Last month, Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez, an outspoken leader on food safety and animal rights, hosted a special screening of the documentary, FOOD, INC. for a roomful of legislators in Sacramento. Thanks to a friend who works at the capitol, I was able to sneak in. It'd been a very long time since I've been surrounded by that many people wearing suits, and discussing public policy is not one of my favorite ways to make small talk (SBX2 3 or SB 135, anyone?). But seeing this important film with a roomful of legislators who were excited about sustainable food and who could actually institute change was one of the most powerful experiences I've had in a movie theatre.

You will soon be hearing a lot about FOOD, INC., a documentary directed by Robert Kenner, winner of both a Peabody and an Emmy for his previous film, Two Days in October. Opening in San Francisco on June 12, this latest release by Magnolia Pictures tackles the unenviable job of educating consumers about the agricultural industry. It's being called the Inconvenient Truth of the food world, and the quality of its production certainly compares well. Super-saturated colors, animation, engaging graphics, a sprinkling of humor to lighten its distillation of immense amounts of information, and a line-up of articulate, passionate speakers all meld into a highly viewable documentary.

Eric Schlosser, co-producer, and Michael Pollan, both ground the film with their journalistic approach. The soundtrack, with its ominous rumbling beneath mass production and the folksy guitar accompanying underdogs, manages to reveal the film's underlying stance, but FOOD, INC. strives admirably to present multiple views. Of course, that's a challenge when corporations refuse to take part in the conversation. (Monsanto, Tyson and many others declined to appear in the film.) The film offers a surprisingly evenhanded treatment of Walmart executives accompanied by Gary Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm. Even more, rock stars of the sustainable food world, such as self-proclaimed grass farmer, Joel Salatin, inadvertently reveal the gray areas of their own much praised business models. After all, how sustainable are loyal customers who drive 400 miles to buy happy, healthy meat?

As someone who has visited feeding lots and blood-slicked slaughterhouses, once worked a very long day in a chicken processing facility, and still wrestles with her decision to continue eating meat, I attended the screening expecting another sermon for the converted. When one of the press contacts reminded me to use all caps whenever I referred to the title of film, I concentrated very hard not to roll my eyes. Yet I there I sat later, stunned by what I was learning.

There's Barbara Kowalcyk, a lifelong Republican who dedicated her life to changing food safety standards after her son died from eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli and who now refuses to reveal what she eats for fear of being sued by the meat industry. (She doesn't have as much money for a legal team as Oprah does.) There's the fleet of Monsanto "private investigators" who knock on uncooperative farmers' doors to threaten, ever so politely and quietly, to put them out of business forever. There's the seed cleaner ruined for providing non-GMO seeds to his neighbors...and the deals struck by employers of undocumented workers with the border police…and the $18,000 that an average chicken farmer makes for a year of hard work...

But there's also the woman willing to lose her contract with Tyson in order to shed light on an oppressive industry, the farmers banding together, and the scores of other individuals in the film who are working to make a difference in ways both huge and small. It'd be an overstatement to say FOOD, INC. is optimistic, but it does end with some modest suggestions for what each viewer can do to help move us toward a safe, sustainable system. More importantly, its wider release will, like the Obamas' garden, help push the topic to center stage for the public and policymakers alike.

Anyone who needs a good, clear primer on the food industry and the state of agriculture in the U.S should see this documentary. If you're already well versed or long converted, it's an important film to see and discuss with others -- your mom who is addicted to the big box stores, your friends who aren’t convinced that local or organic is worth the extra effort, or your children who have a full life of choices ahead.

For as the film reminds us repeatedly, we cast our vote every time we eat.

The Garden is a documentary film about the life and death of a community garden in Los Angeles. After the 1992 Rodney King riots which fractured the South Central Los Angeles community, the City of Los Angeles allotted a 14-acre piece of property to the community, allowing them to create farm plots for 347 families on the corner of 41st and Alameda (two miles from the location of my grandfather's restaurant). The creation of this garden made it the largest community garden in the United States.

In 2003, after the garden had been in existence for eleven years, the City sold the property to Ralph Horowitz in a secret deal, and the new owner attempted to evict the farmers. The battle went back and forth for several years before the farm was bulldozed in a dramatic action in 2006. I am simplifying this story greatly -- it involves backroom deals, corruption, the promise of a soccer field, infighting among the farmers, inexplicable court decisions, celebrities helping to save the farm and a furious rant by the landowner who ultimately refused to sell the property to the farmers at any price.

And interspersed between all of the drama to protect this property, we see a beautiful, peaceful garden where the families grow bananas, papayas, guavas, nopales, cilantro, and many other crops for their families. It's calm among the chaos that creates a perfect foil for this story.

I can't remember the last time I was so affected by a scene in a movie as I was watching the scene where the garden was destroyed after the final eviction notice was served. In front of the eyes of the farmers who had worked the land for 14 years, after innumerable fights, the garden was destroyed. Ralph Horowitz has not developed the land, and as of the time of movie publication it was still a vacant lot.

The community that developed around the garden is still going strong -- they are looking for land in the area, and have started an 80-acre farm in Bakersfield that sells to Southern California farmers markets, and provides a CSA for local customers.

I highly recommend seeing this film while it's in theaters, and I hope that it gets a wider release. The Garden is now playing at the Landmark Lumiere in San Francisco and the Elmwood Theatre in Berkeley.

Other resources:
The Garden on Facebook
Huffington Post interview with the Director
Chicago Tribune profile

I've been spending entirely too much time watching episodes of The French Chef with Julia Child that my friend Craig gave me.

I find Mrs. Child oddly hypnotic. There is something about her uniquely-accented voice and the not-entirely graceful movement of her formerly 6' 2" body that compels me to watch her.

And watch her I do. Over and over again.

This week, I've been enjoying an early, black and white episode wherein she gives a champagne and coffee party in honor of:

"...the Queen of Sheba, which turns out to be this dark beauty, made of chocolate, and almonds, and rum, and butter!"

She then invites us into her kitchen where she promises we'll make:

"the best chocolate cake you ever put in your mouth."

That's one heavy promise, but I love her enthusiasm.

I decided to put my money where Mrs. Child's mouth is and examine this cake and the woman behind it, however superficially.

And one or two other things, of course.

First, there is the name:
The Queen of Sheba

The legend of the Queen of Sheba can be found in both the Old Testament and the Qur'an. As a polytheist monarch of tremendous wealth and wisdom, she was intrigued by King Solomon of Israel, who was famous for his own wealth and wisdom, plus the odd little fact that he and his people worshipped only one god (1 Kings 10:1-13). She set off to visit him, laden with spices, gold, jewels, and a series of riddles to test his alleged wisdom. She was more or less awed by him, and he rather impressed with her. She returned to her southern Kingdom with "all that her heart desired", including a new, solitary god.

Despite what the vampy costume of Betty Blythe might suggest in her 1921 epic The Queen of Sheba, most accounts suggest that the relationship between Solomon and herself were of a respectful, intellectual nature.

Most.

Unless you choose to believe the Ethiopians. They claim her as their own. In fact, the legitimacy of their nearly 3,000-year, dynasty was founded on the belief that Solomon gave her slightly more than gold and jewelry as a parting gift.

Whatever you choose to believe, it is clear why the "best chocolate cake you ever put in your mouth" was named after her-- she was dark, rich, and sophisticated. A queen fit for the queen of cakes.

Of course, I couldn't end it there. Not with Oscar season around the corner. Nor an obvious tangent staring me in the face.

Come Back, Little Sheba

One of the few vintage, Oscar-winning performances I have yet to see is that of Miss Shirley Booth's turn as Lola Delaney in Comeback, Little Sheba from 1952. The dowdy, shuffling, and unambitious Lola and her husband "Doc" (played by Burt Lancaster) are 20 years into a loveless, shotgun marriage. The baby was lost and both find comfort in their own particular ways; he with alcohol, she with a little dog named "Sheba" on whom she lavishes all of her attention until it runs away from her, most likely from fear of emotional smothering.

And that's before the film even begins. I won't give the rest of the plot away, most likely since I have no idea what happens next. I'm hoping it's some kind of sex comedy, but my hopes aren't aimed too high, since films about deep regret and personal failings aren't generally funny. Or sexy.

In stretching the limits of credibility, I have begun to think of this cake as somewhat appropriately linked to this film. Both are reportedly richly-layered, slightly crestfallen, alcoholic, and a bit nutty.

Almonds, you know.

Which leads to a warning to keep one's logical stream-of-consciousness in check. Miss Booth may have won the Academy Award for her performance in Come Back, Little Sheba, but her biggest success came later as the star of the popular 1960's situation comedy Hazel, in which she played the title role of a dictatorial-yet-endearing live-in housemaid.

Though critics have complained that the show was contrived and only "mildly amusing," Hazel does have her die-hard fans, who are referred to as "hazelnuts." Irritating, certainly.

The evident danger here is heaping too much honor upon Miss Booth by substituting the above-mentioned nuts for the traditional almonds, but that would be another cake entirely.

Little Shebas

I still intend to honor Miss Booth. Or at least the dog who had sense enough to run away from her emotionally-starved owner by making this major player in the classic repretoire of chocolate desserts into a minor figure size-wise, while still keeping the integrity of the classic recipe.

I have omitted the chocolate glaze used by many recipes, including Julia Child's. I simply think it's gilding an already-perfect lily. Oh, and I'm lazy. It is a rich cake, with a slightly gooey, warm center. More chocolate only makes it heavier. Still, I think it is a cake that would make its ancient namesake proud.

I doubt very much that Lola Delaney would have either the emotional wherewith all or even the equipment to make one herself, but Hazel would certainly find it easy to whip up for Mr. B when she wasn't busy whipping the rest of his family into shape. And , chocolate glaze or no, I think Mrs. Child would still enjoy putting one in her mouth.

Sadly, this is not as popular a cake as it used to be. Chocolate trends of the past several years have lead to denser, darker, more chocolaty, chocolate cakes. The virtue of this cake is it's balance of chocolate and nuttiness, with just a hint of rum underneath. As befitting a queen, it demands respect by virtue of its subtle complexity rather than by beating the palate with her sceptre. And that's all too bad because I think this little Sheba is definitely ready for a comeback.

The following will make one large Reine de Saba in an 8-inch cake pan, or make six petite versions in a large (3 1/2-inch diameter) muffin tin. Comme tu veux.

Ingredients:

4 oz semi-sweet chocolate (bittersweet may be used, but I'm going the Child route here)
2 tablespoons rum or coffee
1/4 lb butter at room temperature
2/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
3 egg, separated
2/3 cup finely ground almonds
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/2 cup cake flour, measured then sifted
one good pinch of salt

Preparation:

Pre-heat oven to 350F and place rack in the middle.

1. Melt the chocolate and rum or coffee (choose your poison) in a pot set over simmering (not boiling, please) water, stirring to combine. Cover, turn off heat, and leave alone. You'll come back to it later and it isn't going anywhere. Cream the butter and 2/3 cup sugar together until pale yellow and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks until paler and even fluffier than before. Add almond extract.

2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites on low-to-medium until foamy, then increase speed as you like, adding 1 tablespoon of sugar and 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar until soft peaks form.

3. Return to your melted chocolate and give her a little stir. The consistency should be somewhat satiny and fluid. Beat in a bit of butter/yolk mixture at a time, stirring constantly so the yolks do not curdle. Repeat until all is one.

4. Combine almond meal, flour, and salt. Now add this dry mixture to your chocolate goo, incorporating bits at a time. When this has been accomplished, gently fold in egg whites, starting with about 1/2 a cup and working the rest in ever so skillfully.

5. Immediately set to placing about 1/2 cup of your batter into each of the six muffin tins. Give her a good, hard bang or two on your kitchen counter to level and remove any bubbles in the batter. Bake for 12 minutes, then begin to peek into your oven obsessively until finished. A pale, chocolatey crust should form, but the cakes shold jiggle a wee bit, too. Ideally, a toothpick inserted about an inch from the edges should come out dry, but one poked into the center should not. When this has been acheived, remove from oven and let cool for, oh, I don't know, let's say an hour, because you've got other things to do. When ready to remove from pan, run a sharp knife around the edges of the cakes, invert onto a tray, and you're done.

Not exactly. At this point, you may either top them with a chocolate glaze or simply dust them with powdered sugar.

Serve them to friends at your upcoming Oscar party, or just feed them to your pets and watch their little hearts explode from the chocolate.

There has always been a special place in my heart for the Negroni. Not always. I stayed away from them in elementary school, naturally. I don't think I even tried my first until well into my twenties. And I'm not quite certain I liked it then.

But I liked the idea of the Negroni. It was and is a sophisticated, world-weary drink-- one with Italian origins and bitter complexity, yet remarkably, charmingly straight forward. It is not a drink that should be knocked back like whiskey, nor can it be co-opted or diluted with other ingredients and still be called by its proper name. It is the sum of its equal, co-dependent parts: gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari. It must be savored and considered.

If a person could model one's self after a cocktail, I knew that the Negroni was exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I kept trying. So far, so good, and with minimal damage to my liver.

The Negroni doesn't have the wide appeal of the Martini or even the Manhattan, which is, in my case, precisely the point. It isn't necessarily an exclusive drink, but it does attract discriminating drinkers. They know who they are.

Or, at least, quickly find out who they are not.

For example, several years ago, some co-workers and I took a new server out one afternoon for a drink at a place around the corner from our restaurant. It was a warm day, so we decided to sit outside at some little tables on the sidewalk, have a smoke, and get to know our new little friend over a drink or two.

My friend Greg was managing that day, so he came around to have a chat and took our drink order while he was at it. We, all of us, called for Negronis. When he asked the new girl if she would like one as well, she spoke these precious words:

"Um, sure. I'll have a nigg--oni, too."

Then came the long, extremely uncomfortable silence made all the worse by the fact that she said this to a black man. If looks were hunting knives, she would have been flayed alive by everyone present. What made it all the more surprising was that she hadn't the slightest idea what she had just said. Greg generously attributed her utterance to poor Italian pronunciation, which is more than the rest of us allowed her.

And, after all that discomfort, she told us she didn't like her Negroni and sent it back to be replaced by a sweet, vodka-based drink. When she got up to use the restroom, one of our party re-christened her "Chili's" because he felt she might be much more at home working there than with us. The name stuck around for about as long as she did. That drink we bought her as a welcome ended up being her departing gift, too, since that's precisely what she did shortly after.

Apart from its cachet of clique, what I love most about the Negroni is that it is deliciously louche. It hints at danger and moral decay more precisely than any other drink, save Absinthe. Just ask Tennessee Williams. Or don't, since he's dead. Rather, watch Lotte Lenya*, Warren Beatty, and Vivien Leigh drink them in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone and enjoy the ensuing destruction. They weren't exactly good for Mrs. Stone, nor were they especially good for Mr. Beatty's awful Italian accent, but they certainly helped to lubricate the plot. (*After searching for a video clip from the film, I stumbled upon an article by Toby Cecchini in the New York Times referring to Lotte Lenya as, well, louche. It must be true. For a wonderful description of the drink and its components, read the article Shaken And Stirred; Dressing Italian.)

There is a time and a place for the Negroni. Swank apartments at midnight, dimly lit trysting places at any time of day, on the sly in a toney sanitarium-- appropriate situations, all of them. Never, under any circumstances are they to be drunk over a quick lunch with your parents or-- and I speak from personal experience-- are they to be ordered in the jungle borderlands between Brazil and Argentina. Especially if there is a strong language barrier between you and the bartender who only knows caipirinhas. I don't care if there is a casino on the premises, it is to be avoided.

The Classic Negroni

The cocktail owes its name and its existence to one Count Camillo Negroni of Florence, Italy. According to Eric Felten's enjoyable read, How's Your Drink?, Negroni's preferred drink at the Caffé Casoni was the Americano, an admixture of Campari, Cinzano, and club soda. One day, he asked the bartender, Fosco Scarselli, to fortify his drink with gin. The cocktail was an unqualified success and its intake spread first around the city, then the world.

Ingredients:

Makes one Negroni

1 ounce good gin. Please do not stint.

1 ounce Cinzano Rosso vermouth

1 ounce Campari.

Ice cubes, preferably made from Italian spring water. Or tap, depending.

Orange peel or slice for garnish

Preparation:

Into a cocktail shaker, add all ingredients except the orange. Shake or stir, according to your own preference. Strain into chilled cocktail class. Garnish with orange.

Sit back, and enjoy the ensuing existential train wreck.

As an added bonus, while I'm on the topic of train wrecks, enjoy a clip from a famous television personality I would never in a million years expect to see drinking a Negroni. In my opinion, she doesn't get it quite right, just pouring everything over the rocks without proper mixing as she does. Then again, she does only have 30 minutes to make an entire meal.

Enjoy.

Well, they're all saying that Barack Obama is our first president in a long time to be just a "regular guy." And what do "regular guys" do, just like you and me? They go out to eat, and then they go on Check, Please! and they talk about it!

No, I'm totally serious. Barack Obama will be on Chicago's Check, Please! (the original incarnation of the show, by the way) on January 16th, 18th, and 20th, according to the Dixie Kitchen & Bait Shop website.

We at Check, Please! Bay Area are already hard at work behind the scenes to deliver more to you than just this clip, which has the TEMERITY to cut the President-elect off in mid-sentence, so stay tuned!

This particular episode of Check, Please! was taped back in 2001 -- way before the President-elect was even a glint in the White House eye -- when series creator and executive producer David Manilow called upon State Senator Obama (a friend of Manilow's) to appear on the show.

Obama's restaurant of choice was Dixie Kitchen & Bait Shop in Hyde Park, Illinois, and according to the Chicago Tribune article, the episode was shelved because Obama was "too good -- too thoughtful, too articulate, not enough of an amateur. He ended up dominating the conversation." Yikes! Good thing Hillary didn't have that fodder in her hopper during the primary!

Given the country's documented obsession with everything the Obamas do -- from detailed accounts of workout routines to Paparazzi invading private memorial moments to Harlequin Romance descriptions of Obama's glinting pectorals (coming out of the Washington Post of all places!) -- Dixie's better start thinking about expanding because they're about to become a stop on the Obama pilgrimage.

Hm, I wonder if Howard Kurtz and other scrappy pundits will haul various food experts on their shows to chew over just what Obama's Check, Please! restaurant means to us as a nation and an American people.

If so, it will be Alton Brown's chance to finally become a pundit.

Or perhaps that should read: "a head."

One of my resolutions for the new year is to eat more vegetables, especially greens. Hardy leaves like chard, kale, and mustard greens are all well and good, but I've been going steady with escarole as of late.

I think I'm in love.

If you're wondering why on earth I have a photo of a smiling, gap-toothed 1970's sitcom star thrown up here, you are entirely too young for me to be talking to you.

It's Esther Rolle, of course-- the actress who gained fame as Florida Evans, the no-nonsense maid/foil to Bea Arthur's Maude and was soon rewarded with her own show, Good Times. The sad fact of the matter is that I have never been able to think of escarole without seeing her face, thanks to my own selective hearing and memory-aiding word associations.

It's not so surprising, really, given the fact that she starred as a mother struggling to make a good life for her three children: a goofy elder son with a strong creative bent, a daughter who spouts forth episode-related data, and a youngest child named Michael who was, well, just adorable. It was my family, but black and urban.

Perhaps one of my other resolutions should be to stop wandering off on tangents.

Back to Escarole.

Escarole, for those of you unaware, belongs to the Asteraceae family and is, therefore, closely related to asters and daisies, which naturally reminds me of another popular sitcom, which I promise not to go into today. It is less bitter than its cousins radicchio and chicory (née frisée), depending upon which part of the head you eat-- the outer leaves develop the bitter edge of its endive forebearers as they turn green, while the inner, paler leaves are mild and tender.

Escarole is high in fiber, folic acid, vitamin A and Vitamin K, making its consumption ideal for pregnant women with poor night vision, recessive hemophilia genes, and gastro-intestinal issues.

It's a wonderfully versatile green, equally serviceable eaten cold and torn to pieces in a salad, or served warm, nearly any way you like.

One good, hearty, and surprisingly easy way to serve up escarole in the cold months is braised. Here's just one example. One I made for lunch the other day in, oh, about 15 minutes:

Braised Escarole with Soppressata

This is a recipe heavily borrowed from Andrew Carmellini over at Food & Wine, but streamlined. It is, like I said, a relatively quick dish to make. Its southern Italian roots are made obvious by the use of ingredients such as bread crumbs and soppressata. It will feed one person as a full, one-dish meal, or service four people as a side dish, depending upon one's current level of popularity.

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons olive oil, extra-virgin
2 1/4-inch-thick slices of soppressata (any salami will do, really)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 heads of escarole, dark outer leaves removed (about one pound), coarsely chopped
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 cup bread crumbs
2 tablespoons (or more, depending upon how cheesy you like things) grated Parmesan

Preparation:

In a large, heavy-bottomed stock pot, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add soppressata, and cook over high heat for about two minutes. Add pepper flakes and garlic and cook, stirring contantly, until garlic is golden and all perfumy and stuff. Add escarole (which you have washed, hopefully) , one handful at a time, turning with a wooden spoon or tongs to coat with the olive oil andgarlicky meat secretions. Season with salt and pepper, if desired (the salami and Parmesan are, of course, salty, so do what you will). Cover, turning the leaves occasionally, and cook over a lowish-to-medium flame, about 10 minutes.

As the escarole is cooking, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet. Add the breadcrumbs and stir over a moderate heat until golden and the breadcrumbs smell, well, toasty.

Place the braised escarole in the serving dish of your choosing, top with breadcrumbs and sprinkle with parmesan, which I know isn't southern Italian, but I am willing to overlook it, if you are.

Serve, eat, and let the good times roll. Or Rolle, depending.

As much as I like to pretend to be a hard-ass, sarcastic, cynical little crab, movies can really do a number on my emotional system. For instance, Apollo 13 is so effective that whenever I feel the need for a good cry-out, I pop it in, knowing exactly when I can expect the cathartic tears to brim over.

(Of course, it's one of those things where it's not effective unless I watch the WHOLE movie. I can't just fast-forward to the scene where Tom Hanks' voice finally crackles through to Mission Control after over four minutes of silence and expect to feel the full impact of it all.)

It's no surprise that with the excessive amounts of cooking, cleaning, wrapping, and holiday stress that comes from missing family and friends, Christmas movies can really sock it to your emotional core. Give yourself a night off and huddle up with some classic homey movies, some comforting local take-out, and several boxes of Kleenexes.

A Christmas Story
Even though I have the whole thing on tape already, when TBS starts showing this on Christmas Eve for 24 hours straight, my television will be on the entire time. I never get tired of any little bit of it, but I especially love the snow scenes. Ever since I moved to California, the scenes of Ralphie waking up Christmas morning to a backyard coated in freshly fallen snow and the parents quietly closing out Christmas night with glasses of wine and another snowfall hit me hardest.

Christmas Story Take-Out Menu

Randy's Meatloaf and Mashed Potatoes: In my Midwestern opinion, the best Bay Area version of this homey food can be found at any of the Chow outposts. However, Blue Plate's version is also pretty tasty (if a bit salty), and I've recently learned that a Fra'mani meatloaf can be found at Costco?! Heavenly.

Just make sure you eat your meatloaf and mashed potatoes exactly like Randy: face first.

Chow delivery available through Waiters on Wheels, take-out available from the Church Street location. Blue Plate offers take-out.

Roast Turkey: In order to avoid any possible disastrous interactions with ravenous neighborhood dogs, swap the stress of a home-roasted turkey for Zuni Cafe's celebrated chicken and bread salad. (Frankly, we just had Thanksgiving, so aren't we a bit turkey'd out?) Zuni doesn't do take-out, but if you do what we do, it's just as good.

Go in, order a complete meal. Halfway through the meal, ask for the chicken and bread salad. At the end of the meal, profess to be too full for the chicken and bread salad, have their always-accommodating staff wrap up your spoils for you to bring home to your couch and TV. (It's the upgraded version of the two-fer we used pull at Olive Garden when I was a poor college student. We'd gorge ourselves on bottomless breadsticks and salad and then bring our entrees home. Two meals for the price of one!)

Peking Duck: I suggest you bypass the drama of having the poor thing decapitated at the table, so call up Ton Kiang for their conveniently pre-hacked version resplendent with crispy, lacquered skin and accompanied by soft puffy buns, plum sauce, and scallion brushes.

Ton Kiang delivers to some neighborhoods, otherwise do take-out

White Christmas
Ah, singing, dancing, and schmaltz! This Christmas classic is full of Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby, and my eternal favorite, Danny Kaye. Great songs, great gags, great dancing, and I challenge even the hardest-bittenest Grinch around not to sob when Vermont innkeeper General Waverley walks out to see his old troops standing at attention. (Criminy, I choked myself up there just by WRITING about it!)

Never in my life do I crave liverwurst sandwiches except when watching old movies that feature them (they play a role in White Christmas, Charade, and Spellbound), so for this movie menu, think about getting in a nice spread of deli sandwiches, some choice Vermont cheeses, and a cocktail or two.

White Christmas Take-Out Menu

Ham and Cheese on Rye, Liverwurst, and Turkey Sandwiches: Miller's East Coast Delicatessen on Polk and Clay is THE place for authentic deli treats. All the sandwiches Bing offered Rosemary, including the dream-inducing liverwurst, can be made fresh here and taken home to your television set.

Cabot Clothbound Cheddar: Created by Cabot but aged on spruce by Jasper Hill Farm, this cheddar is wonderfully sharp and rich. Look for it at Cowgirl Creamery's retail stores or the Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley.

Hot Buttered Cider-Rum
In the movie, Danny Kaye looks forward to having one of these before they get to their destination and discover Vermont is rather short of snow that year. This is a recipe my husband developed in Boston by piecing a few recipes together.

Makes: 1 cocktail

Ingredients:
1-2 oz dark rum
6 oz mulled cider
1 tsp unsalted butter
1 tsp brown sugar
Freshly grated nutmeg
Cinnamon stick, for garnish

Preparation:
Combine the rum and hot cider in a heatproof glass or mug. Stir in the sugar and float the butter on top. Grate the nutmeg over the top and garnish with a single cinnamon stick.

Waverly Place Echo
Not named for the general in the movie as far as I know, but fitting nonetheless, don't you think? This recipe comes from the December issue of Imbibe.

Makes: 1 cocktail

Ingredients:
1/4 oz Hangar One Mandarin Blossom Vodka
1/4 oz vodka
6 Chinese Five-Spice-marinated Mandarin orange segments
1 oz Meyer lemon juice
5 to 6 candied Meyer lemon peels
1/2 oz Chinese Five-Spice Syrup (recipe follows)
3 Kaffir lime leaves, cut into long chiffonade
3/4 oz seltzer
Ice cubes

Preparation:
Combine ingredients in a mixing glass. Stir, add ice, cover and shake a few times. Pour into a glass and serve.

To make the mandarin orange segments, simply peel and separate the segments of a mandarin, cover with Chinese Five-Spice syrup, and marinate for at least 15 minutes.

For candied Meyer lemon peel, add strips of zest from 1 Meyer lemon to 1/2 cup of boiling simple syrup, reduce heat to low and simmer 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature before using.

Chinese Five-Spice Syrup

Makes: 2 2/3 cups

Ingredients:
5 whole star anise
1 Tb fennel seed
1 3-inch stick cinnamon, broken up
1 tsp whole cloves
1 Tb Szechuan peppercorns
2-2/3 cup simple syrup (dissolve 2 2/3 cups granulated white sugar into 2 2/3 cups hot water and let cool)
2 tsp honey

Preparation:
Process all spices to a coarse powder in a spice or coffee grinder. Heat a stainless steel pot over medium heat and toast the spices. Once fragrant, add the simple syrup to the pan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and add the honey. Simmer for 5 minutes, then remove from the heat. Let the mixture cool to room temperature and strain through a fine-mesh strainer. Will keep up to one month in the refrigerator.

Looking ahead at this week, it would make perfect and predictable sense for me to contribute yet another Thanksgiving-themed piece to the steaming, teeming masses already out there. However, I will not.

I am not being obstinate. I am moving. After five+ years in the same tiny (albeit well-appointed) San Francisco apartment, my husband and I are relocating for the suburbs where he can have a five-minute bike ride to work and I can have a larger-than-life kitchen while ferreting out fresh food finds. So, taking advantage of the 8 days off Stanford gives their professors, we are talking boxes and bubble-wrap, not turkey.

I'll tell you something, it's a singular feeling to be eschewing all things yam and cranberry, while all around me discussions of brining, side dishes, and three kinds of stuffing abound. For a San Francisco foodie, it's partly lonely not to be spending the next four days plotting out how to shop, cook, serve, and digest a massive feast, but mostly, it's rather liberating.

There are few times when a happy cook can be made to feel more inadequate than around the holidays when each fish tale of festal feed becomes more elaborate than the next. I would even venture to say that Thanksgiving is more daunting than Christmas because everyone is making the same general things: potatoes (of a sort), cranberries (in some manner), side dishes (varied but consistent), stuffing (too many arguments to list) and a big ass bird (non-negotiable). How will yours stack up? And what obscenely creative measures will you take in dealing with the resulting leftovers?

The questions swirl around the blogosphere, "Is the turkey heritage?"

"Is the cranberry sauce gelatinous?"

"Are the yams sweet potatoes?"

And everyone's favorite: "To brine or not to brine? That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the dried and tough flesh of unbrined meat or take arms against a sea of relatives and by brining juicify them?"

On that last one, the wisdom seems to change every year. Personally, I've never had a refrigerator large enough to hold bird and brine and I've also never done a side-by-side taste test to judge the relative merits of each.

Instead of answering any of these questions in my own kitchen and instead of ingesting pounds of tasty, seasonal, and cockle-warming victuals, I'll be unloading boxes and sneezing through thick reams of dust. Next year, I'll be back cooking in my upgraded kitchen but this year, my DVD player will do the basting and carving.

The House of Yes: If seeing them around the holidays makes you remember how infuriating your family can be, Parker Posey's creepy family dynamics will make you realize what "dysfunctional" really means.

Piece of April: I haven't been able to take Katie Holmes seriously since she joined up with whackjob Tom Cruise, but some people seem to like this "quirky" movie about a young slip of a thing preparing dinner for her dysfunctional family in her tiny New York apartment. I predict food catastrophes.

Home for the Holidays: One more movie about the travails of having a dysfunctional family and then I'll stop, I promise. This one features a long-suffering Holly Hunter, sibling rivalry, a difficult daughter (Claire Danes), and a gay brother (Robert Downey, Jr.) bringing home a "friend" (Dylan McDermott) to meet his family. Shocking, indeed! Bonus elder set: Geraldine Chaplin, Anne Bancroft, and craggy Charles Durning.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving: You can't properly celebrate a holiday until you've seen Eeyore-ish Charlie Brown almost ruin his. Besides, toast and popcorn is just about in line with what I'll be eating this year. I just wish these recordings had the old Dolly Madison commercials.

The Thanksgiving Visitor: Not as much of a tear-jerker as Truman Capote's other holiday story, A Christmas Memory, but it's still quite sweet to see the relationship between Buddy (young Capote) and his elderly relative, Miss Sook. Also, Geraldine Page as Miss Sook is quite fantastic.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Three words: "Those aren't pillows!"

Son In Law: It's a chance to see Carla Gugino before she was Karen Sisco, Tiffani Thiessen when she still had the "Amber," and Pauly Shore when he was (sort of) relevant. It's also a chance to see how a pure farmer's daughter becomes corrupted by Southern California -- tattoos, spandex, and roller blades, oh my!

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
-- W. H. Auden

Like the earth itself, our bodies are 70 percent water. This also happens to be the proportion of our water supply that the agricultural industry consumes to bring food to our tables. No conversation about sustainable food systems can exclude the topic of water.

While water wars seem like the concerns of distant communities, experts predict that towns across the US will also soon be struggling to provide clean, affordable water to their citizens. An award-winning documentary, Flow, one of the post powerful and elegant films in the recent 3rd I Film Festival, tackles the complex issues embedded in a simple glass of water. From Bolivia to India, from Michigan to our very own California, access to water is being contested.

Water shortages affect California deeply. Earlier this summer, our governor declared the first statewide drought in 17 years, and municipalities across California have been urged to reduce their water use by 20 percent.

Ask any farmer or rancher or fisherman about water rights or water health, and you'll tap into the complex, heated politics of water. It's also a critical issue for environmental health: In nearly every state, citizens' groups fight threats to the safety of their drinking water, local watersheds and groundwater.

Follow the money to find some of the most critical struggles over water around the world. European-based, multinational corporations that specialize in privatizing municipal water systems, such as Suez and Thames, and beverage companies like Coca-Cola and Nestle, which owns 70 brands of bottled water in North American, have enormous amounts of money at stake in tapping into free water for their own use while selling expensive water back to their consumers. As the race to find clean water is nearing its peak, poor communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America are arriving at their communal pumps or wells to find, quite literally, that corporations have locked up their water supply. Dams, privatization, and pollution have immense ramifications on all forms of water on every continent. If you think wars over oil are tragically absurd, wait until you see citizens arming themselves for a sip of water.

Flow helps viewers understand some of these basic issues. Even more importantly, the film shows how courageous individuals, dedicated researchers, innovative business people, and organizations large and small all contribute to the Blue Revolution. Director Irena Salina interviews a wide variety of people around the world who have implemented real, workable solutions to benefit rather than exploit small municipalities. Even the credits at the end of the film highlight delightful ways companies and community groups work together to guarantee clean, abundant, affordable water for all. Among the most memorable inventions were the unique ultraviolet system developed by <a href="Waterhealth, a company based in Irvine, California, that encourages the formation of locally controlled micro-utilities along with public health initiatives, and the brightly colored PlayPump, which harnesses the seemingly endless energy of kids to bring up water.

A simple (and fun!) solution to a complex problem.

Flow will be playing next week at the Red Vic Movie House. It's only engaged for two evenings, though it truly deserves a wider run in many other theatres. Since it may be a while before the documentary is picked up for wider distribution, I highly recommend that you set aside some time next Sunday or Monday evening to see this important, inspiring film. It's a superb example of a well-made documentary, and its message cannot fail to move every person who sees it. Every one of us drinks water, and everything single thing we touch, let alone all that we consume, depends on the flow of water.

DOCUMENTARY
Flow: For Love of Water
Directed by Irena Salina
Red Vic Movie House
Sunday, November 23 (2:00, 4:00, 7:15, 9:20)
Monday, November 24 (7:15, 9:20)
1727 Haight Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
(415) 668-3994
Map

ACTIONS

What else can you do as an individual to help ensure abundant, clean, inexpensive water for all?

Drink tap water
-- Stop purchasing bottled water at home, at restaurants and on the road. The water bottling industry has effectively little regulation, and as the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has stated: "Many people do not feel comfortable drinking tap water, so they buy bottled water instead. The truth is that city water is much more highly regulated and monitored for quality. Bottled water is not. It can legally contain many things we would not tolerate in municipal drinking water."

-- Carry your own water bottles or collapsible cups. Flatterware has a 12-ounce cup that can hold either hot or cold drinks and then folds flat when empty. BPA-free water bottles are available from Watergeeks Laboratories, a company that create new products for consumers that will help "turn the global water crisis upside down" by tapping into tap water. If you dislike the taste of tap water, invest in a filtration system for your faucet or purchase a simple, inexpensive filtering pitcher.

Conserve water in your kitchen
-- Install an aerator in your kitchen faucet. EBMUD offers free conservation devices. Water agencies in most cities offer educational materials and similar incentives for water conservation. Check the website of your local water utility company for more information.

-- If you own or manage a multi-unit residential building in San Francisco, order a Water-Wise Tenant Kit for your tenants. If you're a tenant, contact your property manager and convince them to obtain one for all the renters in your building.

-- If you have a dishwasher, run only full loads. More recent models tend to be highly water efficient, but do check to be sure when you buy a new one. If you have an older one in your home, instead of rinsing the dishes before loading them in, scrape the food directly into your compost bin or trashcan to save water. If you wash by hand, avoid letting the water run while you wash. Use a large bowl, bin or even the pot you cooked in to hold wash water, and then rinse with as little water as needed.

Support water conservation in restaurant kitchens
-- If you own a restaurant, train your employees to use techniques of water conservation that are appropriate for a commercial kitchen. Chicago-based Greening Restaurants shares information at their website. SFPUC commercial customers are eligible for a free evaluation, which includes a consultation tailored to their businesses, free water-saving devices and rebates on plumbing upgrades.

-- Look for the Thimmakka seal of approval on your favorite neighborhood restaurant or market. By helping ethnic restaurant owners adopt sustainable practices while remaining profitable businesses has already saved over 10.8 million gallons of water. Ajanta in Berkeley, tin's Tea House Lounge in Walnut Creek, and La Cocina's kitchen in the Mission District have all benefitted from Thimmakka's expertise to help them transition to sustainable practices. If your local restaurant doesn't already take part in Thimmakka's programs, encourage the owners to contact the organization or send a referral yourself to the nonprofit's outreach administrators.

Support dry farmers
-- Buy produce from farmers who have learned to grow profitable crops without irrigation. Produce labeled "dry-farmed" refers to fruits and vegetables that are not irrigated after planting. Certain crops weather these dry conditions better, such as grapes, potatoes, and tomatoes. Dry farming generally intensifies their flavors, so like with many sustainable practices, it's as good for the palate as for the planet.

-- If you shop at a farmers market and if it's not too busy, ask your favorite producers about some of the water issues they face and learn about the ways they're able to conserve water on their land. Those who can employ dry farming methods are helping to save millions of gallons of water in our state. (View a slideshow of Little Organic Farm, including David Little's dry-farmed potatoes.)

-- To learn the basics of dry farming, including both benefits and challenges, read this detailed overview from the Soil and Health Library. As the writer, a not unbiased farmer in Australia notes, when "the methods of dry-farming are understood and practiced, the practice is always successful; but it requires more intelligence, more implicit obedience to nature's laws, and greater vigilance, than farming in countries of abundant rainfall."

Educate yourself about local water laws
-- For those more interested in the colorful history of water in our state, browse the archives of the fascinating exhibit at the UC Berkeley Library on Liquid Gold: California's Water.

-- With agriculture consuming the vast majority of our water supply, California's politicians, policy makers, agricultural industry and large corporations that will have the most effect on water supply. As a concerned and informed consumer, learn about water laws. The National Technology and Science Center, a department of the Bureau of Land Management, has created an informative page summarizing California's water rights system, a dual system that incorporates Spanish pueblo rights into the riparian doctrine.

Support the Human Right to Water
-- Sign the petition to encourage the United Nations to expand its Universal Declaration of Human Rights to include Article 31: Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstance. The actions of individuals -- in other words, all the things that you can do above -- are more important and effective than any petition, but recognizing water as a right is one of the ways we can voice our concerns. If Article 31 were passed, it would go far in setting a valuable framework for guaranteeing access to water. If the UN considers owning property, holding citizenship, working for a living, receiving an education, enjoying the arts, and resting in leisure, as rights that we all hold by virtue of being human, then surely drinking clean water should be included in their Universal Declaration.

This September, KTEH invited local viewers to audition for their chance to be the next cooking show star in their live December special, KTEH Cooks with Garlic.

Thirty-eight people of all walks of local life got up enough nerve to send in their video recipes and on November 1st, you, in all your I-could-have-done-that-so-much-better smugness, are invited to vote for your favorite. Do yourself a favor and watch them.

For those of you who were either too late to submit your own video, or would simply enjoy contributing your own recipe, there is still time and an ounce of hope. Submit to KTEH your favorite original garlic recipe to be considered for their upcoming cookbook. All recipes should include a byline. Please note that any recipe submitted becomes the property of KTEH.

It takes a lot of time to watch all of the video submissions, certainly, but I found them absolutely fascinating. I am impressed by the amount of people out there who have, um, garlic bulbs big enough to let televisionland into their kitchens and, in a sense, into their psyches.

Take a peek. In the mix, you can watch a woman creating a Garlic Dream Sauce with the help of a puppet, teen-aged girls with confident cooking skills preparing soup under the supervision of a doting father, cooks hawking their own cookbooks, even a woman creating a garlic-infused "Toasty Thai Ice Cream" under the menacing gaze of a crazed-looking, apron-wearing pig.

The overall craftsmanship of the videos is non-professional, to be sure. Many of the videos are so dark, it sometimes seems as though some of the contestants were in the care of some sort of culinary witness protection program. Some of the submittors make up for lack of technical know-how with vibrant personalities. Others come off frightfully dull, professorial, repetitive, or even painfully awkward. But here they are, for all the world to see.

I've spent a few hours watching the videos. I've got my favorites and I'm definitely voting. I'm basing my choices not so much on recipe, production value, or even physical hotness. Instead, I'm voting based on kitchen décor. Look for the Marlo Thomas-as-That-Girl kitchen tile.