Last week, still heavily under the influence of jet lag, Shannon, my oldest friend in the world, whisked me down to Redwood City late Saturday night so that I might spend some time with her family, make breakfast, and later accompany my goddaughter to a community theater production of Annie Get Your Gun. Typical, wholesome Sunday fun.

When I awoke to the various sounds of three children trying to be quiet-- enjoyable to someone like me who merely borrows the children of others but does not have to live with them-- I wandered into the kitchen to find that, not only had the morning's menu been decided, but preparations had been made in advance-- enjoyable to someone like me to whom the words "let's make breakfast!" are sometimes uttered, but the planning and execution are invariably a solo effort, in which case I try to dirty as many dishes as possible.

Craig, my college roommate and the man Shannon had the good sense to marry, announced that he and my goddaughter had been foraging for acorns. Acorns. When I think of foraging, if at all, my mind goes to truffle pigs and strange old men materializing back around the kitchen door with boxes of strange looking mushrooms in their arms and cigarettes dangling from their weather-beaten lower lips. Acorns call to the mind irritatingly industrious and moralizing rodents of fable. I had always thought of foragers as edgy, marginalized, or borderline crazy. Modern foragers do not go to spas for Rolfing sessions or have cable television. I was now faced with performing a quick and rather drastic reassessment. The only two foragers I actually knew were standing in front of me with a bowl of acorns-- a 38-year-old man and an 8-3/4-year-old girl. Based upon the new information at hand, I had to decide that foraging was not necessarily a desperate reaction to hunger performed by those who are either too chicken or too lazy to go out and hunt wild animals. Nor was it necessarily a rejection of supermarket commercialism. As I looked into their proud faces, I decided that foraging was painfully cute. It was an act, in this case, of optimism and resourcefulness.

Shannon mused that she was glad to know she would now be able to feed her family in the event of the Apocalypse. We spent the next two minutes explaining what the Apocalypse was to my goddaughter. She was unimpressed.

Suddenly, foraging for acorns seem like a very, very good idea. I was saved from spending too much time figuring out how I would survive in San Francisco when the world finally goes to Hell by the fact that there were three hungry children and an equal amount of adults who needed to be fed. With acorns.

Though I am technically 1/8 Native American, genetically speaking, I received none of the famous resourcefulness of these ancestors. Neither did I inherit their characteristic lack of body hair or intolerance to alcohol, but those are topics for other blogs. Besides, my ancestors were from the Great Plains. They couldn't walk ten steps without falling over a bison. I had no idea what to do with acorns. Fortunately, Craig has an intimate understanding of both the Internet and how to read cookbooks. He did a little research and got some ideas, the best of which was pancakes. Acorn pancakes.

According to Siouxme.com, acorns were once the main food staple of nearly 3/4 of the Native Californian population. The most common oak trees found in the Bay Area are the Tan Oak, the Black Oak, the Live Oak, and the Valley Oak. (If you don't know why I'm talking about oak trees... please say you know why I'm talking about oak trees.) The Pomo Tribe preferred the acorns from the Tan Oak, feeling that they had superior flavor. The Miwoks preferred Black Oak acorns, because it took less leeching to rid them of their bitter tannic acid. The conflict between what is good and what is convenient is as old as the ages, it would seem. These original food snobs of the Bay Area pronounced the acorn of the Live Oak as "too wormy" and "too easy to get-- nothing that plentiful can be very good."

Craig performed a similar experiment and came to basically the same conclusion. I am also grateful that he took the time to leech the acorns himself, sparing me the effort. So, with thoughts of feeding his hungry brood, he handed me a bowl of acorn meal and recipe for pancakes, Shannon turned on the griddle, and I proceeded to make the pancakes.

The results were great. The meal had a flavor reminiscent of chestnuts. When combined with honey and butter? I would use an expletive here to convey how good they were, but I thought better of it.

Three cheers for acorn pancakes.

Acorn Pancakes

If foraging on your own, look down-- you want the ones which have fallen from the tree. You might consider wearing protective headgear, since Autumn is the only time to gather acorns and, since one invariably spends a good amount of time directly beneath the canopy of oak trees when one is gathering the goods, odds are decent that some might leap to their death from the branches and on to one's head. Lawsuits against oak trees can be costly and, most likely, pointless.

Speaking of headgear, look for acorns still wearing their "little hats". Those found without these hats are likely to be infested with weevils, which some might consider appealingly value-added, in terms of protein content. I doubt these would add much value to pancake batter.

Ingredients:

1 cup acorn meal *
1 cup white flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
1/4 cup of oil (vegetable or some other neutral-flavored type.)
1/2 cup honey
2 cups milk

Preparation:

1. Preheat griddle to medium heat.
2. Combine dry ingredients in whatever large bowl you like. One with a spout is most welcome.
3. Combine oil, honey, eggs, and milk until smooth in consistency.
4. Combine the wet with the dry ingredients into the large bowl.
5. Adjust by adding more milk if the batter appears too thick, more flour if too thin. The nature
of all acorn meal is not equal. The batter should be thin enough to pour, but not runny, as
one might imagine.
6. Drop an experimental dollop of batter onto griddle. Adjust heat accordingly.
7. Griddle dollar-sized pancakes until the bottoms are browned and the top side bubbles.
About three minutes. Flip and cook until cakes are barely firm to the touch.
8. Remove pancakes to a warm plate. I hold mine in a warm oven covered with a towel until
all the pancakes have been made.
9. Serve hot with butter and honey. Or whatever you feel like. I don't really care. As long as
it makes you happy and harms no one.

Makes about 36 dollar-sized pancakes. I was not anal-retentive enough in this case to count them. We were too busy eating them as they came off the griddle to get an accurate number.

* I know I have not walked you through the process of leeching acorns, but I have not walked down that road myself. Go do an internet search or something. It's not like you have anything better to do, seeing that you've managed to waste enough time reading about my pancakes.

In the months prior to this post, I'd been working extra shifts at the restaurant in an effort to save up some extra cash for my holiday in Greece. The closer I got to the date of my departure, it would seem, the further I removed myself from the guests entrusted to my care. As pleasant and down right friendly as I was with my guests-- most often genuinely, I suppose the strain of too many shifts was beginning to seep trough the cracks of my smile. The people who sat at my tables were losing their status as welcomed guests, becoming now customers with open wallets whose purpose was to fund my impending trip. I started muttering unpleasantries under my minted waiter's breath over the slightest inconvenience. Perhaps that's going a bit too far, but I could feel it happening and that's not good, especially in my line of work.

I began to sincerely question the wisdom of running myself into the ground physically and emotionally so that I might be more able to relax on vacation. As a front line player in the hospitality industry, I was losing the sense of what it means to be truly hospitable.

And then I met Dina.

A colleague of mine arranged for me to stay with an old family friend of his in Oia, Santorini. She had a couple of apartments to let. "Great," I said, "How much will it cost? What's her email?" When I asked if I could take a look at her website, my friend gave me a pitying look one might offer a person who has sustained irreversible brain damage. No website. No email. What I didn't know about little old Greek ladies could have filled... I don't know what it could have filled, but it would have to have been big.

"Just trust me. I spent my honeymoon there. You'll love it." Trust me. That's what he says to guests who tell him to select a nice Burgundy for them. Given his rather expensive taste in wine, I had the feeling Dina's place would probably suit me just fine. He made a call and arranged everything for me. "You'll meet her in front of Restaurant 1800 on the 20th between 9:00 and 9:30 pm." That's all the information I had.

I was exhausted when I arrived in Santorini after spending twenty sleepless--thanks to a well-meaning Philipina woman who kept poking my Ambien-drugged arm to tell me not to forget my shoes. As if I were somehow going to walk off the plane for some fresh air over Greenland-- hours wedged into three different plane seats and as many airports and taxis. I showed up at the restaurant with two equally exhausted friends in tow. As we stood in front of the restaurant, I realized that I had just come half way around the world to stay with some woman I've never met, whose accommodations I've never seen let alone received an address for, and that we were meeting her at a rather vague hour. What if she didn't show? I felt rather helpless over the situation and entirely responsible for the well being of my friends.

9:00 came and went. So did 9:30. I began composing my apology to Michael and Dan, who were leaning against the wall of the restaurant, trying to smile. Where else could we stay on such short notice? As I began mentally calculating my now-plummeting credibility rating, a small woman of about 60 in a sleeveless dress came straight up to me.

"Michalis?" she asked. "Neh?", I responded with one of the twelve Greek words I knew. It was Dina. Everything else she said to me was in Greek except "sorry". She was sorry for being a little late, but her explanation was completely lost on me. I didn't much care, I was just so happy to see her. She led us off into the dark streets and down about one hundred steps to our apartment.

As we put our bags down and settled in, Dina talked and talked. I wondered if she thought I spoke Greek because I had been able to say "yes" in her language. That, and the fact that my friend who made the arrangements for us was Greek. Whatever the case, it didn't really matter. I found her fascinating, even in my exhausted state. She brought out a bottle of ouzo, three glasses and some ice. It was clear that we understood each other. Words were unimportant.

In the morning, we were greeted again by Dina's sing song voice. She told us to have a seat, or so we gathered from her hand gestures. The sun was very bright and we were somewhat stunned at the beautiful view we had of the Caldera and surrounding little islands. She opened a large table umbrella to shade us as we sat down to breakfast.

I was expecting some bread and jam with a little coffee-- the typical European breakfast staples. Bread and jam did, in fact come out, but now how I expected...

Dakos, a barley rusk bread from Crete arrived smeared with fresh island tomatoes of a concentrated flavor and fresh feta cheese. She'd even picked the tops off her basil plants to garnish every piece.

The apricot jam she made herself arrived both in a giant glass jar and inside these little cookies she had baked for us while we were sleeping...

Rounding things out nicely were the tiropita she made-- little triangles of phyllo filled with cheese and served with Greek honey, which also accompanied the Yogurt, which is unlike any other yogurt I've tasted.

In the evenings, if she saw us sitting outside, she'd pull out an unlabeled bottle of local white wine, pour us each a glass and leave the bottle or grill us up some octopus. A little pat on the shoulder for me in the afternoon, a fresh towel at night, a cup of Greek coffee in the morning. Everything Dina did seemed to be touched with a sense of grace and humor. She was as warm as the sun on our yet-to-be-burned shoulders. The words she spoke to me weren't necessarily understood, but her meaning was always clear. "You are most welcome."

The Greeks have a word for it, but don't they seem to have a word for everything? In this case, the word is philoxenia. Philos= love, xeno= stranger. Essentially, the word means "hospitality" but that definition is too facile. One enters a Greek household and one is immediately offered a drink and something to eat. Taking care of a guest's wants and needs is deeply ingrained into the culture. There is a sense of generosity that seems completely unstrained. As a guest of Dina's, even though this was ultimately (and I do not mean this cynically) to be a moneyed transaction, I found her kindness was not something that was paid for. My stay with her completely refreshing in every sense of the word. I felt restored. And I am most grateful.

One of the reasons I am grateful is that I was given a refresher course on what it means to be truly hospitable. I think that this souvenir of Santorini is much more valuable to me and my work than any t-shirt or postcard could ever be, certainly. While I'm still basking in the glow of my vacation and as-yet-unfaded tan, that sense of hospitality and warmth is easy to share. But as the tan disappears and I head into foreseeable pressures of the oncoming holiday season, I will remember Dina and how she treated me, and be able to keep smiling as I go get that side of ketchup for that woman who wants to taste about 15 different wines after she's finally settled to the fourth table she's tried on for size. She is a guest, after all.

... or The Carnivore's Dilemma.

Originally, I had thought to do a little post on yet another odd celebrity cookbook, this one by Ted (Cat Scratch Fever) Nugent and his wife, Shemane. I thought I might be able to write an entire piece on the cover photo alone. Or Her name. Shemane.

I was immediately drawn to the cover photo with its creepy magenta-red side lighting, as though the blood from an elk Ted had just shot was seeping from the carcass, onto the hood of the truck where it was tied, and over the headlamps like some macabre gel. They may have thought the light looked pretty, so they got out of the truck and had their son take a picture. Or used a self-timer. That seems a more appropriate technique given this book's subtext of self-sufficiency.

I was also intrigued by the fact that, though Ted may be holding a long phallus of a rifle, Shemane holds an infinitely more sinister-looking instrument of torture. Something that might be a large hunting version of a tomato knife. And a spatula. Of course, with the spatula, she looks more the kill-it-and-griddle-it-type.

Kill It & Grill It is an entertaining read, whether one agrees with Nugent's politics or not. Just take a look at an excerpt from Chapter 16: Limbrat Etouffée:

"Kill tree-dwelling vermin, remove PJs, take to flame, chow down. Drive safely. It's really that simple to get a good meal of squirrel. Limbrat whackin' is truly bigfun [sic] any ol' way ya choose it-- bow and arrow, pistol, rifle, scattergun, slingshot, falconry, grenades, and my favorite, flamethrower. How can ya go wrong? Squirrels are, after all, rodents, so have fun blasting away. That there exists a season or bag-limit on the little shits is mind-boggling to say the least."

When he's not busy telling Democratic presidential candidates to either sit on or fellate his AR-15 rifles, Nugent spends a good deal of time hunting his own animal protein. He reportedly has not bought meat for decades. He hunts, he shoots, he eats what he kills. Outspoken arch-conservative or not, he is a man of strong opinions. He's caused me to take a moment and think about my own meat-eating ways.

I am a carnivore. Okay, I'm an omnivore. I could never give up bacon however I might try. But I've often thought about how far removed I am from the proteins I ingest. Would I, as an eater of animal flesh, be able to hunt down and kill my dinner?

In some cases, yes. If the animal isn't cuddly. I have in the past hunted, killed, and dressed lake trout. Cold blooded animals can be offed by me, naturally, in cold blood. A chicken? I've never seen one in the wild but, though unpleasant the task might be, I think I could do it. Maybe it's that animals whose eyes are on the sides of their heads are less unpleasant to slaughter due to the fact that they cannot look at you with both eyes at the same time.

I once had a lunch date with a man who turned out to be vegan. He was very pleased with his choice of lifestyle, as one should be. Having once dated a vegan in college, I knew that, no matter how wonderful this person might be, we could never have what I would consider a normal dating life. Vegetarianism I can happily accommodate. I eat vegetarian meals quite often. But the minute someone tells me I shouldn't eat cheese or that consuming honey is morally wrong because it represents bee enslavement, I want to remark that I think narrow-bandwidth thinking and a joyless, hyper-sensitive lifestyle is morally wrong because it results in human boredom.

Fortunately, my lunch date was a bore, or not that cute. I can't remember. My response to him was adolescent, at best. I ordered a pork dish and started talking about how, as Americans, we needed to start taking more responsibility for the meat products we eat and, should it become necessary, I would be willing look a cow in the eye and slaughter it on the spot.

It was perhaps the quickest lunch I've ever eaten outside a fast food restaurant.

And now I realize that, though my statement to the vegan was meant to provoke, it was utterly untrue. I don't have the guts to kill any animal cute enough to name. Yet I will happily eat from its flesh if someone else has done the dirty work. I am a hypocrite, yes, but a hungry one.

Though I am not a fan of guns, Sean Hannity, the current war, or much of anything loved by Ted Nugent, I have to give a grudging amount of respect to anyone who puts his money where his mouth is. Or his mouth where his bow and arrow have been. He, by and large, feeds his family on what he himself kills. I go to the store and ask if the neatly packaged chops that were once part of whole animals had been humanely treated in their lifetime. Sometimes. Other times, I forget and am shamed. I am aware of my own hypocrisy. Nugent occasionally makes others aware of their own. The fact that Animal Rights activists (in this case, extremists) have issued death threats against Nugent's children is a rather delicious irony.

By the time you read this post, I will be roaming the island of Santorini. Perhaps I might take the time to spear my own lavraki and throw it on a grill. Or perhaps one might catch me beating an octopus senseless on the rocks in order to tenderize its flesh in time for dinner. I doubt it. I'll let someone with a little more animal integrity to that for me.

I will be living such an aimless lifestyle for the next to weeks.

Apart from the angry comments from vegans I am likely to receive as a result of this post, I am curious to know the thoughts of you out there who are experiencing the same, or similar, meat-eating moral dilemma.

I'll see you in two weeks.

This week, I was invited to a Valrhona chocolate seminar at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco. Since I'd never been to a chocolate seminar, let alone the Ritz, and since someone was kind enough to invite me, I decided to go.

When I walked through the front door and into the lobby, I was greeted politely and pointed in the direction of the elevators, which took me down to the terrace on the second level. What I found there was a courtyard filled with tables piled with Valrhona information packets, cocoa pods and nibs, and perhaps the most sophisticated tent structure I've seen apart from a circus, which was what I half-seriously expected, only more tasteful. This is, after all, the Ritz-Calrton.

Inside the tent, I quickly found a seat near the front. I've never been one of those people comfortable sitting in the front row-- I don't want to be called upon unnecessarily-- so I took a seat in the second.

As I was claiming my spot, a woman dressed in third world fabric accessorized with an equally ethnic-looking woven headband rushed in to claim her seat at the front of the nearly empty tent. "Oh! They're playing chocolate music!" she said to no one in particular. Since I was the only other person in her general vicinity, I thought I should respond. When I asked her what she meant by "chocolate music", she slowed her pace and spoke to me very carefully. "It's music from chocolate producing countries." An "of course" was, if not spoken, implied. I thought about how other music collections, compiled solely on the basis of a common national export might sell. Boron music probably wouldn't do so well. And I didn't want to know who would be interested in guano music.

At least I was clear on the day's theme.

While waiting for the seminar to begin, I chatted with some people I knew and then sat down to talk to my neighbor, who I didn't know-- an amateur chocolatier from Marin. When she mentioned how excited she was about her purchase of a new chocolate tempering machine, I knew I was in alien territory. "You mean they have machines to do that?" I asked, sadly in all seriousness. It was clear that what I knew about chocolate could fill a diaper. I've formulated opinions about chocolate in my life, to be certain-- which types and brands I prefer and why, but I've never given the art of making chocolate much thought. I knew, of course, that chocolate is derived from a pod that thrives in equatorial climates, but the rest was a complete blank.

Fortunately, that was about to change...

When the tent was filled and everyone had finally taken their seats, the audience was introduced to Pierre Costet, Valrhona's chief cacao sourcer and Vanessa Lemoine, their sensorial analysis expert. With the aid of headphones and simultaneous translators of both sexes, we were kept informed-- and entertained-- for nearly three hours.

There is entirely too much to recount for the purposes of this blog, so I will give you what I think were the highlights...

In a short, dramatic re-creation, Costet, wearing his field cap and wielding a knife, took us through the process of sourcing cacao beans, after which he handed a prop burlap sack to Lemoine for analysis. Not exactly Comédie Française material, but I enjoyed the effort.

After explaining the process of cacao analysis, which included extras holding up their assessments to the audience, Lemoine then handed the sack back to Costet who explained that, if the cacao was found suitable by Valrhona for making chocolate, it must then be determined if the source of the beans is stable. Stable? Equatorial countries are not typically known as stable sources of trade, whether the reasons be political instability (Ivory Coast), political hostility (Venezuela), or a proneness to uninviting weather phenomena (Malaysia). If the source is determined to be stable, Valrhona then proceeds to hammer out a deal with the new grower, opting to set prices directly rather than deal with middlemen and the fluctuations of a volatile cacao exchange. According to Valrhona, this leads to more money for the growers and, hopefully, higher wages for the laborers. In Venezuela, for example, plantation owners must pay wages competitive with those offered by the government-- they actually have to entice labor.

Our political correctness satisfied, we could now move on to what we all really came for, tasting chocolate...

We proceeded to examine les coulisses du Grand Chocolat. A coulisse is (not surprising given the nature of the day's lecture) a theatrical term. It refers to either the wings of a stage or the place where backgrounds are stored. Lemoine was determined to set the stage, to have in place the proper background, before we began to actually taste chocolate.

We were instructed to hold a series of liquids under our nose to examine its odor, which is taken directly into the nasal passage. Did I smell apple? Melon? Dog biscuit? Next, we sipped each the liquid, holding it in our mouths, which helped us detect its aroma, which we learned is information taken indirectly or post nasally. Apparently, 90% of what we think of as taste is actually aroma-- information received through the nose, not the tongue. It is little wonder then, I thought, that the French are so tasteful. Then I thought again. Aromatic would be the correct term.

True taste is detected by the tongue. Conventional Western wisdom long kept a short list of four true taste sensations (sweet, salty, bitter, acid) and only recently allowed a fifth umami) onto the team. According to Lemoine, there are more than 1,000. We tried a sixth distinct taste (licorice). I was disappointed we didn't get to discuss this point further, but I think that might have been a bit overwhelming.

How To Taste Chocolate:

1. Look at it. Is it dark or milky? Is there a sheen or a matte finish?
2. Hold the chocolate to your nose and take in its odor.
3. Break a piece between your fingers. Is there a sharp snap or is there some give? A good snap is a sign of good tempering.
4. Put a piece of the chocolate into your mouth and assess its texture.
5. Allow the chocolate to melt in your mouth. Press it against your palate with your tongue. More of the aroma will now be released. Unless there is something very wrong with you, you will begin to salivate due to the chocolate's acidity. As you wait for the tang to subside, pay special attention to the back of your tongue. Is bitterness detected? Please limit your thoughts to the chocolate, not your life. Or your neighbor.
6. Repeat as often as necessary.

This approach to tasting chocolate struck me as very similar to the way one approaches the tasting of wine. The information is processed in very much the same way and in the same order. Just as there are those among us who can pick out a Griotte- Chambertin in a blind wine tasting, there are people, like Lemoine, who could spot the Araguani in a crowd. Both, in their own spheres, are given the title Grand Cru. The Griotte-Chambertin is a true Grand Cru, with its own A.O.C. designation. Valrhona's "Grand Cru" is more of a pretention, but one that tells the public that this is serious chocolate-- chocolate identified by terroir (another allusion to wine), cacao varietal, and blending.

I must admit that a chocolate glaze poured over my brain at about the second hour. To read about the different chocolates we tasted, I am sending you over to Dorie Greenspan, who took better notes on the subject than I did. She went to the seminar in New York the day prior.

All the chocolate we tasted was excellent, naturally, but the item I was most excited to try was basically chocolate detritus-- the cacao pulp. When fresh, as we tried it, the texture and flavor reminded me of a slightly underripe mango. The bean, unfermented and unroasted, was bitter and unpleasant. I wondered how anyone ever got the idea to turn this bitter little seed into something so utterly sensual and desirable as chocolate.

After the three hours of lecture and tasting, I was ready to stand up and stretch my legs. There were more Valrhona-related treats to be had, prepared by Yann Duytsche (who was plugging his book, Diversiones Dulces at the event)...

...and Valrhona USA's Derek Poirier. A tasting of five rather playful desserts, including a cocoa nibs foam with candied asparagus, Tainori jelly with tomato and basil, and an Abinao hot chocolate with Cramique brioche and aubergine jam (my hands down favorite)...

The confections were playful, to say the least. I was surprised at how well items like tomato and eggplant lent themselves to sweet dishes, but it all made sense to me upon the realization that they are classified as fruits. The green asparagus did nothing for me, but I enjoyed its culinary pretension.

Stephane Lacroix, sommelier at the Ritz-Carlton, paired a Muscat de Beaumes de Venise with the desserts. I'm afraid I am unable to remember the other wine he chose to pair with them because I was too busy imagining asking for my own private pairing with him. Apologies. Saturated with information, having had my fill of sweets, and with unsavory thoughts now filling my head, I thought it best to leave.

All in all, it was a very fun afternoon. I learned more about chocolate-- how it is sourced and processed, and how to approach tasting it-- than I ever thought I would. Critically or not, I'll let each piece melt on my tongue, let myself salivate for a while, and think of Vanessa Lemoine, and all the growers, roasters, sourcers, sensory analysists, and chocolatiers huddled together in every bite. Maybe not every time, that would be exhausting. But sometimes. I promise.

To find out more about Valrhona and their line of chocolates, please visit their website:

Valrhona.com

I've been to Avedano's Meats on Cortland several times since its grand opening on July 15, mostly just to poke around, but I could never remember the name. My friends who live in Bernal Heights would say things like, "Have you checked out that new place around the corner?" and, "What's that place called again?" I'm terrible with names (and evidently in this case, so are my friends), which is a great liability. I have to play word association games to remember anything these days. I knew the place was a meat market, in the sense of selling meat, of course, but I was also aware that they sold much more than that. Did they sell skincare products? Doubtful, unless one considers animal fat an excellent facial hydrating agent. Aveda? No. Now you might understand why I am exhausted all the time.

At least now I won't forget the name.

Avedano's is the dreamchild of three women-- Tia Harrison, Melanie Eisemann, and Angela Wilson. Harrison, if you didn't know, is also the chef/owner of Sociale (which happens to be a subject of this week's Check, Please! here on KQED). And, if she's not busy enough running a restaurant and a quality meat store, her new baby occupies the rest of her time. That is what I would call energetic. I am shamed by my own lethargy.

The location, 235 Cortland Avenue (at Bocana), has been a butcher shop ever since it opened as Cicero's Meats in 1901. More recently known as Bleuss Meats, its faded streamline moderne sign leant a charming sense of decay to the Bernal neighborhood for years, but I never saw the door open for business. When the place was (minimally) reinvented as a butcher/ sashimi store, I was filled with hope-- one just doesn't find many good butchers operating independently of a supermarket these days. Sadly, the former owners were using this retail-only space to run a wholesale business on the sly, which isn't exactly legal. So the mini-blinds were pulled down and the door closed again.

The name Avedano derives from Harrison's grandparents, whose family emigrated from Asti to the Bay Area in 1906 to what I would consider a dramatic welcome. One hundred and one years later, there's a fresh coat of paint on the old sign with their name on it and the door is once again open. This time, however, I am more than cautiously optimistic.

You won't find the refrigerated meat case brimming with animal proteins yet, but what is there is excellent: Grass-fed beef from Estancia and Strawberry Mountain, Mary's Chickens, and wild, local seafood like Monterey sardines. The trio at Avedano's is currently working to source more local, sustainable meat and fish for their store, so look for more variety in the near future. Until then, enjoy what they've got. Just get there early and take a number.

Someone stole the number 1 ticket, which should not be taken as a symbolic gesture since I have yet to experience being treated like number 2 here.

In addition to quality meats, Avedano's sells a variety of other items...

Such as rarely seen (in San Francisco) pastas like Croxetti from Liguria...

...stamped with a family coat of arms on one side and a cross (hence the name) or a boat or some such symbol on the other. They look like Holy Communion wafers.

Sea salt: $5.00 a jar...

Cupcakes, cookies, and other sweets from Tia's other, other business, Lucky Cooky Company...

For those of you without time to cook for yourselves, Avedano's has fresh soups and sandwiches available, which are perfect for lunchtime. If you want dinner, prepared meals like their popular fried chicken and potato salad...

... or gypsy peppers stuffed with Oaxaca cheese are available after 3 pm. If you are of an age group not known for having teeth, or if you simply have a preference for soft foods, like my friend Patrick, they make their own baby food, too. Just inquire.

Sundays are a special treat-- fresh tacos. My friend Mark and I sat on the bench outside the store last week inhaling hot, Berkshire pork wrapped in corn tortillas, dripping with lime juice and pickled cabbage for $2.50 a pop. I gave them a rather messy thumbs up.

If you hadn't guessed by now, I love Avedano's. For me, it's one thing for a place to have good, fresh food. Pack a place with nice folks and quirky (and unselfconscious) detail and I am an instant fan...

Avedano's has got this Holy Trinity of charm in spades. In fact, the last time I was there, I was so wrapped up in the details (like the fact that these women had the store's walls painted with colors found in vintage advertising leaflets) that I barely took notice of the meat. I just wish I'd taken a clear photo of the magnet that stated, "It's okay to put fish in your hair" on their magnet board (the stick figure in the green triangle dress at the top center of the photo below).

And this photo of the floor is now the desktop image on my computer...

There's a lot going on at Avedano's, but there's more in store in the near future. Look for more prepared foods, more locally sourced organic products, and maybe even a small cafe or, say, sausage-making classes in the small storefront next door. We'll just have to wait and see.

Avedano's
235 Cortland Avenue (at Bocana).
1-415-285-MEAT
Open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 am to 8 pm
http://www.avedanos.com

Several months ago, our local bottled water purveyor brought two executives from Pellegrino into our restaurant for dinner. As they sat at the bar digesting their meals with alcohol and animated chatter, I stopped by to say hello.

"Have you seen our new product?" the rep asked as she produced a bottle of water from her bag. "We're very excited about it."

I held the bottle, thought to myself how good it felt in the hand and noted that it was "ribbed for her pleasure", which is what I say to myself whenever I see anything ribbed, thanks to a condom advertisement I saw in an adult magazine I should not have been looking at as a child. What I enjoyed most about the bottle was its name, 420.

Were they serious? I pictured the Pellegrino executives lighting up, ties loosened and calling each other dude in Italian, or whatever the equivalent would be. I said nothing, but started to snigger.

"What's funny?" she asked, puzzled. I wiped the smirk from my face and, as seriously as I could, asked one of the pezzi grossi, "Tell me, what made you decide to name this water '420'?"

"I like the way the numbers look. The '4' looks like an 'h', as in 'h20'," he responded. I could tell he was proud of his Northern Italian sense of design. Oh dear. Did I have the heart to tell him?

Of course I did.

"Do you know what '420' means in American slang?" He did not, so I told him.

For those of you not in the know or pretending not to be, "420" is shorthand for marijuana. The term is believed to have originated in the early 1970's at San Rafael High School, where a group of teenagers would meet after school at 4:20 p.m. around the statue of Louis Pasteur to smoke marijuana. I am assuming they were mindful of Pasteur's Germ Theory and washed their hands prior to their illegal activity. How this tradition became widely accepted is unknown to me apart from the fact that, when stoned, people seem to think just about anything is a good idea. Whatever the case, the tradition spread and today April 20th is a day of much celebration and binge-snacking throughout the nation, though somewhat on the sly.

I explained this to the surprised and unsmiling Pellegrino people. I dug myself a slightly deeper hole by telling them that their product might be perceived as luxury bong water, but that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing, since they would have a built-in sub-culture market.

After explaining to them what a bong was, I thanked them for the bottle and went back to waiting on my tables.

Had I just just come across the liquid equivalent of the Chevy Nova? There are far worse examples, certainly.

Recently, while cleaning my desk (where the bottle has been used as a paperweight/ conversation piece), I noticed a website address printed on the back of the water bottle, www.fineh2o.com...

"Luxury by the liter." I had hoped they might opt for "ounce", but that would be too American.

Clicking for more information about 420, I was informed that this water comes from the Southern Alps of New Zealand and was deposited when my "great, great grandmother was the same age as [me]. Which is a fabulous story to tell someone [I'm] trying to pick up in a bar."

I somehow doubt any of my great, great grandmothers were concerning themselves with luxury water. Unless one considers irrigating crops a luxury. They were too busy occupying themselves with things like losing social status in the aftermath of Italy's unification, crossing over from Spain to marry into Sicilian crime families, and not assimilating well into white culture, preferring to sleep on bearskin rugs with trappers in Montana who were not their husbands.

And if I were to pick up anyone in a bar, I most likely wouldn't be talking about water, let alone drinking it. But that's just me.

Another fascinating brand of water from Fine H2O is Heartsease, from Wales, where the Heartsease Pansy grows. In my mind, heartsease is two letters away from heart disease, so it makes me uncomfortable, no matter how cute the pansies are. I think I'm just a little surprised that these two unfortunately named products come from essentially Anglophone countries.

I admit that I am no water snob. Apart from an extreme loathing of Chicago tap water-- which tastes of exhausted Zebra Mussels, I am happy to drink from the local tap, especially ours. I do, of course, realize that there are differences in the flavors and textures of water from various sources-- rainwater vs. spring water, etc.-- I'm simply too occupied with other things to pay these differences much mind. I left such things to my brother who, on one occasion, spent an entire day at Vichy running around the various fountains excitedly sampling every type of h2o he could find, while the invalids who flocked there to take the waters for their health sat around with graduated beakers waiting to take sips in measured amounts at appointed intervals. He even brought home water from Lourdes in a plastic Virgin Mary-shaped bottle to be enjoyed later. Given current airline restrictions pertaining to liquids, I wonder if the good people at that holy shrine have adapted to the times with a 3 oz. version of Our Lady. Perhaps the local priests might go so far as to bless the clear Ziploc bags in which she must now travel. That would be a nice touch.

I have not seen the Pellegrino representative in our restaurant since that evening. I would like to assume that she was allowed to keep her job, since she wasn't the one responsible for naming the water. Of course, the Pellegrino people evidently don't care about the alternative meaning behind their water's branding. Not enough to change it, anyway. I'm rather glad. I was so disappointed when Coors abandoned their Spanish translated slogan of "Turn It Loose" once it was learned that the phrase was read as "Suffer From Diarrhea".

To purchase a case of 420 for your next social event, call 1-888-24-WATER or email them at info@fineh2o.com. Just please don't tell them I sent you.

I wish I'd thought of that little tag line, but I didn't.

Sometimes, I think I spend far too much time sitting in front of my computer. Instead of doing something beneficial to myself, like exercising or cleaning my refrigerator, I troll sites like neatorama and thesuperficial.com. I've wasted hours online staring at folks making shadow puppets, shuddering over videos of people with unspeakable deformities, and chiding myself for trying to understand someone as crazy as that former Mouseketeer, Brittany Spears. You never saw Annette getting into that kind of trouble. No way.

Fortunately, there is an occasional payoff to my time investment. Enter Brini Maxwell.

I have no idea how she got onto my computer screen, but I am very glad she did. Full of chat, recipes and household tips, Maxwell calls upon the spirits of domestic icons past like Donna Reed and Florence Henderson yet manages to steer clear of mere caricature. As graceful as Dina Merrill (whose delicious strawberry pancakes seem like a slap in the face to her Post cereal heiress mother) and more helpful than Josephine the Plumber, I think she defies comparison, which might suit Maxwell just fine, especially when the occasional attempt has been made to label her the "new" Martha Stewart. As she told The Advocate in 2004:

"I don't consider myself the next Martha Stewart, I consider myself the next Sue Ann Nivens! I just think it's like comparing apples and oranges. We talk to different types of people--my audience tends to be very urban, and I think that Martha's audience is more suburban."

I don't see how anyone with such an impressive collection of vintage cookware (not to mention her inexhaustible wardrobe) could be accused of being a "new" anything. And anyone who uses Sue Ann Nivens as a role model is aces in my book.

Here's a teaser for the episode Meatloaf a la Janet Leigh...

Swedish meatballs, deviled eggs and bridge sandwiches? You'll find out how to make them along with advice on how to maximize your urban living (and entertaining) potential-- on a budget. It's a "how to" show delivered by a "can do" gal-- fortunately one with more than a teaspoon of wit and a hell of a lot of style. I can't wait to try out her recipe for Crown Roast of Cheese.

Brini Maxwell (created by actor Ben Sander, by the way) has been wildly popular for years in New York-- I've never claimed cutting edge. I just feel that, given the appalling social skills I've witnessed among certain communities in this city, San Francisco needs a good dose of her-- like, immediately. Think of this as a public service announcement.

I just subscribed to her NPR video podcast, so I won't miss a thing. I suggest some of you do, too. And I mean now. You know who you are.

Now why didn't you think of that?

This week marks both the birthday and deathday, if there is such a word, of Julia Child. The fact that no one in my culinary circle has mentioned either event upsets me. Where are the parades? Is anyone laying a wreath of Bay Laurel on her grave?

Some people old enough to do so talk of where they were when they heard of John F. Kennedy's assassination. I am not that old, so I had to come up with my own where-was-I memories. Karen Carpenter? I was on my way to the newly opened EPCOT Center, the day marred by the endless loop of Superstar running through my brain. Jacqueline Kennedy? Don't get me started.

The most vivid death for me was Julia Child's. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. I was sitting in a traffic jam owing to a fallen tree, crammed into a rental car with five friends near Jemez, New Mexico.

It was a Friday in mid-August, 2004. We were returning from a hike in the mountains and a soak in the local hot springs where, the moment we shucked our clothes and hopped in the steaming water, a hailstorm hit us. And I do mean hit us. It was as though God had opened his comedy closet filled with ping pong balls right onto our heads. Hailstones the size of mothballs screamed down from 10,000 feet, striking us directly or ricocheting off rocks to pelt us in the face. The only safe place was a crag already occupied by a tiny, freakish man-- a naked troll with golden dental work-- who sat there safe and grinning at his good luck and our misfortune. The couple soaking below us held an oversized umbrella over their heads. Everyone seemed prepared except us. When the attack subsided, we dressed and slumped back to the car, some of us bloodied, all of us bruised.

We were singing stupid songs and fogging up the windows, going nowhere very slowly and laughing about the terrible afternoon we'd just experienced. I had written the word "buffalo" with my index finger on the windshield which, for some reason, was funny only to myself. As I considered explaining to my fellow travelers exactly why it was funny, a radio newscaster announced the death of Julia Child, two days shy of her 92nd birthday.

My first thought was a sad one-- Now I'll never get to meet Julia Child-- egocentric, I know. I thought she'd had a good run of it, at least.

My attentioned turned to math, briefly. Two days shy of her 92nd birthday? Since, the day was Friday, August 13th-- which would explain the afternoon we were having-- that put her birthday at August 15th, my brother's birthday.

My brother and I had had a competition going about who's birthday was more significant, his or mine. I touted the fact that I shared my birthday with not only Sally Struthers, but our maternal grandfather and, what I thought was my trump card, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. I liked to throw in the fact that World War One officially started on that date for good measure. He countered with Rose-Marie and the fact that his day was a holy day of obligation in the Catholic church- the Feast of the Assumption (which, as my friend Bill loves to point out, is called Maria Himmelfahrt in German). Since nuns came to pin medals on his pillow the day he was born, he always claimed victory. He never mentioned the fact that he shared the day with Julia Child. I wonder if he ever new. I'd give him the crown for that coincidence alone.

We weren't a Julia Child-loving family. No one to my knowledge watched The French Chef. I'd watch re-runs of the Galloping Gourmet, but only out of the corner of my eye because I was too busy building mazes for my hamster out of Lincoln Logs. To me, Julia Child was just some tall lady with a funny voice who cooked and everyone from Dan Ackroyd to John Candy made fun of. I'd always thought of her as some grande dame, her nose as far above the jokes and pokes as her 6' 2" body would hold it.

I'd bought The Way To Cook when I was in college, as did many of my friends, because I was serious about cooking. It was and is a serious cookbook-- step by step and about as how-to as they get. But I only sought pointers, I knew nothing of finesse and had no sense of humor about cooking-- I was too intimidated by it. I certainly didn't think I'd find either in the work of Julia Child. Of course, I'd never seen her television program.

It wasn't until several years later when I fell into a job working for Jacques Pepin that I heard she had a sense of humor. Pepin, fresh from taping a television show with Child, told us stories of how, when wine-maker sponsers visited the set of their show, she insisted on serving beer. Other stories followed that fairly shattered the previous image I'd formed of her. She wasn't the droning, Yankee bore obsessed with detail I'd made her out to be from her book and my own imagination. It's hard to imagine that I never remembered seeing her on television before, but it's true. The humor and charm that Pepin described surprised me, but it was her puckishness that left me wanting more of her. However unbearable the rest of my experience on Pepin's show, I came away with that wonderful knowledge.

It wasn't until last year that I was finally able to see episodes of The French Chef. My friend John recieved a DVD boxed set of the series' best episodes for his birthday. An ace home cook and successful cookbook author in his own right, he kindly invited me over to his place for dinner and a viewing. We watched her on his kitchen television as we drank martinis and cooked or, rather, he cooked, I drank martinis. Most memorable were the episodes detailing how to roast a chicken and how to make a tarte tatin. Or how not to, I'd say.

Take a moment and watch her talk about chickens (Sorry, I cannot embed this video, so follow the link. I'll wait. And now for those of you too lazy to follow a link outisde this page...

It was then that I felt I finally got her. Thank you, John.

Having participated in the production of a number of cooking programs before the onset of their cable television-induced proliferation and, therefore, banality, Child was a trend-setter. I think we can all agree upon that. What impressed me most about her program was its low- budget, public television feel. Child preformed each show-- from start to finish-- in one take. Along with her many successful dishes prepared on air were many flops, but all were taken in stride and with great sense of humor. Whether blaming her choice of apple for the failure of her tarte tatin or simply explaining, by way of each failure, what went wrong and why, she turned her gaffes into, if not always triumphs, at least into moments of sheer enjoyment. The knowledge that even Julia Child was prone to error on occasion gave courage to her audience, removing much of the fear involved in the making of, say, a Gateau Saint-Honore.

At a time when we, as Americans, generally deferred to the French in all matters gustatory , ignorant of or perhaps in part ashamed of our own culinary heritage, Child not only translated the French way of cooking into a language we could understand and into ingredients we could get our hands on, she served as an entertaining tour guide of French Culture along the way. And she managed all this without dumbing things down-- least of all, herself.

In an age where cooking shows are all but shoved down our throats, where any annoying personality is set free to run amok inside our televisions, it can be said that no one can best the original or imitate the inimitable. For better or worse, the Food Network owes its very existence to her. Have they ever said thank you? I wouldn't know, since I'm not paying attention-- I don't have cable and can't really stomach cooking shows anymore, with a few exceptions. Nothing would say "we care" like a TV marathon devoted to her original, groundbreaking program. Perhaps WGBH in Boston has already taken the idea and run with it. All I know is someone should.

Granted, Julia Child was practically beatified by the likes of the James Beard Foundation, COPIA and even the Smithsonian Institute while she was alive, but I'm voting for full canonization now that she's gone. I'd like a new holy day of obligation to supplant the one that no one celebrates anymore. Except Bavarians and my brother, were he still alive. Let's build a cathedral, a Notre Dame de la Cuisine, say, in her honor-- a place of worship where one can go to pray for, if not culinary inspiriation or courage, at least deliverance from evil. Like the fact that Emeril Lagasse has his own band or the mere presence of that squawking Anti-Christ, Rachel Ray.

There are a number of restaurants in this city that have captured my imagination-- restaurants about which I know absolutely nothing, apart from the clues given away by their often antiquated signs and odd locations. Russia House and Julius' Castle come to mind. I am not typically curious about what's new and exciting. I leave that to other, hipper bloggers. Show me a restaurant that has survived fire, earthquake and food trend and I'll be there. Sooner or later. It's not as if they're going anywhere.

I've driven by the Old Clam House for years. Or, rather, been driven by it-- I don't have a car. It has captivated me for a number of reasons. First, it's location-- a rather depressing stretch of Bayshore Boulevard, near the stretch of the 101 called the James Lick Freeway-- a fact not lost upon me. Next, it's age. The Old Clam House has been in business since 1861, making it second only to (please correct me if I'm wrong) Tadich Grill in terms of senility. Lastly, the name itself-- The Old Clam House. Does the word "old" modify "clam" or "house"? I assumed the latter, but refused to dismiss the former. A home for retired prostitutes also came to mind, naturally. My friends and I talked of going there for a long time.

Finally, after one near miss a few months ago, my friend Bill thought it high time to gather up the menfolk and wander down Bernal Hill for a special dinner-- my birthday dinner-- at the Clam House. As I sat with a cocktail opening birthday cards, I noted that a card from one friend read "To an (old) clam." Everyone, it seemed, was ready for the evening ahead.

When we arrived for our reservation, the seven of us were greeted warmly and offered our table promptly, but we paused long enough to note the Wall of Fame lined with celebrities either gracious enough to bestow autographed 8 x 10 glossy publicity photos they just happened to be carrying with them at the time or desperate enough in their ebbing careers to think that any publicity is preferable to none at all. I couldn't decide. One of my favorite Old Clams to grace the wall is pictured below. Please forgive the light reflection obscuring her face. I feel that, out of kindness, I must obscure her identity, however lightly.

Once seated, we were greeted by our server with water, baskets of sourdough bread and individual cups of hot clam broth which my friend Dan, who swallowed his fear of clams (the actual meat, not clam byproducts or the idea of clams) to come to dinner, declared it good. And it was-- subtly flavored. Briny and fresh tasting without being too, well, clammy. It struck a good first note.

While figuring out what to have for our main courses, we contented ourselves with beer and ordered two plates of fried calamari. My friend Bill and I ordered cups of clam chowder, which seemed like a too obvious choice, but a good one, nonetheless. The clams inside the chowder were plentiful and tender; the potatoes had enough tooth to them without being undercooked. I could smash the chunks on the roof of my mouth with my tongue. If I wanted to. However unsubtle it may have been, I introduced Bill to the pleasure of adding tabasco sauce to chowder. I like the heat it gives and the pretty pink color, naturally. The fried calamari was exactly as it should be, too. Crispy and ungreasy with just a little bit of chew. I normally avoid cocktail sauce and go straight for a squeeze of lemon, but I dipped a few tiny tentacles in, since the sauce was homemade. I might have stifled a yawn, but that's just me. It was good cocktail sauce, if you like that sort of thing.

While browsing the menu, I noticed that the restaurant served Scalone Bordelaise. If you are among those fortunate enough never to have run into this terrible shotgun marriage between bivalve and gastropod, scalone is a mixture of scallops and abalone-- two wonderful mollusks when kept in their separate corners-- usually ground together and frozen into patty or steak form. They must be pan fried directly from the freezer, in my experience, or they will do what is only natural-- separate. The only reason I know this is that this dish was served as an annual specialty at the Bohemian Grove camp I worked at last summer. We referred to the dish as Scabalone which, to us, is what it looked like when sufficiently browned on the griddle. Our campers ate it with a squeeze of lemon. as though to sanitize. I can imagine that adding a creamy sauce to it would only make the scab look infected. I moved down the menu.

I opted for the Mescalanza because it had a bit of everything in it-- crab legs, clams, prawns, Oysters Rockefeller. That, and because the name made me think of Mario Lanza singing "Be My Love". Impossible to refuse, in my book. I think I made the right choice, at least in terms of the dish's theatrical value...

Flaming seafood. An attention-grabbing entree is always in order on one's birthday. I thought about making a wish by blowing out the clam, but thought better of it.

I'd never had a seafood bordelaise before. The sauce itself was fine, but made an already rich dish obscenely so. I nibbled at the Oyster Rockefeller slowly, since there was only one and, to me, the star attraction. To my surprise, I actually liked clams drowned in sauce, but I think the other bits of seafood suffered, like the prawns and crab. Though impaled on skewers suspended above the bowl on what looked like a dumb bell rack, it was impossible not to coat everything I touched with bordelaise-- it was all over my hands. When my butter-coated fingers dropped a prawn into the bowl, I discovered a bit of sunken treasure-- an ear of corn. I think the fact that an ear of corn can go unnoticed at the bottom of one's bowl for several minutes illustrates either the immense size of the bowl in question or the limited observational powers of the person eating it. I vote for the former but won't rule out the latter. Shaking off as much sauce as I could, I bit into the corn. The corn juice released from the now-damaged kernels mingled with what sauce remained, not so much running down my chin, but getting absorbed by my beard. The corn was abandoned.

The other dishes ordered by my dining mates were just as gargantuan. The clam linguini was enough to feed all seven of us and was actually delicious. My friend David's Lazy Man's Cioppino was served in the same oversized bowl as my Mescalanza. We questioned why the dish was named "Lazy Man's Cioppino". Since the crab legs were uncracked and the prawns still in their shell, we assumed that the lazy man in question was the one who prepared the dish.

As we finished our dinners, or at least tried to, I asked our server for a hot towel, since my hands and part of my left forearm were coated with bordelaise. She said yes, but returned without one. I asked someone else for an extra napkin and was given a few small ones of the paper kind. I was wedged into the middle of the table and didn't feel like getting up to go to the bathroom, so I just moistened the paper napkins with what little water was left in my glass and cleaned myself up as best I could given the tools I had. I had hoped that someone might think about clearing our table of dirty plates, but hope accomplishes nothing except the heightening of future disappointment.

I am very glad I didn't get up to go to the restroom. As we abandoned our dinner, my friend Gary turned to all of us and said, "Keep an eye on the door of the Ladies' Room and see what comes out. It's good."

We all tried to keep up our conversations, but everyone kept staring at the Ladies' Room door. A couple of minutes passed. Nothing. A tall, fifty-something blonde entered and then exited two minutes or so later. Was that what we were supposed to be looking at? No, of course not. We'd all stared at her as she went in.

As my attention was beginning to flag, out came a rather tall woman with enormous breasts that were so ill-contained by her overflowing tank top that her aureolae peeked over the top, though her shirt was partially covered by what looked like an open Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation 1814 leather jacket. Her stride was confident across the restaurant, even in her high heeled boots. She wet her index finger with her tongue and wiped the corners of her mouth as she walked. Someone at my table intimated that she might be a working girl. I thought perhaps she was just having the same issues with the excess of bordelaise I was.

Then a man came out of the Ladies' Room adjusting his pants. I knew then that the joke I'd made about the the restaurant being a home for retired prostitutes wasn't too far off the mark. I'll just have to omit the word "retired" the next time I tell it.

Considering the fact that this woman was a practitioner, one assumes, of the world's oldest profession, I thought her behavior best suited for the oldest restaurant, Tadich Grill. Since I don't know what the world's second oldest profession is, I was at a loss to give her any restaurant-appropriate career advice.

No dessert was offered to us, though I had heard tell of flan being available. It would have been nice to have had a candle to blow out, to make a wish for my 38th year, but it seemed so obvious to me that this woman stole my birthday thunder. There was no way in hell I was going to out-blow a professional, so I let her have the honor. I just wonder what she wished for. I hope it was something nice.

Summer reading should be pleasant fare. Though I had found perverse comfort earlier this season in Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror-- the wars and epidemics of our own century seem paltry when compared to the Hundred Years' War and Bubonic Plague of the 14th-- I felt that, just perhaps, I should read something slightly more upbeat; something that didn't cause me to frequently check myself for lice, fleas or imaginary buboes. Something fun. Something food-related.

I was saved from reading MFK Fisher's The Art of Eating for the 17th time when Ian Jackman's Eat This: 1,001 Things to Eat Before You Diet fell into my hot --and mercifully plague-free-- little hands.

Jackman spent two years writing about and several more eating his way through farmers markets, hot dog stands, panaderias and testicle festivals-- and any place else that serves up food in this country. The result is an entertaining, mind-blowing catalogue of regional American food traditions and obsessions.

Eat This satisfies my criteria for pleasant fare-- something I can pick up and put down, jumping from chapter to chapter without getting lost. Though not a comprehensive work (which is impossible be given the expanse of this country, so don't cry about the omission of scuppernongs), it is a work of astonishing breadth, fascinating food facts and inspiration for many a future food hajj.

When I first flipped through these 382 pages of information, I was overcome with regret that no one ever uttered the words "road trip" to me. Not once. "Vegas" was about as far as it went, and culinary adventure was not the motivation behind that utterance. As I browsed further, skipping about between chapters in Part One: Eating In that seem organized like sections in a supermarket, I came across bits of food history I could relate to-- my father's fascination with Tastykakes in the Bakery chapter, my aunt's penchant for feeding her dog on Chateaubriand while the rest of us ate pasta in Meat.

Part Two: Eating Out is crammed with information not only on what to eat and where to eat it but, for example and (to me) much more fascinating, how a national dish such as the hamburger varies from region to region. A Sloppy Joe-like Dynamite? Go to Rhode Island. Butter Burger? Try Solly's Grill in Madison, Wisconsin. I'll need to ask my Madison contact about that one.

The bits of trivia Jackman picked up along the way are filling up the few remaining parts of my brain as yet unsaturated with useless information, which suits me just fine. From Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, Jackman shares a wonderfully creepy burger fact:

Q: Which two American institutions were founded in San Bernadino, California, in 1948?
A: McDonald's and The Hell's Angels.

If you tell me that information isn't going to slip out of your mouth at the next barbecue you attend, I won't believe you.

Of course, for every one item I've tasted or place I've visited (or worked at, for that matter-- four are mentioned in this book), there are 20 listed that I haven't-- a fact I regard with hope rather than frustration. Pancakes at the Original Pantry in Los Angeles? Check. Hungarian Hot Dogs at Tony Packo's in Toledo, Ohio? On my to do list. My friend Gary's family is Hungarian and from Ohio. I've heard the stories, I've seen the photos. Jackman's credibility rating shot way up when I read that. Not that he needs my approval.

In a country I have often viewed (from my cultural bubble of San Francisco) as alarmingly homogenized, where the lingua franca has been peppered with phrases like super-sized and non-fat venti, Eat This simply proves that there are still a lot of lumps in the American Melting Pot. Thank God.

As I step up the planning of my impending holiday in Greece next month, my thoughts are already turning to the next trip. I'm thinking somewhere more exotic. Like Vienna, Georgia. I've never been to the Big Pig Jig Barbecue Contest. I smell a road trip coming on but, this time, I won't wait around for someone to utter those words to me. I'll say them myself.