Sunday, August 31, 2008

Tomato Jam in the New Apartment


Cooking, for me, is a function of mood. I can cook when I'm busy or bored, when I'm tinkering with a story or desire to follow instructions slavishly and eschew thinking altogether. Fever-addled, I once mixed up homemade marshmallows at 4 a.m.; at 20 I nervously roasted a shank of pork to impress my boyfriend's aunt, a Jew, who proved more gracious than I was cultured.

However, I can not cook when I'm unhappy. When I stopped cooking in my last apartment in a sad neighborhood in outer Mission, and would neither invite friends to a meal nor cook for myself, it was clear I needed to find a home that felt more like home.

But now I'm in a new apartment I love. And I'm cooking. And I went to Slow Food Nation.


On a sunny Saturday in front of San Francisco's City Hall, I had the best biscuits I have ever tasted--ever--and tried to shake the recipe out of Scott Peacock, but he was busy turning out a new batch. Curses! Guess I'll have to buy the book.

I decided to check out the scene at the Ferry Building market, where the wait for a Blue Bottle cappuccino looked to be about an hour long. I bought gorgeous Early Girl tomatoes at Everything Under the Sun (which specializes in sun-dried products).

Today I'm cooking a batch of tomato jam, which I've never made or eaten. Recipe to come...

2 comments:

ilovedc said...

yo;

no la cocina at slow food comment? and we right NEXT to blue bottle. :)

colleen said...

ah! but i go to the second, hidden blue bottle kiosk, not the one next to la cocina, my favorite nonprofit kitchen incubator of all time, and home to sinful sweets, my favorite purveyor of home-style cookies and bars