A slow-moving daily parade of idling vehicles stretching up Masonic Avenue...

Since the advent of the digital camera, we haven't stepped foot inside a Costco. Now we have a reason to return. Today's Hot Stuff ("Catering by Costco") in the Merc rates the appetizers found in the frozen food section of everyone's favorite warehouse store. Some of their top picks are the Full Circle Torta Stella, Cuisine Adventures' spanakopita, Clear Springs' smoked rainbow trout (smoked trout is phenomenal, folks -- miles above smoked salmon), and......

Put down the hamburger: Trader Joe's is recalling some ground beef and onions. Generally we love Joe's food, but listeria monocytogenes? Ick! In fairness to TJ's, all supermarkets go through recalls now and then, and it could be far worse -- at the Safeway in the Mission, we've seen them changing ceiling tiles above the uncovered produce. Frequent TJ shoppers can get alerts whenever the company issues a recall, but it's slightly hard to......

It's not an exaggeration to say that some families are held together by dough. Our grandmother for instance, used to bake scrumptious apple tarts to lure her philandering husband back home. It seems however, that the dough-kneading gene did not make it to our batch of DNA. So we 're always on the lookout for some good ready-made. Despite its strong following, we felt completely let down by Trader Joe's 99-cent whole-wheat dough: once rolled, we could not get it to remain stretched. In fact, its ability to retract to the touch reminded us of garden snails when you poke their soft parts. Fortunately there is the onomatopoeic Patxi's Chicago Pizza. ...

We did a confused circle around the first floor of the Women's Building Saturday night, until we noticed the sign which you see at your right, telling us to go upstairs for the SF Women's Film Festival documentary shorts screening, featuring movies all directed by women. We got to a classroom-sized room and settled into a folding chair just as people were starting to trickle in and, more importantly, right as the Trader Joe's snacks......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... ...

SFist Jon's plastic bag story from last week prompted such a good exchange in the comments section, we thought we'd expand on them in a post. The mantra "reduce/reuse/recycle" is something many of us in San Francisco already practice, but as consumers, we need to pull more weight in the effort to make San Francisco "greener." Please feel free to add your ideas and feedback in the comments. ...

-Judge rules lethal injection in California a not very nice thing to do. -$1 billion bucks to go to easing congestion through Interstate 580 between Alameda County and the Altamont Pass....

-Electronic devices cause BART tickets to be demagnetized causing mayhem and anarchy on BART. ...

We're back! Until our editor returns from vacation, that is. --Daly's not wearing green beads anymore. --They're opening a Trader Joe's in Oakland! --Wild pigs contaminated your spinach. --There was a minor fire at the Slanted Door yesterday at the Ferry Building. --Surveying the homeless in Golden Gate Park --Gelato wars in Los Gatos --Was it sexism that only scantily-clad female cheerleaders were suspended after a Halloween party last year? Picture from the SJ Merc......

Sad as it may seem, a great deal of joy comes into of our lives by browsing missed connections. While we like to say that it is simply good clean fun to see people's hearts and thoughts scattering across what might have been, the fact remains that we are just just hoping someone writes about us (Cute? At Trader Joe's? Buying Pasta? That could be us!). Despite the smatterings of missed connection success stories that......

We picked a camembert of the brand Le rouge et le noir at Trader Joe's the other day. Oh my, what a mistake, that thing is not even worth turning into a hockey puck. It is a shame they put the name Camembert on such travesty. It got us in a really sour mood. Will people actually think this is what we French enjoy? And how dare they use Stendhal's beautiful classic as a......

An elderly Novato animal lover was sent to jail after getting in a fight with a trapper over a skunk. (Skunk pictured above, from CBS 5). The 82-year-old man and his wife were trying to release a skunk that the property owner had trapped. Unfortunately, a county trapper was also there. The trapper, there with his son, shouted, "Do not release the skunk, sir!", at which point he claims the man charged him. The trapper's son admits to tackling the activist in a bearhug, but says he only did it after the activist tried to take his father's gun. The trapper says after they let the activist up, he then tried to run them over with his car. The activist says he was attacked and are looking to press charges against the trapper. Does this seem vaguely like a Pepe LePew plot to anyone else? ABC 7, meanwhile, is proudly touting its coverage of cruelty to chickens through the use of "battery cages," in which up to 10 hens are squeezed into a single cage. After they aired footage taped by the East Bay Animal Advocates, Trader Joe's has agreed to stop selling battery-cage eggs under its own name (though it'll continue to sell battery-cage eggs from other producers), and the Humane Society has filed a lawsuit against the State of California, claiming that public funds were illegally used to promote battery-caging in general. ....and someone in Pleasanton saw two great horned owls going at it. Birds do it, bees do it: owlets should emerge in about a month. ...

The six-week-long search for a missing pediatrician concluded tragically, as divers discovered her body inside her car, in the Oakland estuary bay. Dr. Zehra Attari was last seen driving from her Oakland office to a meeting in the city of Alameda on Nov. 7. Searchers were stymied until they received a late-arriving tip that someone had seen someone matching her description looking lost near the edge of the water in Alameda. The tipster said she had almost been hit on the road coming back from Trader Joe's by a woman who looked like she was trying to read building addresses from her car. It was dark and rainy that night and they think Dr. Attari may have accidentally driven off the Grand Street boat pier (pictured at right) in her confusion. Police investigators are looking into it, but report that one of the car's airbags had gone off, and the doctor's body was found in the back seat, leading them to speculate that she may have attempted to get out of the car before it sank. The grieving family has called for an investigation into why Alameda hadn't put up some kind of barrier, given that two men had died driving off of the ramp two years ago. Picture of Alameda pier by Gary Reyes from the Merc News...

Trader Joe's has become a weekend ritual for us. We really can't admit this without shame. Weekends used to be times to climb mountains or party endlessly. Now, we must wake up early on Saturdays, or TJ's parking lot will be full. A little evasion from our dull life--beside TJ's two buck chuck--has come lately from Hukilau, the Hawaiian place just down the street from our TJ, on Masonic at Geary. Not that the......

Those of you who read SFist Watches have probably deduced that your Junkie's TV viewing habits consist solely of KRON 4 News at 11 and Animal Cops SF. (It's not entirely true -- sometimes we watch Robot Chicken.) But we're making an exception tomorrow! Instead of our usual 7:30 p.m. routine (viz, watching Wheel of Fortune over our usual dinner of Lucky Charms and Trader Joe beer), we're tuning in to see ..... none other than our beloved editor-in-chief SFist Jackson MAKING HIS TELEVISION DEBUT!!!!! Yeeeeeeeeee-ha! Jackson's this week's talking head on local politics TV show SF Unscripted on Comcast Channel 11, hosted by local Republican Arthur Bruzzoni (he's the guy up left). He's talking about (what else?) blogging in local politics -- with unrepentant blogger and District 5 candidate Mr. h. brown. Check out Jackson sporting his cool pink shirt! Rrrowr! What's the SFist staff doing while Jackson rockets to fame? Drinking game! Play along with us tomorrow at 7:30! (Jackson, h., and Art Bruzzoni reair Thursday at 6:30, Friday at 8, and Saturday at 8:30).

SFist has been seen wandering the wine aisles at our Trader Joe's many a day and night. We mainly shop for wine by price - not for what may be added to the wines we drink. Not for long! The newly passed Food Allergen Labeling Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) will mandate clear and consistent labeling of foods containing known allergens, starting in 2006. Since we are on our way to Napa this weekend, we found......