You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website also provides restaurant information not specified on the show, written reviews from the guests and restaurant recipes. If you have opinions on the restaurants featured please feel free to share your thoughts. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will be sharing wine tips with each episode.
You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website also provides restaurant information not specified on the show, written reviews from the guests and restaurant recipes. If you have opinions on the restaurants featured please feel free to share your thoughts. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will be sharing wine tips with each episode.
Up until a couple of recent events, I'd almost given up consuming seafood in this country, saving my shellfish and finfish feasts for my annual visits back home to Australia, where eating sea creatures seems somehow less loaded and certainly more local.
That two-day sustainable seafood cram session was followed by a visit to Omnivore Books in June to hear Seattle-based seafood chef-writer Becky Selengut joke about how she caught crabs on assignment for a magazine and, more seriously, dish out advice on how to buy and cook local seafood in her new cookbook, good fish.
Seafood consumers and home cooks should consider this post a companion piece to my Bay Area Bites colleague Denise Santoro Lincoln's sustainable fish primer from February, which is full of good tips and reliable resources on this very subject. Check that post out and then come back here. I'll wait.
Okay, let's get the bad stuff out of the way, shall we? Buying fish is confusing and challenging because you're concerned about species extinction, pollution problems, bycatch issues, and health concerns, right? And you should be. While seafood is an excellent source of lean protein and heart- and brain-friendly omega-3s, it can also be laden with mercury, which can do a nasty number on the brain and nervous systems of vulnerable populations (think nursing women, children, and the unborn). Add to that persistent organic pollutants (also known as POPS) which, despite the cute acronym, are hormone-disrupting neurotoxins that can wreak havoc on humans, and it's a wonder you're not hungry for a slab of farmed salmon or wild tuna cooked quickly on the grill.
Then, of course, for the ethical environmentalists among us, there's the sad realization that we're coming to the end of the line seafood-species wise. We've done a good job globally of depleting fish stocks to worrisomely low levels, with Atlantic cod and bluefin tuna on a fast track towards extinction. Throw in the real problems with certain farmed fish businesses (think waste-disease-pollution) and the anxiety around GMO-salmon and the dreaded Frankenfish, and it's enough to make a seafood lover switch to some other protein source.
Enough with the horror stories from the open seas. There are still ways to get a seafood fix, it just takes a little education, thought and planning. But if you've read this far you're probably willing to go the extra mile for mussels or work a bit harder for halibut. Chances are, you've likely already done that as far as fruit and vegetables are concerned (local, organic, seasonal) and meat (grass-fed, humanely-raised, thoughtfully slaughtered).
Some suggestions for making healthier, more sustainable seafood choices, gleaned from the experts above:
Think small: Americans are conditioned to thinking bigger is better. Not necessarily so when it comes to fish. Sardines and anchovies, those little, oily bottom feeders of the sea, revered in other parts of the world, are delicious, nutritious, and affordable, and carry a lower risk for toxins than big fish like tuna.
Buy seasonally and diversify: Would you expect to buy great tasting, local, organic tomatoes in January? Apply the same sensibility to your seafood shopping and pick shellfish and finfish during their peak time for freshness, taste, and price. Dungeness crab is harvested in the fall and winter, for instance. When in doubt, ask. Most Americans who eat seafood choose salmon, shrimp, or tuna. Check out Arctic char or Pacific halibut for a change.
Reconsider frozen and farmed fish: A properly frozen fish (landed gently, bled, and quickly chilled preferably at sea) can be a high-quality, carbon-foot print friendly option, if handled well, says Selengut. While hook-and-line wild fish is a better bet than seafood caught by dredging or trawling, which can produce a lot of bycatch (accidentally caught species unintentionally killed in the fishing process), farmed fish are a wise choice in some circumstances, adds the cookbook author. Farmed fish may be a more sustainable choice for fish lower on the food chain that are either vegetarian or require only small amounts of fish protein to produce flesh. Find an example of a farmed fish that may be gentler on the environment in a recent Time magazine story on a western Massachusetts-based outfit farming barramundi, a fish much loved in my homeland.
Find a fishmonger you trust: Local picks include the year-old San Francisco-based online sustainable seafood supplier i love blue sea, co-founded by Martin Reed, a panelist at the recent Sustainable Foods Institute. I love blue sea doesn't sell any of Seafood Watch's red-listed fish and ships via FedEx across the country. (Bay Area residents can pick up directly, avoiding the expense and guilt associated with air freight).
Newcomer Siren SeaSA founded by Anna Larsen, offers a CSA-like option for seafood lovers: For six Saturdays starting July 16, subscribers can pick up an assortment of seasonal, sustainable seafood in San Francisco or Petaluma. Catch of the day may include wild king salmon from Bodega Bay, squid from Monterey, wild-caught Pacific sardines, Miyagi oysters from Tomales Bay, and hook-and-line caught black cod. Limited to 100 members for its trial run, a six-week subscription is still available at a cost of $255 for seafood portions calculated to feed four people. Larsen plans to continue the program beyond this initial summer launch.
A Community Supported Fishery (CSF) program is also running this summer out of Half Moon Bay. And a very new online resource Local Catch, promises connections to CSF members via a zip code search function.
Follow the reporting of sustainable seafood writers such as former Gourmet scribe Barry Estabrook of Politics of the Plate and freelance food writer Clare Leschin-Hoar.
Watch Isabelle Rossellini's entertaining, educational, and amusing Green Porno series, which documents the plight of sea creatures and other animals.
Cook Find Mark Bittman's simple recipes for serving white fish fillet a dozen ways in the New York Times. Check out acclaimed seafood chef and National Geographic Fellow Barton Seaver's new cookbook For Cod and Country or Selengut's good fish, which features fifteen types of Pacific Coast sea creatures (including clams, crabs, char, cod, salmon, scallops, squid, and sardines) in 75 recipes. Check out the instructional online videos from the private chef and cooking teacher, who also blogs at chefreinvented.
Got a sustainable seafood resource to share? Add your voice below.
You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website also provides restaurant information not specified on the show, written reviews from the guests and restaurant recipes. If you have opinions on the restaurants featured please feel free to share your thoughts. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will be sharing wine tips with each episode.
There is no shortage of fun food-filled things to do on a holiday weekend in the Bay Area. July 4th weekend was no exception and due to the amazing summer weather I spent Saturday morning at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market...shooting, shopping and eating.
A good starting point... Blue Bottle Coffee at SF Ferry Plaza Farmers Market
Daniel Klein in Tartine Bakery kitchen in San Francisco. All Photos: Wendy Goodfriend
Regular Bay Area Bites readers will be familiar with the edible explorations of BAB contributor Daniel Klein. The omnivorous chef and his vegetarian girlfriend/cameragal Mirra Fine are the dynamic duo behind The Perennial Plate, a web-based, weekly documentary real food romp devoted to socially responsible, sustainable and adventurous eating.
As you may recall, season one of the good grub chronicles introduced video viewers to a year of food finds in Minnesota, a state that Klein and Fine used to call home. Klein wants people to see where their meat comes from, so he documents rabbit, pig, and turkey killings, along with deer hunting, squirrel slaughtering and bison butchering, often set to a haunting soundtrack. For the more squeamish among us, there's also cranberry harvesting, morel mushroom gathering, and wild food foraging, typically accompanied by more uptempo tunes.
Mirra Fine filming Perennial Plate's dinner prep in Tartine Bakery kitchen.
In season two, which began in early May, the culinary couple took their show on the road for a six-month journey across America in search of stories (and the people behind them) that speak to the heart of food and farming practices in the nation. To date their eating expeditions have led them to harvesting produce in urban farms in New Orleans, hunting feral pigs in Texas, and catching frogs in Arkansas.
Daniel Klein and Samin Nostrat cook dinner at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco.
In the Bay Area this week, Klein teamed up with Tartine Afterhours chef Samin Nosrat to cook a memorable family-style meal for 40 last night at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. The guest list, gleaned from Nosrat's considerable good food advocate contact list, included Chez Panisse Foundation folk, Eat Real Festival organizers, and a CUESA staffer. On the menu: Simple yet satisfying salads featuring new potatoes, roasted beets, and shaved summer squash. Followed by bronze-cut rigatoni served with Riverdog Farm pork for the meat eaters and cherry tomatoes generously doused in oregano from Oakland's Pluck and Feather Farm for the veg heads.
Chad Robertson's famed rustic bread at Tartine Bakery.
Oh, and some "little snacks" to nibble on initially, mostly seasonal veggies sparingly and elegantly presented with a posse of boiled eggs topped with herbs that wowed the gourmet cooking crowd. Did I mention that Chad Robertson's famed rustic bread was in abundance (and went home with diners)? Don't get me started on the Sunny Slope Orchard's apricots al cartoccio (think parchment paper) with whipped cream and lavender shortbread that provided the sweet end note to the meal.
Lavender Shortbread at Perennial Plate dinner at Tartine Bakery.
Klein and Nosrat swung through the temporary dining room, gracious, grateful and generous hosts both. Fine filmed the event, which featured music by Sonya Cotton and Gabe Dominguez. The 28-year-old chef, who has trained and worked in many top Michelin starred restaurants around the world (The Fat Duck, St. John, Mugaritz, Bouchon, Applewood, and Craft) and made films about Africa and oil politics, took some time at the end of the evening to chat about year two of his real food tour.
Guests feast at The Perennial Plate's dinner at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco.
Can you give us some of your initial impressions of the food scene in the Bay Area?
Obviously, local food here is huge, it's easy and everywhere. There are even some people who are tired of the whole idea. But I could do another 52 week series right here.
How about some highlights from your visit so far?
On the farms: Riverdog is huge but they've been able to get big without sacrificing their values or quality. Sunny Slopes is small and I ate a plum there that was probably the most delicious plum I've ever tasted. Those apricots speak for themselves. And then there's the local urban farming phenomenon personified by Esperanza Pallana of Pluck and Feather.
On the food front: We had a very good meal at Gather. It's refreshing when a high-quality chef does really interesting things with vegetables.
As for people: Samin is the most generous, relaxed, fun-filled, well-connected person to work with -- she organized this whole event -- and she's a great chef as well. And then there's the incredible generosity of the woman in Glen Park, a random stranger, who heard we needed a place to stay and put us up for three nights.
Has anything surprised you in your travels?
People's generosity and willingness to share their stories. We've met people who work really hard and maybe don't have much but they still take the time to show us their world and teach us new things about food. People have fed us, given us a bed, and while we've certainly been in situations where some subjects are off limits, nobody has murdered us.
What's the message you want viewers to take away from your films?
We want to educate and entertain and project a positive image of food around the country, without making it seem like things are perfect out there, because they're not. We're not trying to tell people what to do. We're trying to make people think about their food and become more engaged with what they eat.
What's next?
Foraging with Hank Shaw before we head to Ashland for a coop cookout on July 3rd. Once the road trip is over we'll have time to think about related projects like a cookbook or a long-form film based on our travels. But right now we're only a third of the way into it, so we're busy hitting the road, editing en route, and meeting and eating with a diverse range of food and farming people around the country. The adventure continues.
Stay tuned for The Perennial Plate's Bay Area installment coming soon in this space.
There are a lot of clichés when it comes to putting food on film. Almost always, food is shorthand for sensuality. Show us a woman who rolls a tomato between her palms at the farmers' market, licks her fingers in the kitchen, or closes her eyes and moans when anything tasty ends up in her mouth, and we know we're meant to believe that she's a tiger in bed. If she does that to a tomato, the reasoning goes, imagine what she'll do with...
The food inspires the sex, or stands in for the sex until a lover enters the picture. If you know how to cook and/or eat, the reasoning goes in films like Eat Pray Love, I Am Love, Chocolat, and Like Water for Chocolate, then you know how to love, or at least how to get it on up against the fridge. And if you don't know how to love, learning how to eat will take you there. (Restaurant movies, like Big Night and the upcoming documentary about Danny Meyer, The Restauranteur, are a different story: more men, more competition, a lot more stress than sex.)
Of course, like most cliché-ridden things, some of this is true. Don't you have a foolproof dish or two that never fails to lure an attractive stranger home? (Thank you, peach pie!) I've been wooed with dim-sum dumplings, challah French toast, coffee in bed, cheese grits, a boat full of sushi, a perfect steak.
One of the frankest and sexiest of all food stories is still Dorothy Allison's "A Lesbian Appetite," in which she writes, "I remember women by what we ate together, what they dug out of the freezer after we'd made love for hours. I've only had one lover who didn't want to eat at all. We didn't last long. The sex was good but I couldn't think what to do with her when the sex was finished. We drink spring water, and fight a lot."
She then goes on, in sweaty, salty detail, to describe the good stuff she and her other lovers shared: roadside barbecue and Yoo-hoos smuggled into a vegetarian women's music festival, fried eggplant and tomatoes ripe from the garden, long-simmered greens and leftover biscuits. Here, as elsewhere, the food leads to the sex, the sex is great, and then you're both starving and you end up eating again, which leads to...well, there's a reason Safeway has so many 24-hour supermarkets here.
So, not surprisingly, gorgeous food does lead to delicious sex in the film Recipe for Love, featured in two upcoming programs of shorts at the Frameline35 LGBT film festival. And the food really does look good enough to eat, or make anyone fall in love with the cook.
The 26-minute piece, made by first-time filmmaker Chauncey Wales, revolves around the food-laden stories of Chance Oliveida, a young Brazilian woman living in San Francisco (played by Brazilian actress Fernanda Jimena). Chance runs a green cleaning company, but she'd really rather be cooking. So when one of her cleaners skips an appointment at the (huge and spotless) apartment of young businesswoman-on-the-go Juliette (Coriander Stasi), Chance shows up to do the job herself, bringing along a box of homemade truffles perfumed with cinnamon, chiles, and rosewater ("romance in a bottle," as Chance murmurs to herself while adding a few drops) to apologize.
Juliette takes the truffles to bed with her (closed eyes, gasp, close-up), and soon she's enlisting Chance to cook dinner for her, her food-snob sister and her brother-in-law. At the party, the guests fall in love with Chance's food—mango-and-Champagne soup, oysters on the half shell, scallops decked with flowers—and before Chance can finish reciting the recipe for the passionfruit mousse, she and Juliette are stripping down in the hallway for their own after-hours party for two.
Wales, a passionate cook herself, gives full credit for the on-screen food to Jessy Manuel, a 24-year-old professional chef who auditioned for the part of Chance. She didn't get the part, but she turned out to the be the perfect choice for food stylist and second assistant director. Before the shoot, Wales, Manuel, and Jimena spend hours together talking about food, trying to figure out what kinds of food would reflect how Chance lives between two worlds, contemporary San Francisco and her homeland in southeastern Brazil. They came up with many dishes (yucca fries, peach chimichurri sauce), only a fraction of which made it into the movie.
And while the music and accents may be Brazilian, the vibe is very San Franciscan, from the skyline and opening Ferry Plaza farmers' market shots to the jilted, cheating boyfriend who's curing his wandering ways with Bikram yoga (while ogling the yoga teacher). And that candlelit scallop dish, layered with broth, jewel-toned vegetables, and a scatter of edible flowers? Utterly ravishing.
DJDave, also known as David Wittman, has penned a memorable little ditty about some disturbing (not) things that go down in the Whole Foods parking lot for affluent Angelenos picking up organic kale and Kombucha.
Posted last Sunday, the mock rage-rapper's hip hop YouTube video "Whole Foods Parking Lot" has gone viral. Even Whole Foods appreciates the humor in a song that pokes fun at the culinary cliches of shoppers in Santa Monica, Venice, and, um, elsewhere, who can afford to spend 80 bucks for six things.
The 37-year-old former Berkeley boy, works as a commercial composer for Elias Arts, crafting catchy tunes for clients like Budweiser, Pepsi, and Haagen Dazs.
Wittman also composes film scores. But he wanted a place where he could create personal projects not destined for commercial use. So he and his like-minded friends formed the artist collective Fog and Smog Films, comprised of film editors, composers, producers, deejays, designers, and such from the Bay Area and Los Angeles. "Whole Foods Parking Lot" is their first collaboration; Wittman created, produced, and performs in the piece.
What inspired you to make this music video?
It's completely born out of my own experience, this is what I do on a regular basis: I drive my Prius through the Whole Foods parking lot in Santa Monica and I live this ridiculously mannered West L.A. lifestyle, and I'm usually thinking about what I'm picking up for dinner that night.
And then someone comes up and takes my parking space and it's like: "Oh, really? It's about to get REAL in the Whole Foods parking lot man."
It's making fun of that and putting it in perspective. We all get really frustrated or stressed out by silly things. I wanted to show the craziness of that in our lives.
I started singing to myself about it and then I found a beat that works that is fun but has this aggressive little tone. And one day I just sat down and wrote it in less than 20 minutes.
Can you tell me some of your musical influences?
I grew up in the Bay Area going to Cazadero Music Camp in the summer, which had a huge impact on me. I started learning to dj there when I was 10. The Berkeley High Jazz Band was another big influence. I deejayed a lot at house parties when I was at Berkeley High and then later at UCLA, that's where my moniker comes from.
In terms of hip hop, I listened to a lot of the standard names coming out of New York in the 80s like A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Mos Def, Rakim. I've listened to my share of Snoop Dog; there's a creeping up quality to this song that's a nod to Snoop.
What about your food influences?
I'm not a foodie. I like fresh food. But I don't go crazy about the whole organic, local thing. I just try to eat well. I definitely started eating better once my fiancee moved in. The editor on this clip, Jake Pushinsky, is into food and restaurants, and comes from the food and beverage industry. He used to work at Hawthorne Lane.
Did you expect this video to be as successful as it's been?
I knew it was funny so I would have been disappointed if only 19 people listened to it or even 900 people. I wanted to see what viral looked like. We're up around the 500,000 mark now. What I didn't expect: Fielding calls from agents and the "Today Show."
What's your favorite rhyme from the song?
You're the most annoying dude I've ever SEEN brah
Could you PLEASE move? You're RIGHT in front of the Quinoa.
Is there anything else out there like your video?
There's another YouTube video set to a bossa nova beat about Trader Joe's that I didn't even know about until someone accused me of ripping it off. It's well done and it's similar but I think it's slightly more endearing. I'm clearly making fun of myself.
What's next for Fog and Smog?
We're not sure. But it will be something authentic that comes out of someone's genuine experience. We're proud of this video because it's an honest little slice of life.
What's for dinner?
You know I think my fiancee and I will fire up the grill and we'll have some chicken and I'll make a kale salad and some quinoa. We might even have it with a Pinot Noir.
Lyrics:
Intro (spoken)
Yo man...
Yo I know you see me here dude!!
I've been waiting here like 10 minutes, man!
No, no no... this is MY parking space man.
What you need to do is put your little hybrid in reverse,
And go out the way you came in.
WHAT?!?!
Yo its about to get REAL in the Whole Foods parking lot man...
Chorus (with feeling)
It's getting' REAL in the Whole Foods Parking Lot
I got my STEEL and you know it gets sparked a lot
Im on my grind homie... It's on my mind homie!
These fools with clip boards are lookin' at me like they know me!
It's getting' REAL in the Whole Foods Parking Lot
You know the DEAL with the little shopping carts they got...
Check out what I say, it happens every day...
It's how we LIVE on the west side of LA!!
Verse 1
... Im ridin' slow in my Prius...
all leather, tinted windows... you cant see us!!
Everybody's trying to park, you can feel the tension
I'm in electric mode... can't even hear the engine (Shhhhhhh)
Just then I saw a spot open up,
My timings perfect... Im creepin' up...
But then this other dude tried to steal it going the wrong way
Yo man, I've had a LONG DAY!
Chorus
(same as before)
Verse 2
Now I'm on this inside, looking at my list
Organic chicken, Kale Salad and a Lemon Twist.
Some girl in yoga pants is lookin at me funny
I'm just trying to find a decent Pinot Noir for under twenty!
Then I take it to the cheese counter, Humboldt Fog?
We just ran out sir! Really Dog?
Take it easy man, I try to calm myself...
I've been on edge ever since they took Kombucha off the shelf...
Chorus
(same as before)
Verse 3
This Busters on his iPhone talking to his friends,
Picking up some cayenne pepper for his master cleanse.
You're the most annoying dude I've ever SEEN brah...
Could you PLEASE move? You're RIGHT in front of the Quinoa.
Damn, I'm about to check out.
Pay my 80 bucks for 6 things and get the heck out.
The express lane is moving hella slow...
Man, these fools don't know... that shit is getting REAL....
But is there an audience hungry for a series that serves up solutions to this country's collapsing food system? Especially one without a famous food icon (or, for that matter, foreign food personality with a flair for the dramatic) attached.
The Bay Area team behind Food Forward thinks so. Indeed, the creative crew on this prospective TV series is so confident (some might say crazily optimistic) that they're kicking off their program with a pilot all about urban agriculture.
Andrew Coté, beekeeper in Food Forward pilot from NYC. Photo: Greg Roden
That's right, readers, there isn't a kitchen makeover or celebrity chef in sight. Instead, Food Forward profiles people around the country who are making a difference in communities where good food is hard to come by. These farm folk work in small-scale sustainable food production, as rooftop farmers in Brooklyn, New York, greenhouse growers in a mall in Cleveland, produce planters in abandoned lots in Detroit, or urban homesteaders on vacant land in Oakland.
On the surface such a series is a tough sell. But the concept, cooked up by local journalist Stett Holbrook, food editor for the alternative weekly Metro Silicon Valley in San Jose, and his long-time friend documentary filmmaker Greg Roden, impressed programmers at KQED Presents, who picked up the pilot. It is expected to air nationally later this year. Raising money for the series, a challenge for most documentary filmmakers, continues.
Bay Area Bites spoke with Roden, producer/director of Food Forward, about the planned 13-part series and the almost-completed half-hour pilot, which screens in Berkeley on Thursday.
Why Food Forward and why now?
Everybody knows that our food system is broken and that factory farming is bad for us. That's been well documented by people like Michael Pollan and films like Food, Inc. It's also depressing: How much bad news can people take? We wanted to pick up where Food, Inc. left off and showcase some solutions to the problems around the country. There are a lot of positive things going on right now and we wanted to capture that. This is reality TV in a sense, but I prefer to think of it as cinema verite.
What qualities make a person a food hero in your mind?
Someone who is going beyond sustainable, local, organic -- all these things we've heard about and get kicked around all the time -- and is doing something cutting edge to help their community, like aquaponics or hydroponics. Our film has a bit of a punk rock aesthetic, these folks are a bit subversive, that's why we call them food rebels. They're not waiting for foundation grants or government assistance, they're part of the D.I.Y. generation, they're just doing it on their own and making change. They're the next generation of farmers.
Who inspires you in the Food Forward pilot?
Abeni Ramsey was a wayward teen in West Oakland, who took a life-changing trip to Africa, where she witnessed hunger up close. She came back to the Bay Area and decided she wanted to make a difference, literally, in her own backyard. And she has: She's worked to get food to people in need through community gardens.
A rooftop garden in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: Greg Roden
John Mooney, who owns Bell Book & Candle, runs an amazing rooftop garden in the West Village of New York City that, during the height of summer, provides something like 80 percent of his restaurant's produce. He's an example of what a little ingenuity, creativity, and patience can do.
Edith Floyd of Growing Joy Garden in Detroit. Photo: Greg Roden
If one production still could speak for the series it would be an image of Edith Floyd, an African American woman on an orange tractor plowing an abandoned area in Detroit. We've all seen the pictures of urban devastation coming out of Detroit, but here is one woman making a huge impact on a whole neighborhood by planting all kinds of produce in her Growing Joy Garden.
It's both an awareness campaign and a fund-raising tool. We've identified enough food heroes to fill two 13-part series. We want to get out there and meet them, give people around the country an idea of who they are, and spread the word about the series. Stett Holbrook is towing a vintage 1965 Airstream trailer and people can follow his adventures and learn more about the food rebels we're featuring on his blog and in other online content.
What's your personal connection to food?
I'm a flexitarian, leaning towards the vegetarian end of the spectrum, who struggles every day to make healthy eating choices. Working on this project has helped get me back on track food wise. I grew up in Southern California on a ranch, my family grew citrus, it was a hobby farm. My maternal grandparents raised cattle in Southern Oregon. So farming is in my blood. But where my food came from was never that important to me. It is now.
What do you hope viewers take away from Food Forward?
As documentary filmmakers we want to educate, entertain, and inspire, of course. But we want to do more than that. We hope the series motivates people to take action on issues such as the Farm Bill, school lunch, and GMO-foods.
Like many modern friendships that are born in our era of social networking, I first "met" Ezra Caldwell online in 2006. I discovered his Flickr account through mutual contacts and was drawn to his extraordinary images of dancers, his beautiful wife Hillary and photogenic pooch Putney. We also happen share a deep devotion to bicycles and food, and he regularly chronicled his endeavors in frame building and cooking.
Ezra shared his thoughts with me about cooking via email: "I think it's important that people eat at home a certain amount of the time. For us it's pretty much every night. We eat out about once every three weeks. There's something about the time spent in the kitchen in the evening that is a real relaxer for me. A meditation. I often drag out food preparation just because I enjoy that time of day."
While I had lived in Ezra's hometown of New York City for 13 years, it wasn't until I moved all the way across the country to San Francisco that I finally met Ezra in real life. In the spring of 2007, he and another Flickr friend, Yohei Morita, embarked on a trip throughout the U.S. to share bicycle adventures and meet other Flickr comrades. They met me and a mutual Flickr friend, Judah, during their visit to the Bay Area.
And like many modern time-pressed friendships, we stayed in touch in the virtual realm. And so it was through Flickr that I learned in August of 2008, Ezra was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. In true Ezra fashion, who has never shied away from baring it all, he started a blog, "Teaching Cancer to Cry," as a "a way to keep people up-to-date as treatment progresses, and a way for me to look back when all this is over and reminisce."
Then in September of 2010, the cancer returned. He resumed his documentation of the grim realities of his second round with the disease.
Through all of this, Ezra still found time and the desire to cook.
"Over the last bunch of months, I was really laid low. I was in a lot of pain, a lot of the time. Having to take pain killers. Spending a lot of time in bed. Happily, though, this time around we found an anti-emetic (anti-nausea) drug that worked! So for most of the winter I would just save up my energy during the day to be able to get out of bed and cook some evening. It meant a lot to me to be able to continue to contribute to the household. I've always done nearly all the cooking, and didn't want treatment to interrupt that. Just about everything else went on the back burner."
Cooking also ignited yet another creative project.
"I started making videos, partly because I was getting back into making video and needed a subject, and here was this thing that I was doing every day anyway! I like to encourage people to cook. I think it's a little strange when people don't know how, or believe they can't. Cooking is easy! It's not hard to make yourself really good food.
So I started putting instructions for cooking on the blog, and later the videos with the instructions. I think it's sort of a great way to learn. See something done REALLY fast, and then read some instructions for it. You've still got an image in your head of what it looked like, and the instructions can be pretty bare bones.
I don't like the word "recipe." I feel as though there's an implication with "recipes" that makes people believe that there's a RIGHT way to cook a certain dish. That sort of takes the fun out of it. Instead I try to write instructions for dishes that maybe include some useful technique, like braising, or using an ice bath, that people will be able to include in their arsenal of approaches in the future. I love it when people write to me and say, "I tried that dish, but I changed it in this way and that, and it came out great!" Aha...you've been bitten."
Here's his artful visual rendition of "Braised Lamb Shanks" that will make your mouth water.
