#11| Refugee Rabbits
+ Is Oat Milk Garbage?
This week’s newsletter includes a recipe for one of the easiest hamburgers ever. Seriously.
By the way, I'm Bruce Cole, Publisher of Edible San Francisco. You're getting this email because you subscribed. If you'd like to hop off at anytime, simply unsubscribe. I appreciate you reading this newsletter.
First up, a heartbreaking dispatch from the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Ground zero at Molino Creek Farm (known for their dry-farmed tomatoes) in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
8/19/20 9:00 pm, fire barrels into the yard, everything starts exploding in flames, terrified again but adrenaline pumping. Hauling fire hose from one wall of flames to the next, putting out spot fires in between. Have to suck down close to the soil, create a pocket of fine water for protection with the wonderfully engineered nozzle, back up, keep from getting too hot…protect the house and self.
9/3/20 We have lost a lot of rabbits, wood rats, song birds. The swallows left the farm. The areas we spared from fire (with fire hoses) are packed thick with refugee rabbits, wood rats, harvest mice and the like.
Our tomatoes and other fleshy annual crops survived. Our orchards lost a bit: 23 of our 50 cherry trees are toast. 18 of the oldest of our 50 avocado trees probably won’t make it. Most of the apples will probably recover. Almost all of our orchard irrigation melted.
9/3/20 All around us, the landscape is burned. Here’s an aerial image (above) from a little while ago, Molino Creek Farm is the green spot on the right, at the end of the gun barrel of raging fire-now ash.
EAT
Long Live Zuni Cafe, San Francisco’s Dining Room Table
It’s only when you’re having a drink at that seductively sexy copper bar and decide to stay a while longer and ask for a menu to order a few bites... and the bartender meticulously unfolds a white dinner napkin on top of the bar in front of you complete with a place setting... and while you’re waiting you watch the day glow parade of bike commuters with their wheels all lit up through the windows that look out onto Market Street... and when they deliver a plate piled high with those infamous shoestring fries and the celery salad with house cured anchovies, that you realize Zuni is, indeed, San Francisco’s dining room tablePhotos above: Zuni Cafe.
I know when I go to Zuni what the next few hours hold. Warmth. Energy in the room that is tangible, it always feels and tastes fresh, alive. You can feel the detailed passion of the entire staff, many of whom have been there for decades. Yet, it is also imperfect at times, just as people are, but you love them just the same. You can feel the restaurant’s humanity and soul. –Geoff Davis for Resy
•
Since the Current AQI Prevents You From Throwing Burgers on the Grill Outside, We Give You Martin Burgers
On the other hand if you don’t feel like cooking, who you gonna call?
Trending
Google says this is still the #1 recipe on ediblesanfrancisco.com right now:
Roasted Green Beans (never mind that we actually used purple beans for the recipe).
DRINK
How to Dismantle White Supremacy in Wine
Step #1: Acknowledge it.
For winemakers, are their pick crews getting paid a fair wage and do they have access to healthcare? What are they doing about ICE raids? How have they advocated for employment opportunity parity in their winery?
For distributors, do your winemakers have labels that may have racist or sexist undertones?
For media, have you sought to amplify BIPOC voices? Have you actively disregarded a story because it has been ‘too niche?’ Have you looked at the body of work and been made aware of the whitewashing rampant in it?
More from Miguel de Leon, restaurant operator, wine director, sommelier.
•
2020 is the Coffee Industry’s Perfect Storm
Be extra nice to your barista.
This summer it’s felt at times like coffee was a floundering industry, headed up in the consuming end by white men and supported on the producer end by unrecognized Black and Brown women. Power is nice, isn’t it, when you’re able to look away from the injustices. But in the face of collective action, unions, public unveils of toxic work environments, and recourse for those involved if possible, that power is quickly diminished. –Jenn Chenn for Sprudge | Illustration: Ken Krimstein for The New Yorker
•
Is Oat Milk Garbage?
“They’re like Ferrari’s, they eventually need a complete rebuild.” the espresso repair guy said over the phone when quoting us a price to fix up our leaking Giotto machine. We couldn’t afford a Ferrari-priced rebuild at the time and have been slumming 😉with pour over since then. And we take it straight-up black, none of that white stuff, especially oat milk {shudder}. Jack Shepherd (formerly editorial director at BuzzFeed) is not a fan either:
“I like my coffee to taste like oatmeal,” you all say, with a completely straight face. “I wish coffee had always tasted like oatmeal!” And let’s not stop there! Thanks to your short-sightedness, we’re already living in a world where ice cream and butter and even oatmeal taste more like oatmeal, you absolute maniacs. –Jack Shepherd for Tenderly
•
Thad Vogler Closes 3 Bars in SF
Sadly, we never made it to Obispo, Vogler’s esoteric rum bar, but we have fond memories of a lengthy mezcal tasting at Bar Agricole which thankfully will reopen in a new location next year. However, Trou Normand and Nommo will also close.
“I made mistakes,” he said. “Classic restaurant mistakes: growing too quickly so you don’t have enough cash, then your places become mediocre because you don’t have the bandwidth to maintain quality. That’s where I was when COVID hit.” –Thad Vogler to Esther Mobley in the SF Chronicle
THINK
Nobody Cares Part Two
From Oregon to North Carolina, counties with the highest per capita rates of coronavirus are some of the top producers of crops like lettuce, sweet potatoes and apples. In California, six out of seven of the state’s most Covid-ridden counties, per capita, are in the Central Valley, which produces the lion’s share of America’s fruits and vegetables.
“We cannot end this pandemic for our country if we do not end the pandemic in every community,” Ruiz said. “All it takes is one high-risk, vulnerable community without a containment strategy in place, for one outbreak to cause another surge.” –Helena Bottemiller Evich, Ximena Bustillo and Liz Crampton for Politico
•
Define Solidarity
Standing in Solidarity with people in need is not approaching the issue thinking you will solve it. It is making an effort to understand the experiences of those you are standing with and taking action to demonstrate that understanding. It is learning the struggles people face, dispelling stereotypes, leveraging your privilege and encouraging others to do the same. How will you take a stand?
Sign at Pie Ranch which reopened it’s farm stand on Thursday after their historic farmhouse built in 1863 was destroyed in the CZU Lightning Complex on August 22.
•
Alice Waters is Always Ahead of the Curve
Marion Nestle has a new book out, Let’s Ask Marion: What You Need to Know about the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health in which she shares her opinions, many of which make food manufacturers and politicians very uncomfortable. She pulls no punches.
People thought Alice Waters was totally unrealistic when she talked about schools having gardens, but now tens of thousands of schools have them. When I go into schools with gardening programs, I see kids who know a lot about food. They’ve grown it, they’ve harvested it, they’ve prepared it, they’ve tasted it. They know what real food is. –Marion Nestle in an online interview with Kate Cox for The Counter
ONE MORE THING
The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Cherry Farmer
Of course I regret it. I mean there I was under umbrellas of fruit
so red they had to be borne of summer, and no other season.
Flip-flops and fishhooks. Ice cubes made of lemonade and sprigs
of mint to slip in blue glasses of tea. I was dusty, my ponytail
all askew and the tips of my fingers ran, of course, red
from the fruit-wounds of cherries I plunked into my bucket
and still—he must have seen some small bit of loveliness
in walking his orchard with me. He pointed out which trees
were sweetest, which ones bore double seeds—puffing out
the flesh and oh the surprise on your tongue with two tiny stones
(a twin spit), making a small gun of your mouth. Did I mention
my favorite color is red? His jeans were worn and twisty
around the tops of his boot; his hands thick but careful,
nimble enough to pull fruit from his trees without tearing
the thin skin; the cherry dust and fingerprints on his eyeglasses.
I just know when he stuffed his hands in his pockets, said
Okay. Couldn’t hurt to try? and shuffled back to his roadside stand
to arrange his jelly jars and stacks of buckets, I had made
a terrible mistake. I just know my summer would’ve been
full of pies, tartlets, turnovers—so much jubilee.
— Aimee Nezhukumatathil, "The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Cherry Farmer" (via the always excellent Laura Olin).
That’s all for this week. Unless you want to give Ripe, Wrinkled, and Rotten a go with these 3 blind links:
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–Bruce
p.s.
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"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end" –John Lennon