I’m not really a calendar kind of guy. I think that makes it easier for me to just live and adapt to things one day at a time. Had I a calendar this past weekend, I might not have felt as relaxed as I did in spite of a rather action-packed schedule.

Thursday night was FM’s holiday party at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. I really wish it had been a Friday night because the drinks were free, the water far between, and I enjoyed myself to the point of not making it into work on Friday. Oops.

Saturday was Joy’s birthday, and she, Kyle, and Marcia came down to the city for a late reservation at Clementine. Before dinner we all caught up at our place over kirs, Jean-Claude’s vin de noix, and some Frigolet we’d brought back from France with Kyle in mind.

Dinner was great. I’ve really been enjoying rack of lamb lately, Stephanie and Kyle both had an interesting duck leg confit with duck breast, Joy had a honey glazed quail, and Marcia had seared scallops with lobster risotto—which she claimed was the winner. We also managed to put away multiple appetizers, including a torchon of fois gras, and multiple desserts, including a cheese plate. Kind of felt like I was celebrating my birthday too!

Then I completely forgot we had brunch plans on Sunday, though thankfully not till noon, at Deenie and Danny’s, who had both come to our ravioli party. (Deenie dances with Stephanie in Loose Change.) I got to lend a hand in the kitchen turning some temperamental pumpkin waffle batter into some pretty decent pancakes, meanwhile enjoying scrambled eggs with sauteed mushrooms and fresh chives.

Otherwise, there was some holiday gift preparation, but we’ve pretty much got that all sorted. Should be a quiet week work-wise (I hope). Then on Friday afternoon Stephanie and I fly to Austin for the holidays, for some time with the fam, including Grandmommy, and a chance to see my brother’s new house.

The strangest thing happened the other night. I was volunteering at a Beaujolais Nouveau party and Alliance Française de Santa Rosa fundraiser with Jean-Claude and Sabine, when I overheard someone mention Trader Joe’s Chocolate Croissants.

I might not have given it another thought, but I’d been taking pictures that night and discovered on the camera some photos Stephanie had taken recently of those very croissants. In her estimation, they are the most accurate pains au chocolat she’s ever had in the US, indistinguishable from her memory of the “real” thing. She had taken pictures of the croissants at each step of the cooking process for an eventual blog post.

Thus I felt compelled to ask the man, “You make the Trader Joe’s Chocolate Croissants?”

“Yes” he said, and introduced himself as Jean-Yves Charon, Founder & Pastry Chef of Galaxy Desserts in Richmond, CA. I went on to tell him, “You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve got pictures of your croissants on my camera,” which of course I showed him, and which I think blew his mind. I learned that he also makes a lemon tart for Trader Joe’s, soon some mini croissants, as well as desserts for the likes of Dean and Deluca and Williams Sonoma—you know those Molten Baby Cake kits? Yup, that’s him.

I’m totally stealing this blog post from Stephanie—with her permission, she said she might do a post in French, if she ever gets a break from dancing. For your mouth-watering pleasure, here are the pictures she took at the various stages of making Trader Joe’s, (I mean, Jean-Yves Charon’s) fabulous chocolate croissants:

Last Sunday I got to see Michael Ruhlman read from his new book, The Elements of Cooking at the San Francisco Ferry Building.

Michael retold the story of what led him to that particular moment in time. An early love of the cooking and the kitchen, seeing Julia Child on TV, a botched attempt at an apple pie cum pear tart, persistence in getting into the CIA to write a book, meeting a restaurateur in Cleveland who connected him with Thomas Keller of the French Laundry who was looking to publish a cookbook…

He emphasized luck. He was lucky to write a book about the Culinary Institute at a time in this country’s history when Americans were developing a passionate interest in food and cooking. He was lucky to meet up with Thomas Keller at a time when he was merely a “guru among chefs” and not yet an internationally known celebrity chef.

He also emphasized speaking the language. Though he was a writer first, his culinary training and ability to speak the vernacular (and hand gestures) of a professional cook meant he was able to quickly earn their trust, and thus receive greater access for his books.

Michael seemed keenly aware of the impact and importance of blogs on writing and the publishing industry. He asked how many people heard about the reading through a blog (2/3 of the 30-40 people there raised their hands—I’d heard about it through his blog). He only recently started blogging at the insistence of Meg Hourihan, and had already come to accept it as an important part of his life, like a pet that needed care and feeding. A place to continue the conversation outside of his books.

Finally he read a passage from Elements on finesse. A survey of some of those almost unquantifiable and subjective tasks a chef will undertake to make a great dish sublime. I might say to make a great dish art.

I asked a question I’ve been meaning to speculate about on my blog—whether he considers his writing something akin to long-form blogging. Of course the obvious answer is no, given the entirely different demands of blogging and book writing. Namely his goal in writing a book is to create a cohesive narrative, to turn life into something that has an identifiable beginning, middle, and end. Whereas in his blogging he said he doesn’t worry about making sure every “i” is capitalized, let alone the rest.

I persisted though and suggested how reading a book is almost like engaging in this distant, unreachable world. Even if it’s nonfiction, the distance of that world from me, and the perfect encapsulating description of the characters make it indistinguishable from fiction. But when I started reading his blog, it took all these characters I remembered from his first two books books, real people he knew and still had contact with, and imbued them with new life. Updated them. It kind of punctured that artificial narrative ending and continued the story.

That and he really seems to have embraced his inner-chef as of late. He admits that his time at the Culinary Institute changed his life. Though he went on to write non-culinary books (experiences he managed to weave into his recent food writing), it seems like he’s starting to define his life around these culinary pursuits, with gigs at the Food Network, etc. He’s never just writing about someone from that “objective” journalistic perspective, he’s very much a character invested in his own stories, as much as we’re all characters in our own blogs.

The other weekend Stephanie and I found ourselves near the Mission and hungry—a good combination—and so thanks to 1-800-GOOG-411, we made our way to 16th and Valencia to eat at the fabled Pancho Villa Taqueria.

Except we never made it, because on the way we walked past Ti Couz, a creperie specializing in crepes from Bretagne (Brittany in English), notable for their use of dark brown buckwheat flour in the crepe batter.

So we stopped and had lunch there instead. I had a savory crepe with ham, cheese, and caramelized onions. Stephanie had cheese, mushrooms, and egg, with a tasty mushroom sauce. And we both washed them down with traditional cider served in small ceramic bowls.

On Saturday, we invited some friends over for our first ever (maybe the first ever?) ravioli party. The new pasta machine was the inspiration, and the idea was simple. We’d provide the machine, the pasta dough, and more red wine than you can shake a stick at, and anyone who came would bring something they’ve dreamed about having stuffed inside ravioli.

We had no idea if people would take to the idea. We had no experience even making ravioli, having used the machine only once before. Amazingly as people showed up, they went right to the kitchen, chopping, sauteeing, preparing their respective fillings. How great, I thought, I can just sit back and sip wine all night. Ha!

Actually I had a lot of fun. Once the fillings were ready and our core group had showed up, I began the ravioli production process (with lots of assistance). We’d knead and then flatten the dough through the pasta machine into sheets about 24 inches long and 4 wide. We’d cut that into two separate foot long sheets, placing the filling on half of the sheet in little teaspoon sized balls, and then folding the sheet lengthwise to seal and cut into individual raviolis. Each foot long sheet made about 5-6 raviolis, so we’d do about 4 sheets of each filling to make sure everyone got at least 2. After a quick boil, I’d sauce them with either homemade marinara or pesto. And repeat.

By the end of the night we’d made 6 courses of ravioli, with 4 batches of dough (16 eggs!), including a final improvised dessert course. Here was the menu:

1. Duck and portobello mushroom with plum sauce
2. Shrimp, pine nuts, and mushroom with marinara
3. White asparagus, caramelized onions, and truffled goat cheese with creamy pesto
4. Zucchini, prosciutto, dry ricotta, and basil with marinara
5. Sun-dried tomato pesto and aged cheese with marinara and pesto
6. Raspberry and mascarpone with chocolate praliné sauce

What can I say? It would have been spaghetti with marinara sauce without everyone’s creative fillings. Thank you all. Here are some pictures that I (and others) managed to take in between batches: