Hello!
Now that spring is in full swing, we're sharing a free ebook, full of recipes by San Francisco food writer Molly Watson, to take advantage of the seasonal bounty including asparagus, peas, fava beans, radish, and strawberries (for a sangria no less)!
If you're reading this newsletter on your Apple iPhone or iPad, you can download our spring recipe ebook and then save it to your device by first tapping the box with the up-arrow icon at the bottom of the screen. Scroll up and tap Add to Home Screen and the e-book will be saved as an icon on your home screen. To save the e-book to an Android device, on the File tab, tap Print. If not already selected, tap Save as PDF on the drop-down list and then tap Save. Now tap on Save. Choose a location for your PDF (e-book), enter a new name (optional), and then tap Save.
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
Here’s one of our favorite recipes from the spring ebook, nettle soup with horseradish cream. Not only do nettles make for satisfying earthy and herbal soup, but they are also a nutritious powerhouse as well, loaded with:
Vitamins A, C, and K, as well as several B vitamins.
Minerals: Calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and sodium.
Fats: Linoleic acid, linolenic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid and oleic acid.
Nettles are also known to contain histamines, and the plants begin to emerge in the springtime, at the same time many allergens are getting blown around by the seasonal windy weather. Nature works like that. 😉 You can find nettles at most farmers markets, or you can always look for them in Bay Area parks and woods (just remember to bring your gloves, they do sting!).
Nettle Soup with Horseradish Cream. Edible Communities
DRINK
To the Victors Go the Spoils: we know the NBA is full of fine wine connoisseurs, the Blazer’s CJ McCollum has bottled his own Oregon pinot noir, and former Heat all-star Dwayne Wade founded D Wade Cellars focused on California wines. So it’s no surprise at all to learn that the Warrior’s Draymond Green honored Stephen Curry’s passing of Wilt Chamberlin as the all-time points leader in franchise history by treating him to a bottle of 2015 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tâche on Warriors owner Joe Lacob's tab. Bet that went down smooth as butter.
On Drinking Sans the Alcohol: this conversation with Julia Bainbridge, author of Good Drinks: Alcohol-Free Recipes for When You're Not Drinking for Whatever Reason and Bruce Bossil, founder of the Virginia-based non-alcoholic beverage company, Delmosa, contains many enlightening moments. Here are a few:
Thirty-five percent of the American adult population doesn't drink. These people have no point of reference for terms like "long finish" or "gin-like."
I'm a bit irritated that the coverage of nonalcoholic beverages seems to focus on those looking for spirit substitutes or those looking for something similar to what they used to drink. It's a narrow view, that the benchmark for whether or not a nonalcoholic beverage is good or high-quality is whether or not it impresses the palates of drinkers, and it leaves out a good portion of the population.
I’d like to see the coverage (of non-alcoholic beverages) expand and be more inclusive of people who don't drink at all. In fact, I'd like to see non-drinkers on these tasting panels. How many would be repulsed by these spirit alternatives? Convinced they haven’t been missing anything? Intrigued? Thrilled by the sensory experience and the new world of drinking pleasure open to them?
Read the full conversation here: How Else to Taste, on Julia Bainbridge’s Substack, Good Drinks
One More Drink Before We Go: another lovely profile from Julia Bainbridge, who is obviously our favorite writer on the subject of non-alcoholic drinks. “This non-alcoholic cocktail might look like a riff on a Shirley Temple, with its mauve hue, but it certainly doesn’t sip like one. It tastes sweet and savory, deliciously strange, and a little bit like North Carolina.” Oxford American
The Sad View from the President of France:
Roughly translated: To you, farmers who, throughout France, have fought tirelessly, night after night, to protect the fruits of your labor, I want to tell you our full support in this fight. Hold on tight ! We are by your side and will remain so.
The orange glow you see in vineyards is coming from fires set in pots or barrels, placed around the base of vines to warm the air and hopefully ward off temperatures that dipped precipitously into freezing (below -7C, 19°F) this past week. Recent warm weather had prompted fresh new growth and bud break in the vineyards, all of which most likely will be destroyed as a result of “the worst frost in decades.” The Guardian
Wayne Garcia, the proprietor of DIG Wine, noted in his recent newsletter this week that “almost every French wine-growing has been affected, as well as some regions of Italy—but early estimates are calculating crop losses somewhere between 50 to 100 percent.”
THINK
A Plea From SF Mayor London Breed: “Get your quarter-pounder at Beep’s instead of Burger King. Buy your pie from Pizzeria Delfina instead of Pizza Hut. Pay Bookshop West Portal, not Jeff Bezos, when you want to tear through the latest bestseller.” Breed challenges San Franciscans to only patronize city's pandemic-battered small businesses. SF Chronicle (possible paywall)
You Are What You Eat: “The logic surrounding food as a moral issue seems to be that if you lead with judgment, you get it out of the way; you clear a path for indulgence or moral superiority or who the hell knows.” We Are All Fragile Creatures: The Manufactured Moral Panic of a Free Krispy Kreme Doughnut. The Audacity
Not Exactly Buying This Argument: “Progressives who glorify meat consumption are doing free PR for a highly-polluting industry working tirelessly to keep polluting.” Against Meatposting. Heated
The Unspoken Art of Service: Tejal Rao describes the sublime, almost abstract generosity of spirit and hospitality she experienced while dining at the counter of Swan’s Oyster Depot.
“Crushed between two strangers on a wobbly stool, I happily ate as much fresh, sweet, cold Dungeness crab meat as I could. Happily, because the server across the bar was making me feel comfortable and cared for, safe and unhurried, though I can’t say exactly how he did this.”
Rao also examines the history of tipping and lays bare its racist provenance:
“This is American hospitality at its ugliest, and a reminder of the inequities at its roots. After slavery was abolished in 1865, employers looking to get away with not fairly paying service workers, particularly those who were formerly enslaved, encouraged tipping instead.”
It’s a lengthy discourse on how decades of our reluctance to treat workers in the restaurant and hospitality industry with the respect and dignity they deserve has created a toxic environment in which until recently, seemed like there was no point of return. The pandemic has created an enormous opportunity for change to the status quo, with restaurants beginning to reopen and at the same time attempting to institute meaningful wage and policy improvements. We recommend that anyone who is prepared to start dining out again, first give Rao’s article a read: What is Hospitality? The Current Answer Doesn’t Work. The New York Times (possible paywall)
An Important Conversation:
It would be remiss of us not to acknowledge the cultural and humanitarian impact of the devastating shootings of Black citizens by police officers in recent weeks. Our friends at Edible Boston shared this article with their newsletter subscribers this week and we’re sharing it with you: “We can no longer afford to say only “racism.” Instead, we must specify “anti-Black racism,” to acknowledge the difference that holds Black people in oppression. We must say it, we must name it, and we must walk in boldness to address it.” A reflection on anti-Black racism. Bread.org
ICYMI we posted our April Spotify dinner jams playlist a few weeks ago. This month’s list leads off with a Fontella Bass classic from 1966 and quickly segues into a rambling mix of covers and culture, including Durand Jones and the Indications outstanding version of David Bowie’s “Young Americans.”
That’s all for this week.
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We’re outta here. Be well and take care,
–Bruce
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