California Casual in words, images, and recipes
"How to Be a San Franciscan" from Herb Caen's
Guide to San Francisco, 1957
He dresses in dark, generally conservative clothes. He prefers streetcars to buses because he can run and jump onto the bottom step of a trolley, like the frustrated athlete he is. And when he drives to work, he'll park anywhere, being pretty haughty about traffic regulations.
New York impresses him, but he wouldn't dream of living there (or anywhere else but San Francisco). He is scornful of Los Angeles and Oakland, and generally insular about everything beyond the Peninsula. He eats long lunches and shakes dice for the check, and reports faithfully to the nearest bar at cocktail hour, for San Franciscans, per capita, are the heaviest drinkers in the land. And perversely proud of the distinction, which has its roots in the Gold Rush days.
Although generally he can take culture or leave it alone, he'll attend at least one opera during the season, as well as a symphony and even a ballet, because he was brought up to believe in those things. He likes dining in small, out-of-the-way restaurants (preferably in an alley) where he knows the waiters by their first names--and one of his greatest joys is "discovering" a good little restaurant his friends haven't heard of.
The Ahwahnee Lodge in Yosemite
From Joan Didion's
Where I Was From:
The Bohemian Club of San Francisco was founded, in 1872, by members of the city's working press, who saw it both as a declaration of unconventional or "artistic" interests and as a place to get a beer and a sandwich after the bulldog closed... For a few years the members appear to have remained resolute in their determination not to admit the merely rich, but their over-ambitious spending, both on the club in town and on its periodic encampments, quite soon overwhelmed this intention.
The rituals of the summer encampment were fixed. There were, every day, at twelve-thirty, "Lakeside Talks," informal speeches and briefings, off the records. .. Local color was measured; the fight songs sung remained those of the traditional California schools Berkeley (or, in this venue, "Cal") and Stanford.
Sporty San Francisco-born socialite Nan Kempner, who canonized slacks and costume jewelry, described her own style best: "She said it was 'artificially relaxed,'" says Harold Koda, the Met's curator in charge of the Costume Institute.
From "Nan Kempner: American Chic"When she arrived at La Cote Basque in a new-style pantsuit, she was told at the door, "no women in pants allowed." So, rather than hang her head, Kempner merely took off the pants she was wearing under her tunic and walked in the front door.
Kempner is the one who played in red-lined blazer over tennis whitesClick on image below to read an
annotated page from
Private Collection (from the Palo Alto Junior League) and a recipe for an eccentric salad perfect for luncheons with Avocado Crab Mornay
Marin County Sweet & Sour Pickled FigsRecipe adapted from San Francisco a la Carte
The San Francisco Junior League CookbookEvery fall my grandmother's refrigerator would always contain a glass jar of cold, pickled figs, incomparable and essential for everyday living. Equally good with ice-cream or with roast meat, they were especially good stolen straight from the jar first thing in the morning.
When I finally made them myself as an adult, I began to play with the recipe, cutting down the sugar and adding more spices. They were perfect with cheese this way. My grandmother was appalled. She didn't mind that I altered her recipe (she loved a little innovation.) "You bought figs?" she asked. She thought every real Californian should know someone with a fig tree.
4 lbs fresh figs
salt water
4 cups brown sugar
1/2 quart white vinegar
4 cinnamon sticks
1/2 tablespoon whole cloves.
Wash figs and bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Combine the sugar and vinegar and bring to a boil. Drain the figs and add to the boiling syrup along with the spices. Simmer for one hour. Pack figs into hot sterilized jars, making certain that the figs are covered with syrup and that there is a cinnamon stick in each jar. Seal at once.
For Heretic's Version (to be eaten within a week) halve the sugar and add cardamom and a few more cloves to taste, plus a very few red pepper flakes, and a minuscule pinch of cayenne. Make sure all the flavors—-sweet, spicy, and sour--are just hitting each other against each other without any one dominating. The traditional version is ambrosial and intense. The generic exotic heretic's version has a long line of surprises in flavor.
Meyer Lemon Tree
