#132 | 🐔 We Eat 74B Chickens a Year?
Bartending at the Bohemian Grove
Hello!
August. Facing the sunset peaches and sugar, and the sun inside the evening like the stone in a fruit. The ear of corn holds intact its hard yellow laughter. August. Children eat dark bread and tasty moon.
—Federico García Lorca
Hey there - I'm Bruce Cole, Publisher of Edible San Francisco. If you’re new here, welcome to Eat.Drink.Think., a newsletter spotlighting seasonal recipes, the latest SF Bay Area food news, poetry, and more!
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from our last newsletter was our poll (thanks to everyone who participated!) with the query: Will you wait in line to eat out at a popular restaurant?
65% said Hell no! Too old for that!
35% said But of course, we love the scene!
Kholodnyk (cold borshch): The fuchsia-colored cold borshch that brings instant relief from the heat and the blissful feeling of rejuvenation. Download Anna Voloshyna’s recipe from our summer issue for this summer soup that: “Offers a respite from the oppressive heat that engulfs us; it is a culinary oasis, beckoning us to indulge in its cool embrace.” 😎
🍸 Bartending at the Bohemian Grove: Michael Procopio woke up to a naked Clint Eastwood in the communal bathroom at the Bohemian Grove, the sleep-away camp for Republican boys, and also noted as the site of a Manhattan Project planning meeting in September 1942, which subsequently led to the atomic bomb. During his recent stint running the dining room and bar for the Roaring Camp group, which included John Ratzenberger (Cliff Claven from Cheers) and Jerry Brown, he was standing behind the mahogany bar where Jack London had carved his initials on one of the inside panels, and Republican governors started singing “Happy Birthday” to him. And that’s just the beginning… Spatchcock
🍆 Eggplant Parm: Sure, this recipe from Eric Kim sounds doable and delicious. Still, we really just read recipes on the New York Times website for the comments, and this one brought out the peanut gallery as usual because everyone’s Italian grandmother has a better eggplant parm recipe than you do!
Related: That cherished family cookie recipe from your Grandmother’s recipe box may have originally come from the back of a bag or box. More than often, family recipes passed down through generations have been copied from mayo jars and famous cookbooks. Atlas Obscura
📖 In the Margins: Why writing in your cookbooks can make you a better cook. The Washington Post (gift article)
R-E-S-P-E-C-T: How Drag Queens Use Cookbooks To Flip Femininity. Eater
🐟 #PROTIPS
We love these pro-tip-fish-themed videos from Positively Groundfish that give home cooks valuable tips on cooking seafood at home. Especially this one, featuring chef Michael Cimarusti of Providence in LA, who explains the simple steps that go into a perfectly grilled fish filet.
☠️ Poisoned ☠️ Netflix’s new documentary about food safety in the U.S. is one of the most viewed movies on the streaming service. “There’s a huge gap between what consumers think the government does for food safety oversight and what the government actually does.” Details from Helena Bottemiller Evich of FoodFix.
Sponsored
🐔 Planet of the Apes Chickens: As a planet, we hatch, kill, and eat 74 billion chickens annually. The death of 74 billion anything would, of course, be considered a mass extinction event under normal circumstances. Still, we’ve normalized the slaughter and consumption of chicken at a scale unheard of before, primarily because we’re so far removed from the process and provided with the convenience of grabbing a boneless, skinless breast at the corner store. Sigh. And waaay down the line, the number of pigs and cows we eat yearly clocks in at 365 million but is expected to rise to 1.5 billion by 2032. Will the number of chickens consumed hit a cool trillion by then? Vox
🐝 Bees Die, This is a Problem: They pollinate $17 billion worth of crops annually, including apples, peaches, lettuce, squashes, melons, broccoli, cranberries, tree nuts, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, plums, clementines, tangerines, sunflowers, pumpkins, and alfalfa for cattle feed. “Save the bees,” you will hear, but what exactly does that mean? The Ringer
The Number One Best-Selling Book in the U.S. is a cookbook by TikTokker Dylan Hollis (who has 10 million followers): It includes a recipe for a 1940s Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake. Boom. Publisher’s Weekly
Related: The old guard of food media is irrelevant on TikTok, where regular people like you and me have authored the most popular cooking accounts. Ina who? Vox
Related: How Cooking Videos Took Over the World. New York Times (gift article)
Related: 64 billion times = the number of videos viewed on TikTok with the #foodtok hashtag.
Diamond Crystal’s Snazzy Re-Brand: “Kosher” takes a back seat with new packaging that features a more modern look and the promotion that the salt is the choice of chefs everywhere (although most home cooks still purchase Morton’s). New York Times (gift article)
Related: We swear by San Francisco Salt Company’s Kosher Chef Salt. You can buy it here, but we prefer to get it in bulk at Rainbow Grocery. Either way, support your local salt! 😉
🍝 Pasta! Pasta! Anthony Strong’s house-made, bronze-pressed pastas are worth the trip to Clement and and Fourth. We like the maltagliata with the house-made pesto, which reminds us of the extraordinary mandilli with pesto at the long-gone Farina. We’ve also heard good things about the dine-in menu from those in the know.
🌮 You Know This Guy: Because you’ve been to La Taq and seen him behind the counter folding one taco after another and another. Miguel Ruiz, taquero supremo, who’s been at La Taqueria since the 80s, has made millions of tacos over the years and he’s not stopping now. SF Chronicle (gift article)
Chicken on a Stick: Hina Yakatori on Divis, the only yakatori restaurant with a “omakase style” tasting menu, is closing at the end of the month, a decision attributed to SF’s reputation as a wasteland in the local and national media. Hina’s business just “fell off a cliff” in July. Chef Tommy Cleary notes that his experience is emblematic of what’s happening in the city and “says all of his friends who run restaurants in San Francisco have seen similar drop-offs in business. Even at the buzziest, most highly acclaimed fine-dining restaurants, Cleary says, “you can just walk in.” KQED
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On Repeat This Week
Patti Smith is playing at the Stern Grove Festival this weekend. We’re trying to decide whether we want to go claim a spot in the dirt and freeze our butts off in the fog for a couple hours before she comes on? Or maybe we’ll just watch some YouTube videos of our favorite songs from the comfort of our couch. Anyways, back in ‘78, when this video was recorded, we were listening to her Radio Ethiopia album and playing this track over and over.
That’s all for this week.
We’re outta here. Be well and take care,
—Bruce
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“There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.”
—Gary Snyder