#23 | Alcohol is a Carcinogen?
Define Food Apartheid
Hello!
Here we go again.
While the impending SIP orders take affect this Sunday at 10 pm (through at least Jan. 4), remember that you can still order takeout and delivery from your favorite local restaurants—they will need our support now more than ever.
“The majority of restaurants simply cannot make it financially on takeout alone. With the uncertainty around further federal support, San Francisco restaurants, their employees, and their families will suffer greatly by having no choice but to close for a period of time,” read a statement from the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which represents San Francisco restaurants. More coverage from Janelle Bitker in the SF Chronicle.
By the way, farmers markets are not affected by the shut down restrictions as they are considered essential services so don’t forget to patronize your neighborhood market 🙏
By the way, I'm Bruce Cole, Publisher of Edible San Francisco. If you’re new, welcome! You're getting this email because you subscribed. If you'd like to hop off anytime, simply unsubscribe. I appreciate you reading this newsletter. Let’s eat!
EAT
Heidi Swanson’s Farro Salad
We’re on a Castelvetrano kick lately. Last week’s radicchio salad featured a creamy Castelvetrano olive dressing and this farro salad from Heidi Swanson’s Near & Far: Recipes Inspired by Home and Travel holds a taste of those buttery-sweet green olives in every bite. If you’ve never tried cooking farro before, it’s super easy to make. Just simmer in water for 15 minutes or so and taste. The grains should be al dente, soft but still a bit chewy. The key to this salad is that all the ingredients are chopped the same size as the farro and in each fork full you get a bit of farro, walnut, onions, chives, and those ripe green olives. Bon appétit!
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DRINK
2019 Emme Wines “Sally” Carignan, Ricetti Vineyards, Redwood Valley, Mendocino
What do we start thinking about immediately after we’ve finished Thanksgiving dinner? What to make for the next holiday feast of course! Only 20 days to go until Christmas and we’re pondering a pork roast for starters, and of course, what to drink with it. And we’re looking no further than this 2019 Emme Wines Carignan “Sally.” It’s a food friendly (aka not heavy and tannic) wine that would also pair nicely with duck or chicken and savory vegetable dishes.
Carignan (also often spelled Carignane in California) is hardy grape variety usually combined with Rhone blends in France, but often bottled as a stand alone grape here on the west coast. The grapes from this wine come from vineyards planted by the Ricetti family in 1939, farmed organically, and like Claire Hill’s Mourvèdre that we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, requiring very little irrigation. In an email, winemaker Rosalind Reynolds tells us:
The age of the vines gives them a high tolerance for heat and much less need for water, conditions that contribute to the acidity of the fruit as well. The vineyard is in Mendocino and farmed by Pamela and Tom Ricetti, third generation vignerons. Tom's parents planted the vineyard, and the family has farmed it ever since. They live on the ranch and are out in the vineyard every day, working the tractors and walking the vines.
That fresh acidity is the backbone of this wine with deep and rich fruity notes (thank you 83-year-old-vines!) and the subtlest tannins. In other words, racy and delicious! Unfined and unfiltered, 13.5% ABV.
We purchased this bottle from Gemini Bottle Co.
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Harrumph!
Alcohol’s cancer link is irrefutable: In 1988, the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded that there is a causal relationship between ethanol—the specific type of alcohol in booze—and throat, liver, breast, and colon cancers. A public health analysis published last year estimated that the cancer risk posed by drinking one bottle of wine a week was comparable to smoking five cigarettes for men and 10 for women in the same time span. —Jessica Fu in Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen. Big Booze wants to keep it that way for The Counter
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66 Bottles of Booze in the Wall, 66 Bottles of Booze…
A New York couple renovating their house found 66 bottles of bootleg booze dating to the 1920’s built into the walls. @bootleggerbungalow
Regular or Decaf?
Nik Cho of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters launches collab with TikTok Star morgandrinkscoffee (4.9M followers). The new brand is called, what else, Morgan Drinks Coffee. By the way Nick Cho has 1.4M followers for his personal TikTok, Your Korean Dad.
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THINK
Celebrating Smitten Kitchen
As Deb Perlman tells it, Smitten Kitchen is a 14 year-old food blog celebrating triumphant but unfussy cooking. Her site features hundreds of uncomplicated, trustworthy recipes and is visited by a million-plus loyal fans each month. Hannah Goldfield of The New Yorker talks to Perlman about pandemic cravings, cooking ruts, and the upsides of a strange Thanksgiving.
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Define Food Writer
Mayukh Sen, the James Beard Award and IACP Award winning food writer doesn’t come from a food or cooking background, but that hasn’t stopped him from penning a long list of notable stories.
From the start of my food media career, I've just been very steadfast in my lack of commitment to actual cooking. I try to be very upfront about it; I just write about food. I am not a cook, I just cook well enough to survive. Barely well enough, I should say. —Vicky Gu in Writer Mayukh Sen is Crafting a New Food Media Playbook for Current
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Define Food Apartheid
The term “food desert” makes people feel safe. It doesn’t resonate as much as food apartheid because apartheid is about racial segregation. Why is it that the greatest country in the world can grow and raise enough food, but we can’t get it back to the people that need it the most? Junk food floods low-income neighborhoods, while the healthy, organic food fills wealthy areas. Food deserts don’t have that conversation; food apartheid does. —Amy Woehling in Womanly Chats with Karen Washington for Womanly
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Show Some Local Love
Mobilize Love, the first ever non-profit food truck distributing free hot meals to the Bay Area in need since 2019, will be distributing approximately 38,500 meals this month. Show your support here.
86Fund is a fund that supports SF Bay Area restaurants facing unprecedented hardship during the global pandemic. Our goal is to help local restaurants—which serve as a diverse, historic, social, and deeply cultural layer of our community and local economy—weather the winter. Donate here.
Beyond Doordash: What will it take to build a resilient restaurant network? Chefs and restaurant insiders discuss the trade-offs among food production and delivery options today, and what a better system looks like. The Dec. 8 free online event will feature Thomas McNaughton (owner, flour+water), Eric Minnich (private chef, previously, The Commissary, Madera), Geetika Agrawal (program director, La Cocina), Maggie Spicer (hospitality expert, founder of Benne), Charlie Yi (ghost kitchen expert and consultant). Watch here.
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Sign On the Dotted Line
We just subscribed (and you should too) to Lisa Donovan’s Substack newsletter, From the Hip: One Woman’s Writing on Food. Donovan, a retired pastry chef, is also the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger and a James Beard Award winning writer. She shared her recipe for Black Pepper Buttermilk Biscuits cooked in a cast iron pan in yesterdays newsletter, and boy do they look delicious (despite the fact she forgot to add the baking soda).
NPR review: Our Lady Of Perpetual Hunger' Is A Savory Memoir Of Food, Work And Love.
ONE MORE THING
In the morning I eat
watermelon and oranges.
I'm barefoot but wearing
a thick wool coat. I forget
what day it is, what season,
what chores call me out into the yard.
I give rinds to the chickens,
drop seeds for the woodrats
and leave the sweet juice
on my mouth as I read a few
poems aloud to the snow
covered mountains.
—Jacqueline Suskin, "Watermelon and Oranges"
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That’s all for this week.
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We’re outta here. Be well and take care,
–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