Author: Eric Kauschen

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Another San Francisco Treat…Red Vines

Well they aren’t really made in San Francisco, but as I was looking over the ingredients in a bag of Red Vines last night I found they were made in Union City, CA which is in the Bay Area. Out here in the West when you say licorice, everyone thinks Red Vines. As a kid like the rest of us we’d go to the corner liquor store and they’d always tub of them on the counter. When we’d go to the movies, we’d always get a box of Red Vines. I never realized we did it because that was our licorice.

The funniest part is that when I looked at the calories on the bag per two twists I can’t believe never got totally obese eating a whole box as a kid. I do remember having the black Big Twists a few times [my grandmother believe only black licorice was real licorice] and occasionally I might find the Grape Vines, but on visiting the Red Vines site I found that they also make Cherry Vines and Strawberry Vines which I think I remember trying once or twice, but they also made Spearmint Twists, Choco Twists [I remember trying those and I’m glad they pulled them].

They were originally made by the American Licorice Company in Chicago [which is now out here in Union City as well] and set up their West Coast division in 1925 and it’s been there ever since using old school ingredients and none of the chemical garbage you find in your candy today. One of the funny things is that Red Vines after opening here in 1925 actually made a pair of licorice shoes for Charlie Chaplin to wear and eat in his movie Gold Rush.

When I first moved out of the house I sort of went back to my childhood. I was shopping at Costco one day and noticed a big tub just like all the little liquor stores used to have on the counter. I had to get it as a house snack. Oddly enough when friends would come over, no matter what age they would see it, laugh at me then dig into it and sometimes had to be pulled away. I always liked the tubs because they stayed fresher that way. If you cut a bag open and didn’t finish it in a week it became the candy equivalent of civil war hard tack. This has always been my favorite non-chocolate candy, so much so that I’m munching on some twists now as we speak.

My wife and I always have a bag around in our snack basket in our living room. I’m thinking next time we’re at Costco we buy a tub. It’ll keep them fresher and keep from me getting whiplash when I have to bite into a dried out one. Now how many of you remember biting off both ends and using it to drink a coke as a kid? I can remember a few restaurants from years ago that used to serve their cokes to kids that way.

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Hostess Goes Down…

Everyone seems to be up in arms that Hostess is shutting down. People are ambushing stores grabbing every last twinkie, ho-ho and ding dong. I say good, because all of the people doing this are over 20 and probably haven’t had one in ages. If you’re under 20 then fine, eat as much as you want, but once you pass 20 all the chemical food product in them will kill you. In case you didn’t know the original twinkie creme was whipped lard and sugar only to be replaced in some cases by hydrogenated oil and sugar [that’s what the vegetable/animal shortening is].

Please people, eat all you want and all you can because when you’re dead there’ll be more job openings in the market. If I want something sweet I’ll bake a cake [usually from scratch] or grab a 70% cacao chocolate bar or if I’m cheap I’ll just grab a plain Hershey’s dark chocolate bar. Not exactly the most healthy, but it’s better than the hostess junk. I’m surprised Michelle Obama hasn’t jumped all over this one. I think the only people who have been regularly eating all the sugary, lard filled Hostess snacks you will normally find at WalMart.

As if twinkies weren’t bad enough there are actual people at county fairs who are deep frying them and serving them up. I have to say a part of me wants to try one, but I’ve already got a bit of hypertension and cholesterol problems so I think I’ll have to stay away from them. This is what everyone is focusing on is the snacks, but there are other things that we will lose with Hostess going out of business.

Dolly Madison, Columbo, Home Pride, Parisian, Toscana and Wonder Bread are all owned by Hostess and three mentioned here are big French bread makers. At least in San Francisco we’ll still have Boudin, La Brea and a few other smaller French bread makers to fill the void. There’s more companies than this, but I just listed the ones that Bay Area people would recognize.

Don’t believe the hype though that it was caused by the strike. They filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and came back [barely] and have bleeding money every since. So this year they decided to triple the CEO’s salary. I think that’s more reason for them to go bankrupt than a few little strikes.

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Muni…’Nuff Said

I haven’t really had to ride Muni much in over three years. In the past three years most of my jobs have been work from home or drive from home jobs, so aside from the rare occurrence I apparently have been lucky. I used to hop on the 48 Quintara which is the only reliable bus in the city, get off at West Portal and hop on any metro train to go downtown. Sure there were a few grumpy faces, but for the most part all was good.

Well things have changed. Now things are fine until you get off somewhere downtown and getting out of the station is like running the gauntlet. I’ve heard about people being shot in the stations, one guy was stabbed in the head, then there is the crazy women who walks around in a heavy coat talking to no one who is interested in listening to her yell things like, I know why we have an AIDS crisis and nobody else does. It’s because we have people f*cking in the mouth! Nice morning commentary Gretchen Carlson.

If you’re traveling on the cheap to San Francisco you don’t rent a car you take the bus everywhere. When I took a trip to London I didn’t rent a car, I took the metro and it was pleasant. Did you know they have ice cream dispensers in most of the tube stops? When I was in NY, pre clean up, the trains while having a few shifty looking characters on them ignored you if you ignored them. We like to show everyone that we’re at the forefront, so why can’t we with Muni?

If you need to get anywhere fast you take the metro. From the Sunset District if you try and take a bus downtown you will definitely take twice as long as the metro and your entire ride will be accompanied by eau de urine. This is what we don’t want the visiting tourists to see. People not of San Francisco like to call us smug, but how can we be smug when our public transportation sucks so bad?

OK, we’ve got the cable cars and F line. Those are more kitschy tourist attractions than something very many people use to get to work and they run on their own tracks. We have new metro cars, but our buses haven’t changed much over the years. We had a few testing free wifi, but I haven’t seen those in about five years. The metro when it goes underground needs cell and wifi service. San Francisco needs to move forward, not at a standstill or move backwards. We are one of the top tourist cities in the world, but how many people come back more than once that aren’t driving? Also shouldn’t we make it safe for those of use who have to commute to work? Muni needs a major overhaul and it needs it now.

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Greek Yogurt

I’ve been hearing Greek yogurt mentioned all over the place, but no one goes into detail about what’s so popular about it. My wife and I were out shopping yesterday and she said, I’ve got a coupon for some Greek yogurt so I figure I’d try it and see. To most guys yogurt is chick food. I think because of Jaime Lee Curtis and all those Activa ads about how it makes her go to the bathroom easier. I never felt that way and used to eat yogurt a lot so I figured I’d give it a try.

Wow, I was in for a surprise. It’s thick, really thick like sour cream thick. Mine was fruit flavored which I learned later that it’s better to get the plain and add your own stuff to it. It was 100 calories, Og fat and 10g protein. I actually felt kind of full after eating the 6oz cup of the stuff. It had a tang to it, but the consistency of pudding. I’ve been losing weight lately and I need to pack on more protein and this is a good way to do it. You can add maple syrup and nuts to it, coconut, berries whatever if you like it sweet, but for the tanginess you can also use it to replace sour cream or mayonnaise.

It’s a very versatile substance that can adapt itself to sweet or savory dishes and save you some calories and lower your fat intake. Just to get an idea of what you can do with it Chiobani and Fage have recipe pages that give you some ideas to get you started. It also has probiotic cultures in it so if you’ve been taking antibiotics, have gut troubles or are like Jaime Lee Curtis it’ll help you out there too. Apparently Greek yogurt is such a buzz word these days that even Ben and Jerry have made a frozen yogurt using it. Our own Straus Creamery in Petaluma has also gotten on the bandwagon as well [which incidentally if you want to taste what whole milk used to taste like not to far from the farm you should try theirs].

While it seems like the new superfood you have to watch the labeling. There are some companies [neither of the two mentioned above] that are trying to skirt around the definition by putting additives in it. Give it a try, but buy the plain and play around with it. I think you’ll like it.

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I Miss The Independent Grocers

I’ve been frustrated a bit lately when I’m out shopping. Mostly because the people who work in the chain grocery stores don’t really care about what they’re selling, but about their meager paycheck that they get each week. When I can’t find something and ask one of the stockers they usually don’t know what I’m talking about. It didn’t used to be like this and I do kind of miss the old days.

I’ve been cutting back on my salt and realized that malt vinegar on a baked potato or fries didn’t make me feel a need for salt. So I’m in a store and couldn’t find it and asked a stocker where their malt vinegar was. She scratched her head because she didn’t know what it was. If I asked her where the Prid nam plah [Thai fish sauce] she would have been able to show me in a second where it was. I guess at that particular grocery store which caters to mostly Asians they don’t have to think about anything else.

We were shopping at another version of the same chain and I couldn’t find the Bisquick. I happened to see a stocker that was fairly caucasian looking so I asked him where was the Bisquick. His response? Beeskweek? vat is dat? [That’s my best insulting sounding version of a Russian accent]. I finally got through to him what it was and he took me to it, but as I said before, it didn’t used to be like that.

My Mom always hated chain grocers and always wanted to support the local so we went to Foremost Market as a kid. Mark and Vic and Lynn were like family to us.  Their prices were competitive with the chains, but that just meant that they had to work harder. These three were Armenian I think, but they knew their customers well enough that one night we got a phone call that I answered and heard, Eric this is Mark tell your Mom that we’ll have fresh basilico and tagiarini in early tomorrow. My Mom always made pesto before it became cool and it was being slathered on everything and Mark knew that and he knew that by telling my Mom that she’d be in first thing in the morning to pick it up and we’d spend time making pesto sauce when I got home from school.

If I stopped by on my way home from school to grab a soda I’d always be told what was good so my Mom would know what to buy. There was always one of them going through the produce yanking the stuff that had gone bad instead of leaving it there figure someone will be stupid enough to buy it. I miss Foremost Market. Everything that wasn’t boxed or canned came from somewhere close by and they even sold Wright’s Pink Popcorn and regularly carried It’s-its. I suppose I shouldn’t focus looking back on the old days, but at least back then they were more helpful. As a side note, Foremost was the first place I got to try prosciutto di parma and it was the industrial made crap that the chains sell today.

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Halloween in San Francisco

Here’s something you might not of heard of, but if you’re looking for something different to do on Halloween you might want to think of heading over to the Queen Anne Hotel and take their haunted house tour. The tour is $20 and while it occurs throughout the year Halloween is the big night because they pull out all the stops.

The tour led by Jim Fassbinder starts at the hotel where you get to tour some of the haunted rooms of this perfectly restored Victorian hotel. Jim is an awesome host for the tour and he takes you on a walk around houses nearby where he tells you about who’s supposedly haunting the house. Dressed in his Victorian finest he looks like he stepped right out of a Dicken’s novel. Jim is part storyteller, part comedian and part illusionist.

Be prepared though because you will do a lot of walking during the tour and nights can be rather cold in San Francisco so be sure to dress warmly. The tour takes around three hours and the majority is done outside.It’s a real kick to go on the tour and you get a little prize bag at the end of spooky stuff to remind you of the tour.

It is well worth the price and the hotel is really beautiful inside. If I remember correctly they offer coffee and hot cider before the tour which is always an extra bonus for me. If you go make sure to them Jim I sent you.

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World Series: The Aftermath

I called it twice. I said the Giants would win and I said to stay away from downtown last night. Well the second part was slightly off, but I was pretty close. This time it was the Mission that was hit. I never understood when the the celebration party after a big win turned into a celebration riot, but it usually does. Cars were turned over, trash cans set on fire and even a Muni bus was set on fire.

It’s the grumpy old man talking once again, but I don’t understand why SF has a big win so let mess our city up. They were lighting fires in the middle of the streets on Mission backing up traffic and destroying everything they could. Everyone had a smile on their face from the pictures and to me this is not how you celebrate. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Back in the 80’s the 49’ers won a Superbowl and a friend of mine invited me out with her friends and family to celebrate. It was complete chaos. I still remember to this day the line of Police marching up Columbus with batons in their hands and shield pushing back and beating down anyone in their way to break things up. It didn’t work too well and the people celebrating [who weren’t breaking anything] got incensed and started fighting back.

Now if you want to know how you should have celebrated the victory I’ll have to hand that over to my blogger friend Greg of njudahchronicles.com. He has been spending the evenings at the Blackthorn Tavern and it was much different. After the win the people in the bar ran out and were dancing in the streets. Nothing was broken, no cars were trashed and I’m probably sure there were a few people drunker than those tossing stuff in the Mission.

I did read an article today on some people who were interviewed in the Mission and everyone was listed as John Doe [city other than San Francisco], so it looks like it was mostly out of towers [the bridge and tunnel crowd] who basically came into our city to get drunk and break shit. Yes, I didn’t edit that because it makes me mad. This is a part of the reason I like being at home.we’re boring out here to people in the Mission and I like that. I worked with a girl once who said I could never live in the Sunset, it’s too boring. I like the activity of the upper Haight. I really should have punched her in the face and told her that’s what you’ll get if you come into the Sunset.

Now the usual custom after an event like this is that the two Mayors exchange gifts of their local products. I suspect that Mayor Ed Lee will send Mayor Bing some crab and our other locally farmed shellfish and Bing I guess will send Lee a car. Not sure who is better off in that deal.

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Gigantes 2012

This is the first time I’ve been able to get a TV on the weekends before 8pm now that I have a device that let’s me watch over the air channels in HD on my computer and I decided I had to watch the World Series. The last baseball game I attended was in the 80’s and it was Giants vs. Dodgers at Candlestink Park. As a kid, I used to go to Giants and A’s games all the time so I have to compare the World Series today to what I saw as a kid.

Well, it’s a completely different game now and it just kind of seems like a boxing match where you get in close enough and knee the other guy in the groin hoping no one notices. Last game I was at when Mark McGuire would come up to bat all buffed out on steroids you wanted to see him knock one into the left field stands. Just hearing the entire crowd go silent with the crack of the bat against the ball until the fans were scrambling for the ball and then hearing a collective HOLY SH*T from the fans made it all the more reason to go. I haven’t seen that in the three games I’ve watched so far. The outfielders could pretty much be sitting on lawn chairs for most of the game only have to get up once or twice during the inning.

The secret today is with the pitchers. They have a small window to throw through and they always aim high, low, left or right just to be at the edge of the safe zone. Occasionally they’ll offer a free ball, but they usually seem to try and get them to 3 balls 2 strikes tiring them out before they move for a strike out. There’s very little action left in the game today and now I know why Mixed Martial Arts has gotten so popular — at least people kick some ass there. I remember being at an A’s game as a kid and I can’t remember who it was, but he smacked the ball right into the pitcher’s gut. Everyone in the stadium yelled OH! That’s the way baseball used to be.

The price has gone up exponentially on tickets and food at the stadiums. My Mom’s best friend used to go to baseball games all the time and I’d get invited and my Mom would give her $5 to cover my getting in and food. We’d get a hot dog [get your red hot’s here!] and a coke and then later we’d get peanuts and cracker jack. If you had a $10 bill you could get in, get fed and have change in your pocket. Granted that was a long time ago, but now that you have all these artisanal, gourmet food companies supplying the food and drink at the game it just raises the price even more for going out to the game. So I watched it all on TV and ate a hot dog with a coke and finished it off with some peanuts and cracker jack. Maybe I’m becoming a grumpy old man, but I miss the old days. The song Take me out to the ball game just doesn’t seem to fit anymore, so I rewrote it for modern baseball:

Take me out to the ball game
Take me out with the crowd
buy me some sushi and chardonnay
look at the kiss cam that couple is gay
so it’s root, root, root for the home team
if they don’t win it’s a fight
cause it’s $20, $30, $40 for food
at the old ball game 

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Where Did He Go?

As many of you have noticed I haven’t posted anything in awhile. It turns out I’ve been sick for the past two to three weeks and no one can tell me what was wrong. I’m starting to get over it now so I’ll be posting more articles in the near future. I’ve just been left really tired which also means doing freelance work or job interviews is pretty difficult, but taking a few naps a day helps me come back to normal.

Thanks to a friend who reminded me of ginger ale to help me get over the nausea. It works really well actually. There has been so much I’ve wanted to write about going on in the city, but picking up my hands to type has been difficult the past few weeks so pretty much just turned into a couch potato watching netflix and hulu plus. I should be all back together on Monday so expect something then.

P.S.: If any of you need any freelance graphic design or web work done contact me.

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iOS 6 and San Francisco

Well it’s here and I spent yesterday updating my iPhone and iPad. For the iPhone I can’t really say I see much difference. The iPad update on the other hand with the update to maps is freakishly stalkerish. You may not notice this if you don’t live near Cupertino or in San Francisco where Apple always gives their keynote speeches, but look at the picture I’ve taken of West Sunset Playground and that will give you a close idea of how freaky the maps app is here in San Francisco.

When I show my wife the pic of our house with the tilt and shift and zoom we could easily make out the  table and chairs in our backyard along with the kiddie slide on our deck. I didn’t include it because my wife just felt like we were spying on ourselves. So you get a pic of a playground instead. This pictures doesn’t do it justice because when you spin it around and do all the tilt and shift stuff you get a feeling like you’re really there.

There have been lots of complaints about the new maps app for iOS 6, but most of the complaints are coming from people far away from San Francisco. So if they want to enjoy the app they need to start stalking us in 3D mode on their iPads. Unfortunately, there is no 3D on the iPhone version of maps, but I suppose it’s a processor thing. I only have an iPhone 4 not a 4S or 5 so I could be wrong. I have noticed that in 3D mode that the it is very slow to load the maps, but if you’ve got time to kill it’s a kind of cool experience. I still feel that the accuracy and detail make it seem like you’ve got an app to spy on people, but at least there aren’t real time updates. I guess living in San Francisco we get the most detail first at the expense of our privacy. At least I don’t nude sun bathe in my backyard.