Cupping at Blue Bottle

SF street food festival conference.

Today was the SF Street Food Conference, which fell on the heals of the festival this past weekend. I wish I had partaken more in the festivities, but I am grateful for what I did experience.  The conference sold out for the Monday panels.  Gioia called me and told me to come take her spot for the end of the day.  She went to the conference for "work" but she wanted to get to the office to return emails, etc.

We had a great panel of people from Liba Falafal (foodtruck), Wise-Sons Deli, nolafoodtrucks.com (an incubator organization for entrepreneurs), Inticing Creations ( a cake decorator), and Blue Bottle Coffee.

I thoroughly enjoyed their perspectives on starting a company, hiring and growing a company, embarking on dramatic career changes, and taking all of the necessary risks to follow a passion.  Lizzy Caston shared some cool anecdotes of coaching entrepreneurs through the process.  I liked when Gail Lillian urged us to "follow our gut" and do what feels right.  I loved when James Freeman talked about "ignorance is bliss."  Sometimes it's better not to know about something and just to believe you can do it.  Otherwise, the obstacles might deter you.  James also said that when you take out a loan from a bank or a third party investor, with whom you have no personal connection, it's easier to mis-spend that money.  Whereas, when you spend your money, each and every penny is considered invaluable. THey all said to start small.  They all said that it's crucial to test your product before it goes to market.

Farmers markets may or may not be the best place to start (for us, I think they will be great!).  Lillian said that they food world is only just beginning to transform in San Francisco.  Some people are starting by bike.  Lizzy told the story of a rich Nike principal quitting her job to ride around on a bike, selling curried pop-corn.

I am really empowered and inspired to take the next steps, and I genuinely look forward to all that I am going to learn in the process.  I look forward to the journey.

Sunday juicing

Today I made 7 different juices.

This does not capture the disaster that was my kitchen

Here is what I had for ingredients: carrots, celery, some chinese greens (I forget their name!), mint, oranges, apples, pears, nectarines, apricots, cantaloupe, tomatoes, and ginger.

It's a juice pyramid!

The first juice I made was a carrot -orange-mint.  Then, I made a tomato-carrot-orange.  Let's call the third: Chinese green-pear-tomato and the fourth an: orange-apple-ginger.  I surprised myself because the fifth was a cantaloupe-celery-mint, and it might be my favorite.  The sixth was a cantaloupe (which you can juice with the rind)-pear.  I made an apricot-nectarine blend just for myself, and I gulped it down before the photo shoot.

By the end, my juicer was releasing some pulp into the juice.  The final juice was frothy, but still delicious

I am working on getting a list of all the local produce that grows on Cape Cod, or in Massachusetts, in the summer months.  It will be very important that the fruit be grown locally, as much as possible.  Oranges are such a staple in juicing, and those don't grow in New England.  I'll have to get those from CA, GA, or FL.  This will be my next research piece for the juice-portion.  I have reached out to Halycon Farms on Cape Cod, but I will probably need several sources of produce.....to be decided.

SoW

Today, I went to SoW, the pop-up juice company that Luisa Alberto started.  SoW began with a kickstarter campaign.  Now, they are open on Saturday's from 9 to 12 and operate outside of a wine-bar, which is owned by a friend of Luisa's.  Soon, the will open on Monday's as well.  Their future seems so bright, and I am so excited to follow Luisa in this journey!

Luisa worked for Blue Bottle for several years, and from what I understand, she worked very close with the founder/president during the "boom" years of expansion.  She then went to go work for Good Eggs before having the juice idea.  On Thursday, she announced to her boss at Good Eggs that she would be leaving to take on the SoW endeavor full time.  She is on the bring of something so very very exciting, and her passion was just uber contagious - I am feeling even more jazzed about our idea for this summer!

Me and Luisa

So, lots of ideas were brewing as I was there and hearing more about SoW. They are sourcing from local farmers - I need to know more.  They are giving much of their fiber waste to a little farm that is on a plot of land in Portrero Hill, where some guys are raising worms for soil.  I want to do this somehow in Cape Cod (give it back to the farms that are sourcing our veggies?). A friend of Luisa and Derek baked some pastries out of some of the fiber - is this a new role for Val?  We could bake pastries out of some of the fruit discard and sell them with the coffee?

Derek works "bakery hours" and makes tons of juice for a cafe in the Dogpatch.  So, another avenue they are exploring is the idea of wholesale juice.  They have this one account now - should they expand? Luisa was part of the Blue Bottle revolution that brought Blue Bottle's brand to many local cafe's and restaurants.  Should they do this with juice?  Maybe some day we will order SoW juice at Outerlands Cafe?

Rolo waits unpatiently outside

I cannot wait to sit down with her and learn more about her plans, ideas, and experience.

Tahoe 2012

I noticed that, this year in Tahoe, serving gourmet beers (read, not Coor's light) in cans was hip.  They were able to perfectly illustrate the beers' logos on tin rather than paper.  It made for a killer break-time buzz that was refreshing and minimal in the hand.

2012 - the year of the Sierra Nevada Torpedo Brew. What a lovely surprise to see this in (huge) can at Alpine Meadows.

Ippuku - 31st Birthday Dinner with Manuel

Happy Birthday to me and Jonny - Quest office parties

31st Birthday - Drake's Bay

Birthday Brunch at La Mar

Vanilla Ice-cream with Green Tea and Carmelized Soy Sauce

Brocclapcemons

Broccoli stems, apples, celery, and lemons.

The old and the new

Papa a la Huacaina (new)

Eggplant Casserole (old)

Katie's Kitchen

Homemade Granola

Dining while I work...

Miso and Tahini rice.
Stir fried kale, onions, and cabbage with sun-dried tomato chicken sausage.
Steamed artichoke with butter.
Rocket fuel.

Perú y Su Comida

Why Not?

After a week of eating "all we could eat" on the cruise to the Caribbean, we figured we'd end the trip with platter at Chili's Boneless buffalo wings (how the crud do they make chicken without bones?), spring roles which were a testimony that CHili's has no idea what a spring role actually is, and mini burgers. Those last items were delicious. Oh, and of course the blue cheese and 3 incredibly healthy sticks of celery.

Oh yes we did.

While at the mall....

Lack of Boundaries

Oh, what, this?

Seaweed

I like the beach. I also love seaweed (more than sticks and balls). Call me special needs. I say tomaato.

Inefficiency that is worth it.

"To make the 1.7 ounces contained in this bag

10 ounces of perfectly ripe, fresh cut mango are freeze dried."

33rd birthday weekend

First, it was the burger from Park Chalet

Organic meat grilled to perfection

With blue cheese and just barely caramelized onions

Then it was the brilliant idea of white wine at Bolinas

(even though we could only find styrofoam)

We ate my sandwiches

Had two surf sessions and swam with Runkey

And celebrated 33 years!

Oh, Starbucks

i like you in the morning
to warm that ocean chill
i like to think i do not need you
but still
my tastebuds especially crave the bitter taste
of the El Salvador roasted by the Beachside Cafe

i wish i didn't like Starbucks
but it's so damn consistent and bold
there are so many wonderful coffee shops in san francisco
and in other cities, i am told
but yet Starbucks is the impetus to our coffee-cultured-nation of fanatics,
and now I wonder what our buzzing American culture would have morphed into without it.

This is what I do....

When my husband goes to work on Sunday nights.

The things you realize as you get older

I eat a lot of chocolate. I love chocolate, and I'm not ashamed.

I buy this chocolate a lot. It's Ritter Sport (WTF kind of name is that?), and it's the dark chocolate with hazelnuts. It is shown here paired with cheap white wine (with a cool label), from Trader Joes.

I had a good realization today about this chocolate. I don't like it. I don't even really know what it tastes like and probably could never identify it in a blind taste test. But, I LOVE hazelnuts, so I eat it because I try to get as many hazelnuts per bite as possible. I eat around the chocolate to get to the hazelnuts.

From now on, I will buy hazelnuts and spend my calories on ice cream and expensive Trader Joe's wine.

More on this to come.

Beer at Bluegrass

Warren Hellman gives us the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park every fall. He pays for this entire event, which attracts thousands of people.

He died in December, so today was a tribute concert for him.

The wind was blowing, but the sun was shining. We played paddle ball and drank my favorite CA IPA while listening to awesome music. It was the iconic, NorCal day.

A Delicate Constitution

A few years ago, in August 2010, I went to the Santa Cruz Board Walk for the birthday of my friend, April Orbison. I think it's best that I prelude everything with a few key points about April Orbison:

1. She is from Texas.
2. She ate a lot of corn-dogs growing up and could NOT believe that I had never tried a corn-dog before.
3. She loves to booze heavily and often.
4. She is, by far, the funniest girl I have ever known

I thought her decision to have her birthday party at the Santa Cruz boardwalk was excellent. Not only did it symbolize her dedication to fun, celebrating her 32 birthday by giving herself and her friends full permission to act like children (who like to drink) was very true to her character. April told me that the best birthday present I could give her was for me to eat my first corn-dog in her presence. I wanted to deliver on this request, and so I was really looking forward to this day. Before I ate a corn-dog, however, I thought it would be a good idea to drink about 2 beers and ride a few roller-coasters. You know, pre-game a bit, in the spirit of April Orbison.

The corn-dog went down nice and well. There were many photos, laughs, and comments from other party-goers such as: "how the hell did you never eat a corn-dog until today?" To which I answered: "Corn-dogs are for white trash." (I was kidding, of course...okay, maybe not.)

We were waiting for what would be our last ride (was it the Torpedo?), and I started to feel it come on. It was a first a headache. I went on the Torpedo anyways. (And, as we waited in line, we entertained ourselves with the newly released fat-booth app for the iPhone - laughing so hard that I almost peed my pants probably did not help my cause). Then I had nausea. When Paul and April finally dropped me off at my car, which Manuel had parked in the prissy, manicured Jackson Square Park, near La Mar SF where he worked, it was not good. That day, the tulip beds of Jackson Square park received a few doses of Shayna's corn-dog vomit. My dog, Rolo, then tried to eat it up. Needless to say, I never made it to the margarita and chili party that was planned for after the SC boardwalk. Hell, I barely made it home. I pulled over twice because I thought I would puke.

Since that day, April told all of my friends that I, officially, have a "delicate constitution." I have been trying to prove that statement false for a few years. But, unfortunately, it's true. If I drink one night, I am hung -over the next day, regardless of the quantity consumed. (Not that this keeps me from drinking multiple nights per week, as one would reasonably think.) If I eat something with just a wee too much saturated fat, I have diarrhea. If something is over-salted, I get a headache.

Why is this pertinent to today, February 18, 2012? Today, I went for a long walk in the morning, ate a bagel, cooked up a bunch of healthy food (cauliflower puree, apple-kale-chard juice, tomato and avocado salad with yellow peppers) but ran out of time before I could eat anything. I took my exchange student, Juanjo, to a movie. We got popcorn, two large sodas, and pretzel bites with "nacho" cheese dip, which is essentially Velveeta. After the movie, we went and ate pizza from Roundtable. It was, no doubt, the Walmart diet, but hey, it was one day.

One day? If only my body could think like that. I have a massive headache, diarrhea, and I might throw up. I feel AWFUL, and the only reason why I can write this post is because I am laying totally horizontal, in the dark, and downed 2 Excedrin migraine.

I have a delicate constitution, and it sucks. Why did my mom feed us such healthy, stupid food as kids? Why the frigg wasn't I allowed to eat corn-dogs? God damn the person who introduced me to Whole-Foods in college. I resent those stupid hippies (read: my college friends) who supported my decision to go Vegan for a few years. Farmers markets in San Francisco are truly for the weak who are seeking to become even weaker. My life is devoid of fun, and it is now probably going to be longer because of all the stupid healthy food I eat.

Burma Super Star

Some say it is overrated. Others will wait more than 2 hours. The restaurant staff are not the nicest, but they don't have to be. The food is amazing. The salads of 15 separate ingredients. The flavors are like nothing you will ever experience again.

Burmese food is delicious, and Burma Superstar knows it and owns it.

Oh, and Mitchell's coconut ice-cream, shown above, is out of this planet.

Orange Citrus

Why I love oranges, clementines, minneolas, etc:

• Refreshing taste
• Color
• Health properties
• Thirst-quenching-ness
• Smell
• Juiciness

Things that I like to do with these guys:

• JUICE! - My favorites are: carrot orange, kale-orange, beet-orange, mint-orange
• Salad dressings with a combination of: soy sauce, cilantro, fresh cracked-pepper, goat cheese, parsley, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, olive oil, different types of vinegar, chives....etc
• Fresh orange juice cocktails (mimosas, pisco cocktails, and gin preferred for my taste-buds. But lots of peeps love whiskey too.)
• Put them in salads with pecans, sesame seeds, spinach, and wontons.
• Peel 'em and eat 'em. Vitamin c directly to the blood stream.

Things I want to learn how to do with these guys:

• Marmalade
• Vitamin C facial masks, scrubs, and lotions
• Reductions for deserts.

YUMSERS!

It all started with at soup

I never really considered myself a cook. When people would ask me: "do you cook?" I responded: "Yep!" Of course I cooked. Who doesn't cook? You really have to be pretty god damn lazy to live 30 years and respond to that question, honestly, with a "nah, I don't cook." But was a I a cook? Like,the noun and the verb? No.

It all started with soup. Carrot ginger. Then potato leek. Then sweet potato leek. I started getting adventurous with Root Soup (ingr: sweet potatoes, yams, turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions, stock, rosemary and cumin). The roasted eggplant and roasted red-pepper was a killer. Butternut Squash went savory once then went sweet. Cream of asparagus (without the cream - or milk for that matter) was a twice-in-one-week kind of soup, and the second time was for breakfast. Carrot dill was super healthy and energizing. It was a few days after carrot dill, third day of leftovers, that I realized I am a cook.

Now I realize that my Italian bloodline affords me all the essential DNA for cooking. My instincts kick in right around the time the garlic starts to frizzle in the extra virgin olive oil. I don't have to think much, I just know what to do next....(well, most of the time). Recipes are suggestions, bare bones of an idea. I like to seek them out for inspiration, but I never follow one step-by-step, two times in a row.

I am starting this blog to keep track of recipes so that, if one day I open a restaurant, I will have a bunch of MY OWN recipes from which I will draw upon. I'll probably write about lots of other yummy things that are not my own, too. Oh, and I already thought of other food-related topics that I want to share. Be prepared for soup praising and new soup trials. (Thank you soup.)