What seems sometimes just yesterday but is actually years ago, I visited a friend who had moved to Marin County to work for/begin a restaurant consulting firm. I saw pictures from that trip recently in cleaning through boxes -- piles of oyster shells (and a memory of learning about oyster farming), bicycling on Angel Island, and flying (yes, I even had a moment when I was ostensibly maneuvering the plane) in a small plane over San Francisco Bay and Marin County). I remember the brown-y yellow of the dry hills and the sun. All this came to mind when I opened the mail a while ago and found Organic Marin: Recipes from Land to Table by Tim Porter and Farina Wong Kingsley. With a cover beautifully depicting veggies in a basket (the radishes are particularly attractive), the hard back book opened immediately to a page (47) with other memories because of its short description of Cowgirl Creamery. Why is this memorable? On a much more recent trip to San Francisco, and the swell Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market, I discovered this excellent cheese, the Straus Family Creamery (depicted on p. 141) and McEvoy Olive Oil (p.67) , for example. And there's always Green Gulch Farm (see p. 110), the farm which is linked forever in my mind to the San Francisco Zen Center and to their restaurant, Greens. Photographer Tim Porter is described on the backleaf as having "an extensive background in newspaper and magazine journalism and as co-author of News, Improved: How America's Newspapers are Learning to Change. Farina Wong Kingsley is described as "a culinary instructor at Tante Marie's Cooking School in San Francisco and a consulting chef for San Francisco's Center for Culinary Development" as well as a "contributor to numerous cookbooks." More information appears there, as well, on Marin Magazine, the book's producer. Most crucial, perhaps, is the following statement from the front leaf of the book:
proceeds of this book support Marin Organic's school lunch program which helps serve 12,000 lunches a week with food grown in Marin County.