Mixed Bag

There are a couple things I want to link to, this Wednesday of food articles. First, Kim Severson in the NYT, about rock star butchers, which, like so much else I read about food, only makes sense if you are, in fact, totally obsessed with the scene. I am, in fact, totally obsessed with the scene, but some of the names were new to me, although not Ryan Farr, who is also featured in the new Meatpaper that I got in the mail, draped with homemade hotdogs. I think that the scene described in the Meatpaper article, of frantic foodies reaching for Farr’s corndogs, was at the Couchon555 event I went to last month, but maybe he does that kind of thing every week. (I can’t link to it yet; they really want you to buy the actual magazine.)

Second is a post at Serious Eats about Community Supported Insert-new-thing-here. I love the term “Community Supported Pie” so much that I have to steal their photo.

CSAs help farmers by getting them cash up front, and sharing some of the inherent risks with the customers; community supported bacon seems more like the Fruit of the Month Club, although I suppose everyone appreciates chunks of capital. I’m kind of surprised no one mentioned Rent Mother Nature, which has been marketing similar products for a while.

Finally, on the water side, the San Francisco PUC is trying to bank water. When I saw the headline, I assumed that they were buying into the same bank down in the Central Valley as the SCVWD, although a moment’s reflection would have told me that they couldn’t, not being a water project subscriber. Turns out there is an aquifer on the Peninsula, which has space enough to recharge.

To me, the fact that this is a new initiative means that they’re taking special pains to recharge it (or would, if there were any extra water) but the article neglected to say how the PUC was planning to go about that any differently than what they do now. Maybe I missed something; I’ll go back and read it again.