(with a wave to William Carlos Williams)

Thank you for the peach pie

red gold, gooey, thick and crusty:

peaches carried heaped in a basket

up the hill from the tree we planted

seven years ago, watched over,

pruned, debugged, (harvested

one rock of a peach that first year)

and now its branches bent to the ground

on the uphill side, their burden of fuzzy

softening fruit almost more joy

than they can bear. Read on… »

For some reason, finding yourself corkscrewless seems to me to be a particular problem of summer. I blame it on all the drinking of wine in nontraditional settings: park, beach, campground, ferris wheel, tailgate … (OK, that last one is an unlikely wine-quaffing-environment, but you get the picture.) So I was happy to discover that you can actually just force the cork out of a bottle if you hit it hard enough. Watch the video--and do NOT attempt with bubbly! Video courtesy of Bottlenotes.

Corin Hewitt (From Seed Stage)

The name and inspiration for this exhibition comes from a 1971 Joseph Beuys lithograph series, which (as I recall) is essentially a very long, typed shopping list with a big butter stain on it. Per the gallery website, “By interweaving gastronomy with aesthetics, Beuys … provides an apt and timely commentary on art as a disposable and consumable economy. The assembled works develop Beuys’ original thematic through various avenues, expanding on the idea of food both literally and abstractly.”

Food For Thought includes work by Nobuyoshi Araki, Joseph Beuys, Nayland Blake, Leidy Churchman, R. Crumb, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Daphne Fitzpatrick, Corin Hewitt, Deva Graf, Dr. Lakra , Ed Ruscha and Jen Susman.

What: Food For Thought, Curated by Sabrina Buell

Where: Silverman Gallery

804 Sutter St.

San Francisco, CA

When: Through August 31, 2010

On June 30, a slew of government agents representing (among others) the FBI, FDA, and DA’s office, plus a dozen LAPD officers with guns drawn raided the Rawesome food co-op, or “club” as they call it, presumably to avoid the legal headaches surrounding the sale of raw dairy products. It didn’t work, and our tax dollars are now being tapped to stop these microbe-lovers.

Rawesome, located in Venice, Calif., is a favorite among raw foodists but also folks interested in locally grown products and ultrafresh ingredients. I have enjoyed many a pristine shrimp and juicy local chicken courtesy of Rawesome–and was  considering joining, which is in fact how I came across the news about the raid. It was not covered in the LA Times … (Can you imagine if the Park Slope co-op was raided by armed NYPD and federal agents? A little ink would be spilled, no doubt.)

The raid was prompted by Rawesome’s sale of raw dairy and honey, which the agents carted off the premises en masse. “Drop the honey comb and whipping cream and put your hands up!” Cripes.

Rawesome promptly reopened, in defiance of the order to close. Raw food revolution, indeed.

via DailyFinance.

There’s a reason, of course, that stone fruits and almonds are such a natural match, flavorwise–the pits of peaches, nectarines and apricots contain a kernel that is called the “poor man’s almond” because it tastes almondy, if a bit bitter. The kernel also contains cyanide (it sucks to be poor). It’s also what amaretto liqueur and those delicious little amaretti cookies are flavored with, as the cyanide apparently dissipates when the pits are roasted or processed. (Booze and cookies, the poor man’s salve.)

This cakey cobbler, or cobblery cake, pairs almonds and summer fruits with delicious results. It’s a very light dessert, perfect for a summer brunch or breakfast. I enjoy it straight, but you can gussy it up with Greek yogurt or a dollop of sweetened sour cream or mascarpone. Read on… »