Have Yourself a Local Little Christmas

The holidays bring another chance to participate in the 3/50 Project and support local stores and businesses. Just select three local stores and committing to spend $50 locally (that’s $50 total, not $50 in each store).

In San Francisco, there’s little reason to deal with the crowds at the mall when you could visit (or revisit) some favorite local stores. Since so many shops now have a website, I even add locally-stocked items to my Christmas list, essentially enlisting my relatives into supporting some of my favorite local businesses.

Rare Device – So many of my favorite things come from Rare Device, like my bright yellow jacket and my favorite Good Society jeans. It’s a great place for gift items that you won’t find everywhere else with reasonably priced artwork, clothes, bags, jewelry and housewares. I love giving these bright, cheery vases and I have these silver dogwood earrings on my gift list this year.

Omnivore Books – This darling bookstore is devoted to new and vintage food books. You’ll find cookbooks, food memoirs, and books on raising animals and gardening. If you’re in need of pasture-raised eggs, Omnivore’s got you covered there, too — plus there’s a chance you’ll spot local celeb Jonathan Richman picking up eggs, too.

Of course, if you are looking for non-food-related books, you should head directly to Green Apple Books. Green Apple is what a bookstore should be: a rambling house with books stacked floor to ceiling. If that wasn’t enough, hardcovers are discounted and they have the best remaindered book section in the City.

BiRite Grocery – A one-stop shop for the best local food and drink. It’s where I get my current favorite chocolate bar, Alter Eco velvet, but there are also other excellent local sweets like Kika’s Treats and Poco Dolce chocolate tiles. (If you are traveling this season, consider a pack of Poco Dolce to help with airport crowds and airplane food. It was the best thing we brought with us on our flight to Italy).

BiRite also stocks wine from Sutton Cellars, another of my favorite finds this year. I particularly love the Rattlesnake Rose’ and the Sutton vermouth (it goes perfectly with the citrus now in season).

Oh Tannenbaum

Was it me or was November particularly dark? I often struggle with the time change but this year, it hit me hard. When I left work, it felt like nighttime, as if the whole day had passed while I was stuck in a cubicle. Even weekends felt rushed to me: the dark was always coming too soon.

I’m usually a strict No-Christmas-Until-After-Thanksgiving person, but given how dark it felt in November (notice the lack of posts?), it didn’t bother me to see lights up before Turkey day or even a few trees glowing in the windows. I need all the light I can get this time of year.

But at my house, we’re in the midst of our yearly debate about the central Christmas decoration: the tree. There isn’t much debate for me. I love a Christmas tree, but I’ve married someone who isn’t sure about cutting down a tree for 30 days of decoration.

It’s worth considering that it takes years for a tree to grow to even 5 feet tall, and to remember how important trees are, how they suck up some of that excess carbon dioxide that’s changing our climate. And yet, we’re not talking about taking down a Giant Sequoia here. These trees are raised for the purpose of decoration, and I also buy our tree from a forester who plants 10 new trees for every Christmas tree harvested.

There are alternatives to the Christmas tree, too Terrifically hideous alternatives that are as close to a Christmas tree as tofu is close to bacon, but alternatives nonetheless. (There is a reason that tannenbaum in German translates into ‘fir tree’ and not, say, ‘ficus’).

A live tree seems like a good solution initially, but as my parents learned, a live tree will eventually grow too large to haul inside and decorate. My parents were content to simply throw some lights on an outdoor tree and call it good.  It may have been environmentally friendly (perhaps more importantly, it was cheap), but it wasn’t good by any stretch.

My workplace has a fake tree. It’s at least reusable (even though a real tree is reused, too, when it’s returned to the soil), but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s fake. It’s stored in a large green plastic duffle bag that’s unpacked each December, and it’s about as festive as cracking open a costco-sized flat of paper towels. To me, fake trees just seem like a cop out. No one should have to bother with a tree if they don’t want to, especially in this often harried time of year. But if you don’t want to spend the time or money on a tree, get a wreath rather than a pretend tree.

I have some opinions about Christmas trees, as you can see. But this isn’t to say that a tree has to be perfect or that there is one perfect tree — far from it. The best part of a real tree is that there’s almost always something wrong with it, some bare part to face the wall, one side that is bushier than the other. My family’s Christmas trees weren’t always actual trees. One year, it was three branches of cedar tied together. And even I had to admit that once it was decorated with lights and ornaments, you could hardly tell that it was leaning up against the wall and had absolutely no back to it at all.

Police Blotters – November 2009

• 7:23 p.m. – A caller reported an upstairs neighbor kept dumping water on her when she went on her balcony to smoke. {the water dumper is my hero}.
• 7:33 a.m. — A caller reported a man was wearing black sweats that had been cut out and “showing his private areas.” He said his pants had been cut due to a medical aid call and he was given a ride to get new clothing.
• 1:14 p.m. — A woman wanted to know if the Bay Bridge was open. She was advised of the proper usage of 911.
• 3:58 p.m. — A woman reported someone used a permanent marker to draw a phallic symbol on her daughter’s vehicle that extends the length of the vehicle.
• 6:00 p.m. — A caller reported as she and her husband were arriving home, three teen girls were walking up the driveway. When the couple pulled into the garage, they found paint smeared all over the walls, windows and floors, with hearts, footprints and the word “Sorry” painted on the walls as well.
• 9:19 a.m. — A caller dialed the 911 emergency number to find out if it was Friday, Nov. 20, and said it was not an emergency. When an officer called back, the woman said she had misdialed and didn’t mean to call 911.
• 11:24 a.m. — A caller reported someone had defecated on the playground equipment at an elementary school.
• 7:36 p.m. — A caller reported a man in camo pajamas was demanding the caller’s shoes and had a bag of marijuana. A woman called at 7:43 p.m. to report the same man was “being creepy and saying strange things.” He was counseled on his behavior.
• 6:02 p.m. — A woman reported her daughter was hysterical after the woman’s boyfriend called her fat. The boyfriend had earlier thrown a telephone at the woman.
• 10:48 a.m. — A caller reported a man was “casing” the bus stop when juveniles get out of school, and he appeared to be carrying a screwdriver. No crime was found to have occurred.
• 2:26 p.m. — A caller reported a “dog-propelled wheelchair issue.” The person was waiting for the bus.
• 1:57 p.m. — A man reported someone came to his residence and took a 1970s-model travel trailer held together with duct tape.
• 9:52 p.m. — A caller reported the strong smell of burning bones in the area.
• 1:01 p.m. — A woman reported a vehicle with teens who wished her a happy Thanksgiving. She was concerned they were casing the area.
• 1:03 p.m. — A caller reported graffiti on a brick wall at the church that included the word “Satan” in large letters.

Alumni of Bookshop Santa Cruz

I didn’t particularly love my time at UC Santa Cruz. Aside from its small but devoted journalism department, my experience at UCSC was more summer camp with extensive journaling than rigorous academics. But I stayed in Santa Cruz in large part because I got a job at Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Bookshop Santa Cruz is a Santa Cruz institution. It’s been on Pacific Avenue since 1966. It survived the 1989 earthquake (it continued operating out of a tent when the quake destroyed its building) and it survived the infiltration of chain bookstores that attempt to put it out of business.

Bookshop is an unofficial information center for Santa Cruz.  In summer, people from ‘over the hill’ would call the store to ask about the weather or the surf. People stopped in to ask for directions or for restaurant recommendations. Just about anyone who visited Santa Cruz made their way through Bookshop Santa Cruz. I once ran into my 6th grade teacher while I was working there.

It wasn’t necessarily an easy job. Working with the public is always a challenge, but it was even more difficult in Santa Cruz, where the store, like the town, attracted crazies like moths to a flame. (A customer once told me I looked like a ‘peaceful dolphin’.) But in the 10 years since I left Bookshop, I’ve looked back on it fondly. My work there felt more meaningful than any job I’ve had since, certainly more important to me than making wealthy people wealthier. I believed in Bookshop, in the importance of  an independent bookstore, a place with personality and determination. It’s an endangered species these days.

It isn’t nostalgia that’s made me look back on my days at Bookshop Santa Cruz, though. Rather it’s the news that my old employer is ‘going rogue’ (to quote a certain Alaskan nutter) and selling copies of Sarah Palin’s new book with a pack of nuts — and not just any nuts, “Sarah Palin’s Just Plain Nutz”. The online offer states that the nuts are also sold separately: “A bag of Sarah Palin’s Just Plain Nutz is also available for $3.98 to those who can stomach a 1 ounce bag of walnuts, but can’t stomach 432 pages of Sarah Palin’s writing.”

This isn’t Bookshop’s first stab at creative bookselling, but it is one reason that I’m proud to be an Bookshop alumni.

Update: Green Apple Books, my favorite SF bookstore, has another option. Buy the Sarah Palin book at Green Apple and the store will donate the proceeds to the Alaskan Wildlife Alliance.

Rave: Presidential Flickr

On this one year anniversary of the election of Barack Obama, I’d like to highlight one of the things I appreciate about this administration. It isn’t Michelle’s focus on fresh, local food or her awesome sense of style, nor is it the President’s commitment to health care reform or repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Instead, it’s decidedly less political: it’s their willingness to have their life and work at the White House documented and shared with the public through The White House Flickr photosteam.

It doesn’t sound exciting, I know. I had pretty low expectations myself. The day-to-day workings of government seem kind of boring, even if you’re the president. Cabinet meetings and speeches don’t seem like they’d make for compelling photos, but this administration doesn’t just show us the official events or meetings with world leaders. Peppered throughout the  Flickr photosteam are pictures like this one that show such a human side to the President.

President Barack Obama bends over so the son of a White House staff member can pat his head during a family visit to the Oval Office May 8, 2009. The youngster wanted to see if the President’s haircut felt like his own. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza).

Of course all U.S. presidents have had a life of their own while they were in office, but for the most part, we the people didn’t get to see much of it and that’s part of what makes The White House Flickr photosteam so interesting. There are the meetings, of course, and then there are the pictures that show the President is just another dad playing with the family dog or watching his kid’s soccer game.

Some of the pictures give the sense of seeing the DVD extras, the outtakes from the Presidency, like Obama joking around in this picture, or the unusual interview, shown below.

If you haven’t seen the pictures yet (or even recently), head on over. I can almost promise that you’ll be charmed.

Police Blotters – October 2009

• 9:46 a.m. — A caller reported feces was smeared on an office door.
• 10:11 a.m. — A caller reported seeing a loose buffalo in the area.
• 1:27 p.m. — A caller reported a chicken on a fence.
• 4:54 p.m. — A caller reported a man with a beard and a Santa hat was passed out in the laundry room. He was gone when officers arrived.
• 11:08 a.m. — A caller reported a large yak by the road. The owner was to attempt to corral it. {this is very strange: neither yaks nor buffalo are common in the area.}
• 4:45 p.m. — A woman reported a man possibly casing her house. When she looked out the window, he gave her the finger.
• 2:54 p.m. — A man reported his estranged wife tried to throw a deep fryer at him. It was off and the oil was cold. She also struck a female friend of his. The woman called and reported her husband poured oil on her and hit her. Neither party wanted to press charges.
• 10:42 a.m. — A man reported his neighbor was yelling that he wants to die. He said his neighbor yells like this often.
• 9:44 a.m. — A caller reported a “Mexian” wearing “Mexian clothing” was sending money by the mail.{I assume this is a typo and they meant Mexican}
• 2:47 p.m. — A caller reported a man in the street with a large hat and dreadlocks, dancing to his own beat.
• 2:51 p.m. — A caller reported two severed deer legs in the road.
• 7:52 p.m. — A caller reported someone went into a barn and moved a bale of hay.
• 12:55 p.m. — A woman reported she thought there was a bear in her basement. An Animal Control officer could hear a snoring sound, but no bear was found.
• 10:37 p.m. — A man reported hearing a woman screaming, It was found to be a loud TV.
• 11:40 p.m. — A woman called to say she stopped for a man in the roadway who then threw himself on her car, crawled up the hood and growled. She said the man seemed disoriented.
• 4:22 p.m. — A caller reported a neighbor was harboring five skunks that play with the neighbor’s cats. The smell was very strong and “chewy.” The person was advised to call Animal Control.
• 1:26 p.m. – A caller said that while he was walking, an elderly driver’s vehicle struck him without injury, but the man who was about 80 got out of the vehicle, shoved the caller to the ground and drove away. Officers are investigating the matter.
• 4:03 p.m. — A caller reported a man possibly wearing a Halloween costume that included a gas mask and bloody clothing was following people to their vehicles. It was a group of juveniles from the high school drama club trying to sell tickets to a haunted house.
• 9:11 p.m. — A woman reported three people running down the road. She believed it was a little too late to be jogging at this time of night.
• 12:32 p.m. — A man reported being the victim of credit card fraud. He said this had happened to him 22 times in the past.

We On Award Tour

When asked why I moved back to SF, I hardly know where to start.

There was the lack of density in the East Bay, and the distance between neighborhoods and commercial areas required more driving than I liked.  There was the lack of decent local grocery stores and the fact that so many local stores, even corner markets, closed so early. There were the deserted streets, how I saw more cats than people on my 10 minute walk to BART and BART was such a long haul and expensive to boot.

But the simplest explanation, and the reason that encompasses so many of the others, is that I realized the value of living close to the things I love.

During this first month back in the City, I’ve returned to many of the places and events I love in San Francisco.

We moved back right in time for our favorite outdoor music festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and, of course, we stopped by Arizmendi Bakery while we were in the neighborhood.

We ate at Nopalito and bought books at Green Apple. We browsed the vintage furniture stores on Valencia Street. We saw Dave Eggers interview Nick Hornby at City Arts & Lectures. We got a Mariquita Farms mystery box, dropped off right across the street from our house. We ate a lot of ice cream.

Everything is close by now. After work one day, I picked up bread at Tartine (we’ve bought Tartine bread at least once a week despite the fact that our SF apartment lacks the counter space necessary for Tartine’s giant loaves). Then I picked up some groceries at BiRite, spontaneously popped into Pizzeria Delfina for dinner and still had time to catch a movie downtown.

And there are always new places to go, too. The Sunday Inner Sunset farmers market started while we were on the other side of the Bay. I got to Four Barrel Coffee at long last. A visit to Flora Grubb Gardens brought me to an area of the City I’d never been before. At Contigo, we found a friend from the farmers market manning the flatbread station and were reminded that SF can be like a small town at times.

It’s all here. And now, so are we.

Now I’m Getting Souped Up

In San Francisco, any time is a good time for soup. Even warm days here often end with cool, soup-worthy nights. On one warm Friday afternoon, I enjoyed a margarita on our front steps and when the fog rolled in, I went inside and had a bowl of Tuscan ribolita.  Here summer and winter are often just a few hours apart.

As well as good soup weather, we also have lots of good soup fixings. At the farmers market, I’ve been buying thick, gelatinous chicken broth from Marin Sun Farms or the rural folk at Mountain Ranch. This stock is completely different from the boxes of broth I used to rely on. You have to scoop this stuff out with a spoon; it doesn’t ‘pour’. It’d be icky if it wasn’t so delicious.

We also have shelling beans available this time of year. Dirty Girl sells fresh cannellinis or cranberry beans (borlotti beans). Shelling beans are delicious cooked up on their own and doused with olive oil. They’re also a lovely foil for Fatted Calf’s tonno di maiale. But I especially like using shelling beans for soup because they cook up so quickly.

This not to say that dried beans are to be avoided. dried beans have inspired most of the soups I’ve been eating lately. Heirloom Beans, the cookbook by Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo, is to thank for the ribolita, minestone, and the white bean and chard soup served with a poached egg and crispy bits of stale bread.

Stale bread is now something I consider an essential soup ingredient, and it’s an easy way to use up the last, somewhat stale bits of Tartine’s country bread. A slab of buttered bread will always be a delicious accompaniment to a bowl of soup, but a chunk of stale bread at the bottom of your soup bowl, broth-sodden and disintegrating, offers something else entirely. It adds body and texture, and if you rub it first with garlic, it adds flavor, too.

One of my go-to soups and a soup that first got me hooked on this delicious stale bread trick is Mark Bittman’s white bean and escarole soup. It’s a dead-simple recipe that I keep coming back to — something about the base of anchovies, garlic and chiles really elevates it. I’ve edited the recipe and listed it below because his list of ingredients includes items like duck or port that are never mentioned in the cooking instructions.

Escarole, White Bean Soup

• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon sliced garlic
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 4 anchovy fillets, or to taste (Bittman says this is optional. It’s not. It’s essential.)
• 1 fresh or dried chili, stemmed, seeded and minced, or 1 teaspoon dried red chili flakes, or to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 pound escarole
• 3 cups chicken stock or water
• 1 cup (or more) white beans, such as cannellini
• Salt and pepper to taste

Put half the oil, half the garlic, anchovies and chilies in a pot over medium heat. Stir occasionally until garlic begins to color.

Add escarole and stir; add beans and stock or water and adjust heat so mixture simmers steadily. Cover and cook about 15 minutes.

Stir in rest of garlic and cook another minute. Drizzle with reserved olive oil, and serve over slices of stale bread, rubbed with garlic or showered with parmesan cheese. (Bittman includes the bread as a “variation”. Pay no attention to Bittman. The bread is a crucial element of the soup).

Don’t Let This Fading Summer Pass You By

With our trip to Italy and our subsequent move back to SF, I wasn’t sure that I’d have time for what had become one of my favorite late summer rituals: making and freezing tomato sauce for the tomato-less months ahead.

We were still overseas when Mariquita Farms had their annual tomato u-pick. Although the farm drops off produce in SF fairly regularly, nearly every time they were in town, we weren’t able to pick up 20 pounds of tomatoes, much less prepare few quarts of tomato sauce.

One problem with our SF apartment has been the stove, a gorgeous old Wedgewood with four burners, two ovens (something I never thought necessary until I had one) and a persistent gas leak. After three visits from PG&E, after having the gas to the stove turned off twice because the stove repair person wasn’t, initially, able to eliminate the leaks, our stove appears to be back in business (fingers crossed).

And just in time: last week, Mariquita made their last SF tomato delivery of 2009 and I was lucky enough to get a flat of their San Marzano tomatoes (and lucky enough to have Mr. WholeHog to go pick up the tomatoes).

By the weekend, we found that for the first time in weeks, we had some free time and a working stove so we set to work making sauce. We rewarded ourselves with with pasta with the homemade sauce that night for dinner, while the rest of the sauce went to the freezer.

I haven’t been feeling ready for fall lately, but making tomato sauce and seeing those bright red jars set aside for the winter months, I felt like I was starting to shut the door on summer.

Fall Fever

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal.”

From the excellent McSweeney’s essay, It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers.

This essay put into words exactly what I’d been trying to write about for the past few weeks. What is it that causes people to bust out their pumpkins as soon as the calendar turns to October? What is it about fall that inspires such devotion, such a need to acknowledge the season?

Other seasons don’t get the same attention. No one hangs decorative icicles from their SF home to mark the onset of winter. No one runs outside in SF wearing shorts when June arrives. But if it’s October, then Decorate Gourd Season takes hold –  and SF doesn’t want to miss out.

When you’ve suffered through months of hot weather, I can understand that you might welcome a new crispness in the air. But in San Francisco, there’s little sign of fall in October. Sure it gets dark a little earlier, but we don’t have trees turning vibrant colors. We don’t hear fallen leaves crunching beneath our feet. October is the end of San Francisco’s short summer so temperatures usually rise in October rather than drop.

But a lack of fall elements doesn’t deter the Decorative Gourd Army. If the calendar says it’s fall, then they have to mark it. As the McSweeney’s piece says, it’s about looking ’so seasonal’.

When I see fall decor appear in San Francisco in October, I get the same uncomfortable feeling I get when Christmas cards appear in stores this month. I thought I was alone in this feeling, that maybe I was some sort of fall scrooge, until I read the fantastic McSweeney’s piece (and laughed until I cried).

Another excerpt, because it really is a masterpiece:

“I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up.“

Go read it now.