California produce has slain yet another one of my Hate Foods. There were quite a few groups things I refused to eat as a kid and peas were definitely one of them. I hated the mushy, tasteless, mean little things. If I piled enough butter and salt on them, I could just swallow them down with a big slosh of water but my gag reflex still worked overtime.

Last weekend, I was picking through the produce at the Sunset Andronico's and my eyes fell on the big smooth pods of English peas. Without thinking too hard about what I would do, I started stuffing them in a plastic bag.

Once at home, I perched on a sunny stool in the kitchen and took old-fashioned pleasure in slitting the pods open with my thumbnail and rolling the pale fat peas into a bowl. A few seconds dip in rapidly boiling water and slightly longer in a shocking ice bath and my peas were ready. Firm and mouth-popping, the peas were as smooth as a freshly Botoxed baby's bottom with nary a wrinkle to be found. But what to do with them?

I pulled out the butter and salt and stared at them. Ugh, I couldn't go that route. While I love the simplicity of salt and butter when oven-roasting or steaming summer corn, in order to fully expunge my childhood memories, I definitely needed something completely different. Since the peas were already cold, I opted for a salad. Peppery watercress, slightly bitter endive, and flaked ivory shavings of salty Pecorino Romano in a light lemony vinaigrette all brought out the sweetness of the spring pearls.

English Pea Salad

Serves 4

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon Champagne vinegar
4-5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 1/2 cups shelled English peas
Three heads of Belgian endive, bruised leaves removed
2 bunches small-leaved watercress, about 1 lb
Pecorino Romano, or an aged sheep's cheese of your choice

1. Whisk the lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil together. Add salt and pepper and taste. Adjust seasonings to your preference. Set vinaigrette aside.

2. Fill a large, heavy-bottomed pot with cold water and bring to a rolling boil. Add the shelled peas and cook for about 45 seconds. Plunge the cooked peas in an ice bath to stop the cooking.

3. Slice the endive at an angle and put the slivers in a large bowl. Add the watercress and drained peas and toss with the vinaigrette until glistening.

4. Serve the salad on individual plates and shave the Pecorino Romano over each portion. Use as much cheese as you like.

June 5th is National Hunger Awareness Day. All year long we talk about artisanal food, organic food, local food, gourmet food, restaurants, the farmers market, chefs, cooking, and yet rarely do we mention hunger or food security. If for even one day a year we all paid attention to this issue, we could help a lot of people in our own communities. There are so many ways you can help, here are just a few:

SAN FRANCISCO

Volunteer
Volunteer with the San Francisco Food Bank. This amazing organization distributes more fresh produce than any other food bank in the nation. They use volunteers to sort food weekdays and weekends. Click on "Volunteer" to learn more and to sign up for a shift.

Eat out
Go to Kuleto's on June 5 and order the special Hunger Awareness Day three course prix fixe dinner at Kuleto's restaurant in San Francisco and the proceeds will be donated to the Food Bank. Call 415-397-7720 to make a reservation.

Go shopping
Make a $5 donation to the San Francisco Food Bank at any San Francisco Macy's store on June 5 and receive a 15% off savings pass for the entire day.

Donate
A $10 donation allows the San Francisco Food Bank to provide meals to 40 children. You can also donate non-perishable food items. Click on "Donate" to learn more.

Take a cooking class
Learn how to make a gourmet Italian dinner at Sur la Table with Chef Bob Helstrom of Kuleto's on June 5, Hunger Awareness Day. All proceeds from the ticket sales will be donated to the Food Bank. Call Sur la Table at 415.732.7900 for details and tickets.

Visit Union Square
Join the San Francisco Food Bank from 12:00 - 1:00 on Hunger Awareness Day to learn more about the issue of hunger and how you can run a food drive, volunteer or advocate for an end to hunger in San Francisco.

Wine. Dine. Donate.
Tanya Steel, editor-in-chief of Epicurious.com, and chefs Mark Franz, Jan Birnbaum, and Parke Ulrich invite you to San Francisco's Farallon for a dinner to benefit America's Second Harvest. The evening's special menu will feature dishes personally created by each chef, including diver scallop carpaccio, crispy maple pork belly, and roasted strawberry turnovers. Click on "Wine. Dine. Donate." to buy tickets.

ALAMEDA

Attend a Fundraiser
The second annual Empty Bowls event is on Tuesday, June 5, 5:30 - 7:30 pm at the Food Bank, 7900 Edgewater Drive in Oakland. The family-friendly event features Chef Ann Cooper, Renegade Lunch Lady, as the keynote speaker. Guests will be invited to select a hand-painted bowl to take home as a reminder of hunger and the empty bowls in the community. A silent auction will feature ceramic pieces from local artists and gift certificates from local businesses. Delicious soup and bread is being donated by the San Francisco Soup Company and Semifreddi's Bakery. Tickets are $20 for an individual, $40 for a family of two adults and two children ($5 for additional child) and may be purchased by calling 510-635-3663 ext. 328 or click on "Attend a Fundraiser" to purchase tickets online.

Volunteer
There are lots of opportunities to help out in Alameda. You can coordinate a food drive or sort food. Click on "Volunteer" for ways to get inolved.

Donate
Every month thousands of Alameda County residents rely on the Food Bank for nutritious food resources. Your donations help provide low-income families and individuals with emergency food assistance and the most invaluable resource of all, hope. Your donations are tax deductible to the extent of the law. Click on "Donate" to learn more.

I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to whole grains. You know the ones I mean: Amaranth. Millet. Quinoa. Teff. They sound faintly exotic, like semiprecious jewels or new colors from the Pottery Barn paint collection. But they also have a hippie-dippy air about them, and I like my food full of flavor (and my underarms shaved, thank-you-very-much).

With superstar bloggers like Heidi Swanson constantly singing their praises, though, lately I've started to waver. But something held me back. And then I went out and ate nine desserts in one sitting -- a feast so ridiculous even Dionysus himself would have surely chided me for it -- and I began looking about for ways to eat healthier. As luck would have it, The Wheat-Free Cook (William Morrow, $24.95) arrived in my mailbox during this moment of curiosity, and the first recipe to catch my eye was quinoa salad with cucumber, tomato, and mint.

Since that sounded like a dish for a warm, sunny day, I decided to call up the book's author while I waited for such a day to appear on San Francisco's foggy horizon. Jacqueline Mallorca is a local food writer who started her career by writing the first ever Williams-Sonoma catalog and later became an editorial assistant to James Beard and a San Francisco Chronicle food columnist. She now has more than 11 cookbooks to her name.

A little over ten years ago, Jackie was diagnosed with celiac disease. For Jackie and 1.5 million Americans, that means gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye, makes them sick. Like most newly diagnosed sufferers, she was taken aback by all the foods she could suddenly no longer eat -- bread, pancakes, crackers, cereal.

"Being a cook, a foodie from way back, I laughed heartily at the diet sheet I was handed, and said, 'Oh no, I can do better than that.' I started reinventing the way that I cook," Jackie told me over the phone.

That meant shifting to nut flours for cakes and cookies, rice flour for things like pasta or bread, and the aforementioned hippie-dippy grains I've been suspiciously eyeing for years. After spending a decade cooking gluten-free, she collected some of her favorite recipes in The Wheat-Free Cook.

Even though I can eat gluten, flipping through those recipes made my tummy rumble. They looked simple and sounded delicious: onion-Gruyere tart, Asian stick noodles with pork and asparagus, cornmeal and cheese shortbread.

Jackie says that her restrictions have actually made her cooking better. "A lot of the time, particularly if I'm making cookies and little petit fours and cakes with nut flours, they turn out much more delicious than the original versions because you're using such fine ingredients. Cakes made with ground almonds and the best quality [cocoa] powder and three or four eggs taste wonderful because they taste of the almonds and the good stuff," she reported.

I wanted to know more about all the funky grains that peppered the book, so I asked her what she couldn't do without, even if she could eat gluten again. "I'd never stop using quinoa because it cooks up very fluffy, and it makes the best grain salad because it doesn't go hard like rice does when it's chilled. I wouldn't give up on millet because it makes a really terrific pilaf. I wouldn't give up on teff flour because it makes the best brownies under the sun," she readily answered. "I find it's like cooking in color instead of cooking in black and white."

The sheer poetry of her answer inspired me to dig deeper into the cookbook. I went out and bought white rice flour to use for dredging sautéed foods in based on Jackie's observation that it's less gummy than flour. I dog-eared a recipe for peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies and another one for chocolate-hazelnut truffle cake (healthy eating having been long forgotten at this point). And yes, I bought some red quinoa.

A sunny day finally appeared, and I set to making the salad. I tossed in a bit of roasted chicken to make it a meal, subbed some spicy cayenne pepper for fresh ground black, and let it sit in the fridge so the flavors could introduce themselves. "Hiya," I imagined the cucumber saying. "How fresh!" would be the radish's sharp reply. But the quinoa just sat there, still and gentle, subtly flavorful, and down-to-earth. Yum.

Quinoa Salad with Cucumber, Tomato, and Mint
Serves 4-6

Recipe adapted and reprinted with permission from The Wheat-Free Cook by Jacqueline Mallorca, William Morrow, $24.95.

2 cups gluten-free vegetable broth
1 cup red or yellow quinoa, rinsed and drained
1 cup shredded roasted chicken
1 cucumber (about 8 ounces), peeled, seeded, and chopped
2 large, ripe tomatoes, finely chopped, preferably heirloom
4 green onions, thinly sliced
8 radishes, finely chopped
¼ cup chopped mint
½ cup chopped parsley
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Fine sea salt and cayenne pepper

1. Bring the broth to a boil over high heat. Add the quinoa, reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer until the grains are tender and the liquid is absorbed, about 15 minutes. The grains will turn transparent, and the white germ ring will show. Transfer to a large bowl and let cool.

2. Add the chicken, cucumber, tomatoes, green onions, radishes, mint, and parsley. Whisk together the olive oil and vinegar, and season to taste with salt and cayenne pepper. Pour over the quinoa and vegetables, and mix gently but thoroughly. Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed. Serve at room temperature.

It's that time of year. When Bay Area markets are jumping with stone fruits. Names whimsical, actual and unpronounceable and downright silly fill signage over mysterious glowing orbs. People want to know, "What's the difference between a pluot and a plumcot, a nectarcot and an aprium? Why all the funny names? What happened to the straight up plum, apricot, nectarine and peach?"

The full answer is too wordy for this medium. But, truth be told, there are almost no fruits we eat out hand today which are their true selves in their original form. All stone fruits are hybrids of the bitter almond tree, and all have been developed by horticulturalists for hundreds of years to withstand certain weather conditions, soils and various interfering pests. And in the last one hundred years or so, farmers have been juggling/gambling with different trees in an attempt to provide Americans with what appears to be one fruit during the course of a season. The peach you eat in May is not the peach you eat in June or July. But the hope is that on each of these hot summer days, you can find, buy and eat a peach.

It's almost impossible to keep up with all the stone fruit hybrids once summer begins. They rush at us like stars in a meteor shower. Some varietals last a month, but many come and go within a week or even days! My favorite farm for stone fruit is Blossom Bluff. Ted and Fran Loewen grow dozens of varietals, oftentimes experimenting or sticking with more difficult trees and fruit to provide their customers with a delicious spectrum of complex, aromatic, texturally sensuous fruits.

It's been as big a surprise to me, as anyone else, that peaches and various plum-apricot hybrids are arriving at the farmers' market as early as this. It's May; still spring by the calendar! But here they all are, available for the picking, and in wide sweeping arrays and displays at Berkeley Bowl, Monterey Market and local farmers' markets.

Unless a farmer has stayed loyal to calling these hybrids their proper names, what you buy here will be named something different there. As of yet there's little regulation to insure names stay consistent. Train your nose and mouth to recognize new varietals. Pick fruit that has a strong scent when you go in for the smell. All stone fruit can ripen off the tree. Unless your house is very hot or humid, ripen fruit further by setting fruit on its shoulders, stem side down, until, when pressed, flesh has a bit of give. If the fruit you buy is very ripe, be sure to refrigerate it immediately.

Early fruits will be smaller and higher in acid than their later cousins. Fruit whose color bleeds right down into the stem end will ripen sweeter than those whose color is yellow or green by the stem. Look for fruit with saturated color. The sun's blush is what determines sugar in stone fruit.

But remember, some of these varietals will be gone before you can decide if you'll like them! Buy a few of each as the season progresses and jot down the name on the placard as well as the name of the farm stand. These notes will help you get a head-start on next years stone fruit onslaught.

If you have an interest in the history of these quirky hybrids, Mr. Floyd Zaiger is the first person to learn about. He has contributed more to stone fruit hybridization than any other person to date.

Short Pieces on Floyd Zaiger:

Your Produce Man
News from The Dave Wilson Nursery (where many California farmers buy these various hybrids.)

And if you are a nerdy (budding) fruit historian (pun intended) like me, you'll enjoy words written by and about the infamous David Karp, Fruit Detective extraordinaire:

California Heartland . Org
John Seabrook from The New Yorker spends a few days with our man.
Smithsonian Magazine interview.

At last week's Maker Faire I ran into a few of my favorite food artisans. In place of single-estate chocolate or the minute's freshest fruit, though, their ingredients were felt and yarn, circuit boards and LEDs.

What happens when you fold together San Francisco's cult of craft with its love of all things sweet or savory? And what if you spice it up with a dash of Silicon Valley's geeky, cheeky inventiveness and a generous dose of Burning Man bravado? You get a robot who mixes cocktails and you get the Dorkbake Challenge, where inventors present their original designs for working ovens heated with a 100-watt lightbulb.

It was a fun, unexpected reminder of how much our taste buds spark our creative cortex. Here are just a few highlights...

Cupcake Cars

Zipping around the San Mateo Fairgrounds were big, bright cupcakes. A double-take confirmed that they were, indeed, giant sweet confections rolling on wheels with one, sometimes two, human occupants. They were capable of turning on a dime and generating smiles wherever they appeared. Surely the best use of old, motorized wheelchairs and fuzzy fabric ever.

How to travel in sweet style.

There were a couple of muffin mobiles thrown in for good measure, but even the antioxidant-rich blueberries couldn't compete with chocolate or pink frosting.

Don't forget the extra frosting and sprinkles for protecting your noggin!

If you've been to Black Rock City in recent years, then you already know about Cupcake Corners. Solar-powered cupcake cars are certainly my own preferred mode of transport across desert (dessert?) flats.

SweetMeats SuperSavor

I've had my eye on this special meat purveyor for a long time, so I was glad to see their unique pillow cuts on display. Who knew meat could be so squeezable?

A big, plushy ham, bone still in and rind neatly scored.

Introduced in person to their new protein, I fell hard for a block of sesame-sprinkled tofu. Bean curd appears in my own fridge much more often than a full ham, so I was glad to see the veggie offering.

I was also lucky enough to snag the last shrinky-dink charm bracelet, complete with steak, ham AND pork chop.

Moveable Feast

At the Maker Workbench, the Exploratorium and London-based Cabaret Mechanical Theatre joined forces to give kids and kids-at-heart a chance to build edible automata. Learning how gears, levers and pulleys work becomes a lot easier when food is involved. (If only my high school physics teacher had appealed as successfully to my stomach as well as my brain!)

Cookies, pasta, pretzels, Twizzlers and, of course, a bagel become a starchy display of erupting lava.

NifNaks

Nifer Fahrion has gathered an entire family of cute, quirky "Shroommates." Each little character, culled from real-world fungi, has a distinct personality that she's conveyed impressively well with bits of felt, from the easily startled Morley Morel to red-topped Mr. Muscaria, who "likes to hang out with all the fairies that crowd in Dolores Park." There are little 'shrooms for ear lobes or cell phones, bigger ones for sprouting on desktops or bookcases. Cherries, bees, acorn, and happy vanilla ice cream cones are also well represented.

Impish and mischievous, Shorty Shiitake hides out in the grass.

Bonjour mes amis -- my apologies for the delay in posting this today. I've had an enfer (hell) of a time getting Blogger to upload my pics but I think all is well in cyberspace. Nothing a mid-afternoon glass of wine can't resolve :) A little culinary bird told me that Jacques Pepin was going to be in town. One of his stops was an informal sit down with the SFPFS (San Francisco Professional Food Society) moderated by Laura Werlin, artisanal cheese aficionada, at the Fairmont Hotel atop Nob Hill.

View of downtown San Francisco and the Bay from the top of the Fairmont

Mother Nature must be a Jacques Pepin fan because we were treated to some of the most gorgeous views imaginable set against a screaming blue sky. Jacques was in town promoting his latest book, Chez Jacques, which means "at Jacques' home". He did a meet and greet for a good hour then had a sit down interview followed by a reception where the Fairmont culinary team treated us to some of Jacques' recipes from this book. Here are a few of his words of wisdom, snippets, quotes and delightful humor.

Jacques Pepin and Laura Werlin getting ready to start the interview

• In this book, Jacques focused on recipes from his home, hence the title, recipes that he cooks for himself and his wife or a big group of friends. He states, the point of eating is sharing food with family and friends, with sharing comes conversation, talking around a table. He quotes anthropologist Levi Strauss who claims that cooking food is nature transformed into culture.

• Jacques claims he is egocentric, egocentric to the food he loves. He goes on to explain that this is natural because you can't escape yourself because you are unique. If you like a restaurant, it is more a reflection of your tastes, aesthetics, preferences, palette, experiences than on the restaurant itself.

• Laura posed the question: "How far should we go to buy our food?" Jacques replied, the best food is always going to be the closest food, similar to the best table in a restaurant being the one closest to a waiter.

• Another question asked about food trends in restaurants such as molecular gastronomy. His response was that chefs are thinking too much, turning it into fashion vs. trend. For example, Il Bulli is breaking new ground but locally no one would know what the dish is. If he took a dish out into the street of the town, no one would be able to identify it. He compares it to a haute couture Parisian fashion show. When you see thee crazy fashions, you think no one would ever wear it but eventually the techniques, such as the foam phenomenon, will trickle down and morph into mainstream dining.

Jacques' art work is featured through the book

• When asked about the Food Network and how chefs are now superstars, Jacques humbly refutes that chefs shouldn't take themselves so seriously, that we are all just soup merchants. Most chefs are basically craftsmen and technicians and some have extraordinary talent such as Thomas Keller. Jacques is also concerned with the lack of actual information on the Food Network - 24 hours a day of food shows but not one minute on actual factual information tackling today's culinary issues such as childhood obesity, diabetes, etc. There is no nutritionist, no investigating, we don't know anything about anything and the Food Network needs a show such as 60 Minutes that investigates and reports on food issues that are so prevalent in this country.

• An audience member asked Jacques the qualities of a good chef. He immediately fired off the following: hardworking, prompt, always there, attentive, fast, a good technician, and can work and get along with other people. These, he states emphatically, are more important than anything, even creativity. Once a chef is a master technician and if he has talent, then he can become an artist. Only then can he take everything he's learned, all his knowledge and experience and his own sense of aesthetics and start creating.

• Jacques tests all his own recipes along with his very discerning wife and assistant Norma. If they don't like it, the recipe doesn't go in the book! His collaborator on most of his books and shows, Susie Heller, also tests all his recipes in her home kitchen to ensure consistency.

• Jacques's next project is called The Artist's Table where he interviews accomplished artists, musicians, etc. to discover how their specific art translates to food and wine. He recently sat down with Itzhak Perlman who discussed the importance of food, using food synonyms to discuss how his music will sound and his love of cooking. When talking about the marriage of art and science, Jacques claims that you can't reduce a recipe to a scientific formula because every recipe incorporates that one chef's techniques, imagination, instinct and talent. If he gives the same recipe to 10 different people, he will get 10 different versions of the same dish because each person will naturally incorporate these traits.

Chocolate tartlet with candied grapefruit peel

• When asked about his favorite memory of Julia Child, Jacques smiled and laughed. The first show they did together had no recipes so it took them 2 years to write the follow-up book because the editors would have to replay the shows over and over to get exactly what they were putting into the dish. Another memory involves a visit to the set by a local sponsor, Kendall-Jackson. The producer Goeff Drummond, before the taping, confirmed with Jacques that they'd pour a glass of wine at the end of the segment. When the time came, Jacques poured himself a glass of wine and offered one to Julia. She graciously declined, declaring that she preferred a beer! The same thing happened when the Land O'Lakes sponsors were on the set. Jacques and Julia were making a pie crust and Jacques took out the butter. Julia announced she was going to make her pie crust with Crisco!

• A poignant ending to the evening came when Jacques talked about how blessed his life is, how he is able to do what he loves for a living and if he could come back in a second life, he would come back as Jacques Pepin. The audience burst into applause in heartfelt agreement.

Dorothy Cann Hamilton, host of the PBS hit series Chef's Story, was kind enough to pay KQED a visit prior to her appearance with Thomas Keller at the Commonwealth Club last week.

When I was approached to interview her, I immediately said, "Of course I'd do it." When I hung up the phone, I realized that I had absolutely no idea who she was. I don't have telvision reception. Excluding internet access, one might think I lived in a technology-deficient cave.

I also remembered that I had never interviewed anyone before.

Not knowing anything about someone you are about to interview might be considered a handicap to some. Probably to many. Mercifully, I was given sufficient time for research.

As I Googled and studied, I wondered how, as a self-proclaimed member of the food world (though, admittedly, marginally so), could I have not been aware of this woman? Listing but three of her many credentials is enough to make anyone with professed food-worldliness who remains unaware of her existence lie through their teeth and say "Of course, I know all about her.":

1. She is the founder and CEO of the French Culinary Institute.
2. She is the Chairman of the James Beard Foundation.
3. She hosts "Chef's Story" on PBS.

When my father called last week, I mentioned the interview. "That's not the ice skater, is it?" he asked, only half seriously. I cringe to think how often Dorothy Hamilton endures that question. My father wasn't the only one who made that crack. I was a bit embarrassed that I had never thought of it myself.

As I sat in a KQED conference room waiting for Hamilton to arrive, I thought to myself, "How bright is this for me, who has never interviewed anyone in his life, to be interviewing a woman who interviews famous people on national television?"

It may not have been bright of me, but it was fun. Dorothy Hamilton is not just a doer, but a talker-- and an entertaining one at that.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

MP: You're the CEO and Founder of the French Culinary Institute, you're the president--

DH: Chairman.

MP: So no time to play petanque? When you do get a day off, what do you do?

MP: Well, there's a definite art to puttering... I've been doing a lot of reading about you in the past week or so-- I don't mean it to sound like stalking or anything like that-- but I'm just curious how a girl from Brooklyn ends up founding--

DH: -- a French school.

MP: Yeah.

DH: And I'm not even French!

MP: Well, not just a French school, but a French culinary school with one of the best reputations in the world.

DH: Well, there's a lot of great people who have come from Brooklyn-- a lot of creative people.

MP: Oh, I'm not knocking Brooklyn...

DH: It is odd because everybody thinks I'm French and I'm not. How it started was my father ran a trade school in New York. I came from the type of family where my grandparents came from Europe, so I'd heard a lot about it, but I had never been there. And so, in high school, I used to just dream about getting on a plane and going to Europe and the only way I could get my parents to pay for it was if I figured out a way to go to college there. So I got myself into a British University, I got myself a student loan and went over to England.

I was very happy to be in England except for two things-- the weather and the food. They were both terrible. It was during the Vietnam War, so everybody hated Amricans-- a bit like today--... and so I actually befriended the French girls, because they hated the French, too. (Laughs)... they taught me how to make a Dijon vinaigrette and they got me to eat cheese that wasn't American cheese. They introduced me to yogurts. When we'd get really fed up with [England], we'd all go to France. It was beautiful. The weather was so much better and the food was light years better than the English food, so that's really where I got turned onto French food. I kind of lived in France during vacations, because I didn't have enough money to come home. Particularly in Burgundy. I had one friend whose parents were professors of English, so that made it very easy for me because they were showing me the culture. And her sister was a famous movie star, Claude Jade... I met people like Jacques Brel. It was quite fun.

I then went in the Peace Corps (in Thailand) because I didn't want to come back to the States-- the whole war thing was going on-- and I still had my wanderlust.

When I eventually came back-- it was about eight years later-- I had a Liberal Arts degree in English, a former Peace Corps volunteer, it was 1974 and we were in a recession in New York City and nobody would give me a job, so my father had this trade school and I went to work as a receptionist. I worked my way up through the administration and eventually got to be an expert in student financial aid. I sat on the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and I also sat on the board of directors for our accrediting agency for all the trade schools in the United States, and because of that, I was invited to see the top trade schools in Europe and, in France. They showed us the top professional cooking school, run by the French government.

See? There was a method for all this madness walking you through this.

So... I convinced my father that we should open a cooking school and use the French school-- not only as a model--but we actually paid the French government for the curriculum, they brought over the teachers and they maintained the quality control. The French chefs in New York went crazy because it was the same training they had. They just couldn't believe it was going to be made available in America... The very first class, I had Bobby Flay in.

MP: I heard he was trouble.

DH: He was voted the least likely to succeed. He has since made a scholorship at the school for kids who hate high school, because he hated high school. When we did this-- we did the scholarship with the City of New York, with the Board of Education-- and he sat down with all these superintendants and high school principals who were so excited to meet him, he just sat there shivering and said, "Any other time I've been with a principal was not for a good thing."

MP: I hear you like to entertain. What are some Dorothy Cann Hamilton signature dishes?

DH: I have a house on a lake... up in Connecticut...

MP: Is this connected with the Inn?

DH: Well, the Inn only existed for a year.

MP: Awww...

DH: Yes, we said it was like a fire hose with dollar bills coming out of it. It's a seasonal
business and you really have to be an owner/operator to make that thing work and we had day jobs, thank-you-very-much, so we realized we'd better cut our losses. It was great while it was there. People still talk about it...

MP: I didn't know it only lasted a year. I had this image of you and your husband running around like Bob Newhart and Mary Frann except, you know, in better sweaters.

DH: We did run around. And not necessarily in better sweaters...

But anyway, one of the things I loved to do... I'm afraid to swim across the lake...I love to swim, but there are so many boats. I'm just afraid I'm going to get hit by a boat, because you can't really see people swimming. So I came up with this thing called The Ladies' Swim Across the Lake. There's about twenty of us who stay over on a Monday. We get the men in rowboats... and what-have-you on either side-- sort of like an honor guard-- and we can swim the whole lake. They all swim across and back and -- I like to swim, but not that much-- so I swim across and say, "I have to go cook." and I jump in a speed boat and come back before everybody and get all cleaned up and I make paella. I have one of those outdoor stands.--and I don't make the seafood one, I make the chicken one because everyone can eat chicken-- and it's absolutely delicious and now everybody looks forward to that in the summer.

MP: Any Dorothy Cann Hamilton signature disasters?

DH: Oooh.... you know, I burn things every now and then. You know, what I burn all the time are pinenuts... Fifty percent of the time, I forget they're in the oven. I'm not a toaster pinenut person. I like putting something somewhere and coming back and it's done. Like a chicken.

MP: You talked about living in England. That was in Newcastle, right?

DH: Right. The coldest place in the world!

MP: Practically Scotland and, therefore, possibly worse food. Do you think their cooking has changed at all? Do you still feel the same way?

DH: You know, I'm going to offend a lot of English people--

MP: Oh, go ahead...

DH: They go on today about how good the food is in London. And I know Marco Pierre White is going to be here next week and he has done a lot for English food... however, the general cooking in England I still find to be...really quite disturbing. The old, traditional food I thought was fantastic. Potted shrimps, the beautiful cheeses, you'd go into a pub and get a Ploughman's Lunch. A really good roast beef... If you look at the products in England, they're so fantastic. I go to London and there are better restaurants, but they're not at the level of, say San Francisco or New York...

MP: What are some of your favorite restaurants in San Francisco?

DH: Well, I went to A16 last night-- I really loved that. And I'm and old time Judy Rogers freak. I love going to Zuni. And I think Gary Danko is a really inspired chef.

MP: Is there anything you won't eat?

DH: Oh yeah. I hate liver. Not only will I not eat it, I won't sit at a table with someone else eating it. I think it stinks. It smells.

MP: Even in pate form?

DH: No. I love foie gras. Now that, to me, is one of the world's mysteries... Of course today, we have this issue in the United States with foie gras.

First of all, there's the history of how foie gras came about is a bird fell out of the sky-- do you know this story?

MP: No, I don't.

DH: Well, this is how they discovered foie gras. The Egyptians discovered it. The geese used to migrate and, occasionally, one of the geese died-- had a heart attack? I don't know-- and would fall out of the sky and they would eat the goose. When they opened the goose up, they'd see this enlarged liver because what [the geese] would do before they'd migrate is force a lot of food into themselves. The French people, when I was learning abou this would say (in a French accent), "Hey, you know, they just eat a lot." They don't have a gagging mechanism.

The thing that surprised me is that geese get attached to only one person. Only one person can feed them and when this woman-- I was on a goose farm [in France]-- came out, these geese came running to her. You know, they couldn't wait to be fed because it wasn't painful, they were just getting fed more than they should to enlarge their livers. I didn't see any cruelty on the farms in France.

Now, the way chickens are raised, and the way beef is being produced in this country, I totally agree. I think there are issues there and we have to get very activist to make sure the food supply is properly taken care of, properly treated and properly slaughtered. But I think to have a blanket notion that foie gras is painful and inhumane... I know otherwise, if it's done on a farm level. I can't really speak for the mass production level.

MP: You mentioned being Burgundy, which is a place I've always wanted to eat and drink my way through. Is there some place in the world that you haven't been to that you'd love to eat your way through?

DH: I was thinking about that the other day-- in one of my puttering moments-- and I would love to go to Germany for the white asparagus festival... they don't have a green flavor, they have a nutty flavor and then that asparagus flavor, but it's much more subdued... it's very subtle.

MP: I suppose we should talk about the show.

DH: Oh, the show! Yeah, that's why I'm here, and this is KQED, isn't it? (Laughs)

MP: So... twenty-seven guest on twenty-six show. Anyone you missed?

DH: Oh, lots! But it wasn't so much that we missed them. I think it was a couple of things. We did all twenty-six shows in three weeks. This is public television and you do not have have a huge budget and you have to make hay while the sun shines, and we did. Some of these people had conflicts and they just couldn't get there. So, bye bye Mario Batali, bye bye Emeril Lagasse, many of them had conflicts. And then there was the other group of people, the "Dorothy who? You're doing what? I don't think so." It wasn't so much in a snotty way, and it wasn't them per se... but it's their handlers. Nowadays, they have agents and this is a brand new show...so a couple of people decided not to go out of the box on this one. But that being said, one of the first people who signed on was Thomas Keller so, once the others heard Thomas was going to be on, they wanted to be there, too.

MP: And you're speaking with him tonight.

DH: Yes, I am! He's an incredibly generous man.

Well. It's been quite a week for the folks that love and hate the Ferry Building Farmers' Market. First, there was the revelation that a new book by Carlo Petrini (the founder of the Slow Food movement) was downright rude about the farmers and their customers, who work, shop, and food-stroll their Bay Area Saturdays away.

Then there was the CUESA follow-up meeting that attempted to get stuff hashed out between the offender and the offended.

This was followed by blog reaction all over the Bay Area and possibly the country. And finally, yesterday came some signs that maybe Alice Waters was Jimmy Cartering her way through the ugly muck and hurt feelings; possibly composting what was said and using it to feed new growth. Mum until just recently, Alice Waters was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday as weighing in with her opinion on the whole nasty mess.

"I don't think he was wrong about his perception that food is more expensive (at Ferry Plaza)," Waters told Scoop on Monday. "But I think he's wrong in his analysis of why it was."

The cost of raising good, fresh food and hauling it to market in the city "is something that's important for all of us to talk about," Waters says. And while she wishes Petrini hadn't written what he did, she supports him 100 percent.

The Chronicle notes that Petrini had apologized in what they term a "politician's type of apology" by saying he was sorry "for any offense caused by this passage." Which, I have to agree with the Chronicle, is sort of like that old wheeze, "I'm sorry you feel that way," which definitely removes the offender from acknowledging any blame whatsoever. As to the poor surfer-farmer that Petrini "outed" as specifically gouging customers just to support his surf habit?

Petrini insists he meant to give a "positive impression." He blamed his writing, and the translation, for distorting his efforts to illustrate the complexities of slow food in a fast world.

So...maybe what Petrini needed was a better editor? Interesting defense.

So far, I haven't subjected anyone to my own opinion about the kerfuffle. For one, there are plenty of opinions to go around and I'd just be adding to the noise, but for another, my opinion isn't really incendiary or original.

I frankly adore the Ferry Building Farmers' Market. Back in Boston, we didn't really have an equal to it. I mean, there was the one in Haymarket, but it smelled so much of rotting fish the one time I passed by that I never really wanted to go back.

However, the FBFM is so...pretty. Even in dank and drizzly weather -- my favorite time to shop there, actually -- it's just painfully beautiful to amble by the delicious, nourishing sculptures gently coaxed out of the simple dirt. The visions of bright tassels of radishes, the soft green piles of lettuces, shiny unblemished peppers, peaches that make you feel warm all over just by touching them. Even if I never pull out any money, I just feel at peace gazing at so much earthly beauty as the water laps the pylons. It's my art museum, and I can't get over it. I hope I never get over it. But maybe I'm naive or satisfied by simple things. After all, I still hunt for four-leaf clovers and hold buttercups under my husband's chin to see if he likes butter. (He does.)

Is the Ferry Building Farmers' Market expensive? Well, yeah, but so are Jimmy Choo shoes and Hummers and diamonds and memberships to Slow Food. It just happens to be where I choose to spend my money. Would it be nice if prices were lowered? Duh. Of course it would, but until I completely understand how much it costs to coax a small, organic farm to produce, transport, and sell the lovelies I put on my plate, I don't feel qualified to complain about it.

In fact, I've always been chuffed by the fact that my knowledgeable mother-in-law -- who can keep a vast number of figures in her head -- looks at the prices at our farmers' market and pronounces them to be competitive with what she pays at her farmers' market in Washington, D.C.

As other people have pointed out, if the Ferry Building Farmers' Market prices are so repugnant to people, there are so many other places to get good produce: Alemany, San Francisco's Civic Center, Marin -- and that's just the few I know about.

It just doesn't seem like the most productive plan of action to attack and tear down farmers and shoppers, call them names, assume motives and wallet size, and backbite.

I know what the real problem is here: we're all just crabby because the summer tomatoes haven't quite come in yet.

Tanya Steel, editor-in-chief of Epicurious.com, and chefs Mark Franz, Jan Birnbaum, and Parke Ulrich invite you to San Francisco's Farallon for a dinner to benefit America's Second Harvest. The evening's special menu will feature dishes personally created by each chef, including diver scallop carpaccio, crispy maple pork belly, and roasted strawberry turnovers.
Click here to purchase tickets. Dates for this event in Chicago and New York have already sold out!

I talked to Mark Franz recently about the dinner and what's new:

For those who haven't dined at Farallon before, how would you describe it?
It's fine dining, sophisticated and elegant. We keep our approach pretty simple in that it's all seasonal, our menu changes weekly and sometimes daily. We give people the whole package--great food and service and almost over the top design, it's whimsical but we take it seriously. It's not a stuffy restaurant people feel at home. Upscale but not pretentious.

What's your philosophy for putting a dish together?
This really feels like one of the best times of the year right now--I'm not particularly religious but it seems like God has a plan, anything that's in season works together. Pick what's in season and it will work together that's my philosophy.

How did you choose what to feature for the Wine. Dine. Donate. menu?
I'm using diver scallops--they are perfect, big and luscious and they aren't dipped, we get them fresh every day so there are no additives no extra water in them, they are extremely fresh and just magnificent. Three quarters of what I find in the supermarket I would send away. I picked something seasonal with fava beans and artichokes to go with the scallop carpaccio. Those two ingredients are a real marriage and I try to turn people on to them. All of that gets served with a gribiche which is an eggy sauce with capers and tarragon.

You've been working on the opening of Water Bar on the Embarcadero, what will that be like?
The food will be clean and simple. It will be more provincial in the sense that the food will be grilled, roasted, less rich ingredients. In general, more simple, more straight ahead, everyday meals that are more mediterranean in approach less of the classic French approach you find at Farallon. What I'm doing at Water Bar is what I wanted to do at Farallon, more everyday than special occasion dining.

Farallon has been around for 10 years, what's new?
The raw bar is new. When you come into the bar there is more excitement because the oysters are in the front not in the kitchen. We sell thousands of oysters but we were never listed as a raw bar so now we moved them into the bar. It's kind of like reinventing yourself but realistically the seafood is the same. If you haven't been in for a while you should check it out.

What's it like working with Jan Birnbaum at Farallon?
Jan worked here for the last year and a half---we've known each other for 30 years. We both try to utilize what's seasonal and make sense of it. There are no egos involved--Jan's influence shows up in that we do more charcuterie, he's known for braising meats and New Orleans style cooking of course. But we each choose dishes and see what works together. Seafood and pork work especially well together. There isn't a lot of fat on seafood so the pork belly adds a nice velvety layer.

Lean in close and I'll tell you a secret: Though I am one of the founders of the Locavores and the editor of the Eat Local Challenge website, I still sometimes become a bit fatigued about the ubiquitousness of information about eating locally. While overall it's amazing and overwhelming, when a new perspective on the subject comes along, I am very excited. And when one of the best writers of our time, Barbara Kingsolver, chooses to write about eating local, I chomp at the bit to read the book.

Barbara Kingsolver wrote Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in conjunction with her husband, Steven L. Hopp, and her daughter Camille Kingsolver. Ms. Kingsolver wrote the main narrative while Mr. Hopp wrote intriguing sidebars that are politically and policy based. Camille, Ms. Kingsolver's daughter is a college student who peppered the book with her point-of-view and recipes relating to the text.

The crux of this book focuses on Ms. Kingsolver's family, living in Virginia, who manages to eat a locally-based diet for a year mainly subsisting of their family garden. More than her devoted point-of-view about eating locally, it was Ms. Kingsolver's calm moderation that made me love this book.

Our locavore project nudged us constantly toward new personal bests. But it always remained fascination, not fanatacism. We still ate out at restaurants with friends sometimes, and happily accepted invitations to dine at their homes. People who knew about our project would get flustered sometimes about inviting us, or when seeing us in a restaurant would behave as if they'd caught the cat eating the canary. We always explained, "We're converts in progress, not preachers. No stone tablets." Our Thanksgiving dinner would include a little California olive oil, a pinch of African nutmeg, and some Virginia flour that likely contained wheat from Pennsylvania and points north."

I talked to a friend recently who was frustrated with Ms. Kingsolver's point-of-view, saying that it wasn't possible for the majority of many Americans. While I didn't find Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to be as pedantic as my friend did, Ms. Kingsolver freely admits that this type of diet is possible if you know how, and are willing, to cook.

The Kingsolver family situation is unique -- they cultivate a small farm / large garden, she works at home and makes the time and has the know-how to create delicious local meals for her family. Rather than consider this a "how-to" book, I believe that the best use for it is inspiration for our own eat local lives -- while I may not be able to grow my own food, there are other nuggets of information that I can take from the book and apply to my own life.

The most compelling of the stories in the book were the stories about Ms. Kingsolver's third-grader, Lily, who participated in the family experiment by raising chickens and selling eggs.

Once she'd brought them home, taken her twenty-eight chicks out of that tiny box, and started each one on its path to a new life under her care, Lily was ready to get back to third grade. When we signed her in at the principal's office, the secretary needed a reason for Lily's tardiness. Lily threw back her shoulders and announced, "I had to start my own chicken business this morning." The secretary said without blinking, "Oh, okay, farming," and entered the code for "Excused, Agriculture." Just another day at our elementary school, where education comes in many boxes.

Whether you're not completely sold on the idea of eating locally-grown food, or you are a veteran at the concept, I believe that you will find Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to be an interesting and richly-written story about one family's attempt to eat locally for a year.

If you're interested in hearing more about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle check out Michael Krasny's interview with Barbara Kingsolver and Steven L. Hopp last week on KQED's Forum.

This book was reviewed based on a free review copy provided by the publisher.