By Matthew Stafford

New Year's Eve - known to legendary boozer Humphrey Bogart as "amateur night" - is a holiday fraught with potholes and land mines. On this wind-chilled evening of manufactured revelry, people from every walk of life take it upon themselves to have a great time or die trying. This grim determination to usher in the new year at a transcendent, life-altering level is as doomed to failure as any keenly anticipated dinner cruise or senior prom. The barkeep runs out of the good stuff. The throngs are too loud, too grating, too avid. And as the evening drones on and the cheap champagne flows and the bitterness and disappointment mount, the best option is to hightail it to some distant continent where the new year begins in late spring, or not at all.

A pleasant and even memorable New Year's Eve isn't absolutely unattainable, however; I've enjoyed more than a few myself. Once a friend and I packed a hamper with champagne and Hershey bars, made our way up Mt. Tam to a ledge overhanging Blithedale Canyon and at the stroke of midnight were rewarded with a roar of merrymaking from the valley below. At the close of the worst year of my life, staring dimly at the time-delayed revelry of Times Square through a mist of bourbon, I watched with great satisfaction as the big ball dropped to the pavement, muttering to myself "thank God THAT'S over." And for the biggest New Year's in a millennium - the dawn of the 21st century - I set out to consume a martini at each of my favorite watering holes, beginning with the Pied Piper Lounge and ending at an all-night Chinatown dive specializing in rice gruel.

More >>

By Meredith Brody

You may have noticed that there's precious little new stuff to watch during the holidays - a period which The New York Times describes as "a profound holiday slumber of repeats and musical specials." But we can't even find any musical specials, and are reduced to re-watching A Colbert Christmas , which in a marketing stroke of genius was broadcast before Thanksgiving and available on DVD immediately thereafter. ("Remember, every time you buy a copy of A Colbert Christmas, an angel gets it wings.")

So far we haven't tired of watching Colbert and his guests Toby Keith, John Legend, Feist, Willie Nelson, Jon Stewart, and most especially Elvis Costello, whose own Spectacle talk-and-music show on the Sundance Channel has continued to program new episodes during the holidays and is both erudite and entertaining. (Catch the marathon on New Year's Eve - four episodes featuring Elton John, Lou Reed and Julian Schnabel, Bill Clinton, and Tony Bennett!)

But HBO has thankfully enlivened the holiday slumbertime by programming a new documentary, Le Cirque: A Table In Heaven, which premiered Monday December 29th, and will be in heavy rotation on all the HBO channels.

More >>

(Palermo vs. Tokyo by Chef Ian Muntzert for Mission Street Food)

By Tamara Palmer

It's only been a few months since I became your faithful daily food blogger, but it's a position I've been unconsciously training for all of my life. I have always been interested in the world of eating, from the political and scientific levels all the way down to an unabashed love of snacking. I'm making a concerted effort to try the new and different as much as possible, but have yet to achieve an Anthony Bourdain-level of experimentation. (That may well never come; I'm realistic and doubt I'd ever eat a boiled grasscutter in Ghana.)

I'm sure I'll continue to be more adventurous in 2009, especially if it gives someone else a vicarious boost to just read about it. I did manage to push some of my own personal tasting boundaries this year at least 10 times, and while not every bite was appealing, the thrill of the new remained. These are my top food firsts for 2008 in no particular order, with the hope that there will be many more to come.
More >>

Notes and Photos by Tamara Palmer

This week marks the anticipated opening of Humphry Slocombe, an ice cream parlor featuring inventive flavors from owner/chef Jake Godby, who has worked as a pastry chef for more than 15 years for fine restaurants like Fifth Floor, Boulevard and Coi. The name comes from Mr Humphries and Mrs. Slocombe, two colorful characters from the classic Britcom Are You Being Served? and is a perfect odd moniker to go with these leftfield flavors.

Inaugural ice cream offerings include the pleasantly sweet Blue Bottle Vietnamese coffee, a rich Balsamic caramel, the yin-yang of Guinness gingerbread and, in a nod to Fifties housewives everywhere, Secret Breakfast (bourbon ice cream with caramelized Corn Flakes). After trying everything, I ultimately chose the Thai chili lime sorbet (which warms without shocking with spice) with some super-smooth coconut sherbet, a soothing after-lunch choice.
More >>

(Image via Food Gal)

•Persimmons for late bloomers [Food Gal]

•The great restaurant boom of 2009 [SFGate]

•Sourdough starter [Bay Area Bites]

•Gluten-free Whoopie [The Urban Housewife]

-- Tamara Palmer

More >>

(Alembic photo by Heidi Schumann via New York Times)

Yesterday's New York Times weaves a magical tale of our spirited culture with Gregory Dicum's "In San Francisco Bars, a Cocktail Is Not Just a Drink," which profiles The Alembic (1725 Haight), Beretta (1199 Valencia), Bourbon and Branch (501 Jones), and Clock Bar (335 Powell) and also makes mention of Anchor Distillery, Distillery No. 209 (Pier 50) and retail store Cask (17 3rd St). Now is as good a time as any to frequent these places and appreciate that they've been shown respect by such an esteemed source; sometimes it takes an outsider to remind us what we've got. Don't forget to tip your bartender or mixologist well. -- Tamara Palmer

By Meredith Brody

If you fried up a whole lot of latkes (potato pancakes) or sufganyot (doughnuts) for Hanukkah, or sautéed sweet potatoes in oil or fried tamales in lard for Christmas, or maybe the turkey frier you hauled out for Thanksgiving is still lurking in the garage, full of congealed fat (lovely thought). PLEASE don't dump the grease down the drain.

Starting Saturday, December 27, and running through Tuesday, December 30, you can bring your used cooking oil to the Costco warehouse at 10th and Bryant, or three Whole Foods Market locations: California and Franklin streets, Rhode Island Street in Potrero Hill, and Fourth Street in SOMA. (And while you're there, maybe there are some post-Christmas bargains to be snapped up.) The used oil and grease will be turned into biodiesel and used to power city vehicles.

This is part of the SFGreasecycle program, run by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. It will, in addition to contributing to a lower use of fossil fuels, and saving money for the city, also reduce the amount of oil and grease that clogs up the sewer system as effectively as it does your arteries - and costs the city around $3.5 million a year to clean up. It's a classic example of a win-win situation.

Which begs the question: why isn't such a free drop-off program available year-round?

By Meredith Brody

On first reading, this bright idea seems heaven-sent for combining two New Year's resolutions: contributing to a greener planet by using less gasoline, and, hey, dropping a few pounds while you're at it.

Alas, this Beverly Hills (where else?) liposuction doctor's simple plan - using the fat he sucked out of his patients' bodies to fuel his Ford SUV and his girlfriend's Lincoln Navigator (nice gas-sucking choices, by the way, doc!), turned out to be illegal.

Not if Dr. Craig Alan Bittner had been performing the procedures at his now-shuttered Beverly Hills Liposculpture on chickens, beef, and pigs, that would have been perfectly OK. Fat (animal or vegetable) contains triglycerides that can be extracted and turned into diesel.

More >>