If You Can Hear What I’m Dealing With

Each month, I cull the police blotters from a little foothill town looking for the most ridiculous items to highlight here. But occasionally, I run across an entry that hits a little close to home. Like this one:

7:25 p.m. – A caller reported a neighbor was yelling, screaming and breaking things. Responding officers found a man who was cooking who said he became angry and was throwing pans.

Cooking can certainly push me over the edge at times, although no one has called SFPD on me yet. Most of the time, I enjoy cooking. Ideally, it’s relaxing, fulfilling and a handy way to use up all of our farmers market produce. Occasionally, it’s even inspiring. But at times, cooking can be maddening and getting a meal on the table feels like an exercise in futility and self-hatred.

I’d like to blame the recipe (it’s too complicated! it’s not written correctly! the measurements are clearly off!) but often, I’ve just made the cardinal mistake of cooking-while-hungry. And that’s when I start swearing and feeling sorry for myself. I don’t usually break things but I’ve been known to put down drop the lid to the pot with a little more force than is truly necessary.

Thankfully, I live with Mr. WholeHog and who guides me firmly out of the kitchen when I’m throwing a fit in the kitchen, wrestling the wooden spoon from my hand in order to salvage our meal. But even he’s seen the dark side of cooking. He doesn’t scream and shout, but I know he takes it personally when he’s spent an evening making pizza dough and the final pizza doesn’t turn out right.

Dough is often a source of cooking rage. My friend Amy got so frustrated making a pie dough that she threw the dough and locked herself in the bathroom in tears. She came out to find her husband patiently rolling out the dough. My sister’s girlfriend Corinna said she once came unglued making pizza dough.

One of the things I loved most about the Julie/Julia Project (an blog circa 2002-2003 that detailed one woman’s attempt to cook her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking) was Julie’s complete honesty about cooking. This is easily the best description of cooking rage I’ve ever read:

“So this is when I begin screaming a bit. As I’m screaming, I know I’m overreacting, but scream I do anyway. As I’m screaming, I’m pouring the failed sauce into the blender. Fuck it. What could happen? Well, not much, as it turns out. I blend it and blend it, and it just remains this thin, sad sauce that separates again as soon as I stop blending.

This is when I begin throwing things.

… I scream and cry as if I have no hope left in life, as if Sauce Tartare is proof positive of the absolute failure of my life.”

Julie/Julia Project, May 13, 2003

Even though her sauce tartare didn’t turn out, Julie’s blog ultimately got her a book deal and now a movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams and directed by Nora Ephron. Blog envy will have to be another post.

My Heart is an Apple

I don’t want to make you jealous, but I have friends in gravenstein country, friends with 90 year old antique apple trees and apple picking equipment who remind you when the gravenstein’s short season arrives.

Every year, John and Kathy invite Mr. WholeHog and I up to pick their apples but we always seemed to have plans during the two weeks that the gravensteins are ripe for picking. But this year, we awoke Sunday morning to a fog so thick that we could hear it dripping on the deck outside and as we contemplated how to escape this dreary City, we realized that it was still gravenstein season up in Sebastopol.

Our friends are the kind of people that when you call on a Sunday morning and ask if you can come up and pick their apples later that very day, they say yes and give you directions. (And when you forget the directions and miss a turn off on your way and have to call them again? They don’t even sound irritated).

I told you: friends. Friends with apples in sunny Sebastopol.

We should all be so lucky.

John outfitted us in true apple picker attire and scoffed at the two bags we’d brought to hold our apples. He clearly knew (or hoped) we’d pick more apples than we anticipated and we filled every additional bags he provided.

We moved from tree to tree, all of them studded with gravs, as they call them in West County. We ultimately filled three grocery bags with apples. A good amount, John said as he helped us carry them back to the car, because now you’ll more motivated to find something to do with them. And then he led us to a patch of Asian pear trees to pick some more.

Life outside the City seems awfully appealing, especially during these summer months.

There is something truly lovely about
being under an apple tree on a summer day.

On our way home, we stopped first at my sister’s new apartment and dropped off a few pounds of apples with her. We spent the rest of the evening peeling apples, following Kathy’s instructions for making applesauce (so easy and delicious! who knew?!) and making apple muffins. We have a pie in our future.

Rave: The Fatted Calf at Oxbow Market

I know gas prices are high and driving in the Bay Area can be a trafficky nightmare, but you should still head to Napa.

I mean, now.

Going to Tahoe? Russian River? Cross town? Take a detour through Napa. It’s a lovely drive, after all, through those vineyard-covered hills. But don’t get distracted by the grapes: this time, you’re not in Napa for the wine, you’re there for the meat.

Fatted Calf opened their first retail location earlier this year in the Oxbow Market, Napa’s version of SF’s Ferry Building. We’ve only been twice so far, but I think dream about it almost daily.

Fatted Calf is already one reason I get up early every Saturday morning and go to the farmers market. When we have something from Fatted in the fridge, we know there’s a delicious meal in our future.

At the farmers market, a chalkboard lists their selection of sausages, salumi and assorted meaty treats (although those in the know order online and pick up their order at the market). Often, you don’t see exactly what you’ve bought until you get home and unwrap it.

In the display case at the Oxbow location, though, you can see nearly everything that Fatted Calf produces and it’s a beautiful sight. If the stacks of sausage, bowls of pate, and thick salamis aren’t enticing enough, there is also usually something fantastic on display at the store, like this leg of wild boar:

With a few exceptions (like, say, tonno. There is simply never enough tonno), Oxbow has everything Fatted makes, along with many items that are rarely, if ever, at the market – racks of seasoned ribs, or lovely lamb chops marinated in orange zest. The store even sells an assortment of other quality products, like Rancho Gordo beans, Soul Food eggs and locally produced milk.

But we’re likely to head back to the store just to have Toponia’s porchetta sandwich again. It’s the best sandwich either of us have ever eaten — lots of roast pork with parsley, onions and plenty of olive oil. We ate it on the road which I do not recommend. This sandwich needs your complete attention (and lots of napkins).

Something Ain’t Right

I would just like to mention that it is August 8th and summer has yet to arrive in San Francisco. Not that I’m bitter or angry or depressed by having December extend through August. It’s cool. Literally. We’re looking at a brisk 58 degrees today.

Sunlight is overrated, don’t you think? I mean, it makes some people feel good, but I’m sure day after day of just sun would be pretty boring. We’re used to a little more variety — sometimes there’s a light rain coming down, sometimes it’s just gray and foggy, and sometimes there’s a crazy cold wind.

If the sun came out, it might feel sort of hot and we might sweat or something. And sweating is really foreign to San Franciscans. We’re much more familiar with shivering. Plus too much sun can burn your skin and cause premature aging, so San Franciscan’s are golden — I mean, we’re set, we’re not golden at all. Our skin is, like, pristine.

Another bonus of our daily fog and cold weather? Getting dressed is a cinch! You put on your sweater, grab your winter coat and you’re out the door. I’m wearing the same sweaters I’ve been wearing since December! Sure, at times, it might be nice to have something new to wear, but have you been a store recently? Shorts? Tank tops? And the fabrics?! We’re in San Francisco here, I’m sure you’ve heard what that ^%#@#^@!&*# bastard Mark Twain said about summer in this dump, so bring on the wool and the down! Cotton and jersey is not going to cut it.

OK, I admit it. I tend to exaggerate sometimes: the sun does break through the fog for about 20 minutes every 7th or 10th day. Sometimes, when the fog clears, we get this excellent cold wind ripping through town.

Here’s the weirdest part, though. Now that it’s August, there’s talk of Fall returning. It’s kind of weird, you know, because um, maybe you haven’t noticed, but fall never left.

Something To Grow On

It’s legume city at the farmers market these days. There are more green beans than I knew existed: Romano beans, jade beans, Kentucky wonder beans, Blue Lake beans. And there’s always something to shell whether it’s cannellini beans freed from their soft white pods or the gorgeous magenta and white mottled cranberry beans.

A week ago, I spotted a new legume at the market. Catalan Farms had a box of very small green pods. The beans looked almost like uncured olives or tiny green acorns.

I asked about them and learned that these mini pods hold garbanzo beans or chick peas.

Now I’ve eaten plenty of garbanzo beans before but nearly every one came from a can. I’d never considered what a garbanzo bean looked like before it was canned, and although it’s called either a bean or a pea, I never imagined it in a pod.

This is what I love about the farmers market — the discovery of what food really is, what it looks before its processed, and the work required, at times, to make a plant into food.

Work is the operative word for garbanzo beans. I generally find shelling beans oddly satisfying, even double-shelled fava beans. But garbanzos were quite labor intensive and tested my patience. There was a lot of shelling for a pretty meager pile of beans.

The un-shelled garbanzos weren’t uniform in color or size. Some of them looked as I’d expected, while others were especially tiny, green colored instead of tan, and wrinkled like a brain.

I just boiled them until they seemed done and perhaps I should have followed more of a recipe because I didn’t really love the taste. Only the beans that looked like fully formed garbanzos actually tasted like garbanzos (if you happen on fresh garbanzos, buy the more yellow-y pods, not the bright green ones).

But I loved what I learned from the process and I’ll never look at a can of garbanzo beans the same again.