Buckets on Shattuck 

strawberry prices I'd like to see in Madison 

looking out from Chez Panisse: a saffron gate or the Golden Gate?

Chez Panisse: Quinault River Steelhead baked in the wood oven with braised cabbage and Meyer lemon 

From Cody's, looking out on Berkeley hills 

In California: wet and ch-ch-ch-chilly

Why "Newark" (the place of my overnights)? Perhaps it is named thus because the immigrants from the east, as always, felt a lack of imagination when naming the new promised land and so they brought with them names of places they remembered with great nostalgia.

Perhaps not.

I am in the middle of Silicon Valley so my cabbie told me last night. My kind hosts -- let me call them Mary and Tom (for one thing, these are their names), are techie-bio-sciencie-engineering types. For once I thought blogging would be a breeze.Not so. Here in Silicon-valley-land (if that is where I am) the phone lines have too little juice to push forward a single post. I could publish from a tiny village in Umbria, from the hilly heights of Ravello, from the mountains of Nagano, from the desert of Arizona, but in Silicon Valley I am stumped.

Not to worry. Today I head out of the valley and into the Bay area with computer in hand.

(P.S. I can already tell what sentence I am likely to hear again and again on this trip: "it's never this wet and cold in mid-February, never!" Maybe this whole sunny California thing is a myth. Maybe they actually have terrible weather here this time of the year but they never admit it to those of us in the upper Midwest who struggle with surviving winter.)

(P.P.S. The triple posting from last night -- now corrected and removed -- is an indication of how my partnership with blogger has worked thus far out here on the west coast. Please be patient with any or all posting errors. It's going to be a challenge to get this right.)

In California: wet and warm-ish

I think my computer has a dependency problem. In Denver, it begged to be removed from the case, lovingly to be touched at the Wi-Fi points (basically the airport is one big internet café), then, again, as I arrived in Newark (yes, the odd thing is that I am staying in Newark, California), out it came and dialed itself up to life.

Would it be odd to visit with my mother in Berkeley tomorrow and blog at the same time, given that she does not know about blogs? And how about at lunch time, if I get inspired to comment on the food?

California – it’s a forward looking state, isn’t it? A blogger should feel right at home.

Word of my new love spreads as closet aficionados come forth and admit to their own sinful passion

No sooner had I posted my affection for the martini and suddenly my narrow world of wines and kir royals appears sheltered and small. I find that there is a bigger planet where gin and vermouth lovers mix and mingle. Only they never talk about it. Until this week.

Now that I am one of them, the door has opened and I feel included. This week I found myself a guest of a skilled martini mixer. Noting this in a blog post caught the attention of a friend, who thus far had talked only of an occasional indulgence into the world of wine. Suddenly he and his wife are issuing invitations to their (secret?) happy hour. The featured drink? A classic martini. I hadn’t heard from them for months and here I am, at once someone to include on a post-work gin and vermouth fest.

My own cabinet remains woefully inadequate for the preparation of anything that require something more than a corkscrew. Still, I am enjoying the discovery of this other world of cone-shaped glasses and submerged olives. In a month such as February, these are heavenly adventures indeed.

[Forgive the somewhat air-born tone of this post. I am currently onboard a flight out west.]

California, work your magic!

I am glad that I am flying west tonight.

What a week. After a totally humiliating Friday morning, a sad Sunday afternoon, a sadder Monday afternoon, a stressful Tuesday, an even more stressful Wednesday, I come home to this:

great, I'm being sued for being absent-minded

Yes, law profs can get sued! Yes it was my fault! (Did I know that those envelopes from said business had contained a bill? No I did not. I threw them away thinking they were yet again trying to solicit my business. Is that a good defense? No it is not. )

I sat by the clock this morning waiting until the magic hour appeared on its face (8:00 am) so that I could call said business, complete the payment that very second, expunge this horror from my kitchen counter and attempt to regain my internal sense of Being In Control Of Things.

Still, the weeks have got to improve! Honestly, I am not usually so in need of comfort foods and martinis late in the evening. But it's nice to know they're there. For the days that sometimes just appear too turbulent to be real.

Local talent recognized among bloggers in academe (and beyond)

Because we are one day after a big-time dog show and a few days short of the Oscars, I thought I’d sneak in my own little awards ceremony. Here’s to you, guys:

Best blogger residence where you can simultaneously 1. blog 2. eat 3. watch DVDs 4. doze off and no one will notice: Althouse, hands down. Others may come close on 1, 2 and 4, but the entire package belongs to her.

Best martini with almond-stuffed olives server, and best betting bandit in town: Bozzo (why bandit? he ran off with my chance at a Trotter dinner! read about it here)

yum 

Best advice giver, in the style of the now defunct Dear Abbey: Brito (paraphrased: if there is going to be an uneven exchange in gift giving, he should be the one paying the larger sum; unfair? who cares! Since I am, for once, on the benefiting side of the gender dichotomy, I’m fully in support of this advice.)

Best self-promotion effort: Freese (I’m not even going to post photos of the billboards around town that have gone up, seemingly overnight)

...almost wrecked my own car trying to take this photo while driving behind... 

Best alias retention by a “pretend-anonymous” blogger, long after everyone in the world knows who he is: "Oscar"

Best stick-to-the-law blogger, also reporter on topics I cannot possibly fathom given my miniscule knowledge of corporate law (prize awarded in spite of his effort to appease me with a post on cheese today): Smith

Hey law prof, have you spoken to a lawyer lately?

An interesting aspect of teaching law is that you can go a long time without actually speaking to a client or lawyer. Decades perhaps. This is, I think, unique to our profession. It would be unthinkable for medical profs to have zippo contact with a sick person or a practicing doctor, or for art profs to never encounter artists or pick up a paint brush, or to have music profs who would not be able to play the piano or some such instrument. But we do not need to know how to practice law – we simply have to know how to teach it. Whether you have any contact with the legal profession is entirely up to you.

Since my entry into the Law School was through the doors of practice (I directed a clinical program where we provided legal services to indigent people in the community), I am one of those who misses contact with my *other colleagues,* the practitioners in my field. I was, therefore, happy to spend an evening yesterday with a group of lawyers who are guest lecturing at the Law School this week.

As I listened to stories of bizarre clients doing awful things to each other, I though about how much I missed the days when I was part of that world. I thought back to my days in the courtroom and those minutes before your case is called, when you are making idle conversation with clients who are desperate, nervous, and angry. I missed it, but only for a minute.

Now that I have had my moment of nostalgia, I am happy to spin around and say – whew! Sure glad I’m not in the thick of it anymore. It’s a tense world out there, beyond the safe halls on Bascom hill.

Resolved: after a lifetime of distractions, I have decided to settle down. I have whittled my interests down to a handful; everything else is tabled.

Why this resolution? Because this week I am being reminded of a crazy year I had not too long ago. This year, things will be different: I am determined to stick with one large project. And just a wee handful of little ones.

A couple of years ago I got it into my head that I should try a different kind of hobby. I was then cooking several nights each week at l’Etoile and I developed a true interest in the small farms and wineries that stocked the shelves of the restaurant.

Wouldn’t anyone in my place decide to set up a nonprofit and advertise on the Net their services for taking small groups to France on an exploration of wineries, cheesemakers, distilleries and the like?

I did. Field to Table was born, with a staff of one – me. I was the trip planner, the driver, the idea person and the accountant. I even wrote out all sorts of legal disclaimers to preclude gross liability in case I messed up. Not that it would have helped.

In the end, I made three trips to France (Provence, Alsasce and Brittany) before I understood that my life was spinning out of control and I had to put a stop to some of my extracurriculars. Ceasing parenting responsibilities wasn’t an option and I like my law teaching job just fine. Field to Table closed doors after a mad year of trekking through vineyards, farmlands and some damn good country inn-cooking places on the continent.

But nothing really ends. One cheerful group that traveled with me to Provence remained quite bonded. Indeed, the trip, which could have ended with us killing each other in the cramped little minivan that I drove along obsolete and hilly backroads, actually resulted in lifelong friendships. I’m going to spend a long week-end with one of the Provence couples that lives in the Bay Area (family obligations require that I pop into Berkeley for a bit this month). They’re foodies, both of them and so postings about Things That You Eat will be part of Ocean fare once more.

Of course, having left New York in a total rain shower, having arrived in Madison to a drizzle, I am this week heading out to downpours in the SF area. Could someone pull some strings and help get rid of the clouds that are hovering over my days right now?

Field to Table memories: if it's Tuesday, it must be Aix... 

The aesthetic pleasure of noise, clutter and discomfort

Those of us who love coffee shops have a habit of groaning about how inadequate they are in New York. You get to the point where you are willing to buy stock in Starbucks just so that there would be more of them in the city and, even more importantly, that they would be larger, so that you could indeed count on sitting down to drink your coffee.

But it is not to be. In NY, my latte addiction either has to be treated at home (though drinking it in private is like downing shots of vodka in the bathroom; these are activities that demand companionship, or at least a murmur of voices in the background), or it has to be a commodity purchased on the run.

I wish I had taken photos of all the people I'd seen drinking their espressos while biking, roller-blading, walking.

In Madison, the problem is of a different kind. Oh there are Starbucks alright. And Ancoras and Victors and Steep and Brews, plus a host of newish babies on State Street. Many are large. Did anyone else think we were getting a Taco Palace of some sort when the new Starbucks went up on University?

Inside, our coffee shops are just too comfortable for words. We have plush chairs, tables, Wi-Fi, we have fireplaces, and newspapers loosely scattered. There are always a few people, but not so many that you could not get a seat at a table.

So why is it that sometimes I think back nostalgically to the inadequate coffee scene in New York? That I smile when I recall my impatience on Sunday as I stood with my paper cup, waiting for the oblivious idiot to get up and gather his trash from the dirty table, so that I could grab his chair and rest for a minute?