Babbling Blueberry

Afghan bread - bolani - and spreads from the Alemany farmers’ market (and you can see the pomelos in the background).  We froze one bread for him to take back to Boston.  I hope it went through okay.

Oatmeal (steel cut) with peaches and Straus (yummy!) milk.  Whole milk!

Gary is now a Burma Superstar!

And finally, he finished off a few scoops of Bi-Rite ice cream. Gary’s showing how sad he is that the ice cream is gone.

Those were all the yummy things.  We also had an adventure with strawberries.  Gary doesn’t like berries, but I thought that maybe eating a strawberry fresh from California instead of nasty East Coast berries could change his mind.  But he’s more stubborn with berries than he is with oatmeal and mangos and peaches and flossing.  I sliced a bunch of strawberries and picked the most delicious one for him to try.  These weren’t the best strawberries I’ve ever had, but they were up there.  This is how much he enjoyed it:

You should appreciate my honesty.  I could have posted a photo like this one and then reported how Gary now loves strawberries:

But he’s pretty sharp and he probably would have found out about my scam, if I had attempted it.

Thanks for visiting and keeping me on my toes!

I went to Pagolac (Yelp, Menupages) in the Tenderloin last night with a fun crew of dinner eaters.  We were in San Francisco, but throughout the whole dining experience, I kept having all these flashbacks to being in Vietnam.  It was an unusually warm night for San Francisco, so that helped.  The rest of the effect is probably from the comfortable, unpretentious atmosphere inside and from the great food.  One result of all this good Vietnam food and the Vietnamness was that I had this flash of worry when one dessert came with ice: “Oh no, we forgot to ask for no ice!  We can’t eat this.” While this is a common thought when traveling in places like SE Asia, I don’t usually have that instinctive reaction in the U.S.  (I should note that this reaction wasn’t because the place looked unsanitary… I think it was because I felt like I was away from home.)  Also, when passing through the tiny, cramped kitchen in the back, because it was extra hot back there, I felt like I was a kitchen in Taiwan or Vietnam or another hot Asian country.

More about the food:  pretty much everything was great.  I especially liked the imperial rolls (with taro inside!).  There was also a really interesting noodle (fat rice noodles) dish with dried shredded pork, coconut milk, and other toppings.  Anything wrapped up in rice paper with noodles, herbs and greens, and fish sauce (assembled ourselves) was great.  The imperial rolls were really yummy eaten this way as was a shrimp ball wrapped around sugar cane.  Such a symbiotic relationship with the sugar cane and the shrimp - both components come out way tastier when cooked together.  (You’re supposed to chew the sugar cane to get the juice out rather than chew to swallow.  But if you’d like a little bit more fiber in your life, it can be eaten, as we all witnessed last night.  Mark, thanks for the demo!)  The best dessert we had was this rice pudding and taro dessert - it also had coconut milk.  It was so warm and pleasant and comforting and yummy!

I’d recommend staying away from the ice cream because while it was flavorful, the texture wasn’t great.  There are way more yummy things to eat at Pagolac so there’s no need to order the ice cream, in my opinion.

I haven’t reviewed the dishes and pottery of a restaurant in a while, probably because I haven’t seen anything memorable.  But Pagolac had some great pieces.  They had this one black bowl with pale yellow flowers carved to look like they were scattered on the inside of the bowl - really pretty.  And they had this four-sided teapot with an amazing glaze job - a tenmoku-like (black/copper/red) top, a narrow yellow band, and most of the base was blue.  The different glazes all flowed together and it was very fiery and organic at the same time.

Happy travels!

I’d like to buy a cherry.

If you’re trying to plan for meals that use local and in season produce, it helps to have an idea of what’s in season in your area. But I know I’ve lost touch with my farming roots (what farming roots, you ask? I’m sure I have some ancestors at some point who were involved in farming) and I don’t have a complete picture of how things grow and when they’re ready. But I’m getting better with the help of the SF Bay Area’s local foods wheel. It’s a literal wheel made from cardstock and you can spin the wheel to figure out what’s in season at any point in the year. I love mine and it’s worth the investment of $12 or so, I think. It also makes a great gift. I’m actually planning to give mine to someone when I leave the Bay Area (don’t worry, I’m keeping mine nice and pristine). I haven’t decided who I’ll give it to just yet, but if you’re interested, let me know! Someone should enjoy it when I’m living far from California’s bountiful and fruitful and vegetableful harvests.

The website also has all the information listed as text, but the wheel is a lot more fun with nice hand-drawn pictures of the different foods. And with the text version, it’s not easy to see which foods are in season at a given time during the year. The wheel is good for inspiration when I’m planning a menu or before I go shopping or to the farmers market.

For those of you outside of the Bay Area, there’s also Epicurious’ map. But it’s not as complete as the local foods wheel - California only has 9 things listed as being in season during May! But it’ll do until there are wheels are invented for everyone!

This round goes to the baking tiles.  The wild yeast did a good job rising the dough, but my baking tiles were too hot and the bottom of the loaves got really burnt.  I’m too embarrassed to post photos.  A close 2nd place goes to the steaming method - the crust didn’t come out shiny and crusty like it’s supposed to.  I hope to triumph over these forces soon!

Because there are no photos of the ugly burnt bread, here are some more photos of B2B, 2008 (oil spill barge, Mario flagpole, and a day at the races):

I really have been looking through photos on Flickr to find photos of myself running as scissors and Mark running with scissors. Actually, when I was running more slowly, Mark had to walk because of his long legs to stay with me, so often, he really was not running with scissors. But in looking through all of the photos, I found lots of interesting costumes that I didn’t see that day.

It seems like a lot of people pick something that comes in a set (scrabble pieces, billiard balls, lucky charms, etc) and then each person in the group dresses up like a different part of the set. And the other costume “strategy” is to take a pop culture person or character and dress up like that. And then of course there are the political statements. Most costumes were fairly entertaining, but a few stood out for me (clicking on the images will bring you to the Flickr or SF Chronicle source):

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A Wheaties box. I saw other cereal boxes, but this one was particularly creative and well-done.

I’m just going to link to it because the original photo that I copied here was deleted. I’m concerned that this Flickr user didn’t like that I put a copy in my blog (even though I linked to the Flickr page). I do like his photo and I’d like to share it. Hopefully, just linking to it will be okay.

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Updated 5/19/2008 at 2:19 pm.

I ran Bay to Breakers yesterday. Last year when I ran, it was a ton of fun, but it really made me want to run the race in costume. So this year, I dressed up as a pair of scissors. And Mark wore a shirt that said “Don’t run with scissors” on the back and we cut up the shirt with scissors.

My costume:

Mark’s costume:

I don’t have any photos of us during the race. If any photos from strangers pop up on Flickr, I’ll share them. But it was definitely way more fun to go with a costume, even if there was more wind resistance while running. We got a lot of compliments from people and heard lots of chuckles around us, and hopefully at least some of those chuckles were for us. One woman even said that we had the best costume that she had ever seen! And she had just finished B2B, so that’s saying a lot! It’s unlikely that she ran the race with her eyes clothes, because given how crowded the route is, that would be really stupid and dangerous and unfun!

Update: A prize for anyone who finds a photo of me and/or Mark running the 2008 Bay to Breakers race.  The photo must be of us after the starting line and before the finish line.

I went to Aziza for the first time last night. It was recommended by a number of people. I may be getting too used to the high quality of food in San Francisco because while the food was very well done, Aziza didn’t wow me enough to be very memorable among San Francisco restaurants. We had a goat cheese, tomato jam appetizer (they gave us a huge chunk of goat cheese, more than I buy for myself at once, but Mark amazingly did a good job polishing it off), I had a scallop dish with lemon saffron rice and pea shoots and chanterelles (the scallops had an inappropriately fishy taste, but other than that, it was very tasty), and Mark had a couscous with an assortment of root vegetables (sophisticated and deep flavors). All very nice, in general, but nothing knocked me over… until the dessert.

I must be feeling a need to try anything with pears, maybe because of the lost pear, bacon, and cheddar sandwich. They have a pear frangipane tart on their menu. It came with bitter almond ice cream and huckleberries. That part was okay. But the tart seriously blew me away with how creative and perfect it was. The pears were thinly sliced and caramelized on top and created a creme brulee-like top but with the added texture and flavor of pear. The frangipane part was so delicate and soft and light, with just the right amount of almond flavor. It was almost cakey, but it had the more dense and chewy texture of almond paste. I don’t know how such a combination of textures can be achieved. The bottom was a well-executed perfect short-dough crust. So brilliantly simple and brilliantly mind-blowing all at the same time.

The waitress was also lovely enough to give us a pot of mint tea that was orphaned. Thanks! I hope the tea was as grateful to be adopted as we were in adopting it. I often find that mint teas are sweetened too much, but this was just mint. Plus, the teapot had the most perfect spout ever. I haven’t figured out how to make a spout that pours well and doesn’t drip. I enjoyed the spout on this teapot so much that I kept pouring the tea over and over again. I imagined that other people watching me thought that I was drugged up, but it really was so fascinating. Not a single drop dripped.

And they also had really nicely shaped bowl and plates. Very deep and round. Beautiful for presenting food, but kinda hard to eat out of because you had to angle your knife in order to cut anything at the bottom of the bowls’ large basins.

Ha ha, my restaurant reviews have turned into reviews of the food and of the dinnerware! Maybe that can be my schtick.

Arlequin (a cafe in Hayes Valley) had these amazing grilled sandwiches with pear, bacon, and cheddar. I would often stop by before going to see a performance at the symphony or the opera or the ballet. This great combination of ingredients, flavors, and textures was an enjoyable surprise each time I had it. But recently, I haven’t been able to go. I’ve been in the neighborhood a number of times recently, but I thought that I couldn’t afford that extra bit of time to stop in for a sandwich. I finally went there a week ago with only one goal - to get this sandwich. They had done some lovely remodeling and reworking of the space. But my favorite sandwich was no longer on their menu. I was so heartbroken.

Enjoy those “pear, bacon, and cheddar grilled sandwiches” while they’re on the menu. Don’t put it off until another day because they may not be around. My sadness was probably exacerbated by my bittersweet feelings about graduating and leaving my beloved city. I have a list of new restaurants and old favorites that I want to make sure to hit before I move and I had budgeted a year to do that. But maybe a year’s not enough if they take these delicious items off of the menu!

I probably should have gone and ordered the sandwich as often as possible. If they thought they had more customers for the sandwich (even if it was me over and over again), maybe they would have left it on the menu! I could have both saved the sandwich and eaten it multiple times! What a tragedy!

Actually, don’t feel so bad for me. It’s such a simple sandwich, I can easily make it myself. In fact, there’s a recipe online. I’m not sure that one needs a recipe to make this sandwich, but Elise at Simply Recipes has interesting stuff to say about this sandwich.