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It's been a while since I last posted. This was a heavy travel month with some freelancing thrown in, so I've been short on free time. I took two trips to Phoenix during the record heat wave, and I can now confirm that Pizzeria Bianco is so popular that people still queue up 40 minutes before the doors open even when it's 114 degrees outside (the temperature at which it begins to hurt to breathe). Was it worth the wait? As much as it was worth waiting in the snow for an hour to get into Sally's Apizza in New Haven last December. Poor Scott was sick for two weeks after that stunt. But it was good pizza!
Yesterday, I judged the cooking competition at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. And I want to go on record to say that there's nothing so terribly weird about garlic ice cream. Think of caramelized onions. Sweet and oniony. We like them. Garlic ice cream is sweet and oniny, too. Sure, it's no Ciao Bella apricot sorbet (new obsession), but you gotta give credit to the person who actually developed that recipe. It took courage. And stamina, probably.
The King of Thai Noodle House at 639 Clement St. in San Francisco is as good as everyone said it was. Go figure. They're famous for their duck noodle soup, and true to form, the broth was rich and meaty and just slightly sweet.
We slurped up the fat rice noodles stir-fried with beef and ginger...all the addictive appeal of ramen, but real food. Plus, each table had a Lazy Susan loaded with condiments, and there's nothing more fun than playing with condiments. And setting aside the condiments for a moment, why did the Lazy Susan go out of fashion, anyway?
For dessert: coconut sticky rice served with perfect, ripe mango slices, which caused us to joust with our chopsticks for the last bite.
We finally made it to Big Sur last weekend, back to Deetjen's Big Sur Inn. If there's a more beautiful place in this country, I have yet to find it.
Deetjen's, for those who haven't heard of it (and I like to pretend that I have readers who are not immediate family or friends), is a rustic little inn with a cult following. It was founded in the 1930s by "Grandpa" Deetjen, a Norweigan immigrant who settled in the area right around the time they built Highway 1. Apparently, Grampy was on the run from the Norweigan authorities, and I'm personally grateful that he decided to hi
de out here. He built little cabins in the redwoods all over the property, added on through the 40s and 50s, and the place has changed very little since then. Rooms still lack televisions or phones or even locks on the doors, walls are paper-thin, and most rooms share bathrooms. It's a very wabi-sabi kind of place, and while all this going-without might bother me in another context, here it just makes you feel all the more unplugged and transported. We first came here in 1999, and it has that camp-like appeal of being the one place where the world seems consistent and peaceful and safe.
If the morning is warm and sunny, you can eat breakfast on a stone patio off the main building and look up at the steep hillside planted with roses (Deetjen's is big on little paths that lead to hidden gardens). I ordered the Huevos Rancheros that Ate Manhattan (actually, there were just called "Huevos Rancheros"). But you can see that they were impressive. That's my arm in the photo, for scale. The pancakes are also great. My other grea
t food find was a little tray of fresh dates sold at an organic farm stand along the highway. The farmer told me that they're grown up near Santa Cruz (another win for Santa Cruz!), and that she can't get her kids to stop eating them. The flavor and texture remind me of dulce de leche crossed with cooked sweet potatoes, and I'm with those kids: I'll take them over candy just about any day. Here's a photo of Scott holding two dates with a view of the Point Sur Lighthouse in back.
Note: If you do visit Deetjen's, check out the journals in the rooms. People tend to get very personal, and it makes for great reading.
Today, my Yahoo account received spam with this subject line:
"We sell all things cervix"
Imagining the offer: "Cervix watches! Cervix snoglobes! Buy now, low price for you!"
I have a backlog of food stuff to write about, including a recent trip to Big Sur. Just too much work this week. Will return (with photos) shortly...
