I sure do have poor dietary timing. Why in the world, i ask, would any sane man go onto a highly restrictive low carbohydrate diet just as our legendary San Francisco farmers’ markets are featuring smiling vendors proffering samples of their exquisite blood red Chandler strawberries so flavorful that you can smell ’em at ten paces, winy Brooks cherries so big you can barely get a whole one in your mouth, golden apricots including fabulous new Afghan varieties with names like “Candycot” to hint at their sweetness, and now, the yellow nectarines, the finest fruit on the planet and just teeming with carbohydrates.
And it’s not just farmers’ markets. I recently discovered that San Francisco enjoys just a few blocks from me the only urban beekeeping store in the country. Not all that surprising, actually, that we’d have such a store, considering that you can buy neighborhood honeys at farmers’ markets and trendy groceries all over the city. I’ve pretty much given up trying to talk Becky into keeping a few hens, but surely there’d be nothing wrong with a few thousand quiet, odorless, and industrious bees helping her neighborhood stay fully pollinated.
Meanwhile, on another front San Francisco is positively buzzing nowadays with new high tech companies opening their headquarters in the city and stocking them with well paid employees that swarm over the city looking for trendy new eateries. And where there’s a demand, supply cannot be far behind, at least for restaurants, so they’re opening all over the city.
And even though most of ’em have few things on the menu i can eat, i’m hitting as many as possible. First, i got all excited over a recent Chronicle article discussing the wave of new barbecue joints opening here because my discovery last year of Gorilla Barbecue in Pacifica reawakened my Texan craving for barbecue, it being the best barbecue i ever ate outside of Texas and to be honest, better’n some i ate in Texas. I mean, this is a place so damn professional that they automatically give you the sauce in a little container on the side, knowing full well that like all good ‘cue, it doesn’t need any sauce. On the other hand, they’re way off down there in Pacifica in the first place and worse yet are takeout only.
So i’m gonna be working my way through the local places listed in the Chron. I mentioned a month or so ago trying the Dancing Pig on Castro and saying i’d go back to try the pulled pork even though the spare ribs were dried out and dreadful. I haven’t yet. I got all excited over the news in the Chron that Big Nate’s had been bought by an enterprising young couple mainly to get the enormous brick built in smokehouse that Big Nate sure didn’t take much advantage of. The newcomers renamed the place “Cat’s Head“, which made me a little nervous, but i tried it anyhow. The pulled pork was OK, not all that exciting but good enough that i ate it all with enjoyment. Actually, i ate all the spare ribs, too, but that was only out of gluttony, as they were rather dry and coated with this strange, not all that flavorful powder. And oh, if you try this place, be sure to ask for the sauce on the side because they seemed shocked that anyone would ask this, and when i got home i sure was happy none of either of them sauces got anywhere on my plate.
Meanwhile, i took advantage of my recelled batteries the other day and Segwayed all the way over to the Bayview to Flora Grubb, when i was unable to resist this Tillandsia. Brought it home and dropped it into this wonderful graduated cylinder Gloria gave me.
And aren’t we happy i finally got a little better at using the macro zoom?