Let me set the scene…

Imagine, you wake up in your tent, perhaps curled up next to somebody cute. You rub your bleary eyes, red and itchy from last night’s indiscretions. “Coffee… Coffee! COFFEE! NOW!” you think. The tent flap zips open. Nature in all her glory fills your nostrils. You take a moment to spread your arms and emit a contented yawn before quickly assembling your drug paraphernalia. Stove, moka pot, cup, grinder.

Wait, grinder? In the woods?

You fill the hopper, turn the handle for a while, and brew up a few spectacular cups as your campmates thank their lucky stars. Ahhhh, life is sweet, isn’t it?

Still in production today but little-used outside of coffee geek circles, quality hand-cranked coffee grinders often have grinding mechanisms to rival the most rarefied big-dollar electric grinders. A not-so-obvious plus is that, due to the sweat of your brow powering the grinder instead of a motor, the RPMs at which the burr spins are far lower. This means the beans will be heated less by friction, which means better coffee. The only downside is, you’ll get a little exercise and wait a little longer. So be it. Coffee is a ritual. Why shouldn’t grinding it be a little ritualistic?

I picked up the above, a vintage 50s model from German maker Zassenhaus, on Ebay just now, for a pittance. Not only will it probably outperform my current home grinder (a Nemox Lux, no slouch), it’ll come in handy for the oceanside coffee roasting party I’m currently drawing up. Please, lord, let UPS be gentle this time.

*UPDATE!*

The grinder arrived in great shape, with some construction surprises- the red domed top is actually beautifully milled out of wood, and swings out in two hinged halves. The whole mechanism’s definitely in need of a little lubing and a good clean, but it happily ground a shot so fine it choked my Aeropress, and the next just fine enough to create a wonderfully fragrant cup. I’m in love.

Filed under: Philosophy, Tools
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For some time, I’ve been a person who is always buying giant armloads of organic/local veggies, sticking to less processed foods, ferreting out fun new things to cook with, having frequent dinner parties, etc. My shopping cart at Rainbow Grocery generally looks like a mobile hill of vibrant greens, reds, yellows and browns when I’m done. I LOVE FRESH FOOD! It’s the centerpiece of my life.

While raw foodism is seen by some as almost ascetic by many, and obviously no fun at all, I normally eat raw food constantly (along with plenty of cooked stuff). My work lunches often used to consist of a box of vegetables, raw as the day they were picked, some miso, and maybe some hummus and some other kind of protein. My contented munching on undressed spinach used to elicit smug titters from my co-workers.

There are also a few competent taquerias and a halfway-decent noodle house about a 10-minute walk away from work, so there was always something decent to eat.

Lately, the pace of my life and work has picked up. The giant shopping trips, the weekend research kibbutzes with co-obsessives, the nice breakfasts and packed lunches on weekdays, and even the safety valve of decent restaurants a short jaunt away have been compromised. Thus springs the trap of immediately available food around the corporate workplace, which generally means: CRAP. Subway sandwiches and Round Table Pizza salads just seem like pale, cruel jokes.

Worse than all of that chain-store garbage, though, is the robot-like entity that recently descended, to much fanfare, in my company’s cafeteria.

Cold Food, indeed. Embalmed sandwiches, interred pizzas, lonely-looking yogurt, bags of tuna salad, toxic muffins. Each week, we’re told “The Machine’s been restocked! This week we’ve got…” as though the makeup of the Costco by-the-pallet astronaut food would change in some compelling way over time.

For god and Grant Achatz’s sake! We’ve invited a robot into our midst that will happily serve us dorm food, forever. Its name is “COLD FOOD”, and it’s here to save us from the drudgery of that one-minute walk. I can hear its wheels and gears clicking together in calm, collected malice, dreaming of fattening us all up for the eventual harvest by its alien creators. “Yes, my pretties. Enjoy your lunch of corn syrup fried in trans fats. The Overlings will be pleased with your girth in short order.”

I’ll never be able to bring myself to support the death-bot, but I’m still being lazy. Every time I find myself biting into another cardboard Subway sandwich when I could have walked a little further and had a really nice torta at Lisa’s, or a bowl of spicy chow fun at TK Noodle, a tiny black cloud forms in my heart, and gray raindrops stream out of it, a cartoon frown forming on its translucent face. A frown that says, “Look how the mighty have fallen.”

Consider this my official resolution, my online point of accountability (hold me to it!) that I will no longer eat crap. That I will take the wheel of my own epicurian 18-wheeler and steer it away from the oncoming ravine. Today I’m taking a couple of co-workers to Lisa’s, so we can all marvel at the rare sidewalk flower that is a great mexican joint in the wilds of Daly City. Next week, the boxes of living, breathing vegetables will be my lunchtime companions again. It’s GO TIME.

Now it’s time to create a map of good local restaurants and stick it on the robot, perhaps with a subtle warning, like this:

Filed under: Random, Philosophy
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For those unfamiliar with the market chain Trader Joes (I’m not sure how far the chain reaches), they’re a sort of funky, cheap place to get lots of semi-gourmet stuff that other markets don’t carry. They send out a monthly pamphlet called the “Fearless Flyer”, a small newsprint thing filled with blurbs about various products they’ve added recently, or are featuring. The writing is snappy and it’s filled with 20’s clip art- It’s a pretty fun little read.

However, I was taken aback by something I read in the latest installment, in a blurb about frozen blackberries. It reads: “If you’re unfamiliar with blackberries, they’re akin to raspberries, but a bit more tart and etc etc etc“. Unfamiliar with BLACKBERRIES?!?! Who isn’t familiar with blackberries? That’s like saying “If you’re not familiar with apples, they’re a crisp, thin-skinned fruit that fits handily into a number of popular applications, like pie, cobbler, and throwing at the homeless.”

However, the crazy thing is, somebody in marketing at TJ’s must have told somebody in advertising, “Now, Jasper, not everyone out there is privy to our advanced berry knowledge. Wouldn’t want to alienate the public- fill them in a bit.”

Well, if you really are unfamiliar with blackberries, they go a ‘lil something like this…

…anyhow, the point of this post isn’t to rail on folks that don’t know their rubus fruticosus from a hole in the ground- if they don’t, it’s not their fault. It’s more of a call-to-arms for folks to get out there and take some food risks. (more…)

Filed under: Philosophy
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Say what you will about Starbucks. Sure, they muscle dozens of perfectly good local coffeehouses and roasters out of business every year and flatten the coffee landscape as they go. They burn the crap out of damn-near every shot of espresso they pull. They’ve changed conventional wisdom about what a simple latte should cost, let alone taste like. *shudder*

However, one of the greatest fallacies to be found in those reassuringly red-lit environs are the spectres they attempt to pass off as PASTRIES.

Limp, lifeless, wooden, weak, alternately too-sweet and flavorless, they scarcely deserve to be called baked goods. Nay, they seem to have been belched out of some nefarious cousin of the Nutri-Matic machine from the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, endlessly turning out items that are “..almost, but not quite, entirely unlike pastries”

In these health-concious times, a pastry is almost a revolt- a personal snicker in the face of calorie-counters, for the sake of sacred communion with the butter, the chocolate, and the holy toasted almonds! Certainly nothing to be sneered at. A pastry is a commitment, a pact, the cause of many brisk runs to the gym. A pastry should tantalize the senses, envelop the soul, and send one into swirling rapture.

..or at the very least it should TASTE GOOD, right?!

*pant* *pant*

Excuse me. Anyhow, here in S.F. we’re blessed with not only some wonderful coffee :roasters, but a good amount of local coffeehouses that have yet to give up the ghost, and most of these serve pastries that just wipe the floor with their plasticine Starbucks equivalents (and let’s not talk about, shh, the COFFEE).

My favorite place for a pastry and a cup of drip in my neighborhood is Squat & Gobble, a place which also does quite good crepes and other offerings. It’s 3 or 4 doors down from me, the coffee is servicable and the pastries are local and fresh.

The place showcases art from local folks, and the people working there are friendly in an unforced way. They are an indelible part of the neighborhood in a way that no megachain could ever be.

(more…)

Filed under: Recipes, Philosophy
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Blessed as I am to share an apartment where the kitchen and living room are basically one and the same, cooking for friends is always a social occasion. I can be deep into a conversation about vintage synthesizers while chopping vegetables, throw a beer to somebody on the couch while deglazing a pan, then jog around the kitchen peninsula and mix into a new record on our little DJ rig before the previous one runs out. It’s a rough, rough life.

(Images: Lydia White - Bad Editing: Yours Truly)

Our place seems made for hosting little soirees, so we try to make use of it whenever we can. On nights when we’re all eating in I usually get to be the lucky guy crashing around in the kitchen with people watching, which is nice for my occasionally attention-grabbing nature! Sometimes, though, even when it’s not time for a meal, the urge will strike me to commit a random act of yumminess.

Sneaking to the kitchen, fiegning dishwashing or straightening-up while still in conversation, I’ll grab a few ingredients and throw a snack together. Usually nobody really notices (except for my girl, she knows my tricks). In the end, I’ll plop a bowl of something or other on the coffeetable with a few little forks stuck in it and say, “Here, eat this”, to much delight (if it’s any good!). I’d better not do it too often, or people will start to expect it, and then it’ll hardly be a random act anymore, will it?
(more…)

Filed under: Recipes, Philosophy
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Excuse the rough layout and nasty graphics (for now). This is, you guessed it, the first post in my new blog, “feeding // fashionistas” (dig the slashes- so hot.) - a running commentary about my 2nd favorite subject*, cooking like a motherf—er.

I’ll admit it, I’m a west-coast urban hipster type, straight out of central casting. I’m a dj, a musician, a geek, a beer connoisseur and a fledgling wine lover. My politics lean heavily left, I love foreign/indie films, I go to Burning Man and underground raves. I’ve got a tastefully messy haircut and I wear subtly chic clothes. I cook almost exclusively vegetarian (sometimes vegan) food, but don’t let that scare you. If you want to take my recipe for dill-miso tofu tacos (forthcoming) and sub in some ground lamb, then far be it from me to stifle your creativity. Baah. I just like a good challenge, and making transcendental grub with little to no animal products is a worthy one.

What I want to relate in this blog is just how goddamn easy it is to cook amazing food for yourself and your fabulous friends. Food that reflects exactly what you want to taste, what you want to say on that plate, so to speak. Food that will have your social circle bowing and scraping at your feet for recipes. The funny part is, once you get it, chances are you’ll be cooking purely in a state of flow and you’ll be able to to smile knowingly and say, “Oh, sorry, this was just kind of improv!”.

At the end of the day, I say all it takes to be a good cook is a little information, some canny shopping, and a sense of adventure. If you “can’t make toast” and want to start on your way to culinary nirvana, I think you’ll find some good info here. If you’re already a good cook but just want some inspiration, I hope I won’t bore the hell out of you. Either way, please leave comments, tell me what’s good, what sucks, what’s missing, what’s overstated. I welcome your jeers as well as your cheers.

One warning- once you start to form your style and get it down, eating out just won’t be the same again.

Cheers and fresh lime leaves to you,
-george C

Filed under: Philosophy, Firstposts
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