I just added a bunch of fruits to my Taste 1,000 Fruits Project. A few of my favorites:

Concord Grapes
I finally realize where artificial grape flavoring came from. Concord grapes taste like the fruit version of grape candy. They’re small, and have an exquisite texture. The outside peel isn’t solidly attached to the fruit inside, so you can squeeze one between your teeth and the interior fruit pops out. That’s how I ate the whole bunch.

Yali Asian Pears
Crisp and light, the flavor is almost like an essence, the way cucumber can scent water.

Muscat Grapes
Sweet and juicy — if you’ve had Muscat wine, you know what these taste like.

Cherimoya
I didn’t get a great photo, but this is one of my favorite new fruits. Like a cross between a banana and a pineapple with texture a little like a peach. The flesh inside is white with large brown seeds in it. If you see one anywhere, try it.

Hooray for Wednesday! Today Libby and I toasted sleeping in, tennis in the springtime, and anticipating fancy parties. What are you toasting today?

After some diligent searching I found the rest of the Gatsby photos! Here are some details on throwing your own party.

To help our friends figure out what to wear, I included a link to a costumer site in the invitation.

My dress is a 70s reproduction worn with a silk robe as a coat and a cloche I picked up at Ambiance in town. I also had a bunch of cloches in my closet because I like hats, so I brought those along for hatless friends. I got Margaret’s black cloche at HandM.

We’d decided on a high-tea menu, so we set up a little table with a table cloth for the food. We served champagne in teacups, Prohibition style. We were in a public park, so the teacups also helped us dodge open container laws. Take that, coppers!

We also served Pimm’s Cup, which is sort of like a British mojito. They’re refreshing, and sweet, and you can make them ahead in pitchers so you don’t have to tend bar when you could be enjoying your party. Don’t put ice in the pitcher or you’ll wind up with diluted drinks and a lackluster lawn party.

Here’s the full menu:
A baked ham (which we ordered)
Rolls and condiments for simple sandwiches
Cheese tray with nuts and dried fruits
Three homemade cakes:
Chocolate
Carrot
Lemon Bundt
Champagne or sparkling wine
Pimm’s Cups
Bottled soda and water

We brought a croquet set to the park, and my friend Margaret printed up rules.

We got giant balloons for the kids. Ours were from a local party store, but you can order them online here. I’m not positive, but I think they’re the 60″.

I’m so thrilled to have the photos back, it was such a fun day. I was really touched by how many of our friends were willing to dress up.

By the way, if you like this theme, you’ll swoon over Mena Trott’s Gatsby Summer Afternoon. She sewed her dress, found vintage soda labels and made bottled drinks to go with them, and acquired a vintage phonograph to complete the look. Mena is dreamy.

This is from my Great Gatsby croquet birthday in 2007. I thought we’d lost all the photos in an epic iPhoto crash a few years ago, but I just found a few on my hard drive! Look at Hank in his tiny argyle socks. Oh, little buddy.

I’d been plotting this party for years, and even my friends who aren’t that into the costume thing really went all out.

Tune in tomorrow for the menu and other little party details. In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun?

“Getting to know San Francisco like the back of my hand” is on my life list, and I’m taking five city tours as part of that goal. I started with the Market Street tour through San Francisco City Guides, a non-profit that hosts dozens of free walking tours.

The Palace Hotel was once the largest hotel in the Western U.S. I had no idea it was a big deal until this tour. Working for presidential candidates has given me most of my fancy hotel experiences here, and I wondered why none had stayed at the Palace that I knew of, apparently it’s because there’s no secure basement parking, which the Secret Service frowns upon.

Franklin Roosevelt was the last president to stay here, but presidents swarmed the place before that. In fact, Warren G. Harding died in one of the rooms, and family legend suggests his wife poisoned him. She tried to blame the hotel kitchen until one of the owners tried to have the glass near his bed tested for poison, whereupon Mrs. Harding snatched the glass and rinsed it out. Dun-dun-DUN!

The hotel originally cost $5 million to build, and rooms were only 50 cents a night. (They run about $250-$1jillion now.) At the time, pneumatic tubes carried room service orders, there was a telegraph operator on every floor, and a fire brigade roamed the halls every half hour to make sure no one was too drunk to be trusted with the wood-burning stoves in the rooms.

There have been two hotels on the site, the first erected in 1879. It was made to be earthquake and fire proof. The foundation went down 12 ft., the exterior was made of concrete blocks banded in iron and bolted together, there were four wells in the basement and 638,000 gallons of water in tanks on the roof. That building withstood the 1906 earthquake, but was gutted by fire days later when the windows exploded and fire jumped into the building’s interior. It took twenty-one months to tear the exterior down.

This is the main event space, the Garden Court — a wedding here starts at $50,000. It was originally a driveway for carriages:

It has one of the largest expanses of glass ceiling in the world:

To celebrate the end of WWI, handlers released Doves of Peace into the dining room at a dinner with President Woodrow Wilson in attendance. Several escaped and had to be recaptured days later. Local newspapers accused the hotel of shooting the birds, to which the hotel responded coldly that they had not killed the Doves of Peace. During a renovation in 1989, pellet holes were found in the plaster near the glass ceiling. So now we know the real story behind WWII.

For a time, the hotel owner kept a mistress, who stayed across the street at the Grand Hotel, which he also owned. He built a covered walkway between the two hotels so his mistress couldn’t be seen when she crossed to see him. Other fellows got the same idea, and soon everyone knew what young ladies were up to if they were staying at the Grand. Harlots.

This is the French Parlor, which overlooks the Garden Court. The parlor was a private space for women who needed to pass out momentarily while maids unlaced their corsets. Once they could breathe again, they were cinched back up and returned to the festivities.

Maxfield Parrish’s Pied Piper hangs in the bar. It is jucier in person.

The bar’s mosaic tiles were restored after wall-to-wall carpet was glued to them in the ’50s.

The bar’s glass ceiling was revealed when new owners removed the dropped acoustic tiles that had been installed well beneath it. The walls feature murals of early San Francisco personalities, including the eccentric Emperor Norton who printed his own money, which was accepted by local businesses. When he died, tens of thousands attended his funeral.