Bread & Butter

  • Consumer Culture
    I've been fortunate to work for a few truly visionary thinkers. This is a great blog by one of them, Context Marketing's Bob Kenney, who shares spot-on insights on the rapidly evolving consumer marketplace.
  • Corby's Fresh Feeds
    Corby Kummer's great new food site at The Atlantic. Lots of top drawer contributors here.
  • Hula Seventy
    "38 things to do before I turn 39" woke me up one sunny early spring day. Wise, beautiful, and memorable, what we all strive for, no?
  • Flying Ready
    Melissa Grossman's great blog on the pursuit of juicy as a fresh-picked orange side project, which for her, blessedly for us, is writing.
  • The Candy Store Blog
    Sugar in your bowl from the owners of The Candy Store in San Francisco. Vive le Candy Store!
  • Rancho Cocoa
    The fabulous new blog of my friends Missy and Raoul, who live and create wonderful, whimsical art projects in Athens, Georgia.
  • Cheese By Hand
    Interviews with American cheesemakers...or as the blog bills itself, "Discovering America, one cheese at at time." Yum!
  • Frontburner
    Michael Tuohy's great new blog addressing the local, sustainable, and organic food movement here in Atlanta and beyond.
  • SFist
    Daily dirt on SF doings cultural, political, heretical, hysterical. I am curiously addicted to all news and photos of socialites (who are not as terrifying looking as those in the South). It all goes back to too much "Dynasty" as a child.
  • 7x7
    One of my favorite San Francisco "lifestyle" magazines. Their food writers are great, particularly Sara Deseran and Jordan Mackay (who writes about wine).
  • San Francisco Magazine
  • The Ethicurean
    Thoughts and ruminations on ecological (and other) food issues.
  • Eggbeater
    This is a wonderfully written blog full of passion and heart and lovely looking baked and cooked things.
  • Beehive Buzz
    Petra Geiger is the founder of Beehive Co-op, a nifty new national business concept that champions the independent design entrepreneur. She's super smart, has fabulous style, and writes about everything from business to design trends on her blog. Love it!
  • Sustainable Table
    Once you see The Meatrix, one of the funniest and most brilliant pieces of sustainability marketing ever made, you may hesitate before picking up those tasty looking kebabs at the company picnic. This site is also just great for when you have a hankering for knowing about any pretty much any sustainable ag issue that affects eaters.
  • Environmental Working Group
    Invaluable resource for information on the farm bill and other ag policy and environmental issues.
  • What to Eat
    The web site for nutritionist Marion Nestle's new compendium to ecological and healthy food foraging, What to Eat.
  • Human Rights Watch
  • PSFK
    If I was marketing director and had a big budget to spend on trend research, this is the firm I would tap. They report on macro trends and smart, innovative global happenings rather than just the eco-fabulousness of Stella McCartney's latest rain slicker.
  • Nina Planck
    Planck is a longtime local food and farmers' market advocate and recently wrote a book called Real Food that celebrates just that: full fat milk, raw milk cheeses and meat, all in moderation doth a good (and tasty!) diet make.
  • Zoetrope
    Nothing but short stories, published by Coppola and friends.
  • Instructables
    Instructions on everything from how to kiss to how not to make a rocket.
  • The Believer
    The magazine of McSweeney's. A literary(esque) magazine that is actually readable. Sneaky and cheeky and always intellectually askew yet, rarity of rarities, sincere.
  • Seth's Blog
    Seth Godin's blog. Love pretty much everything he says and how he says it.
  • The San Francisco Chronicle
    Influential and relevant in food, social issues, environment and technology, on and on. Despite living 3,000 miles away, I still consider this my hometown paper.
  • Grist
    Tom Philpott's new column, "Victual Reality," offers his perspectives as a farmer and a writer on issues like the 2007 Farm Bill.
  • Organic Consumers Association
    An indispensable resource for news and views on the ever evolving organic marketplace.

Kitchen Table

  • James Beard: Beard On Bread

    James Beard: Beard On Bread
    The unassuming, tried-and-true, still I rise, sweet little compendium of breads and how to bake them book.

  • Laurie Colwin: Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen

    Laurie Colwin: Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
    I first read the late Laurie Colwin's writings more than 10 years ago, when I was in my early twenties and having frequent mishaps with my forays into the domestic arts. Her comforting, encouraging, homespun sophistication is the culinary equivalent of Anne Lamott's writings on writing.

  • Elisabeth Prueitt: Tartine

    Elisabeth Prueitt: Tartine
    There is nothing like being on line at Tartine in the morning, bleary eyed and defenseless before coffee, watching the bakers slot fresh trays of morning buns and pain au chocolate into the pastry case. How can the world not be yours with such a beginning to the day? If I could leap back into line via the book's lovely and inviting pages, I would!

  • Edna Lewis with Scott Peacock: The Gift of Southern Cooking

    Edna Lewis with Scott Peacock: The Gift of Southern Cooking

  • Max Mccalman: Cheese: A Connoisseur's Guide to the World's Best

    Max Mccalman: Cheese: A Connoisseur's Guide to the World's Best

  • Miranda July: No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories

    Miranda July: No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
    See June 6 post. I loved her film "Me and You and Everyone We Know," and can't wait to start reading these stories. Some would say she has a childlike sense of curiosity. I would say that unlike most adults, she seems to always start from a place of tabula rasa, and therefore how she captures relationships and moments always begins with that same lack of assumption that enables us to see things differently, too.

  • Matt Lee and Ted Lee: The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook

    Matt Lee and Ted Lee: The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook
    I first became enamored with the Lee brothers while living in San Francisco, after ordering their sweet little hand-stitched Southern foods catalogue for $1 from their web site, www.boiledpeanuts.com. They've come into their quirky own in a lovely way, and now chronicle Southern (and other) foodways for the likes of The New York Times and Travel & Leisure.

  • Seth Godin: All Marketers Are Liars

    Seth Godin: All Marketers Are Liars
    Godin wrote an essay called "Stories that Shake the World" for Ode magazine that gave me the push I needed to leave my nine to five. His basic thesis is that marketing is a powerful tool for change, and the way to achieve it is through authentic stories that move people to action.

  • : The Proust Questionnaire

    The Proust Questionnaire
    This is an inspiring resource for anyone needing a creative way to think about building an authentic brand.

  • David Kamp: The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation

    David Kamp: The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation
    I particularly heart this book for how it reminds of Julia Child and James Beard as lovely examples of square peg late bloomers who fashioned careers in food when it was anything but fashionable.

Kitchen Cabinet

  • Ritual Coffee Roasters
  • Cypress Grove Chevre
    Upon moving to San Francisco in 2001, I was somewhat of a doe in a culinary forest where Gary Danko and Thomas Keller set the bar. Humboldt Fog, Cypress Grove's iconic cheese, was one of the first local artisanal cheeses anyone put before me, and I fell into a swoon. Their new Truffle Tremor is similarly swoon-inducing, and I have to steel myself a bit in its beguiling, butterfat-be-damned presence.
  • Andante Dairy
    Korean-born classical pianist Soyoung Scanlan's ethereal cheeses, made with cow, goat and mixed milks, are among my very favorites on the planet.
  • Cowgirl Creamery
    The cowgirls have crafted a success story in cheese without losing their heart and soul. If you can't visit them at the original store in Point Reyes Station, California, stop by their fabulous cheese shop in San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Building. I love the Mt. Tam year round and Pierce Point in autumn.
  • De La Paz Coffee
    My new favorite coffee. It's roasted in small batches in San Francisco's Mission District and walks the talk with its fair trade practices. I like the Ethiopia Harrar and Brazil Poco Fundo blends. Great blog, too!
  • Askinosie Chocolate
    I discovered Askinosie at Bittersweet chocolate cafe in Oakland's Rockridge neighborhood last fall. I could easily have curled up in a corner at the cafe and let the chocolate bar wrappers pile up for weeks. I love the Soconusco, a single origin, 75 percent bittersweet bar from Soconusco, Mexico.
  • Poco Dolce Chocolate
    The bittersweet chocolate tiles live up to the hype. I brought a box back from Bi-Rite in SF and had to order a new, bigger box within two weeks.
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