Lunchtime at the Farmer's Market

Let me preface this post by explaining that I am currently obsessed - obsessed - with orange soups. To blame for my current issue is the San Francisco Soup Company, which has branches all over downtown San Francisco, including one within spitting distance of the door of my building.

They have amazing orange soups: roasted pumpkin, Caribbean sweet potato, curried butternut squash. Seriously awesome. I've been known to walk across town to get to the one store carrying roasted pumpkin when our store was out.

Yet for some reason, they won't serve them, even though it's clearly the season for them. Every day I check the specials board and every day there's chilled gazpacho, and no orange soup. Chilled gazpacho in October in San Francisco, guys? Really?

So, to hell with the San Francisco Soup Company. Stupid San Francisco Soup Company. I'll make it myself.

Fortunately, on my lunch break, I can walk straight down California street and wind up here:

The Ferry Building, which hosts a ginormous farmer's market every Saturday, and two smaller ones on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's very small on Thursdays, but I found one booth called Thomas Farm Organic that had everything I wanted. Namely...

I got butternut squash for my curried butternut squash soup, but these sweet dumpling squashes looked pretty. Must be murder to peel, though.

What in the world are jelly potatoes? I didn't know, but I needed them. Really, really needed them. I got a pound.

These Thomas guys thought of everything. I picked up some fancy dahlias to go.

There are worse ways to spend your lunch hour, especially on a day like today - that couldn't decide if it was going to be sunny or rainy, and finally, gloriously, decided on sunny.

Halloween Decorating: Vomiting Pumpkin

Aw... Poor Mr. Pumpkin had a tad too much to drink on Halloween night.

Who could blame him really? If you had your insides scooped out and a candle stuck up your butt, you'd get a little drunk, too.

This centerpiece is beyond cute, and you can eat the vomit! Bonus!

Frat Boy Jack is SUPER simple to make. I used a mini pumpkin, which I thought worked really well on the buffet table, but I suppose you could use any sized pumpkin.

1.) Prep the pumpkin like you would any normal jack-o-lantern.

2.) With a sharp paring knife, cut two "X"s for eyes. (You will want to cut them a little wider than single lines, just so you'll be able to see them from afar.)

3.) Cut a large rectangle for the mouth.

4.) Position the pumpkin at the back of a large platter.

5.) Take a tub of hummus, and spread a little around the mouth. Then, pour the hummus onto the platter so it appears to be coming from Jack.

Note: I've seen people add a smidge of green food coloring to make the "puke" look green, but I thought it was fine as is.

6.) Add plenty of crackers or pita wedges to the platter, and serve. Preferably with a beer bong.

The Big Fat Four-Oh

I’m turning 40.

There, I said it. YEAH, I SAID IT!

I mean, it’s not like people don’t at least suspect, right? I do have an 18-year-old daughter. Unless I had her at twelve (and I am from the South, so you never really know), you can kinda do the math.

(Unless you’re really bad at math, and if so I completely empathize with you. You and I were busy in school learning other stuff. BETTER stuff.)

Despite the combative nature of the Post So Far, I’m feeling oddly blasé about the number itself. I mean, I think I look fairly decent for my age, with only a few wrinkles to show for it. I am pretty happy with my life as it stands, and while I haven’t accomplished world domination (sadly) or sold a novel, I do feel like I’ve done and seen a lot.

You know what’s bothering me? The birthday. The ACTUAL day. Now, I love birthdays, and I usually don’t let mine pass without marking “Jenna Day” on people’s calendars and at least making sure to gorge myself on cake. And usually, celebrating on days other than THE date is totally cool.

But this one – the day of - feels like a big deal. More importantly, it feels like I need to make a big deal out of it, or I’ll sit at home feeling sorry for myself.

The original plan was simple: spend the evening with my very closest friends at one of the best restaurants in San Francisco: Gary Danko. Got reservations two months in advance, and was all set.

Then Life happened. (Thanks, Life. You’re great.) Fully half my very best friends had to pull out - all for very good reasons. And while there will be other celebrations (had the first of them last Saturday night – til 3am! Wheee!), I have to decide what to do with that night.

Right now, I can continue out with a smaller group to Gary Danko. Which would be great to cover for this blog. However, there is another, tantalizing option: I could take the Monday after my birthday (a Saturday) off, and go up to Mendocino for two days. Just me, the dog, a cute cottage and plenty of nice restaurants and spas. Mendocino would also be great to cover for the blog. (It would also, if we're being honest, not cost much more than GD.)

Cue: decision paralysis.

It’s not that I’m that upset about turning 40.

It’s that I hate making decisions. I am the master at avoiding decisions. Stupid decisions.

Want to make my decision for me? (You won’t be able to but good on ya for giving it the old college try, to mix cultural catchphrases.) Comment below!

The Annual Plum Cake

This plum cake is so delicious, I don't know why I only make it once a year. I do, actually. I'm not huge on plums. If I do buy them, I'll only buy a couple at a time. I'm not going to go out of my way to buy enough to make a cake out of them.

Except, inevitably, I do ... mostly because someone gives me a carload of plums from their backyard, and I have to figure out what in Hades I'll do with them all.

Enter the Barefoot Contessa's "Plum Cake Tatin":

I can't express how good it is. Every year, I make it and think "I should make this all the time!" That sums it up. I never do, but still...

Basically, the halved (and pitted, natch) plums are placed cut side down in the pie plate, like so:

Then a hot, sugary caramel is poured over them, and over that is a rich, citrusy cake. After it's baked, you turn it upside down, cover it in powdered sugar and chow down. The cake is light, airy and moist, and the caramel brings out the sweetness in the plums.


It's awesome with a cup of tea.







I coulda taken a rag to the edges of that platter, huh? Geez.


Anyway, you can find the Barefoot Contessa's recipe here. I'd highly recommend it, and more than once a year.


Note: If you follow the link to the Food Network site, go to the Comments & Reviews section. Several reviewers of this dish suggested using different fruits, and I have to say, the cake (which has a slight citrus flavor) is well-designed to handle different fruits. I may try it with something other than plums.

The Really, Really, Really, Really Bad Day

Today was a Really Bad Day ™. No, I’m serious…

A REALLY BAD DAY.

Maybe it was because I stayed up too late last night and drank for the first time in months. Maybe I stepped on a black cat’s back and hit them with a broken mirror. Under a stepladder.

But my luck stinks. To wit:

BLEEDING TO DEATH - There I was, just trying to open the almond butter, which refused to budge. My hand slipped from the stubborn almond butter right into the open can of dog food I’d just fed Stella from.

At first, the cut just hurt a little, but it was bleeding, so I headed to the bathroom.

By the time I got there, the blood was gushing down my arm and dripping from my elbow. I applied pressure, but it just kept spouting with every heartbeat. But no matter how much pressure I applied, I couldn’t stop the bleeding.

After 20 minutes my bathroom looked like a murder scene and I actually began to be concerned about blood loss. It wasn’t even that big of a cut, and it was my freaking pinky finger. I was going to die of pinky finger.

So, I went to the ER. And then, of course, the bleeding stopped.

I laughed and said, haha, maybe I shouldn’t be there. The attendent looked at me, and applied pressure to the bottom of my finger (and this was over an hour after it happened), which immediately caused another geyser. Then I got to sit there, digging my nails into the chair, while he rinsed it out with a spray of hot water.

On a cool note, I didn’t need stitches and they actually crazy glued it shut! Srsly! They said it’s the exact same ingredient as Crazy Glue – and you could even use Crazy Glue itself, except that it has an acid in it that would make you scream. They take the acid out for the hospital-grade stuff.

So, it hurts, but my finger is crazy glued. Which is awesome

A few hours later…

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE, PART 1 – I need some serenity, so I decide to burn some oils in a diffuser on top of my dresser, right? Top drawer is open.

So, I pull the candle out of the diffuser, light it…

And drop it right into my sock drawer.

I managed to get the smoldering socks smothered in time. (Alliteration is awesome.)

Then…

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE, PART 2 – I decided that what I needed was some exercise! And better yet, I’d kill two birds with one stone by putting some Brussels sprouts in the oven to roast while I took a walk. Which is clearly the best idea I've ever had.

I didn’t take my keys, because I don’t need to lock the backdoor during the day.

See where this is going?

Yeah, I locked the door behind me.

Thank God I’d opened Stella’s bathroom window earlier in the day and hadn’t latched it yet. I managed to shimmy through it and catch the Brussels sprouts before they took down the house.

I’m going to bed early.

Changes at the Cinema

I love Kung Foo Cinema.

I love my nickname, Foo, even if I have no idea what it means or why it stuck to me the way it has. I mean, I learned last night that there's some coding thing that goes something like "If foo, then bar." And how perfect of a way to describe interacting with me is that?!

Plus, it's always struck me as funny as Hades that I turned "Kung Fu Cinema" into a play on said nickname. ("See what I did there?!")

I open the Post So Far this way because after a conversation with some awesome friends about blogging and why it isn't working for me the way I want it to, I have decided to make some changes here.

CHANGE THE FIRST: Up until now, I've been doing lifestyle/food blogging on one blog and doing "my life" blogging here. I don't know why, except that maybe I thought some people wouldn't be interested in my life unless I was cooking something awesome.

My friends pointed out that, hey, my life is actually kinda interesting, and that my lifestyle and my cooking and my 100-year-old farmhouse aren't separated from who I am and how I live my day to day. They suggested that creating artificial boxes around everything might hurt my desire to post, and thus to keep readers happy.

I have smartypants friends.

Which brings me to...

CHANGE THE DOS: This blog (and my other blog) are way too fracking serious. I'm not serious. I mean, I apparently have a serious face (my thinking face looks like my mad face, I'm told), but little to nothing that comes out of my mouth is serious. Unless it's about gaming. I'm serious as Ghandi about gaming.

So, from here on out, Kung Foo Cinema will be my main blog for talking about food and cooking, home and decorating, well-being, my writing and just general miscellaneous nonsense. I hope you're cool with that.

Practically, this means that over the next few days, I may be removing some of the more boring posts from here, and I will be transferring other posts from The Cottage Witch that I like and think are useful here. Plus, I've already got some seasonal and introspective posts ready.

Therefore (ergo), I'm hitting the reset button....

Now.

Weight Loss

In her book, Quantum Wellness, Kathy Freston says that if you stick with the routine (no alcohol, caffeine, sugar, gluten or animal products), your weight loss will be "profound".

I'm finding this to be profoundly true. At least, so far.

Since the first week in August, I have lost 25 pounds, and two pants sizes. That's a little over four pounds a week - every week.

My previous experience with weight loss tells me that this is a lot. Even on my "best" dieting weeks (and I usually went to bed hungry on those weeks), 3 pounds a week was the best I've ever done. And while I traditionally have been able to shed pounds quickly (sticking to it long enough to keep them off being another matter entirely), this definitely feels like a lot, fast.

In fact, it's so much that I'm wondering if I shouldn't slow down a little - if that's possible. Truth is, I'm pretty much always full, and I feel like I eat a lot. I literally have dieted on more calories in the past, and was hungrier. But meals of oatmeal, rice, beans, big salads, veggie burgers and fruit leave me feeling pretty satisfied. And I'm getting at least 1300-1500 calories a day, and a lot of nutrients (including protein). So, I'm probably okay.

Plus, I've been "cheating" a little. A little gluten here and there (mostly in the form of soy "chicken" patties, etc., but a half-bagel or a small slice of bread every great once in a while), a little sugar (Soy Dream ice cream!) and one mimosa (which made me sick for three hours - thanks, alcohol). So, it hasn't felt like a diet.

And, putting on my new, smaller pants in the morning, I'm not sure I can complain.