Alliterative food...

How often does this happen to you?

Today I wrote a very short list to remind myself to stop for groceries on the way home...

Bananas, I wrote. In my house we're ALWAYS running out of bananas. But I'm very picky about my bananas - they have to be firm. The minute they get the slightest bit soft, it's all over for me.

Bread's almost always on my list as well. I don't like to freeze bread, in fact, I like it as fresh as possible. So that means I'm buying bread on a fairly regular basis, though nowhere near as often as I buy bananas. It's not ALWAYS on my list - but today? Yep. And of course it has to be what we used to call "brown" bread and now call "whole wheat".

And then today there was broccoli. That's actually not on my list very often but in the last couple of weeks I've had a broccoli craving - so today it was the first thing on my list.

Alliterative food...

And it's funny how often it happens. Maybe I do it on purpose so it's easier to remember?

Kate

Service v. food redux

You're going to start thinking of me as a curmudgeon going on about bad service - but I think it must be that time of the year. Servers are bored - January is the slowest month of the year for restaurants -

And money's tight - for servers, restaurants and diners.

We just returned from San Francisco - and yes, even though it's January, the weather was as good as these two photographs appear.

And, being on vacation, we were out to a whole lot of restaurants. Two of them were the best of them - Cafe de la Presse which was listed as one of the Top 10 of San Francisco and Alioto's - a decidedly touristy Italian restaurant at the wharf.

The food at Cafe de la Presse was very good and some of it was fabulous - we shared three different appetizers, we each had the Friday night special bouillabaise and shared a dessert. Everyone loved everything, though I admit that the bouillabaise didn't blow me away. It was very good, the fish and the broth was fine - but it was all of a muchness. Three or four kinds of white fish, fennel, and, if I remember correctly, one kind of shellfish - also white.

But the service was another matter. We had a snob for a waiter and we were, quite obviously in his opinion, not good enough to be waited upon by him. The minute we said no to his suggestion of a very expensive bottle of bubbly he looked down his nose at every one of our requests. The food runners and bussers were great, cheerful and charming, but our waiter was the exact opposite. I might, if pushed, return to the restaurant as the ambience and the food were delightful. I would, however, insist on a different waiter. It didn't ruin my evening - we were there with two of our favorite people so it would be hard to ruin it - but it certainly wasn't as good as it could have been.

But Alioto's? That was a whole different story. You've all been to those restaurants that are magnets for tourists. They're found on waterfronts everywhere and often surrounded by those wonderfully tacky shops full of cheap souvenirs. When you go to these kinds of restaurants, you pretty much expect mediocre. You go because of the location, because they're easy to spot, because everyone else is going.

First of all, we had a table by the window and looked out over the wharf and the boats and out to the water. Our waiter was delightful. He arrived the minute we sat down, told us what was going to happen and when. The bussers arrived with water and bread and the waiter quickly brought our drinks. We had all imbibed a little too much the night before (and at lunch) and so we ordered a couple of glasses of wine. There was no derision on his part - he treated us as if we'd ordered a $100 bottle of wine.

My pasta - cappellini with shrimp and crab - was fabulous, with the exact right amount of sauce (too many Italian restaurants smother the pasta). My partner's halibut was very good (though he wasn't too pleased with the mashed potatoes) and the other two meals were good as well, certainly better than we'd expected.

But if I had the choice, I would return to Alioto's and not to Cafe de la Presse. Once again, for me, great service trumps great food.

Kate

Grapes, grapes and more grapes

There aren't many fruits that are better in the winter than they are in the summer - but here in the Pacific Northwest, grapes are always better in the winter. They're big and firm and incredibly juicy.

Normally, I'm a fan of the big green grapes - which are what we mostly get in the summer - but this winter I've fallen in love with the red globe grapes. I could eat a pound of them every day, they're that good.

When you bite into them, they pop in your mouth, and then there's a burst of sweet lush juice and the texture - oh my god, they're amazing.

I'm buying new grapes every couple of days. I'm going to eat them every day until they're gone.

Yum.

Kate

What is it about oatmeal?

What is it about oatmeal?

It reminds me of my childhood. Having grown up in an English household - my mom arrived in Canada just after the war, having lived through the whole of the war in a small town just outside London - oatmeal was a breakfast staple. Sticks to your ribs, she'd say, or It'll put hair on your chest.

It took me a long time to realize that hair on my chest probably wasn't a good thing.

I think many children who spent the 40s and 50s in England grew up with a massive sugar craving as it was rationed for all of those years. So oatmeal in my mother's house was always sweet - sweetened with lashings of brown sugar.

My cravings generally aren't sweet ones - I get excited more by potato chips than by chocolate bars - but oatmeal? It's an exception to this rule.

And I've been a happy camper since Tim Hortons - for those of you in the US, Tims is a coffee/donut/etc. chain that's ubiqitous in Canada - started serving oatmeal.

I always choose the maple version rather than the fruit version because of the brown sugar. And it's only $1.99. I know, I know, the fruit version is probably better for me but I truly don't care. Oatmeal to me is all about brown sugar. That first taste of the oatmeal and I'm back in my mother's kitchen.

And yes, it does stick to your ribs, though so far, it hasn't put hair on my chest.

Kate

Food and friends

I had dinner last night - a fairly respectable Indian meal (you know from this phrase that it was only okay) - with two friends. We all work in the same group of offices though we don't work for the same firms. One of the women I'd known for many years; we'd worked together at another firm ten or fifteen years ago. The other I've known for only a couple of years. Last night was the first time we'd had dinner together.

The meal might not have been outstanding, but the evening was. It was perfect - fun, sometimes smart, sometimes silly, often serious - in the way only an evening with good friends can be.

Women bond very easily so I think these types of evenings happen more often for women than they do for men. I don't know about you but I often find myself in bathrooms or waiting for a bus and having the most intimate conversations with a woman I've never seen before.

Add wine and food to the company of women and it's as if we belong together in the way that peanut butter and banana does or Leonard Cohen and a great rich red wine does. Put those perfect combinations together and you get magic.

Last night was definitely magic.

Kate

Food and literature -

My book club meets only every six or eight weeks, and there are, as you can see, only four of us. But we read great books, eat, as you can also see, and drink wine. It's a perfect book club for me.

Last night was my turn to pick the book and I chose Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise. We also try to pair the restaurant with the book so I took us to the restaurant in the French Cultural Centre, Salade de fruits Cafe. The food was pretty close to and the conversation matched it, as always.

I had lamb chops cooked rare and they were as good as lamb chops can be - which is excellent. I had vegetables - sugar peas, asparagus, broccoli, beets, squash and fabulous mashed potatoes - all of which were cooked and served with flair. And paired with a lovely, inexpensive French red - Domaine de Bastide. Reasonably priced, this restaurant is definitely French bistro food and cooking at its best.

And all of this made me think about mashed potatoes and the conversation we had over dinner. I don't know if you've read Suite Francaise but it's a book about the Second World War and its effect on the people of France. I loved it, the writing was exquisite, the stories poignant but practical and real. But the conversation we came around to ended up being about the way the French take pride in the small things - I can't remember a meal I had in France (and I've had many from Michelin starred restaurants to the tiniest of cafes in small towns) that wasn't cooked, served and presented with a special flair. Each of those meals mattered - in the cooking of it, in the serving of it, and perhaps most importantly, in the eating and enjoying of it.

So mashed potatoes for me are like eggs. Relatively easy to cook and relatively easy to make them an everyday experience. Relatively easy to do badly, as well. But if you think about those mashed potatoes, if you consider how to make them extraordinary - and it may not take a lot more time or energy - you can end up with something special.

And Salade de fruits Cafe managed that with every part of our meal.

Oh, yeah, and I forgot to tell you another thing that made it special. I made the reservation and the waiter used my name all the way through the meal. He remembered it, used it, and made me feel as if I were a part of their tiny family. I'll definitely be going back and taking visitors and friends with me. In fact, on my desk next to the computer is the two-month calendar that came with our bill. It shows the specials for the next two months and I've already picked out a couple of don't miss weeks - the week of the salmon papillotte and the week of the prime rib. I can hardly wait.

Kate

Olives aren't just good for you...

They're one of the most sexy foods around. And I'm lucky enough to live in a city where I can get many types of olives, most of which I've never heard of.

I can go to a dozen or more stores - Greek ones, Middle Eastern ones, Jewish delis and organic grocery stores - and stand in front of a counter that contains 20 or 30 different kinds of olives of incredibly varied flavors, shapes, sizes and colors. They're gorgeous and I have, over the years, tried them all.

But I have my favourite - and that olive is the Kalamata, the lovely mahogany brown oval olives. I buy them from my favourite olive store (isn't it great that I can say I have a favourite olive store?) and I eat them like candy. I buy the pitted ones and occasionally, when I can't get to that store and have to settle for an inferior store, I will buy pitted ones but I'm not happy about it.

I put my Kalamatas in many things - from salads to sauces to that perfect bowl that sets off their gorgeous color and shape so I can eat them with (or without) my meal.

Yum yum yum. Just thinking about them makes me hungry.

Kate

It's all about ...

What is it about food that you love? I can tell you some of the things that it's about for me.

It's about flavour - not too much and not too little and all the flavours on my plate have to work together. I have a pretty good palate and it's easy for me to pick up a recipe and say that's not gonna work for me because that spice and that vegetable will not taste good in my mouth.

It's about colour. If I'm making a meal, I want to have a bunch of different colours on my plate. That's not to say that I wouldn't love a plate of mashed potatoes, bread and butter and a chicken breast - just that I would never serve all those things together. I'd be much more tempted by mashed potatoes, carrots and green beans and a pork chop. Those colours work for me.

It's about texture - I'm really picky about texture. It took me a long time to get to like tofu because I hated the texture. I don't like soggy cereal. I don't like watery oatmeal. I don't like that brown crispy stuff on the edge of overcooked fried eggs. It gives me the heebie-jeebies. And I still hate pancackes. Texture. Texture. Texture.

It's about memories. I often think about Proust and his madeleine and when I'm having a bad day or a bad week or I'm just overtired, I'll turn to the comfort foods of my childhood. Definitely not because they're good for me because they're not. Kraft Dinner. Chef Boyardee ravioli. Cheez Whiz on toast.

It's about the smell. I love putting a turkey in the oven or bouillabaise on the stove or a cake in the oven and going out for an hour and coming back to have the house smell like that beautiful food. It gets you set up for the meal.

It's about tomatoes. One of my favourite foods. Tomato paste. Tomato sauce. Tomato sandwiches. Grape tomatoes. Roma tomatoes. Tomatoes have everything - texture and aroma and colour and memories of my childhood, sitting in the back yard in the hot summer sun and eating a tomato sandwich. Sliced tomatoes, mayonnaise, salt and pepper. The perfect meal.

What is it about food that you love?

Kate