11.17.13

I went to a place called My Tofu House yesterday evening for dinner.  My body felt a cold coming on, so I decided to try to ward it off with a sizzling pot of hot tofu soup.  I like the look of all of the small bowls of appetizers that are set out in a single file on the table here.  Visually, it's warming and bright.  It is a cheerful affair, eating with wooden chopsticks from these small porcelain saucers, nibbling strips of meat here, strings of sprouts there.  Clutching fried fish.  An inside out experience.

Lonesome brown fried fish laid out on a plate.  To find company for this little nibbler, I would need to come with a friend.  This image is a great self portrait of my life.

A hot bowl of tofu soup with beef, shrimp, and clam.  Boiling like a witch's cauldron, this dish delights my senses.  I wish I could have a bowl every day until my dratted cold shies away.  It is so pleasing to eat hot, to feel the heat of each mouthful as it slides down you throat, making its way into your belly.  What is cold warms so much with every morsel of spicy added to the whole inside of you.  I can become this hot tofu soup, which in itself ignites every cell nucleus in my body.

     The ritual of pouring some kind of tea or broth into this empty bowl of rice, which dislodges the toasted brown remains stuck to the sides and makes a rice soup, is I think unique to Korean cuisine.  I can't think of a better way to serve up toasty kernels of rice.  And the gray stone pot with its stone lid I do wish I could make a part of my dwindling collection of kitchen clapboard fillers for special occasions, or for display.

At Cafe du Soleil, I spotted this little dog sitting in a peculiar way while waiting for its master to reappear.  It's a half sit, half stand kind of song and dance.  This little dog likes to skirt the wily orange cones and show frogs, goats, and llamas who rules the realm, crowned king of the lower Haight.  Where's the nearest dukedom?  That's my new home country.

A street car that travels from Castro to Fisherman's Wharf.  Some day, I'll remember with a touch of sadness and resignation how I once rode one of my favorite streetcars from east to western San Francisco.  Awaiting at the end of its line dangled a freshly baked Argentine beef empanada.

Waiting for a Baroque ensemble to perform, I took a picture of this man waiting for a Baroque ensemble to perform.  The harpsichord has his full attention.  Does he play the instrument?  When I see harpsichords, Bach always comes to mind.  I look at the device with wonder, too.  People don't play it anymore.  The piano completely dominates in this case.  Hearing it played takes you back a few hundred years, at least.  In his imagination, this man is centuries away, I like to believe.

My fellow audience members before the start of the Baroque ensemble show at the SF Conservatory of Music.  I may have been the youngest person in the room, apart from the musicians themselves, that is.  Times are tough for senior citizens as well, so there's nothing like a free stringed instrument and harpsichord performance to lure them out of their homes and into the city.