Food, glorious food

Hungry reader, one of the symptoms of my brush with illness back in June is that I completely lost my appetite. I still ate to some degree, but not with the usual vim and vigour; my symptom diary records "finally ate dinner quicker than Helen" on day 10. What I've found since being ill is that I have a new-found appreciation for food.

California, and specifically the Bay Area, have a reputation for great food. Now there's a lot of nonsense spoken, mostly by natives here, about the food being super-awesome and the food in the UK being essentially Dickensian gruel washed down with dishwater. Reader, like so many things, this is just the cultural imperialism and braggadocio we've come to know and love from our American cousins. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it just isn't true. There's a long list of foods here which are not as good as those found in the UK: chocolate, bacon, cheese, even coffee (yes, you can get really great coffee here, but the average standard is offensive). And obviously tea, scones, jam, anything you might consider quintessentially English just doesn't really work here. What's more, cheap food here is unrelentingly poor. Furthermore, when you go to a restaurant here, quality is inversely proportional to quantity: if you get a big portion, it's probably not going to be that great.

That said, of course there is plenty of great food to be had here, and the variety that's available is far greater than you'd see in Europe. That's particularly true of fresh food: California has a rich tradition of farming and agriculture, including all sorts of stuff you might not immediately associate with the region. For example, California is a huge dairy producer, and the Salinas valley is famous for its lettuce, as immortalised by Steinbeck in East of Eden. Fresh produce is available at our local farmer's markets, of which there are 3 every week within walking distance of our house: Saturday mornings in downtown Palo Alto, Sunday mornings in Menlo Park, and another on a Sunday morning the other end of Palo Alto. Farmer's markets here are almost entirely fresh goods, and thus are pretty seasonal. They're not cheap - prices are essentially the same as in the high-end supermarkets - but the quality and freshness are really good.

You do get the odd bakery stall at the farmer's markets, and one of those here in Palo Alto is supplied by Wise Sons. They have a stall which basically just sell bagels. But these are really nice bagels; quite light and fluffy, not the heavy, doughy stodge you might be expecting. They quote their founding date using the Jewish calendar; 5771 was 9 years ago.

Most Americans seem to love pizza more than their own parents, and we're lucky enough to have the wonderful Pizzeria Delfina near us. This is a nice bit of pizza made with real dough and good ingredients; my personal favourite is the Salsiccia with housemade fennel sausage, tomato, sweet peppers, onions, and mozzarella.

The last couple of weeks has seen California open up a bit more, despite a huge surge in COVID-19 cases. In particular, Helen's volunteering at the Friends of Palo Alto Library has resumed, and she's got a large backlog of donated books to sort through for their book sales. She's also baking like crazy to make up for the 3kg of weight I lost when I was ill.

Finally, Helen's also put together a campaign map of the 28 parks in Palo Alto, so we can tick them off one by one. We've visited a lot of parks during the lockdown, to the point where we've done all the local ones and need to start systematically working through the ones which are further afield. Note that a "park" here is often just a square with some grass in it; there are more of them, but they're typically very small compared to what we'd call a park in the UK. Not everything is bigger here.

So that's it; we eat, we go for walks, Helen volunteers and bakes, I work. At this point you must be wondering how long I can keep this blog going given the restrictions of the lockdown; well you and me both, beloved reader, but I relish nothing more than a challenge.