Tartine's Summer Fruit Bavarian

While doing my usual rounds of the food blogs, I came across a banner that intrigued me: it was from BlogHer, asking us (you?) if marketing to women is all about stereotypes. I couldn't quite remember the content of the articles I read from that link, but one writer was lamenting about a sparkly pink candy "just for the ladies" (I can't remember if this is the article I read about the controversial candy bar called "The Finger") while another one, about a "misguided laptops-for-women site." I found myself agreeing with the content of the articles, and of course I am for gender-neutral advertising, for the most part. But don't think men have been dealt a better hand.

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Lemon Chicken

Sitting on my virtual desktop I actually have a text file that contains several topics I think I may eventually want to talk about on the blog. Whenever I think of something and it turns into an essay in my mind, I file it there just so my food, for some reason, can have a pinch of loopy in it. However, looking at the file and scouring my brain for any sort of content I want to accompany this dish (it also determines the subtitle in the picture), I realize I didn't want to talk about anything at all. I am aware that sometimes you probably don't feel like reading or commenting on anything except the dish, and sometimes I just go on and on not realizing I didn't say anything about the dish. Oops. Well, today's a good day because this one's a no-brainer. Aaah!

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Tales of the City (San Francisco Part 4)

"Is San Francisco still boring?" A friend of mine asked when I told him I was there, and it totally short-circuited my brain because I have no idea how anyone could think that. Granted our trips there were years apart, but in my opinion it's one of the liveliest places I've seen (not that there's anything wrong with peace and quiet-- they both have their benefits). Perhaps it's because there's been considerable growth of the food scene in the interim. I'm posting this slightly ahead of schedule to give Caitlin a better idea of what to expect or search when she goes there. As it turns out, it opened my eyes to even more things I still want to see/eat when (not if, hopefully) I return! (... and please don't badmouth my anonymous friend, I won't allow it.) Above is a photograph of the always-lively Sur La Table at the Ferry Market Building.

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Paella

Susan once told me over at Twitter that she imagined I wasn't a problem child and gave my parents no headaches. That's probably true... To some extent. I didn't hang around the kids in my neighborhood (plenty of cousins to keep me entertained), didn't get to any fights, and was quite content to stay indoors and draw away on my sketchpads, and a bunch of other introverted hobbies like origami or listening to music.

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Sticky Toffee Pudding

When I was in my fourth year of undergrad (positively the Dark Ages), one of my friends who was frustrated with me told me point-blank that I cut people too little slack. As a result, she said, I hurt one of my closest friends at the time, who said I made him feel stupid. You have to be thankful for those moments when people are being brutally honest with you, because during the 90% of the time when people are just being mindlessly polite, you can't accurately make an assessment of yourself and your values. (Hopefully not too often, though, because it can get depressing.) However, even though I felt really bad for how he perceived me (for the record, I never thought he was stupid), I never said sorry for the things I made him feel.

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