schmindigo

scream

I know I’m a mercurial blogger, but I do try to stay at least somewhat on top of our thriving local ice cream scene. So: after a most tantalizing slow tease of a build-up over the past several months, Scream is open & scooping 6 flavors of sorbet, all vegan. They will over the next few weeks work up to 18 flavors at a time, including some sweetened with honey, maple & agave, for y’all who may be averse to processed white sugar. They’ve also got sorbet sandwiches (the cookies are not vegan—yet) & prepacked sorbet to go.

I homed right in on the lemon shiso flavor, but dude behind the counter was making sure I sampled my way there, with very pleasurable stops at satsuma, grapefruit, cranberry orange, pistachio, & Askinosie chocolate. All of them were as good as they possibly could be, except for the grapefruit, which had an odd pithy flavor that went sadly astray of its mark—& I’m speaking as an avowed grapefruit fanatic. The chocolate, on the other hand, provoked me & the customer sampling beside me into an incoherent contest of descriptions: insane, crazy, mmm & oh baby were some of what we uttered before he bought a pint of the stuff to go & I (so disciplined) returned my attentions to the lemon shiso, which was all that I had hoped it would be.

$3 will get you a tiny cup, which may not sit well with you value queens out there—I know because I am one myself, but when it comes to my white sugar quota I actually don’t mind a small portion. I was more than happy with my perfect little scoop of acidy-perfumy sweetness, which I ate sitting on the window bench watching the last bit of sunset.

Oh, & the dairy? You won’t even think about missing it.

Hours: 11am to 9pm every day except Monday. Next to Bakesale Betty in Temescal, with the very charming old-skool vertical neon sign proclaiming SORBET. A most excellent & necessary addition to the hood. Much as I hate to speak ill of any ice cream shop, this is Tara’s final cue to just give up already.

Sorry no pictures; that’ll teach me to leave the house without my camera.

eating green things

Gnocchi & pesto at Encuentro!

Risi e bisi! Recipe from Ferry Plaza Farmers Market cookbook, peas from Swanton.

FOAF (Friend of a Friend) cucumber melon gazpacho! (Same free-association recipe improvisation method as FOAF salad, of course.)

(I know, kinda crappy photo. I’ll give you some nice waves at the end of the post to make up for it.)

I started with cucumber gazpacho in mind, but my recipe wanted lemon & I only had lime. Well, lime is friends with melon, & gazpacho is friends with cilantro & pepper, so…

Fill your blender jar with an assortment of peeled, seeded cucumbers, cut into chunks. I like to get a bunch of different kinds of cukes from different stands at the farmers market, but you could keep it simple & just use one kind.

Then pour in:

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup water

1/8 cup white wine vinegar

Blend so the level goes down.

Add:

Lime juice; start with half a lime. You may want to add more later.

A very small, very mild pepper. By very small I mean not much bigger than a finger.

Couple sprigs of cilantro

Small pinch of cayenne

Salt & pepper

Melon, a couple of big scoops (with a regular soup spoon or tablespoon). I tried this with an Eel River melon from Full Belly & also with an Ambrosia melon; I suspect almost any melon would work. Will try Galia next.

(optional) Small clove garlic

Blend again, taste, & adjust as necessary. You are aiming for a balance of flavors that tastes good to you; it will not be great yet, until you give it several hours—preferably a whole day—in the fridge. See if you can detect just a little hint of the melon; it should not be a sweet soup. Then stick the whole thing in the fridge.

Next day, put it back on the blender & give it another go, just a few seconds, to re-blend anything that separated while it was sitting. Then garnish as you like, or not.

It’s finally really summer!

cherry-picking

This year I really got a bee in my bonnet about cherry-picking in Brentwood. I’ve made it to the age I am (ladylike ahem) without ever picking cherries, & this seemed so very wrong that I almost drove out there by myself(!) on Memorial Day(!) because of course everybody else was hiding at home doing deep cleaning & home repairs, which is the only reasonable way to deal with major holidays. Fortunately The Witch talked some sense into me, mostly by offering to give me some of the cherries she had picked just a couple days earlier while suffering a migraine & heinous Memorial weekend traffic. Even though she was very generous with her hard-won Bings, I still had a hankering for more, & especially for that orchard experience.

Fortunately, this (non-holiday) weekend, Dan was traveling through on his way home from China, & agreed to accompany me on my fruity excursion despite his jetlag. He was a good sport even when it turned out the a/c in our car was busted! We tried to make ourselves feel better by talking about humidity & heat in places like Bangladesh. I’m not sure whether it helped or not.

Anyway, we followed the “organic” signs to Enos Farms, where the nice man reminded us to put on sunscreen & explained that the Rainier trees were mixed in randomly among the Lapins—a charming arrangement.

Here is Dan with Rainiers (not the best picture, but it was the only one I took of the orchard):

There were hardly any people there at Enos, just us & an Indian family with very cute little kids, & granny in a sari. We wandered among the lovely trees that were all dripping with bright, fat, beautiful cherries.

I think they give you those giant buckets because even 5 or 6 pounds doesn’t look like very much:

So moderate did this amount look to us that we went to another farm to pick Bings. (I really wanted my Bings!) We got there only 15 minutes from closing. The place had been quite picked over so that you had to climb ladders to the good cherries up high. We were getting very overheated, tired & thirsty, & to judge by their demeanor so were the workers there. It was a whole different scene from the first place. I won’t mention the name of the farm because I suspect that if we had gone there first it would have been satisfying enough. As it was we were still happy with our couple pounds of Bings, & drove away in search of the largest cups of ice & liquid we could find.

Here is a tip for you when negotiating America. By “America” here I mean those ubiquitous, homogenous, monstrous turd-piles of multi malls containing Michael’s craft store, Home Depot, Walmart, OfficeMax, usual assortment of fast-food franchises, all the same stores you have seen in all the places you’ve been in this great country of ours. These turd-piles smear themselves across the outskirts of every town that ever used to be (& sometimes still are) interesting & unique, including Brentwood. Not long after leaving the farm area we passed through a chunk of new-looking residential suburbia, & then into the America we had seen on our way into town. We knew we could get our icy cups of liquid somewhere in America.

There are many forms of resistance. You can be well-prepared & bring enough ice & drinks with you so that you never have to set foot in America. You can drive around searching for the last little local store in town. You can just go ahead & be hot & thirsty until you get home, it’s only an hour, it won’t kill you. You can go big-picture, decide it’s not worth wasting energy on resistance over something so small as a drink, & just go to whatever bit of America is most convenient & then get out of there & return to your life in which you are hopefully doing something constructive & revolutionary on a daily basis.

Or you can do what I have learned to do: drive into one of those malls & look for the little food franchise that you’ve never heard of. In this case it was Bagel Something. Bagel Street? Bagel Avenue? Bagel Town? You know, something utterly bland & forgettable having to do with bagels. We went in & saw obvious Asian influence: taro & honeydew smoothies, a good selection of tea.

While I was in the bathroom running cold water over my wrists, Dan talked to the proprietor, a 30something Asian guy, probably Chinese, who turned out to be from Oakland & had moved out there in the past couple years for this business opportunity. He said that whole mall was only three years old. When we sat down we noticed Chinese art on the wall & a trippy print Dan described as “future-primitive Hawaiian fantasia” (at least I think that’s what he said)! With dolphins!

Back home I got out our most enormous salad bowl & filled it, I mean filled it, with all the cherries. Now that’s a lot of cherries!

sencha

Thinking & writing: about how that last decade kicked my fucking ass, but I did some kicking right back too

Eating: Taco Grill’s pozole de pollo (thank you, Peggy)

Re-reading after many years: Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Mitchell translation (thank you, Shahara)

Drinking: sencha (thank you, Birgit)

Knitting: wristwarmers that match the sencha

Listening: Furthur (thank you, Bobby & Phil)

Swimming: as always

Trying: not to get sick

Happy New Year, blog readers!

staycation

Sorry to be gone so long. Sometimes I just don’t have much to say. Been doing some hard work pretty much sums it up. Not the kind that pays in dollars (well, there was a wee bit of that), but still I needed a bit of vacation afterward.

Herewith, the Art of the Staycation:

NO computers! We bent this rule only to look up information about Approved Staycation Activities: ferry schedules, concert ticket availability, maps to get to labyrinths, that sort of thing. Remember to turn the computer OFF when you’ve completed your mission, otherwise you’ll find yourself checking email after you get home from the delicious concert. Ask me how I know. Talk about a buzzkill.

Set specific starting & ending times for the staycation. We said ours would start at 7pm on Monday night. Ring a bell & leave the house to go out to dinner!

When you come back from dinner, walk around the house saying things like:

“Look at the nice place we’re staying!”

“I’m so glad I brought ALL of our books!”

“Hey, they sure have a nicely stocked kitchen for us!”

“Isn’t this bed comfy?”

In other words, really work the fantasy. If you are a couple & have usual sides of the bed you each sleep on, switch sides!

Themes are helpful. Our theme was labyrinths.

Sibley’s Mazzariello Labyrinth

If you go, note that they have changed things a little bit in the preserve & the labyrinth is now at marker #2, not #4.

Use alternate modes of transportation—all the less-efficient, more-expensive ways of getting about that you wouldn’t use in your normal life. We took the ferry & cable car(!) to get to the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral, stopping for some clam chowder & oysters on the way.

I didn’t get a photo of the labyrinth. When we were done walking it, we realized that we had like 10 minutes to make the last ferry, so in true staycation spirit, we grabbed a cab(!) & made it to the dock with just a minute to spare. It was dusk & the full moon was rising as we crossed the bay. (Sorry no moon photos. You had to be there.)

Next day, the labyrinth with the spectacular view at Land’s End...

... followed by The Infamous Stringdusters. Deep Elem Blues! Those boys tore it up. I want to see them again.

Even though our staycation officially ended when eyes opened this morning, we couldn’t resist capping it off with Charlie Haden at Yoshi’s SF tonight.

So decadent! Yet all still incredibly cheap compared to flying (or even driving) someplace where you have to pay for a room. I highly recommend it. Bay Area folks, there’s a reason why all those people come here from all over the dang world for their vacations! Go out & enjoy it!

Chinese Culture Center

From the opening, jam-packed especially for a rainy Friday night:

Between all that Censusing, Chicago, & the CCC, this is about where I’m at right now:

If you’re one of my many neglected friends… you will see me, I promise, just as soon as I catch up on some sleep & wash at least the first layer of those dirty dishes piled in the sink.

Thai Temple

(Thanks to angry asian man for the reminder, & for this image.)

Thai Temple feels so quintessentially Berkeley to me, in all the best ways: a cheerful jumble of everybody—Thai grannies & monks, Black kids from the neighborhood, Asian American Cal students, white hippies, foodies of all stripes, tots poking around in the vegetable garden—all of us together on a Sunday morning, grooving on yummy food at bargain prices. Yes, it’s a Buddhist thing, but really the true religion of the crowds is the food.

The food! Green papaya salad, mixed & pounded to order before your very eyes. Sticky rice & mango, with sprinkle-your-own toasted mung beans. Giant bowls of noodles. The long, long veggie line & the long, long meat line stretching side by side through the alley all the way to the sidewalk (best way to catch up with a friend, work up an appetite, & people-watch like crazy, all at once). Tender little coconut milk half moons paired face to face—I can never remember their name but they are heaven in your mouth.

I love to take a brisk walk down there on a summer morning while the fog is burning off. By the time we are all full & dawdling our way home past the rose-fragrant gardens of south Berkeley, our sweaters are tied around our waists, the sun makes our hair hot to the touch, & the afternoon stretches out luxuriously before us….

Please don’t let a few cranky neighbors take this away!

sustainable sushi

Sushi lovers, check it out: Seafood Watch has a new sustainable sushi guide that you can slip in your wallet, so when you go out for sushi you can whip it out & order like a true eco-foodie geek. Fish definitely tastes better when you eliminate those nagging guilt pangs!

If you’re an eco-foodie-technogeek with an advanced cellphone, then Environmental Defense Fund has a version you can download to your phone. No excuses now.

cooking & eating...

Things I’m thinking about cooking & eating:

Tomato sauce: Anticipating our freezers in winter, Plastic Lam & I split a 20 pound crate of dry-farmed Early Girls. I made my sauce using Pim’s brilliant concept & it kicked ass! Now I’m thinking I shoulda got a whole crate for my own greedy self.

Salade Niçoise: Something got me thinking about Niçoise lately, I’m not sure what. Then I had a lunch date with Cooking Show & we went wandering down College Av. looking at menus, until we saw that Somerset had a lovely back patio & Niçoise on the menu. Perfect! ...we thought. The patio was wonderful, but the salad? I’m sorry, but I could do so much better. Sugary-sweet salad dressing? GONG! No green beans, when we are at the height of green bean season? GONG! The conspicuous absence of green beans was made more glaring by the presence of asparagus—where did it come from at this time of year?! The hard-boiled eggs had their yolks whipped (think deviled eggs), which felt like trying too hard. Seared fresh ahi, too, seemed like a nice idea on paper but on the plate also felt like trying too hard. Gimme a can! Cooking Show loved the fries that came with her steak sandwich, though. We agreed we would go back there just to eat fries on that nice patio. Meanwhile, I am determined to make my own Niçoise, one that’ll show Somerset’s salad what’s what.

Chocolate coconut tapioca pudding: I should probably spell this out more clearly. Tapioca pudding, made with coconut milk. Then color it chocolate. First encountered at Good Earth in Fairfax, with the following ingredients: coconut milk, chocolate, tapioca, maple syrup, vanilla, salt. Seems like it should be easy enough, right?

Apple pie: I think I mentioned this before. I even bought the apples last week in the midst of that oddly autumnal moment we had. Then the weather snapped back to the September that I know & love: scorching, brilliant blue skies—in short, weather for…

...gazpacho.

Or, a scoop of Earl Grey & a scoop of saffron orange blossom from Ici, floral & refreshing. Happy late summer, Bay Area!

Japan

Here are the Japan food photos I promised!

It was ume season & we saw this little ume giveaway on the street. Note the perfectly knotted plastic bags so thoughtfully provided:

It was also hydrangea season. Cherry blossoms get all the press, but I thought the hydrangea enthusiasm was pretty dang intense too:

More pretty sweets:

King of Nosh took us to a cute French-Italian place that was tucked away on a quiet lane in Shibuya. When it was time for dessert they brought us this adorable little corkboard:

He also showed me a very good okonomiyaki time in Shimokitazawa. I don’t understand why okonomiyaki isn’t everywhere, all over the world, especially in breakfast places in the USA. Pancakes, homefries, eggs, okonomiyaki… why not?

Four variations on the matcha donut theme:

They like their bread tall:

I always thought I didn’t like eggplant, but apparently when you slather it with miso & grill (broil?) it to perfection, I fuckin love it.

I also fuckin love ice cream, but that’s not exactly news. Gelato from the very-mobbed Pariya in the Foodshow basement of Tokyu Dept. Store, also in Shibuya: lychee, plum, jasmine chocolate cake(!), & coconut banana maple. Then we went back & had green tea tiramisu, apricot, & cherry.