salt. Which you crumble with your fingers. I don't normally eat so completely, but I'm visiting a friend in London. She's 97 and zooms around like a Smart Car. When I'm with her I eat as
she does, whenever I leave, I do my best to replicate and it's a terrible, oil burning minivan.

What do you never eat?

Tongue

Complete this sentence:  In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Things which were purchased with better intentions. I wish I could do my friend's here, how about that? She's always got salad, cheese and leftovers. Berries and fruit. Mine might have candles in it, I'm not sure.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

Tongs

Where do you eat out most frequently?

I pretty much keep to a three block radius. I like Barrio Chino, on Broome Street, mostly for lunch or breakfast since it's quieter. I wouldn't say I eat out at The Pickle Guys, on Essex + Grand, but I eat waiting in line, so I wonder if that counts. What I like most is their pickled celery. Sometimes I go to The Good World, on Orchard + Canal, but there you wait for an hour for your food which I don't mind, because they really don't care or even pretend to, and it's people who pretend who are the worst. Their burger has beets in it and the building it's in will be demolished, I think, this coming year. The Grotto, on Forsyth + Grand, especially when it's warm, because you can sit outside, in the middle of the block, and look up.

World ends tomorrow.  What would you like for your last meal?

My father's scrambled eggs, with onions. I'd like to say I'd eat my necklace or something like that, or my enemies, but probably just a Softy Pop, from The Sweet Life. It's a dark chocolate covered marshmallow on a stick. We make them. [I love that Softy Pop.  --Ed.]

It's my first wedding weekend of the year and I just missed my flight to San Francisco.  I'd like to say that this is the first time in my life I've ever missed a flight, but my oft-inconvenienced parents would call bullshit on me.  Not my fault this time.  My itinerary said that the flight left at 3:30pm.  After years of traveling with musicians, I've picked up the bad habit of not showing up at the airport till 1 hour before departure, even when I have a bag to check.  This usually works out just fine -- I get to relax at home and spend as little time as humanly possible at the airport.

But when I got here at 2:30, I tried to check in and was told that it was too late, my flight was leaving at 2:55.  I don't know how 2:55 means 3:30, which is what I printed out from my e-mail itinerary, but I basically had to get on a long ass line with the tourists to attempt to get on the next flight out, at 5:25pm.  

I actually don't have too much trouble with waiting.  I can go to my zen place as long as I've got a book to read (I brought The Rest is Noise), maybe a magazine (picked up The New Yorker this time, though I usually go with a mix of snortable fluff like Lucky and wordy human drama like Nat Geo), and a little candy (Raisinets are really doing it for me lately, which makes me feel even more like a grandma than I already do.)

The one thing I do resent is having to waste an entire meal at the airport.  Given that I ate right before I left home, and that it will be another 9 hours before I get to San Francisco, I'm going to have to eat something.  You know you're in a miserable place when a woman walks by with an Au Bon Pain coffee cup and you think to yourself, "Ooh, I wonder where she got that from?"

Wouldn't it be great if an airport food vendor decided one day to break the pact of mediocrity they all seem to agree to upon signing their leases?  Here in the American Airlines terminal at JFK, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the Soho Express, the Euro Café and the Brooklyn Deli -- it's basically the same sorry menu of chips, underripe fruit, wet sandwiches, preternaturally perky romaine salads, and cut fruit that look like salmonella playgrounds.

And when did wraps become so ubiquitous and acceptable?  There is so much wrong with a cold tortilla.  Why not just wrap up your grilled chicken in ranch dressing-doused double-ply Charmin?

I still have a bit of post-9/11 flight anxiety.  Sometimes I find myself thinking, what if this is it and the last taste in my mouth is this tempera paint-yellow mustard, waterlogged turkey and vermilion Dorito powder?  Not that I would be giving a shit about my most recent meal, but you know, one thinks about these things.  All this salt is going to make grandma grind her teeth all night.  

Anyway, seems like this flight is all kinds of delayed.  I'm grumps.  I need to go do a few handstands or something.

*****

Of all the "how dumb are we" warnings they could be announcing over the loudspeaker at the airport, why does the "If any unknown person asks you to carry any unknown item onto the plane, do not accept it" one still get play?  Is the general public really still that clueless, given that we're in a permastate of orange alert?  I mean, if we're going to issue warnings for that, why not issue warnings like, "If the guy sitting next to you tries to light his shoe on fire, alert the stewardess"?  Or, "If a bunch of angry young men with one-way tickets threaten to slit throats with boxcutters if you don't give them access to the cockpit, don't give in"?

"There may be some foundation to Indians' accusations of hypocrisy by the West. The United States uses -- or throws away -- 3,770 calories a person each day, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization collected in 2001-3, compared with 2,440 calories per person in India. Americans are also the largest per capita consumers in any major economy of the most energy-intensive common food source, beef, the Agriculture Department says."

--"Indians Find U.S. at Fault in Food Cost", New York Times, May 14, 2008*

(image: Pradeep S. Mehta, whom the article refers to as having said, "archly, that the money spent in the United States on liposuction to get rid of fat from excess consumption could be funneled to feed famine victims.")

 
Over a heavenly brunch of fried eggs, Tamarack Hollow bacon, biscuits, roasted asparagus, butter-sauteed fiddlehead ferns and red-eye gravy (fck yeah!) chez Winnie, the subject of the Abstain Project came up. Winnie figured (rightly) that pork is going to be the next to get the axe in my diet, and was encouraging me to get my bacon on while I can.  A few of the brunch attendees asked why I was cutting certain foods out completely, why it wasn't enough to just buy from suppliers like Tamarack Hollow who farm sustainably -- eat it to save it and all that.

I have to admit that I felt a little uncomfortable discussing the project among acquaintances.  I realize it sounds self-righteous asshole-y, and I hope that's not what I've become.  At the time, I gave a half-assed answer that I was more interested in the push and pull of desire and denial, the co-existence of hedonism and conscience -- and that if I just ate good meat from good producers, I wouldn't have anything to write about. 

But there's more to it than that.   I feel myself pulling away from, not just the culture of excess, but also of access.  It's so easy to buy food, to eat too much food, to waste food, to obsess over food.  Here in New York, you can get anything you want at almost any time of day, from barely legal mangosteen to runny reblochon to guarana soda to dorowat over injera to Barossa Valley shiraz.  Everything's special; nothing's special.

And I think my appetite and curiosity for food has disappeared because food was becoming straight consumption, detached from its communal, human, personal aspects.  Venturing to some Queens outpost to judge a meal by taste alone, eating a cheese with a fancy name but no back story, choosing a new honey vendor over my standard, known, beloved honey purveyor for the sake of reporting -- yawn.

What I do treasure now are meals at home with friends or family, like that brunch at Winnie's, less for the content of the plate than for the company and the kind of chatter you make when you break bread.  Meals in are so rare for me these days.  I'll take relaxed company over a quesadilla with canned black beans and pre-shredded cheese mix over a loud night at the -estest (latest! greatest! best!) spot in town.

Ceci n'est pas un statement.

Still, I keep putting off the pork ban.  I keep telling myself that once I finish that fennel pollen sausage in the freezer, and that kale soup with merguez**, and the jamon iberico de bellota I've been saving, I'll give up the pig.  And, really, bacon I could live without.  But there are so many porcine products I'd keep ahead of bacon -- Thai-style fried pork jerky, pork gyoza or mandoo, Italian sausage...

*Also, check out the comparison consuming chart.  1,674 pounds of corn per person in 2006!!  Children of the corn indeed!

**Remembered while heating up my soup that merguez is lamb.  Which is sort of out by default, and I figure should go out with the other mammalian meat.