Spice Dish

The Most For Your Money

I picked up “The Most For Your Money Cookbook” one day while waiting for a dentist appt. I went to The Great Overland Book Co. on Judah and poked through the stacks. I didn’t have anything special I was looking for, just 30 minutes to kill. Their cookbook section is really small and has mostly newer books, but I dug through until I found this little charmer from 1938.

 

As I paid for my purchase, the clerk chided me “You understand this is in 1930’s money right?” Apparently he thought I was trying to use this book for current day money savers. Not that it isn’t a great resource. This kind of info never becomes obsolete really. I assured him that yes I understood and absconded with my purchase.

 

On the dentist’s couch I flipped through my new find. The inside has the name of it’s previous owner: Annie J Mc Crohan (I found a few possible matches on Google, all of whom were born in the late 1880’s which would fit). The name is written in the script of women of my grandmother’s generation.

 

The Foreword is all about “Stretching the Food Dollar” which includes really practical advice like advocating whole grain cereals at breakfast because they “stretch the dollar like rubber”. The reason I so quickly fell in love with this book though was not only the authors’ sense of humor, apparently new tomatoes “bred to convenient size to suit the shipper, not the consumer” are “only good for kids to throw at cops”, but also their candor. They warn against “the siren call of radio experts who sell us foodless food,” offering a much needed reminder that the concern over food industrialization is nothing new.

 

The recipe I went to was one I remember from my childhood, when my mom was trying to stretch our family’s food dollar, Beef Stroganoff. The recipe is exactly the one I grew up with. It’s uncanny. The taste brought me right back to my family dinner table where I would be scolded for rocking back in my chair, my brother would stuff his cheeks like a chipmunk and my dad would try to make us laugh until the milk spilled. It’s simple, comforting and yes, economical… in the very best way.

Boeuf a la Stroganoff

 

1 lb tender beef

2 tbs butter

1 small onion minced

¼ pound fresh mushrooms, sliced

1 garlic clove, minced

1 tbs flour

1 parsley sprig

Salt and pepper

1 cup sour cream

 

Cut meat into narrow strips. Slowly fry onion and garlic in butter, add steak and brown. Add parsley and the mushrooms. Cover and let cook for 20 minutes. Add flour, simmer until thick. Add sour cream and heat through.

 

That’s it. Total. It’s best, and most nostalgic, on top of wide egg noodles.

Enjoy!

EB

Irish Fix For What Ails Ya

Last Sunday was cold and grey. A few friends of mine were in town for Outside Lands and were a little worse for wear. I dragged them out to the boonies of SF (hey the don't call it Outside Lands for nothing!) to grab a much needed 'next morning' breakfast. We stepped into the Copper Kettle "bakery" and were greeted by a sympathetic waitress with a full on brogue who brought us water and coffee before I think we could even mumble an order. I had the "mini-Irish" a scaled down version of a gut busting Irish breakfast of beans, sausage, tomato, fried egg, toast, bacon and I'm sure a few other things. The out of towners loved the fact that they could order huevos rancheros and breakfast burritos full of Irish bacon. D.E.M. ordered herself a corned beef sandwich... which honestly... was the best I've ever eaten. Ever. Big thick slices of homemade corned beef that had been tossed on the grill like bacon.... this wasn't just the hangover talking. This was brilliant.

That's a mini!!

Fortified by our Irish provisions we stepped back out in to the fog, dropped the guests off at the park for another day full of San Francisco style fun and headed back to bed to sleep of the food 'lude.

This place is out of the way, way out of the way, but it honestly is Irish (with an SF twist) and worth a trek. Especially on a foggy, cold San Francisco weekend.

Enjoy!

The Copper Kettle
2240 Taraval Street

Share Your Table

My new favorite thing? The print by artist Nikki McClure titled "Share Your Table" that I picked up at Little Otsu on Valencia. It really embodies everything I believe about food.

Enjoy

EB

Contigo!

Contigo oh how I love you. How can one not love a gorgeous little space filled with adorable Spanish servers who claim that the pork belly bocadillos changed their lives? How could a person resist sitting on a warm patio surrounded by a fresh herb garden while eating some of the most amazing flavor combinations in the city. And really…. is there a single individual that can resist fingerling potato chips? I didn’t think so.

 

My dining cohort Bibi and I were a little unsure what to expect. We had both heard great things about Contigo and judging by the line out the door at 5:30 on a Wednesday... so had many others. We were a little overwhelmed by the menu. We wanted one of everything, so we relied on our server for our selections, including wine, and each was exactly what we were looking for. It turned out to be one of the most casual, completely fulfilling, and utterly joyous eating experiences I've had in a long time. 

If you haven't been... simply.... go. 

Contigo |1320 Castro St.| 415.285.0250

Enjoy!

EB

Time At The Counter

It was a grey morning today. My hair was dripping wet from my morning swim and the cold wind was chilling my brain to the bone. My optometrist appointment was 30 minutes off and I needed a warm cup of coffee and some comfort food. West Portal is what I call an 'old lady' neighborhood. There is a plethora of hair boutiques, doctor's offices, fruit stands, two drugstores a movie theater, Old Krakow restaurant and not much else. Except... Manor Coffee Shop. To say that this place is a throwback would not do it justice. This is a true coffee counter diner without the irony. There's a few Marilyn posters up for that 50's diner look, but they don't mean anything by them. Doris Day and Dean Martin are on the jukebox, not to be cute, but because that's the clientele's tunes. This is not a kitschy, novelty food, joint. The patty melts are greasy, the eggs are runny, the waffles have burnt edges and the bacon is perfect. There is nothing better.

I saddled up on a red bar stool and was given hot diner coffee, a glass of water and a hearty "good morning" by the uniformed waitress.  I ordered a #2 (yes by the number), read the paper, eavesdropped a bit and waited for my perfectly crispy hashbrowns.

Sated by my breakfast and warmed by a few cups of promptly refilled coffee, I paid in cash (no cards of course since their register is from 1940), bundled up and headed back out into the modern world.

Manor Coffee Shop
321 W Portal Ave # A
San Francisco, CA 94127

Enjoy!
EB

Summer Fling!

Okay. Yes I’m a teacher. When people find out they invariably say “ooh you’re so lucky to have summers off!” Yeah. No. I don’t get summers off. I’m a newbie on the professorial circuit and I’m still paying my crappy schedule-summer session-not getting paid dues. However, I do get a day or two off a week during the summer. Which yes, is awesome (although a paycheck would be awesomer!) I am going to take full advantage of these few precious days. I plan to not only catch up in the blogging world but to also to make the most of the summer by doing all those things I've yearned about all winter like:

Photo by pedrosimoes7
1. Go to PARIS!

2. Go to a ball game or two.

3. Catch up on This American Life at the gym.

4. Go organic in the garden.

5. Improve my Spanish.

6. Explore my city with Mundane Journeys.

7.Read. For fun. Honestly. Just one book!

8. Drink beer and go for the brass ring.

9. Cook from my sorely neglected, ever growing collection of vintage cookbooks.

10. Go to the park. Manshelf?

What will you be doing with your summer?

EB

 

The Love Affair Continues

It was a long, gorgeous weekend. With visitors in town, it was time to play tourist, which always is a way to not only show pride in the city I adore, but do and discover things I never would have without the tourists in tow.

First there was the boat ride to Alcatraz...

Then up the Chestnut steps to Sterling Park...

 
And of course the Easter Parade at Dolores Park...

Then we sent them on their way over the bridge.

It really was a great weekend. I fell in love with my city all over again.

EBS

Fifty Two Fridays

San Francisco

I know I've been a little MIA lately but I am around I swear. Just ask Victoria! You can find the both of us over at Fifty-Two Fridays. What goes on over there? Well, you can check out the adventures of two ladies who live 2,913 miles apart (exactly). Every Friday we each post a pic of what's going on on our side of the country.

Manhattan

Come visit us!

EB
 

Purple Teeth Anyone?

             Here we go again...

Some of you may remember my post about the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition from last year. All I have to say about this year is that I paced myself. Yes I did. I actually made it through the entire pavilion! Did I taste each and every one of the over 4,000 wineries present? By no means. But I did taste many, many, many of them and actually had the wherewithal to know what I was tasting.

Bummer.

There were a few wines that I fell in love with and at fantastic price points. It was great to meet the teams from the tiny wineries. I loved the family operations where it’s just mom, dad and kids doing everything from the vines to the bottling to the marketing. Seeing people living out their dream, especially in tough times, made the ticket price worth it.

                                                     Still drunk.

If the Chronicle doesn’t fold, and manages to host this again next year, I say hitch out there any enjoy. If you want to check out this year’s winners, click here.

EB

The People Speak

 

Josh Brolin (fresh off his turn as Dan White in Milk), Diane Lane, Benjamin Bratt, Kerry Washington, the Stairwell Sisters, Clarence Thomas, Renee Saucedo, and Boots Riley performed in Voices of A People’s History, a selection of works from Howard Zinn’s work A People’s History.

 

This was a quintessentially San Francisco event. It took place in the Mission High School Auditorium (a gorgeous campus and site of the Raza student Blowouts of a few years ago.) Socialists, Gay Rights advocates, The Haitian Action Committee, Students Against War and other like minded groups filled the steps outside the campus handing out fliers and gathering email addresses.

 

The performance’s intent was to breathe life into the words of people who resisted, protested and questioned the unfair practices of the US government and in turn put in motion movements that changed the United States forever. The show did highlight pieces that reminded the audience however, that things that have changed… have also remained all too much the same.

Josh Brolin as Vito Russo, a gay/AIDS rights advocate, received a well deserved standing ovation as did Kerry Washington as Sojourner Truth reading from “Ain’t I A Woman?”

Clarence Thomas and Boots Riley read from Muhammad Ali and MLK’s speeches that denounced the Vietnam War and were followed by Benjamin Bratt playing Camilo Meja a returning Iraq GI who is now an anti-war advocate.

These performances and others are going to be turned into the forthcoming documentary The People Speak which will be released later this year. I highly recommend you check it out.

I heard some non-performance going people on the sidewalk after the show wondering why there was such a crowd at the school on a Wednesday night. They determined that it was “some hippy, granola crap.”  If the rights of humanity and the questioning of unfair governmental actions that lead to injustice and death is “granola”?… pour me another bowl please.

 

EB