Fish Tacos

I'm in San Francisco and having a grazing good time. My favorite things so far were the mahi mahi tacos yesterday at Cha Cha Cha on Haight. Lightly seasoned, excellent aoili, perfectly shredded red cabbage. After growing up on fish sticks in the mtns of WNC, fresh fish is still a delight to me.

I had shrimp tacos last week and they were pretty good but do not compare with the mahi mahi ones.

Our first night here, I...naturally....went to an Irish-style pub and had a nice ploughman's plate. And a Guinness, nicely pulled. My daughter had fish and chips--haddock, maybe?--and that fish was good, too. Though the breading was too heavy for the fish.

Alas.

On to NY tonight and a street pretzel, a bagel with a schmear and some home-cooked Italian food. And maybe a glass of wine somewhere along the way.

Farmers' Market Maven, Me

So starting tomorrow, I'll be selling baked goods at the Delaware Avenue Farmers' Market in Albany. My baking business is called Bungalow Baking Company and the main products I'm selling will be cupcakes, cookies and brownies.

I'm excited to get my goodies out there into the community. I'm not sure if I;ll make any money, although I should make more than when I was selling my cupcakes at the neighborhood cafe, since I'll be able to charge retail prices instead of wholesale. But the main reason I'm doing this is to keep myself occupied and test the waters, see if this is a viable part-time work option for when I (hopefully) start teaching again in the fall.

If you're in the area this summer and fall on Tuesdays from 4-7 pm, be sure to stop by!

Off to West Paganistan

My daughter and I are off to San Fran for a week. I'll report on the free-range grazing of a couple of Appalachian Pagan foodies as we eat unusual things--fresh seafood (hey, we live in the mtns), good Chinese food and fish tacos. After that, it's NYC and a little taste of the nation's capital.
We'll also see some art, maybe a bite or two of theatre.
Yummy!

Go Forth and Forage!

This story from the New York Times tells of enterprising urbanites who forage for fruit in cities. There are links to a number of websites that feature networks of people interested in foraging for and trading fruit in their urban neighborhoods.

I'm tickled to see attention being paid to this, and a whole culture growing up around it. I grew up in a foraging family. In addition to paying to pick fruit from orchards and "u pick 'em" fields, and growing our own vegetables and fruit, we also went into the country throughout the spring, summer and fall to gather wild strawberries, hickory nuts, puffball mushrooms, etc.

Here in my Albany neighborhood there is at least one apple tree that literally drips with fruit in the autumn. Near the girls' prep school is a nice Macintosh tree that I used to get lovely apples from, but it hasn't blossomed or fruited in the last two years. :( I wonder why? Is it the bee situation?

I hope there are plenty of fruit trees and shrubs in your area. Get out there and snag yourself some fruit!

We Be Jammin'

Lots of berries are ready right now in the southern mountains. We picked sarviceberries today. They're a little like blueberries and make good preserves. The big mulberry tree in our neighborhood park is also loaded down, so we picked some of those, too. Topped it off with currants from the back yard and a handful of black raspberries. Tomorrow--as early as possible--I'll make a run of mixed-berry jam.

The pic at right is a colander with sarviceberries--and some leaves and such. Now they are clean and resting in the kitchen, waiting for the big event tomorrow.