Not gonna overdo this, but I want to start the year with a pic of some Market Street wires:

I finished the best year I have had in a long time by going next door to Jeff&Stephen's for a New Year's Eve party that was great fun. Relating to several different people on entirely different planes was a hoot - a foodie here, a poet there...that kind of thing. And I got to please many of 'em with the chile con carne that I'd made out of leftover pork roast. I got a second chance with those who weren't chili fans with my new invention, the mascarpone/gorgonzola tortelet.

No, not torte, not tartlet, but tortelet. You take a walnut half flattest side down, add a dollop of gorgonzola, a blob of mascarpone, and another walnut half prettiest side up. Smear a little mascarpone around the edges but inset it a bit so that folks can pick one of these little suckers up off the plate and pop the whole thing into their mouths without getting mascarpone all over their fingers.

OK, it's not real dainty since you need to get enough cheese in there to balance two walnut halves, but it sure does make a nice flavor explosion as you chew. And yes, they're tedious to make, but they're so rich, you don't need all that many of them. And thanks to my cousin Jania's years in Italy, she helped me with a name for them: "Tortini Luigi."

Both dishes were really quite popular, and I didn't tell anybody that the chili was made three days ago out of leftover Christmas pork roast. Look, you cook any meat for hours with tons of chile powder and nobody knows what animal it came off of, much less when, or whether it might have once graced a Christmas table.

I started this year out right this morning by going to the gym and then coming home and making a batch of kiwi jam, my second pass at kiwi jam. Not too bad although I'm not sure kiwi is ever going to be one of my favorite jams....at least not my kiwi jam. (I had first capitalized kiwi above but then realized that that would be jam made out of New Zealanders.)

While making the jam I finished a wonderful series of taped lectures on the English language by a Stanford Professor named Seth Lerer. I had been listening to these tapes (18 of 'em) for a couple of years during mindless tasks like stuffing beans in jars and cutting up stuff for jams and chutneys. Actually, the jam was finished before the last side of the tape and for once I just sat there in the kitchen enjoying the tape without "getting anything accomplished."

Those tapes brought me great joy, and at one point last summer I was moved to tears by his gorgeous discussion of the Great Vowel Shift, an experience I doubt many folks have shared.

So radiating gratitude to my friend Susan who had lent them to me, I went to package the tapes up for the return journey. Since I couldn't find a box of the correct size, I was forced to search my shelves for a book to fill in. (See, the filler had to be a book or tape so that the package would qualify as educational materials.)

I settled on Susan Solomon's The Coldest March not because I knew in my heart that my Susan was just dying to read a meticulously researched study of Antarctic weather patterns over the past few centuries that Ms Solomon uses, in conjunction with a scrupulously detailed inventory and a close examination of the procedures of Scott's failed expedition, to make a very strong case that Scott was not the infamous bungler who - because of his ignorance, rashness, and obstinacy - cost the lives of himself and all his men while failing to reach the pole even as Amundsen was succeeding, but rather the victim of freak weather conditions never previously experienced and thus not unreasonably unanticipated.

No, it was not chosen for that reason. No, indeed.

Rather, I selected it because Ms. Solomon is one of a group of modern women writers including the incomparable Caroline Alexander who write in fields in which women only very recently endeavored... and they do so divinely. The book is both well written and wonderfully entertaining.

It was also the right size.

OK, I do occasionally fail guyness tests - being, as some wit recently said, a little light in the loafers - but one thing for sure, when my new Griot's Garage catalog is delivered, I'm sitting there in a puddle of my own saliva when I've finished thumbing through its glossy pages. With the exception of the eight pages of cleaning and waxing and polishing equipment and supplies, I want one each of many of the items.

I mean, is there a male whose heart doesn't leap in his breast at the heading?

And then there's the copy:

"Manufacturers are using more and more unique fasteners to keep us out of their stuff."

Insufficiently goaded? Read on:

"Even if I can't fix the part, at least I can poke around and identify the problem so some technician doesn't try to pull the wool over my eyes."

Do you want the wool pulled over your eyes?

I can't hear you!

We don't need the whole paragraph of features including the three bit insertion locations to give us a multitude of grip options for the driver, do we? That's overkill. We're already sold.

Reminds me of that wonderful Dave Barry guyness test from ten years ago about how the aliens land and they give you this little machine that is an infinite source of absolutely pollution-free power. What do you do?

A. Take it to the President of the United Nations.
B. Take it to the President of the United States.
C. Take it apart.

Speaking of guys, here's one of my favorite cuties, Haworthia maughanii x H. mantelli. This dude has got it all - the flattop, the beard, and the translucence:

Background: Now that I can no longer play, I love watching tennis and for several years have got a complete package of tickets for the SAP Open (formerly the Siebel Open) in San Jose....and a few spare tickets to take friends to selected matches.

I've tried to write about this in the past and have found that the audience for my tennis ravings is even smaller than that for everything else, so I've pretty much stopped. This year, though, I wrote about an event sufficiently unusual that I'm thinking it might entertain folks with no interest at all in tennis.

We shall see.

What went on is that in the period leading up to Roddick's match at 7:00, I was stalking Lars Graff. The famed Swede, my favorite chair umpire. I have never seen him make an error, and he can silence the most rowdy players with a glare that clearly leaves second degree burns if he plays it on their exposed flesh. In my continuing attempt to be remembered as one of the weirder individuals in San Francisco, which is admittedly setting the bar pretty high, I'm leaving the stalking of players to the youngsters.

And Andy has a legion of admirers eager to show their appreciation in graphic ways. A couple of years ago, Andy was dating Mandy Moore. Someone asked her whether, since they were both stars, there was any difference in the adulation they got. "Well," she observed, "Nobody's mailing me their underwear."

Now, even as a neophyte stalker I know you have to study the prey's behavior patterns and the security apparatus set up to keep you away. You look for weak points, guards who can be blackmailed or bribed...or perhaps merely deceived by an innocuous tale told by a harmless old eccentric, shabbily dressed but clean.

One could, for example, in the break between the Blake and Haas matches, engage in conversation one of the dozens of attendants who guard the doors from the concourse to the preferred lower seating, the same attendant toward whom one has been radiating genteel niceness for the past three days and who now waves one in without requiring yet another examination of the complete pad of Preferred seat tickets.

One could extract from this guard with mere guile rather than today's trendy torture the location of the room where the officials gather between matches. One could even pry out an approach to the room and enlist the aid of one's dare we now say confederate in getting past the pushover guard at the concourse level elevator entrance and then past the somewhat more suspicious one at the bottom.

Second door to the left, plainly labeled "Officials." Lars, as I've started to call him, is not present, which is hardly a surprise, but by addressing the mere linesmen as if they were as important as chair umpires I am able to ferret out that Lars will be officiating tonight for Andy's match.

But it gets a little complicated after this, so to cut to the coup I'll just say that when I am finally face-to-face with Mr. Graff, I discover that he is unaccustomed to taking compliments from strangers. Apparently he'd never been accosted by a man describing himself as a long-term admirer of the finest chair umpire on the circuit. But after the initial shock, he gives me a big smile and thanks me.

In future, when you see him scratch his right ear on television, it's for me.

The tennis? Well, regarding the Roddick vs. Goldstein match, I discover that forgetting my hearing aids is actually a blessing, as the seats immediately behind me are occupied by teenage girls who scream in either commiseration or congratulation after every point and sometimes after shots within rallies. Roddick takes the set 6-3 in the most boring fashion.

The second set is slightly more interesting since Goldstein ups his level so much that he has a couple of good games and even staves off four match points before Roddick takes it 6-4. A significant fraction of the audience swarm like ants for the railings. Screaming.

It started raining today around noon, and I just have a sense that this is going to be one of our multi-day winter sprinkles during which it never rains all that hard but it doesn't exactly ever stop, either.

I'd gone out on the Segway and got caught in it. And then since I was caught, got stubbornly into this I'm-not-going-to-let-a-little-rain-stop-me mode, and persisted in my errands.

But then I found myself over on Van Ness along about Eddy or so and getting seriously soaked. So OK, I think, I'll just go back to the Castro the quickest way for my last couple of errands... well, the quickest way short of running back down Van Ness to Market.

Van Ness is downright Segway-hostile. In the first place, it's populated by vehicles driven by folks who really don't want to be on Van Ness and are concerned primarily with making their stay on it quick and dirty. And since there's no way a stay on Van Ness is going to be quick, dirty is all that's left. Quarter is alien to them.

To make it worse, much worse, the paving on Van Ness is full of irregularities quite sufficient to down a Segway, a calamity that would guarantee being run over by at least one vehicle....unless I were lucky enough to have the 42 Van Ness in my wake. See, trolley busses and streetcars sense that all of us electric vehicles must stick together against the snarling mob of smog-spewing beasts, and so we treat each other with elaborate courtesy...which is an enormous pleasure to get from a trolley bus. After you, my dear Alphonse.

So anyhow, I cut over to Gough, which sounds kinda counter-intuitive at first, I realize, but actually, the parking lane there is so wide that there is enough space left between the stripe and the parked cars to work very well as a "bicycle lane" even though it is not thus designated. And then as I cross Hayes I realize that this would sure be an excellent time to hook onto little Linden alley and check out the new outlet just opened by Blue Bottle - that splendid, over-the-top coffee stall at the Saturday Ferry Plaza Farmers Market - perhaps even taking shelter while sipping a warming, aromatic cup.

So I do. And get to be entertained as I sip by some really cold and unloving guy talk between the counterman and the customer who comes up immediately after me, an acquaintance who had dumped his girlfriend the night before ... Valentine's Eve.

I pity the women who fall into these mens' clutches, not that they were monstrously evil or anything but that they were just so utterly devoid of any flicker of kindness, compassion, or generosity because they are both very young, very handsome, very buffed, very articulate, and in general very moth-to-the-flame attractive; so at this point in their lives they can just use one woman after another and discard them like tissues.

And I'm not being soft-headed just because it's Valentine's Day. I think the problem is that I spent the past two days in the company of good women (Gloria on Saturday and Nancy on Sunday), and this has made me more sensitive. Hmmm. Maybe I should stay away from women for a few days to build back some callouses.

Not encouraged to linger over the coffee, I sip it as fast as I can and saddle up, so bummed out that I decide to just go straight home. Besides, it's raining even harder, and not just in my heart. The inbound lane of Octavia is now open to Linden, so I cut down it for the short block to Fell, dodging the oncoming cars by darting between parked vehicles, and then I get over onto the two-lane outbound part of Octavia all the way to Market. It really is pleasant to ride on because it's smooth as glass and also has almost no traffic since it runs only four blocks and hasn't been Discovered as a shortcut.

I get behind the J Church as I'm going up my last block of Market to Noe and am tracked by a man and his little boy in the back seat. I entertain the kid by swinging wide right around the back end of the streetcar so it runs interference for me against a cowering SUV as we turn left. Twenty tons of streetcar performs this role splendidly.

Straight up Noe home.

Oh, and just to brighten things up, here's a couple of pics taken four days later in my neighborhood. Yes, spring has sprung. Here's R. officinalis:

and A. nobilis

About a year ago I went onto some new meds that had the fringe benefit of clearing my head up and making it possible for me to rejoin society. Quite a benefit, actually. Alas, nothing is free and there was a downside, a serious one, to one of the new meds.

Sustiva is known for provoking dreams, at least partly because, unlike the great majority of meds, it goes right through the blood/brain barrier. Most folks taking Sustiva report that their dreams are at very least "brightened up" a bit, not necessarily in a positive way. For many, including me, the dreams are usually nightmares and are incredibly persistent.

Normally, if I'm having a dream that gets so bad that it wakes me up, I can get up and go pee and then crawl back into bed and sleep, if not dreamlessly, at least with a different dream. On Sustiva, what routinely happened is that I remained fixated on that specific dream, and after I awakened and then went back to sleep, it took up where it left off. This occurred almost every night.

And they were horrible dreams. For example, one dream that I still remember clearly featured a creature about the size of a horned toad but a voracious flesh-eater, sort of a land piranha. An infestation of them was spreading over the planet and we survivors were being backed into the corners of our continents by the damn things and devoured alive.

Their mode of operation was to hide under objects, a rock or a shoe or anything on the floor...they could squeeze through thin openings like a cockroach...and then swarm all over their prey, which was any other animal but most particularly humans. You'd think you'd got away from them, and then you'd kick over a shoe or something and there one would be and you knew that others could not be far behind.

You could stomp a few of them, but they would eventually become so numerous that they'd get you when you became exhausted from lack of sleep. We called them "snakes."

Somewhere along in this dream I woke up shuddering and went to pee and realized, wait, "snake" is already used in English to mean a different creature, so I'll call them "skakes."

I kid you not. I was half-asleep but still half in the grips of this dream, enough so that I consciously realized that I needed a different word than "snake" and made up a new word by simply changing one letter.

And then I went back to bed and for some hours continued semi-waking dream battles with the damn skakes until the next day, when I dragged myself out of bed still exhausted. After too many nights like that, I gave up and went on different meds.

Flash forward one year, when I discovered that by going back to Sustiva I could save a thousand dollars a month - at Canadian prices, yet. For a cool K a month, I'll give it another whirl.

And this time, I'm going into it with my eyes open. It has occurred to me that I can use Sustiva's blurring of the line between dream and reality to my advantage, that it might very well be possible when I awaken from a nightmare, to take conscious control of the dream and steer it in a more pleasant direction.

Well, folks, it worked. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of at least my dreams.

Sort of.

Last night I'm lying there and my mind is running while I'm waiting to drift off and suddenly I realize that this is not thinking, I have segued into a dream. And then I actually changed the plot for the better! It wasn't a total nightmare, and I don't recall it as well as the nightmares, but it involved my father getting on my case, and I changed it. Didn't actually extract any praise out of 'im, this is not a miracle drug, but still.....

And then, at some point before I was clearly thinking this morning, the concept floated that there might be DreamweaverIII with, ahem, adult themes. Oh my, can dream-time come too soon tonight?

Tonight's proposed feature: In Rod Laver Arena, before a howling crowd of 30,000 Australians, Marat Safin grabs Lleyton Hewitt and spanks some sportsmanship into him. While Lleyton squeals his trademark, "Come on!"

[Background: Hewitt is disliked by many players and fans because of his on-court behavior. Actually, Esquire recently had a feature article about the ten professional athletes most hated by their peers, and Lleyton made the cut.]

Alas, the screen was dark and the planned performance didn't happen. I picture (although I didn't dream it) 30,000 gravely disappointed Aussies shuffling out of the stadium in sullen silence. Apparently, DreamweaverIII has some bugs in it.

I suppose I can just leave Lleyton to heaven.

I went temporarily insane at the market this morning. The only reason I even went, really, was just to get a few of this really astonishing variety of nectarine that's ripe now and to have coffee with Sybil.

See, I'm going to an all afternoon party tomorrow after spending all morning watching what I expect to be Andy's gallant but ultimately futile struggle against that Swiss android tennis machine in the Wimbledon finals. And then on Tuesday I'm doing a little tour-guide-dining-companion thing for some visiting Germans who I'll be giving a ride up to Saratoga Springs on Thursday morning since they are also going to my summer camp.

Oh, and I have a refrigerator full of stuff that needs to be eaten in order of imminent spoilage.

So what did I do?

Well, I went straight for the nectarines and somehow lost track as I kept shoveling more and more into my bag, and then as I was headed down to where I was meeting Sybil I couldn't help stopping to say hello to one of my fave vendors, and he proudly pointed out his first greengage plums. They're the best plum in the universe, many people think, but they're not grown much because they're notoriously capricious producers.

So I had no choice but to get a bagful since I'll miss next week and will have only one other possible day to get them this year. And then the Luceros spotted me and raved about how much they loved my apricot-jalapeño chutney, so common decency forced me to buy a trio of their strawberries and a handful of green zebras.

And I'd foolishly planned to meet Sybil at McGinnis, so to make it look natural I had to get a couple of quarts of their strawberries even though I had prudently hidden inside a cloth bag the ones from Lucero.

So I stopped at Safeway on the way home and picked up four cartons of jars, and I've just finished the second batch of strawberry jam and packing three jars of sugar snaps to pickle. Now I'm taking a little break before brewing the pickling solution and processing the snaps.

Next I'll make jam out of the greengages since I made chutney out of them last year and want to try jam.

The apricots I'll turn into another batch of apricot-jalapeño chutney since that one's getting good reviews, and the nectarines I'll mix with some old sour cherries for a jam, but all of that may have to wait until tomorrow.

Oh, and speaking of Andy, a note from Bruce Jenkins in this morning's San Francisco Chronicle: "Andy Roddick, when told that Maria Sharapova and Andrew Murray got marriage proposals from complete strangers during the tournament: 'I don't know if my fans think that long term.'"

Ummm, yes. Reminds me of Dan Savage's response to the query as to how you'd want to spend the time if you learned that you had only 24 hours to live: "Locked in the trunk of a very small car with Andy Roddick."

A new recipe from the Downstairs kitchen.

Take slices of fresh bread, top them with thin strips of Gouda or other good cheese, and lay them on the bottom rack of your oven. Turn the oven on to the maximum temperature, and set a timer for ten minutes.

When the timer rings, turn the oven off, remove a slice of bread, and close the door. The slice will be lightly toasted on the bottom and the cheese will be perfectly melted. Eat it as a breakfast treat with your coffee.

Do not open the oven door for 24 hours.

The next morning, retrieve your Easy Cheesy Crunchies. The bread and the cheese will both be a rich, caramelized brown and just wonderfully crunchy. Snap the slices into irregular serving pieces, and nibble at them till they're gone.

I'm sitting in my office, too tired to get up and do something productive like sort that growing stack of papers in the kitchen, and I'm idly looking out my narrow window at the beauty of the houses rising up the hill. The top of the hill is obscured by a thin layer of incoming fog, but since the fog's not thick, one flat side of the cap of a tall smokestack on a roof a few blocks away is periodically catching the sun as the stack flexes in the wind.

It signals me in a code I don't understand.

This is not to suggest that during his mercifully brief lifetime Uday Hussein was not the most evil creature on the planet, but still, after seeing Marat Safin allow Bobby Ginepri to crush him in less than an hour in Cincinnati this morning, I can understand Uday's mindset when, after the Iraqi national soccer team incurred a humiliating loss that tarnished the national honor, Uday was waiting for them at the airport upon their return and had the entire team bastinadoed.

Why? For the same reason that the contemporary American list of safest vehicles begins with a couple of normal sedans and includes near the top several minivans. Not until way down the list do you see a single representative of the SUV, the vehicle that most folks claim they bought for its safety.

You live longer when you're cautious...and when you're not King of the Road.

On the other hand, talk about going out in a blaze of glory. Check out this A. americana down the street:

It's Come to This? Department:

This afternoon I purred down to Bell Market on the Segway, and as I was chatting with a couple of folks out front, there lumbered into the lot and parked right in front of us an Armada. A Nissan Armada. Bright black.

Mine was not the only jaw that dropped at seeing this enormous, radiant obscenity here in San Francisco.

I've never been one to give my vehicles names like some folks did in the fifties and I figure probably still do, but from now on I'm calling the Prius "Nelson."

Here's a Castro Street view for you:

I've been in a chutney/pickling frenzy.

Thursday I made a chutney of Angelina plums, red flame raisins, red onion, and jalapeños. The problem with jalapeños is their huge variation in hotness. I used six big ones in this batch, and yow!

I got the plums Wednesday from Erik Scheltewitz at his booth at the Civic Center Farmers Market, and after I'd paid he threw in half as many more as a bonus. I am perhaps Erik's most long-term customer, as I started buying oranges from him on his first trip to the San Mateo Farmers market when it was at Fashion Island back when I had just started working at Oracle and Erik and I were both buffed. It was literally his first day because both he and his oranges, which is all he brought back then, were such perfect farm-fresh produce that I would not have missed either had they been at the market before. The past dozen years have not been kind to either of us although his only excuse is marriage to a good cook.

But anyhow, since I had the extra plums, I stopped at another vendor on the way out and bought a bunch of nectarines and Friday morning made a half nectarine and half plum chutney... with golden raisins and yellow onion and seven of those jalapeños. Double yow!!

Friday afternoon, I pickled the cute little okra I had got Wednesday.

Saturday morning at 8:00 A.M. I was at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market for my usual coffee with Sybil, especially excited because the only vendor out here who does pineapple guavas had told me he'd be bringing his first ones in. Their season is only three weeks, and they make the best chutney of any other fruit I've used so far.

As it turned out, I had misunderstood about the pineapple guavas as they're still two weeks out, but what I did find at Tierra Vegetables was the most enormous tomatillos I've ever seen. As I was stuffing a bag, Sybil asked, "What are you going to do with them?" and I realized that I hadn't thought that far ahead. They were simply too gorgeous to pass up.

And after that at Blossom Bluff when I dropped off a jar of the chutney I'd made with their Flavor Rich pluots, they pointed out that they had their first Damson plums and gave me a bagful. I was going to make a chutney of them but decided I'd just jam them. Two quarts plums, one quart sugar, one apple, and the juice of one lemon. Simmered into mush with a little help at the end from my stick blender.

The tomatillos I put into a chutney this morning with some nectarines, three jalapeños, and a pimento that Lee gave me. I cut back on the spices to better highlight the tomatillos, using only cinnamon and mace. Oh, and it's only three jalapeños because that's all I have and also because I finally made Sybil cry Uncle.

Surreal? You want surreal? How about sitting in the Timpson Whataburger surrounded by large men wearing hats and talking in low voices with deep East Texas accents while you daintily nibble your Whataburger® with jalapeño slices and fries and wirelessly access the Internet. Owing to various conspiracies this is only my second Whataburger this trip, but I have to say they're even better with a sliced jalapeño in 'em.

Downtown Timpson, my father's home town, where I started elementary school in 1947:

This was after going by the Timpson cemetery and photographing my parents' graves, all to kill some more time until Maebelle got out of Church in Garrison so I could see her for a few minutes before blasting back across east Texas on I-20 to get to DFW before my plane back to civilization left.

Downtown Garrison, my mother's home town, where she lived her last thirty years:

And what was I doing back in Texas, you ask? Well, last year before the reunion fiasco I told Mel, my 94-year-old friend in Midland, that if he'd take care of himself and stay alive, I'd come see him again. The old fart, half-crippled but not having lost a single brain cell, remembered my promise and held me to it.

"KEEP TEXAS PURDY," the sign said, and I figure I'll do that by not going back. But I have to say, that it was fun to listen to the car radio as I drove across Texas.

Like that advertisement for some kind of remedy in a capsule "filled with real liquid."

Or the athlete's foot remedy slogan: "Kiss your itching and burning feet goodbye."

Meanwhile, here's the Gay Freedom Flag that flies at Castro and Market:

Editor, The San Francisco Chronicle

I am reading with interest your series touting the installation of a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge, but so far I have not seen articulated what I feel to be the strongest argument against such a barrier: my right to govern my own life.

On the left, liberal do-gooders claim they know what's best for me while on the right, religious fundamentalists try to make me follow their rules.

All I want is for both groups to leave me alone.

I offer this suggestion as the most selfless public service since I would never exercise my right to jump off any bridge, being scared to death of heights.

I spent the day before Thanksgiving in Moffett hospital while they tried, with only marginal success, to fix my neck.

The best part was that today I got a good laugh out of the Thanksgiving crowd next door when I pulled my tee shirt collar down just a bit and revealed this electrical snap-on connector still glued firmly to my collarbone.

See, as I was pulling the others off this morning before I showered, I couldn't help noticing that considerable advances had been made in medical adhesives, YIPE!, and then it struck me that I could leave one on and work a joke around it.

"For a good time, connect me to your PlayStation®".

Two enjoyable parties yesterday, a somewhat sordid one in the afternoon in which my status as a sexagenarian gay porn star was celebrated, and then a very proper one in the evening at which there was an interlude of vigorous caroling during which I got to enjoy the spectacle of a roomful of atheists singing themselves hoarse about the miracle of Christ's birth.

I suspect there were closet Christians in the group.

The high moment of the day, though, was when a cute young thing from the first party arrived at the second party, saw me, immediately realized that Exposure was a likelihood, and blushed most becomingly.

Not wishing to disappoint him, I told.

Note: What this report does not track is the couple dozen or so batches of chocolate sauce I make every year. Maybe I'll remember to do that next year.

KAL - Kiwi Jam - 1-1, 3-6

Pickled Brussels Sprouts - 1-13, 1-14, 1-17, 2-20, 3-3, 3-11, 8-30, 9-8, 9-12, 10-28, 11-18, 11-21, 12-17

Pickled Sugar Snaps - 3-14, 4-4, 7-2, 10-1, 10-28

KGRAC - Kiwi, Golden Raisin, Apple chutney - 4-7

MB - Mulberry Jam - 6-8

TB - Tayberry Jelly - 6-9, 6-10, 6-12, 6-15, 6-16, 6-19, 6-20, 6-22 I missed most of the tayberry season when I was in Amsterdam April 25 - June 8th.

SAL - Strawberry Jam - 6-11, 6-19, 6-25, 7-2, 7-2

3SAL - Reduced Sugar Strawberry Jam - 7-12, 7-16, 7-24, 9-3

AGRJC - Apricot, Golden Raisin, Jalapeño chutney - 6-13, 6-16, 7-2

NCPMAAL - Nectarine, Cherry, Plum, Mango, Apple, Apricot, Lemon jam - 6-14

NRJC - Nectarine, Raisin, Jalapeño chutney - 6-16, 9-21 hot

AAL - Apricot Jam - 6-16

NTC and NTJC - Nectarine, Tomatillo, Jalapeño chutney - 6-20, 6-27 I forgot to put the "J" into the code for the first batch.

MFJ - Mixed Fruit Jam - 6-21 Hey, by now I have no idea what went into this one.

GGAL - Greengage Jam - 7-2 My only batch during the very short season for these.

NCAL - Nectarine Cherry Jam - 7-2

NAL - Nectarine Jam - 7-14, 7-18

NMC - Nectarine Mango Chutney - 7-22

PRCJC - Pluot, dried Rainier cherry, Jalapeño chutney - 7-17

RYBNA - Rustic Yerenaberry, Nectarine Jam - 7-23 "Rustic" means I left the berry seeds in.

PTC - Pluot, Tomatillo chutney - 7-24

SPC - Satsuma Plum chutney - 8-5

MPGRJC - Mango Plum, Golden Raisin, Jalapeño chutney - 8-13 No, not mangos and plums but a plum called a "mango plum" because it looks like a little mango.

Pickled Jade beans - 8-15, 8-30

RRAL - Rustic Heritage Raspberry Jam - 8-16

PNC - Plum Nut Chutney - 8-19 This was from Ellen Adamson's recipe using Satsuma plums from her trees.

EPC - Ellen's Peach Chutney - 8-24 Ellen's recipe made with peaches from Gloria's neighbor.

FGPGRC - Flavor Grenade Pluot, Golden Raisin chutney - 8-27

Pickled Romano beans - 9-8, 9-12

Pickled Yellow wax beans 9-13 -

MTJ - Moroccan spiced Tomato Jam - 9-15 There was a recipe for this in the Chronicle that was so intriguing that I made a batch, only to discover as I was jarring it that it had a cinnamon flavor so strong that it was, to me, inedible. Then I had an idea I will modestly describe as brilliant...I gave it all to people of Semitic ancestry (well, Palestinians and Jews), and they all reported liking it very much.

FRPRRC - Flavor Rich Pluot, Red flame Raisin chutney - 9-15

FRPBCC - Flavor Rich Pluot, dried Bing Cherry chutney - 9-19

BPRJC - Black Plum, golden Raisin, Jalapeño chutney - 9-21 Hot!

MJC - Mango Jalapeño chutney - 9-23 Pretty hot. ALERT: Taxonomy change. It finally struck me that raisins are the default, dammit, and that I put red flames in the darker chutneys and goldens in the lighter chutneys. So effective immediately, I'm no longer mentioning raisins because they're almost always in there. When I use dried cherries or something else instead of raisins, I'll mention it.

HJSAL - Hint of Jalapeño Strawberry Jam - 9-25 OK, I had a couple of scant baskets of strawberries from Lucero that were about to die, so I made a quick jam of them and threw in a leftover mild jalapeño half. Well, you can barely taste the jalapeño, so maybe I'll try this one again with an entire jalapeño for my initial entry in a line of adult jams.

APJC - Angelino Plum Jalapeño Chutney - 9-29 Six jalapeños. Very hot.

Pickled Okra - 9-29, 10-6, 10-29

APNJC - Angelino Plum, Nectarine, Jalapeño Chutney - 9-30 Hotter. I put seven jalapeños in this one, and now that I've got Sybil to cry Uncle, I can now back off on the peppers.

DPAL - Damson Plum Jam - 10-1, 10-11

NTC - Nectarine, Tomatillo chutney 10-2 - Only 3 jalapeños in this one. And also, in an attempt to bring the tomatillo taste up, I used only mace and cinnamon as spices and even used white vinegar instead of the more usual apple cider vinegar. But then I threw in an extra cup of sugar, a slug of balsamic vinegar, and one fresh pimento. It's definitely a keeper although I'm going to go back to using the usual laundry list of spices.

MC5 - Mango Chutney with 5 jalapeños - 10-7

FRPMJC - Flavor Rich Pluot Mango Jalapeño Chutney - 10-25

HJSAL - Hint of Jalapeño Strawberry Jam 10 -26 This time I did a large batch with two seeded and deveined red jalapeños. Just about right on hotness.....a very mild tingle. Seeding and de-veining the peppers tones it down a lot. May try upping the hotness slightly.

PGC - Pineapple guava Chutney - 10-29 11-4 Don't know why they call these things pineapple guavas since they neither look nor taste like pineapple, but they sure do make good chutney.

PGMC - Pineapple guava, Mango Chutney 10-31 I love those little critters, so I decided I'd put some mango in to stretch the recipe.

PGMRCC - Pineapple guava, Mango, dried Rainier Cherry Chutney - 11-1 I put two mangos in this one to try to stretch the guavas even more, and then to make it different, I used dried Rainier cherries instead of raisins. Only four jalapeños, but they were big, hot ones. Oh, And since I'm talking about jalapeños, I am going to stop mentioning them in the chutney descriptions and in the codes. I put some kind of fresh pepper in all the chutneys, and the default is jalapeños.

FAPC - Feijoa, Angelina Plum Chutney - 11-9, 11-10 Yes, I just learned a much better name for Pineapple Guavas. I got the last of the season from Twin Girls and cut them half and half with Schletewitz's Angelino Plums. They work well together. Six jalapeños in the first batch and four in the second.

JRB - Jalapeño Raspberry, Blackberry Jelly - 11-13 Well, the code should have been JRBAL because I also added the pulp of a large Fuji apple from Hidden Star and the juice of a large lemon from Gloria. I used a full flat of raspberries from Yerena and put in two chopped red jalapeños which I didn't bother to seed since I'd be straining the berry seeds out anyway. I shoulda left the seeds out because they carry so much of the hotness. As it was, the jelly was just too hot for most folks, so I tried to weaken it a little by adding a quart of blackberries that Gloria had picked and frozen for me. Still plenty hot, so this is definitely an adult jelly.

HJSAL - Hint of Jalapeño Strawberry Jam - 11-13 After the perhaps excessive hotness of the Raspberry Blackberry jelly, I chickened out and put only one seeded and deveined red jalapeño into three baskets of Lucero's strawberries, so of course the hotness is back down at the hint level. Damn. Hard to find that happy medium.

FMPC - Feijoa Mango Prune Chutney - 11-17 Oh, my goodness, I found half-dried French prunes at the Civic Center Farmers Market, and since I don't dare eat as many of these little beauties as I would like and since the farmer warned me they don't keep well, I decided to put them into chutneys. They work. And what is it with the jalapeños? I put only three into this batch, and it's still plenty hot.

FC - Feijoa Chutney - 11-19, 12-17 No fresh fruit but feijoas. The one in December has no onion.

FMC - Feijoa Mango Chutney - 11-22

CC - Cranberry Chutney 11-27, I guess all these are experiments, but this one was especially experimental. Like I used a 3 lb. bag of fresh cranberries, which worked out to about 2 and a half quarts. I used cinnamon, cloves, mace, cardamom, and curry powder as the only spices. I omitted the onion and raisins. I threw in an extra cup of brown sugar, and I used two large apples and three large jalapeños. Turned out tasty enough that I might well do it again. Not very hot, but I'm trying to back off a bit on the hotness owing to all that whimpering.

FAL - Feijoa Jam - 12-4

FMJAL - Feijoa, Mango, Jalapeño - Jam 12-6 Not real hot.

Whew.

And to end the year, some more Market Street wires: