Most of the produce I mentioned above is still available. I asked someone when the citrus went away and she said: “Oh, around the time the apricots come. May, I guess.” – March 18th, 2015
*
I took an Uber from the Oakland airport when I arrived since I’d been told that’s how the locals did it. I was a little unsettled – my editor had agreed to let me come out here, but as of yet, I still didn’t know what I was going to write about. As we made our way up MLK Boulevard–named for the famed civil rights leader–I looked out the window and noticed the mad variety of miraculous color streaming by my window. “Pardon me,” I said to my driver, a dapper gentleman in his mid 60s. “What are those – those flashes of yellow, and purple… and that absolutely spectacular vermillion?”
The fellow waited until we stopped at a light, then regarded me warily in the rearview mirror. “Those are flowers,” he said.
In a low, driver’s baritone he began to speculate as to what kind, but I was really too astonished to listen. Flowers! In March? That seemed very unlikely.
Arriving at my charming rented Berkeley bungalow I found I was oddly warm in my long underwear, Smartwool socks and Pendleton shirt and found myself changing into some lighter clothing. I heard some chickens clucking and was struck dumb when I looked out the window and saw them pecking through grass on the other side of a bamboo fence on the neighbor’s lawn. Grass? At this time of year? And those pink things with the petals – was I supposed to understand those were also flowers?
Now don’t get me wrong. This was not the first time I had ever seen flowers. But the flowers I knew tended to grow one by one – solitarily, if you will – instead of in social, bountiful bunches. Also, if March was in like a lion, out like a lamb, we were still in the lion phase, thank you very much! The flowers I knew about wouldn’t be out for weeks or even months.
My phone rang. My editor. My heart sank, because I knew he wanted to hear column ideas and so far, I had none.
I ignored it and went outside. Sun sparkled on Priuses. I walked down the block, where more of that miraculous sunlight came in dappled spots through the leaves of some kind of tree that I had never seen before or even dreamed existed because up until this moment in my life, there were only two things I had ever seen or heard of – bagels and snow.
Every one on the block was grilling vegetables. A woman with long gray braids approached me, carrying an earthenware bowl of asparagus. “This is delicious,” I crowed.
She started to tell me how they grew asparagus not very far from here. “Hang on,” I said, “Let me go get a pen.”
After my new friend and I had talked for a while, she asked gravely if I wanted to go to the place where she’d found this asparagus. Trying to hide my excitement, I said I would like that very much.
We walked in silence for a while. As we walked, I thought of the way the sunshine reflected off the asparagus’ olive-oil slick surface. I smiled and made a note to re-watch Under The Tuscan Sun. I finally had the courage to ask where we were headed. “We are going to Hopkins Street off San Pablo Avenue,” she said in reverent tones and I nodded, silently mouthing to myself those lovely, mysterious words, “San Pablo Avenue.”
I can hardly describe what I beheld upon my arrival. It was a very large space, with some of the items in rows, and but a large part of it, the part that interested me most, was the part where there were just big giant bins and trays and bushels filled with fresh fruits and vegetables. “This is absolutely amazing!” I said to my friend. She told me that we were in something called “a well-stocked produce department at a specialty grocery store,” and that California grew a large percentage of the world’s fruits and vegetables, much of it not far from here, in a place called the San Joaquin Valley.
I started to mouth these words then gasped. I was beginning to put two and two together. “Wait a minute,” I said, “does the San Joaquin Valley have anything to do with San Pablo Avenue?” She ignored this, but I was pretty sure I was on to something.
Back in my rented house, I was still struggling to come up with ideas. I heated some frozen peas and put them on a paper plate with a pad of margarine on top of them. I wrote “disgusting” on an index card and set it by the plate. Then I made some fresh peas (from the San Joaquin Valley/San Pablo Ave.) and put them in an earthenware bowl with some fresh creamery butter on top, and set in front of these another index card reading “Fresh/wonderful.” I stared at my creations, sensing I was at the edge of something really big that I didn’t for the life of me know how to crack wide open.
Just then, I noticed a bright stripe of sunshine on the wooden floor, and an instant later, my phone rang. My editor again. This time I answered breathlessly. “I know what I want to write about,” I said. “I want to write about how California is sunny. I mean it is way way sunnier than New York. Like way.”
“Ha!” he shouted. “I knew you’d come up with something! Funny story – at lunch, a colleague mentioned to me offhandedly that New York and the Bay Area were at totally different latitudes. So we were both figuring this out together. That’s how it works, Mark.”
I was just opening my mouth to respond when I realized I was looking at the strangest thing I’d ever seen in all my life. “Bob,” I said, almost not trusting my own voice, “You’re not going to believe this, but there’s a lemon tree outside my window.”
He let out a low whistle. “Well, our readers will definitely want to hear about that,” he said. “Okay. I have to close out a story about people who make cakes out of sugar, butter, eggs, flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Keep me posted.”
Later on some of my new neighbors came over and we grilled a lot of vegetables. I explained to them how our bagels were better because of our water and they explained to me how in a year they were all going to die in a massive drought. I said if that did indeed come to pass I would come and rescue their beautiful tomatoes, and they all seemed very grateful.
When they left I saw a few of them casting shy glances at me. “Do you think we can have some of those lemons?” one finally piped up. I must have looked a little apprehensive, because they laughed and said, “Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Bittman. Even if we take some, they’ll grow back.” I wanted to say this sounded a little far-fetched to me, but then again, who after the day I’d had, who was I to doubt a miracle?
Tags: food, humor, mark bittman, sarah miller
Related Posts
David Brooks Writes a Sestina About Finding The Road to Character
Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Woman: My March Madness
David Brooks Writes a Sestina About Poverty
Realistic Recipes for Every Meal
A Trip to Cheddar Bay, by John Updike
Reasons I Would Make An Excellent Feudal Vassal And You Should Consider Me For The Position
Thank you.
A+ mockery and relevant to my interests — I will always show up for posts poking fun at America’s Top Paid Food Journalists.
This is actually how it feels to visit California from winter, though.
I’m going to San Francisco next week and just looking at the weather forecast in amazement. “Surely those can’t be real temperatures,” I say to myself as I sit here in fleece-lined leggings. “Surely it cannot be true!”
On the other hand, I have only ever visited SF in summer and am totally baffled as to why it is so cold. How can it be 85 degrees near Stanford but in the 60s in SF proper? It is July!
(Yes, I know it is casued by the Bay, but it is disconcerting.)
San Franciscans say “oh it’s the Bay,” but it’s really just that they’re too embarrassed to admit they haven’t been able to master the spells needed to lift the ancient shaman’s curse.
Some of the mammoth skulls with the curse poppets in them are buried in wetlands! We’d have to disturb the wetlands to get to them, and that would anger the Corps. You don’t want to anger the Corps. It’s better to live with the fog.
/seven twenty-somethings seek crowdfunding for their new de-cursing app
Ugh, SPOILERS! not everyone wants to know what’s coming up in Season 2 of Silicon Valley!
😉
when I went to San Francisco it was beautiful and sunny, and I, an ignorant european, assumed it was always like that. I told people how lovely the weather was “go! don’t even take a jacket! look at these natural highlights in my hair!”, and they all came back cold and damp and angry with me.
I know it. I make my mom tell me what’s blooming on her tiny apartment porch garden, starting around February, just so I don’t despair of sunshine and vegetable life. She may grow more things on that postage stamp of dirt (in the San Joaquin Valley, no less) before April than all of Boston grows all summer. Lemons and asparagus in March are wondrous miracles and I want to hear about them.
Also the produce. My first visit to a produce section after I moved to the East Coast was a sad, sad affair. Avocados like tiny little rocks. Limp, soggy lettuce. Just…you don’t know what you have, California. You don’t know what you have.
Ohhhh, I know exactly what I have, thank you. I remind myself of it every month when I write a check for 80% of my monthly take home pay for housing expenses.
I… I… think it’s worth it?
HAHAhaha*starts to sob violently* Every morning I look out at my tiny balcony and stare at the sunshine and wonder if this one bedroom apartment is worth the $2000 a month I pay for it…I still don’t know. But yes, produce in California is divine if you have access to it.
Yeah, I was gonna say, this is humor but this is also exactly how I feel walking around on a sunny day right now. The other day I heard an ice cream truck a few blocks over and almost cried.
That’s what I was going to say, too.
I live in Minnesota. I am currently visiting relatives in Miami.
DAMN STRAIGHT THAT’S HOW IT FEELS.
Edited: we just went to a place called the Fruit and Spice Park where exciting tropical fruit that I’d never heard of LITERALLY GROWS ON TREES. I was able to eat bananas and coconuts and rollinias (snotfruit?!) that had been growing on trees mere moments ago. WHAT IS THIS MAGIC. I NEED CAPSLOCK.
::looks outside at snow covering cars on the first fucking day of spring::
Tell me more. Tell me more, of this strange, glorious, sunny land. Does it overflow with fruit? Are…are there birds there?
I almost started openly sobbing at, “Sun sparkled on Priuses”. This winter is going to swallow us whole.
It’s snowing (again) at my house in the Boston ‘burbs and I am ready to burn it all down and move West.
The House Finch dudes are wearing bright bright red and singing about how they have the illest crib, the illest, ladies, come visit my crib. The sparrows are giving a single fuck about whether other sparrows in the flock are White-Crowned or Gold-Crowned. The Red-Winged Blackbirds and Acorn Woodpeckers are vocally working out their polyamory agreements. The kinglets are madly rushing around as flocks of finger-sized things and eating invisible things! The California Thrashers are occasionally visible in the undergrowth!
Yes! Just got to see some cormorants strutting their stuff in the Everglades. One dude was sitting on a branch puffing his throat out and fluffing his crest and spreading his shiny wings, and I imagined him going, “Hey, ladies. Heyyyyyyy, ladies. Come and get it, ladies.”
I saw my first daffodil in February, if that helps.
FRESH CREAMERY BUTTER
IS THERE ANYTHING MORE COMFORTING
The way you say that, it almost makes me want to live in a time and place where I’ll have no autonomy!
I hear the fats in fresh creamery butter are completely different from the fats in normal butter.
Agh I’m just hearing this in Leopold’s vice from Kate and Leopold.
EDIT MY GOD I just googled and you were quoting directly from the movie. Help me, it’s the end of the day Friday and time has stopped in this office…
Thank you. I loved this so much I read it twice.
Signed,
A neither-coaster who’s hometown has generally mild winters except for every 5th one or so and hot but not miserable summers, and more groundwater than we know what to do with.
Where is that??? I would like to go to there.
The greater Louisville area! It’s a real cool place.
How do you pronounce Louisville?
The English language doesn’t really have a letter to appropriately represent the vowel sounds in my pronunciation of Louisville, but its closest to Lullvull, I guess. But also kind of just Lllvll. If I’m talking to my northern OH in-laws, I’ll say “oh, when I say that I mean lew-ih-vull”one time, but that’s the least mush-mouthed I’ll go.
But are there mountains? And maybe a Very Large Body of Water?
Sincerely,
A West Coast Native Who is Genuinely Terrified of Being Landlocked
ps (Miles of flat land also make me hyperventilate.)
pps (Just a little.)
Well, none of the state is flat. The middle part has rolling hills (pretty steep ones, but not mountains), but the eastern part of the state is mountainous; that’s where the coal comes from. And the whole northern border is a really big river. That’ll take you straight on down to the Gulf of Mexico. There are also a ton of lakes lying around.
Tell me more about this mythical groundwater
Ok. So. in my area we have a saying “God willing and the creek don’t rise”. Well, the creek rose and rose, and doesn’t appear to be going anywhere any time soon. Stuff’s kinda flooded, but nothing crazy. Also, the grounds been real squishy for a while, so currently we’re at peak groundwater. I’ve never watered my lawn in the 5 years I’ve owned a home and it stays green til winter usually. Once about eight years ago we had a “drought” and it turned brown, but there wasn’t water rationing or anything. And that’s groundwater!
Awww I love Mark Bittman though, this is so funny but painful to read because it feels like a long mockery of my Dad.
If you need a recipe to be the best version of a recipe, with solid solid instructions for making said recipe and no measurement errors or unclear instructions, Mark Bittman is your guy.
Man, I was so into Mark Bittman when I first learned to cook (bean salads changed my life, at least between the hours of noon and 1pm) but he’s gotten so much more annoying over the years–the most insane thing I ever heard him say was that beans cooked from dry are light years better than canned beans (no) and that it’s totally no problem to basically always be cooking a giant vat of beans (NO) so it’s a no brainer to always eat dried bean instead of canned (NO NO NO).
That’s out of touch, but is it more insane than “Sugar is toxic”?
I just. . . he seems like a nice guy, Bittman, and he has plenty of good recipes, but like a few other much-book-dealed food writer dudes I can think of, he doesn’t do much to elevate or expand or even factcheck the national conversation about food. Let him do recipes! He doesn’t need a big old media platform to talk about how a tree grows in California!
Yeah, it seems most of his writing about food politics is fairly obvious and not that helpful, and his new diet-type book “VB6 Vegan Before 6” just sounds like someone’s dad who lost some weight got a book deal. But that’s kind of why I like Mark Bittman, he’s just everyone’s Dad. He should probably stay in his lane and stick to recipes, but Dads are famously bad at that.
Yeah, I’ve really stuck to the recipe writing and not the food thinkpieces. I can’t stand that stuff.
My husband has experimented with making cooking dried beans a few times, and it turns out they do taste significantly better, at least to me. They’re more flavorful, I think, instead of just serving as protein-ous texture?
They’re also a lot cheaper than cans (which are, admittedly, already really, really cheap) so that’s plus!
But you have to start the cooking hours and hours in advance of when you plan to use the beans, so we hardly ever do it. Mostly, we just use cans.
Nope, just Google dutch oven beans, you’re putting them in an oven for1.5 hours, tops, then it’s Bean City, baby.
I never soak them because I forget, and throw them in the slow cooker in the morning with salt, oregano, chili powder, and cumin and hit the 10 HOUR button. By the time I walk in the door at night I have a vat of super delicious perfect beans.
Hi Laura here. I’m a first-time-long-time calling in to BeanTalk. Anyway, Christopher Kimball told me that Goya canned beans are better than making your own, and I agree.
GOYA. They are the best. I’m particularly partial to their chickpeas.
And SO CHEAP.
I swear by the no-soak 90-minute baking method. It works like you wouldn’t believe.
I mean, I’m not turning my nose up at canned beans, but this is handy, too.
When I go to my hometown in Florida in the winter, I spend hours just sitting outside (I live in NJ now). No book, not doing anything, just sitting in the sun with my face turned up and my eyes closed. And then when I open my eyes, it takes a little while to get used to the green around me. I mean, it’s hard to be around my family and all, but darn it, the sun is worth it.
Also, I so frequently read things in the NYT where I’m all, “What now?” that it doesn’t even faze me. I should be fazed. It’s nice to hear my “What now?” validated. So, thanks!
Brilliant.
Monterey Market has been there for 40 years, Mark.
I can hardly wait for his post when he discovers that Chez Panisse is right down the hill from his Julia Morgan Bungalow.
“The area is, I discovered, generally referred to as the ‘Gourmet Ghetto’.”
The thing I didn’t understand was why he was like “Everyone loooves Berkeley Bowl, but I’ve been there exactly once.” Why the dig at Berkeley Bowl? Is this a holier-than-thou thing I don’t know about?
berkeley bowl is amazing and overwhelming and i don’t understand anyone saying it is overrated. they have 8 different kinds of yogurt pretzels in their bulk bins.
Once Joyce Carol Oates shopped there and got moldy strawberries and my produce from there is usually wonderful, so I choose to believe that the store exacts moral judgement on you and that the weak must shop elsewhere.
I might also believe that because it has a lot of things, and I often want to break down in the citrus aisle and weep from overstimulation.
I cackled when I read this. Literally cackled.
I have never read any of Mark Bittman’s journalism, but I have his cookbook “how to cook everything: the basics” and I’d really recommend it to somebody who wants to learn to cook, because it has really good explanations of different techniques, and teaches you how to play with recipes.
That said his “basic spice rack”, (the list of spices he says you should have at minimum, is ridiculously long and probably quite expensive). Ditto for kitchen equipment. Also the book is a massive glossy hardback.
Maybe just see if the library has it and photocopy some pages.
Yeah, people rightly give him shit about the stupid things he says, but How to Cook Everything is my most used cookbook by far because it matches how I actually cook. I’m not going to weigh out 12 ingredients and then carefully cook them each separately over the next hour and a half (hi Cooks Illustrated!), I want to get home, put some protein and vegetables and some grains together, vary the recipe around based on what I have and what I feel like eating, and have dinner on the table 45 minutes later. Half the time I just use his cookbook for information like “what liquid to grain ratio should I be using here?” or “how long and at what temperature does one cook a rice casserole?” more than his actual recipe.
You would probably also love the Well Fed cookbooks by Melissa Joulwan. I used to get very anxious about following recipes EXACTLY, but the style she uses has helped me invent some extremely tasty, fun meals that come together very quickly. The books get a liiiittle overly preachy on the whole paleo/whole30 thing, but there are mostly just excellent recipes for protein and veggies.
There’s a HTCE app (for your iDevice at least) that costs like 10 bucks, and it’s brilliant. I can type in whatever ingredient I have that I failed to use that week, and it’ll pump out simple recipes in which to use it. And I won’t be sent looking for some obscure spice only sold in a small Lithuanian hamlet untouched by modern man.
I follow a modified Chanel rule (TM) for cooking, which is “subtract at least 1 ingredient from every dumb overinvolved internet recipe,” but Bittman doesn’t have that problem. For that, I’m grateful at least.
Wow, that rule is true. I’d been doing that and not even realizing it.
This is a great rule and an expansion of my personal rule, “garnish is stupid”.
Also my life motto.
Ah, it’s more than 20 years since I moved back home to Oregon* but I still have fond memories of that store on Hopkins Street. Monterey Market, isn’t it? Gigantic bags of rice and all that dazzling produce. Reverent tones indeed.
* also sunny, plenty of flowers, no lemon trees but they don’t smell that great anyway.
Lemons don’t smell that great? You must be kidding….all citrus flowers have a heavy, amazing perfume; and the smell of ripe Meyers is wonderful!
It’s been six years since I left Oregon for California. It’s practically taboo to say, but I don’t think I can ever go back.
Oh good this is fun to read as I sit here expecting the 6 inches of snow we’re supposed to get on this lovely “first day of spring.”
i h8 u, california
I saw a hummingbird at school yesterday. Sorry about that.
Aw! Come for a visit! Birds are singing and butterflies have been out for a month now. Smells wonderful. Lot of room for you.
“C’mon over, the weather’s fine!”, we say, as we plow under thousands of acres of farmland in the worst dustbowl drought since the 20s.
(f’real, the water situation is *terrifying*)
(Sorry, did that sound awful and pedantic? It wasn’t meant to! I’m just…really scared for my state that I love very very much)
I’m scared too! I’m actually in favor of the aggressive billboards – I saw one the other day with a picture of sad children and the caption “our future is more important than your lawn”.
YES. That’s great. I have taken to turning my shower off when I soap because of the great guilt gnawing inside me.
I want to send this to my dad, because he LOVES Mark Bittman, but I know he would Not Get It.
Okay yes but this is literally how I reacted when I moved to California from the midwest at the onset of winter and saw flowers everywhere and LEMONS growing RIGHT ON TREES where anyone could just reach out and take them! California is a magical wonderland, where everything is slightly surreal and time doesn’t flow quite the same way.
Mark Bittman’s brain is going to melt out his ears when he learns Hawaii exists.
Bless his heart, no one tell him about Texas. The wildflowers started blooming here last month and this winter I had homegrown tomatoes through the middle of December.
But sadly, you are still in Texas!
I’ve lived in both, and trust me, it’s not the same. It’s warmer than NYC, for sure, but Texas has nowhere near the amount/variety of produce that California does. I was shocked to move to CA from what I thought of as farming country, and realize there was so much more farming in CA. Almost all the farmers’ markets are year round, and there’s yardlong beans, bittermelon, a million varieties of tomatoes, cherries that make you want to cry, melons I’d never heard of…it just goes on.
I love Mark Bittman’s cookbooks, but I’ll admit to dissolving into mocking laughter when I read his original piece. Especially the line “Back in the ’80s, I resented the existence of Meyer lemons”.
This just gets better each time I read it.
I clicked, I read, I lolled. Thanks for the Friday cheer.
“who after the day I’d had” –> “after the day I’d had”
The first time I visited Monterey Market, I found myself in the shroom aisle, gaping at them like they’d just fallen from Mars. But I was never resentful of their existence.
Easterners are so cute. *pat pat*
Yes! WHY is that column the top story on the Dining [now ‘Food’] page? Does the NYT think we are stupid? As stupid as its food columnists?
I hope he never comes back.
Love this. Maybe Mark Bittman will even write a big book about his California discoveries.
I honestly didn’t pick up on any sarcasm until I saw that the guy in the article was not the actual author.
I just thought that it must suck to live anywhere else but this forty mile strip of California and his amazement was totally justified as he experienced the promised land for the first time.
I went to Monterrey Market yesterday (I’m in Oakland and live 5 minute walk from the Saturday Lakeshore Farmer’s Market) just hoping to see Mr. Bittman and take a selfie. Alas, he wasn’t there but I did get some huge, juicy Medjool dates.
This is perfect. Although I caught myself thinking the very Berkeley thought, “Well, technically, Monterey Market is much closer to MLK or Gilman than to San Pablo Avenue,” but then I told myself to shut up.
I thought the original column was kind of cute. I felt the same kind of breathless amazement the first time I went there, and I grew up 30 miles away.
I just got back from a 10 day vacation in palm springs and this is 100% how I felt the entire time there. And then I returned to DC where it was 30 degrees this morning, and wept
Damn straight. We got a rice cooker as a wedding present and were like "what? How much rice can two people eat?"
It makes perfect legumes, every time. We make big batches and freeze them so when "what's for dinner?" time rolls around, the answer can be "lentils!" instead of "I don't know, order sandwiches?"
Or standing in long lines to get to the brunching bit.
I have been in California for 15 years and I still see lemon trees and expect to see ice-cream-cone trees right next to them. It's really weird.