I'm back.
I've spent the last few days perusing vegan blogs. All I can say is, what the fuck? Why do a large % of people who claim to be worried about the shit they shovel into their bodies all seem to have multiple cupcake recipes on their blogs? My tween eats cupcakes, why are these vegan holier than thoughs eating sugary shit? Oopsie, sorry, some of them don't have cupcake recipes, they have cake and cookie recipes instead. Grow up.
It's final critique for my Advanced Ceramics class, which means potluck time! The kid and I were in Los Gatos Tuesday, so we made our first visit to Icing on the Cake. We had some tasty snacks and bought a roll of pre-made chocolate chip cookie dough destined for the potluck.*
Baked the cookies this morning. They are nice, plump and not overly sweet. My only complaint is I was told their dough is good 10 days after preparation. At home I noticed the expiration date for the dough is Friday. They could have sold me newer product for $12+ per roll!
* My Sabra Veggie Liver and pita chips were not a hit last quarter.
Icing on the Cake
50 W. Main Street
Los Gatos, CA 95030
408-354-2466
Found a couple of interesting items in Mollie Stone's refrigerated section. Sabra - maker of yummy hummus, veggie liver, pickles and the like has "To Go" single use containers with crackers.
Homemade Baby is organic mush for parents too lazy to mash a banana or cook a fruit/veggy in the oven until mushy. They even have their foods broken into three age groups and textures.
I find the need for this product offensive. Been there, making your own it isn't that hard to do.
Haven't had the guts to try the spelt matzoh I bought.
Mollie Stones
164 S. California Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94306
650-328-8361
Word Wars highlights 4 Scrabble Players preparing for the 2002 National Championship. I now appreciate for the intricacies of Scrabble. I have also found something scarier than computer geeks - Scrabble geeks.
Can't imagine people chowing down on meat after the slaughterhouse scenes.
Sharon writes about her life, and you wonder about her sanity, denial and ability to think. She loves having expensive jewelery in a cute case and gets robbed 3 times (time to ditch the cute jewelery cabinet, get a safe!) Ozzy cracked up on drugs and other women. Ozzy trying to stangle her. Ozzy in rehab more times than Britney Spears. Sharon porking out and getting a ring around her tummy to combat it. Sharon's showbiz dad taking advantage of her.
Nannies gone bad. Managing bands that didn't appreciate her work. And more...
Pulled these two out of a saggar firing last week. Saggar firings are low firing, and these pieces are not water tight. They were fired with banana peels, sea salt, sea weed, copper "dust," sawdust, pine cones and needles and wood collected from a friend's back yard. The piece on the right hand side was thrown as two pieces, the round clay body and the spout.
Since last week I've been visiting Whole Foods for banana peels, and purchased a large bag of cat food for the next firing.
Inspired by Mark Bittman's peanut brittle video, we decided to try it at home. It really was as easy as he said it would be! To start, we roasted peanuts in the toaster oven. 
Then we warmed sugar in a pan over very low heat. While the sugar was carmelizing, we greased a baking sheet with butter. Once the sugar was carmelized we turned off the heat and mixed in the peanuts in with a pinch of salt. 
We didn't account for the sugar hardening as soon as the heat was off. With maximum effort we quickly mixed and spread the mixture on the baking sheet to set.
Cleaning the pan used for melting sugar was not discussed in Mark's video. I added water, heated the water to an almost boil (liquefying the sugar) and dumped the mixture into the sink.
When not producing large number of "Zzzzzzz"s and drool, I kept thinking hey that's Wolverine (Jackman), Patrick Batemen (Christian Bale), Maj. Celliers (David Bowie) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson).
Nice star studded cast. A costumer's dream. Snooze of a movie.
For you latte carrying posers, this shirt from Unicorn Burger has your number.
Chowhound discussed the SF Oakville Market's closing and ponderings if the other stores were doomed. I was in need of a bottle of wine yesterday for a dinner party, and needed to stop by the Stanford Mall, so I decided to check on Oakville.
Side Note: Oakville has been at the Stanford Mall for as long as we've lived in the area (16+ years). We think it is the best place on the Peninsula to get cheese.
The store was very empty at 4pm on a Friday, and I don't mean people empty. The wine racks were almost bare and the olive bar covered with snacks. I was scared!
The wine guy gave me reqs for a bottle for dinner. At the same time he calmed my fears, saying he just got $12K worth of wine in and was starting to put it out on the floor. He got the guy (running the cheese department??) at the cheese counter to bring out the olives for me. Never had an olive bar set up in my honor! The cheese guy said he was new. He'd ordered new olives, cornichons, almonds and vegetables for the olive bar and hadn't set them out yet. He felt Oakville was in a rut ordering the same olives for years. The new olives were quite good, minus the dry cured ones, which were mealy. There was something un-sexy seeing the olives come out of plastic countainers, or worse yet cans and then placed into yuppified white bowls for selection. I know that is how the olives are shipped, but it ruins the experience!
Earlier in the week I stopped at Country Sun to pick up a container of Yokohl Valley Ranch eggs. Country Sun is the only vendor to carry them locally. They are the only local free range eggs outside of a farmer's market that I have found in the Peninsula. Shipments to Country Sun are infrequent, so best to call if you want some.
Oakville Grocery Palo Alto
715 Stanford Shopping Center
Palo Alto, CA 94304
(650) 328-9000
Country Sun Natural Foods
440 S. California Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(650) 324-9190
We dined at Chef Chu's with an old friend and her ex-pastry chef buddy the other night. The ex-chef had some hilarious stories to share about working for the upper ranks of the US government.
We started with a vegetarian hot and sour soup. The soup had good flavor, but it relied too heavily on pepper for heat. Our dining companions, one being from the mid-West, the other from the East Coast, were not use to that much pepper in their food, enjoying the soup, and mopping their brows.
After the soup we had vegetarian goose and spicy pickled cucumber. The veg goose reminded me of mock duck that I'd had elsewhere, only more dense and more 'meat like' flavoring. The cucumbers are always good, but sweeter than spicy.
Next came the special lobster in sauce with noodles, all pieces and parts of the lobster proudly displayed. Everyone else said the dish was delish!
At this point everyone was ready for a bucket to make room! Out came a whole fish, deep fried, topped with a spicy sauce, my veg Singapore "style" noodles, seasonal asparagus sauteed with garlic and the kid's candied pecans with prawns. I can only attest for the asparagus and noodles, they were quite good.
Everyone shared an order of fried banana with ice cream for dessert.
Dinner was pretty good. Chef Chu's is not the ultimate destination for Chinese food in the Bay Area, but it is good and always consistent.
Chef Chu's
1067 N. San Antonio Road
Los Altos, CA 94022
(650)-948-2696
Stopped at Izzy's this morning for 2 bagel sticks, one for me, one for the kid. We agreed we should have gotten everything bagels instead, they have garlic and more salt.
Izzy's makes the best bagels on the Penninsula. I'm sure the SF store makes the best ones in SF.
Izzy's Brooklyn Bagels
477 S California Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 329-0700
La Luz de Jesus
4633 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323)-666-7667
Stopped by Sehbali Cafe in downtown Palo Alto around 4:30pm to pick up an order of Bhel Poori for the kid's dinner. Fortunately for me, the dish was made a bit too spicy, so I ate most of it. Chaat "to go" isn't the greatest idea. It should be eaten ASAP otherwise it gets a bit soggy. Still, it was a nice warming meal.
While I waited for the dish to be assembled I watched the other patrons. My favorite was one table with two people and one laptop doing business cold calls.
Sehbali Cafe
235 University Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650)-566-8860
Thought I'd run into a friend who shops at the Mountain View Farmer's Market, just had a feeling...
Refused to buy the kid baklava at the market. As we walked back to the car I offered to buy her a pastry. Looked up, there was my friend heading towards the market. Told him we were off to Neto, and invited him to join us.
I've been to Neto a number of times. I prefer their savory dishes to their pastries. I find their pastries to be a bit doughy, and lacking in salt (and I'm a low salt kind of blogger!) Being 10am, figured I'd give their pastries another try. The kid had an eclair, our friend had a chocolate babka, I had the pita with zahtar. The pita was doughy, but slathered with zahtar, it didn't matter. The kid ate half of the eclair, then ordered a pita with zahtar. Kid got us samples of the chocolate croissant, which was doughy and lacking salt.
Washed everything down with a Turkish Coffee.
Neto Caffe & Bakery
135 Castro Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
650.625.9888
Our PC solar powered residence numbers from matterinc arrived yesterday. Too bad it's raining outside, we'll have to wait to install them and check out their solar powered glory.
I've been bad. I haven't posted for a while. What has happened since I last typed...
1. Five of us had lunch at Madison and 5th today. 1pm on a Saturday downtown Palo Alto was busy, Madison and 5th wasn't so. Mad and 5th is an Italian eatery with a decent menu, clashing interior and high prices ($11 for a glass of the house red. "It's from Napa!" is all the waiter could tell us about it).
Three of the five diners were vegetarian. The waiter insisted the soup of the day was vegetarian. He didn't sound convincing, so we asked him to double check. The hostess came by to inform us the soup had chicken stock.
I had the Gratin of Pear Carpaccio, a confused dish of thinly sliced pears with lettuce hiding cheese and nuts melted on the top of some of the pear slices. Once I discovered where the cheese and nuts were, I enjoyed the dish more.
For a main course I had the pumpkin ravioli in a brown butter sage sauce special of the day. It was quite tasty, but I would have enjoyed one or two raviolis with a side of veggies instead.
Dessert was a Nutella crepe with what looked like mango in it (!!??) with a fruit sauce on top and vanilla ice cream. The elements were good, combined was a bit strange. I should have ordered a different dish, the dough used for the ravioli and the crepe had similar tastes. The kid had her first chocolate fondue. It was a match made in heaven.
Overall the meal was good. I'd eaten here once before, and was luke warm on the place. I'll give them one more try before passing final judgement.
I'll try to bring my camera next time!
2. Read Tuva or Bust!
The book recalls the author, Ralph Leighton, and his friend Richard Feynman's attempt to travel to Tuva in the late 1970's, early 1980s based on their interest in the spelling of the capital Kyzyl. Tuva was part of the Soviet Empire. Soviet/US relations were not great at the time. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the work required to investigate each and every fact, potential contacts, and hoops to jump through for permission to travel to Tuva in the pre-Internet age.
Madison & Fifth
367 University Avenue
Palo Alto, CA
(650) 323-3900
