Saturday in San Francisco

Here’s Ted, looking handsome and showing off the beauty that is San Francisco in October.  Seriously, if you ever decide to come to SF, come in October.  It’s the best weather of the year.

Yesterday we went in to San Francisco for a few hours.  SF was hopping, with people coming in to see the Blue Angels put on their admittedly fun show of money wasting bravado, the Giants were playing the Reds (go Giants! (stupid Reds won, drats!)), and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park.   Ted has a gig coming up, directing and editing a show for a local TV station, Fresh From the Farmers’ Market, which spotlights vendors and local seasonal offerings at the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmers’ Market.  They shot several episodes, and then had some issues and retooled the whole thing, with a new host, new production company, new director and editor (Ted), all of that.  It’s been a bit of fits and starts while they looked for a new host, figured out timing, that sort of thing.  They’re going to start shooting in the next week or two, so Ted thought it might be a good idea to go walk around the Farmers’ Market a bit, and I decided it might be fun to go along with him.  Guess what?  It was!

We walked around the food stalls, talked to a few vendors, got an idea for the lay of the land, and had a nice lunch.  We saw the Blue Angels buzzing the city, which is always deafening and fun, and tons of people dressed in Giants shirts, ready to cheer on their team.  I didn’t bring enough cash to really do much shopping, but we got some lovely dahlias, a jar of amazing marionberry preserves, some tomatoes, and a poem.

The woman who sold us the marionberry preserves is from Glashoff Farms, in semi-nearby Fairfield.  They sell seasonal fruits, nuts, and preserves.  She and Ted were talking about how she’ll be selling walnuts soon, and said she would make a walnut pie for him to feature on the show.  It’s like a pecan pie, but duh, with walnuts.  I like walnuts better than pecans, generally, so maybe I’d like it.  I’ll post a recipe if he gets one for me.

There are many, many vendors at the Farmers’ Market, some of whom are very well known locally for their delicious products.  Frog Hollow Farms, Cowgirl Creamery, Point Reyes Blue, Hog Bay Oysters, and Acme Bread, amongst a few hundred others.  I’m thinking another time, I’ll go with Ted into the City when he shoots, bring more money, and get some nice things for dinner.  They had some pumpkin gnocci that was calling my name, for example.

I thought perhaps I would share a few photos of our day with you.

Here’s our booty for the day. Lovely flowers, delicious preserves, ripe tomatoes, and a poem.

If you look in the right top quarter of this picture, there’s a little flag, and above the flag is one of the Blue Angels.  Much more cool in person.  But you can see in the cloudless sky, the trails they’ve been leaving behind as they buzz around, sometimes in formation, sometimes not.

Then there’s this silly picture…some companies got the bright idea of taking advantage of the clear blue sky, the windless day, and the fact that people would be out in droves looking upwards, and made signs selling crap.  Mostly we saw signs for Geico insurance, but this one was for Order.com.  They’ve spelled out ‘tap tap order.’ and are just starting on the ‘com’.

This is Zach Houston, whom Ted commissioned to write a poem for me.  Ted gave the topics:  tomatoes, white wine, and coke zero, and Zach typed them out on his old manual typewriter.  Here is Zach’s poem.  I think he wanted to name it ‘bloody maybe’, because he liked the idea of that as a drink, with tomatoes, wine, and coke zero. I can’t get my wordpress here to keep the formatting. Sorry, zach, for messing up your work.

bloody maybe
the mix
of to our
tomatos
keeper
of pizza
italian
kinda
love apples
sicily source
north america
for the coast
of coca cola
with nothing
in it zero
certainty
but sips
of certain
crushed grapes
made patient
then mixed
with to
some um
tomato post
diet coke for
the male market
and gmo zero
tomatos

~ zach houston

I was being a bit of a drag, as I often am…when Ted asked me if I wanted a poem, I said no, I wanted tomatoes (vendors were closing up at this point, and I was thinking I might have missed the boat on any tomatoes).  He said, ‘you’ll be glad once we have it, though’, and duh, as per usual, he was right.   Very romantic, having a poem commissioned about your favorite things.  🙂  Thanks Ted, for a lovely day.