I’m always saying that Trader Joe’s is both wonderful and evil. Wonderful in that it’s convenient and walking distance and we go all the time, but evil in the sense that every time I go in, I end up buying at least $20 worth of stuff, even if all I wanted was a loaf of bread. So these are my latest thing. See this trash can? There’s two packs of the freeze dried grapes in there. We empty out the trash can once per week, which means that so far this week, we’ve eaten two bags of this stuff! Anyway, in case you were wondering, it’s yums. People who’ve tried it with me pretty much agree, I think. I guess the novelty of having a Trader Joe’s nearby hasn’t worn out.

Flacos, the vegan Mexican place, usually comes to the Berkeley Saturday Farmers’ Market, and they have grilled corn, Mexican style, when corn’s in season. Even though we’d eaten lunch already, we got two anyway. I wimped out and got just lime and salt on mine; Yut got the full chile powder (I think cayenne), salt, and lime treatment. Spicy! So we had to get a Thai Iced Tea because the burn starts slowly but then your lips and tongue and throat start going numb. Sooo full, but sooo good.

I’m afraid it’s going to be a short season. I know that there’s a crazy heat wave in much of the rest of the country, but here in the Bay Area, we’ve had an unseasonably cool summer (70°F high today) but with a lot of variability. I blame climate change. Anyway, it’s already late July and this was the first weekend I saw the corn!

Yes, corn does merit its own post, why do you ask? :)

The two new places are the self-serve types, meaning you grab a bowl and put however much yogurt, however many flavors, and whatever toppings you like, then pay by weight. Yes, you can see the problem already, can’t you? It’s hard to get just a little bit, it never looks like much and it’s yogurt, healthy yummy yogurt. It’s also hard(er) to not go. Like… after dinner, when you’re so full, but well, you can just get a little bit of yogurt, so why not. (And by “you” I mean “me.”)

In case there was any doubt, I’ve tried all of the places. Creations on Shattuck between Channing and Durant and charges 36¢ per ounce and Yogurtland on Bancroft near Telegraph (although the website says they are also opening one on Shattuck) charges 30¢ per ounce. They’re both good, but Creations has more of the fruity flavors that I like. The one time I went to Yogurtland, there were green tea, coconut, chocolate, tiramisu, and cherry vanilla flavors amongst others, but Creations had blueberry, mango, lychee, passion fruit, strawberry, chocolate, and green tea flavors (amongst others, I don’t go enough to have both menus memorized I swear!!!). On the other hand, Yogurtland has biodegradable spoons, and regular Cap’n Crunch which is a plus. Creations so far only has Crunch Berries so if I only want the regular Cap’n I have to pick them out of the Crunch Berries. But overall, I think I like Creations a little better than Yogurtland.

Compared to my old favorite, Yogurt Harmony (where they serve you, have compostable everything, regular Cap’n Crunch, and free wireless), it’s tough. Because even with all of those advantages for Yogurt Harmony, it’s nice to be able to decide to mix three flavors and a little bit of three toppings and control (or not control) how much to get. I think Creations is especially a good value if you like flavored (instead of plain) tart and if you want a little bit of multiple toppings. So I go to both, depending on what I feel like — Yogurt Harmony for plain yogurt with two or no toppings, and Creations for lychee, mango, passion fruit yogurt with mochi, and/or Cap’n Crunch. I’ve mentioned the compostable spoons and Cap’n Crunch problems to the Creations folks, so hopefully they will fix that. It’s getting to be nicer weather, so I am back to a minimum of once per week, so I dunno, maybe they won’t fix it because no one cares; I’m just weird!

Haha, just had the following chat with Yut:

yut: they will just kill each other’s business after a year when the craze starts to fade
mim: It worries me cos I mean… I want the ones I like to make it
mim: This talking about yogurt makes me want some
yut: you can’t support their livelihood all by yourself

:p

Today, we BARTed to San Francisco and got tea lattes at Coffee Bean, cos of course, why wouldn’t I?! Then we rode the trolley which dude, it’s gone up in price: $5 one way now. I dunno though, it’s darned worth it for a visitor, I think. Okay, I live in the Bay Area, I’ve been on it multiple times, and I still enjoyed myself immensely. :) Then we walked to Pier 39 and had some clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl — not bad, not awesome, darned filling. Then we shopped for souvenirs and looked at the sea lions. Then we rode the bus to the Ferry Building (Pier 2 area) and walked all over, stopping at like every shop, bought some cheese from Cowgirl Creamery, ate some gelato. Then we get out of the Ferry Building and there’s stalls outside! So we walk all around them. Then finally back to Berkeley in time to get ready for dinner at Chez Panisse, always excellent. Aaaaaand by the way, all the shopping and dinner was my family’s treat. YESSSSSS! I mean, thanks guys. Oh and the weather was basically perfect all day. And we played a few rounds of a variation of Sevens called Jielong or as K and Pol like to call it, Jello. Actually I don’t know who made up the “Jello” name, but I first heard it from K and Pol, and now we all call it Jello if we’re not talking to the parents. And now I should get ready for bed cos we are going to walk around Berkeley tomorrow (well today now) and go to the farmers’ market, which knowing Leaf, means going up and down the block a whole bunch of times. Or at least definitely more than once. :)

I actually think we messed it up a bit, and the whole thing took us like five hours, not counting the grocery shopping, but we are not expert chefs, knife wielders, etcetc by any means. Oh and a lot of the time was just waiting around for things to reduce, or cool down (during which we played games, of course). And we made changes, little bits here and there. Despite all of that, it was delicious!

Seafood Stew (or actually, this is our version, so more like Noob Seafood Stew. And it is what I would imagine a seafood chowder to taste like, so I don’t really know why this isn’t a seafood chowder.)

Ingredients:
most amounts are sort of random

• 1 Dungeness crab
• 1 lb shrimp, peeled, deveined, heads removed (but reserve the heads)
• 10 sea scallops (approximately 3/4 lb?)
• 1 lb fish (we used turbot because it was on sale, but turbot is terrible for soup, just falls apart. I would recommend trying the black cod they used or maybe red snapper or some other firmer fish.)
• 3 lbs clams (we got 8 littleneck clams, so this is an estimate. Also, completely random.)
• random herbs: a few stalks of fresh basil, a few sprinklings of dried parsley, dried thyme, and a couple of dried bay leaves (optional, obviously! We happen to have this stuff, so we used it.)
• 2 carrots, diced
• 6 stalks leek, diced
• 6 stalks celery, diced
• 1/2 lb brown mushrooms, diced
• 2 small potatoes, diced
• salt, to taste
• white and black pepper, to taste
• 1 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 1 pt. heavy cream
• 2 cups dry vermouth
• 1 pkg. Dufour puff pastry (I think puff pastry is optional.)
• 1 egg

Directions:

1. Bring 1 gallon (less is maybe ok, but we wanted to be close to covering the crab) of water to boil in a large pot. Add in a little bit of salt (remember a lot of the seafood is saltwater so they’ll be naturally salty), black or white pepper, herbs, and 1 cup of dry vermouth. Poach the crab (I think poaching involves lightly not-quite-boiling. :p) for like 15 minutes or so, then remove the crab and set aside. Boil the shrimp heads in the same water (this is optional, I just wanted more flavors because crab is pretty strong, I think — but no worries, the herbs and aromatic veggies will take care of everything), then remove and throw away the shrimp heads. Poach the shrimp (~5 minutes?), fish (~5 minutes?), and scallops (not sure, maybe ~10 minutes?). Poach or boil the clams until they open fully. Remove all the seafood, reserve the water, and bring back to a boil.
2. Cook all the vegetables until tender. Remove vegetables, continue boiling until only about half of liquid is left (this is completely random — the original recipe called for a quart but we didn’t want to wait any more and anyway we were worried there wouldn’t be enough soup for the amount of stuff we had, and I have no idea what a quart would look like in our pot).
3. Bring the stock (it’s stock now, right?) back to a boil if it isn’t already. Add in 1 more cup of vermouth, salt (to taste), pepper (both black and white pepper, because we like pepper), and nutmeg. Reduce the stock by half — the desired consistency is supposed to coat the back of a wooden spoon, but I just boiled it down to about half and stopped, even though it wasn’t particularly thick. I suppose we could’ve added some flour (or even better, roux, which is like flour cooked in butter) to thicken it up, but we decided we didn’t care. Set aside to cool.
4. Defrost the puff pastry according to the package instructions (refrigerator).
5. Supposedly, cut seafood into bite size pieces. Actually, we didn’t. Although we did crack the crab, but we didn’t remove all of the shell cos that seemed like too much work.
6. Pre-heat oven at 400 degrees.
7. Fold seafood and vegetables into cool sauce, being careful not to mix too much as this will break up the seafood. Scoop mixture into terrines or oven proof baking dish of your choice.
8. Cover bowls with puff pastry rounds, brush them with egg wash (1 egg, 1 tsp. water) and bake them until golden brown, about 10 minutes (actually more — make sure the puff pastry is puffy and golden), allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving. You can cook this 2-3 hours ahead of time and keep warm at 150 F degrees. I think the puff pastry is completely optional.

I guess they are trying to have more tea options because last weekend I had an apple chai tea infusion, which tasted an awful lot like mulled cider.  Quite delicious, but I did think that if I was in the mood for tea, it wouldn’t do it.  On the other hand, if I kinda felt like a spiced (mulled) cider, then yah, darned good! :)

I meant to post more than I did in December, I really did, but work got so busy and then I went to visit the family in MD, and dude we stayed up late all the time (Leaf likens it to Guantanamo, yet if I don’t keep up, Kay calls me a pansy!) and somehow I didn’t get on the computer to blog.

But I’m gonna be random and talk about December stuffs anyways, since I took photos for this, even though I didn’t post them. Whatevs!

So… I spilled wine all over my keyboard — dude you never saw me shut down my computer so fast before. I didn’t dawdle! Yut had to take it apart and I took a photo with the keys off, but I forgot to take one from before he cleaned it off. Duuuuuuude, the keyboard was dusty and dirty inside! It didn’t look too bad from the outside, but after the keys were off there was dust like a blanket of snow. Yeah gross! My keyboard wasn’t too hard to take apart and put back together, and once it dried, everything was hunky dory.

The other random thing that I took a photo of is my broken thumbnail. Dude, broken nails are yucks. I always have visions of my whole nail falling off and I’m almost to scared to look. Not that it was that bad, but it was bad enough. And my thumb tip was kinda sensitive for a week after cos it’s used to being covered by a little more nail. Typing kinda sucked… and all sorts of other things. Opposable thumbs, so important!

Guess what? It happened when I went bowling. Dude, I haven’t been bowling in like 8 years, and 2 days after Leaf and K mention that they break their thumbnails bowling, I go bowling and I break my thumbnail! Wacky! I suck at bowling btw. We played two games and I managed a 60-something the first game and I think a 40 my second game. I don’t know why they even make gutters on the lanes! WHY BOTHER?! :p

Anyways, so yeah, I’m sick. It’s just a cold, thank goodness (I guess). Mostly snot and cough with some sore throat — so basically all the most disgusting icky symptoms only. And I know I’m extra icky cos on Tuesday, after helping someone clean up a virus (the irony!) off of their computer, the guy said thanks and shook my colleague’s hand but refrained from shaking mine! Well I had my arms crossed cos I didn’t want to shake his hand cos I was grossing myself out, but now you know how groady I was. I stayed home yesterday and had chicken noodle soup for lunch.

Today I felt a little better, so I went to work. But I still had chicken noodle soup for lunch — in fact, a whole quart of it. Cos it’s supposed to help, right? Cos I’m tired of being sick. I got a headache today from coughing so much. :p