Parlor Profile: Mitchell's Ice Cream

When we were in CA a few weeks ago I dragged M to one of my favorite ice cream places in San Francisco. My friend Rho introduced me to it when we were both living in California and we shared a wonderful afternoon filled with ice cream, cherries and the beautiful view from the top of Bernal Hill.



Name: Mitchell's Ice Cream

Location: San Jose Ave., Bernal Heights, San Francisco CA



The Scoop: Mitchell's has been owned and operated by the Mitchell family since 1953 in the same spot in San Francisco and they make all of their ice cream on site. They are famous for their tropical flavors and they import fresh ingredients from the Philippines to make exotic flavors like Buko (baby coconut), Langka (jackfruit), Ube (purple yam), Lychee, Macapuno (young coconut), and Halo Halo (Buko, Langka, Ube, Pineapple, Mango and Sweet Beans).



The Flavors: We tried Halo Halo and Sweet and Salty Peanut.



The Price: One two-scoop cone ran us $4.80. Yikes!



The Verdict: I've decided to stop imposing a rating system on these ice cream parlors because honestly, would I ever give ice cream a bad rating? So needless to say, the ice cream was delicious. It was thick and creamy, melting down my hand and leaving me feeling a little uncomfortably full, the way good ice cream should. The Sweet and Salty Peanut was exactly that, who knew I would like salt in my ice cream? And if I had to choose again I would go for one of the tropical flavors by itself instead of getting Halo Halo which is all of them mashed together. I've had Ube in the past and it was earthy and bright purple, which gives it a leg up in my book. But I would be interested to taste the difference between "young coconut" and "baby coconut." Maybe next time (why must you be 3,000 miles away from me, Mitchell's?).

Parlor Profile: Tara's Organic Ice Cream

I went to visit my friend Emily in Oakland last weekend and she took me to Tara's in Berkeley. There are a few more ice cream parlors in the Bay Area that I would really like to profile, including Mitchell's and MaggieMudd in San Francisco, and Ici in Berkeley. But since I'm moving in, oh, a WEEK (eek!), I don't think I'll be able to do it. But now you all know a few places to go for your ice cream fix in the Bay Area!

Now, on to Tara's:



Name: Tara's Organic Ice Cream Scoop Shop

Location: College Ave, Berkeley, CA



The Scoop: Tara's was started in Santa Fe, New Mexico and produces ice cream in small batches. Most of their business is done on a mail-order basis (you can purchase pints online). This is the only scoop shop they have as far as I can tell. All of the packaging for shipping, as well as the cups, utensils, napkins and all of that stuff in the shop are biodegradable.



The Flavors: We tried Kaffir Lime Leaf, Comote (sweet potato), Rosemary Pear, and Sweet Corn.



The Price: We each got a small cone with two scoops, for $7.20.



The Verdict: We got black sesame waffle cones, which were very sweet and crunchy, in the best way possible. The ice cream also had a kind of crumbly quality to it with large ice crystals, almost like ice cream that you've mistakenly melted then refroze and eaten anyway (or is that just me?). If ice cream can be light, this is light ice cream. And the flavors taste exactly like what they are supposed to be. Like sweet corn? If you took a can of corn, added milk and sugar, blended it and froze it, it would taste just like this ice cream. There were actually small peices of corn in it. We got to taste a whole bunch of other flavors too, like Basil, Lemongrass, Black Sesame, and Pink Peppercorn (I'm not sure why I feel the need to capitalize all the flavor names). All taste exactly like you would expect, surprisingly. All in all, an 8 out of 10!

SF Love

I can't help it, I love stencils. I found this one on the sidewalk in SF last week, on 18th Street in the Mission Dolores District.

Parlor Profile: Bi-Rite Creamery and Bakeshop

Since ice cream is one of my favorite things ever, I've decided to start a series on this blog, profiling ice cream parlors. Mmmmmmmm. Here we go!



Name: Bi-Rite Creamery and Bakeshop.

Location: 18th and Dolores, The Mission, San Francisco.



The Goods: They make their ice cream in single batches with organic, local ingredients and Strauss dairy products (the same Marin Co. dairy that makes the milk I drink!). Their cups and packaging are biodegradable. This last part actually led to some hilarious moments (for me) because the biodegradable cup kept bending whenever M tried to scoop the ice cream out, and he ended up with ice cream all over his hand.



The Flavors: We tried Mint Hill Honey Lavender, Mexican Chocolate with salted peanuts, Coffee Toffee, and Roasted Banana.



The Price: We got a cone and a cup, two scoops each, for $6.50.



The Verdict: The Mint Hill Honey Lavender is made with honey and lavender collected on Mint Hill in San Francisco and it's smoooooth and creamy, very fragrant, but not too much. The Mexican Chocolate was rich, but the peanuts were unnecessary and detracted from the taste. The Roasted Banana was very banana-y, which I think is gross, so to each his own. And the Coffee Toffee had an incredibly delicious roasted coffee taste (made with coffee from the local favorite, Ritual Roasters), although I don't like toffee, so I'm biased on this one too. All in all, I'd give it a 7 out of 10. Delicious.

The Great Bay Area Garden Tour, parts 4 and 5 :: The Garden for the Environment and the Conservatory of Flowers

Garden tour recap:

Stop #1 - The Edible Schoolyard
Stop #2 - The Slow Food Nation Victory Garden
Stop #3 - The Alice Fong Yu Elementary School Garden

And now, the Garden for the Environment and the Conservatory of Flowers!

Unfortunately, we never got a tour of the Garden for the Environment because everyone was away at a conference. But they have lots of really cool workshops and demonstrations going on all the time, so if you're in the area you should definitely check them out.



The garden basically serves as a demonstration garden for urban food production and low water landscaping. They have volunteer days on Saturdays too, and the people leading the volunteer day were very helpful. I think a garden like this is a great resource for a community, maybe I should start one . . . .



The very last stop was the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, one of my favorite places in San Francisco. We had a docent-led tour of the greenhouse, which was great except that we were all incredibly tired from a long day of walking.



The conservatory is always beautiful and full of wonderful plants, but the real draw at this time of the year is the outdoor dahlia garden.





Amazing. I love public gardens. This tour took a lot of time to plan, and was a bit stressful at times. But it was totally worth it to know that I have the organizational skills to pull off something like this.

The Great Bay Area Garden Tour, part 3 :: Alice Fong Yu Elementary School Garden

Stop number three on our tour was the Alice Fong Yu elementary school garden. It is part of the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance, an organization that manages school gardens all around the city (get a PDF of their self-guided tour here).



Rachel from the SFGSA met us there and spoke with us about the garden, which she managed for a few years before getting her current job. Rachel was incredibly friendly and cool; I was actually a little starstruck because she has the kind of job I want and she was possessed of the perfect mixture of expertise, humbleness, and joy of discovery that I aspire to.

Some of my favorite things from this garden:

The compost area, so neat and tidy.



The signage, of course.





The shed! It was recently painted and it has a roll-up door, kind of like a garage door, to save space.




The outdoor classroom area with hay bales and a huge white-board.



The beds were all made from a recycled plastic "wood" that has lasted them several years already and can withstand the severe incline without too much buckling.



Thank you Rachel!

Next up (last, but not least); the Garden for the Environment and The Conservatory of Flowers!

The Great Bay Area Garden Tour, part 2 :: Slow Food Nation Victory Garden

After our visit to The Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, we popped across the Bay Bridge and parked at the Civic Center for our tour of the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden.







Our tour guide was Kelsey, who coincidentally had spent almost ten years working at The Edible Schoolyard! A twofer! He answered all of our questions about both gardens, even after the Pakistani festival next door got so loud he had to shout to be heard.



The garden was part of an event that Slow Food Nation hosted in SF over labor day weekend to raise awareness of local food sources in the Bay Area. I was away during the festival, but so happy to get to see the garden before it was all recycled in September.

The new lettuce and chard transplants below replaced harvested crops that were donated to a food bank a few blocks away. In the middle of the bed are dandelion greens and chicory! How great! Kelsey said that there were several old Italian women who asked if they could harvest some when they visited and they got to take home bunches (to put in delicious soups, no doubt).



The garden was grown with the help of local nurseries, and almost everything was re-purposed for the project. The stage was made of recycled lumber, the burlap-covered berms around each bed were filled with rice straw from local growers, and the soil and compost came from nurseries and farms in the area.

In the photo below you can see that they are letting their Brassicas bolt and flower (the yellow in the middle). I love that. The natural life cycle of crop plants can be beautiful too, there's no need to rip everything out as soon as it's finished producing edible food.



Each bed was a series of concentric circles with little "keyholes" where you could enter and walk around. This was mostly for aesthetics, so the beds could be viewed from all angles. The plants had to be grown in gallon pots in the nurseries before transplanting into the beds because the timeline for the project was so short. Everyone was afraid that the transplants wouldn't take because they were so old, but apparently the "positive energy" surrounding the project really kicked in and the garden was gorgeous!



Again, nice signage in the garden listed each crop in multiple languages. I'm kind of a stickler for signage, and the gardens on this tour really inspired me with their creative signs.

Next up: The Alice Fong Yu Elementary School Garden and a talk with Rachel of the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance!

The Children's Book Gallery

During a recent trip to SF, my friends and I stumbled upon the Children's Book Gallery on Geary St. It's located in a large building along with several fine art galleries, but no one in the building seemed to even know it was there (I saw its name on the directory in the lobby and had to investigate).



It was adorable, and the owner seemed happy to have people in there who appreciated it. Everything is for sale, so it's less of a gallery, and more of a very specific antique shop.



She has books from 1850 to 1950 mostly, and the design and pictures are priceless.



Here are two of my favorites:





I got the impression that she did most of her business online, but it's sweet that she has set up this little gallery space to display the books. They are beautiful and fragile and deserve respect, so it's nice to see them in a space where they get that.

Modern Art/Makes Me/Want to ROCK OUT!

"So I'm in the Tate/And I'm looking at Hockney.
There's something about that blue/It touches me deep inside.
It makes me remove my tie/It makes me step outside/Sweet Jesus, my heart!"
- Modern Art, Art Brut


I went to the SF MOMA and the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco this weekend and OD-ed on the photographer Lee Friedlander. There were large shows of his work at both places, and the experience left me feeling renewed and awed.



His work is best viewed en masse, because it's not very striking when taken out of context. I remember seeing his shadow photos in college (below) and being indifferent to them. But when you see his whole body of work, you come to appreciate and marvel at the consistent and genius framing of every photo.



He has done many series over the years, but my favorite is his latest, "America By Car."



The title is pretty self-explanatory. The beauty of these photos is that he's working with two frames; the camera frame, and the frame of the car window/mirror. It's really subtle, and he makes it look easy.



I also love his self portraits and the photos of his family. A lot of his work is incredibly funny and sarcastic. Sometimes it seems that he took a picture simply because it amused him more than anything else.

I've been thoroughly inspired.

Cluebonic Plague

The best-kept secret in San Francisco? The Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt.

Every year, a guy named Jayson Wechter organizes a treasure hunt to take place the night of the Chinese New Year parade. It is completely unsponsored, all the proceeds go to charity, and it is the best bang-for-your-buck around.

Teams spend 4.5 hours running around the city solving clues and searching for "the 4 numbers next to the word 'Sydney'" or something similar, on some random plaque somewhere in the city. While this is happening, the parade begins. Lights, fireworks, costumes, crowds, it's mayhem!

My old housemates, G and Mike invited me to join them again this year for the hunt. It's the year of the rat, and all of the team names strive for a punny, cluey name. We were the Cluebonic Plague. Last year (year of the pig) we were Boar is Not the Answer. The winning name last year was I Never Sausage a Team. Oh man, I love it.

We didn't win, and we had no hope to. There are three categories, and the "Beginner" level is so hard, I can't even fathom the others. Last year we got about two-thirds of the clues, but this year we only missed 2 (out of 17). We were quite proud of ourselves, and we can't wait for next year.

Chinatown, SF

I'm going on a three day camping field trip for my CA Plant Communities class this weekend, but I thought I'd share some cool photos from last weekend quickly before I leave. A friend from Philly was visiting her brother in SF and I met them for a fabulous Sunday outing to China town. We had a great time and I've decided that Sundays are the absolute best days to visit the city. No traffic, less people, but everything is still open. It's great.

We wandered around the supermarkets a lot and found artichokes (regular sized) for 3/$1! We couldn't believe our luck and immediately bought them and had two each for a pre-dinner snack. Mmmm, indulgent.




It's always fascinating to see all the dried seafood just hanging out in huge tupperwares. We saw a lot of shark fins which was particularly upsetting after reading the April issue of National Geographic all about the demise of the world's fisheries and the lack of sustainability of most modern fishing practices. Sharks are often caught for their fins and then thrown back into the ocean to bleed to death or be eaten alive. Shudder.





Check out the prices on these dried scallops (and the shark fins above)! They're just hanging out in the open for anyone to steal. I wonder what it would feel like to swipe a pocket full of hundred dollar scallops.


We had lunch at this amazing vegetarian restaurant called Lucky Creation. Apparently it's one of the only veggie restaurants in Chinatown, which is odd. But we had the best fake lemon chicken I have ever eaten. And look at the little carrot stars and flowers in the curry stir fry! Ack!




Well, I'm off to the Mendocino coast to see some redwoods and evergreen forests and the Mendocino pygmy forest. Maybe I'm a huge plant nerd, but I've been wanting to see a pygmy forest for a while now (they have them in the Pine Barrens in NJ and I've never been, I didn't even know about them until recently). So be prepared for many pictures of hundred year old trees that come up to my chin. Yessssss.