Running Water

Although it doesn’t use the tired cliche that butchers are now the rockstars of the food world, Alex Williams’ article in the NYT about the popularity of butchering classes does say that many of them “have achieved a kind of microfame,” which I think is closer to the truth. I certainly recognized Ryan Farr in the little photo on the NYT home page. Of course, the pig’s head next to him helped put it in context. I may not have recognized him in a glamour shot.

I won’t be eating any seals today, unlike the Governor General of Canada, but I’m sure I’ll find something else to eat Coastside.

I forgot on Wednesday to link to this Chronicle article on how San Francisco’s school district had its payments suspended for not following the rules about how school lunches have to be run. It sounds pretty bad, when a state official says:

“When we withhold funds, it’s because our findings are pretty egregious,” said Phyllis Bramson-Paul, director of the California Department of Education Nutrition Services Division. “We’re not taking away money; we’re just not going to give it until there’s integrity in their meal claims.”

But the egregious findings were things like this:

Federal requirement: Schools must accurately identify and count every child as he or she receives a free, reduced-rate or paid lunch. Each child must hold a lunch card while going through the line or be individually identified on a checkoff sheet or computer system.

Violation: At several schools, inspectors found cases in which staff members or teachers violated policy by holding the cards for the children or failing to bring the cards to the cafeteria to give to the children. On touch screens, teachers, instead of students, were seen pushing buttons.

Federal requirement: Children must select their own food, including a minimum of three servings each. Staff must verify the correct quantity. School staff cannot hand children – even the youngest ones – a tray of food.

Violation: At four schools, students left the line with too few items or were otherwise not monitored as having taken a complete lunch, resulting in 37 invalid lunch reimbursement claims.

Federal requirement: Milk must be served.

Violation: At one high school, servers ran out of milk with 30 students still to serve. At a middle school, milk wasn’t delivered on an inspection day. None of those 247 meals should have been counted for reimbursement.

Recall that the district gets less than $3.00 a meal, and marvel at the bureaucratic nonsense that keeps them from receiving even that.

Last week’s storm evidently did a number on Santa Cruz County farms. So no tomatoes or berries this week, but everything else looks great.

Clockwise from bottom left: basil, onions, apples, dandelion greens, radishes, lettuce, collards, beets, broccoli, potatoes, spinach, eggs, carrots, and peppers.

I got deferred again today from donating blood because my hemoglobin level was only 11 (when it needs to be 12.5.) Clearly I should be eating more of these leafy greens.

As a consolation, I had lunch at The Kitchen Table, a locavorean kosher restaurant in downtown Mountain View (whose website plays music upon loading, be warned.) Although I think the dinner and brunch menus look more interesting than that at lunch, I enjoyed my portobella burger and pimientos de padrón. Their dessert menu is also intriguing.

These are all dairy-free, and the squash creme caramel was much more squashy than cremey, but I enjoyed it.

I knit a hat for Mike to thank him for all that he did for our dinner.

There are a couple of articles that caught my eye today. Eric Asimov, the NYT wine critic, asks the musical question why do so many locavorean Bay Area restaurants serve so little California wine? And this prompts The Chron to look into it, too. The short answer from both is that California wines are too fruity and alcoholic to pair well with food, which I wonder at, given the huge scale of the wine industry in this state. But they’re also more expensive, which I’ll agree with, given my experience with sourcing wine for Saturday’s dinner.

Also in the Chron, Michael Bauer likes chefs who use the whole animal at their restaurants.

Dave Budworth will be part of an open-fire cooking event on 7 November that, in St. Helena, is a leeetle too far for me to consider attending.

Helene York thinks that government employees who implement food policy should eat better food. But apropos my comment to that post, not everyone is enamored with the cafeteria just down the Mall.

Last night’s dinner was lovely. I’ll admit to a more than a bit of terror when Eulipia was slammed by the dinner rush just as everyone arrived from the farm, but soon enough the food started flowing out of the kitchen. People seemed to like it. I did manage to smile for the camera with Lisa after we’d got the soup served.

I am so very, very grateful to Mike Borkenhagen and the entire staff at Eulipia for their incredible generosity. When they all came out to take a bow, I said that it was la cocina de amor, and I meant it. Even at the height of the chaos at 7:00, it was a happy place to be.

And I’m flattered by the compliments to the food. I won’t pretend that I’m not a good cook, but in this case, it’s all due to the exceptional quality and freshness of the ingredients I had the privilege of working with. As I said in my own remarks, if we can’t eat locally here in the Valley of Heart’s Delight, then it can’t be done anywhere. I want to work to fix our local food infrastructure so that the same food is available to everyone.

Yesterday’s prep work went very well. Sean, Kerri, Robert, and I beavered away, finishing the peppers, biscotti, flatbread, stock and beans. Amie brought by an enormous harvest from the farm, leading me to consider adding a bonus menu item. Here’s Sean, chopping very spicy chilis.

We got to wear jackets and look very professional.

This morning, I went up to Palo Alto (where I was very impressed by the vendors at the market, but then, it is Palo Alto, after all) and picked up 10 pounds of shiitake mushrooms from Far West Fungi, our last donation.

I’m waiting for the menus to print, as I type this, then it’s back to the restaurant. See you there!

First, Sunset maagzine came out to the farm a little while ago, and posted about it in their gardening blog.

Second, I went to a SubCulture Dining event last night. (WARNING: site plays music!) Ordinarily, the hipper-than-though vibe (evinced by that annoying website, and the s00per-seekrit instructions) would have put me off completely, but this was a Mangalitsa pork special event, so I took the plunge. I’m glad I did; it was a very lovely meal. But a meal composed mostly of pork fat, so perhaps not to everyone’s taste. I ate every scrap.

Finally, I’m off to Eulipia, where we will roast and marinate peppers, bake biscotti and flatbread, and simmer some vegetable stock. All seems in hand for tomorrow’s dinner. We’ve sold 43 tickets as of this morning. I think it will be a very festive occasion.

Time marches on. Despite the flood of local produce that has swept over my kitchen, Thursday comes and again and brings with it another CSA box from Live Earth Farm.

I tried to do a slightly better job of food styling today. Can you tell?

Starting with the bags up top, we have: green beans, sweet peppers, carrots, potatoes and tomatoes. Then counter-clockwise from just underneath the beans: two heads of lettuce (one huge) beets, apples, eggs, eggplants, and radishes.

No extras today, and no huge bunches of cooking greens. The lettuce, peppers and carrots will be pressed into service for the Bounty of Heart’s Delight. (We’ve sold 41 tickets so far!) The beets are accumulating until I decide to roast them all at once. I’ll also probably roast the potatoes and serve them with the romesco sauce I still have lurking in the fridge. I’ll dry-saute the beans, maybe do something vaguely Chinese with the eggplant, too, and eat the apples out of hand. The tomatoes will go into a sauce with more from my garden.

Inexplicably, I had never been to Full Circle Farm until this morning, when I picked up the garlic so generously donated by Meghan Cole, the farm manager. It was a beautiful morning. And their chickens are so glossy and sleek!

Well, really it’s a passel of poached pears, since I can’t think of a word for “80″ that starts with P.

I spent a couple hours in the kitchen at Eulipia yesterday afternoon, peeling and poaching the pears that have been sitting in the walk-in cooler since we picked them back in, what? August? And, true to the predictions of my friends with childhood experience with pear orchards (and it’s something that I say that in the plural) almost all of them hibernated quietly and emerged ready to grace the world with their tender, perfectly-ripened presence.

I wish that my right thumb had survived the experience with as much success. I tried to use my handy-dandy Vermont cranked peeler-corer-slicer, but without the coring and slicing. However, I couldn’t remove the slicing and coring blade from the contraption (because of my own ineptitude, I’m sure, since it’s made to be removable.) So I decided to gut it out and peel the bin of pears by hand. Eighty of them, with just four or five tiny, wizened specimens left over after I was done. I still feel the effect of pressing a piece of metal into the heel of my hand for an hour.

Anyway, they all poached happily in five bottles of Santa Cruz Mountains zinfandel and four pounds of Willow Glen honey. Now they’re soaking in the syrup, back in the walk-in. Saturday night, I’ll serve them with biscotti and crème fraîche.

This morning, I pick up donated dairy from Whole Foods in Campbell, and garlic from Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale. I feel compelled to say that I’m using salt and pepper that are not sourced from anywhere in particular, and that we’ll be serving coffee after dinner, although I hope to get something locally roasted, at least. But otherwise, I’m pretty darn smug about the ingredients.

This evening, I went to a public meeting in Alviso, about a proposal to modify the Educational Center that the Santa Clara Valley Water District has promised to build there. The original proposal called for a dedicated structure, bathrooms and landscaping on Gold Street, which happens to be just next to property owned by the family of Director Richard Santos. Said property would, of course, benefit from landscaping and amenities provided by a public agency. But after six years of study and planning, District staff came up with a cheaper alternative that would provide an open structure and signage at the existing County Park, the marina.

The SCVWD already has the Coyote Outdoor Classroom, which is not a well-used facility. In fact, this proposal called for the District to move the existing pergola from Coyote Creek to Alviso, abandoning the previous site. But the District’s history with educational sites was not questioned this evening. At every public meeting I’ve attended in Alviso, there is a palpable atmosphere of resentment, with speakers demanding that the District make up for all the years of mistreatment that Alviso has suffered. This site is clearly meant to benefit only Alviso, with only the local schools mentioned as future beneficiaries of its presence. No mention of how the District was going to support lesson plans, or of tying the interpretation at the site into the curriculum or state standards for every grade. The attitude of every speaker was if you build it, they will come, and that Alviso deserves it. And only an expensive, brand-new facility, built at the original site, will do. Any changes are a betrayal of Alviso. It remains to be seen what the Board will do.

And, coincidentally, I am quoted as a “frequent water district watchdog” in Paul Rogers’ article about AB466, which Governor Schwarzenegger signed today.

Diana Foss of Willow Glen, said the reforms are a good start. But she said to attract more, and top-quality, candidates to run for the seats, the agency should pay board members a full-time salary, like county supervisors.
“I don’t know if this law will restore public trust,’ she said. “There’s a lot of public apathy. But the district’s work is too important to be left to a part-time board.”

Of all the things I said to Paul this afternoon, this was the mildest. Although I can’t argue against the reforms that Joe Coto has forced on the SCVWD Board, the reason for this law is to let Tony Estremera keep his seat. Assemblyman Coto did not wake up one morning and decide to rein in the SCVWD. The Board came to him and asked him to carry a new District Act, after Ira Ruskin dropped the previous attempt last year. Coto agreed, with the condition that the Board accept some changes in the way they do business, and the changes:

• Board members are banned from seeking employment at the district until at least one year after they leave office.
• All travel by board members must be approved in public meetings.
• Agendas and staff reports must be made public no later than six days before a regular meeting of the board.
• Annual public hearings must be held on the district’s financial reserves; and written summaries of the board’s closed session meetings must be regularly issued.
• Lobbyists working with the agency must register and board members must disclose contacts with board members.
• Board members are banned from contacting staff members on behalf of any party bidding for district contracts.

to me don’t really compensate for changing state law just to let one director save his seat on the Board.