Outside Lands 2009

Festival-goers swarmed Golden Gate Park this weekend at San Francisco's Outside Lands to soak in some world-class music, chow down on some local and diverse eats, and bask in the abnormally warm weather (discounting wintry Sunday).

There seemed to be something for everyone at this massive festival, with a variety of music showcased…

Black Eyed Peas

Jason Mraz

Dave Matthews Band

No shortage of spectacles to watch…

Fou Fou Ha!, performance troupe extraordinaire

And of course, a plethora of tasty food and beverages to fuel the fun, because a San Francisco event just would not be complete without some good grub.

Pica Pica Maize Kitchen, Yucca Fries and Cachapas

Top tastes included Venezuelan bites from Pica Pica Maize Kitchen, who served up arepas, cachapas, and yucca fries. My cachapas filled with shredded beef, black beans, plantains, and cheese hit the spot with its savory filling and sweet corn pancake shell, crispy on the outside and slightly gooey when I bit down.

Maverick’s Cincinnati Pulled Pork Sandwich

Maverick’s Cincinnati Pulled Pork Sandwich was smoky, rich, and meaty, with just the right saucy tang, and crunchy slaw on top. And, the house-made potato chips were without a trace of grease.

Hog Island Oysters

Hog Island Oyster Co. was back again this year, shucking and barbecuing their prized oysters. Nothing like rock n’ roll and oysters. Mmm slurp.

Little Skillet, Fried Chicken, Waffles, Mac n’ Cheese, and Cornbread

Farmerbrown's offshoot, Little Skillet fed the masses with their famous Fried Chicken and Waffles…so good they must be made with love (and butter…same difference). I had been hoping and wishing and praying for some more of those ridiculous black pepper biscuits with brown sugar crumble I tasted a few weeks ago at their pop-up happy hour block party, but alas, that will have to wait for another day.

Philz Coffee, Turkish Coffee

Local favorite, Philz Coffee made sure the party went strong into the night with their frothy, deliciously caffeinated beverages.

Yats, Catfish Po’Boy

And Yats brought a taste of New Orleans to Outside Lands, with their Fried Catfish Po’Boys, Jambalaya, and Eggplant Beignets. A hidden gem located inside Jack’s Club in Potrero Hill, Yats has been a long-time favorite of mine with their authentic po’boys and Creole dishes. I have a feeling that after this weekend, this will be a best kept secret no more.

Yats, Eggplant Beignets

The Eggplant Beignet was probably the most interesting thing I tried this weekend. Thick batons of eggplant coated in a savory peppery batter, deep fried, and dusted with powdered sugar, I’m still not quite sure how I feel about it. It had the sweet and savory combo going, which I dug, but…it was a little weird. Addictive, but weird.

Q Restaurant, Tater Tots

My tastebuds needed something familiar to recalibrate after that, and Q Restaurant had just the thing with their good old fashioned, crispy Tater Tots, available in traditional (ketchup) or fancy (chili lime aioli) accoutrement.

Handcut Waffle Fries, Eos Restaurant and Wine Salon

The Cheesy Waffle Fries from Eos also looked fully satisfying.

Charles Chocolates S’more

For the sweet tooth, giant S’mores from Charles Chocolates brought smiles to the kiddies and grown-ups alike.

Three Twins Ice Cream, Mint Confetti Cone

And Three Twins Ice Cream kept the crowd cool one scoop at a time.

Props to Outside Lands for creating an event that brought together so many of the things SF loves best.

‘Til next year

San Francisco's Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival
Golden Gate Park
August 28-30, 2009

The fizzy, refreshing band Lemonade, used to live in the Bay Area but these days, they call Brooklyn home. Last week, for "Tune in an Afternoon," a reoccurring series conceived by the folks at XLR8R TV, the sample-happy trio, self-described fans of popular television eats-seekers like Anthony "This Aging Rocker's Physique and These Expensive Boots Do Not Hide The Fact I am a Huge Unrepentant Dork" Bourdain and Andrew "I'm Not As Funny As Tony and It's Actually A Little Disturbing When I Force Myself To Eat Weird Stuff" Zimmern, crafted a track appropriate to their quaffable namesake in a matter of hours. With a skimpy budget of 40 bucks in hand, the band went shopping for edible inspiration at Deluxe Food Market on Elizabeth St. in New York City's Chinatown, intending, with the typical enterprising thrift of savvy musician dudes, to fashion both music and mid-day sustenance from their purchases.

Food and music are not strangers. Famously, during an interlude of "Clara," the 12-minute center-piece of Scott Walker's The Drift (2006), a pulsing, jarring horror show of a record, a percussionist is captured vigorously and somewhat rhythmically punching away at a side of beef. The result: dull, wince-worthy thuds, fleshy and full yet weak, an icky almost carnal sound infinitely more gruesome than anything on A Chance to Cut Is A Chance To Cure, Matmos' 2001 album of accessible electronica derived entirely from the recorded saws and squishes of various plastic surgery procedures.

While music made from sounds associated with food, or at least those emanating, with human interference, from things that, properly prepared, could become food (30th Century Man doesn't tell us if Walker or any of his studio minions elected to barbecue the pummeled hunk of cow once it had been thoroughly tenderized) may not be untravelled terrain (I am not knowledgeable enough about electronic music to even bother pretending that there is or is not a chronicled history of such efforts), Lemonade's off-the-cuff July 14 experiment gave me some fresh perspective on the ways we process, enjoy, and dissect food and music.

When we cook a meal, we transform the properties of once-living flesh or vegetable matter to ready them for consumption, rendering them palatable to our tastes and (hopefully) acceptable to our digestive systems. When it hits the table, food is for the most part appraised and enjoyed via four of the five senses: taste (naturally), smell (not far removed), sight, and touch. We may, at times, like hearing the food we're eating -- a bowl of Rice Krispies, shards of papadum, meat sputtering on the grill, even the crackling overture of a super burrito shedding its silver foil skin -- but that sense is, at least for me, not necessarily crucial to pleasurable, or at least engaged eating, the sort of experience capable of triggering memories and emotions. Does food that tastes good often sound good as well? Carpaccio hacked up through mounds of compression and some slithery echo might not sound as lovely as it will taste. Then again, drop a few hushpuppies in a vat of bubbling oil, hold your nose, close your eyes (don't do this before you get within spitting distance of the pot), and tell me that doesn't sound as if it won't deliciously call forth a crashing wave of delirious nostalgia for river-side catfish feeds of days long past and so on.

Whether or not the by-product of Lemonade's music-making was particularly yummy, it's exciting and new to hear food, and only hear it, though the video does obviously visually link the band's process to their final product, a song. Using a cheap microphone and proletariate software, the band documents the pressing of garlic, the popping of a cava bottle, eggs boiling, olive oil sprayed from a can, and, goofily, the open-palmed slapping of a fish, harnessing typical supper-time noises and manipulating them (along with samples from a steel drum platter and some pre-prepared synths) in an improvised recipe for an organic musical composition: "Fish Clap," an uptempo, dish-rattling instrumental ditty, cartoonish, effervescent swirls of kitchen activity in 4/4 with a whiff of the kind of mixer-chewing mayhem Black Dice usually employs to more unsettling ends.

In case the descriptives peppering this tract haven't made it quite clear, the sorts of words critics frequently abuse in reviewing music often work with regard to food and drink too. A mad dash through a few recent Pitchfork reviews reveals that beats, melodies, riffs, tones, and vibes can be construed as fat, rubbery, foamy, gritty, and fluid, just like eats. In the end, writers trying to make sense of whatever creations they've elected to reflect upon have the same tools at their disposal, and there are naturally huge overlaps in the applications of their meanings. That doesn't explain why so many restaurant reviews come off as just a touch less antiseptic than sanitation score reports written by a low-wattage Hemingway sitting down to his Royal portable typewriter after a trip to The Vapor Room.

Amid billowing black stove-staining clouds of digression, I suppose what I'm really coming to, here at the end of this roundabout stew-stirring, is another question, one stretching a bit beyond the scope of the original subject: if food, in the right hands, with the right software, can become music, can music, in a listener's right frame of mind, feel, not literally, of course, but metaphorically, like food?

Certain sounds even evoke specific tastes for me. For example, the vibrato-drenched electric guitar commonly used in old-school surf music lends a silvery, watery quality to whatever it graces; hearing the effect makes me thirsty and apt to think about Coca-Cola in little glass bottles, frozen technicolor drinks churning away in glass-and-metal machines in gas stations, and Gatorade -- sweet refreshments for slaking thirst and cooling down -- as well as deuce coupes and suntan lotion. If sounds packed into songs have flavors, the end results can be dishes, some nourishing, some junky, some deceptively simple, and others triumphs of high art and affectation. To conclude, trying to avoid tunes with explicitly food-oriented lyrics (Sadly, no Dead Prez), because that's really a whole other topic, I've selected, in Rob Gordon-esque fashion, my Top 5 Most Delicious-Sounding Tracks of All Time If They Were Actually Dishes, In A Meal:

1. "Can't Come In" by The Congos off Heart of the Congos -- A very small bowl of intense, almost overwhelming, practically hallucinogenic elixir broth made from about a thousand different tiny spiny slippery sea creature things deftly simmered, frantically stirred, and infused with a literal ton of Scotch bonnets.
2. "Small Hours" by John Martyn off One World -- A cool little lemon-laced salad of sliced English cucumber and some sort of pickled fish, maybe herring.
3. "The Weight" by The Band off Music From Big Pink -- An Arkansas-style poutine, with barbecue sauce substituted for brown gravy.
4. "Tangerine" by Led Zeppelin off Led Zeppelin III -- A luscious royal layer-cake, decadent, towering, frosted with ambrosia (for the gods, of course) and topped with icing in arena light hues.
5. "Turiya and Ramakrishna" by Alice Coltrane off Ptah The El Daoud -- An endless cup of perfect espresso, covered in celestial mounds of spiced cream.

Today's food-scape is a rich tapestry woven from a multitude of little ideas and small stories: tradition, history, science, art, and human ingenuity colliding on plates at the intersection of major political and social issues. The individual strands of this loom-y metaphor are people. They aren't always clearly visible until you look closely. People need food to survive, and in ancient times, communities were endlessly preoccupied with finding things to eat and figuring out how to cook them. Civilizations would form and thrive around the domestication of a single species of animal. Proud eating traditions have sprung from time-honed preparation techniques born of necessity. Great celebrations still honor the harvest and hunt. For evidence, look no further than Thanksgiving and the Gilroy Garlic Festival. There's a gulf between pounding poi in Polynesia and nudging a grocery cart through Whole Foods, but the parallels persist even amid changing times and circumstance: we have always been defined by how we eat -- as individuals, families, neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries. Food used to be seen as fuel; now, it's a mirror, and everything we stuff down our face-holes shows us more about ourselves and the way we live.

The view of Guerrero from inside 18 Reasons

18 Reasons, the Bi Rite-affiliated gallery space on Guerrero near 18th Street, has made such conscious, well-examined consumption its mission, offering exhibitions, lectures, tastings, and classes to draw clear bright lines between food, people, and place, existing essentially as the embodiment of its intention, as a local meeting spot for people who love food and want to talk about it, share what they know, and learn from others. The gallery has received some local press love but this summer's offerings deserve special mention.

Morgan Maki starting on the lamb

Last week, I attended the second part of a Lamb Butchery and Sausage Making class taught by Bi Rite butcher Morgan Maki, the same guy who schooled folks in Stock Theory and Knife Skills a few months ago. The first session saw a 5-foot-long 45 pound lamb broken down and whittled into chops, roasts, and other cuts for cookery. I missed that one due to illness but the pictures tell enough of the story for you to get the basic idea. It came in whole and left in chunks. Maki dropped some anatomy knowledge. Everyone ate cheese and drank wine. When I arrived at the second session, the students were chopping the trimmings from that depleted carcass, sleeves rolled up, ties tucked, and jewelry removed. It was a Tuesday night, and most had clearly come straight from work and were dutifully taxing the bottles of merlot making the rounds. The gallery's clean white walls were bare, awaiting the summer show (Julie Duffoo's semi-gristly Meatpaper photographs of local butchers). The only exhibit on display was the whirl of activity, something like a party happening around the sturdy wooden table in the center of the room: sausage as social sculpture.

Gathering around the grinder

As Maki spoke, some of the attendees frantically scribbled on yellow legal pads. A few people hung back against the walls, silent, literally watching others watch and talk. Most crowded around the table for a shot at slicing, or volunteered to help grind once the ingredients were assembled. "This is probably used in extreme interrogation techniques," quipped one dude as he eyed the sausage stuffing apparatus.

The sausage, ground

People capable of paying 60 dollars to learn how Bi Rite butchers make sausages using $2000 grinders can afford to buy sausage at Bi Rite any time they want. They don't need to learn how to make sausage at home in order to save money or make their lives easier. Prussian statesman Otto Von Bismarck (an abundantly mustached practitioner of Realpolitik who probably put away many many sausages in his day) famously compared the crafting of laws to the processing of sausages. There was once the idea that people wouldn't want to eat sausage if they saw how it was made. Now, people want to know where they can find fresh pork blood and a good deal on a professional grinder.

Those who show up at 18 Reasons for something like this aren't just amassing knowledge for themselves. They're making a personal investment in an enduring artisanal tradition and, by extension, a community. "The more people that use this space the healthier it will be," said Maki when I asked him what he wanted out of the gallery. The neighborhood has definitely taken notice. Every person walking past with laundry and grocery bags stops to peer in. Maybe they all won't shell out the ducats for a class but they'll maybe come to a free event, or at least read up on something they saw posted on the board outside.

If you want to get involved, now is a good time. Classes on the horizon promise to please. On Tuesday, July 7, Maki will teach the first section of a two-part course on Pig Butchery and Curing, in which participants will learn the basics of swine disassembly as well as several principles and techniques of curing in preparation for smoking or curing. The cost is $60 for non-members. Buy your tickets here.

Photos by Michael V. Chopko

This 1970s commercial shows how to make a big production out of soup. Ann Miller was a much-loved dancer who was discovered before she even hit puberty right here in San Francisco at the historic and colorful Black Cat Cafe.

Eat your heart out, Ann Miller!

On the other side of the world, Campbell's soup plays a quieter role. I found this lovely reuse of a can in an alleyway in Macau. Half filled with dry rice grains, the can holds incense sticks burnt as an offering to dead ancestors. The lazily drifting smoke serves as a bridge to connect the spirit world to the homes of faithful descendants. Perhaps someone's grandmother loved creamy corn with chicken soup? Or perhaps the day-to-day tasks of honoring the dead has settled into the comfort of reusable containers?

In my print studio are two drawers of old copper and zinc cuts, from the days when metal -- not pixels -- spread words and images around the world. Mixed in with farm manual illustrations, matchbook covers for defunct restaurants, and finely etched maps of roads crisscrossing San Jose's orchards lay lots of product images for food adverts. Campbell's iconic soup can is one of my favorites. While my childhood memories involved many more bowls of chicken and stars than tomato, Andy Warhol's conflicted critique of mass production still holds my attention.

Even better, an actual can of pepper pot in my office reminds me of all the quirky, real-life, meaningful intersections between the distant past and the relevant present, our private stories and public memory.

Perhaps soup is not so humble a food after all.

I have a really amazing circle of friends and family. Because of this, I am always on the lookout for great gifts that are easy on the wallet, and that hold to my buying philosophy: buy from mom-and-pop shops over chain superstores whenever possible. While I definitely have some San Francisco stores that I frequent in order to find unique gifts, my obsession lately has been Etsy.

Etsy is an online marketplace of over 100,000 sellers who sell all things handmade.

I've had particular luck using Etsy for my food-loving friends.

A couple of months ago, I purchased the above apron from Bella Bee Designs. Wendy at Bella Bee uses fantastic fabrics, and is currently selling aprons, napkins and totes. As has been the case with all of my Etsy transactions, customer service was friendly and she even worked with me to get a gift out very quickly to a friend. The friend was thrilled, and by the time I saw the apron I was jealous that I hadn't bought one for myself. I am really looking forward to buying more gifts from Bella Bee Designs.

This necklace was a purchase for myself about a year ago. It was made by Rachael Sudlow, and I love wearing it to the farmers market during sweet pea season. Sudlow also makes this cute cupcake necklace.

Sumiko makes really beautiful pottery including the sushi set above. I was so pleased when I purchased this gift for a friend. Not only was the sushi set exactly as advertised, but the wrapping and attention to packaging detail was impeccable. I have my eye on this olive plate as a purchase for myself.

It's hard to go wrong with Etsy. It seems to be a relatively safe buying environment, and I've never had trouble receiving a purchased item. I keep an eye on ratings and feedback which are available for every seller. If I'm purchasing from a seller with relatively few ratings, I use a little more caution than I do from sellers with many high ratings.

In gathering links for this story, I came across several new Etsy items that I'd like to purchase including a hemp tote bag from Uzura, this "pretty peas" bag from dailybread, cute floursack towels from YourWayEmbroidery, this lovely soup bowl from kimwestad, and this gorgeous bag from iragrant.

It's easy to spend a lot of time on Etsy. One search leads to another, and two hours later you are still clicking around looking at beautiful items. Etsy provides some tools to help you refine searches.

My favorite ways to search are:
• Using gift guides
• Checking out featured sellers
• By color

CAKE by Camille Holvoet, 2008.

The recent opening of a gallery exhibition at Creativity Explored in the Mission District was a reminder of just how much San Franciscans love their food. The exhibit, entitled Tasty, highlighted the work of local artists who had explored the shape and color of eating in a variety of media. During the reception, both the small gallery up front and the large studio space in back were packed wall to wall with friends, donors and hungry viewers. It was the most crowded I’d ever seen their gallery. Attach the word "food" to any event here in Northern California, especially if your normal operations have nothing to do with anything edible, and you can expect to sell out.

In this month’s noise of food and more food, though, the art on the walls at Creativity Explored reminded me of two vital gifts, the same forces that pushed me into my own work and that inspire me still after all these years. One, the power of unleashed creativity and uncensored expression to reveal who we are as individuals. And two, the power of people coming together to support each other and help each other thrive.

Camille Holvoet, one of the studio artists at Creativity Explored, is known for her rich, lush oil pastels of cakes, pies and pastries.

If you haven’t visited the exhibit yet, please try to carve some time out of these waning weeks of summer to stop by and see the works. Be sure to linger at Steven Greeter’s Popsicles, Kevin Roach’s interpretation of meat in Pork Cut Chart, the vivid montage of green in Peter Cordova’s papier mache Vegetable Bowl, John Patrick McKenzie’s hand-lettered Tablecloth, Betty Benard’s Watermelon collage, and Camille Holvoet’s many cupcakes. They are truly stunning, and while I may be biased about the provocative images (yes, a few of those red dots marking sold paintings and sculptures are mine), I also believe Creatively Explored to be one of the most important nonprofits in the Bay Area. Their mission, to support the creative efforts of developmentally disabled adults, has been realized through an ambitious vision pushed forward with much hard work. In addition to offering a safe studio space and workshops for their artists, they promote their artists’ works at their Valencia Street gallery and in museum exhibits around the world. Like many mainstream, for-profit galleries, half of the money received from buyers goes directly to the artist.

I’d been lucky enough to help teach a workshop earlier this summer at their studio with Sharon Smith, one of many instructors who teach there and a friend who nurses her own personal mission to show the artists how to eat more healthfully. Wanting to offer easy, nutritious and delicious alternatives to the daily snack truck that arrives everyday at the studio, Sharon had asked me to assist her with transforming whole fruit into edible art.

FAVORITE FOODS, by Camille Holvoet, 2007.

It was new territory for Creativity Explored. A hands-on cooking class had never been on their list of objectives, but with some dedicated fundraising through Sharon’s contacts with the food industry and lots of paring knives, we were able to come up with four tables worth of colorful, edible art.

After the artists had a chance to sketch the fruit whole, we all worked together to prepare platters of rainbow-bright snack skewers. Melon-ballers helped us transform large, unwieldy, intimidating orbs into small, friendly finger-food. Oranges kept their peels, as color and convenience dictated the results as much as flavor, while five different hues of apples fueled debates on everyone’s preferences for sweet vs. tart. To my delight, I noticed that both green and red grapes managed to travel more directly to mouths than skewers. The patterns, shapes, textures and rhythms that emerged on each artist’s skewer informed a second wave of sketches. Along the way, we all shared stories about our favorite fruit.

The recipe for the day was a dessert dip made with three ingredients: yogurt, honey and orange juice mixed to taste (lots of tasting!) and poured into a colorful bowl. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

It’s a challenge for all of us to eat healthfully but especially so for adults of diverse development levels who may not have full kitchens, basic cooking skills, steady incomes or an attentive family. Thanks to Sharon, though, Creativity Explored has an instructor as dedicated to their artists’ physical health as their creative spirit.

CREATIVITY EXPLORED
Gallery Exhibition: Tasty
Curator: Judith La Rosa
August 14 through October 1, 2008
3245 16th Street (at Guerrero Street)
San Francisco CA 94103
(415) 863-2108
Map

CAKES by Camille Holvoet, 2008.

I fully intended to write about my newest bit of foodie finery that will soon hang happily around my neck. After three years of gazing at the gallery with longing and indecision, I finally made up my mind and bought a necklace from SpoonFed Art. SoCal artist Karin Collins started her collages as therapy for her eating disorder, but four years ago her therapy turned into a successful online business. Collins fills an empty bowl of a spoon with her whimsical and alluring collages, making them both jewelry and delicate works of art. However, excited as I am for my "Berried" to shimmer at my throat, it was actually SpoonFed Art's packing material that really took my breath away.

As mother and father to two cats, my husband and I are very concerned about packing material. Cats (and presumably dogs) should not be let near Styrofoam peanuts or popcorn. If they bite the stuff -- and if you have cats you know they will try to bite, chew, or eat it -- cats have a good chance of choking to death on the Styrofoam. Therefore, whenever we receive a package that is well padded with floaty, sticky, staticky Styrofoam, we Hazmat the entire area.

The cats are sequestered in another room, and the package is carefully slit open with sharp scissors and the flaps laid flat. The contents are slowly lifted out by one of us, while the other brushes it down and keeps a weather eye out for escaped Styrofoam. After the contents are decontaminated more thoroughly than anything on the Enterprise, the box is resealed, Styrofoam within, and the entire area is checked for escapees. Even the tiniest bit of styro-schmutz is tagged and bagged before the cats are allowed back in the room.

Therefore, when I opened my SpoonFed Art package and saw that my necklace was thoroughly padded in actual popcorn, well, I'm not ashamed to admit that I let out quite the squeal. Aside from the popcorn within the mailer, there was also an actual popcorn box, likewise stuffed with popcorn. Tucked snugly inside that humorous box was my lovely necklace.

Of course I know eschewing Styrofoam is better for the environment, but I'm a cat person first and an environmentalist second, therefore on behalf of Hunca Munca and Poppadum, I thank and adore Karin Collins for coming up with such a clever, thoughtful, and thoroughly foodie way of packing her delicate creations.

Now if I can only convince my husband to stop eating it.

SpoonFed Art
1076 Hi Point Street
Los Angeles, CA

Black Tartarian Cherries: "Copyright 1910 – Edward M. Mitchell, San Francisco"

In celebration of National Postcard Week, which spans the first week in May in the US and UK, be sure to send out a few notes to your favorite folks. An actual piece of personal mail, let alone hand-written thoughts for someone you know and love, is the closest thing to a hug you can share long-distance.

A trick I learned a long time ago from a consummate correspondent: Buy a stack of cards, stamp them in advance, and keep them in a pretty box in a visible place with a pen right there next to them. If you're trying to stay in touch with someone specific—your grandfather in the nursing home, your friend from college, your flame across the country—address the cards in advance and shuffle them up. Then, all it'll take are two minutes and three sentences to remind someone that they're important to you.

Michael Sowa's surreal "Zum Kartoffellagerhaus."

Yes, email is so convenient and links to weird news always provide a laugh. And, yes, Facebook offers a million ways to poke your friends. But for this one week, pickup a pen and send your thoughts on paper.

To help inspire you, I'm sharing a few food-related postcards from my own boxes. Some are waiting to be mailed out; others were sent to me from friends who know how much I like to cook and eat. Below you'll also find a few resources for tracking down interesting postcards, or, if you're feeling especially ambitious and creative, making your own.

A card from Hong Kong.

One last quick note: On May 12, the postcard rate will go up to 27 cents. It's still, a bargain, though, for injecting a smile into someone's day, so go ahead and buy a couple books of the USPS's brand-new, colorful tropical fruit stamps.

This linen postcard, showing two boys and their very big catch, is from my own collection of vintage travel cards.

San Francisco Bay Area Post Card Club
Local history buffs will want to browse these online exhibits of delightful historical postcards to learn about "Goats in San Francisco" or modern-day restaurant "freecards". Visit SFBAPCC's website to learn about their monthly meetings at Fort Mason or read their latest newsletter. The April aviation issue (pdf) includes a linen postcard showing the elegant tables in the Skyway Wing Room of San Francisco International Airport, with its expansive view of the ramps and runways during the cutting-edge "air age" of the 1950s and 60s.

Advertising for the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island in 1939. (From the postcard collection of Katheryn Ayres.)

Pomegranate Postcard Sale
One of the foremost publishers of postcards and notecards is offering a postcard blowout sale. It's a mystery assortment of 100 cards—plenty to get you through the week and beyond.

MoMA Food Collection
Visit the online museum store of the Museum of Modern Art to purchase a box of postcards featuring food art drawn from the paintings, drawings and prints in their collection.

A card from Singapore, one in a series of drawings from the Straits Settlements of the early 18th century.

Art Postcard
Although I'm emphasizing actual paper cards, I'd be remiss not to mention new ways of sending images with messages. This impressively extensive online art postcard gallery allows you to search by style of art, topic, artist's country, or keyword. Select an image, type your message, and your friend will receive your virtual postcard.

Handmade Postcards
For the crafty among you, here are a few sites showing how to make your own gorgeous works of mail art. At the more involved end, see how leaves can be pressed into still-wet pulp to make elegant Japanese-style paper cards. On the much, much easier end, learn how to transform any photo into a unique postcard in seconds. A wonderful way to reuse AND amuse is by appropriating food packaging, such as dried pasta boxes, with their built-in, plastic-coated "viewing frame," to make fun postcards. All you need are scissors, pen, and a postcard stamp. This last one would be an especially fun project with kids, but adults will enjoy these moments of creativity and connection, too.

A cup of matcha on tatami mats. Japantown's gift shops have beautiful cards.

Deltiology
If you'd like to brush up on postcard history, spend some time reading about deltiology, considered the third most popular collectible hobby in the world after stamps and coins (baseball, limited to the US, counts lower). Since that first postage stamp in 1840, these little missives have helped document our shifts in technology, travel, communications, and social networks.

Coco-note
No piece about food and mail would be complete without a mention of that classic tourist gift: a whole coconut mailed intact from Hawaii. Coco-notes and Fortune Coconuts are the modern incarnations of what surely the US postal service regrets ever allowing.

Cindy sent this from Argentina to let me know that she was eating fine.

After successful runs last year at the DeYoung Museum and Galleria de la Raza, The Great Tortilla Conspiracy returns for another fantastic show at SomArts Cultural Center. Self-described as "the world's most dangerous tortilla art collective," the father and son team of Rene and Rio Yañez explores a wide swath of themes in their unique medium. Along the way, they recruit other artists as well as creatively minded gallery visitors to join the fun. Immigration and genetic modification, apparitions of religious icons and pop-culture celebrities, free trade and lucha libre -- it's all game in tortilla art.

Artist: Jos Sances

Artist: Rene Yañez

Artist: Anonymous pork lover

The exhibit opens with a reception on WednesdaySaturday, April 5th, 6:00 to 9:30 pm. Throughout the month, SomArts will host a series of interactive tortilla events, including a tortilla fashion show and a panel discussion on the globalization of tortillas and corn. Those who don't want to think about the rising price of Mexico's staple can skip straight to the hands-on art workshop, where you'll create a masterpiece of your very own to contribute to the growing body of tortilla art.

Artist: Nicole Schach. Oh Blessed Virgin Mary, grant me patience for the 14 Mission, the 30 Stockton, the 38 Geary....

Artist: Rene Yañez

THE GREAT TORTILLA CONSPIRACY
April 3rd to 23rd, 2008
SomArts Cultural Center
934 Brannan Strreet
San Francisco, CA, 94103
(415) 863-1414
Google Map

Event Schedule
April 5, 6 – 9:30 pm - Opening Reception
April 11, 5 pm – Tortilla Drawing Rally
April 12, 6 pm – Artist Panel Validating Tortilla Art
April 18, 7 pm – Tortilla Fashion Show
April 19, 5 pm – Special Panel on the globalization of Tortillas
and Transgenic Corn

The divine Morrissey graces a tortilla.

On display through the wonderful internets are hundreds upon thousands of photographs of everyday lunches. No soggy PB&J's here, though. One forum, the Mr. Bento Porn Flickr group, posts their collective creative efforts to make mid-day meals visually appealing, healthful, delicious and, yes, a little easier on the wallet. Their cousin site, Diet Bento, includes impressively low calorie counts for those whose 2008 resolutions (for now at least) include trimming down a little of their own belly fat.

Portable meals have been with us for as long as farmers have trudged off to their fields and soldiers have marched on in war. The Japanese took it a little further, of course. Where other countries preferred banana leaves or woven baskets, Japanese al fresco diners preferred compartmentalized boxes. By the 17th century, bento meals became elaborately arranged celebrations of the full moon and cherry blossoms, a leisurely way to enjoy intermission with friends at the theatre or, like the older form of sushi, essential food for travelers in an age before planes and bullet trains.

Fast forward to the 20th century for aluminum tins, insulated containers, microwaveable cups and, last but not least, those brightly colored, plastic Hello Kitty boxes that accompany kids to school. Adult versions abound, too, although Ichiban Kan's bento aisle seems pretty well populated by over-twenty-somethings. For those who want to pack with style, <a href="http://www.plasticashop.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=P&Product_Code=BNTOBX&Category_Code
Designer boxes">Plastica offers a sleek, stackable set in elegant colors.

Japan is not the only country with distinctive lunch boxes. Vietnam has its aluminum ca men that families carry every morning to the market to pick up breakfast, a different soup in each of the layers prepared exactly as each person prefers. The beautifully painted enamel tins of Malaysia are collectors' items, while in India, no-nonsense tiffin boxes show wonder less in their appearance than in their amazing daily travels from home to office and back again.

In Japan, there are nearly 500 magazines dedicated to showing parents (read: mothers) how to pack lunches that will entice and impress. The proper order to place in the elements, the proper balance of color and flavors, the proper container for the right food, the secret to making flowers and hamsters and their favorite manga characters out of edible delights: childrens' meals are no less subject to codification and over-the-top creativity than anything else the Japanese do.

A few English-language books attempt to translate the techniques as well as the art of bento. Some designs would only appeal to an obsessive artist with lots of free time, but many are simple and worth trying. It's a good way to get the kids involved the night before. Lay out some ingredients, flip to a fun photo and suddenly packing lunch becomes a game. Two titles to check out are Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals on the Go for a how-to guide and Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes for an aesthetic treatment of the topic.

Another good resource is Biggie's Lunch in A Box site, where parents will find excellent suggestions for getting their kids off to school with good food. She has hints that acknowledge the need for speed in addition to the desire to make lunch and snacks both healthy and fun.

Like with most good habits, packing meals for lunch requires practice and foresight at first, then as the regimen settles into a comfortable part of your day and week, merely some momentary foresight during weekend shopping and prep. Simple tips include washing and cutting your vegetables ahead of time, freezing food in smaller batches and learning to pack more flavor than bulk.

And if you just want to have a cute lunchbox without the work, well, they do make excellent take-out containers. Buy one with straps or handles to carry to your favorite deli counter and do your part to cut back on disposable ware.