Exactly one week from today, I'll be in San Francisco taking a class in artisan bread making at the San Francisco Baking Institute. I'm so excited that I'm positively giddy.
I've been planning this trip for some time, and I do have some ideas about how I'm going to spend my free time in the city. However, there's only so much you can learn from tourist websites, so I need your help: if you have any suggestions on food related destinations I want to hear from you. What are your favorite San Francisco foodie haunts? Where would you eat in the city? Where would you go for food souvenirs?
I'll have a lot to do while I'm in San Francisco, but your suggestions will make the trip even better!
I went to college in Walla Walla, WA, just as a revolution in food and wine was taking place in that area. When I started college, the only dining choices in town were grubby old diners, a couple mediocre pubs and and fast food. By the time I graduated, the area was awash with tasting rooms, upscale restaurants and excellent bars serving the best in hand-cut french fries and hormone-free burgers. Walla Walla was just one example of the revolution taking place all across the Pacific Northwest in the area of wine and food. In Pacific Northwest Wining & Dining, Braiden Rex-Johnson captures examples of that revolution all over the region and condenses the best of the offerings down into a pleasure-filled book.
Organized by region, Rex-Johnson presents food through engrossing stories that evoke the place and setting before finally ponying up the recipes. By giving so much backstory she makes the food come alive and seem more accessible that if she had simply created a volume of recipes.
It isn't an everyday cookbook, but is the kind of thing that is fun to page through on a Saturday morning while you drink a cup of coffee and plot out a trip to a farmers market. But the time you are a few pages in, you'll be awash with ideas and will be mentally planning an impromptu dinner party so that you can make the Mixed Greens with Fallen Cheese Souffles and Champagne Viniagrette or the Sea Scallops with Spiced Carrot-Dill Sauce. While it's designed around the food and wine of the Pacific Northwest, many of the recipes are easily transferrable to regions all across the country. While some of the seafood might not be quite as available, many of the other ingredients are. Don't let the regionality of this book prevent you from checking it out. It might just stir up a desire in you to visit Washington, Oregon or Idaho and that's not such a bad thing, is it?
I never thought I'd see the day when I had something in common with President Bush, but here it is. Apparently we both love asparagus. Who knew?
On the German leg of his European tour last week, President Bush commented on how great the German asparagus was, saying how much he enjoys the vegetable. According to McClatchy online, the President now has a chance to sample ten pounds of Washington State asparagus, sent to the White House by two Washington State lawmakers.
Senator Patty Murray and representative Doc Hastings are naturally proud of the asparagus from their state, as Washington provides about 40% of the asparagus produced in the US. It's one of my very favorite vegetables. I'm not sure if President Bush feels as strongly about asparagus as I do, but at least he has some taste. How do you feel about asparagus?
I'm posting images of sausage counters the world over each weeknight (and occasionally weekend) witching hour (until I run out), so please use the comments section to post links to your Flickr or personal site faves, and perhaps you'll see 'em posted here late some evening.
I had a friend once who saved the corks from wine bottles. He said that he sent them to his brother for some reason or other I can't remember now. Now there really is a reason to save your corks (and not just for all those cork stamps you've been planning on making).
According to Chow: The Grinder, a new program called ReCORK America is operating in Oregon and California. ReCORK America collects and recycles used wine corks. It's sponsored by a Portugese cork manufacturer, Amorim, and works mainly with institutions that go though a lot of corks. However, they also have drop off centers so individuals can also participate.
The vintner who put California on the wine map, Robert Mondavi, has died at the age of 94, says a spokesperson for the Robert Mondavi winery. Mr. Mondavi died Friday (May 16) at his home in Yountville, Calif.
Though he had little formal training in wine-making, Mondavi has been credited with creating fume blanc, and with popularizing that quintessential Californian white, chardonnay. He was the first one who saw that with proper techniques and a lot of great PR, domestic wines could one day hold their own against the French tradition.
According to the obit in the Los Angeles Times, when Barron Phillipe de Rothschild of Bordeaux first approached him about a Franco-American collaboration in 1970 -- the equivalent, in the words of wine industry consultant Vic Motto, of "Goliath coming to David to learn how to throw stones" -- the resulting Opus One cabernet sauvignon not only sold for a then-unheard of $50 a bottle (in 1979), but validated his vision for the industry.
"He has probably been the most important figure in the wine industry in the last half of this century," Paul Gillette, then-publisher of the Wine Investor newsletter, told the New York Times in 1990.
Ironically, Mondavi was born on June 18, 1913, in Virginia, Minn., just five and a half years before Prohibition.
The San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau wants you to have the greatest dining experience possible on you next trip to the Bay Area. They've added Taste as an additional website to the official visitors bureau site, and it's completely dedicated to food.
I was particularly interested in Taste, as I am going to San Francisco later this summer and I want any dining info I can get. Taste does offer plenty of dining information, especially of you have plenty of cash to spend on your trip. There's a mini blog, Foodie 411, and a calender of upcoming food events. Also, you can check out restaurants based on different categories like 'price', 'dining adventures', and 'al fresco', even the area of town. Overall the site is interesting and east to navigate.
There is one area that I think Taste is deficient in. Taste has a section dedicated to drinks, and it is awful. There is only one brew pub listed and no wine bars, even though they have several wineries listed. I'm not sure what's going on with that, but my guess is that the brew pubs didn't sign up with the visitor's bureau. Either way, if you're planning on going to San Francisco this website can help with dining choices, but definitely use as many resources as possible for the food aspect of your trip to San Francisco.
Hopefully by now you've heard of Flickr, the popular online photo-sharing website. If you ever look at the photo credits for images on Slashfood, chances are you'll see a lot of them come from Flickr. If you are familiar with Flickr, then you might know they've recently added a video sharing option, and some people are not happy about that.
I really don't understand it, but according to Wired plenty of Flickr users are joining groups like "No Video On Flickr". Some other users, though, have a different opinion. A group has popped up to mock the anti video sharing crowd, and this group demands that Flickr give everyone a donut! The "We Demand Free Donuts" group proclaimed that if they got 20,000 members Flickr would have to give in to pressure. Well, Flickr gave in, even though the group only has about 2,500 members so far. If you happen to be in San Francisco today you can go to the meet up and get a free donut.
The budgeting families offered tips like buying whole chickens instead of just pricey breast meat, reducing meat consumption, eating beans and lentils and getting more organized.
Longing for bright and crisp flavors after a winter of soups and stews? Check out this noodle salad made with buckwheat noodles and lots of fresh veggies.
Need a quick dinner for your family? Try this puttanesca sauce. The best part about it is that you've probably already got most the ingredients in your pantry.
The Baja meets the Bayou with fish tacos and accompanying fiery salsas, beets get an undeserved bad rap, the Roving Feast goes to Berlin for Potato Salad and Big Meatballs, and a Hae-muhl Pah-jun, Korean seafood "pancake," pairs well with wine.
Cooking Bold and Fearless was originally published by the folks at Sunset Magazine back in 1957. My copy dates from 1961 and was one in the stack of books I picked up back in December at a Portland thrift store (which one it was escapes me right at the moment). I bought it because of the cover, all those colors and that grandiose title made me think that it might contain some good stuff (or at the very least, some highly entertaining kitsch).
All the recipes in the book come from the magazine's column "Chefs of the West," in which they regularly published recipes and short articles penned by home cooks and backyard grill masters from up and down the West Coast. (Does anyone know if this column is still included in the magazine? It's been years since I've had my hands on a copy of Sunset, so I have no idea. My guess would be no, though).
The recipes range from the frighteningly retro to the interestingly timeless. The most intriguing thing about this book is that all the contributors seem to be men. I guess Sunset assumed that only those of the male persuasion would be interested in cooking boldly and without fear.
The vintner who put California on the wine map, 
The San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau wants you to have the greatest dining experience possible on you next trip to the Bay Area. They've added 
Chocolate-stuffed bananas on the grill
Tyler Florence welcomes new daughter
Beware kids' menus!
