Walt at Random

I love stone fruit season, and we’re in the (early) middle of it right now.

Brook and Index cherries are mostly gone, but Bings are coming in. (Rainiers too, but local Rainiers rarely seem to be a good as those from Oregon/Washington.)

Apricots have been available for a few weeks, and really good for the last two weeks, but this week they’re just plain wonderful–especially an apparently-unknown variety that two Pleasanton farmers’ market vendors had (both, I think, from Stanislaus County, but they’re neither the Patterson nor the Modesto variety). We have a LOT of apricots at home now, and they will get eaten with great pleasure.

Pluots are still early–mostly FlavorRosa–but there should be many more varieties to come. Also some plumcots, peachcots, apriums and, maybe, the rare apricot/plum/peach combo.

Not to forget nectarines and peaches (esp. saturn/donut peaches)…

These are all fairly local (within 150-200 miles, and the apricots within 90 miles or so). mostly organic, all from farmers’ markets. It’s extremely rare to find supermarket apricots with the depth of flavor of good farmers’ market cots: I’m guessing that the varieties that ship and store well just aren’t as potent. (See tomatoes…)

I’m guessing that, no matter where you live, there’s a farmers’ market within 20-30 miles offering some really good local produce. Take advantage of it! [At least where we are, farmers’ market vendors have signs saying where they farm and have certification that it’s all California produce, with separate certification if they’re organic. Most also have “we grow what we sell” signs.]

[I did a thought experiment for what it would mean to “eat local”–everything grown/produced within, say, 150 miles. Here, of course, the Bay Area is unusually blessed. I’d have to give up coffee, chocolate, and pineapples, and that’s pretty much it. ]

This is the first in a possible series of OFPs, truly random posts related to life changes in later years. I won’t offer the expansion of the initialism just yet, but “get offa my lawn” might enter in…

The Early Days

My credentials as a Proper Northern California Coffee Drinker are pretty solid. I started buying coffee beans at Peet’s original Vine Street store (Berkeley) shortly after it opened in 1966–it wasn’t that far away from my Northside residence. One grinder, one Melitta porcelain cone, filters, and shazam: “pour over coffee.”

(I also drank a lot of coffee at Caffe Espresso just across from the north edge of the UC campus; I believe the place is gone. My introduction to Ronald Reagan’s regard for free speech and assembly came when I was on my way down to have some coffee and faced lots of people coming my way, then realized why: cops with batons held firmly between hands were shoving us along as martial law was declared. But that’s another story…)

I don’t believe I ever cared for Starbuck’s, which seemed like a Peet’s wannabe. I probably purchased Peet’s beans for 20 years or more… I even had my own blend (not on Peet’s menu; I purchased half-pound bags of different beans to make it).

The Middle Years

When we got married, we had two coffee grinders and two Melitta cones and carafes. And purchased our beans at Peet’s.

Later, though, I learned to like Kona coffee–except Peet’s (and knew that Peet’s denigrated Kona as being too weak). Finally figured out that I really wasn’t wild about what seemed like over-roasted coffee. Started buying beans elsewhere. Kona got to be too expensive and pure Kona too hard to find, and moved on to a range of coffees.

Much more recently–a few years ago–I moved from beans to ground coffee; not that I couldn’t detect a difference, but that the difference didn’t matter to me. (My wife mostly gave up coffee because it started giving her problems.) I usually purchased one of a group of good-quality ground coffees, either Costa Rica or Colombia or Tanzania Peaberry or possibly a Kauai coffee, always medium-roast, the way I liked it.

When I say “coffee” I mean black coffee, for what that’s worth.

Recently

For years, I had one cup of coffee with breakfast, and that was it–except when dining out or on a cruise.

More recently, I wanted a second cup of coffee as an afternoon pick-me-up. But for that, I didn’t feel like the whole pour-over route. I tried some instant coffees and found them acceptable as an alternative hot caffeinated beverage, not really coffee but OK.

And then…

Trader Joe’s 100% Colombian Instant Coffee. The only instant I’ve seen that’s from a single country rather than the usual “wherever we can get beans the cheapest” laundry list on instant-coffee labels. The label also claims that it tastes amazingly close to freshly brewed coffee. It’s not wildly expensive ($3.99 for a 3.5-oz. jar).

As an afternoon coffee it was great–much, much better than any instant I’d had before. It was, well, coffee.

Then one morning I didn’t feel like doing the pour-over ritual and instead made a cup of TJ’s. And liked it a lot–not as a coffee substitute but as coffee. I went back and forth between ground & this, and have now pretty much settled on the TJ. (I suspect I would be able to tell the difference between it and pour-over Colombian, if I could somehow make both to the same strength, but I doubt that I would care. I might try it some day: there’s 50+ filters sitting in the cupboard…)

Oh, when my wife does have half a cup of coffee, she likes the TJ’s instant just fine.

The bottle suggests a heaping teaspoon for a reasonably strong cup. I suspect if you’re a dark-roast devotee, that’s probably right. I use a scant teaspoon–actually about two-thirds in an 8oz. mug–which makes a good medium-body cup.

Conclusions?

If you love the coffee you drink, I wouldn’t suggest changing it for a minute.

But for some of you, this might be an interesting alternative. (I’ve noticed that some TJ cashiers make a point of saying how good the 100% Colombian Instant is, and they rarely talk up products.)

Or maybe I’m just getting old and my taste buds are shot. I can live with that.

Keurig? Not gonna happen…not in this household.

The next OFP, if and when it happens, will be very different–about audio and some surprises.

Look, I’ll be honest: For a variety of reasons, most nights I drink relatively inexpensive white wine (my system doesn’t get along well with red), mostly chardonnay. I get a lot of my wines from Trader Joe’s and Grocery Outlet, and a lot of those from Trader Joe’s are clearly produced by Bronco, the same company that produces Charles Shaw (“Two Buck Chuck” in California, “Three Buck Chuck” in less enlightened states–but it’s up to $2.49 in California now.) My wife keeps Purple Moon on hand as a reliable little wine; my most common repeat wine is Santa Barbara Landing. Both, based on UPC codes, are from Bronco. (Both cost $3.99 in California.)

But the last time I tried Charles Shaw, I wasn’t impressed. Oh, like most Bronco wines, it didn’t have the usual “cheap wine” flaws–it was cleanly made and entirely drinkable. But when compared to wines costing a mere $2 more…I was willing to spend the extra $2.

Then my favorite consumer magazine, the one you can’t quote in ads and that only runs in-house ads, did a “summer whites” review. And Charles Shaw’s 2011 chardonnay(which I hadn’t tried) was one of the eight Very Good wines, along with Bogle (which I like quite a bit when it’s on sale) and a few others, including a $23 Sonoma-Cutrer and a $29 Frank Family.

So I decided to give it another shot. I had the usual two glasses with dinner last night; my wife had enough of a taste to suit her. I’ll have most of the rest this evening.

And, well, compared to $3.99 and $4.99 chardonnays, and even $5 to $7 chardonnays (on sale)…I think 2.5-buck Chuck is a little overpriced for what it is. It was clean but harsh, and really not very interesting.

So what is it about 2.5-buck Chuck that I’m missing? Yes, I know, it got a Double Gold at one commercial wine tasting, and it’s beaten some Napa chards in tastings. (I’m not a great fan of Napa chards, by the way–even if I was willing to spend $15-$25, I find Sonoma, Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez, Monterey, Mendocino and Lake County wines all more interesting, at least for real-world prices. That’s me.) But I just don’t get it.

My wife loves fresh fruit, even more than I do, but a lot of it doesn’t love her: She can’t cope with apples or citrus, just for example. And we’re generally not thrilled about buying fruit from thousands of miles away, If possible, especially for the “dirty dozen,” we’d really prefer organic. I’m really not fond of apples, and I’m deathly allergic to bananas.

We both get pretty tired of pears at some point, and kiwis only go so far. I thoroughly enjoy navel orange season–I’ll have one a day during the whole season–but that’s been gone for a while.

So for both of us, June/July (sometimes a little earlier) is a special time:

Stone fruit season!

When the farmers’ markets we go to are filled with competitively-priced fruit that both of us enjoy, some organic, some no-spray (but not certified organic), some conventional.

We’re in the heart of it now. And we’re loving it.

• Brooks cherries showed up early this year, and they were pretty good, but…
• Bing cherries are plentiful and absolutely first-rate at this point; Rainiers are here, and some of them are first-rate, but they seem to bruise awfully easily. (In both cases, we’re paying $4/pound for low-spray, $5 for organic; unfortunately, the best cherries at this point aren’t the organic ones.)
• Peachcots. Peachcots. Peachcots. Did I mention this cross between peaches and apricots? Two years ago, one vendor had them for two weeks. This year, two vendors have them (but the one we used two years ago has the best ones), and for two or three weeks. They are wonderful. Just plain wonderful.
• Oh, and as with all the other store fruit (except cherries), $2/pound seems to be the running number for conventional and pesticide-free, $3/pound for organic. (There’s one oddball vendor who lowballs everything–$1.50/pound for apricots, for example–but the produce and the vendor are both a little questionable.)
• Apricots are very good at this point. Apriums are OK.
• Pluots are all over the place, as usual–some superb, some good, some still a little tart. There are so many varieties of pluot (and plumcot) at this point!
• And two vendors are selling peach/apricot/plum hybrids, also very good. But not as good as the peachcots.
• When these start to fade away, we should still have some time with peaches and nectarines. We buy a few of them now, but focus on the shorter-season fruit.
• Yes, I’ll probably buy Washington/Oregon cherries in a few weeks when the local season’s through, but there’s something special about local produce. (“Local” typically means within 100-150 miles, which around here covers a lot of orchards, mostly around where I grew up.)

I’ve been reading about farmers’ market produce being so much more expensive than grocery store produce. That hasn’t been our experience, by and large–but we’d probably pay the difference anyway.

I just love reading the local wine critic’s admiration for those daring, forward-looking, inspiring wine directors in local restaurants, and restaurateurs in general, who:

• Don’t have any Chardonnay or Cab on their winelist because, you know, that’s so boring.
• In California, explicitly don’t have any California wines on their winelist because, you know, that’s so boring.

I really wish that such restaurants would have little notices saying that they despise California wines, so that I could be aware of their forward-looking nature before spending my cash there.

Odd how restaurants are always praised for locavore tendencies–sourcing the food as close to the restaurant as possible–but equally seem to be praised for their one-finger salutes to a vibrant, incredibly varied wine industry by saying local just isn’t good enough for their golden palates.

In case the above wasn’t clear enough: I won’t knowingly dine at a California restaurant–that has a wine list, that is–that makes a point of shunning California wines.

I wonder: Are there high-end restaurants in France that pointedly reject French wines? Are there famed restaurants in Italy that will have nothing to do with Italian wines?

I’m guessing not. I could be wrong.

It would be one thing if California simply didn’t make any world-class wines, or didn’t make anything but overoaked Chardonnay and high-alcohol Cab. Those are such caricatures of the diversity of what’s made here that a wine director believing them should be sent to direct wine traffic at a liquor store, not in a restaurant. (I don’t say “supermarket” because, in the Bay Area at least, many supermarkets have excellent wine collections. I’m thinking of the small traditional liquor stores that have astonishingly poor wine selections, probably because they know their clientele.)

When I travel out of state, I’ll make some effort to try the local wine, since every state has at least one bonded winery (although not every state grows wine grapes). Many states have some good or excellent wines, even if you leave out Washington, Oregon, New York and Texas, all of whom have first-rate wines by any standard.

I think a Texas restaurant gets extra points for seeking out a few of the first-rate Texas wines to serve. Ditto for New York. Ditto for Virginia. Ditto for states with more than a handful of wineries turning out quality products, although those may be fewer and harder to find. At the other extreme, I’d find it odd for a Washington or Oregon restaurant in the white tablecloth category not to have some of the state’s wines.

But in California? To explicitly exclude the state’s own wines? Sorry, but I’ll take my food dollars elsewhere.

Reading an article in the local weekly about Wal-Mart’s attempt to open a supermarket in a neighboring city, noted some comments about “local” markets, which Wal-Mart is anything but.

The interesting note in those comments is that, after citing a couple of true locally-owned groceries (the kind with one to ten stores in a small area), the article noted that Safeway is in fact “local” since the headquarters are in Pleasanton–the neighboring city in question.

That got me wondering about the other places we might use as supermarkets or grocery stores.

• Lucky, the only one in walking distance, I already knew: It’s part of Save Mart, and Save Mart is headquartered in Modesto, CA, my home down, about 75 miles from here.
• Trader Joe’s is headquartered in Southern California–but it’s owned by a German family.
• Our only other real option is Nob Hill, which is part of Raley’s…which is headquartered in Placerville, probably 90-120 miles from here.

I suppose there’s Target (their food prices are awfully good), and that’s headquartered in Minneapolis. There’s Whole Foods, headquartered in Austin, TX, but even if there was one around here (there isn’t), we couldn’t afford it.

Interesting. Every place we’re likely to buy most groceries is headquartered in California–and, to be sure, we buy most produce at local farmer’s markets.

No deeper significance. I know supermarkets are typically regional: That’s why Consumer Reports food reports include store brands from stores I’ve never heard of, but never Safeway store brands.

One of the few things unfortunate about going to ALA Annual in New Orleans is that it meant four days without this year’s crop of stone fruit–a crop that’s generally been unusually good.

How good? Last year, there were no Bing cherries at all from local orchards. This year, the Bings are first-rate–and the Brooks cherries aren’t far behind.

New pluot varieties keep popping up, and some of this years’ (such as Flavorosa) are wonderful. Ditto the Modesto apricots, not all that much less glorious than Blenheims.

And then there are peachcots.

Peachcots? We’d never heard of them until a year or two ago. At this point, precisely one vendor at one of the two Farmers’ Markets we go to has them–and for all of one week. We got ours last week. We probably won’t get any more. This is sad.

You can guess the cross from the name: A cross between peach and apricot. What you can’t guess is either the look or the taste.

The look? Smooth skin like an apricot, size larger than most apricots but smaller than most peaches…and color like an apricot with red tinges that’s been rendered using oversaturated artificial colors. An apricot the way Andy Warhol might paint one, or perhaps what you’d get taking a picture of an apricot using high dynamic range filtering.

The taste…heaven. Just plain heaven. Very strong apricot flavor, some peach flavor, almost sweet enough to be candy, with a great texture. As with most apricots, it’s a freestone fruit, which makes cutting and serving easy.

I just finished off lunch with two apricots, ten cherries and a peachcot. The apricots were excellent. The cherries were better. The peachcot…well, it was in a category all its own. I’ll miss them.

Followup, July 8: To our considerable surprise and pleasure, the same booth had peachcots again yesterday. So it will be another week before I start missing them…

Late spring, that is, as in:

Farmer’s market today: Organic apricots, white peaches. (Also cherries, but not yet Bings or Rainiers).

In other words,

It’s stone fruit season!

I took part in an odd exchange a couple of days ago on Facebook; I won’t link to it because it was truly trivial. But it did make me think…

The exchange had to do with one person saying they could stop worrying and let the natural expansion that comes with age take place–in other words, pudge out at least a little.

I offered a snarky comeback (knowing the person was a lot younger than I am) noting that I’m 65 and prefer not to allow “natural expansion”: how old did I need to be before weight no longer mattered?

The person responded with their actual age. And another person, just a couple years younger than I am, offered a comment saying that they no longer cared what others thought about how they look or what they weigh.

In all cases, I’m paraphrasing, possibly badly, but I’m also not naming names or offering links. Both of the others involved are good people, and I have no quarrel with either of them.

Not just for others

I do pay reasonable attention to my weight–which is currently, and has been for a couple of years, within two pounds of 160 at any given point, one way or the other. (I’m roughly 5’10”; I was 5’11”, but have shrunk a little, which does seem to be a common consequence of aging.)

Reasonable attention? Only this: I have dessert frequently and eat as much as I want to. If my weight started creeping up past 162 for more than a day or two (or for more than two weeks after a vacation or other trip), I’d probably cut back…just a little. (If my weight started falling below 158, I’d wonder if anything else was going on. Below 155, I start losing energy reserves.)

Although I’m sure my wife wouldn’t be happy if I started “natural expansion” back to the 165-170 I weighed for years or beyond that (175 appears to be my BMI touchstone–that is, above 175 and I’d be in the slightly-overweight category), that’s not my primary reason for staying at a good weight.

My primary reason boils down to wanting to be healthy, active, and ideally still free of prescription drugs when I’m 85, and with luck when I’m 90.

I know I’m lucky: Genetics has a lot to do with all these things. I also suspect that being able to walk far enough, briskly enough and with no assistance when you’re truly getting on in years has much to do not only with how much weight you’re carrying around but with whether you were walking a lot in earlier years. And I’m reasonably convinced that, all else being equal, maintaining a reasonable weight will serve me well in the long run in other ways.

No, I’m not a health nut. I do try to eat at least 2-5 servings of fruit & vegetables every day (but don’t do nearly as well as I should), but I’m also an omnivore, eating meat with some frequency. Bacon? Oh yes, from time to time. Cheeseburgers (well, bacon cheeseburgers)? Not often–maybe once a month–but oh yes. (Fast food burgers? Not so much: I avoid fast food in general, partly as a matter of taste, partly because I think the calorie/enjoyment/nutrition/taste balance is better elsewhere.) Alcohol? Wine pretty much every day with dinner and, very infrequently, with lunch…and that’s about it.  I suppose I’m really lucky in that I lost any taste for soft drinks decades ago. Candy? Similar to fast food: most of it just doesn’t taste all that good any more; I’ll take a handful of my dried fruit mix (five flavors of cranberries, two varieties of dried cherry, maybe a mix of other dried fruit) over most any candy any time. (Exception: Trader Joe’s 72% Dark Chocolate bars, but I rarely even eat those, and savor one-quarter bar at a time instead of chomping through the whole thing.)

(Supplements? Plain old senior vitamin pill, calcium citrate ‘cuz I’m lactose-intolerant so don’t drink milk, fish oil ‘cuz I don’t eat enough fish, and a half-dose glucosamine/chondroitin tablet because, while it might well be a placebo, taking it seems to keep away the shoulder pain I had at one point, and it appears to be a cheap and harmless placebo if it is that.) [As to the lactose intolerance, which is probably a lot more common among adults, even those of Northern European stock, than people think–if you’re passing gas all the time, that could be one reason–while I don’t drink milk, I do eat things containing dairy: lactase tablets as needed to the rescue.]

As far as I can tell, I’m not denying myself anything that I want. I am making a point to stay active, between the weekly 5 to 7-mile hikes and the 6x/week 1.5-mile “walks around the block” and, of course, walking for errands when that makes sense. I do try to avoid eating as an idle activity, snacking for the sake of snacking, and that turns out to be easy once it’s habitual: you’re not avoiding anything.

I’m not suggesting how others should live. There are lots of reasons for being a given weight, many of them not under personal control (I’m guessing), and I respect other people’s situations.

Incidentally, there are also lots of reasons some people are perhaps thinner than you might consider normal, and in many cases the reasons have nothing to do with vanity or with trying to feel superior. I can assure you that some underweight people would rather not be that way. It’s as offensive to sneer at people who are thin as it is offensive to sneer at people who are fat or fatter than you consider ideal.

I am saying that, for me at least–and, I think, for quite a few others–maintaining a given weight is for ourselves, not for how we look to others.