Restaurants, A-P

I've really felt twinges of almost-guilt these last couple of days, thinking I ought to be in class.

I took the ferry from Oakland to SF this morning (and back, this afternoon), an experience that was also oddly discomforting, in that it was so pleasant, and not like commuting at all. My hours will be 9 to 2, three days a week, and 6:30 to 2 on Saturdays when there's a chef demonstration (now through mid-December). The CUESA office, a small room filled with about six desks and an adjacent conference room, on the second floor of the Ferry Building, was quiet this morning. After we got coffee from the Blue Bottle coffee booth at the Farmer's Market, Sarah oriented me to my first project: updating the mailing list of local chefs, who we'll be inviting to participate in 2008 demonstrations. I'm game to sit in front of a computer monitor for long stretches of time, doing Internet research, so I was content, and it's fun to chase down a chef who's left one restaurant to find where s/he's landed. Stuff like that.

We took a break at 11 to stroll the market (about 15 booths on Tuesdays, between 10 and 2), and I brought home fresh cranberry beans, English peas, raspberries, assorted potatoes, almond paste, bittersweet chocolate almond bark, and a bunch of kale that Sarah gave me, because one of her farmer friends gave her two. I've never cooked with kale before (in my own kitchen, anyway), so the cookbook Tim recently sent me (Vegetable Love by Barbara Kafka) will be the first place I look for some ideas.

We had lunch from the Prather Ranch Meat booth, juicy cheeseburgers that we ate sitting at tables outside. Sarah knows many of the farmers (she's been working at CUESA for a year, starting out as a CCA intern, just like me), and they offer her greetings and samples and extra treats (see "kale," above). "Tough job, huh?" she asked. It feels wonderful to be this much closer to my goal of working in the culinary industry. All I really need is a paycheck.

Tomorrow, I'll finish up the mailing list (Q to Z), and do some additional research on new restaurants and recently published cookbooks, in order to add those chefs. I think there will be Mail Merge in my future.