Carolyn Tillie makes tasty jewelry

We met a lot of cool people in San Francisco. One of my favorites was Carolyn Tillie.

Why? Two words: Food jewelry.

She had a stall at the Fillmore Jazz Festival (where we also discovered BBQ oysters and Spam musubi). I saw the teeny cupcakes and tiny sushi sets from a distance, and had to stop.

Carolyn has a background in metal work and food — how perfect is that? — and she sources her ingredients from doll-house suppliers and Japanese gumball machines (I imagine her stalking video arcades in Tokyo with fistfuls of coins).

I couldn't decide: the pendant of frosted macarons?



Or the tiny vegetables?





The jewelry Carolyn makes influences what she eats. "When I was working with sushi, I ate a lot of sushi," she said. "When I did the cakes, I ate a lot of cakes."

She held up a Ziplock bag packed with doughnuts, frosted, sprinkled, each tinier than a fingernail. "Now I'm working with doughnuts." She pointed to another Ziplock, this one filled with fresh snow peas. "I have to pace myself."

Every piece was perfect, delicate, delicious. While I browsed, we chatted. Carolyn has a number of blogs; her current project is Fried Dough Ho, a love letter to the ways various cultures translate, create, and celebrate deep-fried yeasty goodness.

And then I saw it: not the tiny cupcake pendant or the chopsticks with maki, but the beans.

The necklace of real beans, heirloom beans, Rancho Gordo beans, laquered and threaded onto silver posts, strung on black stainless steel.

I had to have the bean necklace.

Mine is slightly different to the version on Carolyn's website; it has a big jewel of a Christmas lima bean as the showcase.

The necklace makes me think of slowly braised stews, of thick, rich cassoulets, of buttery bean purée.

I'm just waiting for the accompanying salt pork bracelet and garlic earrings.

What we ate in San Francisco

This morning we got back from a real actual vacation.

It's hard to believe that this time yesterday we were on the West Coast, finishing up a week of eating and sightseeing and hearing about the powerful warm weather back home (the temperature barely hit 70 the whole time we were in California).

I have to write it all down as much for my own purposes (failing memory and all) as to share adventures in eating (which included food trucks, street food and Chez Panisse; some of these most definitely earn a post of their own).

So here's a rundown of some of the things we ate in San Francisco.

From Far West Funghi in the Ferry Building market, a truffle macaron (because they were all out of porcini). It was an intriguing (in a good way) balance of desserty sweetness with truffle's dark earthiness.



We also checked out the Cowgirl Creamery location and drooled over cheeses (they had a few of the New England types we tried at ONCE Cheese).



And we picked up a snack pack to go: Bellwether Farms Crescenza with marinated olives and sesame crackers, as close to butter as you can get while still being cheese.



We also wandered into the Mission, where we did a little pirate-goods shopping at 826 Valencia and then had lunch at Regalito Rosticeria.

The fresh guacamole comes with warm, whole, crispy tortillas.



The cochinita pibil was smoky, warm-spicy, slow-cooked and topped with pickled red onion.



The food was not unlike the style of Mexican found here, except. Except. The cheese was queso fresco, the tortillas tasted like corn, the salsa verde was made with fresh tomatillos and the tomatoes were full of flavor.

We had drinks at the Rickhouse, which is a lot like Drink or Eastern Standard in that the bartenders have encyclopedic cocktail knowledge. It's a lovely space. Note the jars of fresh garnish.







At Wexler's we had scotch eggs with runny yolks. That blew my mind-grapes.



And then there was our visit to the Fillmore Jazz Fest on July 4th, which meant we got to try all kinds of fun stuff, including pupusas stuffed with pork, tomato and avocado:



Fresh, warm beignets, loaded with powdered sugar:



And the two best discoveries: Spam musubi, a work of Hawai'ian genius involving Spam and rice wrapped in seaweed:



And BBQ oysters (shucked, grilled, and basted with garlic butter)



What a country!