… you can ask for a “butter tart, please” and they know what you want. (It was amazing.)
… nobody thinks that…
a) curling is an odd way to spend a Saturday morning, and
b) calling a sports club, an annual agricultural winter fair, a police force, an air force, a mint, a train line, a museum, or a comedy show “Royal” is strange. (Did I miss anything?)
… Canadian geese are in their home and native land. (And if you just started humming the Canadian national anthem, chances are good that your mouth is watering right now for one of those butter tarts.)
… the natives get their feathers in a ruffle over language wars.
… “Bottoms up!” and fishing are both favorite national pastimes and are often played simultaneously. (That’s cottonwood fluff on the water, by the way, not beer foam.)
… the weather can go from this…
… to this in the time it takes to get from one shore to the other.
… and portly pooches who look like Winston Churchill but are named “Disco” proudly sport patriotic red and white a full month before Canada Day.
Last Sunday at the Half Moon Bay Brewery, there were more dogs than children — and the dogs were better behaved.
They sat when it was requested of them, and aside from the occasional nose bump or delicate inquiry into a chum’s rectal health, seemed content to mind their own business and eat what was put in front of them without complaint.
Of course, some sport more heavy motivational bling than others. I saw a few parents of serious brats eye-balling that collar with a wistful gaze.
And yes, there was bling.
Marilyn Monroe (seriously: I asked) here had spent more time on her hair than I had.
And Cody Bryant (yup) had on a nicer shirt than me. Kinda embarrassing, actually…
Jake was just too hot in the full sun. Silly dog… wearing a fur like that to a brew pub. What was he thinking?
Negra knew better. She went with a lighter coat in a simple black and tan motif.
Perfect.
Shecky chose the understated yet classic dog tag…
… while all Holly needed was her big smile, can-do attitude, and excellent posture to show up fully dressed.
It was Griffin, though, who made me feel better about the whole “who combed whose hair before dining out?” one-upsmanship thing…
… and Bubba was a great reminder that fretting about one’s weight while simultaneously anticipating a good meal is just plain dumb.
I relaxed about my appearance, and we settled in with the other kids to visit until a table was free.
And as we waited, I found myself with a question that had never occurred to me before…
Do wiener dogs get nervous in a restaurant with a children’s menu?
1. We love farmers’ markets for the fresh, local, organic produce.
Where DOES it come from?
For instance, what’s the difference between the ways organic and mass-market cherry farmers go about their business? And why, in our opinion, do the organic ones taste so much better?
How much work goes into raising a $2 bunch of organic swiss chard?
Or an organic red onion?
And who are these people who choose to make a living this way? For instance, Farmer John here… what’s the story of chard before it gets here on a Saturday morning, and why do he and Eda do this and not something else?
We love that farmers’ markets are populated with people on both sides of the tables who wear everything from parkas to promotional t-shirts…
.. to perfect, powder-blue pullovers…
.. to purple hair, if that’s the way you roll.
Ever wanted to see a TRUE strawberry blond?
So while the primary draw is access to locally produced food and other goods, the ultimate story is, of course, about people.
2. Farmers’ markets are about community and the interactions between the people who buy the goods…
… and the people who produce them.
There’s a generosity and artisan pride in the practice of offering samples…
… and a palpable and respectful connecting of one generation to the next in the transaction that inspires incredible hope in us.
There’s an authentic simplicity and beauty to the promotion of goods that is sane and comforting.
And there’s enough intrigue of gustatory possibilities to satisfy any foodie’s fantasies, which leads us to the third reason why someone might write a book on farmers’ markets.
3. Once you’ve got it home, what can you do with it?
For every food vendor we hope to highlight, we’ll not only feature the marketplace experience and what it takes back on the farm to get them there, but we’ll also share the fun of what we do with it once we get the goods into our own kitchen.
Yes, yes… there will be tears of joy over what Rick comes up with.
That’s just how I roll.
So that’s why. Now, how?
We figure we’ll start with Erin.
Erin, a farmer of a niche variety of scallions and a lifetime local, started the Coastside Farmers’ Markets of Half Moon Bay and Pacifica nine years ago.
We figure that beyond a kickin’ story about how the market got started and why, she’ll know where to get a great cup of coffee to go with the Bee Bakery lavender shortbread cookies.
When the kids were little and we were in our one homeschooling year, as a language arts project we kept a “family meal” journal. The girls chronicled shopping for ingredients (counting, weighing, paying for, etc.), wrote out the recipe, crafted stories of what happened while we were cooking, and then interviewed and recorded the feedback from family members.
I could sell that thing on eBay for millions.
“Eggplant parmigiana” was the first and only entry in the journal for the humble Solanum melongena. In the feedback/interview section for the recipe, Emily wrote, “Mathias cried.”
It was not a big hit, and I hadn’t bothered to cook it since.
Come to think of it, I still don’t cook it, but fortunately, Rick does.
He slices it thinly, and lays the rounds in layers in a colander, sprinkling them with salt, where they rest for about 20 minutes and leak out the mystery juice that can make them bitter.
He gently pats olive oil on them to make them feel better…
… and then slaps their happy little bottoms on the hot grill, where they grow these beautiful stripes and turn utterly translucent and crispy with joy.
We grab some hummus, a few olives, carrot sticks, pita, and maybe a glass of wine, and…
You guessed it. Sometimes it’s so good, I cry.
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When the rain, fog, and clouds of Vancouver Island aren’t in the way, my parents have a splendid view of the Comox Glacier out of their living room window.
It rains a lot on Vancouver Island.
Guests will often come and go and never catch a glimpse of the fabled edifice, so Rick painted it for them to hang beside the big window. At least this way when they’re socked in, it helps people see what they’re missing.
Come to think of it, that’s what artists do for the rest of us. They help us see what we’re missing.
See that teeny splooge of red at the base of the evergreen on the right? That’s how much I know about the process of painting, just so we’re all clear.
However, I am becoming quite the expert at the process of watching Rick paint.
Painting appears to be a strenuous exercise in problem solving, involving both seeing things as they really are and knowing how to trick the eye into seeing what we think should be there.
Until I started watching Rick paint, I hadn’t realized that I have only been processing my visual world as it makes sense to me, and this is not anywhere close to the same thing as seeing what’s really there.
My favorite part is the guessing game I play with myself as I watch him paint.
(Well, that and the way his shoulder muscles flex. I think I may have mentioned before this makes me want to bite him. But he’s painting and also has a strange aversion to being bitten, so I refrain. Noble of me, don’t you think?)
He’ll stare at the painting for a bit, then squirt out a splotch of the most unlikely color onto his palette, and smoosh it around with a little of this and a dab of that. As he lifts the brush up, I almost always think, “Now, where the heck are you going with that, Mister?! There’s no crying in baseball, and there’s no electric blue in a landscape!”
Doink.
And all of a sudden, there’s a new freshness or relief or believability or something that hadn’t been there the moment before.
A dribble of honeydew green grows into the top of a tree. A big bold swipe of shark blue… I see the contour of a hill.
And now I think I’m starting to understand how this seeing/tricking thing is done.
It’s magic.
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(Note: Oliver’s manners have not yet improved significantly. Everyone knows it’s rude to pee in the pool. Lulu seemed quietly resigned to the situation, though. Some of life’s “what boys do” lessons just come early, I guess. And no, we have no idea why we seem to catch all manner of animals taking a leak. Perhaps they’re just relaxed around us.)
Okay, I think you’re ready for a bug shot now.
You can’t say we didn’t warn you.
We’d had our play with Lulu and Oliver and were on our way back up the hill when we saw “it” in the middle of the path. We had no idea what it was, but I’m very clear on what my visceral and completely girly response was to the sighting: “EWWWW! That’s just disgusting!”
It was two inches long–which is a BIG bug for California–and looked like a cross between a grasshopper, wasp, and the biggest dang ant I’ve ever seen. Did it fly? Could it hop? If so, how high? A quick trip to Wikipedia made me feel better about how squeamish I was:
“In California, the Jerusalem cricket is known as a potato bug.Its large, human-like head has inspired both Native American and Spanish names for the Jerusalem cricket. For example, several Navajo names refer to the insect’s head:[8]
c’ic’in lici’ I coh (Tsiitsʼiin łichíʼítsoh) “big red-skull”
wo se c’ini or rositsini (Wóó tsiitsʼiin) “skull insect” [Who, I ask you, would have warm fuzzy thoughts about a huge bug with a red humanesque head? Ick.]
Also from the same wiki page: “Despite their name, Jerusalem crickets are neither true crickets, true bugs, nor native to Jerusalem, and they do not prefer potatoes for food.”
Interesting, but somehow doesn’t make it any easier for me to look at it. Need a break now…
The dogs still adore each other.
Equals in size, maturity, energy, temperament and ear-biting skills, it was like watching kids let out of class on the last day of school before summer break.
Ready to get back to the bug?
(And note what kind and considerate bloggers we are? We even issue “disgusting photo” alerts for our readers. Who else does THAT? Come to think of it, who else posts disgusting bug photos? Hmmm… never mind.)
It was kind of dragging itself along, exoskeleton bumping along the gravel as it hauled its big disturbing self towards the grass on the side of the path.
Ack. Enough.
Resplendent.
Repugnant.
How many nasty weapons of mass destruction does one two-inch bug need? Look at all those blades and pointy bits! Are those eggs on the underbelly? And doesn’t that thigh also look kind of human as well?
Ugh.
Why do we find some creatures so delightful and others make us gag on sight? I’d love to know. What I do know is that there are many “human-like” attributes evident in these dogs: flowing hair, smiling faces, the joy of companionship and play, bling… and I don’t find them offensive at all.
I feel I’m missing something here.
In any case, we had reached the stage of “Honey, get out one of our cards and see if you can move it to a better angle, okay? Honey?” (Read: “I’m not going anywhere NEAR hopping distance to the thing, but I’d love a close up shot of that face.”) Just as “we” were getting within nudging distance, who should appear on The Path, but…
… the rescue squad.
One of the owners, obviously a native Californian, said “Oh, a potato bug,” upon which he bent over, scooped it up, and threw it in the bushes. “There! That’ll give him a chance. See ya next time!”
Sigh… you never know what you’ll miss until it’s gone.
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One of the very best aspects of sitting on the cliffs at Pelican Point is that it often puts you at, or even above, the flight path of the seagulls, pelicans, hawks, and ravens that cruise the coastline.
The downside is that it really puts the memory card in your digital camera through its paces.
Not that there’s anything wrong with taking literally hundreds and hundreds of photos in an hour.
It’s just that it can get so painful to decide what to keep and what to dump.
For a painter who’s always on the lookout for a great reference shot for an upcoming painting, it means you or your designated alternate (the wee wifey, say…) shoot, keep, process, and store thousands and thousands and THOUSANDS of photos.
I mean, really… is this shot that much different than the one above it, or the five others that where shot in between them? Same bird…
The answer is “yes, in ways too numerous to count.”
Even within a single shot, there are multiple images that can–and must–be harvested.
From one perspective, it’s all about the context and spatial relationships between objects…
From another, it’s about body shape and color.
And from yet another, it’s about how freaking wonderful life is as you recline on a cliff in the late afternoon light, leaning against your sweetie, shooting photos of seagulls.
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