It seems just yesterday we were licking our wounds over Prop 8 and comforting each other saying equal marriage rights were inevitable over time. While that may be true, the news reminds us constantly that it’s far from certain and it won’t come without a fight. From the news:

• A year ago, Arizona enacted domestic partner benefits for state employees. This week, their governor, Jan Brewer, signed new legislation tossing domestic partners back onto the street.  She said “God has placed me in this powerful position”.
• In Maine, our friends from Prop 8 are trying to rescind the right to marry via a ballot initiative this November. There are uncomfortable signs they might win. A new poll shows narrow support for the initiative and against the idea of marriage quality overall.

(via Towleroad)

Some very clever people have an idea of how to re-use the old double-decker span once the new eastern span of the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge is completed. The idea of architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello is to stabilize the old bridge and then create an urban park out of it. Other possible uses include housing, cultural activites and, of all things, rock climbing.

And why not? After all, Florentines have had their shopping-mall-on-the-Arno, the Ponte Vecchio for over 650 years.

Read about it at BldgBlog.

Rael & San Fratello’s proposal makes for interesting reading, even for laypeople like myself. Check it out here.

Sounds good to me.

Once upon a time, there was the mother of all strip malls, the Concord Park and Shop. Here’s the humungous sign (they took down the letters but oddly decided to leave the tower behind, which still stands):

The Woolworth’s which you can just make out in the photo was gone by the time we moved here. In the 80s it was C. Markus Hardware and then Simon’s Hardware. As new homeowners we spent a lot of time and money since that location was the main game in town. Eventually Simon’s moved and Officemax slid in. Officemax slunk away, the old Woolworth’s space stood vacant for a couple of years until this morning, when 99 Ranch Market, a big Asian grocery, opened an outpost here in Concord.

Parking lot packed, lines stringing from the cash registers into the food aisles, it was a zoo.

Here’s a quick tour:

The excellent produce selection looks pretty fresh. Here the pig looks at bags of ong choy, a wonderful green that should be more widely known here. (One of these days I’ll put up a recipe.)		Many times, when “exotic” fruit shows up at a market, it looks wan and jet-lagged. Not so with this dragon fruit.
	This was a little puzzling…what exactly is “buddhist” duck? You’d think it was some tofu creation, then why are the head and feet attached?
The fish fryer is something I’ve been wanting to have nearby for a long time. It’s great to pick out a whole fresh fish, have it cleaned and fried and then to bring it home for a quick trip in the wok to finish it off.		And a place to go for roast duck is certainly a plus.
	I was hoping for a better selection of fish sauces, but it’s hard to argue with the array of soy sauce, which goes from the pig all the back to where Tom is standing.
Not everything is impressive, but I guess somebody has to be eating this stuff.		The bakery is tasty-looking and it’s fun to watch the cakes being decorated before being whisked into the display cases. This one is a black forest cake.

A hand basket was all we could manage in the crush of people so we came away with just a few things. Just a couple of hours after the official opening, so much had been sold that the register tape needed refilling on our aisle. I guess they’re doing well.

Seriously though, the freshness and variety of the produce and proteins is going to have a big effect on the way we cook.

If you’re in the neighborhood, scoot over to Willow Pass when you get off of 242. Otherwise, you can check their website for other locations:

all locations of 99 Ranch

Later this fall, a Filipino-leaning supermarket called Seafood City, is going into the old Circuit City building on Diamond. Better yet, it’s bringing a Jollibee with it.

Yum.

This summer had an unusual number of cool evenings, which meant some plants wouldn’t set fruits (like melons). That’s why it was surprising to these beauteous melons nestled in the vines.

On the right is one of the few hybrids allowed in my garden, a Galia melon. With netting similar to a canteloupe, the flesh is greenish-white, tastes amazingly good and not at all like the orange muskmelon. There’s fullness of flavor extending all the way to the back of the palate I usually associate with umami. On the left is an old heirloom variety, Tigger. Weighing about a pound, it has white flesh and tastes a lot like canteloupe. (Galias occasionally appear at farmers markets…keep an eye peeled for them.)

Both filled the kitchen with wondrous perfume before we ate them.

I took some time off from posting to solve a technical issue involving the way photographs display on chaosweb. Problem solved, posts should start showing up again.

Also, as an experiment, I’m opening up commenting functions. For now at least, all comments have to be approved. I’m doing this mostly for the many readers from around the world who come back for the travel posts.

As always, if you’d like to contact me directly, use the email link in the upper right column on this page.