This time it was all about the vomit

Owl vomit, to be precise, or regurgitated pellets if you want to get all technical.

When faced with the vastness of a museum, in this case San Francisco's Academy of Sciences, you never know what's going to tickle your -- or your children's -- fancy, especially when you are regular visitors.

This time the aquarium was too crowded, the rain forest seemed less than lush, the stuffed beasts in the Africa hall were more creepy than compelling. And we had to steer poor Ada away from the frustrations of finding that people are still playing the 'Watch Your Step!' game wrong.

But we found the perfect spot in the quiet of the education center where a delightful young man sat with an owl pellet ready for dissection. It was from a Barn Owl and featured an almost complete song bird skeleton, multiple scapulae, a number of small rodent skulls, tiny jawbones, radii, ulnae and more. It kept the children rapt for longer than anything that day.

An exemplary pull quote

Editors occasionally ask me to suggest pull quotes for my articles.  It's something I dislike doing -- isn't that a bit like asking visual artists to select only a part of a painting to put in a catalog, one wonders?  Well okay, it's not really.  But still, it's a job I'd prefer to leave to someone else.

The exercise, however, does make me appreciate the art behind a truly great pull quote.  Most of all, you have to know your audience.  What in the body of the piece you are excerpting, you have to ask yourself, will excite them most and be most likely to persuade them to read the entire thing?

Which brings me to a pull quote I came across this week that, to my mind, is just about perfect.  Here it is:

I watch my medlars getting fatter all summer, hoping the squirrels will keep their paws off until the fruit has just started to soften.

That's it.  Did it work for you?  Are you hooked?

Well, the author is culinary writer Nigel Slater.  The venue is The Garden, house magazine of the Royal Horticultural Society.  Obscure fruiting trees; summer; the pulse-quickening entrance of squirrels onto the scene: you can bet that single line had the magazine's entire readership anxious to read on. 

It's a great article, by the way (in the November 09 issue, but not available online).  It has me thinking that maybe a medlar is just what I need.

Beyond the bubbles, fish

Annual membership of the Monterey Bay Aquarium comes with a number of nifty perks. One is the chance to save a bundle on the admission price on only your second visit. Another is that you get admitted early on many weekends, and so have the place pretty much to yourselves for a good while.

My new favorite perk, though, is the chance to see the big tanks through a screen of bubbles, which gets turned off at the regular opening time.

This weekend we sat transfixed in front of the 54ft-long window into the Outer Bay exhibit (the largest such window in the world), watching the fish through this magical curtain of air.

Enough with the yogurt, Palo Alto (a parochial post)

Will someone do us poor Palo Altans a favor, please, and launch what I see as the city's most-needed startup -- a truly serious ice-cream store?

It's both embarrassing and annoying to those of us who stray occasionally to the North and East that, while other Bay Area cities are blessed by the attentions of an exciting new generation of ice cream entrepreneurs, all we get is yogurt, yogurt, and ever more yogurt.

Yes, Fraiche is great.  I also really like Culture, but as places to get excited about, these joints are junior league.   

Last week I was in Berkeley, home to several outstanding nouveaux creameries.  Take Ici, founded by the former pastry chef at Chez Panisse, where I tried the Persimmon Brandied Current and the Spiced Apple Cider Sherbert but came down in favor of the Creme Fraiche Hazelnut Praline. 

Just down the road is Tara's Organic, where the joke is that every other flavor is basil.  Even if that were actually true (which it almost was last time I visited the excellent Sketch on Berkeley's 4th Street), that would be a whole lot more interesting than the flavors our local yogurt emporia (Pumpkin Spice at Halloween, who'd have thought?!) are able to come up with.  

I'm not even asking for crazy flavors -- I can believe the Valley's not yet ready for Humphrey Slocombe's Mission district Boccalone proscuitto, balsamic caramel or hibiscus beet ice creams.  

But just something as old fashioned and unimprovably awesome as the unrivaled Fairfax Scoop would do.  This place has been doing the small batch, organic ingredient, classic-but-still-interesting flavor combination thing since 2001 and I think people are generally right when they say (as a great many who go there do) that it's simply the best ice cream store in the world.  

I'm not asking for anything new.  We can do better than Fraiche and Culture and even, bless them, Rick's Rather Rich, that's all.  

So VC's, get a lease on University, find a pastry chef, throw money at said chef.  I tell you, it'll be bigger than Google (at least to me and my kids).  

Hipster ties going fast!

California Avenue's Bargain Box charity shop is on a roll. After the fab thirties Erector Set they were selling the other week, the store is now offering a big collection of seemingly unworn vintage men's ties from the 1940's through 1960's. The cellphone pic I snapped does not do them justice. They are vibrant, over the top and utterly cool.

It's too bad they are being sold in Palo Alto, ground zero of tie-less culture. But guys, that means you have a chance to tap your inner Mad Man and get one before they run out!  I got me two.

The ties are a mere ten dollars each. Many are silk and have labels saying "made in San Francisco."  You just can't buy stuff like this new.  

A farm with an ocean view

Such is the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz, home also to the wonderful Life Lab educational center.  

Ada's second grade class got to visit today.  That's the Monterey Bay behind with the Santa Lucia Mountains rising above it.  The kids enjoyed the chickens, the apple juice pressing, the compost-temperature-taking and all-around eating of much produce fresh out of the ground.

I enjoyed the beautiful farm buildings and landscaping.

Plus the fruit trees.  Figs with the last of the year's crop:

Crisp Fuyu persimmons:

Even a huge avocado tree dripping with ripening fruits.

And let's not forget the lichens, including this bright fall beauty: