Happy Super Bowl Sunday! I think…?
I knew a woman who, for years, loved Football Sundays, the gatherings, the tailgates. And Super Bowl Sunday was a huge event for her–the culmination of that sport’s season–and the season’s eatings. One year, for health reasons, she’d elected to keep to whole and healthful eating and at the following year’s Super Bowl celebration, having chosen to have her healthy dinner before the party, in the absence of all that super snacking, she finally had to admit something to herself–
She didn’t even really like football.
Living Near is living authentically. For instance, if on your day off you’d happily do the same thing you do to earn your living–now that’s some authentic living.
Chef Jorge Lumbreras, Executive Chef of San Francisco’s premier sports gastropub, Public House, located at the beautiful AT&T Ballpark, home of the San Francisco Giants, recently presented a healthier and delicious version of potato skins for Super Bowl noshing at the cooking Demonstration, hosted by CUESA at the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market. While he sauteed the butternut squash and chard filling for his Winter Vegetable Potato Skins, he took questions from the eager and curious audience. One woman asked, “On your day off, where do you like to eat?”
“At home. I like to cook for myself.”
WHAT? Of course Lumbreras does go out too, to try a restaurant he’s heard or read of via an interesting review or word of mouth–just like the rest of us. And he has a “go-to” place he’ll frequent, Blue Plate, in the Mission District of San Francisco. But his first response was an emphatic testament to the fact that Chef Jorge is indeed in the right profession. He still does what he does, even when no one’s paying him to do it. That’s passion.
And like any good story, his food story is a love story. The ingredients in his Potato Skins were not simply “local” but, I thought, very much ingredients of the Americas–pepitas, squash, potatoes, chard. I asked him about that. He said his cooking story began in Mexico, the country of his birth, and that, indeed, that influence is in his cooking. Many of his ingredients are those he saw his grandmother use in her kitchen–even the chard he used in the demo referenced the wild chard they’d harvest from her garden.
Speaking of love stories, we might be spending our upcoming Valentine’s Day at Public House, which might seem like a strange choice–a gastropub Sports place on the most Romantic day of the year? Don’t get me wrong–I want to try the menu like any other curious eater–but now I know my instincts were right. There’s a love story of generations somewhere in all that fun.
And Chef Lumbreras’ offerings look so tempting, I don’t think it will even matter if there’s only hockey on the big screens.
life lived near 