Olive You Tartine Bread

Blustered, we were, on the trip to the SF Bay Area this weekend. That is the best way to describe the windy dolldrums of Pooh weather smattering the ships in the harbor and blowing pedestrians up and down the slick, steep sidewalks of downtown. Where better to shelter from the storm than in the welcoming homes of loved ones and in restaurants, stuffing ourselves silly?

Olive you, San Francisco. I didn’t even feel compelled to visit the Tartine bakery on this trip because I have been so successful in making my own home-grown approximation (below). However, I am strongly considering sending a vial and a self-addressed stamped envelope to the Tartine bakery with the simple request to scoop up some air for my Minnesota bacteria to breathe. I would love to taste the difference in my starter with the heady influence of some Tartine yeast fumes. Perhaps it would lift them the way it does me when I breathe in my first scent of eucalyptus carried on the warm gusts off the Bay.

Olive Tartine Bread

Adapted from the Tartine bread book

3 cups pitted black olives, chopped

Zest from one lemon

2 TB herbes de provence

Follow the recipe for Tartine Country bread and add the herbs after the first turn.

To make your own herbes de provence, I use this scheme:

1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon fresh basil
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon dried fennel seed

A cursory photo montage of our SF restaurant tour, sadly omitting pics from Burmese Superstar (by far my favorite of all the places we dined) and Danny Coyle’s (a lovely pub in Haight where we got to see Mezacapas)

Palo Alto duck pond beauties– look at the schnoz on the one to the left.

Apparently you cannot just go to Facebook to hang out. Thumbs down on closed campus.

KP in this photograph taken at the Palo Alto Marsh Preserve was likened to this smiley character from Conan, by Anders.

And finally, we visited in the pouring rain the Alpine Inn, a historic Stanford watering hole. A local, Lloyd, told me he regularly rides his horse to the bar and hitches it up out back. Really bad cheeseburgers. But cheap. And the old-timey ambiance is worth the dive.

I have quite a few catch up haikus to include in this post as well!

Haiku #33 (Feb 2)

What if there is no

Tomorrow, ground hog? There was

No such thing today.

 

Haiku #34 (Feb 3)

The cheapest package

At the mortuary is

Called: “Togetherness.”

Haiku #35 (Feb 4)

Fluorescent wrist stamp:

My prison pass. Guards bark, “You

Don’t glow? You don’t go.”

Haiku #36 (Feb 5)

You have to crack the

Egg, says the psychiatrist,

Delusion is goo.

Haiku #37 (Feb 6)

Blow dart to the back

Of the neck for the plane guy

With no indoor voice.

Haiku #38 (Feb 7)

In the storm, this house

On the sea drips inside. It

Rains over the couch.

Haiku #39 (Feb 8)

Some punishment—to

Wear ill-fitting denim pants

On a red eye flight.