You won't see any cupcakes here. No whoopie pies. Heck, not even any American pies. In Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker's excellent documentary Kings of Pastry, what you will see is a peek into the competitive high-level French competition for membership in the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (or MOF), an exclusive group of pastry chefs distinguished by "the collar" they receive as winners. The film begins at a time when seventy contestants have been narrowed to sixteen finalists and each man (apparently no woman has ever competed) spends four years preparing for the intense three-day competition.

At first, it may sound like a film you'd only be into if you appreciated French pastry or cooking competitions. But Hegedus and Pennebaker manage to draw you in quickly and don't let go until the very end. Like most good documentaries, you connect with the characters and begin to understand each man's motivation for competing as you get a glimpse into their home and work life. In this sense, you become invested in the outcome of the competition just like the competitor's own spouses or children. In addition to rooting for each contestant, you'll find yourself puzzling over the level of commitment it takes to prepare. There is so much to give up: time with family and kids, being fully present at work, and a normal social life. One of the contestants insists that when he and his wife were remodeling their home, they had to add a pastry workshop in the basement for him to practice and prepare for the competition.

I found myself rooting for Jacquy Pfeiffer, an Alsace-born, Chicago-based chef who has both determination and drive but also humility and perspective. While working on an elaborate wedding cake, he smiles and says "If you whistle it works better." While he may not be as piercingly intense as the other contestants, Pfeiffer is obviously immensely talented and confident that he's a sure contender. Here he is shaping his chocolate sculpture:

As you can probably imagine, not all goes as planned at the competition. To avoid any misteps, each contestant does a three-day trial run to try and work out the kinks. Sugar flower work for eight hours at a time without stopping for food or much drink? Check. Putting the finishing touches on an elaborate sugar sculpture only to break it when making an adjustment? Check. The stakes are obviously high. No amount of practice can prepare each man for how he'll perform on any given day. And the judges, having each gone through the same competition at one point in their lives, relate and sympathize with this pressure. When reading the name of the winners, the judge is obviously shaken and has difficulty saying the names out loud. By this point, they've witnessed sixteen sure winners, so it must be unimaginably difficult to announce that three years of one's life have been spent without anything to take back to show for it. One gentleman in the film is competing for his fourth time: sixteen years of constant preparation!

As the head of the jury says "Your mind has to work as hard as your hands." And this is, I think, at the crux of the fascination with this film: it's difficult for many of us to imagine this kind of focused and relentlessly enduring determination towards any one thing for years upon years. It's not just an interest, a hobby, or a passion. It seems to be more of a fire--something each finalist feels like they must do. And by the end of the film, you'll be surprised at who earns the "collar" and who is ultimately sent home to consider competing again or throwing in the towel. It's a touching, emotional, and thought-provoking film. Whether you're interested in food films or not, the topic at hand isn't really what this movie is about. It's really about heart. And that's where we all meet at the same table.

Image Credit: Film Forum

It's Oscar time again, in case you hadn't noticed.

Which is pretty much what I wound up doing this year. Not noticing, I mean. I somehow managed to see only one Oscar-nominated movie over the past twelve months and I am not about to make a heaping pile of grits to celebrate it, no matter how much I enjoyed the film.

So instead of discussing the current cast of award hopefuls, I thought I might celebrate those marvelous singers of Academy Award-winning singers of yesteryear.

I mean, why not?

As I ran down the list of songs, I realized that there were a handful of artists who introduced not one, but two Oscar-winning tunes to the world: Bob Hope, Judy Garland, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, disaster film songstress Maureen McGovern, Barbra Streisand, Bing Crosby (who sang a record four), Fred Astaire (if you count his whistling to The Continental), and...

Irene Cara. Remember her name?

I thought long and hard about which singer to single out and pay tribute to. Judy Garland? Too obvious. And the only thing I could think of doing for her was making a meal comprised entirely of pills, which is beyond my scope as a home cook. Bing Crosby? I suppose I could have taken some young, tender chicken, beaten it mercilessly, and marinated it in Minute Maid® orange juice, but I didn't have the stomach for it. Barbara Streisand? I worried that whatever I chose to make would spring to life from the counter top and try to wrest from me total creative control.

I almost gave up.

Then I remembered the Cara Cara orange and how every time my chef would utter its name, I would say quietly insert two "Irenes" into his sentence, as in "I'd like to have the Irene Irene Cara Cara orange salad, please." My chef seems to love this fruit so much, he says things like, "It's so nice, they named it twice."

Twice.

And, since Miss Cara sang an Oscar-winning song not once but twice, I just had to go with it.

When I realized that she was one of the original cast members of the best children's show of my generation, The Electric Company*, there was nothing else I could do but pay this woman tribute.

So I set about to make an Irene Irene Cara Cara sorbet.

Referencing a recipe for blood orange sorbet by the rather solid David Lebovitz (Solid as in his recipes. I have never once asked him to flex for me.), I did everything with precision. I measured my juice in milliliters and weighed my sugar in grams, I made a perfect little syrup, I added just the right hint of alcohol to make it scoopable.

I did everything right except allow my ancient ice cream maker's freezing element to get cold enough. When I set my sorbet to churn, it went round and round but, instead of firming up into a silky sorbet, all it managed to do was make itself dizzy. I would have thought three days in a cranked up freezer would have done the trick, but I think it decided do kill itself after bearing witness to my last ice cream experiment, which will more than likely never see the light of day on these pages. I was filled with the same emotion that was conveniently printed on label of the Campari whose content I had so tenderly splashed into my sorbet base:

What a feeling. I was also undeniably frustrated but, search as I might, that word was nowhere to be found on any of my ingredient packaging.

I had half a mind to just throw everything away and pour myself a drink, but I thought better of it. There was to be no drinking in my immediate future because my creditors depend upon my showing up to work sober.

And I couldn't let Miss Cara down. Her comeback is entirely dependent upon the success of this dessert.

So I placed my motion sick sorbet base into my refrigerator, and returned to it in the morning. I have to admit that I was rather pleased by the outcome.

Irene Irene Cara Cara Orange Granita

I don't care how much you groan at the name because it's a dessert as refreshing as Miss Cara's voice and as perky as those breasts of hers she so reluctantly showed to that guy with the video camera in the movie Fame.

As I have said before, this recipe is based upon the blood orange sorbet recipe of David Lebovitz, who has a much better ice cream maker than I do, but is nowhere near as perky as Miss Cara's Cara Caras.

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 2 cups (500 ml) freshly squeezed Cara Cara orange juice
• 1/4 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons, plus 3 tablespoons (for soaking citrus segments) of Campari
• About 1/2 cup of Cara Cara orange flesh, hacked into little pieces

Preparation:

1. Put your sugar into a small, non-reactive saucepan. When one says "non-reactive" when referring to sauce pans, one means a pan that is made of a material that does not react adversely to acid, such as stainless steel, glass, or ceramics. If you think your saucepan is non-reactive simply because it shows no emotion when you fill it with ingredients and put it over high heat, you are either hopeless in the kitchen or you are an entirely fascinating, innocent creature and I would like to get to know you better.

Add just enough juice to saturate you sugar, then heat--stirring frequently-- until the sugar is completely dissolved and you have a lovely little syrup.

2. Stir this syrup into your Cara Cara orange juice. Add three tablespoons of Campari and stir well. Pour the mixture into a shallow dish and set in your freezer or the freezer of a good friend or neighbor who will allow you frequent access to his or her kitchen. Let stand in said freezer for about 45 minutes.

Toss your chunks of orange with the remaining Campari and place in your refrigerator to chill and marinate, covered.

3. When the juice mixture begins to form ice crystals, break them up with a fork, then leave it be for another 20 minutes. Fork the juice again. Repeat until all the juice is frozen. The texture should be grain, which is why the Italians call it granita.This should take roughly 2.5 to 3 hours, depending upon your freezer.

If you are lazy, you can simply freeze the juice into one, solid block and shave it up, but then it wouldn't be granita, it would be a sno-cone.

And everyone would know how lazy you were.

Or, if you're really, really lazy, don't bother to freeze anything at all, but simply pour the mixture over ice (which someone would have to have pre-frozen), but then it would be called a cocktail.

4. When you feel your granita is ready for its big night, stir in the Campari-soaked orange pieces, spoon into chilled glasses, and serve immediately.

And, as you and your guests are eating it and you are receiving their accolades, do your best to come up with ideas for a Maureen McGovern-inspired dessert. Clue: it should be served either flaming or upside down.

Do get back to me. And soon.

*That Electric Company was some sort of genius Oscar-winner mill. Rita Moreno, Morgan Freeman, Irene Cara. There is something to be said for groovy literacy programming.

Heads up readers: Want to know a dirty little secret of online journalism, including website food writing? It doesn't always pay. Maybe you haven't given the matter much thought, but read on to find out why you should.

First, some context from recent headlines: progressive online media giant The Huffington Post, which has a lively food section and set the standard for the new no-pay media, announced that it was being bought by AOL for a cool $315 million in cash and stock. That was fabulous news for the already fabulously wealthy Arianna Huffington and her cronies, but a slap in the face for the army of unpaid wordsmiths on which the HuffPo has built a blog empire using, essentially, the slave labor of journalists who wrote posts for free in the hope it may make a difference, including to their cash flow, down the track.

Mainstream media analysts like Tim Rutten at the Los Angeles Times even said as much: "To grasp The Huffington Post's business model, picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates."

Elsewhere other scribes parsed out the economics at play, including Nate Silver in a column for the New York Times, but the fact remains no matter how you run the numbers this business model is just plain exploitive. So much for Huffington's liberal values. And don't just take my word for it, as media maven Tina Brown told New York Magazine: "My stance is that as a writer, I like to get paid. That's just the cost of doing business. I mean, you wouldn't expect to not be paying anyone doing any other things."

Indeed. It's a brutal economy, and many writers and editors have lost their jobs or taken buyouts, as the print media implodes. Filling the void: online blogs pumping out content, journalism's low or no-pay poor cousin. (Full disclosure: KQED pays me $40 to pen posts like this one. I retain the copyright for the stories I turn here and am free to run them on my own blog or use them as pitches for higher-paying pieces in other media.) Exclusivity and copyright questions can get sticky, as Politics of the Plate writer Barry Estabrook discovered in curt correspondence he received from Conde Nast Publications, which owned Gourmet. Estabrook, who wrote for the since shuttered magazine, was admonished for reprinting articles he authored for the mag on his blog.

It wasn't always so. Back in the olden days, a phrase which here means just a few years ago, before the word blogging made its way into the popular lexicon, the activity was simply known as "writing for the web" and writers like myself were compensated -- handsomely -- for their time and talents at rates comparable to print outlets. We're talking fees in the thousands for reported stories, usually at a rate of $1 a word or higher. (A rate, mind you, that has been pretty set in stone since I landed in this country as a novice reporter some 25 years ago. But that's another story.) This meant that it was possible, with a lot of hard work and persistence, to make a modest living at the job.

Fast forward to today and we now have a band of self-styled "journalists" roaming the web writing off the cuff (and frequently about themselves, since this is the narcissistic age we live in). And yes, some of it is well done. But a lot of it is not. Regardless, it doesn't do career journalists like myself any favors and it's a disservice to readers, too.

Here's why: Offering up content -- or packaged information -- is not the same thing as crafting quality journalism, which involves interviewing, analysis, and research, along with expertise, experience, and a modicum of style.

But I've taken to adopting the mantra "adapt or die," and find myself -- like many mid-career scribblers -- struggling to find a way to make a living in a field where the landscape has changed dramatically. Although I shifted to food writing two years ago, a notoriously under-paid beat, I've been able to eke out an income by diversifying and carving out a niche.

The jury is out on whether this experiment will work, and there are days when I wonder if I should go fill out an application at Trader Joe's. I know scores of writers, both freelancers and those who used to be staffers, who feel the same way.

Even folks on the inside feel our pain. "It eats at me every day," says Corby Kummer, The Atlantic Food Channel's senior food editor. Kummer explains that once he learned about the business model for the site he would run, he was careful not to ask established freelance writers or new reporters to pitch because he couldn't compensate them for their time.

Instead, he sought out people who were experts in their activities and businesses, like Ari Weinzweig and Larry Stone, or academics who write as part of their platform, such as Marion Nestle and James McWilliams, or writers with books who wanted to reach a wide audience. (The Atlantic, an intellectual magazine not known for bringing in big bucks, turned a $1.8 million profit last year, the first time in at least a decade that it hadn't lost money, largely due to its digital presence.) In a sense, these were people who could afford to write gratis, since they already had an income source.

But once the site launched Kummer fielded numerous emails from writers -- including this one -- who wanted their stories to appear on the site. "I want nothing more than to be part of the solution to making web writing into the going enterprise that, for a time that seems so long ago, print journalism was," says Kummer. "We hope revenue will follow, not just for us but for the people who create that work."

And that's exactly what we want to hear, since there are still rents or mortgages to pay, food to get on the table, and kids to raise in (public) school. Meanwhile, there's a core of mid-career professionals -- including many women who are the family breadwinners or head of households -- who have seen their freelance writing income literally slashed by 50 to 75 percent. We're all working harder and longer hours than we ever have for much, much less.

In certain circles I hear rumblings about a potential uprising among writers; some even talk about starting a new union to protect online workers.

That may sound far-fetched but really what we have going on here is sweatshop conditions akin to the old economy's industrial capitalism: Poorly paid piecework and huge profits for the owners. Something has to shift.

Full disclosure: While I continue to derive decent income from food writing for print publications such as AFAR, California, and San Francisco, I also contribute regular food coverage to online sites that offer token compensation, including Bay Area Bites, which is based on the concept of citizen media, and the local start-up Berkeleyside. And, of course, nobody sends me a check for the pieces I pen on my own blog, Lettuce Eat Kale.

On rare occasion I turn an original post for non-paying Internet outlets such as the wonky website Civil Eats (where nobody, including the editors, makes a dime) and The Atlantic Food Channel (where the editors, presumably, are well compensated for their work) as part of a strategy that I trust will pay off in financial terms in the future -- a phrase which here means "I hope very soon."

Lest you think I've lost my sense of humor, I leave you with this video, "Adventures in Freelancing," part of a series on YouTube by the talented Lauren Lipton that amusingly sends up the current state of affairs that resembles reality for many writers. Food for thought:

Chef Jennifer Biesty. Photo credit: Cris Molina

Chef Jennifer Biesty rocketed to national fame when she was a cheftestant on Season 4 of Top Chef and a Star Chefs Rising Star in 2007. She is currently the Executive Chef of Scala's Bistro and the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. Biesty’s Bay Area culinary career developed under Loretta Keller, the Chef/Owner of the now shuttered Bizou Restaurant and current COCO500. Biesty cooked with Keller at benefit dinner events for The James Beard House, The Master’s of Food & Wine and Taste of the Nation. She also worked at Jardinière, with Chef Traci des Jardins. Biesty trained at the CIA Hyde Park at the young age of eighteen, and worked at NYC’s Aquavit and March restaurants, respectively. She worked in London at the River Café, alongside uber-talent chefs Ruth Rodgers, Rose Gray and Jamie Oliver. The Brooklyn native (“where the food is all about the ingredients”) lives in San Francisco with her girlfriend, Sara Delman. Biesty and Delman met at COCO500. Bay Area Bites caught up with Biesty to talk about her favorite food and drink spots.

Where do you live?
We live in the Potrero foothills, which is a nice way of saying “on the wrong side of the mission tracks.” Sara and I have been together for more than three years and love living in the Mission. There are so many great restaurants and shops. And it’s such a colorful neighborhood!

Where do you like to shop for food?
Rainbow Grocery: The produce there far surpasses any other market, and to stay eco-friendly, you can refill oil, vinegar, soap, lotions, honey, sugar, pasta, you name it. It’s great.

But Rainbow doesn’t offer meat, so for that I go to Avedano’s meats in Bernal Heights. It’s a beloved neighborhood butcher shop that has great tacos and Ryan Farr’s hot dogs! I like that is more Euro-style and you create a relationship with your shopkeepers and merchants.

The New May Wah market on Clement! In the heart of a little Chinatown, it’s just too fun to go there. They offer things like bone-in pork belly, whole fish, frogs, bulk spices, all the Asian sauces you could ask for and Asian beer, wine and sake. And when you need a bit of agar agar or basil seeds they have it all too.

Alemany Farmers’ Market: It feels like community. It is cheap and has great variety. Fresh flowers that are so affordable.

Where do you go on your nights off?
Bar Agricole. Amazing space and delicious cocktails. I love the Scotch egg there.

Zero Zero is a fun place to go for cocktails and crudo -- I love the yuzu sidecar. Oh, and the pizza and soft–serve there is another one of my guilty pleasures.

Hog and Rocks is another great place -- a big selection of oysters from the east coast, which reminds me of home!

How about your favorite local Mom & Pop joints?
Torta Gorda: on 24th for a good simple sandwich or some Puebla specialties.

Plow: has the best fried egg sandwich, although I wouldn’t call them mom and pop because the couple that own it are so young but it is a great breakfast and lunch place in sunny Potrero Hill.

Haltun Mayan Cuisine: for poc-chuc de puerco. Great food and reasonable. They have a good happy hour deal. I love the Panuchos & salbutos.

Where do you go for date night?
Universal Café: I was the chef there in 2003 and love the feel of that little restaurant. Sara and I like to go there often because they change the menu often but they also have things you can count on, like a delicious flatbread and a nice charred steak.

Ino Sushi. It’s in the Japantown mall. Great fried smelt roll and everything else is good too!

Oh, and Blue Plate is always fantastic for date night.

What is your guiltiest local food pleasure?
I crave poutine, but since luckily you can’t really get it around here I just make it for family meal at my restaurant. I love tacos and taco trucks! I frequent the one on Treat and 23rd -- Gallo Giro. Also, the tempura at Sanruku.

Any news on projects we should know about?
Honestly being the chef of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel is all consuming and is a big enough project for me currently. But I do have plans on the back burner to be reveled at a later date!

We’ll stay tuned.

Remember how good slices of roast beef smothered with gravy tasted when you were a kid? If you're like me, you haven't eaten this meal in years, and maybe even decades. Other than a holiday standing rib roast, most people now forgo the once archetypal Sunday supper of roast beef, including me. Eating copious amounts of beef is no longer fashionable, with the good reason that it's simply not healthy for you. But when I was confronted with an eye of round roast recently, I just couldn't help myself. Nutrition and food fads took a back seat for the night: I had to make a traditional roast beef with gravy.

So what was I doing with an eye of round roast in the first place? Well a few months ago I bought an 1/8 of a grass-fed Sonoma cow. A friend called to say that someone had backed out at the last moment of their share, and when pressed to find someone who would buy into a cow at the last second, she thought of me (which makes sense if you know me). So I now have a freezer full of various cuts of beef -- from soup bones and ground chuck to short ribs and eye of round.

Remembering that my mother always used the eye of round for her roast beef, I started to reminisce about my childhood dinners. The idea of beef with gravy and potatoes sounded too good to pass up and so I started searching for a recipe. After digging out numerous cookbooks (including my mega The Essential New York Times Cookbook and some cumulative family meals cookbooks) and searching online, I was surprised to find that there are hardly any current recipes for roast beef. I hear America's Test Kitchen has a great slow-bake method, but I don't have that book. And so I did what I should have done in the first place; I called my mom. Her recipe was simple: salt and pepper the roast and then bake at 325 for 20 minutes per pound. That's it.

Easy enough, but I was fearful that the roast would be dry, so I updated the directions a bit, cooking the meat as I do a chicken: in an enamel cast-iron Dutch oven with the lid on and then raising the temperature and uncovering for 10-15 minutes so the outside browns nicely.

The dinner couldn't have been a bigger hit with my family. My kids devoured their first helping and then had seconds while raving about the gravy. The meat was tender and juicy inside but with a nice crust on the outside, and there was plenty of jus to make a large batch of gravy. Plus there were leftovers for sandwiches the next day.

Now I'm not going to be making roast beef on a regular basis, but I am looking forwarding to revisiting this comforting childhood favorite in another month or two.

Updated Classic Roast Beef

Makes: Enough for 4-6 people

Ingredients:
1 2 1/2 - 3 pound eye of round beef roast
Salt
Freshly cracked ground pepper
1/2 tsp your favorite dried herb (I used thyme)

Beef Gravy
Dripping from the roast beef
3/4 - 1 cup beef stock or broth
2 Tbsp flour (plus more if needed
1 Tbsp butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Sprinkle salt, pepper and herbs on your roast and set in a baking pan (I used a large enamel cast-iron Dutch oven, but you can also use a regular pan and then cover the roast tightly with foil).

3. Cook roast for 20 - 25 minutes covered. Turn up heat to 400 degrees, uncover the roast and then set it back in the oven. Bake for 15 more minutes to brown.

4. Check temperature (you want your roast to be 145 degrees in the center if you like it medium rare or 140 degrees if you like it rare in the middle. I'm not providing temperatures for medium - well done because then the rest of the roast will be too dried out) and then remove the roast from the oven when ready.

5. Set roast on a board or plate to rest (tenting with foil) while you make your gravy.

6. Set roasting pan on the stove top. If the drippings have a lot of fat in them, drain all but about 1 Tbsp fat out. If you don’t have much fat, add 2 Tbsp butter instead of one in the next step.

7. Heat pan to medium and incorporate the butter into your pan drippings while you add in the flour to create a roux. Add in your beef stock or broth and stir until the gravy is smooth. If it’s too watery, mix about 1 tsp flour into 1/8 cup of broth or stock to create a slurry and then add to the gravy. Add salt and pepper to taste.

8. After your roast has rested for 5-7 minutes, cut it into slices and serve topped with gravy.

Recipes are adapted for single cooks. Entire books are written to inspire solo chefs to get into the kitchen. Heck, blogs are even devoted to maintaining a full culinary life while living alone. Despite how many of these recipes you've clipped or how many inspiring books you may own, at the end of the day -- you're still dining alone. And in my experience, you can take the 'ho hum' approach or you can chuckle at it all. This post is much more about chuckles than sighs. Because hey, life is short.

Spilled Milk Podcast:
Writer and food blogger Molly Wizenburg pairs with food writer Matthew Amster-Burton in a podcast they created last year called Spilled Milk. The gist of the podcast? The charming duo takes on heady topics such as Hot Dogs or Fudge with witty conversation and banter. Last week, they discussed Spouseless Eating and their revelations will make you smile. Both Wizenburg and Amster-Burton have partners at home, but they dish about what their partners think that they're eating and what they actually eat when at home alone for a chunk of time. No area is left untouched: from peanut butter to Stouffer's French Bread pizzas, you'll feel a little better about the odd meals we all piece together on occasion while standing over the sink.

Cooking For One: Web Series
Writer Jiji Lee has just put out Cooking For One, a new web series that pokes fun at cooking shows in general and the single life in particular. Host Ada Gordon (played by Jenn Schatz) was supposed to be starring in a newlywed cooking show with her fiance, Neil. Well Neil broke it off. So Ada's left to bat solo. And it's pretty darn funny. In the most recent Valentine's Day episode, Ada begins with, "Hey, solo chefs! Turn off that Fiona Apple and put down your copy of the Bell Jar..." as she prepares baked brie in athletic pants and a yellow cardigan. It's likeable and laughable and brings a little levity to a topic that's so often treated as more serious than it needs to be.

Table For One
Table for One is a website that collects photos of people eating out alone. Some are reading, some day-dreaming, some appear to be downright nodding off. But the website captures something we all must do throughout the day and something so many of us enjoy. You can't eat with a rousing crowd at every meal. Table for One celebrates that.

A Week of Cooking and Eating Solo
Mark Bittman's piece, A Week of Cooking and Eating Solo didn't set out to be blatantly funny. Bittman was exploring what he prepared and enjoyed eating while alone at his place on Cape Cod. But his blatant honesty and detailed explanations of what he ate throughout the day make for an enjoyable, light-hearted read. After a particularly large meal out that included steak, fresh tomatoes, potato and quinoa salad, Bittman proclaims: "Well it was practically Rosh Hashana." Later he discusses a morning meal with admirable brevity: "Breakfast: Watermelon. A lot of it." At the end of the week, Bittman does draw a few conclusions which I find to be true of myself. Single cooks often over shop, and they really must be comfortable with leftovers or reincarnations of meals. If you're a Bittman fan or are curious how others are navigating the solo dining realm in great detail, this one's worth revisiting.

Jen Biesty. Photo by Tamara Palmer

In our continuing quest to learn more vital yet elusive tips on how to best select produce for flavor and longevity, we turned to chef Jen Biesty of Scala’s Bistro inside San Francisco’s Sir Francis Drake Hotel. When we arrived at her busy kitchen one afternoon, she had set out a platter of beautiful dark red fruit. Even though it’s February and well past stone fruit season, we found ourselves asking if she had somehow managed to pick some plums for us.

Jen Biesty holding an Arkansas Black apple. Photo by Tamara Palmer

“They’re Arkansas Black apples!” replied the Top Chef alum. “I love these, they remind me of the apples in Snow White.

“You want an apple that’s firm, with a nice color,” she advised. “They all look a little bit different and they’re not just homogenized. If you can see the pollen or dirt from the tree then you know it is really fresh and just picked within a week or a few days.”

Meat is traditionally thought of when pairing apples with a protein, but Biesty has found that they go great with fish as well; she likes to shave them raw into a salad with chestnut and parsley, an accompaniment for sea bass. She picks the Arkansas Black apples in particular up at the Alemany Farmers Market in San Francisco from Chimayo Farms.

Eric Tucker holding a Chanterelle mushroom. Photo by Tamara Palmer

Chef Eric Tucker of Millennium Restaurant, a venerable temple to creative vegetarian cooking in San Francisco, was kind enough to let us tag along with him on a Saturday morning visit to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, where he was leading a small group who had signed up for a beer-themed cooking class in honor of the conclusion of SF Beer Week. No matter the theme of a particular course, Tucker will meet students the day before to wander the market and decide on some ideas and direction for the next day’s session, a hands-on class that includes sitting down to a family-style meal.

He first led the class to Far West Fungi, which has a permanent stall inside the building. Tucker snapped up some beautiful black trumpets, chanterelles, and maitakes. Mushrooms are a staple at Millennium for their earthy, meaty qualities, whether it’s a sauce of black trumpets in a red wine reduction or oyster mushrooms simply fried. Tucker’s advice for selecting shrooms focuses on what you should avoid, which is just as valuable to know as what to pick.

“I’m leery of mushrooms that look too waterlogged or dark. Those you have to dry or use very quickly,” he said. “If you’re buying portabellas and the gills are really present and the caps are really open, you need to use those quicker than ones with tighter caps, which will have more life.”

“Or look at these,” he noted, pointing to some mostly beige Lion’s Mane mushrooms. “When they start to turn red, I associate that with some possible bacterial growth or breakdown.”

Sunchokes. Photo by Tamara Palmer

We ducked outside in the pouring rain to the Tierra Vegetables stand. Tucker started rifling through what we first thought were oversized knots of ginger root, but were actually sunchokes.

“You want the ones that are not caked in dirt, because they’re hard to clean and peel,” he explained, “And you want the larger ones.” While many like to work with raw sunchokes (shaving them thinly for a salad, for example), Tucker likes to slow bake them with white wine, olive oil, and herbs, the combination making a sort of guilt-free confit.

Golden Nuggets. Photo by Tamara Palmer

We finished at the Blossom Bluff Orchards stand, where some weird, nubbly looking mandarin oranges were about to be the subject of Tucker’s excitement.

“These are great for the zest!” he exclaimed of the variety, called Golden Nuggets. He likes to use them in savory applications, and for his beer class imagined they’d pair well with the bitterness of the hops in the different beer varieties. These can be a little difficult to pick. If they’re nubbier and heavier, they’ve got more juice, but they’ve also got thicker and more developed cell walls, so there’s a bit of a tradeoff when it comes to the insides.

Aaron London. Photo courtesy of Ubuntu

It’s still a good time of year for carrots, and chef Aaron London of Napa’s notable vegetarian restaurant Ubuntu has some valuable advice and a colorful, flavorful recipe to share. No matter what color or size your carrots are, he notes that the pigmentation should be deep and plush. Look for strong, rigid stems and leaves with some sheen to them that blossom out and don’t lay flat.

Carrots. Photo by Tamara Palmer

“If you’re at a Farmers' Market,” London says, “dirt is a good thing to see on a carrot. If it has dirt on it and any moisture, it will degrade and diminish very rapidly, meaning that if you see a soil covered carrot with all of the above attributes, then you’re really looking good because it must be super fresh. I know this sounds redundant, but it should smell like a carrot. Take that in mind and try hard to find a carrot that actually smells like one, and you will have found a winner.”

Tender White Satin and Crisp Purple Haze Carrot Salad With Strawberry Spinach, Raspberries, and Crushed Herb Vinaigrette

By Chef Aaron London, Ubuntu Restaurant

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

2 large carrots, peeled and sliced thin
Peel of 1/4 of an orange
1/4 onion, sliced thinly
2 oranges
1 Tbs. sugar
Mixed color baby carrots, carrot tops reserved for cooking and for garnish
1/2 pint raspberries
1 qt. picked greens, such as arugula, chervil, celery leaf, and mint
1 cup grapeseed oil
2 Tbs. crushed toasted hazelnuts
1 big handful of baby spinach
3 cloves crushed garlic
1 sprig rosemary
Salt
1Tbs. sugar
Edible flowers, or garnish of choice

For the carrot puree:

Sweat the onion, sliced large carrot, and orange peel in a little grapeseed oil with salt in a heavy bottomed pot until very tender. Add 1 pint of water and reduce it by half.

Place the carrots into a blender and blend on high until smooth and the mixture blends easily. At the end, drizzle in a thin stream of 1tsp. of oil to emulsify it and make it creamy and fluffy. Reserve puree.

For the tender carrots:

Wash the carrots and tops very well. Clean the tops off of all the baby carrots, and reserve some of the smaller leaves on the herb in ice water for garnish. Place the rest of the tops in the bottom of a roasting pan.

Lay 2/3 of the carrots on the carrot tops in 1-2 even layers, followed by the garlic, whole sprig rosemary, peel and juice of 1 orange, the sugar, enough water to cover and a pinch of salt. Cover with tin foil and cook until tender, about an hour, at 350. Once they are done, let them rest in their liquid until it is time to plate.

For the crisp carrots:

Take the remaining carrots and cut them into interesting shapes as well as shave on a mandolin. Place the carrots them directly into ice water so they crisp up and tork (twist into natural shapes).

For the vinaigrette:

Place the grapeseed oil in the freezer for 30 minutes before you need to use it. Blanch and shock the quart of “rabbit greens” (greens of choice as listed above) and place them in the blender with the oil and spin until smooth. Chill immediately.

Place the raspberries into a mixing bowl and lightly fork crush them with the micro-planed zest of 1 orange, a pinch of salt and a twist of pepper. Add in the hazelnuts and ½ cup of the green oil and let marinate for half an hour.

To finish:

Spread the carrot puree nice and wide on the bottom of 6 plates or wide bowls. The puree should be just above room temperature. Pull the tender carrots out of their cooking liquid and toss them in a bowl with the juice of one orange and a spoonful of the green oil and place them artfully into the puree.

Drain all of the water off of the raw carrots and toss them in a bowl with some of the green oil and a pinch of salt and dance them though the tender carrots, building as much height as possible.

Spoon the chunky vinaigrette evenly over all of the dishes, making sure to stir it often in order to insure even dispersion. To finish each dish, toss whatever spinaches and other garnishes with the lightest drop of oil, a pinch of salt and weave the leaves and edible flowers throughout the plates so it looks like their growing out.

If there is ever a nuclear war or our food system completely falls apart, I'm heading to Hank Shaw's house. Besides being an avid hunter and gardener, Hank is a highly experienced forager -- which means that he's likely to be one of the few people who continue to eat well when the world is on its last legs (assuming we haven't destroyed all plant and animal life, too). Lucky for us, he chronicles his adventures on his blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, and is about to release a cookbook/wild food guide, Hunt Gather Cook.

I'm excited to interview Hank about his new book and learning to forage in the Bay Area, an area that is teeming with wild edibles. He was also generous enough to provide a recipe for Fennel and Tomato Pasta Sauce, which you will find at the end of the interview.

Happy foraging!

How do you define "foraging?" What sort of things do foragers do?

I think of foraging as the gathering of wild plants and mushrooms, and, to a lesser extent, shellfish such as clams and mussels. For me, foraging is when you go looking for things that don’t run away. Hunting and fishing involves catching more mobile fare.

Foraging can be as easy as eating the weeds around your house -- you’ll likely find dandelion, wild lettuce, chickweed, plantain, wild mustard and possibly wild onions and salsify root in vacant lots and yards around the Bay Area. Or, foraging can be as tough as digging giant geoduck clams (pronounced gooey-duck), which live three feet under the sand and are only accessible at extreme low tides a few times each year. Picking berries is easy. Picking owl limpets off storm-tossed rocks in Bodega Bay is not.


Foraging has become more popular over the past few years. Any ideas why?

People are yearning to be closer to their food, to know where it comes from and to eat with a sense of place on the plate. To eat abalone is to be Californian. To eat wild rice is to link yourself to the great Northwoods of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. Nothing is more local, more seasonal -- and, when done responsibly, more sustainable -- than incorporating wild food into your diet.

Foraging gets you out into the world, into the fresh air and into close contact with Nature. We are all so busy that maybe the simple act of hiking with a purpose provides the spark we need to get the hell away from the computer, whether it’s to bring back huckleberries for a pie or a deer for a full winter’s worth of meals. Foraging allows us to flirt with the wild.

I can walk nearly anywhere and spot edible plants and animals. Knowing that not everyone possesses that skill is a heady, powerful rush. I know I am not alone in that feeling, and many new foragers describe something similar to me when they find a good stash of nettles, or morels, or butter clams.


What can a Bay Area person find in their area? Any ideas for tasty things the average Joe or Jane should keep an eye out for? 


"Yard weeds" are a great place to start. I wrote a primer on lawn foraging a while back that runs through the basics. Mostly these are salad greens, and right now is prime time for them all.

Blackberries are a good one. Everyone knows what they look like, and they are everywhere. Put on some gloves and get out there in July and August. We also have great huckleberry picking around here. Huckleberries are a lot like blueberries, only a little spicier, a little more tart. There are other berries around, too.

Fennel is another easy one. Fennel is native to the Mediterranean, but it was brought to California by Italian immigrants a century ago and has naturalized here. It is the same fennel you get in the store, only denser and more flavorful; it will not have big, fat bulbs, though.

Are there any dangerous foods that locals should avoid? What are your thoughts on the general dangers of foraging? 


Everything has its dangers. Mushrooms, especially. I came very close to poisoning myself recently. I thought I had a fried-chicken mushroom: It met every descriptor, except the spore print. Had I been foolish enough to not take a spore print, who knows what might have happened? That said, chanterelles and morels are pretty easy to identify. Buy a good guidebook (I recommend David Arora’s All that the Rain Promises and More), learn it, and go slow.

This is also true for plants. There are lots of good guidebooks for West Coast foraging. Pick one up and study it, and then bring it into the field with you. Never eat something you cannot absolutely identify.

You will also meet up with ticks, bees, wasps, and, occasionally, rattlesnakes. It’s an occupational hazard. Bears and lions are around in the mountains, too, but they will not generally bother you. I’ve seen both animals several times while foraging. I gotta admit I was a little unnerved by the kitty, though.

Say a person wants to learn more about foraging before setting out on their own. Where should they go for more information? Should they take lessons or go on foraging walks? Where can they find such a thing? 


I know that some people do conduct foraging walks, but I have not been on one since I was 11 years old -- and that was in New Jersey. I’d contact Iso Rabins with Forage SF for more on that one. As for me, I learned everything I know from experience, from books, and from being with knowledgeable friends. If you are into mushrooms, however, there are several excellent mycological societies around the Bay Area. Join one, go on a foray, and learn. It’s a cool experience.

Can you tell us a little bit about your book? What topics does it cover? Will a Bay Area person be able to put it to good use? How about a person in other parts of the country? 


The book is called Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast, and it is intended as a guide and cookbook for anyone who wants to make wild foods part of their diet -- or for someone who already does fish, forage or hunt, this book will help expand their knowledge. A lot of people just forage, but don’t hunt or fish. A lot of hunters don’t know much about foraging, and a lot of anglers don’t understand hunting. This book brings it all together, with recipes at the end of each chapter. Some of those recipes are basic, like buttermilk fried rabbit, but others push the edges of wild game cooking, like wild boar liver crème caramel.

But I think the most important, the most unique piece of this book is the hunting section. Very few books have ever been written for adults who want to start hunting but have no idea how to go about it. Most intro-to-hunting books are geared for little kids. I include extended chapters on everything from hunting rabbits to deer to waterfowl, wild boar and upland game such as pheasants. Not a week goes by when I don’t receive an email from a reader of my blog who wants more information about how to start hunting. This book is an attempt to help.

As for the Bay Area, it is an integral part of my blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, and since the book is an outgrowth of the blog, it follows that anyone living in the region will get a lot out of the book. There is not one chapter that is not relevant to someone living in NorCal.

That said, I have lived (and fished, hunted and foraged) in New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and I have visited many other states in search of wild food. Just as there is no chapter that excludes California, no chapter excludes the rest of the country as well. Sure, there may not be highbush cranberries here in NorCal, but the Midwest doesn’t have manzanita or madrone. I write about all of them.

When does the book come out, and where can we get more information? 



Hunt, Gather, Cook comes out May 26. It is already available for pre-order on the various online booksellers such as Amazon.com and Powell’s. Once the book is released, I will be setting up a series of events in the Bay Area and beyond -- cooking demos, readings, even fishing and foraging trips. You can get updated information about both the book and where I will be doing events on my blog, Honest-food.net, and by following me on Twitter under @Hank_Shaw.

---

Fennel and Tomato Pasta Sauce
By Hank Shaw, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook

Tomatoes and fennel pair well together, and this recipe is wonderful with the baby fennel that is sprouting all over the Bay Area right now. The sauce gets an added anise hit with a splash of Ouzo or Pernod, just to liven things up.

It is a great vegetarian sauce to serve with pasta, ideally a long pasta like spaghetti, bucatini or even homemade tagliatelle. Once you make the sauce, it will store in the fridge for 10 days or so. You can also freeze it.
Serves 6-8

Ingredients:
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup wild fennel, finely chopped
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
1/4 cup ouzo or other anise-flavored liqueur
1 quart tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon mint or lemon verbena, chopped
Salt to taste
Pecorino cheese to garnish

Instructions:
1. Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a wide, deep pan or a large pot. When the oil is hot, add the fennel and onion and saute for 4-5 minutes, until the veggies are translucent. Don’t let the veggies brown — turn down the heat if you need to. Add the garlic and saute for another minute or two.

2. Pour in the ouzo and let this boil until it is reduced by half. Add the crushed tomatoes, honey and mint and mix well. Taste for salt and add some if needed. Let this simmer gently for 30 minutes.

3. Put the sauce into a blender or food processor and puree. Pour the blended sauce back into the pot and bring to a simmer. You’re ready to serve. This is a powerful sauce, so use less than you think you need at first.

(Note: Photos courtesy of the fabulous Holly Heyser)

Time will tell how history views the current President and First Lady's legacy on the food front.

Though it's probably fair to say that the family now calling the White House home have never had their eating habits, food policy, or culinary preferences more thoroughly documented and photographed as Barack and Michelle Obama. For that coverage we have the prolific Eddie Gehman Kohan, the voice behind the self-explanatory blog Obama Foodorama, to thank.

Of course, for every pundit singing the praises of Obama's anti-obesity Let's Move campaign, the White House garden, and Sam Kass in the kitchen, there's a critic lamenting the Administration's rulings on genetically engineered salmon and alfalfa, worrisome stance on importing processed poultry products from China, a country not know for its stellar food safety record, or its ties to big biz players like global retailer Wal-Mart over the cultivation of small, local farmers.

And despite their healthy food stance, the Prez's favorite foods appear to be pizza, beer, and ice cream.

But since President's Day is about honoring leaders from history, we'll focus on the palate preferences and food initiatives of presidents past and offer a week's worth of food facts for today's holiday:

1. Founding Father's Food Challenge: By the time he was president George Washington (1789-1797) had lost most of his teeth and could only manage to eat soft foods, despite wearing hand-crafted dentures made from animal and human teeth. Washington also had a slave chef, Hercules, who has been described as immaculate, impeccable and a bit of a dandy. One wonders if he made apple sauce for the chomping challenged Washington, known to be a big lover of that fall fruit.

2. The Roots of a Holiday Food Tradition: Abraham Lincoln's (1861-1865) longest-running food legacy may well be the presidential pardon of a Thanksgiving turkey, a tradition that began when Lincoln spared a bird that had become the beloved pet of one of his sons.

3. Obesity Problem Nothing New: William Taft (1909-1913), who was a little too fond of rich, fatty food, has been the U.S.'s largest president to date, weighing in at a whopping 300 to 332 pounds. He got so fat he got stuck in the White House bathtub.

4. Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays: In 1917, Woodrow Wilson (1913-1917) urged all Americans to observe Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays to conserve food at home and help feed the troops fighting abroad during World War I. In recent years, the Meatless Monday campaign has been resurrected as a global health and environment initiative.

5. Victory Gardens: A response to the Great Depression and World War II when food was scarce, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945) and his wife Eleanor encouraged people to grow their own food and preserve excess harvest crops for the lean winter months. Since history is destined to repeat itself, the Victory Garden concept has made a comeback in recent years. See a theme emerging here?

6. Veggie Bashing: At a news conference in 1990 George Herbert Walker Bush (1989-1997) was famously quoted saying: "I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli," clearly traumatized after being forced fed the nutrient dense green as a child. Needless to say, some folks in the produce lobby got a little steamed by this anti-veg outburst.

7. The Pleasures of the Table: Former movie star Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), delivering his Farewell Address from the Oval Office, pronounced “all great change in America begins at the dinner table” in the daily conversations between parent and child. That's the kind of sentiment likely to garner strong bipartisan support during any administration.

Resources for presidential political history buffs with a culinary interest who want to learn more:

Radio: Hercules and Hemings: Presidents' Slave Chefs (NPR) by the Bay Area's Kitchen Sisters focuses on some of the African-American cooks who have served in the White House, including the enslaved chefs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Who knew that Sally Hemings, a Jefferson slave alleged to have had a relationship with the president, had a chef brother James Hemings? Also a Jefferson slave, James Hemings studied French culinary techniques and assumed the role of chef de cuisine in Jefferson's kitchen on the Champs-Elysees when he was minister to France.

Blog: The History Chef! by Suzy Evans, a lawyer in Newport Beach who holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and is working on a book about presidents' favorite foods. Her blog, which goes by the domain name lincolnslunch.blogspot.com, includes fascinating food factoids from the archives, like this one: Ronald Reagan asked for his favorite comfort food -- mac&cheese -- while recuperating from injuries sustained during an assassination attempt.

Book: All The Presidents' Pastries: Twenty Five Years in the White House: A Memoir by Roland Mesnier with Christian Malard (Flammarion, $24.95) dishes up White House dirt along with over-the-top desserts from the French pastry chef who served five presidents from Jimmy Carter to Bush junior during his 25 year tenure cooking for the country's top commander-in-chiefs.

Blog: Obama Foodorama: There's no food news related to POTUS and FLOTUS (that's Barack and Michelle) to minute to report on this site, which includes policy analysis, events, speeches, videos, recipes, menus, edible ephemera, and lots of food shots too. Eddie Gehman Kohan serves up side dishes of food news from the USDA and The Hill in a blog cataloged by the Library of Congress.

Cookbook: Capitol Hill Cooks: Recipes from the White House, Congress and All of the Past Presidents by Linda Bauer (Taylor, $26.95), a collection of dishes from appetizers to desserts from two centuries worth of policy wonks. Profits from the sales of the book benefit Homes for Our Troops, an organization that helps injured veterans build or adapt their homes for handicapped access.

Outside of the Sacred Wheel Cheese and Specialty Market, on 51st and Shattuck Ave. in Oakland. Photo by Marlene Saroni

"Wait, there's still 10 cheeses here you haven't tried!" insisted Chris Howse, the enthusiastic, lavishly tattooed general manager of Oakland's' new Sacred Wheel Cheese and Specialty Market.

When was the last time you heard that over a cheese counter? Especially a few minutes before closing time, after you've already tried several dozen different cheeses, each handed over eagerly, complete with full description.

In my experience, 3 tastes is about the limit of most cheese-wranglers' patience. After that, there seems to be a tacit agreement that you'll pick one, pull out your wallet, and seal the deal, or else slink away to make room for the next dairy-loving freeloader in line.

Not at Sacred Wheel Cheese and Specialty Market, which opened early January in the rapidly foodie-izing district of Temescal. Here, the staff seems much more eager to discover your new favorite cheese, reveal their latest find, or simply blow your mind with a groovy but unfamiliar flavor or texture. Specializing in domestic cheeses from mostly small, farmstead producers, the emphasis right now is on mostly Northern California cheeses. But you'll also find wheels and wedges from Oregon, Utah, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

Going all-American was part of co-owner Jena Davidson Hood's plan to create an unpretentious, unintimidating, neighborhood-friendly shop, where anyone could drop in, taste, and learn, without being overwhelmed by an enormous selection or a wall of hard-to-pronounce names. And while Jena may have the most food knowledge, thanks to her culinary-school training and years as a chef with Michael Mina's restaurant group, she emphasized that "no one here is pretending they know everything. We really encourage tasting--we'll taste any cheese in the shop, because it's fun to learn with people."

Said Jena, "Now that we've been open a little while, people are starting to come to me," with handmade accompaniments. "I'd really like to see the shelves fill up with local stuff, tiny, small-batch products." Already, the shelves are stocked with hot-pepper jellies from Inna Jam; honeys from Five+Dime and Bay Area Bee Company; and baguettes from Berkeley's Bread Workshop.

Not everything will be local, however. Sacred Wheel is a family affair, and Jena, her brother Merrick Davidson, and her mother Bernice Davidson, all of whom work in the shop, are proud of their Virginia roots. "We grew up country," Jena laughed, "on a farm in Bedford County, so we wanted to bring a little bit of home here." In a green shelving unit (made by her husband, Brian Hood, out of an old truck bed) are all manner of edible Virginiana, including jars of sweet chow-chow and hot zucchini relish from Meadowcroft Farm and cans of she-crab soup and blue crab chowder.

Still, Jena is proud to be living "100% Temescal" lately. She and her husband, who did much of the carpentry and design work needed to turn the long-empty storefront into a homey and welcoming space, live just a few blocks away, close enough so that she can run home to walk their dogs at midday. Said Jena, "We moved here 5 years ago, but I think even if we hadn't, it would have ended up being our favorite neighborhood. We're hoping this will help make Shattuck less of a stepchild" to the more popular and already restaurant-lined Telegraph Ave. "I'm happy we got in when we did."

While the bulk of the business is in take-home cheese and products, there's also a short menu: a couple of soups, including chunky, beer-spiked "tomato PBR" and a daily special, like silky, creamy carrot and roasted garlic; and a simple, kid-friendly grilled cheese sandwich of Cowgirl Creamery's Wagon Wheel cheese on sourdough bread. On the second Saturday of each month, James Whitehead of Fist of Flour will be setting up his mobile pizza oven on the sidewalk outside, making pizzas with a variety of Sacred Wheel's cheeses.

So, it's clear: Temescal likes its cheese, the bigger and bolder the better. And what could be better than grilled cheese dunked in tomato soup? Well, how about mac and cheese washed down with beer?

A few blocks east of Telegraph, a lunchtime line is snaking from the counter at Homeroom, past the Kraft-yellow wall almost all the way to the door. As you might expect, woolly hats, trucker caps, goatees, and I hella (heart) Oakland tees are much in evidence. But despite the line's slow crawl, everyone seems to be smiling. And why not? Above the counter is a chalkboard reading A is for Apple, B is for Beer, C is for Cheese.

It's the last two that Homeroom is banking on, with a menu that's all mac and cheese, all the time, serving ten varieties (loaded with Vermont cheddar, Mexican chorizo, goat cheese, Prather Ranch hot dogs, and more--and yes, they do make both vegan and gluten-free versions) alongside a dozen draft and bottled beers. There's wine, too, a few veggie sides (broccoli with ranch dressing, roasted carrots, salad) and a handful of simple desserts (brownies, peanut-butter pie, homemade Oreos, ice cream floats made with housemade root beer or Old Rasputin stout). The mac and cheese, plenty of it, comes bubbling in wide ceramic dishes, while the beer arrives in Mason jars, a few ounces shy of a pint. Just enough for a pleasant little lunchtime buzz, especially over the ballast of all that cheese and starch.

In the kitchen, a wiry crew is sweating over the pots, shoulders hunched with the pressure. "Even working in a mac and cheese restaurant, I think I've lost 5 pounds since we opened," laughs co-owner Erin Wade. Less than a week after opening their doors on Valentine's Day, Wade and her co-owner Allison Arevalo are still getting their systems down, gearing up for an all-day schedule that will see them dishing up from 11am to 9pm from Tuesday through Thursday (and Sunday) and from 11am to 10pm on Friday and Saturday.

Like the crew at Sacred Wheel, Arevalo and Wade have made Homeroom into a community affair; with the help of their husbands and friends, they did much of the space's renovation themselves, giving the big, open space a sweet and quirky feel that's almost kitschy, but not quite. The chunky red coffee mugs, decorated with the Homeroom logo, are instantly covetable; the old-fashioned library card catalog, now a repository for customers' "buy 10 get one free" cards, is a nice touch, even if few of the 20something patrons here would remember ever using a card catalog for real. Still, there's no denying the moneymaking appeal of cheesy-good nostalgia, especially with beer and without homework.

The only thing missing? Some no-nonsense lunch ladies to keep the din down.

Sacred Wheel Cheese and Specialty Market
Address: Map
4935 Shattuck Avenue
Oakland, CA, 94609
(510) 653-1653
Hours: Tues-Sun: 11am-8pm
Twitter: @SacredWheelOak
Facebook: Sacred Wheel Cheese and Specialty Market

Homeroom
Location: Map
400 40th Street
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 597-0400
Hours: Tues-Thurs: 11am-9pm, Fri- Sat: 11am-10pm, Sun: 11am-9pm
Twitter: @homeroom510
Facebook: Homeroom