Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Shopped out

As promised, yesterday was shopping day. After another hearty breakfast -- eggs benedict sans ham at Lori's diner -- I walked down to the Ferry Building to find the farmer's market I'd read so much about in various food blogs. I was somewhat taken aback to find nothing so much as an upmarket food mall, with expensively nice stores selling hand-stamped Ligurian pasta and milk expressed from happy organic goats, rather than stalls selling vegetables. (Of course, when I returned to my hotel and checked out the Ferry Building site, it turned out that the Sunday market is closed until spring -- which doesn't start until May. Guess I should have checked that before I went along.)

Anyhoo, I made the best of a bad job and forked over huge amounts of cash for the following: an excellent 3-cheese sampler from the Cowgirl Creamery; chocolate and a t-shirt (extra bitter) from Scharffen Berger; a sour baguette and a rosemary/potato bread from Acme Bakery; wine, sourdough starter kits, olive oil biscuits, and frou-frou smellies from a "general stores" type of a place; and a bento box. This last one was a serious disappointment when I got round to tackling it for lunch today; what I thought were shrimp patties turned out to be pork -- what was it doing under a shrimp bento box label? Incompetent fools!

Just as I got back to the hotel, the much-anticipated SF rain kicked in and kept going for the rest of the day. We got soaked as we made our way around upscale stores like Origins, Sanrio, Old Navy, and, erm, Rite-Aid. Then it was back to the hotel to watch the Oscars, marvel at the incompetence of the ABC post-Oscar interviewers, and, apparently, nuture a stinking cold.

And so to bed.

No comments: