six week muffins and a quick trip to the bay

This past week I booked a last minute ticket home to the Bay Area. While my visit wasn’t under the most ideal of circumstances, it turned out to be a great week. In addition to spending some quality time with the ‘rents, I got to celebrate with Katie for her 22^nd birthday, watch Jill and the rest of Cal crew dominate Stanford and Wisconsin at the Lake Natoma invitational races in Sacramento and experience the infamous “Around the Clock” Happy Hour in Berkeley at the Bear’s Lair. My mom, who has perfected the art of taking a butter, cream and/or sugar-laden recipe and adjusting it to be more healthful and less caloric while still maintaining it’s flavor and integrity, shared with me an awesome muffin recipe that I will be very quickly adopting.

on eating meaty

This is Jake Dickson.

He’s Zoe’s boss over at Dickson’s Farmstand Meats in Chelsea Market, and a recent subject for a profile I’m writing for my food journalism class. I had a really wonderful time taking a tour of his store and becoming an enlightened meat consumer, and want to tell you guys about it. After recently reading Michael Pollen and looking into Jonathan Safron Foer’s new book, Eating Animals, I’ve been struggling with the ethics behind eating meat. Although we mostly eat vegetarian at this apartment, I really, really truly love eating meat. Jake took me back to the meat freezer and with the smell of the meat and the spices, all concentrated within a very small space, I was convinced that Heaven would be a freezer, and that I would be happy to spend eternity here, assuming I had a very warm jacket and means to actually eat all this meat. Anyway. I digress.