Eastside Road, March 2, 2015—
FEBRUARY 24, 2015: a Tuesday, we fasted, as usual — a slice of toast with the breakfast caffelatte; a few nuts with the evening tea; a glass of water now and then if we're thirsty. We've been doing this for two or three years now, suspending the routine only when traveling. We find it retunes everything. It does have one unfortunate result, though: it interrupts the daily eatblog, and sometimes I don't get back in the traces for a few days — as this last week, when springtime activities outside (those damn fruit trees!) push deskwork to a back burner…
WEDNESDAY, February 25, 2015: Lunch at Chez Panisse: aïoli; confit; what — find the menu. That's the first course you see in the blurry photo: the vegetables not cru but very lightly blanched. The confit's at the bottom of this page.
• Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; 510-548-5525
THURSDAY: patés from the new (to us) butcher shop in Petaluma, Thistle Meat. (The name seems strange, and isn't improved by their sidewalk sign, which announces "This'll meet your expectations".) This is an artisinal shop, I guess you'd call it, working with grass-fed and organic animals from regional producers, and the shop is small, clean, fragrant with sweet healthy meat; the cases attractive.
Petaluma is a little too far for us to make this a routine stop. A similar shop seems to have opened in Santa Rosa, which is twelve or fifteen miles closer to us; and yet another is said to be opening in our own nearby town, Healdsburg, later this year. I wonder if all these blessings are due to those following the "paleo" diet: if so, my thanks to them. I remember when the last butcher shop in Berkeley closed, back in the 1970s I think, and we had to make do from then on with plastic-wrapped pre-cuts in the supermarkets. In fact our local supermarket, Big John's, has a decent meat counter.
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| Thistle Meats |
We don't eat that much meat at home in any case, partly because we eat out so often, partly because it's expensive. We eat only organic, non-hormone, and no-antibiotic meat, as far as we know (and we do try to know), and I attribute our reasonable health to this, among other dietary attentions…
• Thistle Meats, 160 Petaluma Blvd N, Petaluma; (707) 772-5442
FRIDAY: Taken out to a Salvadorean storefront in our nearby town, where Cook and I had the "plato tipico" you see photographed below. It was okay, nothing more. Nice people, but unmemorable food and very plain room — no reason to go back.
SATURDAY: Toulouse sausage from Thistle, and there's a story here. Cook treated it the usual way, searing it dry in an enamel skillet over a fairly hot fire; but said while cooking it that she didn't like the smell, and worried it wasn't sound. I cut a chunk out of one and tasted it: sound, I thought, but unusually tripey for a Toulouse sausage, normally rather a delicate affair. I ate mine; Cook nibbled at hers. Next time I'm in Petaluma, I'll have to ask about this mystery…
YESTERDAY: Fusilli pasta, which hold the sauce so well; and Bolognese, which Cook makes so well, being half Italian, and that Piemontese, and I do think the Piemontese know long-cooked meat sauces as well as the Emiliaromagnesi…
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| Confit, Chez Panisse | Plato tipico | Fusilli at home |
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