As someone who keeps containers of bacon fat, duck fat, chicken fat, lard and butter along with rank-and-file bottles of olive oil, sesame oil, chile oil, grape seed oil and good ol’ peanut oil always handy by her stove, I was delighted to learn a new term this week: FOG.

No, not the lovely mist that sweeps over our city from the sea.

Fats
Oils
Grease

Unfortunately, in addition to carrying flavor and adding texture, these staples of the kitchen can be as bad for our sewer system as our bodies. Multiply thousands of restaurants by dozens of gallons of FOG and very quickly, the mess builds up.

A program launched this past month by San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission, SFGreasecycle, will attempt to alleviate the headache of FOG disposal while linking to Gavin Newsom’s mandate to use 20% biodiesel in all city vehicles by the end of the year. There are still a few weeks for us to reach our goal.

Around the world, the dumping of FOG into sewer systems has become a serious problem. New landfill regulations prohibiting the burying of liquid fats and municipal directives on hazardous waste, animal by-products and waste oils make FOG disposal increasingly complex and expensive for restaurants and catering companies (not to mention the much larger amounts from abattoirs and food processing plants). An entire industry has risen up to separate, collect, store, treat, transport, buy, sell and dispose of FOG. The next time you wonder how pet food gets its calories and flavors, well, just remember the deliciousness of french fries and potato chips.

SFGreasecycle hopes, through education and incentives (like free pick-up) to reduce the amount of FOG flowing into the city’s pipes. Reusing it as fuel for its fleet of municipal vehicles is another excellent benefit. Will it cut down on emissions? Well…that depends….

Grease Goddesses’ hatchback.

Bumper stickers aside, the heated debate about whether the use of biodiesel results in a positive impact or a negative one overall confuses most of us. There’s an abundance of mind-numbing technical reports, polarized rhetoric and big-business greenwashing. Much of it comes down to what you measure and how. Another point of argument occurs between those who believe any minimization of petroleum helps slow our current self-destructive spiral and those who, reminding us that gas motors still equal emissions, believe bikes and solar panels are the better answer.

To help you sort out the issues and how they relate to your cooking and eating and driving pleasures, visit these websites:

• Learn more about the SFGreasecycle program, including a participating restaurant list, FOG facts, before and after photos of fat-clogged sewers, and lots of links to sites on climate change, biodiesel facts and supporting organizations. The sound effects of the homepage alone are worth a click. My favorite, though, is the FOG map, showing hotspots in San Francisco where food-service establishments caused the most “multiple grease blockages” over the last two years. (But please, enough with the un-readable, un-typeable web-o-matic compound names!)

• From the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality comes a useful list of ways to reduce FOG in your own home or apartment.

• Scott Gregory, who combines his work from atmospheric science and engineering, offers an admirable summary of diesel history, climate impact and one of the EPA’s studies on biodiesel emissions. His website offers my two favorite sentences in all my reading on the issue: 1) Inventor Rudolf Diesel’s warning, circa 1911, that “The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time,” and 2) Gregory’s own pithy conclusion, “There are good reasons to use biodiesel, but emissions improvement is not the most compelling argument. I prefer the ‘thumb your nose’ at the oil industry argument.”

• The environmental journalists at Seattle-based Grist gathered three experts to offer their views on the biodiesel controversy: Ana Unruh Cohen, director of environmental policy at the Center for American Progress; David Morris of the Institute for Local Reliance; and Number One Biodiesel Skeptic, David Pimentel, professor emeritus of entomology at Cornell University.

• Here’s the recent story in SFGate describing the Public Utilities Commission’s launch of the program. In addition to General Manager Susan Leal’s colorful descriptions of the problem of fats in the sewer system (”It’s sort of like a heart attack in our sewers,” Leal said. “It’s like a blocked artery.”) there’s blood-pressure-raising reading in the comments section that illustrates much of the confusion and polarization around biodiesel.

• The crew of the Unifried Bus have put together a friendly, informative website about how they outfitted their engines for oil. In addition to photos that clearly convey the “Julia Butterfly-Burning Man” aesthetic of their approach, there’s a plain language comparison of Biodiesel Emissions compared to Other Fuels Fuel Types that takes into consideration the entire fuel cycle, or a “well-to-wheel” analysis. They also offer tips for other biodiesel drivers from their own experiences.

• For a view from the industry itself, here is an explanation from the official site of the National Biodiesel Board. Their membership includes state, national and international feedstock and feedstock processor organizations, biodiesel suppliers, fuel marketers and distributors, and technology providers.

• And, finally, for the hard-core, here is the 118-page Comprehensive Analysis of Biodiesel Impacts on Exhaust Emissions (Draft Technical Report) that was conducted at Harvard with Ford Motors as part of the EPA’s Biodiesel Emissions Analysis Program.

And you thought your arteries were clogged.

One of the most exciting pieces of food news this year is that “locavore” has been knighted “word of the year” by the Oxford University Press. However, I absorbed the concept of the Eat Local Challenge before I did “locavore,” which, in all honesty, I thought had something to do with the phases of the moon and the lycanthrope society. (It’s possible I’ve watched one too many Frasiers.)

The first time I heard about the Eat Local movement, it was over two years ago, and since I was still trying to ferret out where to buy my favorite French nut oil, Mexican ginger beer, and New England pumpkin ale, I felt totally overwhelmed.

Did I really need to think about each and every food product that came into my kitchen when I was just starting to find my cooking legs in San Francisco? Of course not. If you give the smallest crap about eating local, it’s not necessary to ensure that every food product — salt, coffee, flour, sugar, produce, meat, Diet Coke — in your kitchen is from local purveyors. If you give the smallest crap about eating local, you just think about what you’re buying and wonder if it’s local. Because you care.

That’s all you need to do to effect change: start thinking about it. Start caring about it. Then maybe, you’ll start acting on it. Frankly, if it hadn’t been for Jen Maiser, I’d still be just thinking about eating local and not actually doing anything about it. Not only does Jen blog about eating local at her own site, Life Begins at 30, she’s also the editor of the Eat Local Challenge blog and has worked at various farmers’ stands at the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market.

After my failed first attempt at participating in an Eat Local Challenge, I started following Jen’s efforts more and more. Her passionate, yet refreshingly frank and evenhanded writing style drew me in deeper and deeper, and before I knew it, not only was I examining every tag, sticker, and vittles visa at Andronico’s, but I was delivering earnest, flushed-cheek diatribes to my Minneapolian parents and sister about why they should think to ask, “Where did this come from?” before they stuck anything in their mouths. It got to the point when my mom was collaring the hapless meat guy at Whole Foods and demanding to know why he was offering her lamb from New Zealand and not from Minnesota.

Jen shares her information widely, energetically, and — most importantly — nonjudgmentally. She embodies the sentiment that you don’t have to harvest your own coffee beans, dry your own salt, or refine your own sugar to be a conscientious eater, you just need to wonder, “Where?”

In fact, “Where?” is the sentiment of the newest Eat Local Challenge. According to Jen, the next ELC — set to be unveiled early next year — is: “a challenge focused on where our everyday foods are sourced from. Instead of challenging participants to eat food from as close to home as possible, we will be asking them to take everyday items that their families eat — processed foods like crackers and potato chips, mass-produced products, and fast food items — and try to find out the source of the product ingredients. I think it will be interesting to learn what we can, and can’t, find out about our food.”

I’m thrilled that “locavore” is being recorded in the annals of history, but without the Eat Local Challenge spurring me to think, question, act, and eat, I have a feeling I’d still be assuming that locavores howled at the moon and stuffed pillows with their own hair.

When an old friend from high school picked me up yesterday in her sparkling rental car, we were still trying to decide between taking in a museum or heading toward some fun shops. And when she finally nixed an afternoon of art and culture, I was more than happy to direct her to one of my favorites, Flight 001 on Hayes.

While she lost herself among their beautiful bags, a smaller but equally enticing travel gadget section kept me busy “researching.” Some things weren’t worth the box they came in — a portable pasta drainer?! — but one item caught my eye. Collapsible chopsticks.

Over the years, I’ve tried my share of portable, reusable chopsticks. My solid metal ones from Korea, engraved with gorgeous birds and encased in silk, are too heavy, too fancy and too difficult to use (note to self: thin metal sticks + noodle soup = stained shirt). All those cute, little plastic ones from Japan aren’t any easier to use and don’t collapse. On the other hand, my lovely white ones obtained from that cult in Macau are simply a pain in the ass to assemble.

So, I was intrigued by the petite size and grown-up look of this set from the folks at Kikkerland (who brought us Moleskine notebooks and Pieter Woudt’s space-bending Spy Clock). These are my favorite travel chopsticks right now for their elegance, lightness of weight, ease of use while actually eating and relatively low price ($12). The plastic case is slim enough to slip into the smallest pocket and offers a protective covering in case you aren’t able to wash your chopsticks until later. I highly recommend a pair of your own, especially if you travel frequently in Asia or if you’re trying to cut back on your use of disposable wooden chopsticks here at home.

For those who’d like to more about waribashi, those disposable chopsticks invented and much loved by the Japanese, here are some quick facts and interesting links exploring the business, art and environmental impact of the ubiquitous, not-so-innocuous little sticks:

• The Waribashi Project is a collaboration between Berkeley artist Donna Ozawa of Berkeley and the Japanese Community & Cultural Center of Northern California. Collecting and washing discarded chopsticks, Ozawa has created art installations in both Japan and California. For one piece, she gathered 15,000 pairs of chopsticks from 11 noodle shops over a period of 12 days.

• The Green Chopsticks Project’s reading room includes a few basic articles. It’s a simple website but a decent start for someone just beginning to explore the issue.

• China, the major producer of waribashi, exports the equivalent of 25 million trees annually so that we can slurp noodles conveniently and swallow sushi hygienically. While bamboo makes up a small number of high-end disposable chopsticks (the bigger, longer ones) most of the break-apart versions come from birch, aspen or poplar trees. Since 2001, universities and entire cities in China have increasingly banned the use of disposable chopsticks. Demand from abroad, however, continues to grow. Last spring, in an effort to slow the deforestation of its country, Beijing imposed a 5% tax on the handy little chopsticks. Japanese businesses, ever adaptive, are now looking to Vietnam and Indonesia for new sources of wood.

• Voice of America takes a softer view of the controversy.

• Ping Mag, an online design magazine based in Tokyo, has an entry on chopsticks with lots of fun photos. NotCot has a great blog entry specifically covering modern versions of portable chopsticks.

• Kim Moser’s color-coded collection of waribashi wrappers offers an aesthetic appreciation for the art of the disposable.

Not long ago I had dinner at a place that specialized in fish. But oddly enough, there wasn’t that much fish on the menu. Weird Fish in the Mission is committed to serving “sustainable” fish and that limits what’s on offer. Catfish and tilapia are mainstays. But sustainability isn’t the only issue. While we tend to think of eating fish as healthy, concerns about PCB’s and mercury have also made choosing fish more challenging.

There couldn’t be a better man to set us straight about fish than Paul Johnson, a former chef and advisor to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program, he is best known for having founded the Monterey Fish Market. He has supplied fish to local chefs and restaurateurs including Thomas Keller, Alice Waters, Michael Mina, Traci Des Jardin, etc.

Fish Forever has almost 100 recipes, but also describes each fish in detail, how they are fished, their health benefits and how to find the best sustainable options. It’s written in a wonderfully clear and engaging manner by someone who is absolutely passionate about the subject. I was thrilled to see sardine recipes, tips for how to make tilapia more tasty, a recipe for albacore confit, and clear instructions for how to prepare every fish for cooking. Consider it a bible for anyone who eats fish.

Sand Dabs with Fried Capers, Parsley and Lemon
Serves 4 as a main dish

1/4 cup mild olive oil
2 Tablespoons capers, rinsed, drained and patted dry
8 pan-ready sand dabs
Seasoned flour: 1/4 cup all-purpose flour mixed with 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, and 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup dry white wine
Juice of 1 lemon
2 Tablespoons minced fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 Tablespoon cold unsalted butter, cut into bits

1. In a large cast-iron skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat until it shimmers.
2. Add the capers and fry until slightly crispy and a shade darker, about 1 minute. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain.
3. Dredge the sand dabs in the seasoned flour and carefully add them to the hot pan. Cook for 3 or 4 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Transfer to a plate and keep warm.
4. Pour off any oil remaining in the pan. Add the white wine and lemon juice, stirring to scrap up the browned bits form the bottom of the pan. Cook to reduce the liquid by two thirds. Turn off the heat and add the parsley. Whisk in the cold butter, a bit at a time, until the pan juices become silky and thick. Pour the sauce oven the sand dabs and garnish with the fried capers.

Reprinted by permission from Fish Forever, by Paul Johnson. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Copyright © 2007 by Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Short Pieces on Floyd Zaiger:

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

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

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

Call it the triple whammy. Restauranteurs in San Francisco have to pay their workers a higher minimum wage than the state minimum. If their restaurant has over 20 employees they have to pay for health care expenditures. And now, they have to pay for sick leave for all workers. Needless to say this is all costing them money, making many of them mad as hell and seeking relief.

Perhaps you saw the news yesterday, Burger King is being applauded by animal rights groups and customers. The company announced that it will start buying eggs and pork from suppliers that do not confine their animals in cages and crates. It will also favor suppliers of chickens that use more humane methods of stunning birds before slaughter, in particular a “controlled atmosphere stunning” rather than the standard electric shock currently used. Of course this will all cost money, but somehow the value seems to outweigh the costs.

You don’t have to live on a farm to care about animal welfare. But surely anyone who eats in a restaurant should care about the welfare of its workers. I am not a restauranteur nor have I ever worked in a restaurant, but I really do care about the welfare of the people who work in them, both for their own well-being and mine. Can you imagine if we didn’t give sick leave and health benefits to nurses? It would be an outrage, yet it’s standard practice for restaurants, for people who make and serve us food.

Just as Burger King has chosen to lead the way in farm animal standards, San Francisco has the opportunity to be a leader in making life more sustainable for its workers. Restauranteurs can complain all they want, but owning and running a restaurant has always been an expensive proposition and they knew that when they got into it.

Bottom line? San Francisco is an expensive town. It costs more to live here and to do business here, but that’s true for everyone. I used to pay $13 for a residential parking permit now I pay $60. That’s the price I pay for being able to live in a city I love. And you know what? I would pay even more if I had to. I’m not moving due to the increasing costs of living here and I doubt most restaurants will either. While I appreciate reasonably priced food as much if not more than the next person, I appreciate workers being treated reasonably even more. My guess is that people will be willing to pay more when it comes to dining out, especially if they understand why.

We want to hear from you! Are you a diner? A restauranteur? A restaurant worker? Are you willing to pay more? Do you think it’s an unfair burden for restaurants? If so, who should pay for these costs?

Interested in this topic?
Read another BAB post addressing issues regarding the restaurant industry:
Is The Public Ready For A Transparent Restaurant Industry?

Eating local seems to be the focus of the hour, with the Eat Local Challenge blog and the local food movement getting press in Time magazine, Food and Wine, and E Magazine just in the past month. As a person who spends a lot of time thinking and writing about local farmers and local food, it is rewarding to see that the discussion is occurring nationwide. The main thing I’d like to see is that consumers consider the origin of their food before deciding what to buy, and these articles are bound to affect that decision.

The Locavores and the Eat Local Challenge blog will be hosting a nationwide challenge in September asking people to pay attention to eating locally for a month. This year, the focus will be on preserving and putting food up for the winter. Keep an eye on the Eat Local Challenge blog as well, as some of us will be taking part in an exciting challenge toward the end of April.

If you’re interested in food issues in general, and like to keep up on food news, there are an astounding number of deep resources that can be found on the web. Samuel Fromartz, the author of Organic, Inc., has started a blog called Chews Wise that has thoughtful and current essays about today’s food news. This week, Fromartz dedicates a post to organic food in mainstream grocery stores. We’re all aware that Wal-Mart is selling organic food, but what happens if no one buys it? So far, the sales of organic food at Wal-Mart are not as hot as expected, and if that continues it may have far-reaching effects on the organic food industry.

The Ethicurean is a group blog that I read on a daily basis. If you only have five minutes in your day to keep up with the day’s food news, check out their daily digest.

Culinate is a beautifully designed and chock-full new website that covers the food world especially as it pertains to food politics and where our food comes from. Their tag line is “eat to your ideal” and with posts on the food-justice movement in Portland, lawsuits against Kraft foods, and Costco selling cage-free eggs, they are helping us do just that.

Those expecting a brawl got more of a lovefest when Whole Foods CEO John Mackey met with Michael Pollan author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma at UC Berkeley last night. The feud, if you can call it that, goes to back to a time shortly after the publication of the book when Mackey took issue with the quality of Pollan’s research, his criticism of Whole Foods and what he called “industrial organic”. Over the months that passed a series of letters were made public in which each seemed to take the other to task. Those letters can be found here:

Letter 1: Mackey to Pollan
Letter 1 Response: Pollan to Mackey
Letter 2: Mackey to Pollan
Letter 2 Response: Pollan to Mackey

Mackey complained that he wasn’t contacted by Pollan before the book was published and tried to argue that all “industrial organic” is not bad. Pollan challenged Mackey on the authenticity of the storytelling present in the store, and on how much produce was truly “local”.

The problem is and was, that Pollan and Mackey agree more than they disagree. While Mackey got his chance to explain his philosophy and to announce several new praiseworthy initiatives that deal with fair trade, animal welfare, support for local “food artisans” and loans for farmers and food producers, he admitted that criticism was good, and that it spurred a reexamination of their practices and a rethinking of their approach. Pollan in turn praised Mackey for the new initiatives and for being willing to so thoroughly engage his critics, something few CEO’s are willing to do.

It was surprising how unpolished and passionate Mackey was compared to the almost slick and sometimes snide Pollan. Mackey even went so far as to say the backlash against his company and the concept of organic has actually been good in some ways. Still Mackey doesn’t like being compared with Wal-Mart, and his philosophy of a more enlightened capitalism and movement towards a post industrial age he calls the “ecological era” puts him on the forefront of progressive businesses.

For his part, Pollan kept the conversation to a discussion more about the future than the present or the past in the discussion part of the program which was entitled “The Past, The Present, The Future of Food”. Pollan even envisioned a kiosk in a grocery store that would allow shoppers to scan items and see what was happening back on the farm for a kind of nanny-cam meets corporate transparency, a vision that Mackey seemed to embrace. Perhaps both Mackey and Pollan are ready to put down the gloves and make peace with the past and present (in addition to each other) and to make more room for a focus on the future.

Between my vacation and a work trip to Southern California, my time in the Bay Area lately has been sporadic. The first thing I try and do when I return home to San Francisco is to visit a farmers’ market. Farmers’ markets ground me. Seeing the fruits and vegetables that are in season reminds where I am in the year, how much time has passed, and how the farmers are doing. The main thing that I took away from this week’s trip to the Sunday San Rafael Farmers’ Market is that SPRING IS COMING.

Though our produce is still heavily into kale, butternut squash, and root vegetables, the turning of the season has begun. Look hard and you will see tiny little green onions and green garlic. Green garlic looks a little like green onion with a small garlic nub at the end that gradually gets larger and harder as the season goes on. I use green garlic for everything that you’d use garlic for, but you’ll learn your own favorite ways to try out this subtle, delicious vegetable.

Asparagus has started to make an appearance, foreshadowing our wonderful asparagus months of March and April. This week, I only saw asparagus at the Zuckerman’s Farm booth, but it will soon be available through other vendors as well. Get your risotto recipes ready! If you look hard, you will also start to see glimpses of strawberries at different markets throughout the area.

The young greens throughout the market at the moment are stunning. Just perusing the market on Sunday, I noticed nettles, spring mix, baby chard, baby arugula, rapini and other greens. As we move further along in the year, these greens will be in even more abundance.

I was gone during much of the citrus freeze last month, and expected when I returned that I would not find any citrus products in the market. The opposite is true. While many farmers lost a lot of their crop, citrus is still widely available. According to Julie Cummins, the Director of Education at CUESA, many of the citrus growers were able to pick in advance of the freeze and are now selling their pre-picked fruit. Because the farms who attend our Bay Area markets are fairly small, they were able to mobilize enough workers on very short notice to save a lot of their crop, where the large farms were left with worker shortages and seemed to lose a larger percentage of their crop. This week I could choose from mandarins, pomelos, kumquats, Buddha’s hand, blood oranges, and lemons.

Will Brokaw from Brokaw Nursery says that they lost a small percentage of their avocado crop due to this year’s weather. Where we’ll really notice the lack of avocados, says Brokaw, is next year in the late fall and winter. While we normally could expect Gwen avocados at that time from the nursery’s northernmost orchard in Soledad, all those avocados “are toast” and we’ll have several months without avocados and will have to wait until January or February 2008 when we can see the Haas avocado crop. Brokaw’s guavas and cherimoyas from the Soldedad farm also were harmed, but we can look foward to kumquats, other citrus, and many more months of avocados from Brokaw Nursery.

I was surprised this week to see that Dave Little still has some potatoes from the fall crop. He has a couple weeks more of potatoes to sell, and then will take some time off to plant, returning in the late spring with a new crop. Be sure to check out Dave’s cooking demonstration this Saturday at the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market, where he will demonstrate that even sprouted potatoes are good for cooking and taste delicious.

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Mariquita Farm is a popular vendor at the Saturday Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market. Julia and Andy, the farmers, put out a fantastic newsletter each week with essays by Andy and farm news. Mariquita has taken a big step technologically and Julia and Andy are now publishing a blog: The Ladybug Letter. If you are an RSS-geek like me, then The Ladybug Letter is going to be a worthwhile addition to your feeds.

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The hottest ticket in town tonight is the John Mackey and Michael Pollan event at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Those of us who follow food politics watched with interest last summer as The Omnivore’s Dilemma kicked off a series of letters between the author, Michael Pollan, and John Mackey — the CEO of Whole Foods. The event is sold out, but you can watch the live webcast courtesy of UC Berkeley. With the number of bloggers who are planning to attend, you will surely be reading posts about the event this week.

Letter 1: Mackey to Pollan
Letter 1 Response: Pollan to Mackey
Letter 2: Mackey to Pollan
Letter 2 Response: Pollan to Mackey

I’m new to TV watching. But I have taken to it like a parched and thirsty fish. In the last few years it has saved me from my head, often a bad neighborhood to inhabit alone. Armed with an inherited television set equipped with an internal VCR and DVD player, this brain drug of a machine has kept me company a lot in the last few years. To this end I have joined other Americans in following a number of series’ and caught up on movies that have defined my modern cultural generation.

For years I have been repeating this sentence, “Oh no, I didn’t see that, I haven’t heard of that, I wasn’t aware of that, because I have been working.”

My mother said years ago I could have made the best jury member on the OJ Simpson case, because I knew absolutely nothing about it.

A few months ago I was given an innocuous little shiny disk labeled, Escape To River Cottage, and only remember the odd tidbit about what it could be about. Good thing I did not start watching it until just the other night. A person has to have a life which includes leaving the house, making supper, taking the legs out for a stretch, and interacting with other live human beings.

If you like to eat, are interested in where your food comes, have ever entertained the idea of forsaking city living and planting a garden from which you will plan meals around, enjoy the feeling your face gets when an unplanned smile emerges, like a dash of English humor, and think a show involving cooking and eating could be something other than staged, perfect, indoors, and inane to the point of “lowest common denominator” script writing, you must get ahold of any part of these series now and watch it with someone you like!

The liner notes from TV.com:

“Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstal has decided to quit the bustle of London and take on the life of a smallholder at River Cottage, a former gamekeeper’s cottage in Dorset. The aim is self-sufficiency; to grow his own vegetables and raise his own animals for food.”

It is addictive in the best sense of the word!

The word on the street is that I have only just begun. A quick perusement on the www comes up with a fantastic interview with Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstal himself. Then there’s the River Cottage website, complete with appropriate page links and a whole page devoted to those behind the delicious scenes. Channel 4 talks up their baby as well, and then there’s the dangerous list of all the titles.

It’s still winter, even in the Bay Area, go ahead, get a few disks and hole up for the weekend. But be sure to have some farmers’ market snacks around. You may not be hungry for bridge mix or chips and salsa after watching an episode end with recently culled and butchered pidgeon in B’steeya, cold pike en gelee, or Hugh’s first hen egg whipped up into a quick courgette souffle.

If you’re one of those new fans for whom doing things halfway is not an option, you may choose to cook up some of this fellow’s food right away by heading over to our own local British Gourmand, Sam, of Becks and Posh, as she has cooked up one of Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstal’s recipes, from his most recent River Cottage Meat Book.

Feel free to come back to Bay Area Bites and let me know if I have steered you right!