March 2014

Following through on my promise to provide more material about farmers’ markets, i’ll start with three of my favorite vendors at the Castro market.

First, another mention of Shelly’s eggs.  They really are dramatically more delicious than grocery store eggs, and i’ve never tasted an upscale egg that vied with them other than the few Nash brings to the Alemaney Farmers’ Market, and he’s usually sold out before 8:00 AM.  Oh, and finally Shelly let me take a pic of her… after i reminded her that she’s here to sell eggs, not be all made up for a special dinner, which is why she’s laughing.

Oh, and what else do you do with eggs besides creaming them with asparagus?  Well, how ’bout a potato salad made with nearly as much boiled egg as potato?  Plus all the usual ingredients and lots of chopped red onion to give it more texture and taste.  Upping the egg ratio increases the protein, lowers the carbohydrate count, and pleases our doctors.

Next stop, East & West Afghan Gourmet Food.  They do a very good eggplant casserole that you can just stick in the microwave, and i like some of their sauces, but what keeps me going back is their spinach bolani.   Oh. my. goodness.  I’ve had spinach parathas  from a Sikh vendor at the Noe Valley Farmers’ Market that i just loved until i tasted these bolani, which are basically the same thing but with more spinach inside and even more delicious.  That said, the Sikh’s coriander sauce might be a tiny bit better.  On the other hand, he’s nowhere near as nice looking.

I mentioned the nice young man at Alpine Blue Farm last time, but here’s a pic of him.  Oh, and he now has his blueberries.

I’d said that i buy my asparagus from Cecchini at the Castro market, well i’m loyal to him, but i got this shot at the Noe Valley Farmers’ Market that i’ll use to show folks what California asparagus is looking like now.

Some wonderful things can be done with asparagus, but one favorite is to just blanch it for three minutes and serve it cold in a vinaigrette.  My other favorite is the Asparagus and Creamed Eggs from the old Joy of Cooking.

And now, some favorite vendors at the Noe Valley Farmers’ Market.

The fresh green garlic season is nearly over, but here’s what it looked like at the Herr’s stall.  No, ma’am, it’s the garlic.

And speaking of the Herrs, here’s their snow peas that i wrote about pickling.

A new favorite at the Noe Valley market, Garden Variety Cheese.  Breathtakingly delicious raw sheep’s milk cheeses.  Expensive, but i’m worth it.

I’d mentioned becoming a fan of the sourdough loaf from Sour Flour.  Here’s what they look like all stacked up.

Gosh, looking at all that good food made me hungry for politics, so i’ll close by mentioning that it doesn’t look like Big Sister Feinstein is going to see her hypocrisy in wanting to keep me under 24/7 surveillance while objecting to government spying on herself.  No, just the opposite.  The other day a few citizens had gathered in the street in front of her mansion to articulate their concerns, and when she peeked out from behind the curtains and saw a toy helicopter out there, she went ballistic and called in a drone strike.  Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and she was convinced that we don’t yet have the drone capability to take out little airborne targets without way too much collateral damage, at least in this country and most especially not in Pacific Heights.  Besides, the authorities reassured her that everyone out there had been thoroughly photographed from multiple angles and the photos filed, stamped “Keep Forever”.

I’ve failed yet again.  Comrade Putin has completely ignored the sage advice i sent him in that letter a couple of posts ago.  Ignored, hell, he’s dug himself even deeper and has succeeded in isolating himself from just about every country on the planet by taking over Crimea the way he has.  And all of it so completely unnecessary when Crimea was just waiting for a chance to get out of Ukraine and back into Russia, as was illustrated by that 95% vote in favor of leaving Ukraine in the referendum called by the Crimean legislature.

And yes, even though that referendum clearly revealed the will of the people, and according to the EODE observer mission was conducted freely and fairly, it was illegitimate under both Ukrainian and UN rules.  Sovereign states do not graciously allow portions of themselves to secede with a simple vote, as witnessed by our Civil War.  No, it takes a revolution…or intervention by a foreign power as when we helped Kosovo throw off the Serbian yoke.

None of the stats i’ve mentioned before can more starkly illustrate the feelings in Crimea than what happened after Putin had accepted the surrender of the Ukrainian forces in Crimea and had offered them the choice between free passage back to the Ukraine for them and their families or the opportunity to remain in Crimea as Russian soldiers at the same rank.  I read in yesterday morning’s paper an article that included a photo of bunch of Ukrainian soldiers waving from their departing bus.  Buried deep in the middle of the article was one sentence mentioning in passing that two-thirds of the Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea had chosen to become Russian soldiers.  I can think of nothing that speaks more eloquently for the innate Russian identity of Crimea than this.

And nothing that more deeply underscores how badly Putin has handled the issue.

And here, a sign of our times, this one on 16th Street at the foot of Potrero Hill.

Well yes, the loathsome Westboro Baptist Church scumbag has gone to his eternal reward, the location of which most of us are pretty sure, and he would doubtless be pleased, publicity hound that he was, with all the media attention his death has got.

Hell, the fanfare started before he was even dead with all the coverage of his son’s post that he was near death, the coverage certainly dramatically increased by the juicy tidbits regarding his excommunication of at least two of his sons and his own subsequent excommunication.  Oh, and didn’t we love that, since it sparked speculation about the cause of his getting the boot.  Ummm, maybe a little dalliance with that lovely soprano in the choir, or much better yet, with that handsome, buffed field hand.  Yesssssssssss.

My favorite response to his death was the lighting that evening of the Empire State Building with rainbow colors for about five minutes around 9:00 PM.

My favorite verbal response was so widely promulgated that i’m not sure of the source, but it ran, “My mother said to say only nice things about the dead. He’s dead. How nice.”

Or speaking of nice, as Isabella Allende remarked upon the death of Roberto Bolaño, “Dying does not make you a nicer person.”

But actually, i mourn his death, not because i’m nobly turning the other cheek because i realized just a few years ago that if i didn’t start fighting back now, i’d go to my grave without ever standing up for myself.  No, i mourn Phelps’ death because i wish he were still alive.  Since his anti-gay ranting was so over-the-top that nobody with an IQ in double digits would buy into it, that evil fucker did more to advance the cause of gay tolerance than “Will and Grace”, albeit inadvertently.  And now he can’t do it anymore.

That’s why, if i uttered prayers, i’d start with heartfelt and deeply earnest ones for the health of Pat Robertson.  Now that Phelps is dead, Robertson is our primary remaining source of anti-gay bile so ludicrous that it cannot but turn folks away from hateful Christianity.

I looked through my recent photographs trying to find a good portrait of Phelps, but this was the best i could do:

Tovarich!

I write in love and sorrow.

You are, i’m sure, aware of the terrible press you are getting now in the Western media and worse yet, of the political sanctions being proposed by the Western powers, all over the handful of troops you sent into Crimea last week to help maintain order during the chaotic conditions in Ukraine caused by the recent coup that deposed their democratically elected president.

Oh, Vladimir Vladimirovitch, what were you thinking?  By that rash action you ignited an international firestorm of anti-soviet feeling and may very well have shot yourself in the foot from an economic standpoint, as i cannot think of a single economic benefit that might accrue to Russia from your action.

If you had just backed off, everything would have worked out your way.  I mean, you know better than i that Crimea has always been Russian (well, at least since the resolution of the Tatar Problem early in the previous century) and that until Khrushchev gave it to the Ukrainians in 1954, virtually nobody in Crimea even thought of wasting his time learning Ukrainian.

Even now, sixty years later, the vast majority of the Crimean population still considers itself Russian and speaks Russian, so there was absolutely no need to send a single Russian soldier in.  The Crimeans would have seized with great joy their first opportunity to vote on which country they wanted to be part of, and an overwhelming majority would have still voted to join Russia without what the western media is calling your “coercion”.

Furthermore, it will come as no surprise to many of us if at least three of the eastern Ukrainian oblasts now start agitating to leave Ukraine for Russia, but of course now that you’ve sent those few soldiers into Crimea, people all over the planet will start accusing you of fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine.  Oh please, you don’t need to foment unrest, the people in those oblasts are ethnically Russian, Russian speakers, and pro-Russian.  And they were overwhelmingly supporters of Yanukovich.  You don’t have to do anything to make them want to join you, especially considering that joining you will immediately improve their standard of living by getting them off the Good Ship Ukraine as it sinks into a maelstrom of debt.

Reflect, reflect, comrade.  Yes, you’re a KGB thug, but you don’t have to act like one.  It’s too late to undo the damage you caused by sending a handful of peacekeepers to Crimea, but don’t send any to eastern Ukraine.  Just look at the election results for the last presidential election for Ukraine.  Those folks are already in your camp and as soon as they get the chance, that part of Ukraine will quite naturally all by itself fall onto your plate like stack of Babushka’s blini.

Your friend,

Matte

Meanwhile, everywhere things fall apart:

I had thought about doing a post on how Senator Feinstein, after many years of vigorously endorsing all that national security apparatus spying on her constituents, was consumed with outrage when she discovered that she, or at least her staff, was also being spied on.  But then i realized that this has been all over the national news for the past week and that while her hypocrisy speaks with adequate eloquence for itself, she is now our last best hope for reining in our nascent police state.  That is, unless she still thinks the rest of us should be continuously monitored.  If that’s the case, it’s too late for me, but the rest of you should go underground now.  Well, some of you, if you get my drift.  The rest … well, i cling to the hope that we can be in adjacent cages and console each other between interrogations.

So instead of all that boring political stuff, i’ll do another culinary column, this one celebrating my favorite farmers’ market, the Castro Farmers’ Market, which opened its 2014 season last Wednesday.  It was a festive occasion, and not just because the weather was shirt-sleevy gorgeous owing to a massive solar spill that has lasted all day long every day of the past week.

See, the vendors and their customers hadn’t seen each other since mid-December, so there was pent-up need, and much socializing occurred along with the buying and selling.

First stop, Shelly’s Eggs.  Shelly’s hens are pastured and run around loose all day long eating bugs and seeds.  Their eggs are also very fresh, and you can taste the difference.  Besides that, Shelly’s nice, laughs at my jokes, likes my jams and jellies, and insists on giving me discounts.   I mean, i’m trying to be a good customer and a contributor to her profitability, but i can eat only so many eggs.  If people were not so damn hard to photograph, i’d include a pic of her, but stay tuned.

Next, Serendipity Farms, where i picked up the most perfect wild arugula i’ve ever seen. It was only after i’d served it to my guests on Friday night that i discovered that we have a perfectly fine English name for it – “wall rocket”.  Sure do wish i’d known to call it that when i was buying it from the vendor, who has finally decided that i’m harmless and is now nice.  Guess who gets a jar of jam next time.

The guy in the blue tent is looking at the wall rocket, but i suspect he bought potatoes instead.

Then to Nyia Yi Farms, where i picked up some perfect little sub-golf-ball-size Yukon Golds, plus a bunch of red radishes, and across the aisle to Home Maid for some of their breathtaking olive-fig-balsamic vinegar tapenade.  They also have good ravioli, but i’m so partial to that olive-fig stuff that the vendor waves it at me when he sees me coming.  Yep, he knows his customers, and as you can see, he knows his products, too.

Next stop, back across the aisle to Rodin Farms, where Marie, who is right up there with Shelly on my favorite vendor list, was proudly offering her new product, almond butter, which is quite tasty although i’m holding my breath in anticipation of her divine nectarines in another month or so.

Next, to my walnut guy at Alpine Blue Farms, who in the summer sells blueberries and blackberries and in the fall sells baby kiwi fruit the size of grapes and so young they haven’t grown their fur yet and can be eaten whole.  Yum.

Then to Prather Ranch for a package of their bratwurst, one of the very best in the city and sold by knowledgeable and downright nice vendors.

I’ll cover other vendors at this market in a later post, but for now i’ll close by mentioning that i was buying some of that stuff for the dinner i did on Friday night for visiting Canadians, not exactly a traditional meal, but i like new combinations.

To start, a salad of wall rocket and thinly sliced red radish dressed in a light vinaigrette.  And then a four pound chunk of ahi tuna that i plunged into a pot of boiling court bouillon for two minutes, pulled out, and plattered so that folks could cut off the size slice they wanted.  Only two minutes, you ask?  Yep.  That way the outside quarter inch is nicely cooked and any pathogens have been killed, while the inside is dead raw and still cold in the center.  The best of both worlds, cooked and raw at the same time, and besides, the squeamish can make sure they get an outside slice, leaving the good stuff for the rest of us.

For accompaniments:  first, a childhood favorite, new potatoes (i used the little Yukons) in a thick cream sauce.  Then braised fresh green garlic and corn bread.

I tire easily now, and i was too tired Thursday night to make a dessert, so i cheated and bought a pie from Mission Beach Cafe.  Good thing i love that place because i felt kinda jacked around Friday afternoon when they wouldn’t sell me a chocolate cream pie because they had only one owing to it being π day (3/14) and there having been a run.  And then i felt even more jacked around when i was serving the pie and discovered that they hadn’t packaged the pie i agreed on as a substitute.  But hey, i didn’t even open the box when i picked it up, so i can’t complain … well, any more.

And i’m thinking that maybe i ought to start doing the food posts using my new kitchen persona – “Sue Vead”.

OK, i’m calling it a festival, but it’s really just a smörgåsbord of culinary updates.

In the restaurant news, i keep going back to Company and continue to find it my perfect match with its combination of charming and friendly staff, relaxed and quiet atmosphere, and superb food – the latest delight being perfectly sauteed scallops on a bed of impossibly tiny black lentils, a combination i’d never dreamed of that worked wonderfully.

Another good experience in dining out occurred when i worked up my nerve to give Dante’s Table a second chance after the disappointing first visit.  This time i confined myself to a Bianca Pizza and am much relieved to be able to say that it was delicious, one of the better pizzas i’ve had lately.  You are forgiven, Dirk, and i’ll be back.

The bad news is that Pearl’s Deluxe Burger will be closing next week its outpost at 6th and Market, rent raised more than they could pay and still break even, so to get the best burger bargain in the city you’ll have to go to their other location at Post and Jones.  Can you get a better burger downtown?  Sure, but not at that price, not even close.

About fresh bread, there is now a competitor to the Acme sourdough baguette and the Thorough Bread baguette, the loaf from Sour Flour, which you can get at a number of places in the city (see their Locations) but which i get at the Noe Valley Farmers’ Market, where they are currently hidden in the far back corner at the Stall From Hell reserved for the newest vendor.

It’s so rich and flavorful that you can slice it very very thin, surmount it with some Gouda, sprinkle it with black sesame seeds, and throw it in the toaster oven until it’s all crisp and bubbly.

Regarding the fresh produce, we’re well into green garlic season, and i’ll be serving it braised as a green vegetable to visiting Canadians later this week.

And joy of joys, Cliff Hamada is now bringing to market Marsh grapefruit.  No, not from his groves, since the Marsh grapefruit is virtually extinct, but personally plucked from the old tree beside his house.

Finally, my friend Carol dropped by yesterday with a big paper bag of her Rangpur limes. Get in line, folks, as they sure do make fine marmalade. I went in the kitchen this morning to start prepping them and discovered that she’d not only picked and delivered the damn things but also washed them for me.  Hell, it looks like she detailed them with a toothbrush.

I mean, is she angling for two jars outta this batch?

And speaking of jars:  Does a Bay Area reader have a use for a couple dozen quart-size canning jars, a mixture of various brands (Mason, Kerr, etc), some traditional lid and some wide mouth, all with screw bands but no lids.  I make nothing in quarts and want to pass these on to someone who can use them.  Here’s the Contact Form, or call me.

The other day a friend sent me a fascinating video clip of the most amazing music box device i’d ever seen.  Bear with me here, click on that link now, and watch the video.

Pretty amazing, huh?  I was just stunned, played it over and over, and sent it to a number of friends, most of whom reported enjoying it.  One of them posted it to his Facebook page and told me that it was an overwhelmingly successful post.

I watched it a couple more times, and then noticed something a bit strange.  And if you haven’t yet clicked on the link and watched the damn thing, please do so before you read farther.  I’m serious.  This is a spoiler alert!!!!  Maybe go ahead and watch it twice.

Here’s what caught my eye.  I was watching the section over on the left side with only two strings that functions as a horizontal string bass and noticed that the mechanism that was acting as the left hand and stopping the strings was unlike the other multistring sections in that instead of performing rather like mechanical fingers with joints more or less corresponding to the human wrist, hand, and fingers, the string bass version had a tip somewhat like a two-jointed finger but used a solenoid to throw the “finger” out to the correct point before it then clamped down on the string.

And then i thought, hmmm, must have been a lot of advances in electromechanical solenoid technology in recent decades, as i could not imagine a solenoid having anywhere near that length of stroke.  Went online and browsed around, and the longest stroke i found after a few minutes of searching was way less than one inch.  And all the solenoids i could see had coils with diameters at least five times that of the shaft….unlike the skinny thing on this device.  Worse yet, we do not yet seem to have a solenoid that can be thrown for only part of its stroke, they’re either all or nothing.  So that solenoid looks to me to be impossible.

Then then i looked at the mechanism of the mechanical fingers on the multistring sections, and it was sort of like having my first question about religion and the unsatisfactory answer leading to more questions, which led to more unsatisfactory answers.  In this case,  the functionality of the mechanical fingers also did not seem plausible under close scrutiny.

Oh, and then i noticed things like those vertical harp-like strings that, if you look closely as the camera pans around, you’ll notice are not actually struck by anything and are there purely to make the device look more complex.  Well, OK, an engineer friend pointed out that they might provide some resonant harmonies.

The air was already almost completely out of the balloon, but i went ahead and clicked on  animusic.com and discovered that the name of the company is Computer Animated Music.  Yep.  It’s all fake.  And that said, much of it is quite entertaining.  But this video is the only one of theirs i saw that at first viewing looked like it might be of a real device.

Folks, people are out to fool you, and much of the time not in innocent ways like this one.

Take, for example, the current clamor for us to start bombing Russia to ensure democracy for the freedom-loving folks in Ukraine now that Russia has taken over Crimea.

What i’ve seen very little of in discussion of this crisis is some basic history.  The blunt fact is that in 1954 Comrade Khrushchev turned over governance of Crimea, which was then a part of Russia, to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, but leaving Crimea an autonomous republic.  Because dissent in those days was rewarded with a one-way ticket to Siberia, there was little resistance in Crimea at the time even though 90% of the Crimeans were ethnic Russians, spoke Russian rather than Ukrainian, and had no ties to Ukraine other than having raided them for slaves back in the good old days a few centuries ago.  After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine gained its independence, which left the ethnic Russians as a minority in the nation as a whole even though they were an overwhelming majority in Crimea and in the eastern provinces.

Flash forward to 2014.  When President Yanukovich decreed that he would not continue the push to get Ukraine into the European Union but rather would seek closer ties with Russia, the people revolted and staged a revolution.  Yanukovich fled to Russia and the ethnically Russian parts of Ukraine began their own counter-revolt.  Dissent is particularly strong in Crimea, which as best i can tell remains an autonomous republic where the population has steadfastly refused to learn to speak Ukrainian for the past sixty years, and the Crimean government has scheduled for 16 March a referendum on whether to exercise its autonomy and leave Ukraine for Russia.

What we’re not hearing very much on the news now is that the United States, passionate defender of democracy that it is and absolute advocate of freedom and self-determination for the Ukrainians, is just flat hysterical over the idea of self-determination for the Crimeans.  I mean, since over 90% of ’em don’t even speak Ukrainian, guess who they’re gonna vote to join?  Well, if they’re allowed to vote.  So now we have the hideous spectacle of Putin clamoring for a free vote while Obama declares it should not take place.  Yes, Obama is arguing that people who have endured sixty years of bondage to Ukraine should not be emancipated.

It’s always good to look closely at the mechanism of our music boxes.

A timely pic:

Well yes, i admit that i’ve succumbed to the sin of pride on occasion and posted pics of local floral extravaganzas.  Worse yet, i’d posted pics of my houseplants i wanted to show off.

So in compensation, i’ll share a couple of horticultural disappointments.  First, the “banana tree” on Hartford Street.

I don’t ride very often in the block of Hartford between 17th and 18th, but last year i noticed that this palm-like tree i’d thought of as a banana tree was sporting a large inflorescence.  I’m a sucker for large inflorescences, as folks will have noticed from my frequent photos of various agaves in bloom, so of course i snapped a pic of this one.

I was just fascinated by that three-foot-long inflorescence and kept swinging back by there for weeks, expecting it to erupt into a brightly colored blossom two feet across.  Umm, yes, until one day when i swung in close to examine the tip and looked up inside there.

Click on the photo and look closely around the edge of the central shaded circle.  Those are dozens of miniscule flowers.  Whew.

The other great disappointment occurred in my own kitchen window, where i’ve had a little cactus for going on twenty years, so long that i forgot its name ages ago when it was clear that it wasn’t going to do anything except sit there obstinately.

Then finally last week my eye swept past it and skidded to a stop.  What!!!!!  Is that a bud?   Yow!   Nearly broke my leg getting a cup of water to it and then nursed it impatiently for several days until it finally opened.

Yep, there it is.  My reward for twenty years of patient tending, a pale greenish yellow blossom fully three-quarters of a centimeter across.  Oh, and it lasted only one day.  And OK, i’ll admit it –  it blessed me with a second bloom a couple of days later.

Glad i wasted no effort remembering its name.

My readers will recall that on 17 February i posted here a letter i’d sent to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and Protector of the People, in which i took strong issue with her apologizing to German Chancellor Angela Merkel for tapping her cell phone while remaining utterly unapologetic about tapping mine.

Here is Big Sister’s response on 26 February.  I’ve taken the liberty of redacting my name from her salutation since i’d written to her from an alias in a feeble little attempt to make things a tiny bit more difficult for the 24/7 surveillance maintained by our national security apparatus over all of us dissidents and potential terrorists, but otherwise, not one word has been omitted:

Dear Mr. [redacted]:

Thank you for writing to express your support for alleged National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance of government leaders of our allies.  I sincerely apologize for the delay in my response.

Dear Big Sister,

I find it rather amusing that you use the word “alleged” here since Angela and the whole world learned about this surveillance by reading documents leaked by Edward Snowden that made front page news when they were reproduced in their entirety.

As you are aware, recent news reports have alleged that the NSA conducted surveillance on foreign leaders of our allies, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as other countries and institutions that are friends and allies to the United States.

 Again, what’s this “alleged”?  Top Secret NSA documents describing this surveillance were released for everyone to read.

Please know that I strongly support U.S. intelligence programs like the NSA’s collection under Section 215 of the PATRIOT ACT and 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which I believe have been essential in preventing terrorist attacks at home and abroad.  However, I am concerned about the potential costs of conducting surveillance on foreign leaders of allied nations.

 You ignore here repeated testimony before Congress that surveillance of the communications of US civilians has not prevented a single terrorist attack.  And yet you are concerned about ‘potential costs’ of surveillance of allied foreign leaders, but you make no mention of what those costs might be.

You may be interested to know that on January 17, 2014, during his speech on proposed reforms to NSA programs, President Obama announced that “unless there is a compelling national security purpose – we will not monitor the communications of heads of state and government of our close friends and allies.”  I support this approach and several of the other changes proposed by the President, and look forward to working with the NSA and with the White House on these issues going forward.

 So you and Obama have caved to international pressure and have stopped monitoring foreign leaders (or at least you say you’ve stopped).  Again, my point remains that any reasonable person can see far more utility in monitoring the communications of foreign leaders  than there is in monitoring every word uttered by loyal citizens.

Again, thank you for your letter.  While we may not agree on this particular issue, I hope you will continue to be in touch on issues of importance to you.  If you have any additional comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841.

No, we do not agree on this particular issue. I believe that your vociferous support for the gathering of intelligence on loyal American citizens goes far beyond the wildest dreams of the Gestapo, the Stasi, and the NKVD and that if you are not stopped, you will lead us into a complete police state.  Well, without the monitoring of highly placed allied political figures, which apparently you think of as “professional courtesy”.

With Senators like you as our Democratic friends, what need do we have for Republican enemies?

Sincerely yours,

Matte Gray
Loyal American

Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the nation are available at my website, feinstein.senate.gov.  And please visit my YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for more ways to communicate with me.

Whew. Hard to come up with a good pic after that, but here’s one of a citizen who’s just discovered he’s being bugged: