Happy New Year pic by Kimra

Happy New Year, meat lovers!

We took a much needed break from December 22 until January 2nd, involving much San Francisco-based festiveness, crabs, families, a trip to Dallas, and then New Year’s with friends in a house up in Cloverdale in Sonoma, CA.

And now that we’re back, I’m raring to go, but sadly my body is not cooperating. Too much computer time, poster rolling, and art making in the last few months has left me with washwoman’s wrist, aka, gamer’s thumb, aka tenosynovitis. Basically, big time pain in my wrist, thumb, and index finger of my money-maker hand. I’m on doctor’s orders to rest it (and also eat a lot of ginger, turmeric, and rosemary) so expect a blog lapse for a couple of weeks here. After that, I’ll hopefully be back in fighting form, ready to kick ass in 2012!

Thanks to everyone who came out to Bazaar Bizarre last weekend! It was a great way to kick off  the holiday season, despite the one vegetarian heckler who visited our booth. We thankfully had some beers from nearby City Beer Store so the awkwardness quickly faded.

Would you rather have some delicious food and tasty beverages while you shop? Well, this is your weekend for sure.

On Friday, December 9th is the 3rd annual La Cocina Gift Bazaar, from 5pm to 9pm, at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (Mission, at 25th). La Cocina is an awesome local food business incubator, which provides support to low-income food entrepreneurs as they formalize and grow their businesses.

If you love food, or are shopping for a food lover, you seriously don’t want to miss this. In addition to food vendors (both take-home and eat there, like Wise Sons Deli pastrami, mmmmm….), there’s going to be a “tamale alley”, featuring tamales from around the world (there’s no way that it won’t be delicious) and a pretty crazypants live auction. This should honestly be a ton of fun. There is also a silent auction going on RIGHT NOW online.

We’re talking things like:

• The ultimate picnic courtesy of Delfina – including a pig roast, side dishes, a keg of freshly brewed beer and maybe even some square dancing.
• Evening with a Monger at Bar Bambino
• Cocktail class for two at Beretta
• Private tour of Blue Bottle Coffee’s Oakland Roastery, followed by a single origin cupping, demos and half pound of beans for each guest.
• In-home ramen and kimchi class from Hapa Ramen’s Chef Richie Nakano followed by, well, ramen!
• Be a brewer for a day at Magnolia Pub
• Dinner for two in the Chez Panisse kitchen

And like, a WHOLE lot more. Insane, right? You should totally come. Check out more details, including information on the eBay aution, here.

After you’ve had your fill at La Cocina, you should also hop on over to the Holiday Market Market trunk show at Rare Device, from 6pm to 9pm, featuring work by my biz ladies pals, lemonade handmade, Kendra Renee, Sharon Z Jewelry,  1.by.liz,  Casa Murriguez, Bird vs. Bird, and Noteify. There will also be a raffle and a paid gift wrapping station to benefit 826 Valencia. Rare Device will also be offering 15% off all of their regular merchandise (excluding the trunk show and art show). At 1845 Market Street @ Guerrero.

And Saturday afternoon is the final New Taste Marketplace of 2011, at St. Gregory’s Church, 500 De Haro,  from 12 to 5 pm.  This will be the normally awesome foodie grazing paradise, but now we’ve stepped up our game and have transformed this into another one-stop-shop for the food lover on your holiday shopping list.  This market, there will be arty vendors, including Geraldine Adams Art (selling food related art prints of illustrated recipes, vegetables and wine map of France), The Heated (durable, non-toxic and good-looking flour sack towels and market totes), Faerie Goatmother (all natural organic goats’ milk soap and face masks), Flock Home ( hand-printed linen dinner napkin sets, cocktail napkins, coasters, pillow shams, pin cushions, and tea towels), Buttons & Pears (funky aprons and hot pads), and me! You can also meet Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz, authors of Mission Street Food Cookbook,  and pick up a signed copy.

There will also be over 30 food vendors, selling take home treats like bacon caramels from Nosh This, pickles, coffee and tea, as well as “eat it there” food, like pastrami from Jablow Meats, dumplings, cheese balls and more. Check out the full line up here. There is a sliding scale entry fee for $0-$10,  with proceeds going to the Food Pantry at St. Gregorys.

Whew! I guess I better get back to work now! Hope to see you there.

Just wanted to pop in to let all the San Francisco people out there know that this weekend is the Bazaar Bizarre Holiday Craft Show, and I’m so psyched to be vending there! This is an even bigger event than last year and has moved to the Concourse Exhibition Center, East Hall, in SOMA. More details are here.

My mom is flying in tomorrow to help out with the show which is super exciting! We’ll be holding down the fort in booth 98, right down the middle aisle, next to Chronicle Books. Hope to see you there!

obviously this one was mine….it was a hit with the parents.

We moved to San Francisco in October 2007. We loved our adorable new neighborhood (Cole Valley), full of dogs and families, and cute French bistros, and especially loved our tree-lined street. When meeting our new neighbors, invariably, the first thing they asked was “Do you know about Halloween here?”

Not even crowded yet. Seriously.

See, we live on Belvedere St. Those of you who live in San Francisco, especially if you have kids, you know what this means. Every year, the residents of Belvedere Street block off our street and throw an amazing Halloween block party – basically the Castro for kids.

ghosts

There are garages turned haunted houses, tons of decorations, live bands, animatronic spooky shows, live dancers dressed as Disney and Pixar characters, movies playing on outdoor screens, tons of jack-o-lanterns, (perhaps some adult beverages for the adults dealing with sugared up children…) and oh, the candy.

Kung-Fu Panda dancers, from 2007

See, kids are brought here from all over the city. The little ones start around 4, and after that, it’s basically a rapid countdown until the bags upon bags of candy you bought are gone.

The swarm at our front door.

This year we went through 1800 pieces of candy, plus a huge bowl of candy corn in 3 hours. It was…. a little intense. But fun, and one of those special only-in-SF kind of events.

While arranging anniversary flowers* this morning, Steve commented that “It looks like a Martha Stewart photoshoot up in here.” (Which was odd, because I just had a dream that I was sitting next to Martha at a class reunion. But that’s neither here nor there..) So, I clearly had to snap a pic of my breakfast, right?

Fried egg with Outerlands bread, hot tea in the kitchen with flowers and Lucky Peach magazine. Yeah, I’m reading about eggs while eating eggs. I have a problem.

Besides eggs, these days have found me obsessed with that ridiculous Outerlands bread and Meyenburg goat butter.

Outerlands has transformed into one of my top 5 restaurants in SF. It’s a magical place, full of driftwood, twinkling lights, and down by Ocean Beach. The food is creative without being fussy, and man, that bread. Originally based on the Tartine bread recipe, it’s now morphed into an artisinal sandwich bread. And the best part? $5 a loaf! We’ve been eating it for a week.

And that goat butter? Thick, creamy, bright white, and with a slight goat gaminess, in the best way possible. We won it playing foodie trivia at Omnivore Books (yes, we dominated. thank you for asking.)  but I’ll definitely be buying more when our stash runs out.

Excellent when topped with We Love Jam Blenheim apricot jam. It’s crazy good, and run by a super nice couple who started the business when a family member’s apricot tree was laden with fruit. We’ve been buying it for years … the first time was out of a car trunk, drug deal style in a parking lot off of Masonic. They’ve become more legit since then – you can buy the jam at Williams Sonoma.