Ask five people what they taste when they suck a plush gobbet of Cowgirl Creamery's Pierce Pt. off their finger and you'll get five different answers. "Chamomile!" "Fennel!" "Coriander!" Personally, I always manage to pull out a flavor that reminds me of the big steaming bowls of oatmeal my mother used to dish out on cold Minnesota mornings. And now, with San Francisco skies waxing chill and nights that stretch dark and long like a Halloween cat flexing its supple spine, Pierce Pt. is once again of the season.

Once upon a time when I was a sweet young cheesemonger, Pierce Pt. was thick with herbs that scattered messily as a knife pulled through the encrusted round. It was a delicious mess, however, because I delighted in taking small white wedges and stamping them all over the plate, sticking up the herbs in a woodsy, furry collection.

Although it continues to be made with organic whole milk from the Straus Family dairy, today's Pierce Pt. is more restrained, refined, and graced with a delicate scattering of herbs that grow around the coastal climes of Tomales Bay. A quick spritz of a sweet and golden wine from Fetzer deepens the cheese's flavor and encourages the gilding of chamomile, fennel, bay, and coriander to cling fast to the natural, soft mold.

Delicately creamy, Pierce Pt.'s many levels of flavors unfold gently on your tongue.

Taste fall.

In 2005, Garrison Keillor, that curmudegon of a Minnesotan, wrote a column in <a href="http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2005/09/28/keillor_work/index.html
">Salon stating:

"Today, home canning has gone the way of the typewriter, the vacuum tube and the TV variety show. The Ball company sold off its jar division and now makes satellite sensors or something, and groceries stock fresh tomatoes all winter, imported from Mexico, which cost a buck apiece and taste more like tennis balls than tomatoes. But at least you don't have to stand in a steamy kitchen and ruin your hairdo."

How great is it that locavores everywhere are proving him wrong this month? As Jen Maiser mentioned late last month, this year's September Eat Local Challenge is focussed on "canning, preserving, and putting food up for the winter." As the blogs I frequent roll up on my Google reader, I can see that several Bay Area Bloggers have risen to the challenge.

Sam at Becks and Posh starts off her Eat Local Challenge canning project by first making me jealous that she invested in a pressure canner and then giving a hysterical list of "Don't"s for novice canners. As in:

" --Don't embark on a canning project unless you think you will get extreme satisfaction from a loud popping noise in your kitchen that almost sounds like someone has been shot but is, in fact, just indication that your lid has concaved, your vacuum has sealed, you can safely remove the screw band and that the operation was a complete success..."

and

"Don't install the disk of your food mill upside down. It is possible, but not recommended."

Hee. She also appears to be swearing, cursing, and using lots of bad words. But she doesn't recommend that either.

Elsewhere, Cookiecrumb at I'm Mad and I Eat who, rather than canning, has just pickled some serranos and jalapeños, and explains:

"I covered them with a boiling mixture of vinegar (local), salt (uh-uh), sugar (nope), cinnamon (as if) and cardamom (yeah, right). Water from Marin County. No idea if this mixture is chemically balanced for the hot water bath, but it's yummy just the same, and who cares. "

For my part this time around, I'm doing my passive (but LOCAL!) part by discovering and indulging in cold jars of certified organic sour dills from Happy Girl Kitchen. You can buy them as singletons at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market and slurp on them as you do your shopping or, if you're a glutton like me, you can grab a whole jar and snack on them late at night while watching The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T and wondering if drinking pickle juice really does give you strange powers.

This past week, Joy over at Confessions of a Restaurant Whore pointed me to a disturbingly addictive new site.

Based on official local inspections, CleanScores will tell you all the gory details about your favorite restaurant. It can tell you their cleanliness rating in current years, past years, and even give details about what Major, Moderate, or Minor violations the restaurant incurred. At this time, CleanScores is only dishing the dirt on San Francisco restaurants (lucky us!), but note that they have plans to cover more infracted ground.

Joy asked this question:

Riddle me this, though: why, oh why, is it a greater violation to have a few dirty utensils than it is to have rats and mice in your kitchen? I could give two shits if my chef is downing a beer while s/he cooks, but allowing roaches to throw a little party in the back room? Not cool, bitches, not cool. That's the health department's fault, though, not the fault of Clean Scores so don't hold it against them.

Seriously.

My burning question for CleanScores has to do with listing previous years/ratings: it appears that these years are clickable, which is great because I would love to see why Kokkari got a 75 in 2003 as opposed to their current 94, yet when I do click on the 2003 report, nothing happens. Is that a bug or a feature?

In the comments at Restaurant Whore, Sam pointed out that the same official information has been available online for awhile now. She's right, but it's a fairly clugey site and, well, with that clean *ding!* mark on the spoon, and the hip design, CleanScores makes health code violations so darn pretty!

BREAKING BEER AND BIKE NEWS

This Saturday, July 21st, is the 2007 New Belgium Brewing Company's San Francisco Tour de Fat. Bring your bike and bring your beer thirst to Speedway Meadow in Golden Gate Park and enjoy free admission, live music, beer, food, and all manner of bike events at this annual "bike rodeo."

All proceeds from the beer sales go to benefit the San Francisco Bike Coalition and the Bay Area Ridge Trails Council. Now doesn't that make your Fat Tire taste even better?

Strike one more vegetable off my, "I really, really, REALLY need to learn how to like this repellent green thing" list. Okra, oh delicious, mysterious, oddly viscous, okra -- so long have you been out of my reach, beyond my culinary ken. I've had you fried, steamed, and gumbo'd, but still, you did not convince me of your deliciousness.

Catherine did.

Even more amazing than my about-face on this newly in season veggie is how simple her recipe is; just slice the fuzzy hexagons and saute. Nothing fancy. When I saw Catherine pull her okra out of the fridge -- already sliced -- I interrogated her. "Is that necessary? A sort of resting in the fridge to dry out the slime before cooking? It makes it crispier?" She looked at me. "No, it was just easier to have them sliced before you came over." Oh.

Just tonight, I tried to replicate Catherine's easier than easy recipe. Sensing the sizzle-pop was over and delicious okra was soon to follow, my husband wandered into the kitchen and found me staring at my pile of okra. "I don't think I did it right. It looks overcooked." I reached out and sadly plucked a slice out of the green mound and sampled it. It definitely wasn't as crispy as Catherine's. My husband plucked out a slice of his own. "It's great!" he assured me. The perfectionist in me didn't believe him. But I plucked out another slice. And another. And another.

Without any utensils or even sitting down, the two of us consumed the entire mass of salty okra in about two minutes. I will not stop in my quest to get my okra Catherine-perfect, but it does appear that even the less than perfect stuff is furiously addicting.

I'm not worried. I have all summer to figure it out.

Akaka Falls, Big Island, Hawaii

I don't think I've disguised my deep and abiding love for all things New and Belgium when it comes to beer. I recently fell all over a coriander and bitter orange peel laced summer quaff called Mothership Wit Beer (New Belgium's first organic beer) and I do highly recommend that one as well, but I've got a bead on a fascinating new hot weather beer. Kona Brewing Company -- the self-same outfit that introduced my confused system to the awesomeness of coffee and beer -- has a new summer sipper out.

Wailua Wheat, coolly saronged by a bright, tropical label, is named for Wailua Falls on Maui's famed Hana Highway and brewed with tropical passion fruit. Or, if you're from the islands "lilikoi." Now, I'm not a fruit beer lover. I freely admit that I did the raspberry-blueberry-cherry beer thing in college, and they're probably the reason why the mere idea of fruit beers chokes my throat and offends my tongue. However, this is not what I would call a fruit beer. At least, not in the Boston definition of fruit beers.

The tart passion fruit in Wailua Wheat is neither sweet nor cloying, and its twangy edge matches as well with the crisp and hoppy wheat beer as a wedge of lemon in a cloudy pull of Hefeweizen. It's the heat and throb of the tropics crashing up against the centuries-old tradition of brewing and when the tide ebbs out, you're left with this icy bottle of exotic sunshine.

From the brewers themselves:

Wailua Wheat is an excellent beer to enjoy after a day on the water or at the beach (or even after mowing the lawn or playing softball in your "pau hana" summer league!). It typically pairs well with lighter fare like grilled fish and shrimp, roasted chicken, salads and Asian foods. Perhaps even a dish of vanilla ice cream.

I think I'll leave the vanilla ice cream for my Pipeline Porter, but I'm on board with the grilled shrimp idea. In fact, marinate the shrimp in this beer before grilling and see what happens.

You can find Wailua Wheat at BevMo.

Barely over my ecstasy from that first amaranth-hued glass, I decided to sample another grape-smeared offering from Marin Wines, their Mount Tamalpais Merlot. My god. My GOD!

Now, yes, Merlot has been battered about by the Hollywood likes of Sideways and bad examples of the glass. And, because it had been at least five years since I traded in my last glass of Merlot for Zinfandels, Francs, Barbarescos, and anything found in the Rhone, I also laughed knowingly along with the rest of the Northern California audience as Paul Giamatti's character, Miles, slagged off on the once-popular wine.

It wasn't even that I agreed with what his character, Miles, said about Merlot, it's that I had long left what I considered a cloyingly sweet and flat red for rougher cut pastures and vines. Certain Merlots were shuddering reminders of my White Zinfandel-tinted youth, and I knew that my palette had grown up and was guiding me to richer and more complex climes.

However, last year I went to a traveling seminar sponsored by Swanson Vineyards called "Merlot Fights Back." Not only did I get reintroduced to Merlot and reminded just how good that beleaguered grape can be, but I learned that the special bottle of '61 Cheval Blanc Miles had been saving was a 50/50 blend of Cabernet Franc and Merlot. That's right, fifty percent "fucking Merlot." However, I still wasn't buying it by the bottle or even ordering it in restaurants. Until now.

Mount Tamalpais Merlot is remarkably robust and much more like the Bordeaux of old than the fruity, jammy, Smucker's Merlots I had given up. Rich and musty with shifting prisms of loamy complexity, this Merlot massaged my soul with long, intense strokes. After one sip, I felt myself sinking bodily into my garnet glass.

As with any new and exciting bottle, this wine deserved a special dinner, so I paired it with a flagelot bean gratin, rare rosemary-flecked sirloin lamb chops, and a peppery watercress, fennel, and French Breakfast radish salad. Limbs entangled endlessly, the creamy beans, the gamey lamb, and the crunch-spice salad wallowed happily with the velvet-tongued wine.

You can buy Mount Tamalpais Merlot at PlumpJack Wines and the Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant in San Francisco, at Tomales Bay Foods in Point Reyes, and from the Marin Wine website.

Mount Tamalpais Merlot, 2004, $25.00