Why are we talking about baseball in a food blog? Because See's Candies and Major League Baseball are sponsoring a sweepstakes where the winner will throw out the first pitch at the Mariners vs. New York Yankees game on Sept. 5.

Visit a See's between July 25 and Aug. 23 and fill out a free entry form. The winner will receive four tickets to the game and will be escorted on the field to throw the ceremonial first pitch.

No purchase is necessary, but if you care that much about baseball we should note that the See's folks say you can ask at the counter for any box of See's to be custom wrapped with a sticker of the Mariners logo.

Not in Seattle? A handful of other teams are participating:

* Arizona Diamondbacks (vs. St. Louis Cardinals on Sept. 2)
* San Diego Padres (vs. Los Angeles Dodgers on Sept. 8)
* San Francisco Giants (vs. Arizona Diamondbacks on Sept. 9)
* Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (vs. Seattle Mariners on Sept. 13)

Remember, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, the Vancouver, B.C.-based authors who helped create the locavore phenomenon of the "100-mile diet," are coming to Lake Forest Park on Sunday, July 20.

They'll be cooking at the Lake Forest Park farmers market with the folks from GreenGo at 4 p.m., then doing a reading and Q&A at Third Place Books at 5:30 p.m. I'll be having coffee (er ... I'll be having coffee, maybe they'll drink Rockridge Orchards cider) with them afterwards. If you have questions for them, send me an e-mail by Sunday morning or post them in the comments here.

As I've said before, I find Smith and MacKinnon interesting partly because their efforts to eat foods "grown, caught or foraged" close to home are of practical as well as philosophical use to us. Because they live in Vancouver, their 100-mile Venn diagrams of food sources intersect with ours.

It's a good thing they're coming now instead of a couple of weeks ago, because, after dropping by the Lake City Farmers Market yesterday, I'm officially ready to forgive the weather all its permutations of the past few months and relax into summer.

The market itself was worlds different from opening day just last month. It was bustling with shoppers (the guy at Tonnemaker Farm, where I snagged a bag of dark, sweet, Van cherries, said traffic has doubled since moving from the old location) and the tables were bursting with new options. Alvarez Farms had a bin of squash blossoms. Berries were everywhere, including the tayberries I wrote about from Schuh Farms. (I'm using my berries to make more berry "fool" from the River Cottage cookbook, which proved as easy and summer-scrumptious as it looked.) The line at Half Pint's ice cream stand was long enough to curve around and down the aisle (she had raspberry ice cream from Hampton Farms berries, and a lime-mint "mojito.") And Billy's from Tonasket had cherry tomatoes and tomatoes that -- I'm calling it, the good life is here -- had enough flavor to deserve the name.

Finally! The good folks at Starbucks Gossip have got it, with Starbucks telling them "In the spirit of transparency with our partners, customers and communities, we have provided the full list of stores below for general information purposes."

Seattle stores slated for closure, according to the list, are:

15th Avenue East -- 328 15th Ave. E.
Denny & Aurora -- 620 Denny Way
Met Park II -- 1220 Howell St.
23rd & Madison -- 2201 E. Madison Ave.
45th & Stone Way -- 1218 N. 45th St.
Northgate Mall II -- 301 N.E. Northgate Way
42nd & S.W. Alaska -- 4704 42nd Ave. S.W.

Want to ease the upcoming shock of finding out just how many calories are packed in a serving of Outback Steakhouse's Bloomin' Onion appetizer, Dunkin Donuts corn muffins, and other chain restaurant dishes? A law will require large King County chain restaurants to post nutritional information starting Jan. 1, but MSNBC.com has a report on how a new labeling law in New York is already affecting customers. The story reported on diners so disconcerted by the numbers they asked if they couldn't just have an old, label-free menu instead.

"While some sit-down chains and fast-food eateries are waiting until the last minute, coffee shops like Starbucks -- home of the 470 calorie raspberry scone and 610 calorie cookie -- have been replacing their menu boards and adding calorie tags to pastries in recent weeks. The result: Do a little eavesdropping in a New York City restaurant, and you may think you've stumbled into an Overeaters Anonymous meeting."

Among other shocks, a weight-watching T.G.I.Friday's customer found the chicken salad she was ordering actually had more calories, at 1360, than the chain's cheeseburger with fries. I still have to believe the salad, with pecans and dried cranberries, was a better choice overall. Under King County's law, we may have more of a clue -- besides calories, it will require restaurants to provide information on saturated fat, carbohydrate, and sodium content.

Read the whole story here -- unless you'd rather not know for a few final months.

I have loved eating Elise Fineberg's playful, seasonal, savory-sweet desserts at Taste SAM, and I am now regretting the restraint I've shown all the times I haven't stopped in for a bite. That regret is because Fineberg is leaving Seattle. Her last day at the restaurant will be July 26; she's heading back to the Bay Area. She wrote that her professional life here has been rewarding, but "I miss San Francisco" and she's going back home. When we find out where she lands there, we'll let you know.

Last Christmas, Fineberg shared a great pecan tart recipe that she had reworked as a home cookie bar, and I've made it far too many times for my own waistline. Here's a picture (from my own oven, hers are much neater) and a recipe link.

Sniff.

Excuse me, I've got to go call Leslie Kelly to talk this out before we decide if we'd rather try out a pistacio cardamom kulfi with rose macerated strawberries and pistacio "paper" or a toasted walnut cake with poached dried pluots, Rogue smoky blue cheese, and lemon-olive oil ice cream before the 26th.

Neil Robertson, don't you be going anywhere now!

Janet McDevitt, our 2008 Farm Fresh Family, is blogging here, and it's already a good read with food for thought.

Janet, a trained pastry chef whose resume includes Bouley Bakery in NYC and Earth & Ocean here, comes clean from the start that she is an "environmental disaster" who drives a mini-van, a thrifty shopper who used to think it was ridiculous to pay more for organics (she calls it "cheap," but I like thrifty better), and is squeamish about meat that looks like it used to be alive. In other words, she's normal (or as normal as a person who knows how to make croissants can be) -- but she's trying to change.

As a fellow parent of young kids, I relate to the feelings she just posted about the logistical difficulties of a farmers market run (let alone having time to cook what you've bought). She raised this interesting point on the business of the stands themselves:

"In the three weeks that we have been at this challenge, we have come home with some amazing produce. Cherries (of varieties I hadn't previously known existed) abound. Sugar snap peas, sweet onions, beautiful tomatoes (salmonella free, thank you) and lettuce that - oh my gosh! - actually has a flavor have graced our dinner table in the last few weeks. But I'm embarrassed to admit that I have no idea which farmers grew any of the food that we've been eating. Making it more daunting is the fact that we shop at the U-District Farmers Market, which has been PACKED the last few Saturdays. How do you strike up a conversation when there is a line behind you? And are the farmers really at the markets anyway? There must be so much work to do at the farm that I can't imagine working more on the weekend too.

Perhaps the thing for us to do would be to actually visit a couple of farms. In theory I love the idea of neighborhood farmers market shopping and the communal nature of it. I love being part of a community of people with similar interests in the quality of their food. And yet I still seem to shop as anonymously as I would in a conventional grocery store."

My own answer to this is to shop the smaller farmers market. I love the U District market, but, as I've said before, it overwhelms me. I gird up my energy and go with an attack plan. It's at the littler, less crowded neighborhood markets (or not so little -- Edmonds somehow manages to feel smaller than it is) that I feel most at home.

Got advice for Janet, or a tip on markets to try? Check out her blog and send her a note.

I am not much of a coupon clipper, but I made a rare grab for this free "coupon magazine" when I saw La Casa Azul (14419 Greenwood Ave. N.) on the cover. We got takeout from this unassuming place one of the first days it was open last year and knew we had scored when we asked a kid where one of the ingredients came from (was it the Oaxacan mole sauce? The tortilla?) and got the answer "My mom made it." In May, Jonathan Kauffman anointed the restaurant as comparable to La Carta de Oaxaca when it comes to Oaxacan specialties like entomatadas and picaditas.

The coupon (the usual half off an entree if you buy another full-price entree) is good until July 19, and you can print out a copy here.

Because every city needs an oasis, inside

Photos copyright Meryl Schenker unless otherwise noted

and out

Courtesy of Eric Riddle

Because life also has no set menu

Eric Riddle

and is full of surprises

Because the baby was welcome

and everyone could be heard, even with every seat filled

Because, of course, to everything there is a season

Courtesy of Traca Savadogo

and who knew that Kusshi oysters taste even better than Kumomotos?

Because we have tasted the freshest possible porcinis, and these were better

Eric Riddle

Because it is oddly relaxing not to order

And because "three vegetarians and one gluten-free" was no problem

Eric Riddle

Most of all, because there are fewer weddings and the funerals have begun

and because a daughter is missing

Because the years, months and nights speed by too fast

but our cup still overflows

Eric Riddle

There are three main types of cacao beans, Lauren Adler tells visitors to her shop. Ninety percent of chocolate is made from one type, she said -- and farmed badly to boot.

Chocolopolis, as you might guess, is devoted to the other 10 percent.

The new Queen Anne store will host a bunch of grand opening events this week, with highlights include chocolate-tasting sessions, presentations by makers of fine chocolate, and three "golden tickets" placed in store chocolate bars, entitling recipients to (enable me! No, enable meeee!) a free chocolate bar every week for a year.

I visited Chocolopolis last week and, even in the 80-degree days since, I kept returning to the memory of the shop's spicy drinking chocolate, slow-burning with cayenne and pasilla. While I like to think you can't take the Russell Stover's out of the girl, and I feel plenty fancy already baking with Fran's or Valhrona, that drink did pretty well convert me to the benefits of El Rey.

Overall, the store reminded me more of an independent wine shop than anything else, the sort where the owners love their subject so much they want to talk about it with customers and share the excitement. Chocolopolis is not a city of caramels and chews; it's a place where chocolates are categorized by geographic region, and described in terms of beans, of conching processes, of notes of licorice or berry.

The shop is not designed to pry the Snickers bars from your fingers. Adler said she swore when she got the bug for fine chocolates that it wouldn't turn her into a snob. But she found herself that she couldn't go back: Now when she eats Hershey's she gets nothing from it but the synthetic notes of vanillin.

Adler led me through a chocolate tasting, and I did find the mere act of paying attention to each bite (rather than blindly and blissfully nibbling while reading) makes a difference. Observe the texture, I was instructed. Break the chocolate to see if it makes a clean, well-tempered snap, smell it, chew it a few times and let it melt over the tongue, and suddenly all that stuff about "overtones of cherry" will make more sense.

The shop features fine chocolates from around the world, many of them hard to find and most with great stories behind them. I told Adler that, even as a registered chocolate fiend, I had never seen a good half of the producers she's featuring. She smiled.

"Then we're doing our jobs."

Here are the grand opening events coming up. The store's at 1527 Queen Anne Ave. N.:

continue reading

Festival food tends to clone itself throughout a region, and we did see plenty of the usual hot dogs and kettle corn at the delightful Skagit Valley Highland Games and Celtic Festival today. But there were also a couple of distinctive touches to the food:

Scottish meat pies -- in this form, at least, something like pastry-wrapped ground beef.

I've only seen this barbecue truck at one other festival -- one in Mukilteo last year -- and I wouldn't mind seeing it around a lot more. It's a two-kilter.

And, seeing as we were in Mount Vernon, there were local strawberries in the shortcake.