food, and other musings

Pho what?

I had my first bowl of pho today. That is what all the freaking fuss is about? You have got to be kidding me, people.

A whale of a taco

Today I harpooned my Moby Dick. For the last eight years, ever since I moved to San Francisco, I have been hearing about the El Tonayense taco truck. "Ooh," people say, "the El Tonayense truck is the best taco in town!" and it's on every "best of" list I have ever read. But somehow, the El Tonayense taco has eluded me, either because I couldn't remember where to look for it when I was hungry, or because when I ran across it I wasn't in an eating mood. Until today. We were on our way to Rainbow Grocery for some free-range eggs when I saw it parked outside of Best Buy. As quick as you can say jackrabbit, Mr. Food Musings hopped out of the car with my order: one carnitas taco. (He'd just eaten lunch an hour before, but he got a taco, too.) You know what? It was damn good. It came out of the truck on two flimsy paper plates nice and hot, just two soft corn tortillas and flavorful hunks of pork topped with a slurry of salsa, raw onions, and pickled carrots and jalapenos on the side. Mr. Food Musings and I pulled up a section of curb, sat down and ate. Mmmm.

First Anniversary

Warning: the following post is not for people who get queasy reading about blood and guts. Seriously.

One year ago today marks the beginning of our annus horribilis. The day started out like any other. Mr. Food Musings got up and rushed off to his job running the creative department of a local advertising agency, while I sat in my PJs all day, researching an article on chocolate. In the evening, Mr. FM -- J -- had a work event he thought I'd enjoy, so we met up at the California Culinary Academy for the launch of some new food website. We mingled with friends over jiggling hors d'oeuvres -- aspic and forcemeat must have been the chapter at the CCA that week -- and drank a few glasses of wine. At one point in the evening we went upstairs to watch Martin Yan of Yan Can Cook have his way with a sharp knife and some vegetables. (And, yes, we got suckered into buying a knife.) Then we went home, had a third glass of wine, watched some TV and went to bed.

At about 1 in the morning I was awakened by a loud KATHUNK. It was the sound of J hitting the bedroom floor, hard.  I got out of bed and found him lying on the floor, moaning. Truthfully, I wasn't overly worried. He tends toward clumsiness, and this wasn't the first time he'd gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, and fallen on the way back.

"Honey, are you okay? Did you fall?" I asked.

"I think I have food poisoning," he gasped, holding his tummy. "I've been in the bathroom throwing up for the last few hours."

A quick blink at the clock made me frown. A few hours? We hadn't gone to bed more than a few hours ago. But I shooed away the funny feeling.

"Honey, can you sit up? Let's get you into bed." I tried moving him, but he refused to budge from the fetal position.

"I'm so dizzy, I can't move. I just want to lie here."

Dizzy? I thought. What does dizzy have to do with food poisoning? And not just dizzy, but too dizzy to move? A small feeling of panic stirred in my chest.

I tried a few more times to convince him to get into bed, but he refused to move. Something about him -- his mannerisms, his speech -- just seemed...funny. Not like him, but not in a way I could put my finger on. My heart beat a bit faster, and a quick blast of hot fear ran through my limbs.

"Honey, I think we should call 911. Okay? I don't like this," I told him.

"NO!" he moaned. "Don't call 911. I'm fine. I'm just sick, that's all." As he spoke, he tried to get onto his knees but all he could manage was a pitiful crouch, with his head and shoulders on the floor. I reached for the phone. As I cradled it against my neck, I grabbed some clothes from the dresser and knelt down to him, pulling a tee shirt over his head as I gave the operator our address, yanking underwear up his legs as I told them I needed an ambulance. It's funny the things you do in the middle of an emergency; he'd slept naked that night, and I wanted to protect his modesty in front of the paramedics. I also coaxed my hair into what I hoped was a semi-attractive pony tail, and slung on a pair of sweatpants, silently saying a prayer that the tank top I'd worn had a built-in bra because it saved me a step. I already knew we were going to the hospital.

The 911 operator let me know that someone was on the way, and that he'd stay on the phone with me until help arrived. "Is his airway clear?" he asked me, and followed that question with a series of others. I was trying hard to pay attention, but by then J was starting to whimper. "Hang on," I told the operator, following behind as J crawled along the floor towards the bathroom. I grabbed him under his chest and tried to help pull him forward onto the linoleum. As he vomited, I held his head. He managed to get most of it in the toilet, but a small amount splattered on the white rim of the toilet seat. It was red. Blood red. That's when I started to cry.

"Ohmygod, he's throwing up blood," I sobbed into the phone. "That's not good, is it?" I half listened to the operator's reassuring voice while trying to soothe J. "It's okay, honey, you're going to be okay, the paramedics are coming." I repeated it like a mantra for the next few minutes. In between heaving, J begged me not to call them. "I'm fine. I'm fine. Don't call 911, please don't call 911."

When the paramedics arrived, I buzzed them in. They burst through the doorway, one blue-clad figure after the next. Two of them immediately started taking J's stats, his blood pressure, his pulse, and asking him questions. "He's throwing up blood," I said to anyone who would listen. "I think he might have food poisoning but I don't know, he's acting funny."

"Sir, how much have you had to drink?" one of them asked. J kept insisting he was fine, that they should leave. I stood in the still-dark hallway filling another one in on the night's history -- his name and age, how much I thought he'd had to drink (3 glasses of wine over the course of 4 hours), what drugs he was taking (none) and on and on, trying to keep my eye on J all the while. The paramedics kept asking him how much he'd had to drink, if he regularly drinks a lot, if there were any other drugs in his system.

I finally realized that they thought he was loaded, either on drink, drugs, or both.

I pushed past the man with the paperwork. "No, no, we don't take drugs, we barely drank anything tonight. He's sick and he's dizzy and he's been throwing up blood," I said. "See, right there." I pointed to the toilet seat.

"That's not blood, ma'am, that's just the red wine." My heart slowed a bit when I heard that. That seemed like good news. Then I realized, if he's not throwing up blood, what the hell is wrong with him?

After they determined he was stable, they wrangled him into a metal stair chair since our building didn't have an elevator. As they maneuvered him out the door and into the hallway, I dashed through the apartment, grabbing wallets, a bottle of water, pants and a sweatshirt for J, our cell phones. I remember being aware of how odd it was that I was thinking so clearly. I also remember worrying it meant I wasn't taking this seriously enough. Why wasn't I consumed with fear, with worry?

On the way down the stairs J continued to insist that he was fine, and they should take him back upstairs. The paramedics finally got stern with him. "Mr. S, we cannot leave you here. Your wife has called us because she thinks there is something wrong with you, and we have to take you to the hospital." As they spoke, he started to heave again and they thrust a plastic container underneath his mouth.

They loaded him into the ambulance and asked if I wanted to go with them or drive myself. I didn't know where they were going and I didn't want to waste time parking so I got in the ambulance's front seat. I sat there as they hooked him up to an IV. It was 2 a.m. and I was scared and alone. J wasn't making any sense, and I knew something was bad wrong. I just didn't know what.

When we got to the hospital, the doctors asked him a barrage of questions. "Do you know what your name is?"

"Yes, it's J." My heart started to slow down and the knot in my stomach began to unclench.

"Do you know where you are?"

"I'm at the hospital." I felt safer, now that we were around People Who Knew What to Do.

"Do you know what year it is?"

"1986." I glanced over at the doctors and my heart sped up. "No wait," J said, "That's not right." It slowed back down. "It's 1996." boom-boom-boom-boom. I barked a sharp laugh, even though it wasn't funny.

Pretty soon they gave him something to ease the nausea and told us they needed to take him for a CT scan. They'd quizzed us both on everything that had happened so far, and I didn't know what to say except what he had told me: that he thought he had food poisoning and had been sick for hours, that when he came back to bed he fell, that he was dizzy and didn't seem like himself. I asked to go with him to the CT scan, and they said I could. I dragged all our things along with us, stashing his sweatshirt in a corner of the gurney, a bag on either shoulder. I grasped the little plastic half-moon tightly in my hand in case he needed to throw up again. Outside the scan room was a small waiting area, and the technician asked me to wait there. "We'll be about 20 minutes," he said.

I sat down on an ugly blue chair, scanning the out of date magazines, and tried to collect my thoughts. I took a few deep breaths. Then I called my mom. It was nearly 5 a.m. on the East Coast, and I knew she'd be up.

"Hello? Are you okay?" she answered.

"No, J's in the hospital. They don't know what's wrong." I explained, half sobbing, what had happened, where we were, what they were doing. She calmed me down a bit, asked how to reach me. Before I knew it J was being wheeled back. "I have to go," I said. "I'll call you as soon as I know more."

We spent the next few hours in the ER, where J threw up every few minutes. Doctors and nurses came in and out, asking questions, administering drug after drug in an attempt to stanch the constant vomiting, restarting a new IV to help hydrate him. I called my mom every so often with updates, nothing definitive. "We're waiting for them to read the CT scan," I explained.

Finally, about 3:30 in the morning, they came by with the results.

"Mrs. S," they said -- I'd let them believe I was his wife so I could make the medical decisions without any hassle -- "your husband has suffered a bad concussion. When he fell, he fractured his skull in two places. That explains the dizziness and the vomiting." They also found evidence of drugs in his urine, and they asked me again what he had prescriptions for, what drugs we had in the house that might explain the presence of a drug I'd never heard of. Within the hour, they moved him into a private room for constant observation. Every so often, he would moan and sit up while I grabbed for the closest plastic bowl and thrust it underneath his chin. The nurse gave me a plastic pitcher for him to pee into because he couldn't get out of bed, and when he had to relieve himself, I would lift up his gown, hold the pitcher up to him, wipe him off and then save the output for the nurse to measure later.

By 7 a.m. the doctors had started rounds, and I met his resident. She explained that a neurosurgeon had been called and he'd be stopping by later that day. That morning was a flurry of doctors, nurses, more scans, MRIs, vomiting, phone calls. Surgery was ruled out, but a neurologist came by and asked him to follow her pencil with his eyes, and touch his fingertips to his chin. A psychiatrist came by to ensure he hadn't tried to overdose on whatever drug they found in his system. (He hadn't, and they chalked that up to erroneous test results.) Friends came by, bringing me a change of clothes, a notebook, a phone card so I could use the hospital phones to call long-distance. I asked them to cancel my interviews that day, and to let the office know J wouldn't be coming in.

In the afternoon he was moved into a permanent room on another floor. I kept in touch with my mom and called J's parents, who live in Silicon Valley, but told them not to come, that we'd would be getting out that afternoon or evening, or the next morning. In the end, we were there for 6 days. His parents came up every afternoon for a visit and brought us fruit, snacks, water, books. While they stayed with him, I dashed the 3 blocks home. The first day I slept for a few hours, since I hadn't slept at all the night before, but later I stayed just long enough to shower, pack food for myself to eat the next day, get a change of underwear for J. One day I left and J looked up at me, a bit broken. "Are you coming back?" 

"Yes, honey, soon, in less than an hour, I just need to get a few things from the house." I ran all the way home and all the way back.

Throughout that week, I slept in the chair next to his bed, getting up to hold his head when he was sick, or to help him pee into the pitcher. I wrote down all his medications, and reminded the nurses when it was time for another painkiller or antiemitic. For the first 3 days all he did was sleep unless the doctors woke him to ask questions. By the 4th day, he was awake for some of the day and able to sit up a bit, and I gave him some yogurt and a sponge bath. By that afternoon, his nurse had him on his feet, and the physical therapist came by to take him for a walk. By the next day he was asking when he could go home, pushing for it to be soon. The doctors looked at us, grave. He was still dizzy and throwing up nearly everything he ate. He could barely walk more than 30 steps without collapsing from exhaustion, and he was so unsteady someone had to hold on to both hips while he did. "He can't be left alone," they warned. "He'll need help walking until his balance improves, and he has to be able to eat on his own, without getting his nutrition from an IV." I explained that he had started to eat, and I worked at home, I could do whatever he needed. We just needed to get home.

On day 6, they released him. His parents drove us home, and he walked upstairs, one step at a time. The two flights took us 20 minutes. His parents ran to Walgreens to fill his many prescriptions -- one for nausea, one for vertigo, one for pain, another for sleeping, another for the migraines -- while I got him comfortable on the sofa. We talked about how he would need to be out of work for a little while. "I'll stay out all this week," he said. I looked at him hard. "You might want to be thinking two weeks instead," I warned. Neither of us had a clue.

The next 6 weeks are a blur. I was by his side the entire time, save for an hour when he needed a refill on his prescriptions and none of our friends could do it for us in time. If he needed to get up and walk from room to room, I got up and walked behind him with my hands on his hips, steadying him. When he got up in the night to pee, I went with him, and I stood outside the bathroom door. Eventually he got a cane. I gave him baths because he couldn't stand up to shower, and I shaved him, which inexplicably always made him throw up. For a few weeks, all he would eat was fruit, yogurt and Coke. Even that was hard to keep down. I learned to keep plastic bags in my purse and in the car for emergencies, and we stashed plastic trashcans throughout the apartment so he would always have one nearby. A good day was one when he could keep breakfast down for a few hours, long enough to get some nutrition from it. On a bad day he threw up within 5 minutes of eating, up to 5 times a day, maybe more. He lost 7 pounds in the hospital and 5 more at home. His parents went on grocery runs for us, and so did friends. Other friends sent food, ordered in Thai, mailed gift certificates for delivery services. I canceled all my projects and stopped taking new work. We took walks together once, twice, three times a day, practicing walking forwards and backwards, walking a straight line, turning corners. Sometimes he fell. Sometimes he had to lie down on the concrete outside. Strangers stopped and offered to help. People stared at the young-old man who hobbled with a cane, moving at a snail's pace.

After 6 weeks, I felt like I could leave him alone. His parents came up and sat with him while I went out for an hour by myself to meet friends for a glass of wine. After a few more weeks, I could leave him alone for an hour -- to get my nails done, or run an errand, to meet a friend for lunch, or conduct an interview. I started working again, just a little. He had 8 appointments every week: acupuncture twice, to control the nausea; physical therapy three times to help him learn how to balance and walk; at least one doctor's appointment; and therapists to treat the depression that is a common symptom of head injuries. His parents and I learned to juggle schedules. They would drive up to the city 2, 3 times a week and take him to PT or feed him lunch so I could get a few things done. I started grocery shopping again, and cooking. We invited a few friends over here and there.

Eventually we pieced together what we think happened that night. When J got up in the night to pee, he fainted. It's very common in men. When he fell, he knocked himself out on the bathroom floor. When he came to -- 2 minutes or 2 hours later, we don't know -- he was dizzy, nauseated, and disoriented. There never was any food poisoning. J remembers waking up convinced that he was alone in another apartment, one we were about to sign a lease on, and when he stumbled back to the bedroom and tumbled to the floor, he was shocked to find me there.  When he hit his head, it resulted not just in two skull fractures, but also in bleeding and bruising of the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls balance and coordination, and teaches the rest of the brain new tricks. It's very rare to injure the cerebellum because of its location at the back of the skull. Doctors, we learned, don't know all that much about cerebellar injuries when it comes right down to it, and every head injury is different, so they weren't sure what to tell us to expect. At first they said to look for big improvements at 3 months, then 6 months, 9, a year. We scoffed. Three months? He'd be well by then.

In the end, J was out of work for 4 months. His office replaced him while he was gone; they had to. But they kept a job open for him, and he fought to get back to it as soon as he could. Throughout the last year he has suffered from unrelenting vertigo every waking moment. The throwing up stopped after about 6 weeks, and the nausea went away a few months later. After 6 months of physical therapy three times a week, he can walk on his own, and even go for a jog by himself. It used to be that just riding in the car for 20 minute made him sick, but now he can tolerate rides of an hour or more. In the last few weeks, he's started driving again. He gets terrible migraines, sometimes as often as every other day, but he's learning how to manage them. Over the course of his recovery, he's tried acupuncture, massage, cupping and acupressure, drugs and therapy, yoga and exercise. We sought out specialist after specialist, consulted friends of friends, mailed his medical records all over the country for second opinions, and third, and fourth and fifth ones. In the end, they have all told us the same thing. "We expect a full recovery." "These things take time." "His improvement is impressive." I can tell you, it feels like anything but. Still, when I look back a year ago, 9 months ago, 6 months or 6 weeks, I can see how far he has come. It hasn't been easy, and there have been many, many times when it seemed insurmountable, days when I cried in the shower out of fear or frustration, mornings when he looked at me with bleary eyes and told me he just couldn't take it anymore.

But here we are. One year later. A day we once thought held some sort of magic, a day when he'd wake up and be his old self again. He isn't. Not yet. But we have noticed a few small changes in the last few weeks, after months of nothing. He feels a bit better than he used to. He can bend over without getting quite as dizzy. He can do yoga without having to lie down afterwards. It's starting to feel like maybe, just maybe, the end of this is out there, somewhere, not too far beyond our grasp.
 

Is Gourmet the next Saveur?

Has anyone else noticed the changes at Gourmet? I was just telling a friend the other day that, although I subscribe to Gourmet, I barely read it. As much as I believe in supporting local agriculture and want to understand the implications of buying wild v. farmed salmon, the last year or two Gourmet has felt a little -- well, okay, a lot -- preachy. It also felt like maybe it wasn't sure who it was. Was it for gourmands? (See elaborate dinner party spread, pp. 96-104) For politicos? (See article on the evils of pig farming, pp. 84-87). For busy home cooks? (See Gourmet Every Day, pp. 60-62).

I picked it up in the bookstore yesterday, and started flipping through February. (Candied bacon caught my eye.) And I noticed that it looked a little different. There wasn't a single article that dealt with the business or politics of food. All of the features were first person narratives that intertwined food and travel. A shot of the Mediterranean's azure seas and rocky, goat-climbed crags screamed Turkey from one page; muted gray-greens and barren trees announced a piece on Massachusetts eating come wintertime from another; photos of Charlie Palmer and his family smiled out at me in an article about his charmed small-town life in Healdsburg from a third. Hell, even the piece pimped on the cover about soups was written by a woman who ran an English-language newspaper in Ecuador about the soups she ate on her lunch break served up from "battered aluminum pots" by "stout matrons wearing aprons."

I picked up January, which was still on the stands, and leafed through it, too. Same thing. I noticed some other changes as well. Like, Colman Andrews is writing the restaurant column (no more bad boy Bourdain?). Ruth Reichl, who rarely writes for the magazine, has a piece on Italian ceramics in one issue. And the Gourmet Everyday Quick Kitchen section seems to have expanded. I counted 13 recipes in one, 15 in another, each of the photos sniped with a bold number indicating how long it takes to make the dish: 10 min, 15 min, 35 min.

Someone asked me recently if I'd noticed any change in Saveur since their new editor-in-chief took over. My answer was, not really. But Gourmet? It's beginning to feel a bit like Saveur, with stories about real people in faraway lands and food as the backdrop rather than front and center.

I like it. I bought both issues and plan to sit down and read through them today.

But I'm curious. What do you think? Have you noticed other changes? Do you like them? Do you still read Gourmet?

Cyrus

Cyrus is many things, one of them defiant. Like a slippery fish or a wriggling child who has her mind stubbornly set against a diaper change, our New Year's Eve dinner at Cyrus simply refuses to be written up. And I have tried, oh, have I tried. But every time I sit down and rest my fingertips on the keys, something wills me away as violently as if I had tried to bring together the north poles of two magnets.

After nearly three weeks of wrangling, it was clear I needed a new approach, so I diverted my mind to figuring out why this post is so elusive. I have decided that it is because it is nearly impossible to conjure the sense of magic of such a dinner with simple words. I need food or lightning, flesh or spells, to convey it to you. (Oh hush up about how I'm a writer and that's my job. Hush!) Unfortunately, all I have are thought-swells, impressions. And a menu. Let's start there.

*
Canapés
***
Half-ounce Iranian Osetra caviar with grit cakes and traditional accompaniments (hard-boiled egg, chives, creme fraiche)
***
Amuse bouche
***
Thai-marinated lobster with avocado, mango and hearts of palm
***
Seared foie gras a la pineapple baba au rhum
***
Turbot with matsutake mushrooms, daikon sprouts and shiso-konbu broth
***
Farro pasta with creamed spinach and poached egg, parmesan and truffle froths
***
Black truffle-crusted rack of lamb with potato puree, sauce perigord
***
Deep-fried champagne ice cream, cranberry granite, gingered kumquats and a bite of chocolate
***
Mignardises
*

Already I have the urge to take a shower, chew on my nails, start a new post on aged Gouda cheese or go read the latest issue of Gourmet. (sigh)

Fine, Cyrus, you win. You with your champagne cart and caviar piled like a necklace of little onyx beads on the table; you with your molten foie gras and dramatic rum flambée; you with your lack of shame, heaping pasta with one sybaritic indulgence after the next, first creamed spinach, then a runny egg, then parmesan and, oh, yes, have some truffles, too; you with your relaxed ways, kind smiles, balletic grace; you with your staff who quietly, unobtrusively, danced a path in front of us each time we went to the bathroom, whispering in an ear here, placing a hand on a back there, orchestrating an obstacle-free dining room for someone who does his best to walk a straight line but still does more lurching and dipping and shaking than anything else; you with your beautiful, beautiful room, the only dining room I have been in (other than Tour d'Argent) that struck me as so lovely to look at. The night -- hell, the year -- wasn't all it was cracked up to be, but for your part, well, you win.

Fancy Food Show wrap-up

So far, this is the most complete review of this week's (now ended) Fancy Foods Show. It is the only wrap-up I've read so far that does not mention the obviously delectable Chilean carica fruit. Sounds like there are lots of good health-infused foods coming our way. Thanks to all who attended and wrote up their observations of the show so that interested slackers, like myself, could stay home.

lunch lady

Since I work at home and Mr. Food Musings is home all day, too, fast/delicious/nutritious lunches have become the Holy Grail. When it was just me, I usually finished up leftovers or popped a frozen meal into the microwave (there are healthy, trans-fat free versions, ya know). But with an audience to cook for -- one who turns his nose up at day-old food, I might add -- I have to do better than that. In the last 30 days, we've exhausted our paltry sandwich repertoire* and it only took half that time for me to start spewing venom about the burritos he always wants to buy from the taqueria down the street. Yesterday I was leafing through Everyday Food, which certainly isn't tilling new culinary ground or anything, but it is a reliable source of fast, easy and delicious recipes, and I found just what a girl needs come 1 p.m.

Whole-wheat "pizza" with ricotta and mushrooms
Obviously you could play around with this idea a million ways to Sunday, though I don't think the tortilla crust would withstand much in the way of tomato sauce. It's a perfect vehicle for using up leftovers, from meats to veggies to cheese.

Take 1 whole-wheat tortilla and brush it with 1 tsp olive oil. Top with a decent sprinkling of salty hard cheese (asiago, pecorino-romano, parmesan will all do) and spoon several dollops-worth of fresh ricotta cheese around. Add a handful of sliced red onions and some sliced button mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper to taste, then bake at 450º for 10-20 minutes, depending on your oven. Serve with a small green salad and a piece of fruit. Serves 2 wistful dieters (or 1 hungry child).

***
*Never did like 'em much, just ask my mom. When I was a kid, the only two sandwiches I would eat were American cheese, sliced sweet pickles & mayo, or cream cheese and jelly. (shudder)

herb garden

Now that I have a big kitchen with oodles of sunlight, I'm growing herbs again. When I lived in Virginia, my dad always had a small garden out back. He'd grow the usual stuff -- tomatoes, knobby little cucumbers, maybe the occasional pepper or squash. Peppermint grew wild out near the old sandbox, and every now and then my mom would ask us to cut some for iced tea. After college, I lived in a big house in Charlottesville, Virginia, with a long front porch and lots of sun, and I had big pots full of herbs growing all year long. The rosemary grew tall and fast, as fast I could cut it, and the basil flourished so frantically it seemed bent on world domination. There is nothing like walking outside on a warm summer evening and clipping some fresh basil to toss over a bowl of spaghetti and tomatoes. When I moved to San Francisco, I carried my pots along with me, packed 'em up in the U-Haul. I can't remember if I brought the plants, too, but I had a teeny-weeny corner of the kitchen that got full sun most of the day long, and that is where my basil and rosemary sat. Eventually, I moved out, to a series of places with not enough sunlight, or not enough space, to support my little herb garden, and it withered away. But now that I have both, here we go again: rosemary, spiky and fragrant; peppermint that already threatens to outgrow the container where I just planted it; a stubby bush of thyme, eager to flavor soups and chickens; and basil, just seeds right now, hopefully seedlings within a few weeks.

California citrus

Good news -- despite record low temperatures and devasting freezes, Northern California citrus may not suffer quite as badly as we have been led to believe. In this week's CUESA newsletter (they run the Ferry Plaza farmer's market) there was a whole article on the fate of Northern California citrus. Here are a few key excerpts:

"Fortunately, our citrus growers were not as hard hit, on the whole, as other California orange, lemon, and grapefruit farmers. Many were able to harvest a good portion of their crop before the first deep freeze. While large farms couldn’t find enough laborers to pick their fruit, most of our farmers have fewer acres and were able to salvage more of their crop because of it. Though some fruits were harvested before reaching their peak ripeness and may not be quite as sweet as usual, they are preferable to no crop at all.

The jury is still out on the fruit that remains on trees. Tory Farms, Hamada Farms, Bernard Ranches, Olsen Organics and Everything Under the Sun Farm all reported that they felt optimistic about the unpicked fruit, but it will be a week before they can determine how much damage was done. Citrus fruits with lower sugar content like lemon, grapefruit, and pomelo are at higher risk than fruit with more sugar, since sugar lowers the freezing point. Yuk Hamada guesses that most of his unharvested lemons will be lost to the freeze."

Sounds like there will still be less citrus than if the freeze hadn't been quite so bad, but there is every reason to expect that the citrus offerings, at least at Ferry Plaza, won't go totally belly up this winter.

strawberry ice cream

Before:

After:

I've now made ice cream twice from scratch, and though I'm not one to brag, I think it's the best ice cream I've ever eaten. I'm not sure if it's the quality of the Straus organic cream I''m using, the fact that we're eating it so soon after it was made, or simply that it's homemade, but I don't even like strawberry ice cream and I snuck a few bites of this before breakfast. It's just got that tongue-coating creaminess that makes ice cream addictive. I feel like if I could just have one more bite, then I would be satisfied. Instead, I find myself wanting, well, one more bite.

Next up? I want to replicate the roasted banana ice cream I peed in my pants over at Bi-Rite Creamery.

***

Strawberry Ice Cream (adapted from A Passion for Ice Cream by Farallon pastry chef Emily Luchetti)

2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup + 6 tablespoons sugar
1/8 tsp + 1 large pinch kosher salt
1 heaping pint fresh strawberries, hulled and quartered
1/2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice

Put the cream, milk, 1/4 cup sugar and 1/8 tsp salt in a medium heavy saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is almost simmering. (It will steam and you will see teeny weeny bubbles forming.) Cool over an ice bath until room temperature, then refrigerate for 4 hours or up to overnight.

Meanwhile, put the strawberries, remaining 6 tablespoons sugar, the lemon juice and the large pinch of salt in a medium heavy saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the strawberries reach a jamlike consistency, about 20-25 minutes. Let cool to room temperature and refrigerate for 1 hour until cold.

Stir the cooked strawberries into the custard. Churn in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Freeze until scoopable, about 4 hours.