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

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

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

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

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

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

SpoonFed Art
1076 Hi Point Street
Los Angeles, CA

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

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

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

Michael Sowa’s surreal “Zum Kartoffellagerhaus.”

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

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

A card from Hong Kong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I couldn’t have been more pleased when STUDIO Gallery opened up on Polk street a few years ago. The gallery is unlike any other I know. First of all, it’s not airy and industrial, it’s a tiny and cozy storefront, and it showcases the work of only Bay Area artists. Art shows are accessible, sometimes provocative and more often than not, fun. Most of the artwork is very affordable and there is just about something for everyone and every budget. In addition to folk art you will also find fine art, but I’ve yet to see anything stuffy or terribly intimidating.

One of the more enjoyable shows they have held every year is Delicious, art inspired by food and drink. The show opens today and runs through April 13th, and there will be a reception this Saturday from 4 until 8 pm. This year there are over 70 artists participating and on display are oil paintings, pastels, prints, photographs, drawings, mixed media and even a paper sculpture from one of my favorite local artisans, Toshiko Kamiyama who makes the most amazing realistic pieces like this one, all made out of paper.

You can see photos from Delicious here. STUDIO Gallery has also recently launched another web site called Really SF that has plenty of local art, from photographs to painting to maps to prints and it is all San Francisco or Bay Area themed. Online is fine, but do check out the Delicious show in person if you are in the area. And don’t worry, there are plenty of places to eat in the neighborhood if the show stimulates your appetite.

STUDIO Gallery
718A Polk Street (between Clay & Washington)
San Francisco, CA 94109
415.931.3130

Gallery Hours
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 11am - 8 pm
Saturday + Sunday 11 am - 6 pm
Monday + Tuesday by appointment

This past weekend many of my favorite activities came together under one roof for one night only in San Francisco. On Saturday August 12, from 7 - 9 PM Slideluckpotshow brought handmade food, art, artists, friendliness, beautiful thought-provoking images, eating new things, seeing old friends and making new ones, giddy excitement at the spontaneousness of it all, and deeply inspiring ideas about creating community together. It met me when I left the just cooling breeze of San Francisco’s dusk and entered the vast white space that is Sandbox Studios on Minnesota Street. Slideluckpotshow met all my expectations and then far exceeded them in a few minutes, when, after arriving too early with my carpool, put me to “work” being a 20 minute volunteer.

The first time I read about Slideluckpotshow was in Time Out NY on a trip there. I kicked myself for not thinking of the brilliant idea myself. And then I wished I still lived in New York City. Well, for a minute, at any rate.

Recently, via Marcia of Tablehopper and through an odd series of random emails, all mere days before the event, I heard that Slideluckpotshow was coming to my fine, fair city. I could barely contain myself long enough to think about what dish I might create to welcome Slideluckpotshow’s founder Casey Kelbaugh and his crew. How could I convince them to come to SF again? How could I gather all the troops possibly interested in coming to an event displaying such an incredible amalgamation of ideas?

It’s true, Slideluckpotshow had little advertising. Until I posted the information on eggbeater no one I knew had heard of it or realized they were coming SF at all. Which is really unfortunate, because it was right up our alley!

The requirements for attending for Slideluckpotshow were easy. Make food (I made enough for 30 people but most people made enough for about 12, depending on the portion size), or bring really good dishes from a reputable prepared-food vending source. Make or bring great beverages. If the first two are not possible, give a good donation at the door. {My friend DB gave $10.} Come hungry at least a few minutes, or up to 2 hours, before the slide-show. Be prepared to sit on the ground if you don’t get there early enough to nab a seat in a chair or on a comfy couch. Wear the eye glasses you do for watching a movie, if needed. Enter a small body of images for the show and make the deadline. Or don’t submit “slides” but be prepared for seeing/ experiencing a wide range of aesthetics and mediums projected on a 20 foot screen via an Apple computer. There were two sections of the slide show, each running at about an hour, with an intermission in the middle.

My favorite artists from Saturday night’s SF showing are the following:

Jessica Rosen’s powerful images of transsexual women in Brazil, high contrast, slightly ironic (fashion or not?) portraits by Olivier Laude, Jonathan Solo’s graphite pencil work wherein he, “collages the drawings… to create meta-feminine/masculine figures from a fantastical assemblage of physical characteristics.” There were two artists whose photographic documentation of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reached into my core, but Heidi Schumann’s images and astute interplay between sound (all the slide-sets were accompanied by music of the artist’s choice) rendered me speechless. Although it’s difficult to pick a favorite set and artist, I will. Tim Gasperak contributed a series of photographs stark, detailed, evocative, lovely and textured from two series, Mystery of Iceland and Isolated Landscapes. Even his bio is well written.

What did I make for the pot-luck? A fruit salad composed of the juiciest, most absolute ripe beyond ripe farmers’ market fruit. Something similar to Shuna & Athen’s Famous Gazpacho. A quick photo of the finished bowl can be found by clicking on this link. From my assembled posse there was also a beautiful pecan-peach cake made by Marc, and a clean squid and broad bean salad made by none other than Brett.

Slideluckpotshow could not be a better event for me: a chef with over 10 years of fine art training and a BFA in photography. If you’re a person who appreciates Open Studios or museums, Flickr or JPG, or just the occasional food porn photograph, this is an event I beg of you to attend if it comes to a wide open room near you.

The work of Arthur Huang and Mary V. Marsh, perfectly calibrated for this age of confessional eating and exhibitionist documentation, examines the minute rituals of food. Currently on exhibit at Mercury Twenty Gallery in Oakland, the two artists explore our culture of consumption, how we ingest ideas, relationships and expectations along with a few basic nutrients and our daily dose of caffeine.

2002 Diet as Periodic Table

What do you get when you combine an MFA from RISD with a degree in biochemistry and molecular cell biology? If you throw in a healthy dose of OCD and lots of wall space, you wouldn’t be surprised to find Arthur Huang’s elaborate works of dietary classification. Using data-collecting systems of the scientific method, Huang recorded with painstaking detail what he eats for a year. The display of this information in ordered columns and rows, with their evocative colors shading obscure terminology, reveals beautiful patterns. His chart spans an entire wall. You can step back and take in the amazing human endeavor, or you can step close to study his precise data. He provides a helpful key so you can decipher the information in the table. I was delighted to see that Huang had included among his ten categories of food elements a few of my own favorite edibles: Salty Foods, Sweet Foods and Condiments.

His periodic chart is part of an elegantly curated show, “Inscribere,” at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, a gallery within the same complex as Mercury Twenty.

The Coffee Diary

While coffee may have once built empires and fueled revolutions, for most of us, it merely jump starts another workday. Mary V. Marsh bracketed a year of her life and then used the 327 paper coffee cups she purchased to record details of the moment. From mundane routine to memorable events, buying and drinking coffee become interwoven with people, places, movement and repetition. Picking up various cups to read her Sharpie-scratched words, I learned that she ate a pumpkin scone on one day, rode her bike on another and stood in a long line the day when Pete’s was down two employees. As I recount this for a food blog, I must admit the experience was both familiar and eerie.

The works of both Huang and Marsh reveal intimate connections within large-scale systems. Even as you wonder about the ways of science or calculate coffee dollars and carbon miles, you can’t help but feel connected to the daily lives of two living, breathing, eating individuals.

Mercury Twenty Gallery
25 Grand Ave. (at Broadway)
Oakland, CA 94612

Gallery hours are Friday and Saturday, 11:00 am - 2:00 pm, or by appointment. There will be extended gallery hours on Saturdays, August 4, 11 & 25, 11:00 am - 4:00 pm in conjunction with the Unread Book Project Reading Room. For additional information, please contact mercurytwenty@gmail.com.

At last week’s Maker Faire I ran into a few of my favorite food artisans. In place of single-estate chocolate or the minute’s freshest fruit, though, their ingredients were felt and yarn, circuit boards and LEDs.

What happens when you fold together San Francisco’s cult of craft with its love of all things sweet or savory? And what if you spice it up with a dash of Silicon Valley’s geeky, cheeky inventiveness and a generous dose of Burning Man bravado? You get a robot who mixes cocktails and you get the Dorkbake Challenge, where inventors present their original designs for working ovens heated with a 100-watt lightbulb.

It was a fun, unexpected reminder of how much our taste buds spark our creative cortex. Here are just a few highlights…

Cupcake Cars

Zipping around the San Mateo Fairgrounds were big, bright cupcakes. A double-take confirmed that they were, indeed, giant sweet confections rolling on wheels with one, sometimes two, human occupants. They were capable of turning on a dime and generating smiles wherever they appeared. Surely the best use of old, motorized wheelchairs and fuzzy fabric ever.

How to travel in sweet style.

There were a couple of muffin mobiles thrown in for good measure, but even the antioxidant-rich blueberries couldn’t compete with chocolate or pink frosting.

Don’t forget the extra frosting and sprinkles for protecting your noggin!

If you’ve been to Black Rock City in recent years, then you already know about Cupcake Corners. Solar-powered cupcake cars are certainly my own preferred mode of transport across desert (dessert?) flats.

SweetMeats SuperSavor

I’ve had my eye on this special meat purveyor for a long time, so I was glad to see their unique pillow cuts on display. Who knew meat could be so squeezable?

A big, plushy ham, bone still in and rind neatly scored.

Introduced in person to their new protein, I fell hard for a block of sesame-sprinkled tofu. Bean curd appears in my own fridge much more often than a full ham, so I was glad to see the veggie offering.

I was also lucky enough to snag the last shrinky-dink charm bracelet, complete with steak, ham AND pork chop.

Moveable Feast

At the Maker Workbench, the Exploratorium and London-based Cabaret Mechanical Theatre joined forces to give kids and kids-at-heart a chance to build edible automata. Learning how gears, levers and pulleys work becomes a lot easier when food is involved. (If only my high school physics teacher had appealed as successfully to my stomach as well as my brain!)

Cookies, pasta, pretzels, Twizzlers and, of course, a bagel become a starchy display of erupting lava.

NifNaks

Nifer Fahrion has gathered an entire family of cute, quirky “Shroommates.” Each little character, culled from real-world fungi, has a distinct personality that she’s conveyed impressively well with bits of felt, from the easily startled Morley Morel to red-topped Mr. Muscaria, who “likes to hang out with all the fairies that crowd in Dolores Park.” There are little ’shrooms for ear lobes or cell phones, bigger ones for sprouting on desktops or bookcases. Cherries, bees, acorn, and happy vanilla ice cream cones are also well represented.

Impish and mischievous, Shorty Shiitake hides out in the grass.

Apricots Almonds
Leeks vinaigrette
gentle flavoured grains
sweet fresh rice.

almond blossom tea
green and black
the cathedral inside the fig trees
leaves like large hands
blush striped
and blue black purple figs
ripe and heavy
the heft of grapefruit
tangerine oil, when peel is pulled back
scent of lemon in my hands
eucalyptus honey
bay laurel leaves, definitive green
juniper berries and pinecones
their nuts burrowed deep inside
Quince perfumes house at dusk
leave me wandering
in oily night blooming jasmine.

One crushed cardamon pod at the bottom of inky thick coffee
hot and dark
four
crisp
doughnut
fritters
shiny with ferocious oil
browning, expanding
caramel buttery salty
chocolate melting
like paint on cheek insides
a woman’s face against mine
like peaches
or green almond husk
plums with reds and purples
mixed inks
flesh and skin
sour and sweet
love affair with citrus.
the dream of bergamot
one shot of Royal Mandarin juice
limes and kumquats
whole and wagon wheel shapes
quarters, eighths, whole.

Crunchy Hot toast
Crab apple, autumn scented
pears picked once
cold, green, ready.
A Comice’s fair complexion
bruised by insults uttered
Walnuts and dried fruit compotes
fireplace warmth
mittens and woolen scarves.

the cherry that protects its stone
and one tiny almond lives within it.
bees who sex flowers to fruit

Thick Arms on Mango Trees
pulp and juice to my elbow
avocados underfoot
i’ll take green or ripe guavas
challenging loud seeds between uncertain teeth
lychees in porcupine skin
k’nippes camouflaged in their own canopy.

Demure berries
the most delicate of all
needing sun but not heat
rain but not downpour
bees not birds
fingers but not hands
o raspberry, where art thou?
ripe blackberry?
bloody forearms
mosquitoes in ears, on sweaty neck
blue-purple stains every which way
the pleasure is grand
but fleeting -
Strawberry soup
smooth and seedless
exquisite small strawberries
crawling on the ground to find you -
Summer drunks me with berries promise.

Clamming in Long Island with my Grandfather
they spit and pee and pull you down
The immense strength of mollusk
Seagulls repeatedly dropping from great heights
smashing open tightly sealed lips
our roof a beach
the ground outside the door, white
My mother feeding me the salty sea
raw clams
taste memory
connected to swimming in ocean alive
sand sharks against shins
schools of fish turning in unison
inquisitive little fishes nibbling toes
learning to drive boats first
salted eyelashes and brows
smoked gold fish for lunch.

lox and bagels
gefilte fish
and what does that fish look like?
Scales stuck to my clothes like sequins
guts on the dock
birds at its wooden edge, eager.
Flounder is flat
the swordfish above my bed is very blue
lobster was always delicious
steamers and their liquor
hot roiling boiling steamy sea
chewy, soft, gritty, sweet.

My love for you
as delicious as
all this.

– March 2001

April is Poetry Month.
For more poems by Shuna Lydon, check in with Eggbeater through this link all month.

In this age of Google and Wikipedia, it’s easy to forget the joy of getting lost for hours deep in the stacks of a three-dimensional library. To entice you back to these important anchors of our community, here’s a short list of culinary exhibits and events worth adding to your list of food adventures:

READING AMERICA: Reconstructed Books by Mary Marsh

“Snack.” Mary Marsh, 2004. Coffee, ink, gouache on found book.

Head to the airy, sunny sixth floor of the San Francisco Main Library to find a wonderful exhibit of new work by artist Mary Marsh. Using comfort food as an analogy, Marsh explores the intersection of eating and reading. Discarded books and old library catalog cards (remember those?!) find new lives with bits of linen tape, layers of gouache and coffee as ink. Marsh explores issues of privacy, consumption and narrative with these evocative creations. Her artwork will be on display at the library galleries though April 5, 2007.

While you’re at the top of the SF Main, visit one of my favorite local resources: the Koshland SF History Center. If you can’t make it there in person, it’s almost as fun browsing their amazing photo collection online. Their “Picture This” series includes a line of serious-minded, long-aproned butchers at the Stadium Market in the Sunset District (1935), a proud baker at Dianda’s Bakery in the Mission (1980); and a birthday party in the Western Addition, when Japanese-American families still flourished in the neighborhood (1938).

San Francisco Main Library, 6th Floor
100 Larkin Street, San Francisco
(415) 557-4400

TASTE MATTERS: The Role of Food and Drink in Jewish Culture

Detail of “Pesach” by Mary Thorman

The Magnes Museum, a stately building tucked in the foothills of Berkeley, has launched a series of cross-disciplinary presentations of gastronomic narratives in Jewish culture. These intimate gatherings are open to the public ($8 for nonmembers) and offer a valuable resource both for those attempting to understand their own heritage and those trying to learn more about the history of an important but largely invisible group. Last week’s conversation with Eleanor Kaufman from UCLA highlighted Eastern European homesteaders keeping kosher under harsh conditions on the plains and utopian farming communities, such as Petaluma’s chicken and egg producers, that succeeded for a brief period in the early to mid-20th century.

On May 31, Alisa Braun from UC Davis will discuss the depiction of Jewish foods in films, and on August 16, Benjamin Wurgaft from UC Berkeley will show how food writers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, shape perception and identity.

In addition to its ceremonial, decorative and modern art collections, the Magnes houses an excellent research library for scholars of Jewish history and culture.

Judah L. Magnes Museum
2911 Russell Street, Berkeley
(510) 549-6950

ALICE STATLER LIBRARY

The menu cover from a 1930s “Bohemian” restaurant near Coit Tower.

To support its stellar culinary arts and hospitality program, City College maintains a reading library of books about food, restaurants and anything remotely related to the history, culture, science, politics and business of cooking and eating. Their periodical collection alone could occupy a dedicated cook for years.

Though nearly everyone in the Statler Library is wearing chef whites, it’s open to the public. You’re welcome to read for hours whether you’re browsing for random discoveries, honing a research topic or filling up on glossy food mags.

You can also enjoy the library’s beautiful menu collections online. With their covers and inside pages lovingly scanned, the menus highlight restaurants across the nation as well as concessionaries at the 1939 World’s Fair in San Francisco.

Alice Statler Library
City College of San Francisco
Room 10, Statler Wing
50 Phelan Avenue, San Francisco
(415) 239-3460