Food

Last week, I came across the website of Eat Your World, a relatively new concept that merges two of my favorite things: wanderlust and essenlust (that’s right Germans, I’m inventing new words in your language!). So I tossed them five questions by e-mail. (Also known as a pentaquery. Yes, I’m neologizing up the wazoo.) 1) How and when did EYW get started? Where are you based? What’s been the best thing you’ve eaten since you started this? Most surprising? Scott:…

Yesterday afternoon, I reported on the creation of the longest California Roll yesterday for an upcoming edition of The California Report. The event celebrated the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Center for Japanese Studies at UC Berkeley. The new record, set at 330 feet, apparently defeated the old record set in Hawaii in 2001 by 30 feet. I interviewed student Zach Brown, Chef Ming Hwang, Prof. Duncan Williams, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, and Consul General Yasumasa Nagamine, who certified…

Last night, I had the sudden urge to make pumpkin scones, so Bex and I hit the new Berkeley Bowl West for supplies, before getting drinks at Marc 49. By the time we got home, I decided that they were obviously they’re better over breakfast. So I woke up this morning at about 8:30 and went to work. Within an hour, this is what came out of my oven. They were shockingly easy to make. I used the recipe from…

Before it gets too rainy, I thought I’d take whoever would like to join me for a taco truck bike tour of my four favorite trucks in Fruitvale this Sunday: When: Sunday, October 25, 2009 Meet: 12:30 pm, Lake Merritt BART station (9th and Oak St., Oakland). Start: ~ 12:45 pm End: ~ 3 pm ish, Fruitvale BART station Itinerary: 1) Tacos Sinaloa at 22nd Ave./International Blvd. (via 10th St., International Boulevard) 2) Tacos El Grullo at 26th Ave./International Blvd.…

Thanks to Yola, I’ve just discovered the exact iPhone application that I’ve been looking for! Enter: California Farmers’ Market Finder. It does everything that I want to in a farmers’ market app: sorts by day, locates the markets nearest me, plots them on a map — and it does it for the entire state! Thanks PasoTours! In fact, based on these guys’ blog, it appears that we had the same idea around the same time.

So I have a set of data in a Google Docs spreadsheet of SF Bay Area Farmer’s Markets. Each market has data for the following columns: Day, County, Location, Hours, Months, Intersection, City, State, ZIP, Phone, URL. There are entries for over 100 markets. What I want is a simple web page (ideally iPhone-friendly) that will have a few text input fields: ZIP, City, Day (or even a pull-down menu for each one). Then based on those inputs, the program…

Dear Friends, I’ve been informed that my piece on TCHO chocolate is on Morning Edition today (August 7). It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams). New York – 5 am to 9 am Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org Washington, DC – 5 am to 10 am Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org Los Angeles – 2 am to 9 am Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg Boston…

For the record, I *love* to cook, as evidenced by the photo above. Just made some flippin’ fantastic pizza last night, too. Still, this article is pretty thought-provoking. -CF Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch by Michael Pollan The New York Times Magazine August 2, 2009 But here’s what I don’t get: How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves? For…

The New York Times, June 1 2009: SAN SALVADOR — Having sent the Iranian people a video greeting on their New Year, President Obama is now inviting them to help celebrate a quintessentially American holiday, the Fourth of July. Last Friday, the State Department sent a cable to its embassies and consulates around the world notifying them that “they may invite representatives from the government of Iran” to their Independence Day celebrations — annual receptions that typically feature hot dogs,…

Big ups to my buddy Andy Raskin, whose memoir The Ramen King and I: How the Inventor of Instant Noodles Fixed My Love Life has just been released. I attended a reading of his at Booksmith last night in the Lower Haight. But don’t worry, he’s on tour in SF and points beyond this month and throughout the summer. Check his site for details. Andy wrote and produced one of my all-time favorite pieces of radio — on the subject…