by Christina Waters | Nov 21, 2012 | Home |
We scored a table at last week’s boisterous opening of Bantam pizzeria, where we shared appetizers of pickled carrots and turnips, as well as two house pizzas washed back with delicious Sicilian Nero d’Avola.
The Margherita was pretty classic—tomatoes, mozzarella and oregano. Our other pizza was a vibrant, thin-crusted delivery system for Fogline Farm bacon, sliced potato, fontina and rosemary.
Looking forward to some fine-tuning, noise-abatement-wise. Really attractive industrial chic interior. Stop by and see what a serious wood-fired oven can do.
(pictured here – Bantam menu with Rita’s Venetian glass necklace)
by Christina Waters | Nov 16, 2012 | Home |
The Hostess Twinkie—about to take its place in the fading memories of baby boomers whose lunches were crowned by the Hostess Cupcake with white icing loops on top; the iconic Ding Dong, and by the cream-filled spiral chocolate HoHo. But mostly by that plump air-filled little creation of sugar, sugar, shortening, sugar, and 40 other ingredients—the poster snack for the early days of cheap junk food that delivered an instant high and the promise of diabetes to come—the Twinkie.
Who knew that polysorbate 60, Yellow dye 5, Red dye 4, monocalcium phosphate, cellulose gum, high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated vegetable and/or animal shortening, thiamine and lots of sugar (plus 35 other ingredients) could power two generations of American school kids through entire afternoons?
Those were simpler times, before the consciousness-raising of the 80s swept visions of transfats from our food radar. Before we came to crave kale smoothies (more…)
by Christina Waters | Nov 13, 2012 | Home |
Why is this man smiling?……..
You’ll find out right around Thanksgiving.
Uh, right about now.
by Christina Waters | Nov 12, 2012 | Home |
Part Arthurian legend, part religious allegory, Lohengrin is a dreamy stormy creation for supersized orchestra, invisible brass quartets, singers with superhuman stamina, and audiences lucky enough to catch a rare production of Wagner’s romantic classic.
From the instant of its 1850 debut, the sumptuous creation was a huge world-wide hit, and for many scholars Lohengrin marka the last of Wagner’s traditionally structured operas, opening the door for his unprecedented “music theater” masterpieces, The Ring, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal.
Last week’s production of Lohengrin at the San Francisco Opera offers Wagner lovers a rare chance to hear the opera in all of its four and a half hour glory. And if it weren’t enough simply to hear the unparalleled San Francisco Opera orchestra and chorus channeling new heights of chromatic power, last week’s audience feasted on the voice of a true heldentenor, American Brandon Jovanovich (last year’s Sigmund and Pinkerton on 2010’s Madame Butterfly).
From the moment we heard Jovanovich’s (more…)
by Christina Waters | Nov 11, 2012 | Home |
I know many of you are über home chefs who think nothing of whipping up a killer cranberry dressing from scratch for your Thanksgiving dinner.
But not me. I have suddenly hit upon the obvious, no-brainer and yet under-appreciated alternative to full-on cranberry dressing. In a word — chutney.
Duh. Chutney, the sophisticated version of cranberry dressing that can be spun and re-visited endlessly depending upon your choice of dried fruit infrastructure, spices and flavor intensity.
We’re completely in love with the Tomato Mint Chutney ($6ish) from Neera’s. (more…)
by Christina Waters | Nov 11, 2012 | Home |
The way most Americans envision that first Thanksgiving, through a haze of richly spun sentimentality, it went something like this:
Plucky white Pilgrims–mostly guys–set out across the Atlantic Ocean and were rewarded with an entire continent of untold wealth that was essentially destined by the Almighty for their use. Oh, sure, there were a few unclothed savages already there, shuffling around in the dirt, slinging arrows here and there at equally clueless and equally wild animals, but that wasn’t really a problem. [Journals and letters written by those first settlers contain shameless accounts of plunder and theft of native stores of food, tools, and furs. If the Pilgrims found it, they took it.]
After working, praying, and surviving a bitter winter, the Pilgrim fathers brought in a bountiful harvest produced by careful tending of seeds they had brought from home. Looked on by Providence, our founders needed no help whatsoever from their redskinned brethren in bringing down fat bucks and other wild delicacies. Inviting their heathen neighbors to join them, the Pilgrims gave thanks for their New World and its riches at a meal consisting of turkey, squash, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Afterwards, the men sat around smoking and watching football while the women cleaned up.
Now what might have happened went like this: (more…)
