30 July, 2010

Renegade This Weekend!


Come visit Pie Bird Press at the Renegade Craft Fair this weekend at Fort Mason in San Francisco. We will be debuting our 2011 seasonal produce calendars and have lots of cards for sale as well. The show is open from 11-7 Saturday and Sunday. Hope to see you there!

27 July, 2010

Weekend!


I'll be honest- the pie contest took up most of my weekend. I did get to go bowling in the Presidio for my friend Jessica's birthday, and had a lovely dinner with Erik and our friend Dan on Friday. Sunday night we had a consolatory dinner at Camino (way better than any prize, anyhow!) including this gorgeous purple basil, cucumber and gin cocktail. Yum! But mostly I wanted to write about yesterday.



My mom and I went to see the Maira Kalman exhibit (Various Illuminations [Of a Crazy World]) at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. I've posted about Kalman's illustrations before, and I just love them, especially her guache paintings of objects. The exhibit was beautifully installed and also included various items of import from Kalman's world. I highly recommend taking a look at it, if you can- it's up until late October. The pictures above are from the CJM website.


We also visited the Clare Rojas exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Craft (next door), and it was really, really awesome. I've always liked Rojas' work but seeing it on that scale and in such an intimate space was great. The exhibit is up until September. (Image from the MOCFA website.)


Last night my friend Jessica and I attended an amazing event that was part of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival at the Castro Theater. We saw a sceening of the newly recovered 1922 silent film "Hungry Hearts" accompanied by an original score by Ethan Miller (from Comets on Fire and Howlin' Rain). The score was performed by members of Drunk Horse, Colassal Yes, Howlin' Rain and Comets on Fire and seriously rocked. Definitely a unique and wonderful event.

Pie or Die!


You might recall that I won a little pie contest last year at Omnivore Books with my Hannah Banana Creme Pie. This year I decided to enter it into another, more prestigious contest: SF Food Wars' "Pie or Die." Erik helped me bake 20 pies (enough to feed 240 people who had bought tickets to the event), and we managed to tie for third in votes (although we didn't win any prizes). We had a lot of fun and were really happy to see our table-mates take third place from the judges for their delicious peach-rosemary pie! Here are some pictures from our preparation. You can get my recipe here.


supplies!


chocolate cookies about to become crumbs


erik was in charge of making the crusts. here he is folding in the egg whites and butter with the cookie crumbs


crusts!


heating the milk for the custard. this is half of what we used.


four out of 40 bananas


custard, ready to pour into pies


all wrapped up for the refrigerator


whipping the cream


finished pies!


and here's us at the contest!

20 July, 2010

Bright

(Extended) Weekend!


This weekend I went to see two shows: Built to Spill and the New Pornographers (long live the '90s!). Built to Spill played at Slim's and it was a great show; the New Pornographers played the Fox, which is a beautiful venue but much too big. I felt like it wasn't much different from watching them perform on tv or something. Too bad.

I also had a delicious dinner at Doña Tomas, drinks at Camino and the Hotsy Totsy Club, and took a mozzarella pulling class! Erik and I made about 12 balls of cheese (and took home more like 8... ahem), and we can't stop eating them. I think we're going to have to start buying curds on a regular basis to feed our mozzarella obsession. Even the bad cheese we made is so much better than the stuff you buy in the store...

Last night I drove out to Turlock with four lady friends to visit the Stanislaus County Fair. I attended my first demo derby there years ago, and things haven't changed much. Here are my pictures!







17 July, 2010

County Fairs, Part Two


















County Fairs


I've been to four county fairs so far this summer: Solano, Napa, Marin, and Alameda. I'm planning to go to more, of course, but I thought I better share what I've got so far.