Lee Foster (fostertravel.com)

Melissa's Specialty Vegetables

The food experience in travel continues to improve.

With each passing year there are more chefs and wine makers who are considered major artists.

The materials they are working with evolve and advance, and the delivery of these quality products becomes ever more widespread.

Specialty vegetables, especially baby vegetables, are one aspect of the story.

When one consumes some delectable baby vegetable in a restaurant, the question arises: how could I get this for my own home cooking?

Recently I learned part of the answer.  My sister Colleen Foster, who writes about food as well as enjoys it, sent me a basket of miniature vegetables under the Melissa's brand.  See this at www.melissas.com, 800-588-0151.

In my basket, packed in Vernon, CA and sent two-day UPS there was a cornucopia of perhaps ten pounds of baby cauliflowers, beets, carrots, beans, green zucchini, yellow zucchini, and "gemstone" potatoes.

I stir fried and steamed them for a week, storing the basket in my frig to keep everything fresh.  The taste was outstanding, as in generally true of baby vegetables.  One forgets also how easily and quickly one can cook such miniature, bite-size food.

It was as if a week of fine dining had been brought to my own kitchen.

A Good Spanish Language Book for Travelers

When I go to Copan, Honduras, in September to look at the Mayan ruins for a few days, it will be helpful if I can recall some of my Spanish that has atrophied.

Recently I ran across a small book that will help me.  It is Meg Graham's AHORA HABLO TRAVEL EDITION: SEVEN SIMPLE STEPS TO AUTHENTIC SPANISH, $12.95 from www.ahorahablo.com.

I like the way this Spanish language aid is laid out.  It is small enough and slim enough (6x8.5 inches, 118pp) to fit into my daypack and is spiral bound, so I could set it flat on a table in a restaurant while brushing up on how to order my lunch.

Graham, a veteran Spanish teacher, has analyzed just what you need to know and don't need to know to function in a Spanish language situation.  If you have had no Spanish, there is also helpful phonetic interpretation of words.

She starts with a "Necesito" and the 40 main function verbs you need to know to get along, plus the basic courtesy words.

Then she goes into the nuances of verbs.  Each double-page layout has a little space left for you to jot down, right in the book, your specific, likely expression and practice speaking it.  You could then go to the hotel front desk or the shop owner or the taxi driver and speak out your thoughts.

Graham proceeds finally to the main situational vocabulary that you are likely to need at the bank, or the police station, or the market.

All considered, whether you are just brushing up on your Spanish, as I am, or starting out from scratch, this book is extremely helpful.  The type is large and the book has an easy pace to it, especially with those interactive spaces where you can write out your phrases and practice your pronunciation.

Though I have some other Spanish language books stashed away on my bookshelves, this is the one I will take to Copan, in Honduras, in September.

Artist Jesse Allen

I am fortunate to live in Berkeley, CA, next door to a noted artist, Jesse Allen.  This past weekend I went into San Francisco to see Jesse's new show, at Chandler Fine Art, 170 Minna.  The gallery is literally across the street from SFMOMA if you happen to be headed to San Francisco for an "art travel" outing.

As I stood with Jesse in front of one of his new works, titled "Valley With Elephants," there were several things that struck me.

Jesse Allen has a special vision in his paintings.  It is as if you are in his lush, secret garden, with its own layers of mythology.

The blue parrots, the elephants, and the valley are recollections of his youth in Kenya.  His family was English, but living in Kenya.

However, Jesse's paintings are anything but primitive.  One can see the sophistication that crept in when he took his degree at Oxford in French and Italian.  Like other major artists, working with words or images, he has created his own world, a new landscape.

Jesse has also consistently followed his vision for a long time.  It was touching to see at the exhibit an article about Jesse in California Living, the former magazine of the San Francisco Chronicle.  This was one of the early places where I published my work.  The article about Jesse was from 1967, describing this new and young artist from Kenya who had come to the Bay Area.  The photos of Jesse's paintings in 1967 showed that same beguiling secret garden landscape.  Today, at age 71, Jesse still carries on with his artistic production.

Part of the joy of travel is the refreshment that comes when one stumbles across a new artistic vision, emphasizing again the wondrous diversity of perspective that helps make life rewarding.  At the SFMOMA now, for example, there is a major show on how Picasso influenced American artists.  And, right across the street, a traveler in the neighborhood can see the lush, secret gardens of Jesse Allen, which are one-of-a-kind.

 

Why I Love Berkeley

Many of us have a special fondness for the place where we live, and I am no exception.  I love Berkeley, CA.

I began to catalog some of my reasons yesterday as I was having lunch at a restaurant called Downtown, which is in downtown Berkeley, a short walk from my condo in North Berkeley.

As I looked out the restaurant window, I could see people at street level going in and out of the rapid transit BART station, which is underground.  The ease with which I can get into San Francisco and back to Berkeley on the BART is a big plus.

Berkeley is about innovation, including culinary innovation.  I enjoyed my fried olive appetizer.  I had not had fried olives before.  My Duck Confit main course had a special side dish of lentils, pleasant but not expected.  Berkeley is also inclusive.  Though the California wine country is nearby, this day's featured Chardonnay was from Australia.

Within this same walking radius of my condo I could have gone to Chez Panisse, where Alice Waters has probably done more than any other single individual in the US to affect food culture.  This trickles down to the school food garden at the track by the Martin Luther King Middle School, where I sometimes walk for exercise.  Fresh, pure, nutritious food, locally grown, is the goal.

At Downtown restaurant, I was a block away from the noted Berkeley Rep, one of the vigorous regional theatres now functioning in the U.S.  I was a block away from the Berkeley YMCA, with its state of the art facilities, where I exercise on most weekday nights at 9 p.m.  The voices in the locker room are often not English, and the non-English is often not Spanish, and that is Berkeley.

I have a feature on the Oakland Berkeley East Bay that I need to update soon.  Then I will do a hometown piece on Why I Love Berkeley.  Of course, some call it Berserkeley, with affection, but let's not get into the city's foreign policy right now.

Big Roles for Small Zoos

I had an opportunity recently to meet a dynamic zoologist, Alan Baker, who showed me his distinguished small zoo, the Charles Paddock Zoo, in Atascadero, a town along Highway 101 midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Baker makes the case effectively that the competent small zoo has a large place in the overall goal of preserving species.  Though only five acres in size, the Charles Paddock Zoo is now being transformed to emphasize the 25 most endangered biodiversity hotspots on the planet.  Because the 214 accredited modern zoos in the US are so thoroughly integrated by computers, a zoo that is a small physical facility can have a major role.  For example, saving endangered species of a few reptiles and amphibians, including a toad in Yosemite, will be one mission of the Charles Paddock Zoo.  Saving toads does not require a large physical space.  Let others focus on the elephants.  Part of the pleasure of this zoo is its several highly unusual animals, such as Indo-Chinese tigers, red ruffed lemurs from Madagascar, and spider monkeys from South America.   Entrance fees are modest.  The zoo is a major destination for school groups.  As the current transformation of the zoo proceeds, the first new unit to be completed will be a section on endangered animals from Burma.  When driving between San Francisco and Los Angeles, especially with children, it is a recommended stop.