Monthly Archives: August 2008

San Francisco Summer Menu

Food & Booze

This won’t be anything like what you are expecting. It’s really cold here during the summer. Last night TSB was buried under paperwork, so I offered to make a hearty spread of comfort food to help sustain her working into the night. Without a plan upon reaching the grocery store and without really realizing it until I started to cook, I made all sorts of traditionally fall foods. Ultimately it makes sense, considering that it will be cold and damp here for the next few weeks, but it feels odd to make this stuff in the summer.


Rustic whole-grain bread
Steamed artichoke with garlic butter
Salad of arugula, grilled peaches and goat cheese with a balsamic vinagrette
Mashed sweet potatoes and squash with roasted parsnip and grilled apple
Penne in a cream sauce (loaded with shallots, sun-dried tomatoes, red belle peppers, mushrooms and chicken apple sausage)

In an attempt to motivate each other to blog, TSB and I decided to both blog our SF Summer menus. Read all about her’s here.

Site Use Idea: Artistic Intervention

News and Updates

Inspired by an irritating work of public art funded by the San Francisco Art Commission and placed along advertisements on municipal buses, I’m thinking this site might be a good place to launch a response to bad ad art, particularly misguided PR campaigns that intend to warm the public in a way that only disturbs the intended audience.

I’ll post images of the initial art below. Essentially, they are simple portraits of Muni drivers with an anecdote from their career. My favorite is Vawanda, who tells the story of an attempted bus-jacking. Just what I want to read while riding.

I’m thinking it would be fun to make pieces in response, printed to blend with the originals, but taking the simply upsetting stories to a new level of horror, which I would slip into place on buses all over the city. Anybody want to help?

“After a particularly long night at the Lusty Lady and still a bit “UI,” I picked up my first passengers of the day. They seemed irritated as I veered from the standard route, but a couple of hard stomps on the brake pedal let them know who was in charge. They need to understand that when Jimmy The Tooth says he’ll only be on the corner of 6th and Market for another ten minutes, you need to be willing to adapt. I should have known the brakes would go out on me again, but the retread tires shredding was a real surprise.  I can’t say that was the last time I mixed Schedule II controlled substances with alcohol on the job, but it certainly was the most interesting. -Bob, MUNI Operator since 1991″

From: http://www.helenakeeffe.com/archives/000046.html

Indulgences Re-Explored

Art & Design, News and Updates

Addendum to my last post. I forgot to include these notes on the topic, which I had jotted on a napkin and then misplaced:

Marketing all prints as “hermeneutically sealed” as opposed to “hermetically sealed”

Using elements of old ephemera in the designs

Hole-punching designs, or perhaps the monetary value into the prints.

Once I get bored with the site in it’s pre-reformation form, I stage a neo/net Lutheran hacker attack on my own site, posting that they have taken control of nermo.com and demand reformation, post a page of 95 theses on the homepage. Maybe it will just be 95 links to pictures of those awful lolcats.

Using renaissance design elements in the layout of the site.

Designing the site with a central navigation menu, splitting the site right down the middle, because everyone has one on the side or top.

JOURNAL: A Proper Cheese Plate

Food & Booze

Cheese plates, like the one I am eating now, are simple elegant and delicious, but there is a formula for maximum enjoyment. Here’s my first draft of the perfect cheese plate.

CHEESE
Texture 1 soft 1 semi-soft 1 hard
Flavor 1 strong 1 medium 1 mild
Source 2 cows 1 sheep or goat
STARCH 1 white bread 1 dark bread 1 cracker or other
FRUIT 1 stone fruit 1 berry 1 other
1 fresh 1 dry 1 processed
PROTEIN 1 hard, salted meat 1 nut
ADDITIONAL ITEMS honey, balsamic reduction, herb butter, maple butter, olives, pickled vegetables, etc.

As an afterthought, I dug up some articles on making a cheese plate:

Wikihow says have a theme [disagree], go with odd numbers [agree], Arrange your cheeses from mildest to strongest [lame], Add accompaniments [duh], and Pick a drink to go with it [to which I must ask, “only one?”]

Chow says diversify by regional origin as well as texture and source [good point, but not as crucial unless you are trying to impress someone, and it won’t work], choose 4 cheeses including a semi-firm [I still like odd numbers and am fine with a semi-firm or semi-soft], plate according to strength of flavor [still lame, and I’m not going to arrange my cheese in a straight line regardless].

Artisinalcheese.com is broad but boring and commercial.

Food Network divides cheeses by production style (fresh, washed-rind, bloomy, pressed, and blue) which I found thought provoking.