Filling in for Joe Carcione, with your Green Grocer’s Tip of the Day

Bless the fine folks at Raley’s and Bel Air. They send out a weekly e-mail with tips, recipes, and a coupon good for a quality item for free in their store.

This week you can get a free garden salad when you buy a sandwich. Other weeks have featured a free bag of romaine lettuce with a $10 purchase. I have no idea how I got on their e-mail list, but it’s the one piece of advertising I actually look forward to each week (now if they’d spam me with a coupon for free Spam, that would be funny.)

Now, I realize Raley’s and Bel Air are no Whole Foods, but who doesn’t like to patronize a home-grown business, and who doesn’t appreciate free stuff when it’s actually good for you?

Hecka Culture and the Devil

Actual conversation overheard by me at McKinley Park after work:

Girl One: I want to go somewhere different this year though.
Girl Two: Yeah. Not like somewhere hecka touristy either.
Girl One: I know. I want to go somewhere with like hecka museums and hecka restaurants and, just like…
Girl Two: Hecka culture.
Girl One: Yeah. But definitely not like hecka tourists though.
Girl Two: Maybe like Greece or something.

The next day at the farmer’s market I saw a dude wearing a T-shirt that said, “THE DEVIL IS A PIMP. DON’T BE HIS HO.” Now, I ask you: is there not hecka culture right here in Sacramento? And not even hecka tourists either?

4th of July Traditions at the Mall

So, the Mrs. and I went with some friends to dinner (thanks Mike, for picking up the tab) at California Pizza Kitchen at Arden Fair mall. (Go for the Jamaican Jerk chicken pizza, it’s great: chicken, peppers onions, jerk sauce and of course, bacon. The waiter didn’t appreciate my aside when I asked him how the Jamaican Jerk compares to the Haitian Asshole.) Anyway, we wound up taking so long that we were sitting with a ringside seat when the Cal Expo fireworks went off. It was rather entertaining, watching 4th of July fireworks from the window of a chain mall restaurant, entertaining and relaxing.

The point of this, though, is to chronicle what we saw on our way out of the Arden Fair parking lot:
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“A popular local blog” receives mention

After months of lamenting on this here web log, the citizens of Sacramento were rewarded today as the Sac Bee finally did a piece on the whereabouts of Paul Joncich and Jennifer Whitney and in doing so found time to mention the Sac Rag.

It helps that he’s had tremendous support from viewers, Joncich says. A popular local blog, sacrag.com, has served as something of a grief-support group for fans of “Paul and Jen” — their casual on-air names for each other.

Casual on-air names for each other? At any rate, it is a good piece and answers many of the questions many Sacramentans have asked since their departure.

Joncich and Whitney still wish they had been given the opportunity to say farewell to viewers on the air when they left. (Valenzuela, who left in late January, negotiated a good-bye statement into her severance agreement.) “The viewers were confused when Jennifer and I just disappeared,” Joncich says.

They sure were.

Drivers beware!

My brother was first in line at Fry’s this morning to snap up a refurbed GPS for under $200. He has wanted one for a year, even though he knows every street in the county and is the only one I know who can make it from Kennedy to Jesuit during rush hour in a half-hour. (He has his secrets, and won’t share them.)

He is now on his way to the airport, to pick up a friend of ours coming in from Baton Rouge. (I love saying “Baton Rouge.” So much more fun than “Red Stick,” don’t you think?)

“But … you KNOW how to get to the airport,” I said, pointing out the patently obvious. “You’ve been there a million times. Hell, you used to WORK there. You don’t need a computer to tell you the way.”

“Ahh, but does the GPS know how to get there?” he replies. “THAT’s the question!”

I’m going to assume it does, and not bother with an update. Boys and their toys! Sheesh!

Going, going, gone …

Perfect summer evening for baseball, and so on impulse I rounded up some friends last night and headed for Raley Field to watch the RiverCats play the Salt Lake City Bees. Maybe it’s me, but … where did the fun go?

To be sure, you couldn’t fault the weather, Sacramento’s best: just a hint of summer warmth with an overlay of classic Delta breeze. Raley Field still looks as adorable as ever, with its center field neon and center-right view of the Tower Bridge lit artfully by both nature and SMUD power. The field itself is crisp and clean, with sharp white chalk lines as always striking against the dark valley loam. The food was great (no sense complaining about ballpark prices — they are what they are), the play was good and the ‘Cats beat the Bees, thanks to a lovely grandslam midway through.

So what was the problem?
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Where’s my sushi, Nick?

OK, remember what I said the other day about treating everyone nicely (yes, Kit, including hipsters)?

The one exception is Nick from Ameriprise Financial. “Who’s Nick from Ameriprise?” you may ask yourself.

Answer: He’s the guy who called me to tell me that he’d plucked my business card out of the fishbowl at Kamon Sushi, entitling me and nine of my friends to a complimentary sushi lunch.

I immediately called my hubby, and we brainstormed on our favorite sushi eaters who would be on the invitation list (yes, you were all on the list), and we compared Outlook calendars to coordinate good days for our complimentary lunch.
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The Dispossessed

Eddie Fong closed his restaurant on Monday, and his regulars are bereft. All week long they’ve been wandering around town looking for a place to have breakfast, but there’s no place like Eddie’s, never has been and never will be again.

I was an Eddie’s regular, once removed. In truth, my brother was the Eddie’s guy, and I was allowed a pass into the inner circle because of him. Without that pass, Eddie’s could be a rather intimidating place to eat. Eddie ran a restaurant with good food (heavenly corned beef on Thursdays, best in town) and an attitude that was all his own. If you didn’t like anything about him or his place, he had no hesitation whatsoever about swearing at you until your ears hurt and then throwing you out. (Banishment to the Tower Cafe across Broadway was considered akin to being sent to hell for any Eddie’s regular.)
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