May 9, 2010

Yesterday eve, Anyra went out to dinner with Heather and Rachael, old time friends.

Matt, Falipa and I went to eat at a Picanate', a Taqueria that is in the canal or Hispanic section of San Rafael... just east of where the old Circuit City used to be. I had been there before when I used to live here. Matt and I each had the taco salad... and it was a meal for 2. It was so incredibly tasty, fresh, and the spices and flavors were like no other I've experienced in any other place. The walls were covered with beautiful mosaics depicting scenes in nature and the comfy chairs and tables with windows all around gave it a very cheerful and comfortable feeling.
In the place of the old Circuit City is the Mi Pueblo Food Center... a giant super market catering to the Hispanic community. That was an incredible experience to go there. As we approached the big, brightly painted Food center, we first passed a large take-out BBQ serving people simple dishes from the window. Just beyond that were some table and chairs and another BBQ set up where they were cooking oysters - very large oysters and serving them with hot sauce and salsas.
Inside the store to the left was a huge area for eating as well and a very long cafeteria style food service serving more choices than I'd ever seen before. The produce section adjacent to that had an impressive huge array of vegetable and fruits and bulk items, like green garbanzo beans, tamarind seeds, cactus leaves, and dried beans in big containers. There were aisles of food like in a regular market but we stayed on the periphery where the produce, diary, meats and deli was. Matt told me that now the Latino community is big enough, they can sell their own meats raised and butchered the way that they like. He said they have better husbandry standards for their meat and the prices all around were better than our markets. The chickens looked fresh and real.... not factory raised. Besides the meat looking incredibly fresh and offering more cuts than I'd ever seen before, they had tripe, beef tendons, beef hoofs, chicken legs etc. they sold butchered pigeons which were incredibly tiny.
The diary section sold huge wheels of cheese, specialty cold cut meats, aspics of some sort, homemade yogurts in several flavors. It went on and on.
Matt figured that he paid about 40% less for the items when it was tallied up.
I couldn't imagine doing anything else that exciting on a Saturday night in Marin.

View story at http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=7335900

Pigeon Story May 3rd, 2010

This pigeon showed up in Keeler, Monday evening begging for a drop of water. John was out in front outfitting the LandRover for camping. He gave it a bit a water which it drank up in a hurray. It came into the garage and didn't want to leave. I think it was at that point John decided to name it Percy. At one point Percy got inside the house and clearly wanted to stay. We chased him about ...finally catching him. He was banded on both legs. The clues on the one band helped yield the info off of the internet as to the club that the owner belonged to and a name and phone number. We called and were informed the pigeons had been released this last weekend in Fernley (?) Nevada near Sparks. It was a pigeon race. 'Percy' really was off course from the intended course, west to northern CA.
I gave Percy some 7 grain raw cereal which it gobbled up. Percy spent the night in the garage, roosting on top of the garage door. In the morning there was pigeon poop dotted around the garage. As much as we wanted to befriend this little fellow, we were both leaving and didn't want to just turn him out into the open desert, so we managed to catch him again and take him down to our neighbors who feed the birds and have a lot of trees. He can hang out there and recoup before taking off again.