sweet berry heaven

Mmmm, strawberries. As it turns out, Watsonville's Tomatero Farms doesn't just sell at the Grand Lake farmers' market, they sell at my local down the hill, the Alemany Sat morning market, where everyone was basking and strolling in the sunshine. Well, some of us were basking. The rest were stuffing mad handfuls of sugar-snap peas into plastic bags and stowing 10-lb nets of oranges into granny carts. The last of the Sevilles were on display, along with a shriveled Buddha's Hand or two.

(Speaking of which, I ended up chopping up my BH and adding the blanched bits of rind to my kumquat marmalade. A mistake! This BH, perhaps all BHs, had a strong, camphor-ish scent, and made the whole batch of kumquat marm taste like Vick's vapor rub. Eucalyptus marmalade! Not the tastiest thing for toast.Next time, should there be one, I'm sticking the whole thing in a jar of vodka and making citrus liquor. Another kind of medicine...)

But I saw a flat or two of red berries behind the lettuce (flat whorls of red butter lettuce to make you weep) at Tomatero, and asked the price. Turned out they were just a buck a box, because they had been picked Wed. and were looking a little ratty by Saturday. Personally, I like a superripe, wine-dark berry, so with a little picking over it was cheap sweet heaven.

What other good things? Meatloaf on a rainy night at Blue Plate, with mashed p'taters and green beans, and the best smoky bacon ever. They do a salad that comes with a gorgeous burnished strip of bacon laid over the top of it, and that's reason to eat your rabbit food right there. Being on a fridge magnet with my pal Molly, advertising the Sundance Saloon (motto: "Building Community, Two Steps at a Time"), a fab country-western hangout over on Barnveldt St, near the produce district off of Bayshore. Hot coffee and warm apricot turnovers from the Liberty Cafe bakery on a sunny weekend morning.

Garden lilacs that smelled like lilacs, at Heartfelt on Cortland, and a blowsy three-buck bouquet of lavender-pink garden roses that smelled like roses, from one of the vegetable stands at the Alemany market. Essays about owls and poetry about snakes from Stanley Kunitz. Hearing about rabbit, Powell's, and absinthe up in Portland. Serving hot homemade herb biscuits to the plant-sale crowds at the Homeless Garden Project, and feeding the farmies with fresh strawberries, roasted squash, lentil soup and homemade rolls. Being sprung from the chocolate mines for the next four days, and going back down to the farm to cook again.

And of course, Cookie Fairy!

duck, duck, mousse!

Come on down to Santa Cruz and see PQ make duck-egg frittata. The Homeless Garden Project will be holding their annual Plant Sale and Youth Day on Saturday, April 19th, and I'll be doing a cooking demo in their newly rebuilt outdoor kitchen. We'll be getting VERY local, using chard from the gardens along with duck eggs from the ducks that roam the rows. And because you can't have eggs without bread, there will also be flaky herb biscuits, using whatever herbs (probably rosemary) are growing around. And then, after the demo, I'll be scooting up the hill to the farm center, to make dinner for the new little farmies coming in to set up their tents. I can't believe it's been a year already since I fled the snows of Watertown for the fog and strawberries of Santa Cruz...

More info on Saturday's event, here.
Note that this is at the Natural Bridges garden itself, NOT the little shop where they sell their wreaths and stuff. If you have a garden, definitely plan to pick up some stuff at their great plant sale, which will have loads of organic plant starts, fruit trees, herbs, annuals, and perennials.

Where: Homeless Garden Project, Natural Bridges Farm, Schaffer Road at Delaware Ave, Santa Cruz, CA
When: Plant Sale, 9am-6pm. Cooking demo: 3pm-4pm.

What else is in the kitchen right now? Scones with lemon zest, candied ginger and dried apricots, just because, plus last night's mashed potatoes and a picked-over chicken, plus a few sugar-snap peas with mint chiffonnade, courtesy of Tomatero Farms in Watsonville, which had the best-tasting sugar snaps, eggs, and strawbs in the whole market. And two quarts of frozen lemon juice, because you just never know, and a crate of meyer lemons doesn't last forever, but lemon juice in the freezer does, or at least as close to it as I need to be.

PQ for Sale

Which is to say, a case of Meyer lemons in my kitchen, waiting to be used! I think, given the abundance awaiting PQ's attentions, I might actually sell some of my wares this time around. Nothing fancy, no Paypal or anything. But if you live in San Francisco or its nearby environs, I think we can figure out a way to swap fabulous lemon marmalade or lemon curd for cash. Let's see: here's what I'm proposing:

For Sale from Pie Queen Kitchen:

Pablo's Ode to a Lemon marmalade (nothing but organic Meyer lemons and sugar)
8 oz. , $8

Delovely Delicious Lemon Curd (organic Meyer lemons, eggs, butter, sugar)
$8 oz, $10

and to go with:

Happy Tea Time Lemon-Currant Scones (whole wheat and white pastry flour, butter, currants, meyer lemon zest, buttermilk, sugar, baking soda, salt)
-the real deal, light and fluffy, perfect with tea and marmalade or lemon curd
$10 for 6 scones

So, interested? All extra-delicious and homemade in the PQ kitchen. The lemons are definitely organic; I can go all-organic/local with the other ingredients, too, although it might be a little pricier. Option of using local Straus organic butter and buttermilk, pastured eggs from Soul Food Farms, etc. Post a comment if you want to get some, and we'll figure it out.

lemonades

Ode To a Lemon

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
from the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essence,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

-Pablo Neruda

Maybe things aren't as bad as you think

Rhubarb, we have it here at PQ Castle! Along with another, final case of Meyer lemons--final, that is, until I go down to cook at the farm in 2 weeks and score as many Meyers as I can pack out. Whatever ripe lemons are left after making the famous Meyer lemon pound cake and lavender-sugar lemonade are coming home with me. Well, I might leave a few (or 10) so that Lanette and I, aka Cookie Fairy, have something to work with when we return to cook for the new farmies on May Day. Lemon ricotta pancakes? Lemon thumbprint cookies? Spicy lemon lentils? Mmm, tasty. As I recall from my own first few farmie weeks, there's not a lot in the larder or in the fields at this time, so I'll have to be inventive with the carrots and beets. But I remain dedicated to the PQ Farm-Cooking Creed: No Bean Mush, No Undressed Salads, No Unpeeled Beets, and Yes, There Is (Always) Dessert.

But back to the rhubarb, another perk from the produce co., so silky and pretty and gorgeously pink. I am thinking, of course, of strawberry-rhubarb pie, the most perfect harbinger of spring I know. And perhaps some rhubarb compote, with a hint of rosewater or vanilla bean. And then a few jars of strawberry-rhubarb jam, since I gave all my farm jam away last year.

Brown sugar and waffles

Artichokes, fava bean leaves, asparagus, and soon, yes, rhubarb: Spring at last, spring at last, hallelujah, it's spring at last! The tiny page mandarins are still kicking around, though, and a sweeter little citrus you'll never see. Four of these, from Tory Farms, were about all I could afford from the Ferry Plaza farmers' market last Saturday, but they're so sweet and juicy you could grin all day just from licking your sticky fingers. After a spin around the crowded, crowded market(it's only April, people! Nothing to see here, no tomatoes, no peaches...where are you going to stand come July if you all pile in here now just for tangerines and deep-fried asparagus?) I headed back down to my local, the much more down-to-asphalt Alemany Market.

It was close to 1:30pm when I got down there, so many of the booths were already shut down and sweeping up, but I still scored a bag of 4 or 5 slim heads of red butter lettuce rubber-banded together for $1, plus cilantro, garlic, onions, peppers, and a big bag of brutto ma buono tangelos, golden nugget tangerines, Meyer lemons, and mandarins for a mere buck a pound. Flowers, taco trucks, strawberries (conventionally grown, and a little beat up, but $10 a flat' organics go for $35/flat): PQ says check it out. SE edge of Bernal Heights, Putnam and Alemany, Saturday mornings.

It was an Eazy-Bay kind of weekend, from breakfast at Brown Sugar Kitchen in West Oakland to a French movie (Hors de Prix--Priceless--with Audrey Tatou, and a delightful romp it was) in Piedmont, drinks at Kingman's Lucky Lounge, coffee at Peet's on Grand Ave, even late-night eats at Rudy's Can't-Fail Cafe (the servers' black rocker tees read "Serving E'ville" with the RC/FC logo done AC/DC style on the front) in Emeryville (they're open til 1am! In the East Bay! Wheeee!) The only thing I missed was farmers' market cocktails at the Easy with the Red Meat Ranger, Papa Sueno, and their market pals Kelly (who sells fabulous girly lotions and soaps) and Arianna, who runs a small farm and chicken ranch in Watsonville. Arianna is cool, says Papa Sueno, because she farms, raises Peruvian chickens that can lay green eggs, and knows all about what's in season. Farmers are our new rock stars, now that we're all too sleepy to stay out late enough to go to gigs any more.

So, what will being in bed by 10, PQ can be up with the chickens herself, and a good thing too, if you want to get some of that fried chicken and waffles at Brown Sugar Kitchen. Don't let the industrial West Oakland setting fool you: Peralta Studios is just across the street, and the word is out about the homemade biscuits and doughnuts and Blue Bottle Coffee. Shuna of Eggbeater was working the biscuit dough behind the counter, doing a helpout for her pal, BSK owner Tanya Holland. The all-female kitchen crew was working hard, scooping grits and plating waffles on this busy weekend morning.

Oh, those waffles! At the last moment, I looked to the left, looked to the right, and realized the chicken would be little too much fried for first thing in the AM. But on their own, these waffles were light-as-a-feather babies, crisp and airy and golden brown. Real maple syrup, a smear of some kind of flavored butter, chicken-apple sausage from Aidell's: a very good time. The biscuits are very fine too, but only if you get them warmed up. Cold, they're still good, but they won't fill you with that special buttery-edged Southern-warmed lovin'. The home fries were good, the scrambled eggs were very good, the Niman Ranch bacon top-hole.

But now, the caveats. BSK, at least on busy weekends, does not have its service together. The hostess has no time (or inclination) for charm, the servers are sweet but overwhelmed. After finally snagging seats at the counter, then being ignored for many minutes, we went and fetched our own menus. The weekend menu itself is short--a fine thing, usually. I like a chef with an opinion, and there are enough places with millions of omelettes already. But there's short, and then there's running a breakfast place with no straight-up eggs-potatoes-toast option.

Now, I'd understand this, maybe, if this was a dinner place that did a fancy brunch once a week. But no, this is a joint that only serves breakfast and lunch. I understand that, grits and pie aside, this ain't no Just for You, no Rudy's or Al's Good Food Cafe. Holland's clearly not interested in running a short-order white-wheat-or-rye diner. What you can get are cheese grits and poached eggs, quiche, veggie scramble, French toast, or waffles (with or without fried chicken). But if you, like many, many people, want home fries, a biscuit, and some scrambled eggs for breakfast, you're going to get charged a la carte prices for every little thing, which means something like $12, with bacon.

Then they charged me for the fried chicken I didn't order. And did I mention it took close to 45 minutes between sitting down and getting breakfast? On the plus side, there were a couple of free (cold) biscuits to take the edge off, and an extra cup of coffee. (Another warning: that Blue Bottle coffee is all French-pressed, which means no waitress warming up your cup from the Bunn-o-matic. I imagine if you want more than a single dose of joe , you're going to pay a fresh $2 for every round. Haven't confirmed this, but I didn't see any warmups going around, so I'm figuring this for policy. And go easy on the half-and-half: it comes in tiny pitchers, filled only halfway.)

Not that I'm trying to be negative, mind--I came in really wanting to love BSK. It's a very pleasant place, with apple-green walls and a lively open kitchen, and some very handsome pecan and sweet-potato pies on display, right next to some massively nutty sticky buns. But it's still getting itself together, and a little more attention to the nuances of making customers happy--instead of just well waffled--would go far in getting the PQ's adoration, or at least her returning breakfast cash.

Girls, Cookies, Eco-Cocktailia

jesus died for somebody's sins
but not mine

Happy Easter, everyone! Did you enjoy your bunny cake, your chocolate eggs, your righteous pagan fertility worship? Glad to hear it. And now, on to Passover, and rhubarb.

But first, fabulous femme Shar Rednour is doing a reading/talk with Michelle Tea and Chelsea Starr on this Tuesday, April 1st, at the 3 Dollar Bill Cafe at the LGBT Center on Market St. Starts at 7pm, free, and if you ask a question during the Q & A, you get a homemade cookie!

As Shar says, "They have beer and wine at the 3 Dollar Bill Cafe and pretty good potato salad. All a femme needs, right?"

And before that, the swanky XYZ bar in the W Hotel, right near SFMoMA, is kicking off their new green happy hour called, I kid you not, Ecolicious, from 5:30 to 7:30pm. How this will be more green than say, the Easy Lounge's Saturday afternoon happy hour, when they make cocktails out of stuff from the Grand Lake Farmers' Market across the street, is the serious research PQ will be doing on your behalf tomorrow afternoon. Is this the bevvie version of Toyota's latest hookup to the green bandwagon, the hybrid SUV? Tune in on Wednesday for a report...

freebies!

Free samples are one of the happy perks of any job. I showed up at The Alley in Oakland the other night with a bag of salted caramels, hazelnut bonbons and big slabs of chocolate studded with candied orange peel and almonds, just because we'd been rotating the display boxes at the chocolate mines and there were loads of extras in the big "eat me" box behind the counter. Everyone needs some sweets to go with their cosmos and French fries. (Of course, when you work for, say, Goldman Sachs, these free samples are called "money", that being the stuff they rotate around. But I digress.)

And now, doing some freelance writing work for an organic produce distribution company, my perks come in the form of bunches of asparagus, bags of kumquats, a cherimoya or two, and most exciting of all, a Buddha's hand! Do you know the Buddha's hand? A very trippy citrus, like a citron made up of a dozen curling fingers covered in bright-yellow, intensely aromatic peel. No real pulp to speak of; it's all about the zest. What to do with it? I'm going to my favorite resource, former Chez Panisse pastry chef, Parisian homme-about-town, and cookbook author, David Lebovitz. His book "Ripe for Dessert" is a fantastic resource for fruit dessert-making, and his citrus-prosecco gelee was a huge hit at the PQ family Christmas dinner last year. So, David, qu'est-ce qu'on peut faire avec le main de Buddha?

spray-on tan

Remember pancake batter in a can? We were talking about this back a month or two ago, and today, the Bay Guardian's "Cheap Eats" Leone does the perfect sum-up.

The verdict on aerosol-can waffle and pancake batter?

Yeah. Whatever. No, I mean, it was free, and it was delicious. But being a person who loves to cook, and who loves to spend as much time as possible doing the things that I love to do, like cooking, why in the world would I ever in the world squeeze waffle batter out of a can? And then blow time looking out the window that I could have more wisely spent separating egg whites and hand-whisking until they hold soft peaks?

No kidding, I make three meals a day. I want to have my hands in the food, and my arms, teeth, and tongue when appropriate. Like sex, I actually want it to take as long as possible. And dirty all the dishes. (I'll do 'em in the morning.) You're in a hurry, I know. You have a job. Me, I'll keep doing what I do ... stirring constantly.

Tiptoe through the Tulips

This being San Francisco in citrus season, I may not be the only girl walking around the city with 4 kumquats, a tangelo and a cherimoya in her purse. Ok, two kumquats and a cherimoya, because I ate the rest, dripping juice down my sleeve and biting through that aromatic kumquat skin to the sour pulp within. It's a breezy early-spring day, the stripy, frilly tulips out in buckets in front of Heartfelt, our local card-and-giftie store, and it's pretty, pretty, pretty out there, yet again. And I'm skipping around on this, my day off, singing that Be Good Tanyas song "The Littlest Birds" over and over again and hanging my laundry out to dry in the backyard, so it will come in smelling of sunshine and eucalyptus.

Another reason to be happy: you didn't wake up today as Eliot "Mr. Clean" Spitzer, a man who's having a Very Bad Day, the specific sort of Very Bad Day you have when you pledge to clean up corruption in the Empire State and then get busted as "Client 9" by the booker of a high-class escort service, who, alas for the Gov., was wearing a wire when he set up his NY-to-DC assignation with "Kristen" the petite brunette. Did he really think that paying the Amtrak fare for a NYC working girl to come down to DC was somehow more discreet than booking a date with a local? Now, as the result of that train trip, he's doubly busted for the whole crossing-state-lines-for-the-purpose-of-prostitution thing. Politicians: Toujours Stupides!

On another note: good books! Almost finished with Amy Bloom's novel Away, yet another in the sub-genre of Jews in Alaska, stories about (see also Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union). A rambling picaresque, and better than almost everything else I've read by her, except for the small, perfect story "Love is Not a Pie", which remains unsurpassed.

the littlest birds

Well it's times like these
I feel so small and wild
Like the ramblin' footsteps of a wanderin' child
And I'm lonesome as a lonesome whippoorwill
Singin these blues with a warble and a trill
But I'm not too blue to fly
No, I'm not too blue to fly, cause
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs...

-Be Good Tanyas, "The Littlest Birds (Sing the Prettiest Songs)", from Blue Horse

Woofer

Normally, I don't love being booked for work down in the Marina chocolate mines all weekend, especially on sunny spring days when all the ladies of leisure come breezing in for a couple of fleur-de-sel caramels, full of cheery commentary on how beautiful it is out there beyond the barred gates of retail. But last night, the Giant Scary Dogs arrived in my home, courtesy of my roommate's visiting girlfriend. I haven't seen them, but I've heard them, and they sound like the Hound of the Baskervilles looking to take your leg off. So having a paid excuse to be out of the house today and tomorrow will be very welcome.

Off to the Libery Cafe for coffee and apple turnovers, then on to Bart to see K. off to the airport, where she flies back to Richmond for 3 more months of Army-officer training. Meanwhile we took many slow buses out to Lincoln Park for a spin around the Legion of Honor museum, followed by whole fish and goat cheese with tomato-preserved lemon jam at Aziza.

Which was swell, really, except for the service at Aziza, which was way snootier than anyone doing business at the Outer-Richmond side of Geary deserved to be. I learned a few tricks during my 10 years as a restaurant critic (back pre-Yelping, pre-blogging, when this was a job one got paid to do, with the accompanying professional standards), and one was that the chillier the waiter, the more likely that he or she would know next to nothing about the menu, or the food being served, or anything but the most basic info about the ingredients. And that he or she would, when pressed, b.s. with aplomb, usually in the most patronizing manner possible. So when we asked what was argan oil, exactly, we got the spectacularly unhelpful but smug response that It's Smoky And It Comes From a Tree. Like maple syrup, presumably.

Nothing about the small, oily kernels of the nut of the argan tree, a gnarly little tree native only to a certain part of Morocco. Or how the nuts are encased in a rock-hard shell that is in turn wrapped in a small, olive-like fruit delicious to goats. The goats clamber up the branches, eat the fruit, and drop the nuts (still in their shells) to the ground. Each nut must be cracked and the kernels removed and ground between heavy millstones to release their dark, pungent oil, work often done by women's collectives in rural Morocco. A good story, non? Especially if there had been enough oil dribbled on the white chunk of cheese to actually taste, rather than merely providing gourmet-cachet to the menu.

Beautiful Day

Oh, sunshine! Daffodils! Prettiness! It's the nicest day you could imagine out there, even if the burly guys in neon vests are jackhammering up every square inch of the Cortland Street pavement outside Martha's coffee where I'm trying to write this. A day to frolic in the green, green grass, where there should be fluffy white sheep grazing on the top of Bernal Hill. Waiting for the 24 the other day, I heard a rooster crowing, something that never happened in Park Slope. This led to a conversation with an elderly woman at the bus stop, about WWII-era victory gardens, her husband's and my dad's WWII experiences, how hens will lay eggs regardless but it takes a rooster to fertilize them into potential chickens (which led my new pal into singing a verse of "It's So Nice to Have a Man Around the House"). All in all, not a bad way to pass a little of the inevitable waiting for Muni.

Then, down to the Ferry Building, to admire the oranges and watermelon radishes, and to lunch on lamb stew, roast chicken, yams and herby polenta from Mistral, followed by a spin around MOMA (free Tuesday!), tea in very stylish black-and-white cups at Caffe Museo, a trip to the main library to see Dorothea Lange's luminous photos of the summers she spent at her cliffside cottage at Slide Ranch. Family snaps, really, but heartfelt, and some exquisite. And then, around the corner, a fabulous little exhibit of SF nightlife souvenirs. Connie Champagne, hoofers at Bimbo's, eyelinered bartendresses at Coconut Grove, pool players at the 500 Club, Tosca's neon. And a photo of the old 17 Reasons Why sign, just to warm the PQ's heart. Dinner at Little Nepal back home on Cortland, where yak-butter tea has been replaced with mango shakes and chai, but we still enjoyed the mustard greens in tangy ginger broth, and the chunks of chicken in a cashew-thickened, creamy orange garlic-ginger-tomato sauce.

Chocolate Pie

Tomorrow is Bucky's birthday, so we'll all be celebrating (and raising a glass to his namesake) with a backyard bbq and (for those lucky enough to get tix ahead of time) the Extra Action Marching Band at Cafe du Nord. I've never seen the EAMB, but hanging out with dozens of skimpily dressed brass players blasting away in that little speakeasy space sounds ridiculously fun. I've been tapped to bring a chocolate pie in lieu of the fancy whiskey I'd love to bring but can't afford (now that B.'s ruined me for all but the finest 15-year Islay malts). Since I've got the big new Bubby's Pie Cookbook--written by the founders of NYC's Bubby's and the pastry socialists responsible for the annual Brooklyn Pie Social), I'll be hitting those pages to find me a tasty, tasty recipe for some kind of choco pudding in a crust. Pictures to follow, if I can ever find the little computer cord for my digital camera.

Tonight, it's opening night at Cutting Ball's spankin'-new production of Beckett's Endgame at the Traveling Jewish Theater, 470 Florida at Mariposa. Don't miss it!

Poetry Afternoon

It's warm! It's sunny! It's a day for tipping the last bits of ice and strawberries out of your cup of agua fresca--and, if you're strolling in my part of the Mission, to put on your tank top and tiny denim miniskirt and stiletto sandals, and that's just to go to the bank.

And, of course, to roll out the springtime poetry.

Snowdrops

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

--Louise Gluck, "The Wild Iris"

No Snow, pie!

It's a little damp today, yes indeed. A hat might be well-advised; perhaps some boots, or at least not your favorite suede platforms. This morning, I'm drinking coffee in my crossword-puzzle pajamas and making pie crust for Meyer lemon meringue pies, part of What Is To Be Done with the big box o' lemons that's been filling my kitchen for the past week. And while the kitchen fills with the scent of sweet California citrus, am I feeling just a tiny, tiny bit grateful not to be here"?

Yep. California is a beauteous place, especially when it's snowing in NYC.

Will Bake for...

Doesn't every office deserve a resident baker? Especially one devoted to rev-'em-up, his-n-her pleasure in every size, shape, and glittery color. It was Jackie's one-year anniversary at the Oakland warehouse/headquarters of Babeland, and rather than hire a stripper, she called me, PQ, baker for hire. I tied on my fabulous Parisian pin-up birthday apron (thanks, susie!), filled my bag with Meyer lemons and brown sugar, and nipped across the bay. Up on the 3rd floor, past the Pam Grier and Jenna Jameson posters, was a little kitchenette, with a coffee machine, a fridge full of soy milk, and a real full-size gas oven. Say no more, say no more...on that rainy Tuesday morning, it was HQ of Babeland Bakery.

Grating, juicing, making crust and mixing up cake, ransacking the cupboards for usable baking pans...by lunchtime, there were two pie plates full of vegan carrot cake and a sheet pan of buttery-tangy Meyer lemon bars, thickly drifted with powdered sugar. The Babeland babes (and dudes) wandered in, drawn to the scent of hot butter and sugar, nutmeg and lemons, and stood there in a daze, clutching their coffee cups in stunned amazement. After all, there are visuals, and then there's stuff you can actually put in your mouth.

Truly, this is what your workplace needs--me, baking for you. Warm, fresh-from-the-oven, made-from-scratch treats beat Safeway cupcakes any day when it comes to promoting worker productivity and encouraging general smiley well-being. Book the PQ now! Wide selection of vintage aprons available...

Meyer Lemon Bars

There's a kick-ass sounding recipe for lemon bars in the Tartine cookbook, involving (as all their recipes do) vast amounts of butter and egg yolks. I'm sticking to my old tried-and-true simple one, though, because it always works and makes everyone happy, without much effort at all. Remember to allow time to cool--these are sort of disgusting hot out of the oven, but fantastic chilled. Let them cool to room temp, then cover and chill for several hours, if you can bear to wait that long.

Crust
1 cup flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1 stick (8 TB/4 oz) butter, softened
a couple teaspoons of water

Filling
2 eggs
6 TB Meyer lemon juice (approx. 2 juicy lemons)
zest of those 2 lemons*
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
Powdered sugar for decorating

Preheat oven to 350F. Sift flour and powdered sugar together. Cut in/mash softened butter into flour mixture, to get a crumbly texture that's halfway between cookie dough and pie crust before you add liquid. Add just enough water to make it stick together. Press into a 9 x 9 baking pan (8 x 8 is ok too--whatever square brownie-making type pan you have is fine). Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

While crust is baking, stir or sift together the sugar and baking powder. Beat in eggs, lemon juice, and zest. When crust is ready, pour filling over hot crust and return to the oven. Bake until set but not browned, about 15 minutes. It's OK if it still seems slightly gooey in the center--it's better to underbake a little than to overbake. Let cool on a rack, then cover and refrigerate. Sift a good snowy drift of powdered sugar over the pan, cut into bars, and serve.

*Yet another shout-out for the amazingness of the microplane grater in this instance. I had to go down to Cole Hardware and buy another one of these, my original one being (like everything else) in storage in Brooklyn. Fast, easy, no-waste grating every time, with no shredded knuckles--if I could do infomercials for one piece of cooking equipment, this would be it. It's especially useful with Meyer lemons, which, besides being soft and tender, also have that very smooth, hard-to-grab peel. Available in cookware stores and fancied-up hardware stores everywhere, it's a tool that will make you at least as grateful when you use it as anything Babeland has to offer.

my heart is telling me...

Spring in San Francisco always sneaks up on me. I know that come February, the rains will taper off, shy mauve blossoms will star the plum trees, the bees will start pummeling the fuzzy clusters of acacia, and the boys in their speedos will be lying out on Dolores Beach. But still, just a couple of weeks after January's icy nonstop rains, it's suddenly a new season.

This weekend was just ravishing, everyone out with bare ankles, stumbling around still winter-pale and grinning stupidly at the warm sun. Ti Couz had their umbrellas up for the noontime crowds eating crepes, drinking cider and pretending that 16th St was the Latin Quarter, except that we're much luckier, because Paris in February is wind-whipped and gray, the castles of pink macaroons at Laduree the only cheerful thing in the whole bitter frozen town.

It was a day for--what else?--a mint chip cone at the Bi-Rite Ice Creamery (yes, I'm filling up my buy-10-get-one-free punchcard, thank you very much), indie movies at the Roxie (what's playing at the Roxie? I'll tell you what's playing at the Roxie....the SF Indie Film Fest, that's what) and then, on Sunday, a hike up to the top of green, green Bernal Hill to survey the territories. And then an N-Judah out to the beach, where the happy hordes were swarming the Java Beach cafe (because god forbid you're ever less than a block from a latte and an oat cake, even at the far western fall-off of the continental U.S.) and it was just a easy stroll across the sandy pavement of the Great Highway onto the wide strand of Ocean Beach, where the waves were breaking in great tumults of creamy foam and dogs were racing madly everywhere.

This being my life, I got a call from Molly halfway down the beach. She was shooting some photos to promote the Sundance, her favorite country-western dancing bar, and did I want to come down to be in the shoot? Well, sure! This being Molly, she had about 7 complete extra outfits, including cowboy boots and hat, in her car, so I bought some cheap lipstick and mascara on the way and we trucked down from Cafe Flore to Troy Dean's basement photo studio for a hour of dancing and posing. I fully expect to be handed a club flyer with my grinning mug on it one of these days...

Down in the overgrown Bernal background of Wild Side West to celebrate our Cindy-and-Naomi moment, an impromptu old-time music jam was going on under the trees and every little nook was full of neighbors sprawling over beers and bloody marys and plastic packs of mini-cupcakes, celebrating the first beautiful weekend of spring. And then Molly ran off to dance and I ran home to madly chop the bounty of my Mariquita Farm mystery box, a huge haul of greens, parsnips, true baby carrots, squash, turnips, fennel, parsnips, beets, parsnips, leeks, and parsnips. Dinner with Papa Sueno and the Red Meat Ranger followed--roasted squash, green noodles with leeks, garlic, greens and parmesan, with pears, toasted walnuts and dark chocolate for dessert. And, of course, we had to talk about fruit.

All in all, a very good day.

Ain't We Got Fun?

Well, Saturday's weather outside was frightful--I kept singing that line from "Lady is a Tramp" that goes "Hates California, it's cold and it's damp..."-- but the citrus faithful (aka Papa Sueno and the now-veggie/flexetarian (hey, she's a Gemini, and the world still contains bacon) Red Meat Ranger and their fabulous child-toting friends, Rox n' Nance, and the fabulous Molly McK), all showed up, along with a bunch of other almond-cake-curious locals, even as the rain drizzled down and my little fingers froze as I sliced and sliced through the cara-caras, the blood oranges, the ruby grapefruits and the page mandarins. Gorgeous, gleaming fruit from Torey Farms, Olsen Organics, and Hamada Fruits, and raw almonds and orange/vanilla/honey-coated crunchy candied almonds from Alfieri Farms. What was really fun was going back to the farmers afterwards with samples, to show what their wonderful food had become. Quite a treat all around, especially since there was lots of cake and citrus compote left over to share with the hard-working CUESA volunteers. They'll be doing a cooking demo every Saturday from now til Dec., so do drop by.

It was almost worth losing my voice over, not that near-complete croakiness kept me from a grilled-veggie burrito at Azteca that afternoon or the fluffy pancakes at my new favorite breakfast place, Rudy's No-fail cafe in Emeryville, with Kas and Kirsten. Much fun, and then I had to go home for tea and complete silence. No Superbowl screaming (well, as if), no hanging out at K'vetch with the RM Ranger and Shar the Cupcake Queen.

But today, a sunny day! And here's a challenge to all you folks out there: the PQ needs gainful employment. I can cook for you, teach you to make pie (among other things), write for your website/newspaper/magazine/blog, edit articles/books/whatever, even feed your cat or weed your garden. Anyone that gets me a job lead that pays off gets 2 jars of just-made orange marmalade (or the future jam of your choice) or a freshly made homemade pie (your choice!) from the PQ kitchen. Let the networking begin!

Sunny D-Lite

Look outside, it's sunny! Thanks to 11 days of rain, Bernal Hill looks like Ireland. Keep your fingers crossed that this brief interval between storms stretches out through Saturday morning, so you won't have to stand under a deluge to get your bite of Orange-Almond Cake with Citrus Compote.

Yes, the PQ will be doing a cooking demonstration, complete with samples, at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market at the foot of Market St tomorrow morning at 11am. Look for the demo kitchen out in front of the Ferry Plaza, on the north side of the arcade, near Taylor's Refresher (if you're standing in front the building, look to your left). It's part of the market's Citrus Festival, so I'll be using as much fabulous Cali citrus as possible. Kumquats! Blood oranges! Navels! Pomelos! Come by, heckle, eat cake, maybe even buy a copy of Fun Food, my kids' cookbook, afterwards. More info on the CUESA site.

See you there!