The Five Senses of Pillar Point, Princeton CA

Inspired by a warm, sunny Autumn day (the kind Californians brag about) and armed with the keys to a rental car, I drove south on Highway 1 for a late afternoon adventure. I stopped at the Pillar Point Harbor in Princeton, just north of Half Moon Bay, and savored the scene on the docks as fishermen sold grateful customers their fresh-caught fish straight off their boats.

I SAW:
White and blue painted fishing boats trimmed with orange rust; three sea lions slipping through the water; a sea otter swimming playful circles around a white buoy;

a clam spitting streams of water out of the sand in rhythm with incoming and outgoing waves;

a cheerful, bright yellow boat named "Sunshine".




I SMELLED:
Seagull guano; salty seaweed; chunks of cod deep-frying in rice oil.

I TASTED:
Salty, creamy chowder loaded with chewy clams, Diet Coke slurped on the beach at sunset;








peppermint, molasses, and green apple salt water taffy.

I HEARD:
Seagulls squawking for scraps of bread; customers and fishermen haggling for best fish prices; small recreational planes landing at the nearby airport; boats signaling their arrival in the harbor with their deep horns; sea birds dragging their feet in the water as they took off flying;

17 pound frozen tunas thudding against a metal scale; hoses spraying salt water off of decks; puttering boat motors; fishermen warning each other of the whereabouts of the Fish and Game warden.

I TOUCHED:
Weathered wooden railings held together with rusty nails; woven wire crab traps; rough barnacles clinging to dock pillars; smooth ahi tuna steaks resting on crushed ice; ragged ropes.

For other Five Senses blog posts, see:
Five Senses of Pescadero
Five Senses of Haiti
Five Senses of San Francisco's Presidio
Five Senses of Chinatown

The Five Senses of Pescadero

While driving down the coast from San Francisco to Pescadero…

I SAW:
Skinny tow-headed teenagers lugging surfboards to the beach; pelicans flying in formation; bicyclists hugging the shoulder of the road; bright yellow kayaks in the harbor; a tall blue heron hunting for lunch; driftwood forts constructed on sand; fat lizards sunning on driftwood; hovering Red-Tail Hawks, coyote scat, coastal wildflowers.











I SMELLED:
Coastal sage; fennel; eucalyptus trees; salt water marsh; beach BBQ’s; fresh baked cinnamon bread.
I TASTED:
Cream of artichoke soup; crusty sourdough bread; olallieberries fresh off the bush; succulent tender flounder sandwich; peach-apricot jam.
I TOUCHED:
Sun-dried crab legs; empty snail shells cast away by satiated sea birds; gray feathers; hot sand; a bench made out of driftwood; Indian Paintbrush flowers; thorns on berry bushes.
I HEARD:
Scurrying lizards; Jethro Tull singing “Thick as a Brick”; elephant seals barking; farm workers hoeing around plants; seagulls squawking their warnings; waves crashing through a natural bridge in the rock.

Road Trip to Pescadero

As a city-dweller without an automobile, I often yearn for the freedom of open roads and a day-long adventure that will supply me with a steady stream of simple pleasures. So on a recent Friday I gassed up a borrowed car, pressed the radio buttons to a classic rock station, and shrieked to Styx’s “Come Sail Away” as I put the car into gear. “I thought that they were angels but to my surprise, they climbed aboard their star ship and headed for the skies….” 70's rock and roll was so dramatic. With the Pacific Ocean on my right, and wildflower-dotted hills on my left, I headed south on coastal Highway One past small beach towns with pleasant names like Pacifica, Moss Beach, Montara, El Granada.

After an hour of driving, my legs needed stretching so I pulled over to a parking lot to explore the Pescadero Marsh Preserve- an area I have passed on multiple occasions but haven’t taken the time to explore. The marsh is a low wetland of brackish water, which I learned is a mix of salt and fresh water. Over 68 species of birds live in the marsh, but they must get a kick out of giving birdwatchers a run for their money because all I could see with my binoculars were white herons and blue herons (which I can see in Golden Gate Park five minutes from my apartment).






While the marsh didn’t have much action (that I could see), it was peaceful and pretty with a winding channel of water meandering through the grasses and reeds. A larger river curved its way around sand dunes and fed into the ocean. Seagulls and other sea birds stood in groups on the river bank, facing the same way and squawking like banshees whenever anyone or anything approached them. Driftwood of all shapes and sizes was scattered on the sandy river banks, and some enterprising explorers had built simple driftwood forts large enough for 2 people to sleep in.
After hiking through the wetlands and tiring of the uneventful bird watching, I got in the car and headed further south. Fields of artichokes stood between the road and the sea and it was visions of artichokes that motivated me to turn left onto the road that leads to the small town of Pescadero.

Pescadero is an old Portuguese town that was founded in 1856. Pescadero means “fish seller” and I assume that after California’s initial Gold Rush of 1849, San Francisco grew so large so fast that those who were disenchanted with gold mining moved south of the big city to fish for seafood to sell to San Franciscans, and ended up planting agricultural crops (like artichokes) as well. In all of my reading about California Gold Rush history, it is clear that the people who sold things to the gold miners usually made more money than the gold miners.

Pescadero’s current population is 643, which must triple or quadruple each day as tourists swarm in. There’s not much there—a couple of general grocery stores, a few artisan shops that sell the works of local artists, and Duarte’s Tavern.

Pronounced by locals as “Do-arts”, Duarte’s Tavern was founded in 1894- so about 40 years into the life of the town. It isn’t cheap but it has delicious food and fantastic pie, as evidenced by the fact that everyone who was leaving the restaurant was also lugging along 2-3 pies to go. I took a seat at the counter and was ignored for a while by my brusque waitress, who daily deals with demanding tourists and cranky old timers- like the one sitting next to me at the counter. This man- who appeared to be one of the town’s founders from 1856-- ordered a slice of pie and a cup of coffee, then complained bitterly when he was presented with a bill for $9.74. He paid with a $10 bill and departed, giving the waitress just cause to roll her eyes over her whopping 26 cent tip—which was probably a decent tip in 1856, but not so much in 2011.

My lunch started with a bowl of cream of artichoke soup, perfectly accompanied by steaming hot sourdough bread and unsalted butter. That would have been enough but I also ordered the flounder sandwich, earning the title as the juiciest, best-cooked fish sandwich I have ever eaten.

Craving more exercise than a lap around the tiny downtown, I got in the car and drove south to Swanton Organic Farm. Stopping first at their strawberry fields, I chatted with the attendant who was sitting behind a make-shift table with a scale, and was reading an organic chemistry text book. Since no one else was around, he seemed glad to have some company so I listened to his animal facts about the nearby barking elephant seals and the pelicans(in the 1960’s pelicans almost became extinct because pesticides ran from the crops into the ocean, contaminating the fish they ate and affecting their reproductive systems).

But since I can get strawberries at my own farmer’s market, I drove to the olallieberry patches. Families with children fanned out amidst the berry patches, and the kids alternated putting one berry in the communal container and one berry in their mouths. I happily strolled the well-tended rows while berries practically leapt into my Tupperware.

After paying for my U-Pick berries, with visions of the jams I will never get around to canning, I shifted the car into gear with my purple stained hands and drove north up the coast towards my San Francisco home.

The Five Senses of Haiti

In Haiti…..

I touched: A whole goats’ head wrapped in cold plastic in the refrigerated meat section of a grocery store; a tattered deck of cards; a farmer’s worn machete; a handful of tiny planting seeds; conch shells lining the top of a wall; banana leaves slick with rain; rain drops sneaking through a tin roof onto my bed; rough wooden carvings; calloused hands and leathery cheeks of countless Haitians; a non-electric iron that grows hot by inserting pieces of charcoal inside.












I smelled: Small charcoal fires in cinderblock houses; pigs wallowing in mud; grilled chicken at a street stall; trash rotting in the streets; shared chunks of watermelon in a crowded van; Caribbean ganja; propane stoves; homemade meat turnovers being cooked at a street stall; incense; trucks sputtering exhaust; sulfur flats where President Duvalier used to dump the bodies of his enemies; freshly woven shopping bags.


I saw: mangroves lining the coast; a Benedictine monastery nestled atop a hill; cars and trucks crushed by earthquake debris; chartreuse lizards clinging to walls; trees heavy with fruit; armed men piled in the back of United Nations Land Rovers; piles of sticks prepared to make charcoal; flying fish skimming the sea like skipped stones;fridges turned horizontally to be re-purposed as ice chests from which to sell cold drinks; children bathing in rain puddles; scraggly dogs searching for scraps; children dancing; cock-fighting rings; the sun setting over Florida; men and women donning cheap shower caps to walk in the rain; coffee and manioc plants, street art on public walls.












I tasted: Madam Antoine’s delicious homemade donuts; dried breadfruit chips; fresh mango; Haitian rice and beans; hot coffee from beans hand-ground by the neighbor next door; homemade peanut butter; tangy lime juice sweetened with sugar cane; Prestige Haitian beer;
manioc dumplings; fresh passionfruit juice; conch meat with hot sauce; goat meat; spaghetti for breakfast; spicy hot tea with ginger and anise; sugar cane peanut brittle; hot chocolate with spices; chaka stew (beans, veggies, milled corn).



I heard: impassioned preaching and singing from outdoor tent churches; children singing and playing drums and wind instruments at school; gentle rain on a tin roof; roosters who start in at 4am; children chanting “blan! blan! blan!” (white!) whenever we went by; the soothing waterfall next to Carla’s house; goats bleating for food; a dot-matrix printer spitting out receipts; cats meowing in the night.
Mesi, Haiti. Pita. (Thank you, Haiti. See you later. )


For other Five Senses posts, click on any of these:
The Five Senses of Tanzania
The Five Senses of San Francisco's Chinatown
The Five Senses of San Francisco's Presidio

Haitian Market

The streets of Port au Prince are crowded with street vendors selling what they can. Imagine every square foot of the your city’s sidewalks filled with people squatting beside blankets on which they have neatly arranged items to sell- shoes, clothing, food, cooking utensils, mattresses- I literally saw kitchen sinks for sale on a sidewalk. Lucky vendors who stake out prime sidewalk space get to hang their items on a fence or the wall of a building. Of course there are no official standards, no permits, but there probably are mutually understood rules. I have no idea how anyone carves out a living selling the exact same mangoes and bananas that the person right next to them is selling, but somehow it works.

One day our whole group drove Madam Antoine, our amazing cook, to the market in her old neighborhood so she could pick up a few days of food to prepare for us. Madam Antoine brought along 3 children to help her at the market, since she essentially bought the equivalent of a big Costco run and needed help lugging her purchases from place to place.

This is what the market looked like:
There were pyramids of papayas, mangoes, oranges, coconuts, pineapples, melons.
Tables were heavy with piles of pigs feet and chicken feet.
There were wheelbarrows of charcoal for making fires, and other wheelbarrows of 3-4 foot rods of sugar cane (Haiti used to be the sugar cane capital of the world).
Most interesting to me was that men and women stuffed scrawny live chickens head first into black plastic bags, and walked around with them tucked under their arms.
Platters of smoked herring glistened in the heat and Madam Antoine picked up the biggest sweet potato I had ever seen: (this isn't Haitian Madam Anoine, by the way. This is Anne, of Virginia. But that is the sweet potato)

Later on in the day when we returned for Madam Antoine and the children, we had 15 people, all the market purchases, and two propane tanks crammed into a van with a passenger capacity of 12. We were so packed that the sliding door of the van threatened to come off. At one point in the van I yelled “Stop! The window just fell out!” and we drove slowly along in traffic as a random guy on the street trotted alongside us and gave us back our window.

Book Reflection: On That Day Everybody Ate

On that Day Everybody Ate, by Margaret Trost.

Ms. Trost’s story begins with a “reverse mission” trip to Haiti in which the goal of the hosting organization is for the participants to be transformed. She volunteered in a hospital and orphanage and observed first-hand the physical hunger that the Haitian people suffer and the spiritual satiety they posses. She returned to the U.S. so transformed that she recognized a series of events for what they were—a personal call to help feed the hungry children and adults in Haiti.

Partnering with a local Haitian Catholic church, she raised the money to start a feeding program that provided one hardy meal a week to 500 children—some of whom walked 5 miles to get that meal. Donations kept rolling in so she started a non profit—the What If? Foundation, based in Berkeley-- and they were soon feeding 1,000 people five days a week, as well as running a summer camp and sending some kids to school with scholarships.

All of this happened before this year’s earthquake in Haiti. Their kitchens in Haiti were miraculously spared severe earthquake damage, so in the aftermath of the disaster they are now serving about 2,000 meals a day.

All right then. Ever since 2008 when I read about Haitians eating “mud cookies” (made out of lard, salt, and dirt), Haiti has been in the back of my mind nagging at me like an item on my grocery list that I just can’t recollect. A logical next step would have been to go to Haiti earlier this year after the January 15th earthquake, but I feared that there was so much chaos in Haiti at that time that my trip and intentions would be wasted. I’m still waiting for my call to Haiti and it feels like I’m revving my engine at the red light, waiting for it to turn green so that I can peel out over the starting line.

Until I get that green light, I’m pondering some of the lessons from this book.

1) The reason Margaret Trost was on the original trip to Haiti in the first place was because her husband had unexpectedly died 18 months earlier. Her life as she knew it had ended, and she was ripe for a new beginning. Oftentimes something new doesn’t begin until we have experienced and honored an ending. I’m on the watch for endings in my life (jobs, relationships, interests, etc).

2) The Haitian women who partnered with Ms. Trost in the original once-a-week feeding were women who worked full-time jobs in addition to caring for their children. However, they still carved out time to go to the farmer’s market every Saturday morning, buying sackfuls of rice, beans and vegetables, then cooking all day and night Saturday, then serving 500 meals, and then finally cleaning up on Sunday after church. The author describes their joy as they sat in a circle peeling carrots, picking bugs and rocks out of the rice, cooking the meal with love and care. Where, oh where is my heart for service like that? I considered it a monumental sacrifice to dedicate two nights in a row recently to cooking a meal for the homeless one night, and serving it the next night.

3) I’m still trying to figure out what to do with mathematical and ethical incongruencies like that the money I spent on organic strawberries at the farmer’s market yesterday could feed 24 Haitian children their one meal of the week. Or that I have a cupboard full of pasta, beans, and sauces, and Haitian mothers are baking “mud cookies” in the sun to give their children something to fill their tummies.

Market in Marungu

Here are some photos of a typical market that I strode through in a small village called Marungu.






Spices in bulk. Not unlike Costco!











Bananas are BIG BUSINESS around this village. In front of her bananas is this female CEO who refuses to accept any glass ceilings.

Booze in Tanzania

I did some taste-testing of some of the local “fire water”.

Banana Beer
Home-brewed. Strong. Chunky. The texture was like a cup of sawdust stirred into a root beer float. I drank it from a hollowed out gourd, and the taste was like something I imagine Hawkeye and BJ distilling in their MASH tent.

Konyagi
A catch-all name for a liquor that isn’t vodka and isn’t gin but tastes somewhat like both of them mixed together. It comes in little packets like the “Capri Sun” juices favored by American children, but the contents are a lot more flammable. Tanzanians drink them down like shots, then discard the packet. They are littered everywhere.


Drinking is a problem- especially in rural areas. People are bored so they drink. People get drunk and lose their good judgment. People lose their good judgment and have unprotected sex. People have unprotected sex and contract an STD or HIV. People contract HIV/AIDS and get sick and die. See the problem?

African Cuisine

The primary thing I learned about Tanzanian food is that it revolves around gravies. I ate a banana stew with chicken in white gravy, and the cooked bananas tasted similar to potatoes. I had a lot of great vegetable and chicken Marsalas, but again, they were heavy on the gravy. Beef stew…gravy. You get the idea about gravy.

The most common food in Tanzania is “ugali” which is made from corn and flour with the color and texture of grits or a really thick version of the hot cereal “cream of wheat”. Tanzanians eat ugali every day and claim to love it. I don’t know if they love the taste or love that it is a cheap food that sticks to your ribs, but I heard stories of people who visited family members in other countries and lugged along the ingredients to make ugali so they wouldn’t miss it while they were abroad.

Here is a photo of a typical meal I had—grilled chicken, cooked bananas, beans, a generous helping of ugali, some cooked greens, and tomato sauce.

No forks are used, so you roll up some ugali into a ball in your hand, pinch the other foods with the ugali, and eat them all together. It tasted pretty good, but I’ve got to admit that my stomach never did very well in Africa. I don’t know if it was the food, the high altitude (I was at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro), or malaria medicine, but I had a low-grade nausea the whole three weeks I was there.

Bottom line: don’t go to Tanzania specifically for the food unless you are on a top end safari with a world class chef making you Spice Rubbed Chicken, Carpaccio and Fennel Salad, and Roasted Bananas sprinkled with walnuts, thick cream, and cinnamon. Oh, and ugali.

Street Food

At the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco there is a tank in the aquarium where several amazing, other-worldly seahorses live. I’m fascinated by them. They move to and fro like a hot air balloon floating lazily over the Napa valley. So imagine the “ewwww” factor when I opened my book What the World Eats and saw a photo like this one:

In Beijing, China, street vendors sell dried seahorses on a stick.

Now don’t get me wrong- I am completely on board with the street vendor idea. Four and five star restaurants are fine and dandy, but for my money some of the best food in the world is bought on city streets. Cases in point:

• on a cobblestone street corner in Bratislava, Slovakia, a man sold me a rolled up cone of newspaper that held a dozen or so chestnuts that he had just roasted on his cart.
• in the Philippines, I snacked on delicious strips of grilled chicken on sticks.
• in Maui, teenagers standing under coconut trees sold me chilled chunks of mango and pineapple out of an ice chest.
• in Bangkok, virtually every square foot of sidewalk space was claimed by food vendors setting up mini-kitchens from their carts and the aromas of the satays, curries, and various noodle soups fought a losing battle to overcome the odor of automobile exhaust.
• just last December I gamely embraced the New York ritual of buying a basic but adequate hot dog from a street vendor near Rockefeller Center.

Street food. Most City dwellers have noshed a taco or burrito from one of San Francisco’s many taco trucks. And those of us who have frequented Zeitgeist or other bars know that the Tamale Lady makes tamales so good they bring a tear to your eye. But I’ve been reading in the newspaper that the crappy economy has birthed a new breed of vendors roaming our city streets.

At 24th and Mission, “Murat the Muffin Man” sells strawberry tarts, zucchini muffins, and chai tea for $1. Peddling his cuisine in Dolores Park is “Curtis the Crème Brulee Guy” who skillfully finishes off the carmelized sugar with his blowtorch.

The Department of Public Health may be getting nervous about these culinary entrepreneurs, but I think it is a good thing to have them around. And if I find out that there is a street vendor in Chinatown who is selling seahorses on a stick, with a lot of prodding I just may go ahead and give it a taste. And to assuage my guilt, I will immediately make a donation designated to the seahorse exhibit at the Academy of Sciences.

What the World Eats- III

If you ever get to view this book you will observe that families from many of the poorer countries have a bonanza of food laid out in their kitchens and food prep areas. The main difference between their piles of food and other family’s piles is that their diet consists mainly of fresh fruit and vegetables, much of which they grow themselves.

Look at the food for this Ecuadorian family—plantains with every meal!

This reminds me of Michael Pollan’s wise little phrase:

Eat food.
Not too much.
Mostly plants.


I enjoyed reading some of the more exotic recipes offered up by many of the families.

The mother from Chad makes a daily breakfast soup by throwing a handful of dried tomatoes into some water and salt. I figure it’s probably healthier than Frosted Flakes or Pop Tarts for breakfast.





From Greenland there is a family recipe for Seal Stew, which will come in mighty handy should I ever get famished and want to club a baby harp seal.


Lastly, here are some of the more interesting foods and drinks ingested by families in different countries:
o The family from China lists MSG, a flavor enhancer, as a regular condiment in their meals. I thought MSG was only for places like Panda Express.

o The family from Greenland lists walrus and polar bear as regular meats they enjoy. Any animal that stars in a children’s cartoon is questionable in my book.

o The family from Japan eats an average of 12 different kinds of fish and shellfish, and 3 varieties of seaweed each week. I don’t think American supermarkets even sell 12 kinds of fish.

o Mexico ranks 1st in the world for per-person consumption of Coca-Cola. Considering how miserably sick I’ve gotten from Mexican water in the past, I would brush my teeth with Coca-Cola if I had to.

What the World Eats- II

Somehow I missed this little fact, but this book says that in the year 2000 the World Watch Institute reported that for the first time there were just as many overfed people on the planet as there were underfed. This surprised me. Hunger organizations relentlessly show us videos and photos of starving adults and children— so naturally I believe that there are a lot of underfed people in the world.

Overfed people are not on my radar screen-- probably because they aren’t on TV or in movies because they aren’t considered beautiful enough for Hollywood. Personally, the only times I view the obese populace are when I attend a county fair and see chunky people waiting in line for corn dogs and funnel cakes; or when I am at a national park accosted by pudgy moms, dads, and children spilling out of their RV’s (and tight clothing) munching on bags of Cheetos.

Many of the countries represented in What the World Eats have a high percentage of their population living on less than $2 a day.
o Almost half of China lives on less than $2 a day.
o India has 80% of its people living on less than $2 a day. This stat is exacerbated by the mere fact that the population of India is well over 1 billion, so right there we have $800 million people living on next to nothing.
o African countries fare worse. Mali, in northwestern Africa, has 91% of their people living on less than $2 a day.

Two dollars will barely buy a Happy Meal in America. Speaking of which, let’s see approximately how many McDonald’s are to be found world-wide:

Australia- 726 (kind of scary considering that there are what, about 5 big cities in Australia?)
China- over 600 (but China is so big and spread out you can't find them)
France- 973 (France isn't that much bigger than California)
Great Britain- 1,100 (gamely closely the gap on the Americans)
India- 46 (even though they can't serve beef)
Japan- 3,891 (I wonder if their fish sandwiches outsell their quarter pounders?)
United States- 13,491 (the big winner, er.. loser!)

It would be picking on America for me to post a photo of the poorest country in the book and compare it to a photo of one of the American families in the book. I’m here to tell you that the three American families represented here don’t stand out as being the only ones with big piles of food. You should see the photos of Great Britain (that family likes their biscuits), or Kuwait (that family likes their candy bars), or Australia (there must be 60 lbs of meat on their table). Obese Americans are a convenient target, but the scary truth— as the World Watch Institute has reported— is that world-wide, the numbers of overfed people are quickly on the rise.

What the World Eats- I

On one of my book shelves sits a photo-journalistic, coffee-table type of book titled Material World in which a photographer visited countries around the world and took photos of typical families with all of their worldly possessions laid out in front of their home dwellings. I've used that book for teaching classes on simplicity and I look at it often.

Shortly after my $1 a day experiment was finished I bought a similar book called What the World Eats. The same photographer traveled to over 20 countries and found a family that represented the average income for each particular country. He took a photo of each family in the place where they prepare and eat food, surrounded by a typical week’s worth of groceries.

Here is one of the families from the United States:


Here is the family from Chad:


Here is the family from Mexico.


I could sanctimoniously say that this book made me want to immediately get online and buy stock in Coca Cola (check out the back row of the photo above), but there is much more to this book than gawking at the photos and judging what the families eat. The book is a fascinating study of food, economics, cooking, survival, globalization, culture, tradition, health, and so much more.

With each photo of the family and their food, the author records how much money the family spends on food in one week (converted into U.S. dollars). I won’t list all 20-something of the countries, but here are some highlights:

o The French family (2 adults, 2 teens) spends $419.95 per week on food (with all of their sublime cheeses, mousses, cafés, and pastries I’m pretty sure that I’ve spent close to that in one week for myself in Paris)

o The family from Japan (2 adults, 2 teens) spends $317.25 a week on food.

o The large family from Mali (8 adults, 5 kids, 2 babies) spends $26.39 a week on food (if you want two wives you gotta be ready to feed more mouths).

o The Sudanese refugee family (1 adult, 5 kids) living in Chad spends $1.22 per week on food. Nope, that is not a typo. ONE DOLLAR AND TWENTY TWO CENTS!

For some reason, the authors photographed 3 families from the USA.
o The California family (2 adults, 2 kids) spends $159.18 per week on food.

o The North Carolina family spends double that at $341.98, but to be fair they have 2 teenage boys in the photo.

o The Texan family (3 adults, 2 kids) spends $242.48 per week on food.

I've got much more to say about this book, but for now I am wondering how many of us would enjoy putting a week's worth of our eating habits on photo display? For the photo in my kitchen, I imagine a small castle made out of stacked pints of Ben & Jerry's icecream.