Books I'm Reading: Michael Pollan's Cooked

I’ve just finished Michael Pollan’s Cooked (Penguin Books, 2013). At its core, the book is a look at how cooking transforms raw ingredients into something new, but it also looks at cooking from the perspectives of human culture and health. The book is organized into four sections, one each for the elemental forces of fire, water, air, and earth. 

Pollan puts himself at the center of each of his four exlorations. He approaches cooking as a curious amateur, documenting his successes and failures as he gradually gains a deeper understanding of cooking with fire (grilling and roasting), with water (braising and boiling), with air (baking), and with “earth” (fermentation), reinforcing the idea that cooking is a skill that most people have become distanced from but that anyone can reclaim. His hands-on experiences –whether mastering slow-cooked barbecue or keep a sourdough starter alive – ground the broader arguments in tangible, relatable moments. Along the way, he introduces us to a number of memorable characters, including Ed Mitchell, the barbecue master; Harry Balzer, who studies food eating habits among consumers; Samin Nosrat, who introduces the author to “grandma cooking;” the baker Chad Robertson; and fermenter Sandor Katz, among others.

Cooked is partly a critique of modern industrial food culture. Pollan argues that the decline of home cooking has had important consequences for public health, environmental sustainability, and social cohesion. He connects the act of cooking to a greater awareness of ingredients, portion sizes, and nutritional value, while also emphasizing the role of home cooking in fostering patience, mindfulness, and shared experience. The book is more than a culinary memoir. It is a work of cultural analysis.

Cooked is entertaining because it combines intellectual enquiry with genuine enthusiasm for food and the act of preparing food. Pollan presents cooking as a practical and deeply satisfying response to contemporary challenges around eating well. Finally, for those inspired by the prose, Pollan provides four recipes in an appendix at the end of the book, one related to each of the four sections of the book. Recommended. Pollan is always worth the time in my experience. 

 

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 317 (Santa Rosa)

Happy New Year to all! Here's a collage from last summer. This is Untitled Collage No. 317 (Santa Rosa). July 17, 2025. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monotype. Image size 37.6cm x 23.4cm (14.8in x 9.2in). Matted to 24x 20 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my abstract monotype collage work, visit my website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ or you can purchase my recently published book commemorating ten years of working in the collage medium – Colin Talcroft: Abstract Monotype Collage: 2103–2023 (ISBN 979-8-218-37717-5). Available on the website. 

In person, my work can be seen at Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg, and at the Ren Brown Collection in Bodega Bay. Or, you can visit me during Art Trails, Sonoma County's premier juried open studios event, usually the middle two weeks in October. Studio visits by appointment. 

Rain: Rain in the third week of December (and beyond)

We've had pretty much steady rain for the past couple of days and more rain is in the forecast until the end of the week. As of today, 22 December, we've had 5.25 inches of new rain since I last reported. That brings our total so far for the 2025-2026 rainy season to 11.50 inches at my location in Santa Rosa. Another three inches or so is expected in the coming days. I'm hoping it will be clear again by Sunday as I'll be doing another Audubon Christmas Bird Count on that day. 

[Edit: We got an additional 1.55 inches of rain last night, the night of 23–24 December. That brings our total at my location in Santa Rosa now to 13.05 inches.]

[Edit: More rain on the night of the 25th–26th, an additional 2.55 inches, for a total of 15.60 inches.]

[Edit: It's been raining steadily for the past few days and it's supposed to rain again tomorrow before we head into a dry spell again. Looking at the rain gauge this morning, we've had 3.6 inches of new rain since I last reported, bringing our total as of January 4 to 19.20 inches.]

[Edit: On January 5 and into the early morning of January 6, we had more rain. Today, January 6, the sun's finally out for the first time in about nine days. I found 1.30 inches of new rain in the rain gauge, bringing our total to 20.50 inches. The forecast says it will now be clear for the coming week at least. Nice to have a break....]

Food I'm Eating/Places I'm Visiting: Yank Sing in San Francisco

Santa Rosa has a good restaurant for dim sum – San Francisco stalwart Hang Ah has a branch right here in town (2130 Armory Drive). It looks funny because the building was once an A&W Root Beer restaurant, but the food is good. Sometimes, though, I get a hankering for dim sum in the city (for those of you not in the SF Bay Area, here “the city” means San Francisco), which always feels more authentic. Having some business to attend to in nearby Berkeley yesterday (picking up a new futon we had made), we decided to make a day of it. 

My favorite dim sum place in San Francisco is a humble place called S&T Hong Kong Seafood, at 2578 Noriega St. We’ve been going there for years. Another favorite was Tom Kiang, on Geary St. near 20th Avenue (no longer in operation) along with the place right next door – until the chef changed at the latter and things went abruptly downhill.

However, thinking it would be fun to try something different, I went on line and searched “best San Francisco dim sum,” which brought up sites with recommended restaurants. The consensus was that Yank Sing in the Rincon Center was the best place in the city for good dumplings. When I saw on Yank Sing’s website that they offer $4 dollar parking with validation, I was sold. 

There was a bonus. The Rincon Center includes the historic Rincon Annex Post Office, an Art Deco building built in 1940, now part of a complex with apartments, offices, and shops. It preserves New Deal murals by artist Anton Refregier. The post office closed in the 1980s, but the lobby with the murals is intact, integrated into the Rincon Center development. The old post office lobby is worth a look if you have any interest in New Deal art, Art Deco architecture, or the history of the US Post Office. 

But, back to dim sum. Yank Sing was a disappointment. It was fun to pick dishes off the circulating carts (a feature many dim sum restaurants have abandoned) and I liked the elegant glass teapots. The curry and vegetable dumplings were an unusual variation and the barbecue pork rice noodles were good, but, on the whole, I was expecting more from a restaurant with a Michelin rating that people claim is the best in San Francisco. In addition, most of the offerings were not as hot as I would have liked (the xiao long bao buns were barely warm). 

The meal for two came to $138 plus tip, which I would have happily paid for a memorable experience, but, as I say, the food was mostly unexceptional. It felt quite overpriced. At S&T Seafood on Noriega, the same meal would have been about $65 and the food would have been as good or better. Additionally, S&T is always filled with Chinese families and friends speaking Cantonese, which adds to the charm (at Yank Sing, the only Asians present were working at the restaurant). At Yank Sing, you pay for the location. I won’t be going back, except perhaps to look at the post office lobby again if I happen to be in the neighborhood. 

After lunch, we strolled over to see what was new at the Ferry Building, stopped in briefly at the San Franciso Railway Museum (77 Steuart St), which presents the history of the municipal trolleys the city runs using cars purchased from defunct trolley systems all over the world, and then ran over to the Legion of Honor to see the Manet & Morisot show before heading home by way of the futon shop in Berkeley. All in all, a fun day despite disappointing dim sum.

Miscellaneous: Lion's Mane

I collected this beautiful clump of Lion's Mane today in Santa Rosa. This is the first time I've encountered Lion's Mane outside of a grocery store, so I'm excited. Looking forward to having some if it with dinner tonight. It's hard to see from the photo, but this double clump (I took only half) was growing high up on a tree. I was actually out birdwatching, not mushroom hunting, but I couldn't resist. 

This was truly delicious. On the first night, I dry sautéed sliced pieces and then, once they had lost a little moisture, I simply lightly salted and peppered them and then sautéed them further in a little butter and olive oil until golden. We ate these as "steaks."

Tonight, I did the same and but then diced the thick Lion's Mane slices and used those pieces in a spaghetti dish with pine nuts, a little prosciutto, a little sliced fresh jalapeño pepper, topped with fresh arugula all drizzled with olive oil. Delicious!

Places I'm Visiting: Salt Point State Park

We spent Sunday in the woods at Salt Point State Park, north of Jenner and Fort Ross on the Sonoma County coast, participating in a mushroom foraging class led by experts. I had never gone mushroom hunting before. That is, my experience with mushrooms has been finding them while birding and my pleasure has always been simply in observing them, photographing them, and identifying them. 

Like many of my generation, I was taught as a child never even to touch a wild mushroom. Surely any mushroom not sold in a grocery store will kill you, it was implied. I imagine parents thought it prudent to instill a healthy fear of mushrooms in their children – just in case. The truth is, most mushrooms are not deadly. While only some are edible, most that aren't edible will simply make you sick for a while or they just aren't tasty enough to bother with. That said, the most poisonous varieties are so deadly that a little bit of mycophobia is probably not a bad idea.

Among edibles, we found mostly Hedgehog Mushrooms and Yellow Foot Chantarelles, which, despite their name, are now considered closely related to Black Trumpet Mushrooms rather than actual Chantarelles, although I noticed that they have the same pseudo-gills that Chantarelles have. Otherwise, they are skinny yellow hollow tubes that are easy to recognize once you’ve seen them. 

I really enjoyed the day. It was fun to have experts on hand who could make IDs immediately on the fly, but I wish I’d brought a notebook, as it’s difficult to remember all the names. 

The Cocktail Glass Collection: The Pink Elephant, Monte Rio

I came across this delightful neon bar sign recently on the way out to a mushroom foraging class at Salt Point State Park on the Sonoma Coast. The cocktail glass in this one is in the trunk of the elephant – a unique custom design. I'm not sure whether this place is still open. Some sources seem to indicate that it was shut down for a while but also that it has recently (summer 2025) opened again. I'd love to see the sign lit up at night.

For more neon cocktail glass signs, use the "Cocktail Glass Collection" search tab to the right side of the feed.

Music I'm Listening To: Geneva Lewis with the Santa Rosa Symphony

I attended the Santa Rosa Symphony concert at the Green Music Center in Rohnert Park on December 6 –  as usual, doing volunteer photography for the Symphony during the Saturday evening performances. The program started off with Intermezzo from Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo followed by the Brahms violin concerto. Geneva Lewis was the soloist in the Brahms. After intermission, the orchestra gave the West Coast premiere of Aino, by Jimmy López, which I thought a rather interesting piece. The concert ended with a suite from Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. I've been very impressed by the SRS lately. They seem to get better with every performance. 

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 316 (Santa Rosa)

Here is a fairly recent collage. I'm getting somewhat caught up on posting new work now, but mainly because I haven't been very productive this year. Sometimes one needs a break from creating. Things are always stewing in my brain though, and before long it will all start coming out on paper again....

This is Untitled Collage No. 316 (Santa Rosa). July 16, 2025. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monotype, found paper (fragments from Carol Dalton), collage. Image size: 27.2cm x 18.8cm (10.7in x 7.4in). Matted to 20 x 16 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my abstract monotype collage work, visit my website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ or you can purchase my recently published book commemorating ten years of working in the collage medium – Colin Talcroft: Abstract Monotype Collage: 2103–2023 (ISBN 979-8-218-37717-5). Available on the website. 

In person, my work can be seen at Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg, and at the Ren Brown Collection in Bodega Bay. Or, you can visit me during Art Trails, Sonoma County's premier juried open studios event, usually the middle two weeks in October.

Miscellaneous: Western Jack-o-Lanterns

A pretty clump of Western Jack-o-Lantern mushrooms (Omphalotus olivascens) I found yesterday. These are not deadly poisonous, but they are not edible either. They will cause severe gastric upset at the very least. They are often confused with the edible and delicious Golden Chanterelle, but a close examination reveals differences that make them easy to distinguish. 

Jack-o-Lanterns get their name from the fact that they are bio-luminescent. That is, they glow in the dark – or so I'm told. I haven't checked myself. In any case, I thought these rather attractive. Tomorrow we are going on a mushroom foraging tour with a professional guide up north in Sonoma County. Stay tuned....

Places I'm Visiting –Back in Time

It’s been said that so much of our lives is now documented digitally that we rarely have the opportunity any more to stumble across old letters and photographs that take us back in time, but those letters and photographs are still out there. This morning, I was looking in a drawer for a checkbook (another relic of the pre-digital past) and came across some photos of me with high school classmates in Japan during my year as an exchange student (1977-78) and some photographs of me with friends building sandcastles on the beach at Onjuku, in Chiba Prefecture years later (sometime in the mid-1990s). Sadly, I just learned that one of these friends, Yasushi Zenno, died in August. I have yet to learn what happened. 

I found my BOAC Junior Jet Club log book. My father worked for BOAC, at first on the New York sales desk. Harper Lee of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird” fame was a colleague. Later, he was assigned to various other cities working for BOAC and later British Airways. On two summers my brother and I were sent off to a boarding school in Taunton, Somerset, in England, while my parents traveled in France. I see from the log that we flew New York to London on June 10, 1966 and made the return flight on July 2, 1966. The book shows we flew out on a BOAC Boeing 707 with Rolls Royce engines (BOAC 707s with this engine configuration were designated 707-436s), registration number G-APFP and made the return flight on a Vickers Super VC-10, registration number G-ASGA. The flight time is given as six hours 30 minutes both ways.

I also came across my BOAC vaccination certificate showing that I’d had my smallpox shots, which were required for overseas travel. Folded inside were a number of other sheets, one from the children’s clinic at New York Hospital showing that I had three doses of the Sabin polio vaccine, which was new at the time. Another sheet has notes in my mother’s hand indicating that I had the measles in 1962, the German measles in 1963, the Mumps in April 1966, and then chicken pox in May, 1967. These are all diseases my son, born in the late 1990s, never had to endure – because of vaccines. 

The following year, 1967, we flew New York to London on August 4 and returned on September 3. In 1967, we flew out on a Super VC-10, registration number G-ASGH, with a flight time of six hours 15 minutes and returned on a Boeing 707-436, registration number G-ARRC, with a flight time of seven hours 20 minutes. Each entry is signed by the captain. Somewhere, I still have my Junior Jet Club flight wings. These and the book – and the Junior Jet Club program for kids itself – are reminders of a time when flying was special.

Miscellaneous: Send Mr. Trump a copy of the Constitution

Here's a fun idea: Send a copy of the US Constitution to Mr. Trump at the White House or at Mar-a-Lago – or both. You can get cheap paperback copies for as little as $2.99 (here's a link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1631581481/ref=sw_img_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1). Wouldn't it be fun if he received thousands or hundreds of thousands of copies? At that price, I might send him one every month going forward. If we all did that, maybe he'd get someone to read it to him. 

His address at the White House is:

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500 

His address at Mar-a-Lago is: 

Mar-a-Lago

1100 S. Ocean Blvd, 

Palm Beach, Florida 33480

Miscellaneous: Canned Fish Design

A couple of weeks ago, I posted some images of canned fish containers, noting a much more modern design trend recently than in the past. Here are four more I recently came across.

Places I'm Visiting: Alameda on the 90th Anniversary of Transpacific Airmail

Anyone who knows me will know that I’m something of a nerd. My interests are many – art, art history, and particularly the history of pigments; cooking and fine wine, including making wine; birds and bird photography; classical music and classical record collecting; and, philately among them. This last, stamp collecting, I write about the least. That’s in large part because the USPS effectively destroyed stamp collecting for me when it switched from the little works of art that well-made stamps once were to the cheap adhesive stickers that today pass for stamps. The switch to “forever stamps” has not been helpful either as all US stamps are now the same denomination. I no longer actively collect stamps, but postal history still interests me (more about that below).

Aesthetics aside, the shift to cheap-looking stickers makes collecting mint stamps difficult because the stickers always have to be attached to their paper backings and they often don’t separate cleanly into individual stamps. Some long-time collectors have resorted to collecting full sheets of 20, but that multiplies the cost of collecting by 20 times, which discourages collecting by children in particular. That’s a shame because an active interest in philately among children can foster life-long curiosity about myriad subjects. Stamp collecting as a child greatly expanded my general knowledge of the world, knowledge that has often been useful in adulthood. Philately – stamp collecting – was once the most popular hobby in the world. Dedicated philatelic windows at post offices were once a commonplace in the US. Now they are virtually non-existent. Collecting used stamps, meanwhile, has become very difficult, as self-adhesive stamps (stickers) can’t be soaked off envelopes. 

The move to stickers was presumably intended to cut costs. I imagine it’s worked, as the US is not alone in having made the switch, but, as I say, to the detriment of aesthetics. Many other countries have adopted self-adhesives – for example, Canada, the UK, and Australia, according to Wikipedia. It‘s mostly in Europe that countries still issue traditionally perforated stamps with water-activated gum that often are beautifully printed miniature engravings. Ironically, stamp collectors are in some sense a postal service’s best customers: stamp collectors pay in advance for a service that they never demand.

I’ve been thinking about stamp collecting today because yesterday was the 90^th anniversary of the transpacific airmail service, flown by Pan Am flying boats (Pan Am “Clippers”) from San Francisco to Manila in the Philippines by way of Hawaii, Midway, Wake, and Guam, an event remembered at this remove by few but us nerds.

My mother collected stamps in her youth. Her mother collected stamps before her. Both were at one time members of the Dayton Stamp Club, in Dayton, Ohio. Their presence in such a club was unusual then. To this day, most philatelists are male. My mother appears to have often attracted benevolent attention from the older men in the club who would give her stamps and covers to foster her collecting (in the world of philately, a “cover” is a stamped envelope, either one that actually moved through the mails or one made as a commemorative of some kind). She was once given the cover that later inspired my particular postal history interest – a cover flown on the inaugural transpacific airmail service mentioned above. It was flown on the entire route from Manila to San Francisco, receiving colorful cachets and backstamps along the way (pictured). 

The first flight across the Pacific that carried official airmail (there were earlier survey flights) left the lagoon at the Alameda Naval Air Station on 22 November 1935. As Alameda is only a little over an hour from my home today in Santa Rosa, I designed commemorative covers for the 90^th anniversary and took them to Alameda to get them cancelled on the anniversary date (pictured). I was the only person doing such a thing and the postal employees I interacted with were unaware of the significance of the day despite working less than a mile from the Alameda departure point of the Clippers. 90^th anniversaries are perhaps little recognized compared with others. The US and several other countries issued stamps to commemorate the 50^th anniversary in 1985. There were events in Alameda in 2010 on the 75^th anniversary and I expect the USPS will issue a commemorative sticker in 2035 on the 100^th anniversary. We’ll see. 

In 1935, the start of transpacific airmail service was a big deal, reported on across the nation and around the world with the kind of hoopla that would later attend moon launches. The service reduced the time to send mail from the US West Coast to the Philippines from over two weeks (by ship) to about six days via Pan Am’s Clipper service, flown by Martin M-130 flying boats. Later the route was extended to Hong Kong and Macau. Passenger service, which started in 1936, cost about $42,000 one way in inflation-adjusted dollars. Needless to say, only the very rich took advantage. The mail, too, was expensive. One-way mail across the Pacific cost $0.75 – about $18.00 in today’s dollars.

After getting my commemorative covers cancelled at the Shoreline Dr. post office on Alameda, the closest extant post office to the old Naval Air Station (now a museum; it was temporarily closed, a casualty of the recent government shutdown), I determined to find California Historical Marker No. 968 (which commemorates the Clipper service). It’s at 950 West Mall Square, Alameda, I know now, but I was unable to locate it as I had inaccurate information. In front of the Naval Air Station building (where I expected to find it) I discovered instead a plaque commemorating an anniversary of the 1942 Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo, which was flown by bombers launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. The Hornet is now a static museum, berthed across the Clipper Lagoon, the lagoon from which the Pan Am Clippers were launched until the Clipper base was moved to Treasure Island in 1939 during the run of the Golden Gate International Exposition. Among other things, the Exposition celebrated the city's two newly built bridges: the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. There were other plaques in front of the building, but the Clipper plaque was not there. Next time I’m in the area, I will look for it again.

Frustrated in my search for the Clipper plaque, I decided I might as well tour the nearby Hornet. Being a “senior” saved me $10 on the $25 admission fee. The Hornet is an impressive vessel even though compared with an aircraft carrier of today, such as the USS Gerald R. Ford, it is significantly smaller in every dimension. The Gerald R. Ford is about 338 meters long. The Hornet is about 267 meters long and it displaces only a little over 28,000 tons, while the newer carrier displaces over 100,000 tons.

You enter the Hornet today on its spacious hangar deck, on which several aircraft are displayed, some from the WWII era (a Wildcat and a dive bomber) and others from later eras (the Hornet was decommissioned in 1970). Also on display are NASA-related artifacts, including a space capsule; Hornet recovered Neil Armstrong, “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins after their return to Earth from the first moon landing in 1969. Many areas one or two levels down are open to wander through. These include one of the ready rooms where pilots were briefed before missions and de-briefed afterwards; the sick bay, including operating rooms; crew quarters; the section occupied by the Marine contingent assigned to the ship; and a generator room, among others.

You exit the ship by ascending to the flight deck, where three or four other aircraft are on display, two in position on the ship’s launching catapults, which I was surprised to see are quite close to front of the vessel – a testament to the immense thrust generated by the hydraulic catapults. Murch more of the deck was used for landings. The positions of the arresting cables are indicated and still visible are the pylons from which emergency arresting nets were deployed to stop aircraft that for whatever reason couldn’t rely on the arresting cables (typically because of a missing tail hook or when fuel was so low that a pilot had no chance of making more than one landing attempt). 

The flight deck offers excellent views across the Clipper Lagoon toward the Naval Air Station building. At the edge of the Lagoon, three concrete ramps that were used to launch the Clippers into the water or to bring them up on land for maintenance and repair are still there. To the left, looking over the back end of the Hornet’s flight deck, the Bay Bridge is visible. Further in the distance and shrouded in fog were the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. The Clippers were towed out of the Clipper Lagoon into the open water here to make their take-off runs out toward the bridges. Over the bow of the Hornet, at its opposite end, Oakland Airport’s control tower was visible. At regular intervals, I saw modern aircraft departing over the same waters that launched the Clippers almost a century ago. 

In between visiting the post office and the Hornet, I spent about an hour walking along the water at Shoreline Drive. There were a couple thousand shore birds resting on the flats. I noted Dunlin, Black-bellied Plovers, Western Sandpipers, Least Sandpipers, Whimbrels, Avocets, Marbled Godwits, Willets, Greater Yellowlegs, Snowy Egrets, Black-necked Stilts, a number of gull species, and even a Bald Eagle flying high over the water. The birds were strongly backlit, making it difficult to see details sometimes and making photography rather challenging, but I include here a few of my better bird shots from the day.