the grand pause

stuff

Dinner this evening was two cobs of white corn and ice cream with stuff.

(Don't mind me--late lunch was nutritious as well as far too heavy: turkey and swiss on focaccia with tomato, avocado, and pesto. For goodness' sake. It came with a side salad, including fresh carrot slivers and crunchy red cabbage.)

So, the ice cream with stuff: drop about a scoop and a half of vanilla ice cream into a mug. Find cereal spoon that's roughly tablespoon-sized. Use it to scatter over the ice cream, in order-- third of a spoonful of Ghirardelli's chocolate mocha powder (ordinarily for hot chocolate), some ground mace (or nutmeg), three spoonfuls of brandy, and a spoonful and a bit of Kahlua.

Not bad. I haven't had a brandy Alexander, but now I'm interested....

Next time, I'm using normal ice cream or adding a bit of vanilla extract (this was Breyer's lactose-free vanilla, purchased by lactose-free Dan on a whim and fine aside from being less flavorful than its normal cousin), and chilling the mug with the alcohol in it first. It's not warm here, but the concoction went melty a bit quickly.

one bead at a time

2006-08-20, Strings (take-out) (CA > El Cerrito)

me: chicken piccata (with unexpected but welcome steamed broccoli); Dan: "combo" = lasagna, stuffed mushrooms, tortellini

Strings offers basic, unpretentious Italian food for a couple dollars less than The Olive Garden (which no longer exists around here) or Macaroni Grill. That's damned useful. The tortellini could barely be seen beneath a blanket of cream sauce (its own) and cheese (the mushrooms and lasagna). Everything tasted fairly good, though, and both entrees came with a choice of side salad or minestrone, which made this more food than we needed for $27.

It's also practically the only food we had today, so we finished it. (Split a serving of fruit crisp from Bette's Diner this afternoon while hunting a desk chair for Dan.) Yesterday involved a pseudo-hike and a picnic, and we had rather too much provender for the latter, considering that all the rest of the weekend I've sat motionless at my desk.

While seeking an elusive, dissertation-related item this afternoon (safely, ergo impossibly, concealed somewhere), I found the "learn to cro-tat" kit I'd acquired a few months before moving. Who makes beginner booklets containing six patterns of which two are rated intermediate, four advanced? Though it doesn't look complicated, if I'd never played with a tatting shuttle, I'd be perplexed instead of bemused.

two new neighbors

I realize this stuff can't be of much interest to non-locals. Someday Vox, too, will have cut-tags. (Surely.)

1. Krung Thep

takeout, 2006-08-11: Dan had pad thai with chicken, I the tom yum gai

The soup was fantastically good with fresh vegetables, flavorful but fairly lean chicken pieces, and astonishing amounts of lemongrass and basil that nevertheless yielded a pleasing whole. (Lemongrass can be pushy....) Dan prefers Thai Noodle's pad thai, which is greasier but gives a better balance of peanut, noodle, bean sprouts, tofu, and meat. "Okay" from one of us and "great" from the other is enough to put this restaurant on the return list, a fact boosted by its being three blocks away.

2. Uncle Wong's

split, 2006-08-13: hot and sour soup, General Tsou's chicken, black mushroom with Chinese greens

The greens turned out to be entirely mundane baby bok choi (and carrot slices). As a meal, merely okay, to me; Dan was more pleased than I. The chicken was nicely spicy and (happily) lacked the hard evidence of deep-frying that Gen. Tsou's often has. OTOH, the soup and the mushroom/veg dish suffered from too much corn starch. The soup turned out to be vegetarian and had a goodly amount of stuff--biased towards egg, tofu, and bamboo shoot, with the unusual addition of water chestnut slices yet the disappointing subtraction of wood ear mushroom, lotus shoots, and any sort of red pepper. Black pepper is too straightforward by itself (Hey, when I make a more flavorful version of something, I'm allowed to criticize; I don't cook much.) We'd probably go again because, again, it's only a few blocks away. Must remember to specify "no MSG."

skullduggery

The incipient series of food posts would not be complete without reference to the pig that our friends T. and D. roasted whole this weekend--in a pit they dug in the ground, wrapped in banana leaves and chickenwire, beneath a tarp. The eightyish-pound pig came from a local farmer, and the roasting process was a total success. The hardest part was the digging, apparently, since one hits rocks after the first foot or so around here.

Their dog was pleased by all the grease-flavored dirt that resulted when the pig was dug up.

Sidenote: over time, parties involving this group of friends have come to have small children present. What makes this not weird is that it's not an isolated tyke or two but a bunch of kids at different ages. There's enough parent-eyed adults to watch things casually, the kids have each other to play with, and no one becomes the sudden focus of too much scrutiny, with the result that the party remains fun for everyone regardless of why they're there. Granted, adults can leave more readily when bored or annoyed, but the 8-10 kids between a few months and seven years seemed to have a good time.

Cheers to Jen for bartending.

heh

Since Dan has linked here: if any of you non-vox lj types wants an invitation to vox, I have two. You might want to read this first.

Note that I can't screen comments, nor can either you or I delete them.

waters lite

(No cut-tags, eh? Pity.)

2006-08-03, dinner at Chez Panisse Café (CA > Berkeley > gourmet ghetto)

Shared: Little Gems lettuce with cream, garlic, bottarga di muggine, and chervil

Dan: gnocchetti pasta with chanterelle mushrooms and wild nettles; summer berry tart with crème légère; a rather fine non-alc grape juice whose identity I've forgotten

Me: Hoffman Farm chicken braised with paprika, served with red peppers, polenta, and pounded parsley; bittersweet chocolate hazelnut cake with chocolate cream; glass of Spaten Pils (the regular dry lager)

Total cost: $94 (they include 17% gratuity regardless of party size)

-----

After well over a decade eating out in the home of "California cuisine"--if on a tiny budget--one learns a few things.* Actually, one becomes spoiled. Meeting the low-end version of CA cuisine's flagship then is a bit like seeing Gone with the Wind after sampling later decades' filmmaking: one can tell it's pretty cool, but there's not much "whoa" factor.

Overall we were pleased. The entrees' respective flavors were extremely well balanced. The bottarga (which I had to look up--roe) gave the salad excellent flavor, lingering but not overpowering. The chocolate cream balanced my cake's dryness almost well enough :) and though the thick crust on Dan's tart overwhelmed his berries, it tasted good on its own as well, after he'd given up and eaten the rest of the berries first. We had prompt service (especially re: neverending water refills), which isn't "expected," given my tendency to make the table I'm at turn invisible; at the end the head server bid us good-night, which was nice.

But, you know, we can spend half that (or less) and have food that's tasty, well-prepared, and slightly less extraspeciallywonderfully fresh. :P

*I could not have written--wouldn't have thought to write--anything resembling this post when I first came to Berkeley. Prior exposure to lots of cuisines, check. Written articulacy, check. Ability to discern anything particular about food? Nope.

the sun always shines on tv

I've figured out what I can post here without overlap: food and crochet. Lacking a camera, I can't manage the nifty immediacy of EmilyLaughed's yarn shop visit, but we'll see. *pokes Dan's Treo* It's strange to contemplate an online space in which I actually go by something related to my given name. I'm not sure what to do with it!

On Thursday I'm treating Dan to Chez Panisse for his birthday. Upstairs in the café, thanks, which is less expensive. Despite the Bay Area's exorbitant cost of living, around here one can have good meals for under $8 and lunch for $5. Hell, one can have relatively fancy recipes monthly, for free, because they know locals can find the prep materials. Thus, I've little incentive to pay more than $18-25 for an entree at a relatively fancy restaurant, since one can have so much goodness for half that. Birthday. :)

As for crochet, the "current" projects are just now being unearthed after weeks in a moving box. There's a wool/rayon scarf and a doily in size 20 thread the color of old gold. Neither is past the halfway point; both were begun last winter. I'm fond of making doilies that I give away (my poor family). The point is the radial symmetry. After that, meh.