(a post without a photo of food?!) A link from my father: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/opinion/terms-of-service-in-new-york-restaurants.html

I should really turn my food-splurge impulses into cooking more often. I bought the most exciting version of everything I wanted without thinking about price (a BN Ranch grass-fed sirloin steak, local padrone peppers, blackberries, a nectarine, olives, a shallot)… and the total came to about $17. Not cheap, but inexpensive for a “special splurge on dinner”.

For a camping trip with a few friends, I decreed “no burgers, no sausages”, and a very loose theme of “Korean BBQ”. I don’t think I’d ever cooked Korean food before, but the general idea of marinated, grilled, thin-sliced meat and lots of banchan (side dishes, most of which could be made ahead of time) seemed feasible for camping, and a break from the ordinary. I bought a nice large marbled ribeye steak and sliced it thinly against the grain (following an online suggestion to pre-freeze it for an hour to aid with slicing thin helped): ...

What I ate for dinner: fresh mozzarella (not made by me), the first dry-farmed tomatoes I’d seen this season (sweet and intense), basil, olive oil, salt, pepper.

Last weekend I took a sausage-making class (hands-on practice, recipes, and helpful Q&A from the owners of Jablow’s Meats). I don’t have time to write much up, but it was fun, informative, and I especially like the sweet italian sausage we made (with plenty of garlic and toasted fennel seed): (yes, everyone photographs sausage being extruded out of the piston into pig intestine:) Hat tip to relatively new organizations Curiosity Atlas for organizing and Good Eggs for hosting. ...

I spent 4 days in Sayulita and ate both great and deeply mediocre food. If I don’t write up a few notes now I’ll forget them, so off the top of my head: Good advice in general in Mexico: “Get tacos at outdoor places with red plastic Coca-Cola chairs”. (as a side note, I was horrified to see that the top Sayulita restaurants according to Tripadvisor readers are a burger place, a nachos place, and a burrito place) ...

I’ve never really appreciated tequila. The closest I came was a series of excellent, smoky, mezcal* cocktails at Mayahuel in New York a few years ago, and the occasional good tequila Francisco had around, though I was never concentrating just on it. That started to change last week– I was down in Sayulita, Mexico for vacation, and got the tip that I should check out the Sayulita Fish Tacos Tequila Bar. The fish tacos in the restaurant upstairs were pretty bad, but the bar itself was a revelation. A few notes of what I remember or jotted down: ...

Mid-market in the Pause Wine Bar space, currently weekends 9am-2pm: http://sowsf.com/

For dinner: bread, cheese (Humboldt Fog and a Neals Yard cheese that wasn’t their cheddar), mixed greens with roasted peaches and radishes, and a bowl of figs. Followed by lentil soup based on the version I liked so much earlier this year, involving sweating the lentils, shallots sauteed in bacon fat, nora pepper, and this time a dried ancho pepper for a little extra kick. I did the “add a big bunch of spinach a few minutes before serving” thing again too: ...

Dumplings around SF. My favorites were the xiao long bao at Shanghai Dumpling King and the Pork and Chive (w/ unusually good chili sauce) from Kingdom of Dumpling. Full details at the bike blog, since this was a food / biking crossover: http://bikeit.tumblr.com/post/26301800287/dumpling-ride-recap

Great food at flour and water, and interesting strangers who it turns out know someone I know (I was just dining alone at the bar to celebrate a special week). The “smoked duck raviolini with charred onions” was phenomenal (dark, smoky, not caramelized-sweet onions in a rich dark-meat duck sauce over raviolini stuffed with duck), as was the garganelli with braised pork, peas, amaranth, and I think preserved meyer lemon. ...

My favorite place in the world to eat lobster is Five Islands Lobster Wharf on the coast of Maine, an hour East of Portland. It’s very informal– you can take live lobster away or have them cook one for you on the spot. Then you sit at picnic tables on a working dock, with lobsters boats coming and going, piles of traps, and the freshest, most flavorful lobster I’ve ever had. ...

I give these a B+: excellent ganache and a concept that of course I’d fall for (a six-pack of chocolates flavored with different beers, including several I already know I like such as Old Rasputin Imperial Stout and Oskar Blues G’Knight)… but I found the beer flavorings very subtle next to the strong chocolate, and I wanted something forceful and more different chocolate-to-chocolate. I’d still like to visit nunu in Brooklyn some day and have a beer next to the chocolate, though. ...

Life brought me to Carson, CA recently, so on a suggestion from a friend who saw my gmail chat status (who knew that would be useful?) I checked out the Shin-Sen-Gumi in Gardena for their Hakata-style ramen. And am I ever glad I did– it was a delicious bowl of ramen. I’d accidentally arrived half an hour before they opened, but within a few minutes there were already another few people waiting– so it’s good I didn’t show up right at 6. I got the base Hakata ramen of pork, ginger, and green onions (choosing the default levels of noodle firmness and broth strength), and added spinach, menma, and a delicious medium-cooked seasoned egg. ...

I love the fresh-from-the-Bay-a-few-hundred-feet-away oysters at Tomales Bay Oyster farm in Marshall, about 6 miles North of Point Reyes (both the sweet Golden Nugget and the more briny regular Tomales Bay oysters). However, I realized I’ve never been a huge fan of Tabasco or soy sauce on oysters (too tart, too thin – I think I want something more buttery and spicy to balance out the brine). So as an experiment I made my own inspired-by-harissa sauce: dried ancho chiles from Tierra Farms (reconstituted in hot water for 10 minutes), pureed with olive oil, a few cloves of garlic, and a little toasted coriander seed. This turned out a thick, slightly spicy, mouth-coating paste that you could dab on the oysters. I declare it a success! ...