Butcher

Here is a local butcher (though not ours) on the high-street whose strangely creepy figure captures my eye. The chicken rotisserie takes me back to Park 'N Shop on Salano Avenue in Berkeley - its delicious smells bring good memories of shopping with mom and sometimes sugar cereal which broke the household rule. As Berkeley upscaled from its hippy roots, the grocery taken over by wonderful Andronicos in the 1980s; Andronicos offers yuppie fruit and veg on par with anything in France. Maybe better in fact - during season, there must be >25 varieties of tomato. Andronicos also absorbed The Berkeley Co-Op whose '60s ambition to return profits to the customer - kinda like communism maybe? - but that business model failed, oh boy. Nobody complained though I did miss the sugar-baked cookies. Sometime later Starbucks took over Ortmans Ice Cream, Eddy's became Peet's Coffee; Hinks a Ross and now closed... this be progress in the East Bay.

Mary is in town and we dine with her, Dana and Nathan at Racines - a favorite French bistro in South Kensington that actually is... French! The waiters from Paris or wherever with attitude and all that and most of the diners French-speaking. I get to stumble through a few words impressing really only myself but hey, I enjoy it. I learn Devon a top notch skiier and now competing at high-levels; I am sure he and Eitan will absorb themselves in sports when we are with them in May.