My own food chores came to a head last night. I was making up a brine for smoking this salmon, and toasting nori seaweed (200 degrees in oven, which didn’t make it taste any better — got to figure this out, it’s such nutritious (and free) stuff), when we discovered that our rooster, which had killed one of his own baby chicks the day before, had wounded 2 of the remaining 3. This is the loudest, most aggressive rooster we’ve ever had, and this was over the line. He is now headless, cleaned and plucked and headed for stew thus weekend. And boy is it quiet around here.

I made sourdough oat flour and cattail pollen pancakes last week. Ground the oat groats into flour just before mixing it up. The pollen is a deep yellow. Buttermilk, a little baking soda (interacts with acidity of b’milk), eggs, a little sugar, no oil.

Just made my first batch of sauerkraut. Simple, just salt and cabbage in a glazed crock with a waterseal; the lactic acid in sauerkraut is supposed to do wonders for health.

Salmon is now smoking in my Little Chief electric smoker with alder and hickory chips. Will vacuum seal and freeze when done.

The salmon are back, not like in the past, but it’s an encouraging sign for this magical species. Billy brought us a slab, this is half of it.  We had it with broccoli from the garden (hey, broccoli is entirely different when it’s hours, rather than days, old), Lundberg Sacramento Valley short grain brown rice, such a meal. When we have something so simple and so delicious I think the foodies are missing the point. Fresh pure organic food doesn’t need sauces and chefly acrobatics. The flavors are there. Add a good red California wine (Chasing Lions, as of this week) and umph!

And in the pan are baby (road-kill) venison ribs marinating in a little olive oil, soy sauce, fresh ginger and garlic, a few dashes of Vietnamese hot sauce. A message to you brothers and sisters, you who are into wild flavors in meat: you know you can’t buy anything like the meat of a wild animal. If you get an animal recently hit by a car, it’s win-win-win: meat-skin-skeleton. It has all kinds of flavors you don’t get from domestic human-fed animals. I mean, people who eat hot dogs re going, about my road-kill meals: Eeeeuw! Well, Eeeeuw back. Matter of perspective fer shure. Jeez, did I just get into a sermon here?

And it’s not all flesh around here: it’s been a great year for cattail pollen and I’ve been having (fresh-ground) oat flower-with-cattail-pollen (great year for same, it’s bright yellow) waffles. AND innocculated with sour-dough starter the night before. Rully good…

I just had dinner at Han Bat, a 24-hour Korean restaurant a few doors down from the hotel. Meals served in stone bowls heated to near-incendiary temperatures, very exotic, many side dishes of pickled vegetables, almost all people eating there Korean. Like stepping into another country.

Upon the recommendation of Janice at the Spoonbill bookstore, I had dinner at Caracas Arepa, a Venezuelan restaurant a few blocks off Bedford last night. Hugely popular place, rightly so. Rum drinks. Their specialty is arepas, various fillings inside a wrapping made of white cornmeal, which is not fried, but grilled, then baked, making it crunchy. Wonderful food, wonderful place.

There were 4 girls having dinner at a nearby table. They had a pitcher of sangria and were having a great time. In the past week I’ve seen a bunch of girls-nights-outs at tables in various restaurants. So different without men. They’re really connecting, sharing, tuning into each other, comfortable without the big T present. Harmony.

Then I went over to the Ragegast Hall (a serious beer bar) on N. 3rd Street to see The Baby Soda Jazz Band. The bass player is Peter Ford and he plays a box bass that he sort of invented. (A year ago I finally talked him into making me one — I’d seen the band playing in Washington Square —  and I play it a little almost every day.) The band was in great form, doing ’20s-’30s music like Baby Won’t You Please Come Home and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue. Peter’s awesome on this one-string bass. A guest trombone player, who has played with Wynton Marsalis,  sat in. Great dancing, wonderful to see young people picking up on songs from this era. Diga Diga Doo…

Photo by Walt Denson

A blast from the west coast: today I’m sitting on the bus after a long (and productive) day at Book Expo America, and I check my email on the iPad, and there’s a message from my friend Hans with a link to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, showing me skateboarding in a weekly column called “Healthy Obsession.” https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/24/DDM31JHPOO.DTL

Yesterday I went to see an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art Library on the Whole Earth Catalog and other books from the cultural revolution of the 60s and 70s, including our Domebook 2. It’s a nice exhibit, with maybe 50-60 books, and it’s a blast to look back at those days and see the newsprint books we were producing about what was going on. 1st photo below is an early WEC; 2nd photo is Domebook 2 at top and Steve Baer’s Dome Cookbook (which actually preceded the WEC) at lower right.

(See Wikipedia on the WEC.)

One thing about all my years’ running is, I can navigate city streets pretty well. I’ve always told my kids, “Watch the cars, not the lights. New Yorkers cross against red lights en masse when there’s a break in traffic. I saw a mother with a kid in a stroller crossing on a red light. (Kind of reminds of a time years ago when I heard a mother in a park playground here tell her kid, “If you don’t get over heah I’m gonna break yer ahm!”)

I love this chain of restaurants here called Le Pain Quotidien. A great bakery, and breakfast and lunch. A lot of the food is organic, everything is freshly baked, and tables are broad-planked pine with one 35-foot long community table, and motif of a French farmhouse kitchen.

Had fabulous sushi last night across from the Beacon Theater at Fusha. Four sushi chefs dressed in all black were putting sushi together with lightning hand speed. I said to the guy next to me at the counter, “They could make a movie of these guys,” and he said, “It’s better live.”

Nice little building complex on outskirts of Sonoma. I love the brick red trim.Took off Monday morning for a 5 day road trip. First up to my brother’s farm in the Napa Valley to watch the olive harvest, then up towards Clear Lake, and Harbin Hot Springs. From there out to see SunRay Kelley’s “man cave,” a 12-sided cob-walled wooden yurt, then over to hang out with my friend Louie at his place on the river.

I love starting on a trip. It’s always an adventure. Rainy drizzly morning, and on my Sirius satellite blues station, Bobby Blue Bland singing, They Call it Rainy Monday, then Paula Nelson (with Willy Nelson) doing Have You Ever Seen the Rain. Over on the “Outlaw” station, Dale Gilmore: I’m a Ramblin Man…

Heading along the back road to Petaluma, it’s misty and the hills are soft and green. God I love California! Ayreshire cows grazing. One of Clover Milk’s billboards shows a cow lying on her side, relaxing in a meadow, with the words: “Amazing Graze.” I still remember “Tip Clo Through the Two Lips.”

Olive harvest: my brother made a deal with the (large) McEvoy Ranch for his (certified organic) olive crop. The McEvoy crew was there, 44 guys, and I shot photos. It was a bumper olive year; my brother resurrected a pretty neglected bunch of olive trees (over 1000) on a ranch he bought 3 years ago. This year they expect to get 12 tons.