VenerableBede

appleman was in san francisco until a month ago or so.. .he was the chef at A16 and co-owner of SPQR.

i too had never heard or seen of such a thing until i saw it made twice in "V for Vendetta" and then again on Top Chef a few seasons ago. I grew up in San Jose, so, maybe it is a regional thing that just never quite made it out to the urban areas of California.

went last night. . .had the rigatoni carbonara. . .could have used more of the guanciale. a friend had the rigatoni aglio e olio, and another had the spaghetti cacio e pepe. . .it was agreed that mine was the best. also had the fried mozzarella, which we all liked. one of my friends complained that the portions were smaller than the first time she had been there, which was shortly after they originally opened. i didn't really mind.

There's an article here on Carol Scott. . .

to join the list of people here, i too remember taking the helm and making drinks for guests at my parent's parties. . .but this was in the 70s. . .and i was making seagrams and 7's, just like katie. . .i found it more interesting that the daughter was making things like old fashioned's and tom collins'. when my wife and i see scene's like that, we joke that "yep, that's gonna be our child."

i thought the exact same thing. . . . as for carla, i thought the whole "served with love" explanation endearing. . .it doesn't excuse poorly made food, but it does explain a lot about carla; and while that is also not a defense, i didn't care for the way the judges went after her on that point. she's just a wacky, out-there individual.

There's the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis which is all about. . .flour. Well, the history of flour and flour mills in Minneapolis. They have a bunch of old Betty Crocker boxes and various General Mills products (their HQ is in Minneapolis); as well as a test kitchen on the various types of flour and their effects in baked goods. I must say, the more interesting aspect of the museum, other than explaining how flour particles are combustible, is how Minneapolis harnessed the Mississippi River for hydropower to power the mills.

Had a great dinner at Stokes last Friday night, would go back in a heart-beat. My one minor quibble- the kitchen went a little overboard with mushrooms on their mushroom pizza. Although, upon return to our hotel, one of the workers there told us that he heard it was up for sale. . .don't know anything about that. However, had a less than stellar dinner at Sardine Factory, but I'll attribute that to the fact that I was attending a group dinner for 40 or more people. One of the amusing parts of the dinner was that the group holding the dinner had the head of the Monterey Bay Aquarium there and she spoke, at length, about this and that, including how shrimp catching has done untold damage to marine life (shrimp was served for dinner as part of a surf n'turf) and also how sardine catching did a lot of damage off the coast of california, and we were eating in a restaurant called the sardine factory. she also let us know that the aquarium now has an accompanying chart of sustainable fish for sushi...I resisted asking her why all the best sushi was on the avoid list.

beef jerky, pork rinds and moon pies. i'm only half joking.

instead of drinking the jug wine straight, why not turn it into sangria. . .or some other punch-like concoction, that way it doesn't really matter what the quality.

i'm sorry, but i really must have missed something when i visited gary farrell. i found them to be very overpriced with a staff that was not the least bit interested in talking with us about the wine. course, gary farrell was in between a stop at sunce (love that place, ditto what trishiad said, cindy's awesome) and porter creek, so i suppose we weren't ready for napa treatment in between sonoma treatment.

I bought one within the last week or so - maybe ten days - in Ricmond, CA - across the bay from San Francisco. i'm guessing its only san francisco.....was somewhere on the road to redding off of I-5 and stopped at an McD's that still had the double cheeseburger for $1.

The McDonalds across the street from my work here in San Francisco raised the price of the double cheeseburger a few months ago.

2 things on this area since I kind of work in this area. . .the refrigerator is the primary consumer of electricity in the kitchen and is roughly 15-20% of a home's overall electricity consumption (depending on the amount of AC primarily). 1) there was an ad at the bottom of page 1 of today's San Francisco Chronicle food section that is about Miele refrigerators. I'm transcribing the text of the advertisement: "Does your refrigerator keep in touch with you? Miele's new RemoteVision WIFI technology will notify you if there's a problem or even if the door is left open." So, what's the next logical progression in this. . .if a refrigertor is able to contact you and tell you the door was left open or whatnot, why not just be able to have more control over the settings. 2) This post projects the future kitchen and being able to monitor and control the usage of all your appliances, but especially the refrigerator. It's a bit more heavy on electric rate design (which is what I'm interested in and work on), so it may be a bit too into the weeds for some people. It deals with home area networks and home energy management services where people can monitor their electricity usage by the hour or minute and see where their usage comes from and being able to control that usage in response to electricity prices or emergencies. Like I said, pretty in the weeds. In a related post, the Green Lantern on Slate answers a question on when is it cost-effective for one to buy a new energy efficient appliance, such as a refrigerator. Of course, what we've found in California is that people might buy a brand new, energy efficient refrigerator, but then put the old one in the garage and use it for beer, Coke and other larger items that need to be frozen or refrigerated. Which, I guess, sort of defeats the whole purpose of that effort.