Months with Rs

I was reading over some old posts when fear struck me. April is the last month with an R in it for a while, which means that oyster season is winding to an end (actually, I heard that oysters are still good in May, June, July and August--months sans R--but that they're smaller or something to that effect). And, this weekend is supposed to be warm and sunny (we'll see, since that's what I thought about last weekend for Berkeley Thai Temple brunch and kite flying). So if anyone wants to see if Buddy can still make it deep into Marin and want to have a cheese, wine, and oyster picnic, let me know.

Brown bagging

I’ve been packing my meals to work more often lately. It’s in an attempt to save up for a summer vacation (I can go to Thailand with airfare and accommodations at a four-star hotel for two weeks for about $1500) and those looming student loan payments.

Today’s meals have been a peach flavored yogurt cup and the slice of rhubarb-orange pie that Colin and Eleanor brought to me last night. Of all the artificially flavored yogurt flavors, I think peach is my favorite. And, the slice of pie, which was supposed to be my afternoon snack, was just delicious in the AM. It was tart and tangy. The sprinkling of sugar on the crust was a nice touch. The crust, however, was a bit soggy, although I blame that on overnight refrigeration, and not on any party of the Bakesale staff (I don’t think they can do anything to make my love for them waver).

For lunch, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. There’s something really satisfying about a good old PB&J. The peanut butter was gooey and sticking to the roof of my mouth, as I was talking to students. The bread was soft and smushy, and if I wasn’t carefully, I would smush the bread too hard and peanut butter would ooze through the thin bread layer.

I followed that with some baby carrots, which were slimy and soft. I had some slimy and soft carrots last week, and after about six of them I was thoroughly disgusted and threw them away. I thought I’d give them another try today, and they were still slimy even after I ran several napkins over them, in hopes of absorbing some of the moisture. I stuck them in the refrigerator, hoping that the cold would help rectify the softness problem. I don’t know about the slimy part though.

We’ll see if by packing every meal to work if I’ll be able to afford Thailand. It’ll be tough, especially if I spend my lunch break eyeing the menu at Slanted Door and wondering when I’ll be able to wrangle myself a reservation.

April catching up

I’m having a hard time managing the writings of my daily eats and feel guilty for not posting as frequently as I once did. So, in a last-ditch effort to make it up to this food blog of mine (I promise to reconcile whatever issues Food Blog and I are having, and will post as regularly as a diet full of prunes), here are some highlights from the past several weeks.

Alamo Square
Alamo Square is a quaint little French-style bistro that specializes in fish that seems very out of place on its strip of Fillmore. The ordering is supposed to be simple: you choose the type of fish you want, the way you want it cooked, and a sauce to accompany the fish. In theory, it seems like a simple, easy process. But in reality those choices produce an almost countless number of variations. And, how was I to know what combination worked best? I didn’t, and let the waiter decide for me. I ended up with a grilled salmon with a green peppercorn sauce, which was fine but not great. The salmon was nicely cooked but the peppercorn sauce was too peppery. It overwhelmed everything else on the plate practically. But, the other things on the plate weren’t overly impressive. The rice pilaf had a slight curry flavor to it and the sautéed vegetables were a bit soggy and quite ordinary. They were the same rice pilaf and vegetables that sat on Greg’s plate and that sat on the plate of almost all the other diners around us. Sure, Alamo Square might have its charms, but somehow they were lost on me.

Fried chicken and chow mein
For the second night of our student orientation, my co-workers had agreed on ordering food that our students would want to eat, which somehow meant fried chicken and chow mein. It went against our efforts to feed them healthy food. But when I showed up and faced a table covered with huge aluminum tins of fried noodle and fried chicken drumsticks, I couldn’t not dig in. The fried noodles were greasy and salty, as was the fried chicken, but still really good. I took a bite, wiped my lips, and took another bite. I walked around greeting students with a drumstick wrapped in a napkin in my hand, saying hello in between chews. These students have seen me enough times in button-downed collared shirts in muted colors, dark slack pants, and dressy shoes. It’s time they saw the real me--greasy and stuffing my face with fried chicken.

Sunflower
After Jon’s book release party, where I had too many onion-flavored chips, too much Snapple, and a couple of triangles of grilled cheese sandwiches, Eleanor, Colin, Shari, Alex, Greg, and I walked over to Sunflower on Valencia at 16th, where we proceeded to eat some more. I ordered the imperial roll and chicken vermicelli. It’s a rice noodle dish with mung bean sprouts, lettuce, fried egg rolls, chicken and a fish sauce. The chicken was tender and flavorful. The imperial rolls were filled with glass noodles and pork, and were crisp. The fish sauce brought all the elements together in a salty bath. I ate, and ate, and ate some more, and it looked like I still had tons more to go before I was done. Although I was getting ridiculously full, I knew that rice noodles couldn’t do that to me, and kept eating. I was on the verge of pulling a supermodel bathroom maneuver before I finally gave up. Everyone but Eleanor put down their chopsticks in surrender to the rice noodles too (she’s such a trooper).

Chinatown Eats
Colin, Eleanor, and I took a little Chinatown eating tour. We started at Ling Hung, where we ordered three bowls of the pork and preserved duck egg rice porridge, the fried doughnut, and the fried doughnut wrapped in noodle with a light soy sauce. The food rice porridge was better than the last time we ate there, and the various versions of fried dough were just as good as I remembered them the last time. I think we also discovered the prime arrival time, ten o’clock in the morning. There was no crazy long line of loud Cantonese speakers pushing out the door. We finished our meal with dessert pork buns at Happy Nice Good Food (or some amalgamation of those words) Dim Sum.

Minako
Minako on Mission at 17th really does have some spectacular tempura. I think it’s the only dish that Colin orders when he’s there and there’s definitely a good reason behind his rationale. He ordered it again that night after APE, and I followed suit. The tempura dinner came with a warm, simple but mouth-filling soup, a salad with what seemed like a horseradish dressing that was pungently strong and brought tears to my eyes, and a bowl of perfectly cooked and dark seven grain rice. I was also surprised by the boxes of little side dishes that I had never seen before. The large box had compartments with a cucumber salad, picked vegetables, spongey and chewy tofu, mashed potatoes, and other fun little prizes. But the real star of the meal was the tempura. Asparagus, squash, and other vegetables lied next to shrimp, and they were all coated in a golden batter. The shrimp and vegetables were all tender and the batter was light and crisp. And, even when I reached the last vegetable, it sounded with a crunch when I bit into it. We were told that the coating stays so crisp and light because they don’t use egg in it. I picked up bits of just the golden coating and popped it into my mouth, not caring that I was only eating deep fried batter. I could have sat and ate fried batter all night long.

SoCal eating tour

I spent four days of spring break on a bus with 44 high school students traveling to southern California to visit college campuses. I probably learned more about the freakish amount of food I could and would consume on long bus journeys than about the schools. Be prepared for the rundown:

Monday
-Two Quaker Oats apple cinnamon flavored cereal bars, one Fugi apple, one Nature Valley granola bar
-Lunch at UC Merced: toasted turkey club sandwich and a salad
-Crunchy Cheetos, Fritos, some Asian pastry with green tea filling, a cookie
-Dinner from El Pollo Loco: chicken, two corn tortillas, strange tasting beans, rice, steamed vegetables, salad
-Another cookie

Tuesday
-Breakfast: onion bagel with cream cheese, cantaloupe and honeydew melon, strawberry yogurt, ecinacea tea
-Lunch at Cal Poly Pomona: three beef tacos with rice and beans, a pink colored drink, yet another cookie
-Two over priced Twix bars from a vending machine at UCLA
-Dinner at Buca Di Beppo in Santa Monica: caprese salad, a very fishy Ceasar salad, margherita pizza, spaghetti with meat sauce, fettuccine alfredo, green beans, chicken parmesan, cheesecake, lemonade
-Even more cookies, this time from Dee Dee Reese

Wednesday
-Breakfast: onion bagel with cream cheese, scrambled eggs, two bites of corned beef hash, cantaloupe and honeydew melon, strawberry yogurt, ecinacea tea
-Nature Valley granola bar
-Lunch at Pitzer College: salad, grilled vegetable sandwich, more cantaloupe and honeydew, brownie, orange juice
-More cookies, Handi Snack cheese and crackers
-Dinner at Tokyo Wako in Long Beach: mushroom soup, salad, grilled zucchini and bean sprouts, rice, scallops, peach ice cream, lemonade
-Another Dee Dee Reese cookie
-Late night in LA with Jeanne: French fries from McDonald’s on our way to the bar, vodka tonics at the Short Stop, 99 cent tacos from Jack in the Box on the drive back to the hotel

Thursday
-Breakfast: onion bagel with cream cheese, cantaloupe and honeydew melon, strawberry yogurt, ecinacea tea
-Lunch at Carl’s Jr. along the 5: Chicken club sandwich, fries, lemon-up
-A Fugi apple, Gardettos snack mix, two halves of a cookie

* I got back to San Francisco at about four o’clock Thursday afternoon and didn’t have anything to eat until one the next afternoon.

Dining hall circuit

By the time I’m done with my current job, I’ll be well-versed in the ways of the college dining hall circuit. Since October I’ve experienced the fine dining of UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, and will add Stanford to that list on Tuesday. This week’s journey to southern California treated me to the food of UC Merced, Cal Poly Pomona, and Pitzer College. For those of you keeping score of the who’s who among college dorm food, here’s the rundown on the last three.

UC Merced
The newest addition to the University of California system, UC Merced is tucked into the there’s no there there of the central valley. With only 900 hundred students, this growing university has only one dining hall, which is more comparable to the mall-style food courts than the buffet-type of more traditional dining halls. As with most large university dining halls, there are various ethnic cuisine options--Asian-style stir fries, pizza and pastas, a burrito bar--and, of course, the ubiquitous burger and fries and mandatory salad bar.

I opted for a safer bet of a sandwich and salad. I ordered a toasted turkey club, watched it be assembled, and witnessed it travel through the toaster. The sandwich with turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, provolone cheese, and a ranch dressing sauce was a decent sandwich though nothing spectacular. The ranch dressing was an interesting addition, although it didn’t taste too out of place with the bacon and turkey. The warm toastiness of the bread was quite enjoyable though.

My half-sized salad was decent too. I had a “make-your-own” salad with mixed baby lettuces, spinach, romaine, garbanzo beans, cherry tomatoes, grilled chicken cubes, shredded carrots, and an Asian pear dressing, which was their only sort of light vinaigrette other than an Italian one. It’s hard to mess up a salad, but for this one the dressing was too sweet, tasted nothing of pear, and with no discernable Asian qualities, whatever those might be other than the presence of soy sauce. I also had asked my salad maker to go very light on the dressing, which she might have done, but the vegetables just tasted like the syrupy dressing.

Lunch came out to be a little of $7, which isn’t bad, but a little overpriced for a dorm food sandwich and salad.

Cal Poly Pomona
Cal Poly Pomona was funded by a generous grant by W.K. Kellog (the same Kellog whose name adorns various supermarket cereal boxes). And, although the cereal magnate donated a huge sum of money to the university, I couldn’t see any of his breakfast boxes to be found at the Los Olivos Dining Commons. This was more of the buffet-style dorm food that I’m used to seeing and, for a year of my life, had been used to eating. It’s the type of dining hall where you can pile on as much food as you want on your plate and go back for seconds and thirds. It’s the type of dining hall where you pack onto your once thin frame those non-mythical freshmen fifteen. I had to be careful with this one.

After making a lap and scoping out my edible options, I decided on beef tacos with beans and rice. It was a questionable choice, but, sadly, it looked like one of the better ones. I made myself three tacos with hard corn shells, ground beef, grated cheddar cheese, lettuce, salsa, sour cream, and guacamole. And, on the side, I had black beans and rice. The tacos weren’t bad. I probably would have made something similar to them at home although probably with beef that most likely wouldn’t also be sold to prisons. The beef was flavorful and spicy, the shell crisp (although one of them leaned against the beans and became so soggy I had to eat it with a fork). The rice was good too, fluffy and light. And, the beans tasted like black beans, hearty and earthy, and were tender.

I had two glasses of a pink colored juice that now I can’t remember what fruits were in it. And, for dessert, I had a chocolate cookie that was still slightly gooey inside. It was crisp on the outside and chewy within. Yummy. Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to see if my skills at frozen yogurt cone making were still up to par, as I had to leave before I got around to the soft serve machine. All this food for $6.50 was a good deal, although it would have been exponentially better if I would have been able to walk away with a frozen yogurt cone in hand.

Pitzer College
Pitzer College is among the five colleges that make up the Claremont consortium. It has been described as a hippie school of sorts and is the most liberal campus of the Claremonts. And, the dining hall reflects this attitude.

Pitzer’s dining hall is another buffet-style one with many options. There were several vegetarian options and a few vegan ones. One section boasted organic field greens, grown by local farmers. According the fact sheet on the table, the Pitzer dining hall tries to serve seasonal organic foods and foods grown by local farmers whenever possible, they make all their broths the day before in order to remove all fat, all soups and dressings are made in-house, and there are always vegetarian and vegan options. And, in the corner of the dining space was a large sign that read, “Compost.”

After making my usual circle around the different sections, I headed straight for the salad bar. I piled mixed greens, spinach, mushrooms, garbanzo beans, tuna, beets, and croutons onto my too-small plate. I topped it with an unknown dressing, which was a faint orange color and was tangy like a light Ceasar dressing. I also grabbed a pre-made grilled vegetable sandwich since I didn’t want to wait in the long line for a custom-built one.

I was excited by my salad. How often does one see beets at a salad bar, nonetheless a dorm salad bar? It was a great salad. The vegetables were fresh. The tuna and beans added nice texture and need protein to the greens. The dressing was delicious too. It was light but creamy and rich, and not too overpowering. I had only wished that I had found a larger plate so that salad wasn’t falling of onto my tray.

My sandwich was good too. In between the slices of focaccia bread were grilled Portobello mushrooms, zucchini, and eggplant with a creamy white spread. The focaccia bread was a nice touch to the otherwise seemingly unsurprising sandwich. And, the white spread, which I still don’t know what composed it, added a nice bit of creamy substance and flavor.

For dessert I had some honeydew and cantaloupe melon, which tasted unbelievably sweet, and a brownie. The brownie was the most disappointing part of the meal. It was grainy and had a weird texture. It tasted like some vegan’s mean trick on the egg-eating populace. I think it was the first brownie in my whole brownie-eating existence that I didn’t finish. I washed away that graininess with some orange juice.

At $5, the Pitzer meal was the least expensive of the bunch, and the healthiest, eco-friendliest, and best tasting (except for the brownie, of course).

A little star

In the nine months that I’ve been living in San Francisco, I’ve been trying to find dining equivalents of some of my East Bay favorites. Where in the 415 could I find a Vik’s Chaat Corner or a Cheese Board or a Thai Temple Sunday brunch? I got a little closer to my hunt Friday night when Gabe and I went to Little Star Pizza on Divisadero for an after-work pizza and beer meal.

I’d been craving a Zachary’s-style pizza after the disappointment of Paxti’s several weeks ago. I wanted lots of cheese stringing from the slices, I wanted a thick, rich tomato sauce, I wanted pizza I had to eat with a knife and fork, and Little Star totally delivered.

Gabe and I stepped through the dark-curtained door a little before seven o’clock Friday evening. I was expecting crowds, a hoard of people waiting for their dish of cheesy goodness, an hour-long wait, but there was none of that. The dimly lit restaurant was only about half full and we were seated immediately. The crowd was young, hip (or so I was able to perceive in the near dark) and lively. There were no young children being forced forkful after forkful of pizza by their parents and no large groups of college students wearing Cal hoodies. I could get used to this.

We ordered our beer from their various choices on tap (I chose their Hefeweizen), started with the caprese salad to share, and ordered a small Little Star deep dish pizza. The caprese salad came out quickly. The slices of mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar with olives on the side were delicious. The cheese slices were fresh, soft, little round pillows of white creamy dense fluff. And I could have sat eating the tomatoes with balsamic vinegar all night and have been perfectly satisfied.

Shortly after our waitress cleared our plates away, she carried in our pizza. I was shocked at the speed of its arrival, and we didn’t even place our order before we got seated as happens at Zachary’s. The Little Star was spinach blended with ricotta and feta, mushrooms, onions, and garlic, and it was delicious. The crust was crisp, flakey, and buttery. The tomatoes were rich and tasted fresh (not tinny like Paxti’s). And, the filling stretched long pieces of cheese as I tried to serve us. It was gooey and densely flavorful as a good deep-dish pizza should be. As I finished up my second piece, I rubbed my belly stuffed with cheese and tomatoes and was just about to put my fork down when Gabe suggested we finish it off, which we did.

By the time we were done and paid our check, Little Star had gotten crowded with more young, attractive people, some of whom were eyeing our table. We knew it was time to go home, have some chamomile, and lie down. Even if the pizza place changes, there are some things like the comfort of tea after stuffing oneself silly that stays the same.

Urban family chicken fry picnic

I don’t know why Jeanne and I decided to have a fried chicken dinner party. It just seemed right. Our dinner menu would be some hearty, but not too heart-healthy, comforts: macaroni and cheese, potato salad, green beans in a garlic butter sauce, fried chicken, and brownie sundaes.

We prepped our food early and thought that we would have plenty of time to cook and look pretty, but our timing didn’t work out. Friends arrived and we were still cooking. The kitchen was a mess as we tried to entertain and fry chicken simultaneously. I brought dinner out to the table with my hair in a foul ponytail, sweat and grease smudged all over my face, and wearing the paper thin gray T-shirt I run in. But, it didn’t matter. All attention was on the table full of food.

We laid out a sheet over the shag rug, spread ourselves out for an indoor picnic, and helped ourselves to mounds of food. The macaroni and cheese could have been a touch warmer, but it was still rich and gooey. The potato salad was sad. I had let the potatoes overcook, thinking that one couldn’t overcook potatoes, and they had turned into potato mush. Scott had thought we made mashed potatoes. And, when I was at the little grocery store on Hayes where the family who runs the place chat me up, I opted for the healthy mayonnaise with flax seed oil and Omega 3. Healthfulness shouldn’t have been a deciding factor for my pack-on-five-pounds dinner. The mayonnaise tasted a bit like Berkeley hippie. The greens beans were fantastic. I stood by the counter and popped bean after bean into my mouth. They were crunchy with just the perfect amount of salty, garlic butter. The fried chicken was great too, not the least bit greasy, with a beautifully crispy coating, although I think it could have used a touch more spice. And, our brownie sundaes were yummy too. We washed it all down with a variety of beer.

After our urban, indoor, fireside picnic, we packed up and headed to the Rickshaw Stop, which turned out to be a bust, and we went to the Arrow Bar instead, where dancing and more drinking ensued. Afterwards, we stumbled our way home, where cold fried chicken and brownies awaited our drunken bellies. I couldn’t have thought of anything better.