#133 | On a warm San Franciscan night

Spaghetti Mayhem

Hello!

NOW IT'S FRIDAY

I came for coffee 
to water my deep heart

Now it's Friday 
and my hands still hurt 
from Monday Tuesday

But a cup of coffee 
is a big brown eye 
that looks at anyone

Where is the door 
that opens like a hug

When you're always alone 
at night there are the stars 
The sky's a plate of salt

And you wait growing hard 
like a loaf of bread

—Bert Myers, From early rain, Swallow, 1960

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 Anna Voloshyna’s recipe for Kholodnyk (cold borshch), the perfect soup to chill you down for the next heatwave.

🍷 This week’s poll:

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Welcome to Mary Oliver Garden: “Home of Italian-adjacent cuisine and poignant observations about the human condition as it intersects with the natural world. My name is Blair, and I’ll be your server today.” McSweeney’s

Have it Your Way: We love Deb Perlman’s recipes because she acknowledges you may be wavering as she suggests more butter than you’re comfortable with when making her Corn Butter Farro. “Add the remaining 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter — the correct amount is whatever is in your heart that day.” The Smitten Kitchen

Lost in Translation? "When customers think of sushi, we want them to think of Kroger." The chain sells more sushi than anywhere in America, to the count of 40 million pieces in an average year. Men’s Journal

For the Health: “Potato salad, or any potato that’s been cooked and chilled, provides a good dose of resistant starch, which is beneficial to the gut microbiome. Add this to the evidence that potatoes are good for you.” Cruciferous Recommends

It’s Getting 🔥 in Here: Corn sweat is making the Midwest's humidity even worse. Axios

Even Hotter: The primary reason for the sriracha shortage is that it’s too hot to grow jalapeño peppers. The Atlantic

Timeless Advice for Aspiring Restaurateurs: Ten lessons for opening a new restaurant from Sara Deseran, Branding and Marketing Director at Tacolicious. The first one should be good enough to scare you away - Openings are like birth. Bon Appetit

Name That Microbe: The one ingredient that makes mozzarella cheese so delicious. Inverse

👀 Spaghetti Mayhem: You’ve never seen anything like this.

Eating Uncomfortably: On having an eating disorder and working in the food industry by Elena Kadvany, food reporter for the SF Chronicle (gift article).

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Alicia Kennedy photo: Israel Meléndez Ayala

When I started to write about food and research the reasons people eat meat in the first place, I realized that the same impulse toward cultural belonging that I sought out by rejecting meat was the reason most people loved to have a steak on their plate. Eating a veggie burger meant I was radical; eating a beef burger meant being mainstream. Flavor was and is secondary to symbolism when it comes to eating meat or rejecting it. Though the consumption of animals is historically tied up with human evolution—indeed, it was what allowed us to become human—according to Josh Berson, author of The Meat Question: Animals, Humans, and the Deep History of Food, it has been an economic imperative more than a natural one.

Excerpt via Fast Company from Alicia Kennedy’s No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating

• Related: “What surprises me the most about No Meat Required, the debut book from prolific food writer Alicia Kennedy, is its optimism.” Bettina Makalintal interviews Alicia Kennedy for Eater.

• Related: “We Have a Deep Hatred of Taking Food Seriously. The author of No Meat Required on the politics of veganism, living and eating in Puerto Rico, and the future of subscription lettuce.” Hazlitt

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🍔 Impossible? Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have found that lab-grown or “cultivated” meat’s environmental impact is likely to be “orders of magnitude” higher than retail beef based on current and near-term production methods. UC Davis

A Rib Too Far: New plant-based pork ribs to feature edible vegan bones. The Guardian

Fast Food is Still 👑: Since Covid-era enhanced food stamps benefits ended, Americans are cooking less at home and spending more time at the drive-thru. Washington Post (gift article)

This Is So Cool: A circular blender for your stash of glass jars. Blend and go!

Anything is Delicious in a Dumpling: The sisters behind the fridge clean out dinner. The New Yorker

Peak Dinner Time: Or maybe you call it supper? State by state, what time does everyone eat? Flowingdata.com

Calling All Golden Gate Green Thumbs: In the new 30th-anniversary edition of “Golden Gate Gardening,” author Pam Pierce’s guide to growing vegetables and ornamental plants in the San Francisco Bay Area, she calls for a regional food culture and “cements her years of activism and teaching into a philosophy she hopes will actually bring about the change she sought when she ventured into her first community garden plot in the 1970s.” SF Chronicle

Cheers to This: Napa Vineyards Are Pairing Wine With ‘Fish Friendly Farming.’ Reasons to be Cheerful

• Related: One of our favorite California bottles comes from a winery where coho salmon spawn in the creeks along the vineyard. Winemaker Jennifer Reichardt notes, “Anything that happens in the vineyard has to affect the creek positively, so it only gets pruned and it gets mowed, but there’s no spraying on the ground, there’s no spraying on the vine. Even if you farm organically, you’re still allowed to spray things in the vineyard, and there’s nothing, so I think it’s the most honest expression of terroir there is because it’s just the grapes. There’s nothing else. I craft it in a way to really highlight all of that.” Raft Wines, 2019 Weed Farms Syrah, Dry Creek Valley. Edible SF

Believe It Or Not: Nearly 16 million Americans live in towns or counties where buying booze is against the law. What it’s like to live in a dry town? Wine Enthusiast

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On repeat this week:

This following program is dedicated to the city
And people of San Francisco
Who may not know it but they are beautiful
And so is their city…

—The Animals, c. 1967

That’s all for this week.

We’re outta here. Be well and take care,
—Bruce

Thanks for reading EAT. DRINK. THINK. from Edible San Francisco! Subscribe for free to receive the next edition.

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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