Occupy Oakland General Strike on November 2, 2011. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Have you moved your money yet? A lot of imperatives have come out of the Occupy movement of late; this one is both concrete and far-ranging, something that anyone can do.

What does it mean? It started with a call to action for people to pull their money and investments out of the big banks, and put them into smaller, locally-owned and locally-responsible credit unions and community banks. It's like voting; the amount in my tiny checking and savings accounts means nothing to MegaBankUSA, but add my numbers to thousands and thousands of others, and suddenly a bank could feel some impact.

That's just one part. Like the concept of eating locally, which started with food miles and then grew into a much larger movement, even revolution, about how and what we eat, the idea of "moving your money" can be applied in so many ways.

And it's not limited to how or where you spend your actual cash. On the style blog Ironing Board Collective, my friend, writer and health coach Sara Seinberg, has posted a great Move Your Money gift guide, with suggestions for everything from art-museum memberships to shared activities and bartered services. Her list, and the fact that right now, like so many of us, I am luckily rich in friends, family, and good intentions, and not-so-rich in disposable income, have got me thinking even more about value this time of year. About surplus. About what we use to get what we need, and how we can support the needs of others--friends, family, your community, your neighborhood and beyond. This holiday season, what do you have that can bring delight and deliciousness to those you love, while keeping your money out of the coffers of the big corporations?

How about chocolate? There are lots of locally-made chocolate treats available to sweeten your holidays. Or you can make your own with this easy chocolate truffle recipe. Dandelion's bean-to-bar chocolate store will be opening in San Francisco next month or early next year; until then, find them at local farmers' markets, including the Mission Community Market and the Noe Valley Farmers' Market.

With the explosion of books, classes, and blogs dedicated to food preservation for fun (or profit), it's easy to spend a little time whipping up a gift batch of something, especially if you turn the simmering or brewing into an all-afternoon stir-and-gossip session. What do you like best to make? It's a little late in the season to make jam, but there's always apple butter, pear butter, slow-roasted quince paste (so tasty with cheese), Meyer lemon marmalade or tangy lemon chutney. WorkshopSF has classes in beer-making, tea-blending, cheese-making, even vintage apron sewing coming up in December; take one yourself, or take a friend along.

Does everyone rave about your ramen, your cranberry bread, your caramel apple pie? Do you want to share your mom's recipes with everyone who loves her? There are dozens of print-on-demand services that let you turn those scribbled-on recipe cards into a surprisingly chic and stylish personal cookbook. Pop-up holiday markets are also a good place to find quirkily perfect host/ess gifts made by your friends and neighbors. On Dec. 9, La Cocina is holding its 3rd Annual Gift Bazaar, featuring unique products developed in La Cocina's incubator kitchen in the Mission.

Or, depending on what you have to spare, you can give money, time, or expertise to organizations who redistribute the wealth across the Bay Area's tables. Did one (or ten) of your Facebook friends and Twitter followers post Mary Risley's hysterically practical YouTube video, Just Put the F*cking Turkey in the Oven? Now, with over 100,000 hits, let's hope she can make the follow-up, Just Give Your F*cking Leftovers to Food Runners.

Risley isn't just a cooking teacher, she's the founder of Food Runners, which moves thousands of pounds of fresh, useful leftover food from restaurants, grocery stores, and catering businesses into the kitchens of shelters, low-income senior and youth programs, and other organizations that serve the needy. Mary talks about Food Runners on this episode of Food & Wine This Week in Northern California.

Chloe and me, we were pretty much a 21st-century urban couple of a certain type. We met at a mock Iron Chef party that some friends of friends of mine put on—I think the theme was “Battle Matzoh,” with a team of out-of-work chefs throwing down the Streit's against a crew of laid-off CNET coders. The coders were winning when I spotted Chloe in a nurse’s outfit one size too small, drinking Manischewitz shots out of a tiki mug. Well, that was it for me. I’ve always had a soft spot for women in uniform who can hold their liquor.

It didn’t take long to convince her to leave the house she was sharing with 3 roommates on Cesar Chavez and move into my place in Oakland. I had a backyard, a Vitamix, a 3-year-old Saab, room for her cat and I always put the seat down, even when she was gone for the whole day at a yoga-and-goat-cheese-making retreat.

And we were pretty much in sync around most things. We’d recently switched our coffee from Ritual Roasters to Four Barrel to Sightglass. With their roastery in Williamsburg and their farmers' market lockdown in Temescal, Blue Bottle was over, Chloe insisted, pulling her curly hair into two Dr. Seussy-looking pigtails on the top of her head, and I had to agree, although secretly, I’d been kind of looking forward to being able to get one of their insane New Orleans iced coffees to wake me up for the drive home after a Sunday of Frisbee and Tecates in Dolores Park, even when it became obvious that their generator-driven coup wasn’t going to happen.

Since we both worked in Emeryville, we got together to eat lunch together almost every other day, sharing leftover jicama-kale salad or hitting up Primos Parrilla if our supply ran low. Sometimes when she was feeling cranky I’d walk over to her office and leave a couple of cupcakes from the Cupkates truck—one for her and one that she maybe didn’t have to know about for the cute maybe-lesbian-but-maybe-not receptionist with the mermaid tattoo and the skateboard kicked up at the back of her desk.

Chloe used to be vegan in college, but like most girls, she was just waiting for someone to feed her a really good pork chop wrapped in bacon and convince her that we could be ethical omnivores together. She’s still pretty skinny though; I’d like to go in on getting a whole pig with the neighbors down the street but I don’t know what our actual capacity for jowl and trotter might be. It’s not like I’m Chris Cosentino or anything, who could probably propose to a woman with a fried calf brain and a lamb tongue and still get lucky.

So we’d had our first anniversary last month at a Stag Dinner in her friend Chicken John’s art space, down the street from the Victorian where she used to live. Pretty cool, and Chloe didn’t flinch at the oyster starter or the second course of squid stuffed with blood sausage. But now her birthday was coming up, on April 1st, and I had to come up with something to top that, without tapping into what we’re saving for going to Bali in December.

That’s when I saw it on my Twitter feed: another underground restaurant, this one by Guerrilla Greens. I hadn’t heard of them, but I figured they were probably part of the East Bay's roving, ever-shifting band of backyard-chickening, rooftop-beekeeping, front-yard-chard-growers. They made me feel old, they were so earnest and gluten-free in their muddy Carharts, foraged lemons rolling around the back of their pickup trucks. But at least a couple of these types could usually be counted on to have worked the line at Ubuntu or done a stage at Saison. I signed us up.

Ok, so maybe I should have seen something weird right then. See, they didn’t ask for an email address or a Paypal account, just my address. In fact, there wasn’t any mention of money at all, which was definitely strange, since usually these dinners are, you know, pretty expensive, especially given that the bathroom's usually down 2 flights of stairs and the main course takes three hours to come out and then it's something like three little pieces of raw goat meat in argan oil covered in flowers.

But I wanted to convince myself that maybe this was something really new. Maybe they were trying some kind of different slow-money business model with kale donated by Novella Carpenter. Not that I wanted us digging into platefuls of cougar-chomped lamb, but why couldn’t there be a new post-capitalism paradigm at work? Underground restaurant, underground biz model, right?

Until I woke up on Monday. Shower, shave, go into the kitchen to steam up an almond-milk double latte for Chloe. Except that the stove’s not there. The refrigerator is gone, too, which is okay because we stopped keeping our coffee beans in the freezer after the guy at Sightglass told us how that shocks the beans. And I usually make the almond milk myself in the Vitamix, so I still should be able to make Chloe her coffee. Except these Guerrilla Greens—and really, who else could it be?—have taken everything with a plug. The espresso machine, the juicer, the toaster, even the crockpot given to us not-really-ironically from Chloe’s mom.

There was firewood piled where the television, stereo, and Netflix envelopes had been. They’d left the iPad, which was nice, but after all, they'd need the Twitter feed to explain themselves. Even without the carefully calibrated fair-trade, shade-grown buzz I’d become so used to every morning, I was beginning to understand.

We weren’t going to their restaurant. Their restaurant was coming to us. We were becoming their restaurant. Their restaurant was inside us.

I picked up the iPad. There, on their Twitter feed, was their paradigm: THE NEW URBAN HOMESTEADING. BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

My hands were shaking. I did my yoga breathing. If only they'd left us some matches, we could still make pour-over coffee.

While I crumpled up old copies of the East Bay Express to get the fire going, Chloe came in from the backyard, a baby goat in her arms and a chard leaf caught in her pigtails.

“This..is...the…cutest…thing…I’ve..ever…seen,” she breathed, snuggling her chin between the kid’s floppy little ears. “I’m going back outside to get us some milk for breakfast.”

“But, Chloe,” I whined. “What about your lactose intolerance?” But she didn’t answer; looking out, I could see her head already tucked tightly against the furry brown side of one of the four dwarf goats wandering through the backyard, nibbling the oak branches and trimming down the blackberry brambles. "Aren't you going to be late for Hot Zumba?"

“It’s like squeezing a hairy water balloon!” she called back, as a family of quails skittered over to the compost pile, followed by three seagulls and five high-stepping pigeons. A snake lolled on one of the three discarded, empty computer monitors which were now filled with honeycomb and a swarm of slightly angry-sounding bees. A bag of clay kitty litter and a bale of straw sat in a back corner. I knew, without looking, that the next tweet would be cryptic instructions for building a cob oven.

I still need my coffee every morning, but besides that, it’s not so bad. I know what to do now. Chloe freecycled a hand-cranked coffee grinder, and we filter it through one of her old American Apparel tank tops. We’re naked now, most of the time; it just feels better, especially after a whole bunch of snails moved into the shower. We sleep on the moss under the oak tree; our futon's under the porch, growing our first crop of enoki mushrooms. Chloe says we should have our friends over for escargots in goat butter next week.

Did you know that snake makes an awesome curry? You should try it, you know. Just get on our Twitter feed. We'll tell you how.

Vanessa Barrington (Twitter: @veebee22) is a food writer and cookbook author based in the Temescal District in Oakland. She is the author of the recently published D.I.Y. Delicious (Twitter: @DIYDelicious): Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food From Scratch (Chronicle Books, Fall 2010) and co-authored Heirloom Beans with Steve Sando (Chronicle Books, 2008). She works as a consultant with HavenB Media on food, agriculture, and environmental issues. She also blogs about food policy and healthy cooking for EcoSalon.com, Civil Eats.com, and most recently, OaklandLocal.com. For recipes and current food writing go to vanessabarrington.com. Barrington was born in Salt Lake City, and said she “moved to Santa Rosa when I was 4. (and) spent most of my life in the Bay Area and Sonoma County.”

FOOD SHOPPING

“East Bay Farmers’ Markets: I base all of my food shopping around the farmers’ markets and supplement from there. I love The Grand Lake Farmers’ Market for its urban Oakland feeling and the mix of vendors. Also the Temescal Market. It’s close to my house, it’s on Sunday. and it’s fun to watch all the kids. Love Tomatero Farm, Catalan Farm, Blossom Bluff, Scream Sorbet, and Massa Organics for brown rice. In the summer I tend toward the Berkeley Saturday market. First stops are always River Dog Farm, La Tercera Farm, and Morrell’s Bread.”

“Market Hall in Rockridge —it’s less crowded than some of the more popular grocery stores, a short bike ride from my house, and I can get everything I need there. The produce store has local organic selections, for when I don’t make it to the farmers’ market, and a nice selection of heirloom beans.

The new Marin Sun Farms butchers rock my world. They are real pros (and they know where the meat is from). I wasn’t eating much meat at all until they opened because I’m kind of a stickler about local, small-scale, humane meat. Now I’m often in there picking up some goat chops, or a pork shoulder for braising. Favorite things are the duck crépinettes and the porchetta sandwich that they make on weekends. It has thinly sliced fennel, spicy arugula and they build the sandwich so almost every bite has a crispy bit of pork skin. At The Pasta Shop, I like to check the top of the pasta counter for day-old ravioli. It’s the best deal in town. And their new cheese counter is great.”

“Rainbow Grocery is one thing I miss about living in SF. They have the best bulk section on the planet for dried heirloom beans (including Rancho Gordo) and grains, as well as teas, olive oil, maple syrup, etc. Gordon, their cheesemonger, has turned the cheese counter into one of the best anywhere, and the produce buyers go to great lengths to offer as much local and organic produce as possible, while still maintaining a good selection.”

“For Asian groceries, the New May Wah store on Clement is wonderful. They have everything you need for Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and Korean cooking adventures.”

EATING AND DRINKING

Barrington said that, “This changes all the time, depending on my mood and who I’m dining/drinking with.

Currently I like CommonWealth on Telegraph. You can go in at night and get a really nice beer and some Shepherd’s Pie or a pressed sandwich. During the day, you can order coffee and an excellent scone with Devonshire cream and jam. It’s comfortable and friendly. Just a great place to hang out.

Saul’s is great because they serve wonderful deli food but they source local and humanely raised meats, introduce seasonality into the mix (especially in their specials) and they even make their own sodas!”

MOM AND POP SPOTS, WITH A LATIN AMERICAN BENT

“I haven’t found my favorite mom and pop restaurant in Oakland yet. Still looking. And all of these are Latin American, but they are all I can think of.

I like El Trebol on 24th in The Mission because it literally is mom and pop and their kitchen is a literal hole in the wall and they are sweet and have been there for years. It’s really cheap and good—especially the pupusas, refried beans, plantains, and crema.

I love Pastores on Mission—the food there is special and the owner, Irma, is a graduate of La Cocina. The last time I was there, she was in the kitchen cooking everything to order—I haven’t been in forever though, so I’m not sure if it’s still the same. I remember the chilaquiles and the chicken enchiladas with tomatilla salsa fondly. To my knowledge, there’s no pop, just mom.

La Borinquena —family owned Mex-icatessen in Oakland on 7th Street. I go there for tortillas, tamales, and Mexican groceries. Family owned since 1944.“

DATE NIGHT

“Hibiscus: Great atmosphere. Comfortable but romantic. Hand-blown glass chandeliers. Order the spicy crab and grits or the fried chicken. Great cocktails.

Camino: Another restaurant that just feels really good, comfortable, and spacious. Love their brunch, especially the baked eggs, sausage and roasted duck fat potatoes, the crab prix fixe on Monday nights during Dungeness season can’t be beat. Their menu is small but everything on it is always perfect. It’s great for double dates because you can order almost everything on the menu and share. Also delicious cocktails!”

GUILTIEST PLEASURE

“Kozy Shack chocolate and tapioca puddings. Yep, even the staunchest advocate of home cooking buys store-bought pudding. Sometimes you just need pudding and you don’t want to make it. There’s no fake stuff in here and it doesn’t taste like chemicals so it passes muster with me.”

Hungry for more? Try Barrington’s recipes for grainy prepared mustard and a mustard-bourbon glazed pork roast. Find out what it’s like to D.I.Y., Vanessa Barrington style.

Vanessa Barrington’s Mustard and Bourbon–Glazed Pork Roast
Recipe credit: Vanessa Barrington, D.I.Y. Delicious, Chronicle Books, 2010

Here’s an uncomplicated, crowd-pleasing way to cook an inexpensive cut of meat. This recipe utilizes your Grainy Prepared Mustard and pairs well with a variety of different side dishes. It also yields versatile leftovers that you can use for Pulled Pork Canapés with Fig-Rosemary Jam in sandwiches, on pizza, or stuffed into Corn Tortillas with Simple Tomato Salsa or Avocado-Tomatillo Salsa.

Time Required: about 25 minutes active; 3 hours passive (excluding mustard preparation)
Yield: 6-8 Servings

One 4-pound boneless pork shoulder roast (ask your butcher to roll and tie it)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup bourbon
3 tablespoons any version Grainy Prepared Mustard (see recipe below)

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F. Season the roast all over with salt and pepper.

In a heavy, dry cast-iron skillet over medium-high to high heat, brown the roast all over. Start with the fat side down, and turn with tongs until the roast is a deep caramel brown all over, 10 to 15 minutes. The fat from the roast should render, providing plenty of oil to brown the roast. (If the roast is very lean and you feel you need oil, use a tablespoon or so of refined vegetable oil suitable for high-heat cooking.)

Remove the roast to a plate and let the pan cool slightly. Pour off the excess fat and wipe out any burned bits. While the pan cools, in a small bowl, whisk together the sugar, bourbon, and mustard.

Return the roast to the pan and pour half of the glaze over it, turning the roast to coat it completely and using your hands to distribute the glaze evenly. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and roast for 2 hours, turning and basting every half hour with the remaining glaze.

Remove the foil and increase the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Continue to roast uncovered, until the glaze reduces and the pork is glossy brown and thickly coated with glaze, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Let the roast rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

---

Vanessa Barrington’s Grainy Prepared Mustard
Recipe credit: Vanessa Barrington, D.I.Y. Delicious, Chronicle Books, 2010

Homemade mustard has so much more flavor than store-bought and has many uses in the kitchen. Whisk it with bourbon to make a glaze for pork or with maple syrup to caramelize root vegetables, stir it into vinaigrette, or simply spread it on sandwiches.

Mustard is simple to make, economical, and easy to vary to your taste. A word of warning: Your homemade mustard will always be quite a bit spicier than store-bought. You can control this somewhat by varying the ratio of brown to yellow seeds (brown are more pungent). You can also add sugar, honey, maple sugar, or other sweeteners to temper the spice. You won’t need to use much in a recipe or on a sandwich to get a big mustard flavor and the mustard will mellow with time in the refrigerator.

Time Required: about 10 minutes active; 24 hours passive
Yield: Makes 1 cup

3/4 cup liquid (mixture of vinegar and wine, beer, or some other alcohol; see Note)
1/2 cup mustard seeds (brown or yellow)
About 1 tablespoon finely chopped aromatics like onions, garlic, or shallots
About 1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs (optional)
About 1 tablespoon (sugar, honey, or maple syrup; optional)
Salt

Put the liquids, mustard seeds, aromatics, herbs, and sweeteners in a nonreactive (ceramic or pottery) bowl and soak overnight in the refrigerator.

In a blender or food processor, blend the mustard to the desired consistency. Depending on your equipment and inclination, this can take up to 5 minutes. Don’t expect your mustard to be as smooth as factory-made mustard. Add salt to taste as you blend. Transfer to jars and seal. Will keep, refrigerated, up to 3 months.

Note: If you don’t wish to use alcohol, replace the alcohol portion of the liquid with water. Mustards made solely with vinegar can be overwhelmingly vinegary.

One of my favorite culinary mash-ups of recent years is the Vietnamese-Chinese-Cajun crawfish boil served with rice or garlic noodles. Following the arc of families moving from Vietnam to New Orleans to Southern California to, finally, San Jose and San Francisco, mud bugs have taken a garlicky turn and shown up, of all places, in Little Saigon's across the country.

Red Crawfish in San Francisco's Tenderloin is the one closest and dearest to me, as I head over that way anytime I'm craving familiar, comforting flavors. Boiled crawfish is a new tradition among my peeps, but it's one that I'm very happy to adopt, too.

Eating here is a dress-down, messy affair that requires friends with absolutely no pretensions about food. The red, steaming, spicy crawfish come out from the kitchen in pails and are plopped down on the paper-topped table inside plastic bags, rather than piled right on the table, to hold in all that the thick, rich broth.

I love very spicy food and found that the medium was just fine for me. If you're hungry and a bit of a glutton, you could eat two pounds of crawfish with nothing else, but it's definitely hard to resist popular side orders like batter-fried sweet potatoes, buttery garlic noodles, buttery garlic toast, or just plain rice. You can also order potatoes and corn on the cob, and they'll throw them right in with the crawfish. If you don't suck the heads (and the purists among us would insist that you do), you should at least order some garlic noodles or a bowl of rice for soaking up all the juicy goodness that spurts out of each one.

There are other entrees on the Red Crawfish's menu -- the usual suspects of Vietnamese fare dominates over the Cajun influence -- but I haven't yet strayed far from the namesake of the restaurant. The huge bowl of spicy seafood soup is definitely worth sharing, while next on my list is one of my favorite dishes, bun rieu, seafood and tomato-tinged broth served over rice noodles.

For the DIY folks, there's also plenty of local crawfish harvested from the Sacramento Delta and from California's rice fields. Although the Isleton Crawdad Festival was canceled last month, another victim of the recession, you can still pick up live mud bugs (more for the rest of us!) from Bob's Bait Shop a.k.a. The Master Baiter. Located near the Sacramento Delta and the premier sources of live bait in the area, the shop also provides local crawfish for cooks picky about freshness. Be sure to call in advance, especially if you need more than 15 pounds. Check also with large Asian supermarkets near you, especially 99 Ranch Market, where crawfish can often be found crawling around live in the tanks.

Those of us who have no shame will even ask the server at Red Crawfish to leave all the shells on the table so that, at the end of the meal, we can bag them up, spices and all, to make a very tasty stock back at home. Add some Cajun trinity, some dark roux, stir in a little heavy cream and lots of dry sherry, pull out a blender and a mesh strainer -- and you have a pot of mighty tasty soup.

RED CRAWFISH
611 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 771-1388
Map

BOB'S BAIT SHOP
302 2nd Street
Isleton, CA 95641
(916) 777-6666 or (916) 777-6806
Map

Barbecue is literally the slowest of slow foods, not a sauce, but a process, a ponderous and primitive one often measured in days as much as hours. It's much more than mere technique. Like a Bedouin goat roast or a Hawaiian luau, barbecue is a festive carnivorous rite, the sort of party humans all over the world have thrown ever since they could catch the beasts they wanted to eat. Barbecue is a distinctly American tradition, however, and it warrants esteem in our food culture, one that increasingly values authenticity, heritage, and, importantly, a bargain. Historically, barbecue began as poor food. Indirect smoking with hardwood chips and charcoal renders sumptuous feeds from large, inexpensive, uncompromising cuts of meat the non-wealthy can readily afford. Today, due to trend as well as economic circumstance, food writers and chefs champion sustainability, rhapsodize about nose-to-tail eating, and fetishize la cucina povera across cultures. Hip local foodies head to starred eateries to scarf humble ribollita and marrow, and food glossies aggressively explore the homey cooking traditions of everyday people in distant locales.

Even though food tied firmly to a place invariably tastes best in its native setting, barbecue should have a stronger presence here. Sadly, like real bagels and perfect pizza slices, there's something about it San Francisco doesn't quite get.

L.A. export Baby Blues BBQ sits in an old pharmacy storefront on Mission Street at the base of Bernal Hill in San Francisco. The restaurant headed up the S.F. Chronicle's flimsy "new-school" Bay Area barbecue round-up back in February. In the article, the proprietor described his establishment's style as a hybrid, with dry rub from Texas, greens from Kansas City, and grilled shrimp from New Orleans. While only one of those things necessarily has anything whatsoever to do with barbecue, I withheld preliminary judgement, assuming I'd look for proof in the pork. The same writer, Amanda Gold, penned a largely favorable review less than two months later, hailing Baby Blues' offerings as "spot-on," and singling out the brisket and ribs in particular for accolades.

The brisket was, in fact, good -- shredded, not sliced as is customary, slightly sweet, with a broad, warm flavor that belied the stringy appearance. On the other hand, the chicken was desert-dry and the pork shoulder shockingly tasteless. Sauce helped but it shouldn't have been necessary. Good barbecue doesn't truly need sauce, maybe just a splash of vinegary Crystal. The Baby Blues macaroni and cheese was pretty tasty but that came as no surprise. The tidy tureen of pasta, butter, cream, and cheese congregated in creamy, crust-topped ooze resembled a miniature version of one of the less flamboyant goofily greasy things you'd see on thisiswhyyourefat.com. Pork and beans: dreary canned ones of various stripes, topped with some of the same tasteless pork shoulder. Mashed sweet potatoes: one-dimensional and cloying. Great sides are not a prerequisite for even serviceable barbecue but they sure help, especially when a bunch of people are trying to eat until they can't walk.

Dodging categorization is no boon when it comes to barbecue. Homogenizing its varied nuances with the perceived intent of garnering broader appeal smacks of desperation or at least excessive compromise, not inclusivity. Barbecue pit-masters, are curators of sorts. They consciously nurture and carry on a tradition, just making something they really, really know exactly the way they think it should be made for anyone who happens to be interested. Diners prize authenticity when it comes to regional Italian fare; they should when it comes to barbecue as well.

Maybe we're barking up the wrong tree even hoping to find what we're looking for at a place like Baby Blues. Throughout the barbecue belt, you'll eat some of the best barbecue in the world at church benefit suppers, desolate country grocery stores on two-lane roads, and strange little delis straddling dusty cracks in the interstate, not just at grand 'cue emporiums with bright lights and long lines.

Fittingly, in keeping with another current trend, that of back alley catering and restaurant-esque entities sprouting up all over town, the d.i.y. barbecue operations churning away on the edges of the local food scene actually best the likes of Baby Blues, Memphis Minnie's, and Big Nate's. There's definitely something appealing about outlaw status, and barbecue wears it especially well, even here. While the best pork barbecue I've had in San Francisco had to fly 2,000 miles from a deli case in Allen County, Kentucky, there are a few local super-smokers doing it right under-the-radar:

Try ordering a spread from Oakland-based Sneaky's BBQ for your next business meeting. Since 2008, the smoker-in-chief, a native of South Carolina, has been faithfully recreating the barbecue he knew back home -- husky, succulent pork shoulder with pepper-flecked vinegar-laced red sauce and racks of chewy baby-back ribs -- and delivering it, quite sneakily, in an unmarked van (red like the sauce), to homes, offices, and even park parties. It's popping off on Yelp and Chowhound for a reason. It tastes like vigilance. When you're eating it, you easily imagine the whole ritual -- the meat hitting the grill just after rush hour, and coming off, sticky-black, hours and hours later, as well as the sleepless night vigil, the sense, perhaps, of beers drunk and cigarettes smoked, of bleary eyes peering down and smudged hands reaching to open and close flutes at the proper intervals while the rest of the neighborhood sleeps.

The Broken Record is a mildly Zeigeist-y bar in the Excelsior. Chef Ryan Ostler, an alum of Boulevard, doesn't own it but he cooks from behind a wooden, windowed counter buried in the back. He's a Mission Street Food veteran, no stranger to the underground eatery game. The bar's offerings run the gamut from frito pies and amazing 'kraut-topped boar and pheasant sausages (sweet, high-flying stoner-pub party fare, yes, but not barbecue) to pulled pork sandwiches (serious barbecue). Of course, it's a chef's whim kind of place at heart. Sometimes, you show up and the pork isn't done. Or it is done, but it hasn't been carved up yet. Or it was ready hours ago and now there's none left. According to Ostler, they smoke every day, but quantities are limited. If you miss out, eat a sausage. Barbecue is not, after all, on-demand.

Baby Blues BBQ
3149 Mission St. in San Francisco
415-896-4250

Sneaky's BBQ

The Broken Record
1166 Geneva Ave. in San Francisco
415-963-1713

Although I couldn't attend this past weekend's Maker Faire, with its inaugural section dedicated to food, I did have a chance to learn a few new tricks for the kitchen.

It's not a recent phenomenon for cooks to hack their utensils and ingredients—Homo "Handy Man" habilis figured out that meat on the stick thing, Mongol horsemen multitasked by salting and tenderizing and cooking their meat under their saddles, and my mom catches plump frogs with her pasta colander—but the DIY movement has inspired a whole new generation to explore simple, cheap, ingenious ways to accomplish everyday tasks.

Anyone who stocks up on vinegar and baking soda already knows many of the old ways. On the glossier and quirkier end of the spectrum is Ito-ke no Shokutaku (The Ito Family Dinner Table). A wildly popular series, one of those only-in-Japan variety shows in which celebrities demonstrate useful tips contributed by its viewers, it once held the regular attention of nearly 30 percent of households in Japan. Websites, social clubs, and obsessions ensued. These tips are known collectively as urawaza, which deftly applies the word for "unmapped shortcut" to a secret trick.

Local writer Lisa Katayama bundled some of her favorite urawaza into a book, Urazawa: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan. My copy (kindly sent to me by Chronicle Books just in time for this posting) has a few pages marked for testing later: drink green tea after a garlicky meal to prevent a stinky mouth, scrubbing with eggshells to remove scorch marks on pots, tucking chile peppers in your socks to keep your toes warm. Others leave me scratching my head, like the suggestion to add olive oil to a glass of beer to reduce its foam; a spoon seems a much more respectful and easy way to remove unwanted head from a well-crafted brew. Still, Urazawa was a quick and fun read as well as a wonderful reminder to think creatively about life's little challenges.

The interwebs, of course, has many pages dedicated to everyday life-hacking. Googling "food hack" taught me how to peel mangoes quickly and cleanly and how to start a fire with a Coke can and chocolate bar. Here in San Francisco, Mark Powell, a self-described hacker chef of the "anarchist food aesthetic," has set up his kitchen lab at the Unicorn Precinct XIII in Bernal Heights. Chefs, of course, are famous for their trucs of the trade, though these days, nitrogen tanks and pressure probes seem to be more the thing than paper clips and flame-throwers.

I'll leave you with a few of my own kitchen tricks, absorbed from my visits with aunties from Missouri to Malaysia.

• After soaking dried tamarind in water, use the strained fruit and fibers to polish your copper pans and bowls.
• Use the edge of a small spoon to peel the crooks and crannies of knobby ginger.
• After harvesting a crop of onions or shallots from your garden, drop them into the legs of clean but run-ridden pantyhose. Knot the hose to separate the bulbs and then hang in a cool, dry place to last throughout the winter. When you need some allium, just snip a knot. The more colorful your hose, the more festive your cellar.
• Clean out the fragrant cardamom and cumin powder from an electric spice grinder by following your garam masala with a few small pieces of bread. The resulting breadcrumbs soak up all the powdered spice. If you're especially dedicated, you can then use those crumbs in a nice filling or gratin.