Special Singing

Mark went all out in honor of Jessica Beer's visit: homemade pasta with 3 different sauces, garden salad, bread...
...baked eggplant, and a fabulous apple tart for dessert (thanks, Carolyn).
This is at least less blurry than the other picture I took before I finally gave up.

What are you bringing to the potluck?

The Golden Gate Singing is upon us (this Saturday!), so it's time to start cooking!

I mean that literally, of course. We live in the Bay Area, a place rich in amazing food. I mean, there are already strawberries at the farmer's market! So how are we going to impress our guests, foodwise?

Some thoughts and suggestions:

-Main dishes are always needed! Salads and side dishes are always welcome, but every once in a while a potluck happens that is nearly all salad. Bring a main dish! We want everyone to be well fed.

-Delicious desserts are key.

-Casseroles are traditional and always go over well.

-We tend to be heavy on the fats and starches and less well represented in terms of meats and vegetables. Bay Area singers tend to lean toward vegetarian food, which is fine and reflects our local culture. But I challenge you to think beyond the potato gratin. (Not that a potato gratin would go unwelcomed!)

-The more food the better.

* * * * *

A call for ingredient awareness:

We tend to think of foods as containing the obvious. Like Fig Newtons, we would suspect, are made up of equal parts fig and Sir Isaac Newton.

But thanks to the corporatization of food production, this is rarely the case. "Foods" contain ingredients that are only technically edible. Things are processed together that you never thought possible. You look on the label of a packet of cookies and it says things like "may contain traces of prawn powder." And first you are shocked that cookies could go with prawns, and second you are shocked that prawns come in powder form. (Unless you know from Asian food, of course!)

Most of the time this isn't a big problem (well, actually it's a giant systemic problem that we can afford to ignore in the short term).

But some of us have -- shall I whisper it? -- food allergies. Because if you are allergic to prawns you can't go eating cookies with wild abandon anymore. Woe!

When I mention food allergies and cross-contamination, a lot of people treat me like I am trying to suck all the joy out of life. Trust me, I am not. In fact, being aware of ingredients helps prolong my life. And nobody is telling you not to cook with whatever you want or eat whatever you want. But it can't hurt you to be aware of what's in your food. Because... do you want prawn powder in your cookies?

For instance, bread presents a big problem for me because it's often processed with nuts. So any time I eat out, I find myself asking the waiter if that delicious bread is nut-free. I usually get a "you are crazy" look from the waiter along with a "well, I imagine so."

Imagine away, waiter-dude, and see where it gets you. For instance, I would imagine that cake flour was totally vegan. But as you see, that is my imagination.



Now, many vegans wouldn't bother with the risk of eating a trace of dairy, because that teeny tiny trace will not send them to the ER. Not so for those with serious food allergies! Ignoring that stuff is not an option -- even if you survive the reaction, every reaction you have makes the allergy worse and makes it more likely that you'll
croak next time. Not good.

Once again, I'm not asking anyone to change their cooking habits; I'm just trying to increase awareness of just how widespread the common allergens are. (As an informal experiment, you can check out the chocolate selection at your local grocery and try to find some that is genuinely nut-free.)

Know what's in your food! It's good for everyone.

Golden Gate delights!

The 4th annual Golden Gate Singing will be held on the Saturday before the fourth Sunday in April (a.k.a. "April 26") at Potrero Hill Neighborhood House in San Francisco (unless something odd happens).

Ah, the Golden Gate. I remember when that all started. Jill was new to the Bay Area and raring to go, and caused us to have a singing school and an brand-new annual one-day singing. Jill was the first chair, and Carolyn and I spent the whole day cutting up arranging.

We had a boatload (carpool-load?) of Portlanders come down to support the new singing, and a pretty great crop of SoCal folks, too. PHNHH was packed. Oh, what a good singing that was. That was 2005, I guess. Before I had even taken my qualifying exam! Wow. It was also before I owned a digital camera, which would explain why I do not have pictures.

The second Golden Gate, in 2006, was chaired by Betty. I cannot even tell you what a great chair Betty was. People all around her would be freaking out about one thing and another, and Betty would just turn around and fix it. This was also the year in which the distinctive Golden Gate paper name tags were introduced, and I believe it was also the year of our making it a "green" singing: cloth tablecloths (thrifted! yes!), metal silverware (washed by Chris), and composting (taken care of primarily by Carolyn). Yes, that was a great year for the Golden Gate.

The third Golden Gate, i.e. last year's, was chaired by Mark, and went very well. Betty and I were the arranging committee that year, because for some reason a lot of people trust me with the registration cards (fools!). Composting and such went forth as usual, and we outdid ourselves with the food that year, due primarily to some well-placed threats on Mark's part (go Mark!).



Oh, the food. Let me just say that Susan and Shelby have always handled the food with incredible elegance and efficiency. As a nut-allergic person, I had a deep love of those little tags that said whether the food contained nuts (although I have my doubts about how many people actually know what is in the food they make, since most of them say unwitty things like "bread doesn't have peanuts in it!," but that is another rant for another day). I am sure the tags were also useful to vegetarians and vegans.

And that brings us to the fourth Golden Gate. That's this year! It's going to be great.

Mark, bless his trusting heart, for some reason let me be the vice-chair last year, which means that I'm chairing this year.



What's the matter? Don't I look like a responsible chair?

So, lemme see...there are some jobs to assign!

I've already gotten Susan to agree to be vice chair. It gives you confidence in the future of the Golden Gate, doesn't it?

Some of the other jobs have already been claimed/delegated, but here is a list of jobs (most of this is cribbed from a list Mark made last year, by the way).

• Arranging committee: coordinates the order of the leaders and the general flow of the singing. This job is a lot more complicated than you might think, which is why I am glad Betty is going to be in charge of it this year.


• Secretary: takes minutes, turns the minutes in, and makes a report at the end of the convention (number of leaders, songs led, and states represented). This job isn't hard per se, but you constantly have to keep your wits about you. The secretary typically works closely with the arranging committee (to ascertain name spellings, etc.). Linda will be secretarying this year, along with one or more others (pending!).


• Finance committee: passes the hat, counts the money, makes a finance report at the end. I think Chris has done this in the past?


• Chaplain: says the opening, noontime, and closing prayers.


• Resolutions committee: gives a report at the end of the singing thanking the appropriate people etc.


• Set-up and clean-up committees: this is self-explanatory, but I would like to have a leader for each of these jobs. Usually there is a passel of helpful singers that shows up early or lingers late to help with set-up/clean-up tasks, but we wind up wandering around like confused monkeys because we're not sure what needs to get done and what goes where. So we'll need some people to promise to set up and clean up, because we don't want to be caught short-handed, and we also need someone to be the point person who can tell everybody what to do.


• The registration table is really important, but it's also an easy job and good for a new singer. Best of all, you can take it in one-hour shifts. You get everyone to fill out a registration card, distribute name-tags, keep an eye on the cash box and loaners, sell loaners as needed, and get registration cards (for those who want to lead) to the arranging committee. So it's a lot of little jobs, but usually not all at once, and they're all pretty self-explanatory. I recall liking how the Portland singers had a box on their registration cards that you could check if you wanted to lead but needed help. We should think about doing that this year.


• The hospitality committee coordinates housing for out-of-towners. It's best if this person knows a good number of locals. Locals with spare room in their abodes. This job also entails having contact info listed on our propaganda.


• Public Relations: get us advertised! Handle flyers, mailings, PSAs, community calendars, etc. I must admit that I myself am crap at this sort of thing.


• Refreshments: coordinates refreshments on the day of the singing, like coffee, water, and lemonade. This person needs to have a valiant heart. And a car.


• Supplies: makes sure we have all the supplies we need (napkins, compostable paper plates, etc. -- I've got a list somewhere) and buys more of anything we're missing. Currently, our supplies are housed in these big green tubs in Carolyn's garage.


• Green committee: handles recycling, composting, and the washing of the silverware.


• Social: someone has to organize it, and someone has to host it. It would be convenient if these two people were the same person, and Philip's house is really nice (hint)...


• Food committee: In the past we've had one or two people coordinating this job, and a few minions to help arrange food in a logical order, direct the traffic, unwrap/uncover food right before lunch, etc. Shelby has already volunteered to do food, but she'll probably be needing some help, because food is a big job. At least, if we do it right!

Which leads me to add that if you have a kitchen, you should bring food. We do not want people to have guilt about taking the last piece of lasagna, or, heaven forbid, to go hungry. (That said: why does everybody bring lasagna to potlucks? Granted, it's a pretty good potluck food, but we only need a couple of lasagnas, tops. Not twelve of them. The same goes for green salads. I'm going to be pondering good potluck recipes between now and April, for sure. Perhaps Rebecca could share some recipes...)

Holy crap, that's a lot of work. But now I expect the singing masses to rise and volunteer to do it all so I can just sit around stressing out. Whoo-hoo! This is going to be fantastic.

(P.S. - Inder posted on the Time magazine article!)