Selecting records through :has_many :through association

I have the following models, where `favorites` acts as a join table for my `users` to store their favorite `items`:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  :has_many :favorites
  :has_many :items, :through => :favorites
end

class Item < ActiveRecord::Base
  :has_many :favorites
  :has_many :users, :through => :favorites
end

class Favorite < ActiveRecord::Base
  :belongs_to :user    # foreign key user_id
  :belongs_to :item    # foreign key item_id
end

I want to do one query (find) that lists every item and has some sort of "flag" on each to show whether or not it's a favorite of the current user.  This SQL query is perfect at performing this:

"SELECT items.*, favorites.id AS fid FROM items LEFT JOIN favorites ON favorites.item_id=items.id AND favorites.user_id=#{@current_user.id}"

It returns every row in the items table and then has NULL for fid where the item is NOT a favorite of the current user.  This is what I want, so that in the partial that displays all items I can simply know by the presence of a non-null fid whether an item is already a favorite of the user.  

I cannot seem to reproduce this "the Rails Way".

I have tried:

Item.find :all, :joins => [ 'users', 'favorites' ], :conditions => [ 'favorites.user_id = #@current_user.id}"]

I believe that doesn't work because it does an INNER JOIN, not a LEFT JOIN and so eliminates items that are not in fact favorites of the current user, so I tried this next thing (again not very railsy, but thinking it would work via brute force at least):

Item.find :all, :joins => [ "LEFT JOIN favorites ON favorites.item_id = item.id" ], :conditions => [ 'favorites.user_id = #@current_user.id}"]

This similarly did not work and returned only the items that ARE favorites of the current user.  Apparently ActiveRecord is too smart and is "realizing" that I want only the items that are user favorites, but it's wrong!

What am I missing?

John