Hedonia

The Eatsdropper is all aTwitter

In retrospect, I should have known that Twitter was the optimal place to troll for Eatsdroppings. Every submission in today's roundup was either posted on Twitter or sent to me by a fellow Twitterer. You can still send me your items at eatsdropper-at-seantimberlake-dot-com, or tweet them yourself. Just make sure I'm following you, ok?

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Guy with big slab of bacon, into cell:
    "No, I'm at Walmart. I'm not lying to you. I'm getting bacon. Come on baby, don't be like that."

- Eatsdropped by Karina at Walmart      

Karina: "Um, probiotics yogurt starter?"
Snotty boy staffer: (Sniffs in disdain and annoyance) "We don't have anything like that!"

- Eatsdropped by Karina at Whole Foods

Woman, early 40s, speaking to another woman:
    "It's that time of year when I buy a rosemary plant just so I can kill it."

- Eatsdropped by Lisa at the farmers market

Oakland Hills MILF, after being given the lambic by her preciously gay attorney colleague:
    "Oooh, this lambic tastes like a beer wine cooler."

- Eatsdropped by Fatemeh at The Trappist

Woman #1: "What do you want for lunch?  We could do dim sum."
Woman #2: "What's dim sum?"
Woman #1: "Oh, it's tapas."

- Eatsdropped by Allen at Safeway

The Eatsdropper wouldn't know arugula from Aunt Sylvia

A small change some regular visitors may have noticed: In the upper right corner, I've added a Twitter feed. So if you want to know what I and some 50 other food bloggers and other associates are doing right now, you can have almost psychic insight into our quotidian comings and goings. Speaking of psychic insight, keep sending me other people's inane natter to eatsdropper-at-seantimberlake-dot-com.

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Small fry to her similiarily sized friend: "Do you like salad? Yes or no."

- Eatsdropped by Suzie at Plaza Grill at the Sonoma Cheese Factory

Middle aged woman to waiter/bartender when presented with coffee in a silver French press:
    "How are you supposed to tell that it's ready?"

Waiter/bartender laughing to Middle Age Man to after his obviously drunk girlfriend went to the restroom:
    "Whattya think? Should we get her liquored up?"

Same couple moments later, man to date:
    "I'll get the Chimay Rouge. Then I can cross it off my list."

- All eatsdropped by Suzie at Ad Hoc

Man: "I didn't realize that when you eat oysters, they're still alive!"

-- Eatsdropped by Anita in front of the outdoor Hog Island stand at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market

Customer at condiment station, to barista: "Do you have any skim milk?"
Barista: "Sure. Isn't there any out there?"
Customer: "No, all there is is non-fat."

- Eatsdropped by Anita at Peet's Coffee

Guy, to female cohort, in a narrow window of time when he was not on cell phone:
    "I usually get the torta. It's like a burrito between two slices of bread."

- Eatsdropped by yours truly at Tacos San Buena

40s-ish man: "I wouldn't know arugula from Aunt Sylvia"

- Eatsdropped by Jen at the Marin Farmers Market

Woman, unclear on the taqueria concept, faced with line flowing out the door:
    "Where's the line to put your name in for a table?"
Then, on phone with friend:
    "So this place isn't a restaurant. I mean, it is, but it's the kind of place where you order food at a counter and then get a table if there is one."

- Eatsdropped by yours truly at Papalote

Bay Area Real Foodies

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Introducing Bay Area Real Foodies

San Francisco, CA, April 1, 2008 -- In a metropolitan area renowned for its culinary excellence, a new community of those who pursue it has arisen: Bay Area Real Foodies (BARF).

Ralph Hurlbut, president, extolls the group's virtues: "With BARF, you get to experience what others have experienced, share each other's tastes," expounds Farquhar. "BARF is a culinary melting pot, an explosion of colors and flavors from around the Bay Area."

The group's entry criteria are stringent. Prospective members must undergo intense screening to demonstrate their epicurean prowess. "BARFers are authoritarian. They know which pecorino tastes most like cheese, that skinny asparagus has more flavor, where to find vermouth-aged cheddar or Italian baloney, all about the antioxidant as opposed to flavor benefits of blueberries. We want only the crème de la crème in BARF."

Monthly BARF mixers allow members to mingle. "They're great, like culinary think-tanks where people get together and yack to their hearts' content," expounds Hurlbut. "BARFers are serious about food, but like to have fun, too. Someone's always got a gag up their sleeve."

To learn more about BARF, call 415/555-BARF or check out their website.

Levriero

For my third guest-blog post in Married ...with Dinner's illustrious Drink of the Week feature, I unveil a new cocktail concocted for Reese's birthday party, the Levriero. After all, I simply had to do something with all that pompelmocello. Read on!

Pompelmocello

Photo courtesy Anita.

If there's one thing I adore about the foodieblogosphere, it's how inspiration spreads like ooey gooey jam over the peanut butter-covered surface of the web. Stephanie drew sufficient inspiration from my previous posts on making limoncello to pursue a batch or ten of her own. When I saw Stephanie after her first foray into 'cellifying, she spoke of doing a grapefruitcello, and thus the inspiration came full circle.

Many of you may already be aware of my almost pathological aversion to orange, but I really adore grapefruit -- all varieties, from the face-twistingly sour to pleasantly sweet-tart. I love the complex bitter-sour-sweetness of its flesh.

Straight away I made my way to the farmer's market the following Saturday and found a booth bursting with glorious globes of various shapes and sizes. "So," I asked both naïvely and curiously, "which grapefruit has the best flavor in the zest?" They were stumped. So I grabbed an Oro Blanco and a couple pink-fleshed puppies and lugged them home.

Now, in my past few rounds of playing the 'cello, I've learned a thing or three. First, as stated before, Everclear (the 151-proof stuff; we can't buy the rocket-fuel 190 proof in California) is the way to go. Second, I like my 'cellos a hair on the bitter side, not so cloyingly sweet, so I use a grater rather than a Microplane to extract a little pith along with my zest. And lastly, I dial down the sweetness even a touch more by making a simple syrup with a 4:5 ratio of sugar to water, rather than a standard 1:1.

The Pompelmocello, as I dubbed it (pompelmo being Italian for grapefruit), was a success. Surprisingly flavorful, it started off with a bright, orangey note, after which a pronounced grapefruit flavor came to rise, tailing off with a pleasantly lemony finish -- the full spectrum of citrusy goodness. It was sweet without being too sweet, with an intruiging bitterness that tickled the sides of the tongue.

The 'cello plays on -- I currently have a massive batch (as in, almost five liters!) of limoncello going, a cuvee if you will of Lisbon lemons from Hillsborough and meyers from Potrero Hill. My standby recipe follows after the jump. Cin cin!

Good Friday! Sit!

Last year on Good Friday we brought home a baby girl. One lunar year later, we're still as proud and beaming parents as we were then. Today we celebrate her "birthday." Laissez les bone temps rouler!

Cyrus

All right, people. I have heard your desperate pleas for my opinion on Cyrus. I have to confess, I almost decided not to post it after such a delay, but I feel better knowing that at least one other blogger out there is still catching up from President's Day. And anyway, I did manage to scribble down my impressions on the bleary morning after, so why waste the effort?

My other hesitation in posting is that, despite or perhaps because of the amount of fawning praise I've read about it, I just wasn't over-the-moon about the place. I mean, don't get me wrong; it was good. Very good even. There were some things I really adored. But the whole was felt a little less than the sum of its parts. I think that had we not done this so relatively close on the heels of a life-changing meal like Alinea, I might have felt differently.

Nearly every thing they did well was mildly blemished, sort of a wabi-sabi approach, as if perfection would be an affront to the fine dining gods. As with another recent diner, they were very accommodating of dietary restriction, in this case DPaul's wheat problem ... with one little oopsie (read on). The service was professional yet warm and affable, but we ended up with a less than stellar table (why my reservation was inferior to others, I'm still not clear) with a lot of traffic, causing the back of my head to be brushed with every passing server.

Now the bar, that's another matter. We specifically arrived early to have the opportunity to sit at the bar and sample one of mixologist Scott Beattie's world-famous concoctions, and we were not disappointed. DPaul predictably went right for the bourbon with the Frankfort Manhattan, featuring vanilla- and citrus-infused Buffalo Trace bourbon, which has since become our house bourbon. I, in turn, tried the Pelo del Perro, a palate-tickling affair of Charbay Ruby Red Grapefruit vodka, Chinaco Silver tequila, grapefruit juice, lime juice, agave nectar, grapefruit foam and a red-salt rim. The garnish were three minuscule rosemary blossoms floating on top, each a tiny explosion of woodsy bouquet. Perfect.

Though we both partook of the 7-course chef's tasting menu, DPaul's was obviously  occasionally different due to the absence of wheat. Also, we opted for different wine pairings to mix things up; I took the standard pairing, and DPaul selected the Grand Tasting pairing, customized to highlight the chef's tastng menu ... at approximately twice the price. Worth the differential? Sometimes.

We both agreed that it would be delightful to return and enjoy a meal in the bar area with some excellent cocktails. So, a happy ending by and by.

After the jump, the blow-by-blow description of our meal.

Bucatini, a love story in two acts

With some foods, it's love at first sight. Others make you work for it, requiring that you endure their flaws and imperfections to unveil their charms. Perhaps they intrigue you at first, capture your fancy, invite your attentions; but then they do something to irritate, confuse our outright hurt you, and you just don't know where you stand with them. No big deal, you say, there are plenty of fish in the sea, to say nothing of what grows on land. And so you take your affections elsewhere.

But then you catch yourself making furtive glances in their direction. Your curiosity is piqued. Sure, they're ... difficult, but somehow also interesting for it. If only you could crack the code and discover the inner beauty.

So it was with me and bucatini. Until last weekend.

Bucatini, for those not versed, is a cruel joke of pasta: Thick, spaghetti-like strands with a narrow hole running the full length. To try to twirl the pasta around your fork results in irregular, spattering flailing of the snake-like noodles, flinging sauce artistically all over your shirt, kitchen walls and occasionally ceiling. Then, once you've crammed the tangled mass into your mouth, dribbling sauce down your chin and onto your lap, you cannot even slurp the dangling tubes in, as the hole in the center of the pasta makes each noodle into a fine straw through which you suck saucy air. Even bucatini's most famous and celebrated dish, bucatini all'amatriciana, though deliciously bacony, is infuriatingly difficult to pronounce. (For the record, it's boo-cah-TEE-nee all-lah-mah-tree-CHA-nah.)

So, bucatini was destined to be forever too high-maintenance for me. So many other pastas, so little time. But ... being of Italian descent, I just couldn't bear to turn my back on one of my people's creations. Bucatini are beloved by millions. They can't all be pazzi. Can they?

Olive me

Three months, two food service containers, one stockpot and lord only knows how much salt later, ten pounds of olives are ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

These puppies took a fair amount longer than our last batch. But then, they're a fair bit larger than those others as well. I procured these from Penna Gourmet Olives, thanks to a tipster in the comments from last year's post. Penna is based in Orland, in the northern Central Valley. That puts them 158 miles from here, which puts them a little outside the comfort zone of hardcore locavores. I figure, these olives have been living in our house for three months, and that makes them as local as it gets.

Acting on feedback left by another (frankly rude) self-purported Italian olive grower, I upped the ante on salt content in the brine to try to stave off the scourge of mold. Using double the amount recommended in the previous version did little to keep the crud away, though it did make the olives inedibly salty. Hence, I had to go through a few cycles with less salt, and at least one with no salt to try to bring them back into a happy place.

Finally, this week they were both sufficiently de-bitter-ized and not tongue-burningly salty. Let the seasoning begin. A fistful of chili pepper flake, a sprinkle of black peppercorns, some lovely fragrant bay leaves, a fagot of finely matchsticked lemon rind and a very healthy slosh of extra virgin olive oil should just do the trick.

I'm playing it safe: I'm keeping these babies in the fridge, turning them twice daily until I can offload them or consume them. Take that, mister mold.

And so ends another lengthy, tedious and fraught food venture chez Hedonia. DPaul gets his stockpot back, I can sleep at night without dreams of encroaching mold and we can finally give our friends their Christmas gifts.

Type casting

Perhaps it's reflective of my humble nature (snicker); more likely it's early-onset Alzheimer's. Two days ago was the two-year birthday of Hedonia! Of course, as it's been in a virtual coma for the past couple months, I didn't exactly break out the champagne and cupcakes.

You see, apparently, I have forgotten how to blog. Weeks, months go by and I cannot pull the words together to fill a post. Of course, lack of time factors in heavily as well. My work is crazier than ever (and I mean that in more than one sense); the holidays washed over me like a tinsel-clad tsunami; and I remain ever stunned at, as a dog owner, just how much time you have to -- have to -- spend rubbing bellies and throwing squeaky toys. There aren't enough hours in the day.

As a result, I am rusty. As I sit to write this post (Ed. -- again; this post was started weeks ago) I find myself hesitating at the keyboard, intimidated by the virtual white page. Of late, I feel the same way in the kitchen. Whereas I used to handily churn out delicious and interesting meals, I now move a little more slowly, check and recheck measurements, constantly fear that I am skipping an ingredient.

It's small wonder. With our time as constrained as it's been, not only have I not been cooking, I've also not really been eating. I mean, sure, I've consumed my couple-thousand calories each day, but more often than not I may as well have eaten cardboard, cheerlessly choking down whatever sustenance is at arm's reach.

Not that it has all been uninteresting. Attentive readers (and close personal friends) will know that DPaul suffers from a particular back problem similar to rheumatoid arthritis. Recently, in his efforts to combat this condition, he has begun working with a naturopath. Evidently, it's quite likely that DPaul's pain may be triggered by allergic reactions to certain foods.

The good doctor had DPaul purchase a copy of Eat Right for Your Type. The author, Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo, has devised a set of diets based on each individual's blood type. By many accounts, he's on to something with this. In point of fact, in just one week of adherence to the diet, DPaul was virtually pain-free.

Of course, here's the thing: DPaul is blood-type O; I am type A. Type O is purportedly the primal blood type -- hunter-gatherers, cavemen and whatnot. The diet comprises meat, meat, meat and meat, no dairy or grains -- diet not unlike one a certain meat-eating vegan I know was forced to reconcile with. "A" types came with the next step in human evolution: Agriculture. Hence, the type A diet is, well, vegetarian. There is stunningly little overlap between the diets.

Herein lies the irony: When DPaul and I first got together, over fifteen years ago, I was fairly pescetarian, leaning into more hardcore vegetarianism for economic reasons. DPaul was a meat eater. Over the years we gravitated closer together, but left to our own devices, were we doing what our bodies told us to?