Looking hard at things hard to look at

Estate Sale: I stumbled upon an estate sale this weekend, my first, on the way home from the grocery store, my organic-local foods grocery store. I walked up the staircase looking for great finds. but instead i was moved to tears. the kitchen was what broke me, half filled bottles of dusty schnapps and Italian ports just where the owner had left them. cookbooks, pots, pans--all as they had been left. Then there were closets full of clothes. A bed, barely made up, with a spot worn in by the people who slept there day by day.

Recycler by Ocupation: tonight is the second night I've seen someone go through my trash. As I stood talking to an old friend on the phone, this dude methodically picked out all my beer cans and glass bottles to send to the recycling. there's just something so strange in seeing a person make something out of stuff you thought was nothing....

Can't believe it! Renew your food traditions...

Front & center of the NYT homepage, now To Save a Species: Serve it for Dinner! An article focused on the Renewing America's Food Traditions project I've had the honor to work on with my fabulous, always intrepid mentor, Mr. Gary Nabhan.

There's also a mention of a book I helped pen in the article, due out from Chelsea Green press any day now with a forward by the exquisite cookbook author Deborah Madison!!! It feels so good to see the results last year's late nights post-work plus the many weekends spent researching and writing my chapters.

A small victory on the journey, something worth a celebration!

more from the center for lunch time walks.

The Center for Lunch-Time Walks promotes walking at lunch for the purpose of walking. Not of lunching. How walkable is your world? Check it here at Walk Score. My hood scores 92 out of 100--but that's why I live here. Strange enough, my Mom's hood scores an ok 58 out of 100--but I wouldn't walk anywhere in her neighborhood--there's just too many cars & during the summer time heat of 100+ degrees, there's no way...

You, the Living @ SFIFF

Hilarious + shot in amazing colors

A Treasure Found

Jill Freedman's incredible/gritty/beautiful photos of NYC in the 70s faded into obscurity when she left NYC due to health problems. She's back and so is her story here.

A Tortilla Conspiracy

Can't believe I missed The Great Tortilla Conspiracy event at SomArts! A commentary on our global foodshed - a questioning of what is art - a revolution in tortilla making. Good stuff.

Check out this rad article here.

Back on the CSA

Fennel, romaine, spinach, swiss chard, fava beans, sugar snap peas, leeks, beets (with their greens), kiwis, green garlic & grapefruit. I love my veggie box.

Saturday breakfast of champion gardeners.
I can't eat eggs without the Rooster sauce anymore.

Goodness is almonds.

Mmmm--it's hard to call this citrus-flavored, spring crunchiness an almond, but an almond it is. Life is good--getting organized, getting motivated, learning to say no, finding my boundaries.

Our Global Foodshed

Totally into the Food Chain series--learn more about our crazy global foodshed & farming photos too.

Read it: NYT Magazine the Green issue.

Awesome! Check it here & don't miss the Pollan article. Epic. Pollan has written a map of my own environmental/human conciousness and life path. It is a call to action & call for hope--plant, grow, eat, and share even just a little bit of your own food. "The single greatest leasson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world" 

Alemany Farmer's Market Love

Went on an adventure to the Alemany Farmer's Market, the oldest farmers' market in SF located next to the convergence of four freeways - public transit, not recommended. Found out that there's a whole section of streets in SF named after Ivy League institutions.... Anyways, it was awesome, despite the howling 25mph winds.

New favorites: Huaraches (masa corn tortillas filled with beans, topped with 2 different kinds of cheeses, salsa, hot sauce, lettuce and salsa, damn), and almonds from the tree (they're bright green and taste of citrus with a hint of the nutty almond future to come).

Inspired eating: arugula & spinach pesto with buckwheat noodles (the noodles are another new obession) & portobello mushroom sandwiches with homemade aioli (the goodness that is garlic mayonnaise, so easy to make).

The high price of ethanol

Farmers around the world are plowing under their wheat fields to make way for corn and soybeans--to make way for ethanol, the new 'silver bullet' solution to the world's oil crisis. When will we notice that there is no such thing as a one-stop solution?

The implications? Food riots in Egypt (among other countries). And it's hitting home right here in the Bay Area, read more here about how SF bakeries are beginning to feel the crunch too.

More blogging to come...

Back from AZ!

Since when is SF scared of a protest?

I work down by the Embarcadero & yesterday's torch festivities were totally distracting. I didn't realize how excited I would get by the whole day. From my perch on the 28th floor I saw the crowds of people gathering all day--planes all morning with banners reading everything from Free Burma to SF will save Tibet.

I still can't believe that they changed the route...

This dude should've picked up one of Credo phone's free signs (yes, they turned a protest into a marketing opportunity, almost makes me want to return my phone!) I wish I had grabbed a photo of the Credo protesters, the signs read I'm another ____ for a free tibet. Some fill in the blank answers--vegetarian, San Franciscan, Christian...

Note the Bejing 2008 posters with a cop standing over a bloody corpse.

The Ferry Building gets tagged.

Monsanto's dirty secret gets more public...

Learn who's destroying food & farming in the US--it's actually made it into the pages of Vanity Fair!

so much that I've been so passionate about for the past 10 years has gone from being a freaky, leftist conspiracy theory to gracing the front pages of Vanity Fair & the NYT. It's rad but I don't know quite what do to it....

Where did my Sunday go??

A long, windy walk through Golden Gate Park--ending at the model yacht club! Yes, it's a club for racing remote control yachts and it's awesome.

Spent the rest of the day trying to get myself & my life organized...just a small task. But I've started, I'm hoping that's the hardest part.

Strawberries=spring is here

This week: strawberries+awesome Garden for the Environment fundraiser+loving acupuncture. Good stuff

Oaktown adventure

Went to a conference on healthy cities & healthy people. Overwhelming problems with really complex but amazing solutions. Sometimes it's a little much to take it all in.