Market Research

 

I have mentioned in the past just how special San Luis Obispo Farmers’ Market is, but I’ve never gone into depth. Ironically, at the time I wrote that post I was procrastinating during the grand Packing Of The Possessions, prior to moving to the USA, and fantasising about the things I was longing to do once I got here. That was on April 27th. Today, on Monday 29th August, a man in a van is going to bring the very same stuff (minus one German pickling jar which was a casualty of transit) to my door in Cayucos, and I can write to you and tell you all about the Farmers’ Market at some length.

My mother, incidentally, says that these blog posts are too long. She hasn’t, she says, got time to read 2,000 words a fortnight. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy reading them, she tells me, it’s just that I tend to go on a bit, apparently. So, bearing this in mind because a wise boy always listens to what his mother says (even if he chooses, on later reflection, to disregard whatever gibberish it was she came out with on the spot) this is going to be something of a photo-rich, word-poor blog post. In other words, Mother dear, you can just look at the pretty pictures.

The weekly market in SLO began as a response, more or less, to what we today call anti-social behaviour. In the late 70s and early 80s, Thursday night became the late-opening night for shops in downtown San Luis. This in turn attracted large numbers of teens cruising in cars. For some reason, large numbers of young people doing apparently innocuous things like “wearing hoodies”, “talking to each other”, “listening to music” and, here in America where 16-year-olds can hold a license, “driving on the road in cars” are incredibly threatening to those over the age of 21. I can’t explain it; I’ve been there myself- felt intimidated by groups of kids who seem to be doing nothing even vaguely reprehensible at all. My feet speed up all by themselves, and my brain, perhaps troubled by the thought that they appear to be having a better time than I am, just sits there and feels like an idiot. Either way, trade was suffering as the teens put people off coming downtown to spend actual money. After cars were banned on Thursdays, the farmers’ market sprang up in 1983 as a way of attracting people downtown without their cars.

The best part of three decades has passed since then, and the significance of SLO Farmers’ Market, as well as its counterparts elsewhere, has increased beyond the original intentions of the people who started them. I doubt if, in 1983, the San Luis Obispo Downtown Association had the direct aim of attracting the attention of the LA Times and the New York Times. Its Facebook page has over 7,600 fans at time of writing.

But that’s not the point. The point is that the farmers’ market represents a whole range of positive influences on both the local area and the world at large. If you buy at Farmers’ Market, you know that you haven’t paid for more food miles than necessary. You also know that someone is supporting the people who farm the fields you drive past every day. You know that you’re supporting locally owned restaurants. You know that you’re part of a local tradition.

You can buy the ugly-duckling fruit and veg which a buyer for a big supermarket chain would reject. Think of the water, fertiliser, pesticides and hard work which go into producing the tomatoes which will never be bought up by supermarkets because they don’t meet the aesthetic ideal. As if that matters once you’ve blended them up and put them on pasta.

You live in tune with the seasons. This is important to do, not for any flowers-in-your-hair reason, but for reasons like importing Peruvian asparagus to Britain by air in December is stupid when it’s available in Britain in due course in the Spring. If jet emissions contribute to climate change, and polar pack ice melts earlier so the krill, which is eaten by Atlantic cod, can’t breed as successfully, you have to put up with Pollack in your fish fingers because cod’s so expensive. It’s not the only reason- it’s one of many.

You know what’s seasonal by the price. Artichokes are getting their second wind just about now, but the main season has been and gone, avocados are becoming less expensive as the weeks pass, squash and courgettes and tomatoes have been quite cheap for quite some time now. Cayucos oranges are appearing. Peppers are getting there, but aren’t at their peak quite yet. You eat food when it’s at its best, when it’s ripest, when it’s cheapest, and when it does the least harm. What’s not to like?

Rant over; enjoy the photos. I took them this past Thursday (25th August). It was a typically glorious night at Farmers’.

 

Right: Trade is not allowed until the bell goes after 6pm, but barbecue crews from local restaurants turn up around 5pm, while Higuera is still quiet, to get the fires lit and the ribs tender.

 

 

 

 

 

Below: Some items look from a distance, a bit on the British side, until you get a closer look at the label. The jam isn’t quite what you’d expect (left)  and the pies (right) are slightly more exotic than usual too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

Above: Salty and Sweet. Olives from Home Maid Italian Markets and fresh strawberries and cream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above, Left and Right:
Oranges and berries in season. Golden Raspberries are, I am told, sweeter than red ones.

 

 

 

Above: Colour abounds….

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above and Right: … and the rainbows come in many forms; Clockwise from top left: Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory; G. Brothers Kettle Corn; Central Coast GALA.

 

 

 

 

 

The market is a well-used forum for those raising awareness of various issues, from a Making Strides, a colourful stall raising awareness of issues associated with breast cancer (right) to SLO the Stigma, a stall which uses the not-immediately-obvious combination of selling carnivorous plants with a campaign against the social stigmatisation of those suffering from mental illness (left), to those issues you didn’t know were issues (below). Click photos for links.

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above and Left: Bubblegum Alley.

This alley leads off Higuera, the street where the market takes place. Love it or hate it, it’s visually impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right: There are always musical acts at the intersections on Higuera, from up-and-coming local artists, to military bands, to trad. jazz, to emo rock, to those who know that there was never enough accordion in Rock n’ Roll the first time around. Details are published in advance on the market’s Facebook page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The street food is mostly pretty amazing. A typically eclectic blend of various cultures influence the food on sale, but there is an awful lot of what you have to call Californian food on sale.

Top left; freshly-grilled corn; Top right: churros baking.
Bottom left: Tostada salad; Bottom right: The Rib Line BBQ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there you have it. For a couple of hours every week, life is good, evidenced by the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the market. The strongest smell is corn grilling over wood or gas; the air is filled mainly by the chatter of shoppers. It looks like a palette of a hundred thousand colours, in a million different degrees of light and shade. What it tastes like, I suppose, is up to you.

The Summer Wine

 

August on the Central Coast is as it should be: Summer in full swing. Nature seems aware of it, and people too. Migratory species are passing through Cayucos, from the tourists who throng the beaches (and, frankly, why shouldn’t they?) and struggle to cram their vehicles into already-full car parks by the Veterans’ Hall downtown, to the hummingbirds (right) who are feeding from the bottle-brush tree above me as I write. Out of curiosity, I did a bit of research and found that this particular species is known as the black-chinned hummingbird. I personally think this is a rubbish name. For one thing, they have no discernable chin, black or otherwise. The link I posted here seems to be a bit sniffy about them too, calling them “the least colorful of US hummers.” I think this is down to bad P.R. and if I was a prominent bird in the black-chinned hummingbird community I would think seriously about hiring a new manager to turn thing’s around. Someone with a proven media record and some industry savvy. Perhaps Oprah would consider it; she’s bound to have spare time on her hands now her show’s finished. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could get them on a stamp by the end of 2012.

Also spending August round Cayucos have been migrating Fin Whales. Chasing shoals of krill northwards as the water warms, we watched them for half an hour as they swam a couple of hundred yards offshore. For those of you unfamiliar with whale-watching, the best way of spotting whales in a whale-rich environment is to scan the horizon rather than the water. What you are watching for is the tell-tale “blow”; the column of water and whale snot expelled at high velocity as the whale exhales. This, visible for several seconds, is far easier to spot than the whale itself, which can usually only be seen for a fraction of that time. Having seen the whale breathe, you know where to watch.

We are now, at the beginning of August, just over halfway between Independence Day and Labor Day, the two public holidays which book-end the American Summer. In England, the cricket season is at its height (England having just completely crushed India) and the football season has just started.  As a kid, I always thought it was great that the season began in mid-August because it gave the season a little time to take shape a bit before we all went back to school at the beginning of September, and it was possible to drag some of the Summer with you into school, in the form of conversations about player transfers and the three or four games which you’d not yet had the opportunity to discuss at school.

This weekend the Perseid meteors passed through the atmosphere but were largely obscured by the quite spectacular harvest moon which coincided this year. It being that weekend, it was time for the quarterly wine pick-up at Rotta Winery in Templeton.

Stace and I first went to Rotta two years ago on the recommendation of Stacey’s sister Thea. The Paso Robles AVA (American Viticultural Area) is located just over the hills East of Cayucos. Paso Robles, you will recall, is the town which hosted the California Mid-State Fair at the end of last month. It was once home to outlaw Jesse James and the Polish pianist (and later diplomat and founding father) Jan Paderewski, the latter planting Zinfandel grapes which were subsequently turned into wine for him by York Mountain Winery. Padarewski’s were not the first grapes planted in Paso, nor were they the last. Wineries are now a significant element in the local landscape, culture and economy. We visited York Mountain in 2009 and found it a shadow of what it was once reputed to be. That was before it was bought out, the next year, by Epoch Wines- owners of the vineyard planted by, yes, Jan Paderewski.

All wine-tastings are not created equal. We once went into one very grand-looking winery a little way further than York Mountain; a stately-looking building with substantial adobe walls and Tuscan Cypresses planted outside. Snooty people in aprons patronised and overcharged us for the privilege of trying their acceptable-but-overpriced wine. It was distinctly off-putting. We left them with their silly trees and their silly aprons and their silly prices and went in search of a more fulfilling experience.

Above: The Paso Robles American Viticultural Area. Clicking on map opens link.

When we moved on from Snooty Valley Vineyard (or whatever it was called) we acted on Thea’s recommendation, and went to Rotta Wineries, near Templeton. The winery has been owned by the Rotta family for over a century, the original vines having been planted by a Frenchman in the 1850s. Rotta, for those who don’t know, is pronounced to rhyme with “voter”. It was Easter Sunday, and a family was seated on the patio, clearly having a good time.

Inside, the tasting bordered on cabaret. To the accompaniment of first-class banter we tried about ten wines, and bought a couple of bottles; one was a present for my dad. The lady conducting the tasting said she could get the owner of the winery to sign the bottle. A moment later the man who a few minutes previously had been enjoying his Easter Sunday lunch with his family walked in, having signed the bottle I’d just bought. “I hope you know,” he said “this is gonna decrease the value of the bottle by around 50%.” Surrounded by his family and his customers, Michael Giubbini, the owner and operator of Rotta Winery, was spending Easter in the vineyard which had belonged to his grandfather and great-uncle, Joe and Clement Rotta. It’s that sort of place. He said he’d worked in the vineyards as a kid, had loved it, and he had hopes his daughters would continue the family business.

Paso Robles is well-known for its Zinfandel grapes. It’s a traditional Californian varietal, genetically identical to the Sicilian Primitivo grape. In a state which grows over a hundred different varietals, Zinfandel is grown in more than 10% of vineyards. Paso has its own Zinfandel festival, held the third weekend in March every year. During Prohibition, Californian wine producers started producing bricks of grape concentrate which would enable consumers to illicitly make wine at home. The packaging would include warnings like “After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine.” The acreage of Californian vineyards increased by 700% in the first five years of prohibition. The staff at Rotta, a firm proud of its Italian-American heritage, told me the vineyard had survived Prohibition by supplying the church with sacramental wine.

Rotta “dry farms” its Zinfandel in the Templeton vineyard. Basically, they do not irrigate the vineyards, which forces the vines to grow deep roots in search of water. This makes for small yields, and intense character, according to the marketing.

Since that first visit, I’ve been there three more times and Stace has been back a couple of times more than that. The winery has character; the staff are actually very knowledgeable about their product, rather than college students earning a bit of pocket money. The wine is good value for money. When I say this, the following should be borne in mind. The price lists at the Central Coast wineries I’ve visited generally start at about $18-20 a bottle and work their way up. I say this as someone who usually buys wine at the supermarket and rarely spends more than $10.

Sometimes, unfortunately, the wine you buy at wineries is not always better than the wine you buy at supermarkets pound-for-pound; this is especially true of the bottom end of the wineries’ price list. It’s quite often the atmosphere that sells wine to the wineries’ visitors. Vineyards are scenic and are usually in places where the sun can be depended upon to shine. Add to that a drop of alcohol and an enthusiastic pitch and people who have set out to buy the product in the first place and what you have is a sales opportunity. One thing to remember when wine tasting is: all grapes grow in vineyards. All wine is made in wineries. Some of those wineries are out to sell wine to visitors.

So, what you have to ask yourself is not “Is this great wine?” (because at that point in time, the answer will almost certainly be yes) but “Is this wine worth the asking price?” And I can honestly say that the wine at Rotta is worth it. I have tasted better wine, it’s true, but usually on occasions when somebody else was paying for it. And I have definitely been in situations where people have asked for more money in exchange for worse wine. A $20 bottle of Rotta wine is, in fact, twice as good as a $10 supermarket bottle, and that’s not always the case at wineries.

Membership of the various wineries’ wine clubs vary in what they offer; this is a selection of a few.

Winery	Price	For:
Rotta Winery	$32/qtr..	2 bottles of wine, 10% off purchases; free tastings, “Rotta Run” pick-up parties.
EOS Estate	$45-$55 qtr..	2 bottles of wine, 20% wine discount, membership benefits at sister wineries, opportunity to rent on-site vacation condo.
Wolff Vineyards	$35/qtr..	2 bottles of wine, 20% off purchases; free tastings, invitations to events.
Opolo Vineyards	Free (with minimum purchase)	Minimum 4 bottles of wine at 15% discount; free tastings, private tours.
Tobin James Cellars	$155, twice yearly	Eight bottles of wine, 15-20% discount on wine purchases, special gift in each shipment, invitations to special events.

The above wineries are from the 170-odd wineries in the Paso Robles  AVA, with the notable exception of Wolff Vineyards, whose crisp white wines are produced just south of San Luis Obispo in the Edna Valley AVA. I mention them because not only are their wines very good but they are ecologically sound producers, who have a turtle sanctuary at their vineyard. If you can’t approve of a turtle sanctuary you just aren’t having enough fun.

As you can see, Rotta’s wine club is comparable to many others. Not knowing quite what to expect when we turned up, we found a fairly diverse group of socially lubricated individuals enjoying themselves on the patio where, two and a half years ago, Michael Giubbini had been enjoying his Easter Sunday with the family. While winery staff took club members and visitors through the now-familiar list of wines, including their award-winning port- and sherry-style dessert wines, there were others serving snacks to complement the wine, and others still making sure customers collected the wine they’d already paid for.

We tried Cabernet Franc with grilled steak and a 2006 Merlot that went well with blue cheese. We sat on the patio with everyone else. It was so far removed from how I imagined the events at Snooty Valley Vineyard would be. Although there were cocktail dresses and Panama hats in evidence, there was an equal if not greater number of people in jeans and polo shirts. Everyone was eating, drinking and being merry, listening to the live music.

A bold young lady who appeared to be about nine or so was playing her part in the afternoon. She had enlisted the help of a shyer, younger girl who could well have been her sister. The younger of the two was carrying a plate. “It’s cream cheese, and the jelly’s made from the Black Monukka dessert wine.” said Big Sister. I tried some, and as Stace and I smiled at the unabashed confidence of this little lass who was pronouncing words bigger than she was, we reflected on the likelihood that these were the daughters, whose great-grandfather Clement Rotta had bought the vineyard from his brother Joe, who had bought it from the Frenchman who had first planted vines here a hundred and sixty years ago. It’s not just the vines which have deep roots in Templeton.

A million bucks.

 

Like so many things I’ve seen and done since coming to America, going to a rodeo is a a life experience. It’s one of those events whose scenes are familiar to people who’ve never been within 6,000 miles of one, and therefore, one which has the potential to surprise an outsider. I can’t even recall why I’m familiar with the images of rodeo. I can’t remember seeing one in a film or anything. It must just be one of those things which pops up from time to time, but I can’t for the life of me think where. So, as a newcomer to the culture of the American west, it was more than handy to have Dustin and Kimberley along with, who- unlike me- know one end of a horse from the other.

 The California Mid-State Fair, which came to an end yesterday, almost has to be seen to be believed by anyone who isn’t familiar with such things. You find yourself asking if there’s not something more than a bit strange when Kid Rock, Maroon 5 and Lady Antebellum perform at an event which awards prizes for the best jar of pickled eggs. But this is the United States. Where else, one asks, is chocolate-covered bacon available? Where else would otherwise-sane members of the community take a perfectly good  corn-dog, dip it in chocolate and cover it with sprinkles?

Actually, it appears I’ve been pronouncing the name of the country wrongly all this time. If I heard him correctly, the announcer at the rodeo finals, held on the last Saturday of the fair, pronounced it

“Theee HyooNaaaaaahded States

hawwwve

Ha-Ma-Rah-Kuh”

And if you don’t say it with a tearfully reverential wobble in the back of the throat you aren’t doing it correctly. He was, I have to say, very psyched up, and he was enjoying himself. But nobody talks like that. Not even people I met at the airport in Atlanta (the ones who pronounce the word “Order” with three syllables) talked like that.

At first glance, the rodeo was shaping up to be exactly what I’d been afraid it might turn out to be. There was a slightly worrying superabundance of cowboy hats. Which was only to be expected, I suppose; nothing wrong with that. And then they had the national anthem, which is a normal part of public events here, and there’s nothing much wrong with that either- the singer was good and she remembered the words, which is more than some others manage.

But they started playing the sort of country-rock music which barely manages to stop short of saying that failing to be an American is pretty much the worst sin someone can commit in the eyes of God, that if you aren’t an American you’ve got it coming good and hard, and that if you are an American, you’d better be as durned good an American as the singer is, and that’s a pretty high bar to clear because as far as he was concerned anyone from east of Dallas or north of St. Louis was no better than a Canadian or a communist. It’s strange to hear modern patriotic music. This is probably because most British patriotic music was written in the days of the Empire. It’s entirely probable that American visitors to Britain a hundred years ago found Land of Hope and Glory equally odd, and no wonder.

The reason they were playing the record was because a sky-diver was descending upon the arena, bringing with him a truly massive flag- “Old Glory”, as the announcer put it, using no fewer than 6 syllables to do so. It being Armed Forces Day at the fair, a squad of US servicemen were on hand to catch the flag before it touched the ground. The skydiver, the flag and the soldiers and marines all came together in an instant; disparate elements which started out eighty yards apart and yet were all where they had to be, exactly at the right moment and not half a second before. At this point, a corner was turned; the spectacle had begun. It was no longer just weird foreign pageantry; it was a real show.

The events started soon afterwards. You know, I assume, that rodeo events are based on the skills used in cattle ranching. Before about 1880, cattle were grazed on the “open range”; that is to say, allowed to wander over hill and dale in a landscape without fences, for most of the year. In the springtime they would be rounded up so that young calves could be branded and so mature animals could be sorted out for sale. Because the cattle were allowed to roam more or less freely, and because they are by nature herd animals, it would take skilled work by mounted ranch-hands to sort out one owner’s cattle from another’s. Not only did a cowboy have to persuade a cow to do what he wanted it to do, and go where he wanted to put it, the tool he had to use in accomplishing this task is a horse. In short, he or she had to have both the knowledge and the skills.

The techniques used in sorting out cattle (known as “cutting”) and roping individual steers, as well as horsemanship skills were showcased at the rodeo we were watching.We watched teams of three riders separate three steers from a herd of thirty, according to the number the judges called, and drive them into a pen without getting any incorrectly-numbered cows mixed in.

I apologise; I’ve just re-read that paragraph and it sounds about as exciting as watching tortoises play chess. This happens fast. I mean, really fast. It’s a race. The winning time was just over forty seconds, for a team of three to get about a ton of prime brisket from the safety of the herd into the corral fifty yards away .
“You having fun?” Dustin asked. Damn right I was. It’s always pleasant to see something done well, when you can’t do it at all, but this was fast, and it was real. No artificial aids; no computers. It was people, horses and cattle.

We saw barrel racing. Competitors- this was an all-female event- have to take their horses around three barrels. The horses have to be agile and they move like greased lightning. The dirt from the arena floor sprayed up in waves from the hooves. This is a high-octane event; the horses best known for competing in barrel races are of the American Quarter breed, which have been known to reach speeds off 55mph over short distances.

Between events we were treated to a performance by Tomas Garcilazo.  Garcilazo is probably the best in the world at what he does, and what he does is known as la Charreria. Without going too far off the point, he and his friends, as his horses are known in the literature, perform manoevres similar to dressage, incorporating skillful use of the rope. He has performed for presidents of Mexico and the United States, on Broadway and for the Disney, Will Rogers and Buffalo Bill Wild West tours in Europe. It was one of those acts which probably had to be seen to be appreciated; it was like ballet. They guy was throwing a rope in a loop so big his horse could walk through it with him on her back.

This brings me onto my final point here, which is to do with the relationship between all of the people and all of the animals involved. We saw horses ridden hard and we saw steers roped when they most certainly did not want to be. The most spectacular and dangerous events in the rodeo involved determined men trying to stay on top of bulls and horses who were equally determined that the men should be spending the rest of the evening flat on their backs in the dirt. It has been called “the most dangerous eight seconds in sport”; and I think calling it eight seconds is giving the cowboys the best of it. Rodeos have been fairly criticised in the past for endangering the welfare of the animals through some of the methods they have used.

For example, my mother, who has a keen interest in animal rights, had heard that they tied the bull’s nads together to make them buck and said it was cruel. I agree; it would be, but I have the opportunity to reassure her on three counts:

1) You could see that they weren’t tied. They were swinging around back there like a couple of grapefruit in a towel. There was something called a flank strap. This consists of a length of rope loosely  tied around the bulls’ abdomen. This was not tightly fastened; it has to flop around to annoy the bull into trying to shake it off.

2) Both the bulls and the broncos are valuable stock animals; applying undue pressure to sensitive areas is not in the interests of the animals’ owners, if they want to be able to breed from them in years to come.

3) Speaking from a masculine perspective, if I thought anyone had a tighter-than-appropriate grip on the Potts family jewels, top of my List Of Things Not To Do Next would be “Thrash around violently.”

In any case, although I saw animals treated in uncompromising ways, possibly even roughly, it was no rougher than the way animals treat each other; I would guess it was no different to watching a dog herd sheep. All of the animals walked away, which is more than you can say for the Grand National meeting, where horse fatalities average 3 per year according to researchers at Anglia Ruskin University. I’m not saying rodeo is safer for animals than horse racing; it probably isn’t. What I am saying is that I didn’t see animals in distress. I didn’t see animals abused. There’s no doubt that the broncos and the bulls were less than happy to have a guy on their back, but they were given free rein to express their displeasure and they made sure he didn’t stay there too long. The cowboys would have ached a bit the day afterwards; the bulls, not so much.

Which brings me back to what I was saying about Tomas Garcilazo, whose friends will do all he asks of them. Walk backwards, kneel down, roll over, bow, curtsey, step through a spinning rope. What we saw on Saturday night was an old-fashioned thing, perhaps a little out of time. Cowboys don’t drive herds to Abilene any more, and the skills are more to show what can be done, rather than what is routinely done.

It’s not entirely nice. It does appeal to our base instincts, a lust for speed and a will to win, which doesn’t always bring out the best in us. Perhaps if rodeo didn’t already exist today, we wouldn’t take the trouble to invent it. But it would be utterly impossible for it ever to have existed without the humans’ affinity with the animals who make the show. Enjoy the photos:

California Mid-State Fair Rodeo Finals VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Quod subigo farinam

 

Looking back, the blog has been getting just a tad deep and meaningful, which is fine; but only in moderation, I feel. It’s probably time to talk about more frivolous things. For instance, I think the cat might like classical music. She’s usually hiding under the bed at this point in the day, or sleeping on Stacey’s pillow. Today, though, it’s a relatively tranquil and pleasant day in Cayucos and instrumental music helps me write, because their words don’t get in the way of mine. So this morning the cat is dozing on the sofa, quite clearly listening to Beethoven’s 9th. She’s obviously a cat with hidden depths.

We (Stacey and I, not me and the cat) went to SLO farmers’ market this week, which is not unusual, but instead of getting street food from the many, many, many vendors we got Buffalo Chicken pizza from a great little local shop. And there, in between watching the baseball on TV and trying to make up food-related names for baseball teams (Baltimore Oreos, Chicago Subs, Cilantro Blue Jays…..) we started wondering why pizza is one of those things which, 99% of the time, somebody else cooks for you, whether it’s take-away, frozen or in a restaurant.

It boils down to two main reasons. Firstly, home-made pizza is generally very disappointing. Getting the base crispy is damn nigh impossible because you have to put wet ingredients onto raw dough and leave it there long enough for the topping to cook through. Secondly, it’s an absolute arse to make. There are many components which have to come together at once, cooking with yeast is a trial at the best of times and you need about 3 hours from starting to make the dough to sitting down to eat.

My reaction to the very American solution to the home-made-pizza dilemma was one of disbelief. It can’t possibly work. There are so many things which are bound to go wrong. It doesn’t make sense. Whoever came up with it must have been stoned or drunk or both. It’s lunacy; it’s the most ridiculously counter-intuitive idea since bungee jumping. There is just no way you can barbecue a pizza. Here’s how.

You need two things pre-made before you start. I’ll tell you all about one of them- pizza dough- later. The other is a decent pizza sauce. This recipe is fail-safe:

Half an onion
Three cloves of garlic
Olive oil
1 tin of tomatoes
1tsp oregano
1tsp basil
little bit of cayenne pepper.

Fry the chopped onion and garlic for about 2 minutes in olive oil. Add the herbs and stir through; allow to cook for another minute or so, before adding the tomatoes. Bring this all to the boil. Liquidise the whole lot until it’s smooth enough to spread with the back of a spoon. You might want to return it to the pan and reduce the sauce to a thicker paste if there’s too much liquid; use your own judgement.

Now to the barbecuing of the pizza:

First: Preheat the gas grill for fifteen minutes. The grill needs to be very hot and as clean as humanly possible. Roll out your pizza dough (more about this later) thinly. Brush one side with olive oil and put it, oiled-side down, on the grill. Lower the lid. It needs barely three minutes to take a bit of colour (see left) before you remove it from the grill.

It is this browned side you’re going to put your topping on. Unlike raw dough, it won’t go soggy when exposed to sauce.

 

Then: Rub the raw side with olive oil. This raw, oiled side will be the bottom of the finished pizza and will cook at the same time as the topping. The olive oil adds flavour and stops it sticking to the grill.

-This is the bit I didn’t believe would happen. I thought there was no way you could prevent dough from sticking to hot metal. But it works, honest.

 

 

 

After that: Turn the pizza base over so it’s grilled-side up. Spread it with sauce and arrange your chosen toppings on top. Ours had spicy beef (beef mince cooked with garlic and chilli powder), Italian sausage, peppers, onions and cheese.

Remember your toppings have to cook quickly. Whatever you’re putting on, cut it thinly. Grate cheese finely rather than coarse. The topping should be no thicker overall than the base, roughly speaking, otherwise there will be too much water in it and it won’t cook before the dough burns.

Lastly: Return your pizza to the grill. It will have to spend longer on the grill this time in order to cook the top, but the dough on the bottom will cook just as fast. You will therefore probably have to reduce the temperature of the grill. If you find the dough is cooked but the cheese still needs finishing off, put the pizza on the warming rack, where the heat is less fierce, to make sure the topping is cooked properly.

 

 

Now, while we have a delicious home-made pizza, crispy of base and melty of cheese, perfect in many ways, you may have noticed that I’ve totally glossed over the solving of the second problem with making pizza at home: making pizza dough is a pain in the arse. Not only that, but making good pizza dough is the work of a genius; certainly far beyond me. I can make a disc of tough bread which has the ballistic properties and mouth feel of Kevlar. But just because you could theoretically top it with meat and cheese doesn’t mean you should do so. Now, in the UK you can buy pre-made, part-baked, so-called pizza bases. Frankly, don’t. Buy a frozen one. It’s cheaper, by the time you’ve bought topping ingredients, and it’ll be better. Here, there’s the vastly superior option of buying vacuum-packed fresh dough. This works well on the barbecue. We did neither- we used a bread-maker.

It’s cheating, I know, and not everyone has got one. But they are wonderful things, if you can get a high enough level of use out of it to make it worthwhile. Frankly, we do. It’s $4 here for a loaf of bread you’d want to eat, and you can still pay more than that for one you wouldn’t. There’s a certain argument that there is a certain nobility of purpose in baking one’s own bread. It’s a fair argument, I suppose, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to be able to eat sandwiches made of the stuff. Home-made bread is nearly always too dense, for several reasons: it’s rarely warm enough for dough to rise to its full extent within realistic domestic time limits; it’s hard to find a place whose temperature is consistent enough to allow it to do so; kneading for 10 minutes is damn hard work and anyone who says it’s not is either lying or not kneading hard enough. There is also the necessity, when working dough with the hands, of adding more flour to the hands, dough and work surface to stop it sticking. This flour starts to add up eventually, and it makes the finished loaf very heavy. The bread maker maintains constant temperatures, kneads effortlessly and consistently, and there are only 2 pieces to clean. You put ingredients in, wander off and wander back once it goes beep.

Not only does our bread maker make ordinary bread and pizza dough, but it allows me to muck about with more exotic stuff- pictured left is last week’s effort. There’s a story to it.

In our kitchen lives our newest pet. It has no name, but if it were to have one, The Thing or Cousin It would probably be a good place to start. It bubbles, has its own moods, is fed daily, produces alcohol and is allergic to metal. It’s a symbiotic culture of  Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis and yeast, known to the world of cookery as a sourdough starter. The yeast leavens the bread, while the lactobacillus both protects the yeast from chemical damage, and lends the bread you bake with it a distinctive firm, open texture and pleasantly sour flavour.

As you might guess from the name, L. Sanfranciscensis is a California native; it is the foundation of San Francisco Sourdough bread. It first started being used by people to leaven bread during the gold rush era. Getting supplies from anywhere to the goldfields was a royal pain in the neck, and you could forget perishable goods like bread. So the miners had to bake their own. You feed a sourdough starter every day, and although you remove some of it daily, it self-renews. Ideal when you’re in a cabin, in a canyon, excavating for a mine. In fact, in the goldfields, I am told, the miners mostly ate thick pancakes made light and fluffy with the stuff. We tried this last weekend and they are really very addictive indeed. They also used to skim the alcoholic liquid off the top to drink. There’s is no way on Earth I’m going to do that.

Having been given a packet of the freeze-dried starter culture, manufactured by this appropriately-named San Jose company, it now sits on top of the highest surface in the kitchen in an airtight container to keep the fumes in, all the while developing a deeper character and gradually growing sourer as the L. Sanfranciscensis culture becomes more established. In fact, I think I’ll call it Frank. I wonder if he likes Beethoven.

The Rockets’ Red Glare

 

When people have asked me, recently, whether or not this was my first Fourth of July, I’ve told them of course it wasn’t. It was my twenty-seventh Fourth of July, it was just the first time I’d seen people making such an almighty fuss over it.

Independence Day is fun. While Thanksgiving is typically American through its sentimentality, with its focus on hearth, home and family (and turkey), the Fourth finds its American-ness in its bombastic, extrovert, in-your-face, up-your-nose and down-your-throat attitude. If Thanksgiving is about motherhood and apple pie, the Fourth of July is about fireworks, hot dogs and beer. And frankly, as is so often the case here, if you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined.

Local celebrations should be taken with a respectably large pinch of salt. If you dig too much into the history of these things, which one is apt to do as an outsider, it unravels spectacularly and you don’t get the best out of the celebration. In Catholic parts of Germany- the West and the South- the beginning of Lent is celebrated with parades, parties and copious amounts of alcohol, very much like Mardi Gras.

I remember seeing pupils, from a school that I worked at, parading through the streets  during Karneval, as it is called in western Germany, as part of their local scout troop and all dressed as penguins.They waved their flippers at us, and we teachers waved back, and then we went to the pub. If one tried to explain this beginning with the story of Jesus having to go into the wilderness for forty days, and continued via an explanation of the ritual habits of medieval European Catholics, you will almost certainly lose the narrative thread between there and the point at which a bunch of ten-to-fourteen-year-olds parade through the centre of Limburg-an-der-Lahn, dressed as penguins .

Similarly, getting hung up on the historical background of Independence Day gets you nowhere much.  Congress voted for the independence of the thirteen colonies on July 2nd, 1776. This point is one which, today, is somewhat moot. Even if not-President-quite-yet John Adams wrote to his wife:

“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

Whoops. I’m personally devastated for the bloke. If you look at what he thought should happen, he’s absolutely bang on the money, 225 years later. But the only reason we remember this letter now is because he was two days out. You can almost hear Adams’ ghost screaming down the centuries “It was two days, two and a quarter centuries ago, you pedantic bastards!”. Or something.

What IS a slightly entertaining fact, if you are apt to be entertained by such things (in which case, welcome to the Dork Squad; we have t-shirts) is that Adams died on the fourth of July 1826, exactly fifty years (and two days) after Congress declared independence from Great Britain, and exactly fifty years after they approved the Declaration of Independence. Not only that, but his great friend and rival, Thomas Jefferson, spent the same day doing exactly the same thing, i.e. dying. Not only that, but they had been the only two signatories of the Declaration of Independence who later became President of the United States.

But this, while geekily pleasing to know, is useless on the day itself unless you want people to raise their eyebrows at you, and edge slowly away. The celebration of the Fourth of July has very little to do with the reasons to founders broke away from Britain. The day is not spent debating the meaning of liberty, decrying the excesses of absolute monarchy and denouncing taxes found to be unjust. Except possibly for the last one, but it sometimes seems that pretty much all taxation is seen as unjust in America; hardly a day goes by without somebody having a good old denounce.

In America, today, as Adams predicted, it’s a holiday spent the way a Summer holiday should be spent. His prediction was pretty darn accurate. For instance, Cayucos Community Church advertised their “Festival of Freedom, including ‘God Bless America’” for weeks in advance. There are parades held nationwide, one starting at the end of our street. The population of Cayucos goes from 3,000 to 30,000 over that weekend, as visitors come from more parade-deprived areas to get a look at ours here.

Having an opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge before it all went completely mad, we did so. We spent it at the cabin we were married at, by a usually tranquil lake which was packed with boats all trying hard to avoid one another. It was 35°C (95°F) and the chance to swim was a welcome one, even if it meant swimming through the waves created by the wakes of an unusual amount of lake traffic. There was a boat parade on the lake, however, and as you can see, some folks got deeply into the spirit of the thing.

The cabin was dolled up to the nines with flags and banners, and we baked a pretty good berry cake, which was photographed going into the oven, and looking decidedly more patriotic than when it came out, and whose recipe was therefore not included (right). The lake was illuminated by a proverbially huge firework display, whose roars echoed and reverberated (is that a tautology? Possibly. I’m not sure I care.) from the surrounding mountains. The pictures are below; do enjoy. The one thing Adams missed off his list was barbecues. It’s the done thing. His ghost almost certainly approves. We had grilled hot dogs. We’re being a bit more adventurous this weekend with baby back pork ribs prepared overnight with the following dry rub recipe, lifted from Cook’s Illustrated American Classics:

Dry Rub for Barbecue

4 tbsp. sweet paprika
2 tbsp. chilli powder
2 tbsp. ground cumin
2 tbsp. dark brown sugar
2 tbsp. salt
1tbs dried oregano
1tbs granulated sugar
1tbs ground black pepper
1tbs ground white pepper
1-2tsp cayenne pepper

Mix all these together, and store in an airtight container. Rub the mixture into the surface of the meat and allow to marinate for at least one hour before cooking. For more flavour, rub it in the day before, cover the rubbed meat in cling film and put it in the fridge overnight.

July 4th 2011 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Nothing to fear but fear itself

 

Welcome back after a bit of a hiatus, during which Stacey actually went through with becoming Mrs Potts, for reasons best known to herself. It was a wonderful day but I won’t go into it in too much detail here, because, well, there are other things to talk about.

Getting the cabin ready for the wedding was bloody hard work. Much of it was done by other people, but I will admit to waving a duster around half-heartedly myself. As a reward for this strenuous labour Stacey persuaded me to take a day off and go with the redoubtable Morgan and Sam to Yosemite National Park. I’m frankly surprised she could spare the pair of them. Earlier in the week they competed in a local triathlon; 400m through the lake, freshly topped up with mountain snowmelt, then 12 miles up hill and down dale on a bike, and just in case they survived that they finished with a three mile run. All this at some ungodly hour of the morning. They finished competitively, and then Sam, either because the exertion had unbalanced him mentally or perhaps he just hadn’t hurt himself enough that day, spent the afternoon chopping wood with an axe, like a real man.

Now, were I to put my finely-honed machine of a body through a similar level of pain it would surely make me pay dearly for such hubris the next day. If either Sam or Morgan were feeling it, they didn’t show it. They got up and scraped several inches of leaves and pine needles off a few dozen yards of driveway, again, before the dew was off the grass. By this time I was suffering from some sort of inverted smugness at not having, say, built a small log cabin on the beach using only a paperclip and a jar of raspberry jam.

So come the next day they had thoroughly earned their day off. They took Iain and I, who hadn’t. Iain is my old mate from England, who had come to do his bit as best man at the wedding, and had never visited the States before. I must say, it was a lot of fun to see him go through new experiences. The look on his face when he was confronted by the menu in Taco Bell was particularly special.

So was his reaction to encountering Black Widow spiders. No spiders in the UK are even vaguely dangerous to humans, whereas a bite from a Black Widow (left) can be quite painful, and the desperately unlucky can encounter more serious problems. Iain was- how to put this- somewhat jumpy. In his defence, he got within a few inches of a Black Widow sitting in the shed, in order to film it on his iPhone. But thereafter, every log, every bush, plank, every crack in the pavement was inhabited, in his mind, by legions of spiders determined to take a chunk out of his leg. I found this rather funny until I remembered how I’d been when I found out that such things are a fact of life here. When I visited Stacey two years ago her mom squished six Black Widows she found hiding as she hosed off the patio furniture. I remember getting nervy every time I sat down outside. I would offer the fervent prayer “If I get bitten I’m going to have to tell people about it. Please, God make it the leg, and not the arse.”

When really, this was more than a little bit silly, because by all accounts you have to be trying quite hard to make a Black Widow bite you. Same goes for the Brown Recluse Spiders. Although a serious Brown Recluse bite will kill your flesh and make it rot (!!) (as graphically illustrated by slides 17 to 21 here- not for those who are squeamish, or eating, or a big girl’s blouse) you have to really, really provoke it to persuade it that you’re worth a nibble.

What I hadn’t known back then- and this is what Iain was going through now- is the answer to the question “How scared am I supposed to be?”. Are people going to laugh if I’m stupid enough to let a spider bite me, or could it happen to anyone? Will they try to poke the spot where it bit me just for laughs, or are they going to call 911 and ask me which church I go to so the can call a priest, just in case? What is an appropriate level of terror? If this is squeaky bum time, at exactly what pitch is one expected to squeak?

In Yosemite, when we got there, it was fantastically beautiful. Even by the park’s own ridiculously high standards, it was on top form. This year has been colder than usual, so the snow has waited until the last possible moment to melt, and it’s all coming down the mountain at once. You can see in the picture on the right, taken two weeks ago, the massive, roaring column of white water which is Bridal Veil Falls, which is barely visible on the 2009 photo on the left, which was, admittedly, taken a little later in the year. There are at the moment, we were told, waterfalls which haven’t been seen for thirty years, and which would likely be gone again in a matter of weeks. The valley was lush and green. Iain and Sam hadn’t seen Yosemite before, and were suitably impressed. In a meadow (below) surrounded on all sides by the most spectacular mountain scenery, Iain pointed out that  if the view available in any particular direction had been available in Britain people would have travelled across the country to see it, as they do to see Snowdonia, Glencoe or the Lake District. And here we were, in one small, relatively unremarkable area of the Yosemite valley, once again awe-struck by the panorama.

But the threat of being bitten in the bum by anything which might wish to oblige was never far from Iain’s mind. Yes, Morgan said, she had seen rattlesnakes before, but never in Yosemite. Which isn’t to say they aren’t there. They are, in fact the only venomous species of the 13 separate snake species which inhabit the park. Isn’t that nice? The National Park Service has this to offer:

“Fortunately, the likelihood of encountering one is relatively low. Pay attention when hiking or climbing in dry, rocky places. Avoid putting your hands in holes or on ledges where snakes may be sunning themselves. If you do see or hear one, simply detour around it or let the snake crawl away. Rattlesnakes are an important part of Yosemite’s ecosystem, as they help keep the park’s rodent numbers in check.”

Basically, if you’re bitten by a rattler, it seems to imply, it’s no more than you deserve for disturbing the sunbathing of an edgy and sociopathic loner armed with deadly venom. Also, if you’re a rabbit or a gopher, you’ve got it coming too, so consider yourself warned. However, Iain didn’t have this piece of helpful advice to hand, and was considerably reassured as a result, I’m sure.

I should say, at this point, that the attitude of the National Park Service towards the wildlife of the United States is a completely correct one. I only mock it from the point of view of a couple of urban foreigners whose experience with dangerous wildlife is limited to close encounters with frankly psychotic Gateshead pigeons. But then, as Iain put it, when we started on a trail towards Mirror Lake, he’s never before been on a walk where the landowner warned him about the dangers of being eaten by a big cat:

Iain took a photograph of the sign, and failed to be eaten by a mountain lion. Somewhat to his own disappointment, I feel. I got the distinct impression that as long as it made YouTube, Iain was prepared to lose anything up to and including half a hand or foot in the cause of seeing cool stuff.

Bears present their own set of problems to the human who encounters them. Spiders and snakes almost have to be forced to bite a human. You have to disturb them or touch them. Mountain lions, too, although unpredictable, are relatively shy. Loud noises along the trail will tend to (usually, not always) make them avoid you, so you don’t have to avoid them. Bears are different.

Anyone who has read Winnie the Pooh (and if you’ve only seen the Disney version, I can’t tell you how much you’re missing out- it’s like only ever having drunk decaf coffee- read the books) knows, because it is a carefully-observed treatise on ursine behaviour, that bears like their food, and have even been known to become stuck in rabbit holes having gorged themselves on too much condensed milk.

So it follows, that most real-life human-bear conflict starts as a confrontation over food. The rubbish bins at the cabin have been known to undergo the odd inspection by bears looking for food. There are bear-proof containers all over Yosemite for the use of visitors; some are for waste, others are for food. You don’t, ever, ever keep your food in your tent when you’re camping. Keep it in your car, or a bear proof container. Because bears are opportunist omnivores. It goes completely against their nature to pass up the opportunity of harvesting readily-available food. A tent is only so much fabric to a bear: they’ll rip the bark off a tree to collect grubs. Imagine what they’d do to a tent to get an ice box full of ham sandwiches. Suddenly they’re in your tent, and you’re in the way of what are indubitably now THEIR sandwiches, and we’re off to the races, and now it’s time for your mauling.

Bears, therefore, will sometimes come and find you. But they are the most amazing things to see. We were exactly that lucky. Doing research for this post I found out that the NPS ask you to report all bear sightings, no matter what they’re doing or where they are, so I emailed them, and said the following:

“Hi,

I was researching bears for my blog having seen two in Yosemite National Park on Wednesday last week (8th June). Your Bear Facts page (you didn't call it Bear Essentials? So disappointed) asks readers to let you know about bear sightings. So I am. It was about 4.30pm and we were on the road towards Glacier Point. Downhill from the road, cub was scraping bark from a tree to eat insect larvae from beneath it, under the careful supervision of an adult bear, presumably its parent or cubsitter, who kept itself between the cub and the numerous park visitors who'd stopped to take photos. You might already know about this but if everyone thought that way, you'd never find out about any bears at all, and that would be sad.

Regards,

Richard”

There were thirty or so people taking photos of these bears. They, despite their colour, are American Black Bears; all the bears in California are Black Bears, despite the Brown Bear appearing on the state flag. According to Gary Brown, 91% of the Black Bears in Yosemite are brown or blond in colour.  The mother bear was watching the cub, and every now and then turning a casual eye upon us just to make sure that we were maintaining the safe distance between them and us, before returning her attention to what was clearly a practical lesson in grub harvesting. She- they- were about twenty yards away down the hill from the road. Nobody there was in the slightest bit scared or apprehensive. Iain’s camera wouldn’t focus on them properly, but if a crack team of Mountain Lions and Western Rattlesnakes, backed up by the 2nd battalion of the 13th Black Widow regiment had rushed our position, I doubt his attention would have been drawn away from the scene before us.

I sent my mam the pictures. She posed a question, and although her point was a moot one it was nevertheless relevant, three days before I was due to get married: “What if you’d been eaten?” I thought the question a bit daft at the time, but it could have happened. Black Bears can run at 35mph. Even uphill for the bear, with our car 60 yards away on the flat, it might have been a near-run thing; one I certainly wouldn’t have wished to bet my life on. But, quite honestly, the thought never entered our heads. I am fairly sure that that was true of everyone there. It was as if the mother bear had the situation under control for all of us. She wasn’t anxious or nervous, so we weren’t either. She was comfortable with her own cub there, and none of us were trying to get any closer- and how often can you say that about a crowd of snap-happy tourists. It was a perfectly harmonious moment.

A week later, we went back to the coast. We never really got onto the subject of sharks.