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Last weekend, Reid and I had dinner at DOSA and ordered the 7×7 list item #67: paper masala dosa. While it was good, it wasn’t spectacular, which is what I would expect from the end-all-be-all list of SF foods to try before I can die satisfied. This forced me and Reid to re-evaluate how we would rate the 7×7 items. “Would we recommend a friend to go out of their way to eat this?” is the new question. No, but I wouldn’t be adverse to coming here again, provided that we have exhausted the remaining 86% of the list.

A friend had recently asked how my 7×7 100 foods endeavor was going. DISMALLY! I replied. Okay, I didn’t shout. But we’re almost one-third through 2010 and only 14% complete; this projects to roughly a 37%-completion by December. Reid and I haven’t been keeping up due to the fact that 7×7 updated its list for 2010 while we were already 12% into the 2009 list in January 2010. The fact that we had already tried some items off the 2009 list that didn’t make it onto the 2010 list was kind of discouraging. You can’t UNCROSS things off a list! We will have to RE-EAT EVERYTHING… which is a good excuse to eat another Roli Roti porchetta sandwich now that I think about it.

Also discouraging is that now I have to update the existing list on this blog. Or I could just not.

The end!

Okay not really. But I made spam musubi! I never had it before even when I really was in Hawai’i, but it seemed easy enough.

Here I am finding out that spam is half-fat, half-sodium.

Here is the Baker’s Edge brownie pan doing double-duty as a spam musubi assembly.

Nom nom!

Okay, I’ll admit it – I’m a hypocrite.

Back in college, HK and I used to bash on the male population that bought flowers and stuffed animals for their significant others on Valentine’s Day. One year we even [facetiously] suggested that she decapitate the stuffed bear that an admirer had gifted her since she was known to be rather selective (that’s a nice way of putting it) and often scoffed at any cliché signs of affection directed at her. I know, I know - we’re horrible and don’t deserve anyone’s adoration, but Valentine’s usually leaves a bad taste mainly because of things like this:

Lover's Lane at Safeway

Yech!

Anyway, that was until last year, when she received a bouquet of roses and sheepishly admitted how thrilled she was. And then this weekend, Reid pulled out all the stops for our first Valentine’s and one-year anniversary. Now I’m the sheepish ball of sap.

First, we celebrated Chinese New Year on Saturday night with my parents and some extended family. Yay, good food and red envelopes!

Second, Reid surprised me with all the sappy stuff that I pretend to hate and then made a delicious brunch crab and avocado omelets with hollandaise sauce, mimosas, and bacon! We went to Tartine Bakery in the late afternoon, got a fresh loaf of bread right out of the oven (7×7’s 2010 list of things-to-eat item!), slathered it in creamy, sweet brillat-savrin cheese from Bi-Rite Market, and munched on it at Dolores Park. Granted, my suspicions were correct in that we would spend the day trying to get the Foursquare Valentine’s Day badge, and Tartine was one of the Foursquare stops, it was hands-down the best bread and cheese I have ever tasted, and it was a beautiful day in the Mission to enjoy it. We did have some time to kill before our dinner reservation, so we went to Absinthe to try the Galapagos cocktail (another item off the 7×7 list). I can’t say it wow’d me, but we’ll have to come back for the house-made hot dog that’s also on the 7×7 list.

And last, Reid took me to dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, which I have been excited about since he told me he made the reservation. The restaurant is hailed as the birthplace of California cuisine, was listed as one of the top 50 restaurants in the world, and was awarded a Michelin star for several years. I was particuarly impressed with the UN-pretentiousness of the restaurant and the friendliness of the wait/kitchen staff who invited us to explore their open kitchen at the end of the meal. I’m not a self-proclaimed foodie, nor can I speak with knowledge to quality of ingredients or cooking technique, but I can just say that the meal was absolutely delicious. It was definitely one of the best dining experiences I’ve had, but the caveat I must state with that proclaimation is that fine dining is only as good as the company dining with you. That said, I looked forward to making pasta with canned sauce, frozen meatballs, and leftover bread and cheese with Reid the following evening as much as I looked forward to our nice dinner out at Chez Panisse.

Okay, enough of the sap. Back to self-deprecating humor now.

The difficult thing about this 100 foods list is filling in the time in between the eating. Luckily, last weekend there was the free admission to the SF MOMA. And this weekend, Reid and I decided to watch Avatar again. This is worth noting because this is the first time I’ve seen a movie more than once in the theater. It’s difficult for me to justify spending $10+ for a movie at the theater unless it’s a movie of epic proportions, like Lord of the Rings, Titanic, Matrix, etc. Avatar, of course, is our generation’s technologically-pivotal Star Wars, and I can justify watching it in the theater again only because there’s no way I would be able to watch this movie in all its 3D (and in IMAX!) glory at home, or maybe ever again.

Anyway, Avatar was just as exciting and epic the second time around. While most critics thought James Cameron delivered on 3D tech magic and the creation of a whole new world and failed to deliver on script and storyline, I really enjoy the story. Sure, it’s the superarch of Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves, and FernGully (in space!) , but that’s what makes it classic and timeless. Having read several articles about Cameron’s world of Pandora that he crafted so carefully, I wish he divulged more of that world in Avatar; I did come across one that describes what was cut from the original script, and I think those scenes would have given the movie a lot more background and depth. That aside, there was enough depth and character development that I became really engaged in the movie, even the second time.

With that plug out of the way, onto the food!

22. Vietnamese roasted pork sandwich at Saigon Sandwich: Sometimes the best foods are made in dark little stores, stacked to the ceiling with odds and ends of desserts that haven’t been touched in years, and owned by little old ladies that could pass for your own mother. Such are the women that made our sandwiches today, and the sandwiches were everything Vietnamese sandwiches should be: crunchy but soft French rolls, perfectly seasoned roasted pork, sweet pickled carrots, cilantro, and whatever mayo-like spread that ties it all together. Man, I love Viet sandwiches, and these guys put Lee Sandwiches to shame and will give my local favorite (and the lunch place for many a Cisco or Yahoo employee), Cam Hung, a run for its money.

87. Fresh spring rolls at Out the Door: This place is owned by the same people that run the reputable Slanted Door at the SF Ferry Building (which is also on the list). I’m not surprised that $8.50 will get you only 2 spring rolls here, since it’s kind of a fancy-pants place. They were pretty good, especially the creamy peanut dipping sauce, but $8.50 is pretty steep even for delicious Vietnamese spring rolls. $8.50 should get you about 6 just-as-delicious-if-not-super-delicious spring rolls made by Vietnamese moms. Or maybe 20 if you’re in Vietnam.

63. Meatballs with grapes at Aziza: Reid and I had planned to visit Aziza (thanks to SF’s Dine About Town deal) before we decided to tackle the 100 foods list, and the list conveniently has listed one of Aziza’s appetizers that we had never tried before. Could it be better than even the basteeya and the spreads? Or, heaven forbid, their lamb shank? How could we have ever missed the meatballs if they are THAT good? It turned out that the meatballs were good, but not mind-blowingly so; i.e., Reid has ordered the lamb shank for the past 5 (and now 6) times he’s been to this restaurant–THAT is what I call a good dish! In conclusion, go to Aziza, but order the lamb shank, and if you happen to be there in the right season, order the fig moscato cocktail. Amaaaaazing!

Conclusion for the day: Mom-made food is probably the best when it comes to simple, non-fusion ethnic food (though, ironically, Vietnamese sandwiches are technically a “fusion” food from the French colonization days). Aziza still awesome; get the lamb.

On Saturday, Reid and I set out to SF, prepared to be WOW’d by foods we wouldn’t have ever thought of trying on our own. We live too close to San Francisco not to indulge in the affordable luxury that is available to us. For efficiency, we decided that the SF Ferry Building Market and the Mission would be the two places to hit first, since we are most familiar with those. In order of appearance:

12. Porchetta sandwich at RoliRoti at the Saturday Ferry Plaza Farmers Market: Rotisserie pork loin, rolled with pork belly and spices and herbs, and covered in crackly pork skin on a spit for 4 hours. The bread roll is slathered with the juices from the spit, and the cut of meat is topped with sweet braised onions and tender greens. After a good 20-minute wait in line with growing anticipation, this sandwich completely satiated my appetite and set our expectations unbelievably high for the rest of day - I mean, this is a sandwich of DREAMS. It was a worthy beginning to our foodie endeavor.

91. Albondigas soup at Mijita: Beef and pork meatballs in a tomato based broth with vegetables. Coming off the high from the porchetta sandwich, this soup was sadly disappointing. It was a good soup, but it was no porchetta sandwich; it lacked any sort of Zing. However, the point of this whole exercise is to experience new foods and new restaurants that I wouldn’t have cared to even step into. If I ever want Mexican food while I’m at the Ferry Building, I will try the tacos and Quesadilla Mijita here; they looked amazing on everyone else’s plates. However, after having tried the aforementioned porchetta sandwich, I don’t imagine myself wanting anything else at the Ferry Building.

49. Ginger snaps at Miette: I had high expectations for these ginger snaps. Afterall, what’s not to love about perfectly designed tags, signs, and typography? Plus, Miette’s macarons are absolutely delicious - so maybe I had just missed the memo on their ginger snaps? I never cared much for ginger snaps, and upon the first bite, I wasn’t too impressed. However, you can taste real ginger in this cookie, and it is subtlely aromatic. The texture is interesting as well - it is neither very chewy nor brittle, but somewhere in between. After my 3rd cookie though, the flavor and texture both really grew on me. I probably would not buy another canister (because the price is a bit steep; $7 for 12 cookies), but they were good to try.

28. Gibraltar at Blue Bottle Cafe: This is apparently the name of a country, a brand of guitar, a candy, and so on. Supposedly this drink is named after the glass that it is served in. But basically, at Blue Bottle, this is a super small cross between a latte and a macchiato/cappuccino. The menu board does not explicitly note that you can order this, but indeed you can. I don’t have enough experience with espressos, lattes, or macchiatos (Starbucks doesn’t really count) to judge this drink, but I still think it was really good. You can taste good coffee when you taste good coffee, and this is good coffee.

40. Cheeseburger at Taylor’s Automatic Refresher: A cheeseburger is a cheeseburger, so when THE LIST says you need to try this cheeseburger, you should expect that this cheeseburger will blow all cheeseburgers out of the water. Sadly, it didn’t do quite that. It was a good cheeseburger - something like what you’d get at In-N-Out, but for 3 times the price - but on an egg bun. The egg bun WAS quite good though. But not 3x-the-price good.

35. Salted-caramel ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery: Okay, I am an excellent judge of icecream, if not by the sheer amount consumed, then by… I don’t know, the love of icecream. No icecream is a hard sell for me, since the only bad icecream I’ve had was the 1-year-old freezer-burned icecream from my freezer. But this salted-caramel scoop of icecream was so creamy and so delicious, it tasted like I was eating caramel, but in an icecream form - which is exactly what I was looking for. I’d get this again and again and again and again…

21. Pizza margherita at Pizzeria Delfina: I’ve had this before, yet I looked forward to it as if I never experienced it before and was promised, as Reid put so cleverly in his Yelp review, “heaven on dough”.

In conclusion, our day of food was bookended by the two best foods of the day. I would return to order the porchella sandwich, the gibraltar, the salted caramel icecream, and the pizza margherita. 4 out of 7 ain’t bad, though I would expect to love every single item on this end-all-be-all list. Oh well!

Misc. notes:

• Too full to visit Hog Island Oyster Company (99#), Out the Door (87#), Slanted Door (#7), and La Mar (#47) which are all also at the Ferry Building.
• In the Mission, Tartine Bakery’s Morning Bun (#8) was sold out by 6PM. Also, we did not make it in time for their fresh loaves (#25), which come out at 5PM.
• The SF MOMA was promoting free admission this weekend for their 75th Anniversary exhibit. We visited the MOMA since AVATAR in IMAX was sold out at the SF Metreon (STILL, after 5 weeks!!!). I left feeling more cultured, but also biwildered; I don’t understand modern art, must less those of the vaseline scupture variety.

Okay, I take back what I said about not having new year resolutions. THIS is my new year resolution: I will be eating through 7×7’s list of 100 Things to Try Before You Die.

Look, I even made a Google map to help plan the strategy of my attack. Iwill need to strategize so that every trip to SFis optimized for money, time, and stomach space. It is not complete yet, but you can see that under each restaurant/location is the food I am to consume at each location; additionally, I am trying to identify each location by dessert/snack (coffee symbol), dine-in restaurant (fork and knife), casual counter food (burger and drink), and cocktail (martini glass not pictured).

Reid, who has already blogged about our endeavor, and I will begin at the Ferry Building this weekend with the cheap(er) foods, but in the meantime, I will satiate my appetite with au bon pain at the airport before I board my plan back to the Bay Area. Smell ya later, D.C.!

So I haven’t been cooking lately since it’s no fun cooking for just one person. Also, I recently retired the no-brand mixer that I bought from Walmart in my thrifty college days because the chrome plating on the beaters were flaking off, and I don’t want that stuff ending up in my food. For a couple of weeks, I wrestled with myself, deciding whether I should just get another $10 beater mixer or just splurge on the coveted KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer With Styled Tilting Head And Ergonomically Designed Mixing Bowl Handle. In the end, I picked out the cheapest hand mixer available from the reputable KitchenAid. The Artisan Stand Mixer will just have to wait until I reach Joy the Baker status. Or when I am rich.

Armed with my new mixer on Monday night, I had the brilliant idea of baking/cooking 3 different dessert/snacks at the same time. I would tackle marshmallows, shortbread, and caramel popcorn all at the same time! Never mind that I have neither a candy thermometer, nor do even my regular cookies come out well. I think more sugar ended up on the counter/floor/my hair than in the food itself, and I certainly had bits of liquid marshmallow in my hair. Egads. Well, luckily for the recipients, better that than my hair getting in the marshmallow instead!

Anyway, the following pictures are lacking in quality because 1) my photography skills are lacking, and 2) I don’t have the patience to photograph when both hands are covered in some mix of chocolate, marshmallow, cookie dough (which tasted really good out of the mixing bowl, btw).

Smitten Kitchen’s Toasted Coconut Shortbread turned out pretty well. I’m normally not a fan of coconut, but I think I’m adverse to only the papery texture regularly used in baked goods. I toasted the coconut and then ground it up in a processor pretty well so there wasn’t a texture issue here and were thus delicious! I used regular Safeway butter, but maybe next time I can try something more decadent? :)

Orangette’s Caramel Popcorn with Salted Peanuts turned out delightfully chewy, crunchy, sweet, and salty. Perfect! It was so easy to make, I think this will become a regular snack to make!

Lastly, the Chocolate-dipped Marshmallows turned out way too sweet for my own liking. I was never a huge marshmallow fan (except in s’mores!), but this one seemed like an interesting challenge to tackle. And there it is. At least my sweet-toothed Mom loves them so I gave her most of the batch to share.

Yikes, I wish I could take better pictures! It’s something to work on, I suppose. Wouldn’t it be great if my photography skills developed in a positive linear correlation to my cooking/baking skills? That would be an interesting trend to see :) Fingers crossed.

Anyway, the snow was so great last weekend thaaaaat… we’re doing it again!  Tomorrow, all the college kids are out of finals and it’s going to be a beautiful partly sunny Saturday, so we’ll probably have to deal with the crowds. The more the merrier? Perhaps. Oh well. If all else fails, we still have our 5-day New Year’s Eve cabin trip snow bonanza coming up in 2 weeks!

December is upon us, and I am now 3 years out of college. Yikes. Where did the time go?

I had a good time in Vegas with good friends, spent mostly eating and walking the strip. A few partook in gambling, but I’m way too risk-adverse to invest in luck and would rather invest in things with guaranteed positive return—like shoes! Or not shoes. I don’t know. I really like shoes.

All the fun I had in November—crab fishing, Reduced Shakespeare Performance, Paramore concert, Vegas—culminated in my 4-day Thanksgiving trip with Reid to his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri—my first trip to the Midwest! I wasn’t sure what to expect there, but if Missouri’s attractions were proportionate to Reid’s anecdotes and descriptions, St. Louis should have a restaurant on every block that served toasted ravioli and Budweiser, all under the Gateway Arch.

Needless to say, St. Louis wasn’t quite like that. What I’ll probably remember most is the Yokoyamas’ home—downright cozy with beautiful exposed brick walls and blue-checkered walls, sprawling lawn, trees everywhere, deer and birds frequenting the garden, and a very warm, hospitable family. Oh, and leaves. Leaves EVERYWHERE in St. Louis. As a member of the Facebook Group “I Will Go Slightly Out Of My Way To Step On A Crunchy Looking Leaf”, I lived up to my name and stepped on as many leaves as I could that were slightly out of my way—and the crunch of leaves was particularly gratifying in Missouri. I also saw the Mississippi River for the first time. I sort of expected to see Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher on steam boats floating down the river. And I DID. Sorta. Okay, they were tourist steamboats named Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher. That’s okay.

And Thanksgiving dinner—oh my! Thanksgiving dinner to me usually means huoguo—Chinese hot pot, similar to shabu shabu—and maybe a rotisserie chicken. A family of three like mine has trouble eating any-sized turkey and/or ham. But in St. Louis, we deep-fried a 12 pound turkey (along with coconut macadamia nut shrimp and wontons—a delicious deviation from traditional Thanksgiving fare), baked a green been casserole and spinach-and-yam gratin (adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s recipe), and made pumpkin pie, cornbread, fresh cranberry sauce with golden raisins, stuffing, gravy, and fresh mashed potatoes! Oh, what a delicious meal by the Yokoyamas!

After Thanksgiving, we spent one day at the St. Louis Art Museum (the special Five Centuries of Japanese Screens exhibit) and at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, and then spent another day doing the tourist rounds at the Gateway Arch and Anheuser-Bursch Brewery, ending the trip with Reid’s old favorite eateries: Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, the Posh Nosh, and Steak ‘n Shake!

I had such a pleasant holiday with great food and wonderful company, that coming back into work was pretty rough. I’m back home for a good while now after an exciting month. The Christmas wreath has been dusted off and hung up, Starbuck’s gingerbread latte is now in stores, and the annual snowboarding trip to bring in the new year has been planned; ladies and gentlemen, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Yesterday was Friday the 13th. And as luck would have it, my Friday-the-13th’s are generally good days, and indeed yesterday was a good day. Why? Well, it was the first day of my 5-day weekend/vacation/getaway. And let me tell ya, there are good things lined up this weekend: I’m going to Vegas!

Okay, so let me start by saying that Vegas seems generally kind of over-the-top and tacky to me. In Ocean’s 11, you don’t see the stumbling drunk people, the seedy strip bars XXX GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS XXX, the people lined up on the side of the streets trying to hand you “censored” “escort” calling cards. And who actually goes to Vegas to get married? I’m painting such a picture that suddenly I’m getting un-excited about my trip, so I’ll stop right there. Let me start over.

I’m going to Vegas! It will be a college apartment-mate reunion—whew, that’s a recipe for disaster, isn’t it? No tagging in Facebook photos, guys. Just kidding; the movie Hangover makes me wary of drinks (or friends that would accidentally roofie your drinks) lest Mike Tyson’s tiger ends up in my bathroom.

Anyway, as most girls know, a trip to Vegas doesn’t really start with Las Vegas, NV itself. It starts with a prior week of I-don’t-have-anything-to-wear, since we work at an engineering firm and not, say, Sephora at the mall. So Linda and I have been shopping around and yesterday, we got our nails did.

I’m still getting around to the point of this blog entry, which is not about, as you might have guessed, Vegas. Yesterday, oh yesterday, to kick off this awesome mini-vacation, Reid and I drove up to Walnut Creek to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s performance of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised!]. Now, I watched a video of this performance back in high school in the 12th grade. On occasion, I’ve been Googling (how is “Googling” not a word accepted in Wordpress’s spellchecker?) about their tours. Finally, 4 months ago I introduced Reid to some of their work and it just so happened that I found that they were going to perform in the Bay Area for 3 days, and tickets would be sold in a month!

I called the first day that tickets were available and landed us some 6th row seats to the show. Let me tell you: it was possibly the best $45 I have ever spent. Sure, most of the script was verbatim from their taped performance, but it was amazing live. They engaged the audience (with audience participation!) and delivered clever lines and witty puns with incredible comedic timing. The fact that I knew what to expect didn’t matter; I laughed so hard that I cried! I find it hilarious that so many, as I once did, consider Shakespeare to be irrelevant and stuffy. Only some people realize that these Shakespearean plays were written for the common folk and were riddled with slapstick comedy and sexual innuendo. These guys captured the spirit of Shakespeare wholly.

You’ll just have to watch it yourself! This is their Romeo and Juliet. Watch it and try to tell me it’s not hilarious!

Before our show, we went to Va de Vi Bistro and Wine Bar for dinner. I think the restaurant is described as an Asian California fusion tapas bar. Basically, what my mom makes like this, wonderful in taste and familiarity:

…Va de vi interprets into this:

Delicious! Okay, now I’m off to Vegas!

Nancy and I went through 1.5 pounds of butter in 3 days. Do you know how disgusting that is? We’re bordering on Paula Deen here. But it’s totally worth it because I’m living on a prayer baked goods—chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, rice krispy treats have made up the majority of my diet in the last few days.

And the bundt cake—O Lord, the bundt cake! Really, the bundt cake is a mere mortal of regular cake batter. But spoon it into a pan with scalloped, curving edges and a hole in its center, and my-oh-my! When I finally flipped that bundt out of its mold, I was literally jumping around the cake with joy. I kid you not! This is no regular cake—this is a bundt cake with choclate chips embedded in swirling orange and chocolate batter, Kahlua glaze running down the sides like melting glacial ice frozen in time.

But even this pales in comparison to the deliciousness to follow.

Here’s a bit of a background: My mom has always been amazing at making Japanese food—somen, ramen, all kinds of soba, tempura, tonkatsu, udon, maki sushi, fried eggplant, fried tofu, fried everything in dashi, onigiri, nabe, teriyaki stuff, unagi—all kinds of awesome! That said, when I visited Japan at 11 years old, I was intrigued by only one food she never made: okonomiyaki.

(Okay, really more than one, but I’m claiming artistic license for dramatic effect.)

We were in one of those awesome 5-story high-end department stores where the sales ladies all line up when the mall opens, bow, and greet you in a uniform chorus of irashaimase—welcome! In the basement of this amazing mall is a food court, and in this food court was a chef making Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki—a layer of yam-egg batter, another layer of cooked cabbage, another of meat, and yet another with yakisoba! This was then all topped with a fried egg and generous amounts of okonomiyaki sauce, Japanese mayonnaise, shredded dried seaweed, and bonito flakes! I begged and begged to buy one of these little mountains of heaven, but to no avail. Instead, Mom promised that she would make me one when we returned to the States, and of course, I believed.

LIES. Thirteen years and still, I waited.

Until yesterday. Yesterday, I made okonomiyaki. BAM.

BAM.

and BAM.

It tasted just as I had dreamed it should have. Reid and I made it in the Osaka-style which supposedly does not have the yakisoba and the fried eggs. But still. We’re rock stars, baby. BAM.

In the fashion of visiting SF over two consecutive weekends, I spent the last two weekends in Berkeley, CA. Now, I had (and have) plenty of friends who attended Cal in the past few years, but I’ve generally avoided the city like the plague in the same way that I’ve avoided San Francisco. It is unlike the suburbs (San Ramon, Fremont, Davis, and now Sunnyvale) in all senses: parking is horrendous, streets feel dingy and cramped, and one-way streets are like one-way tickets to an overdue accident. Only rarely is there some occasion worthwhile enough to venture into Berkeley, like the annual CMAT held at Haas Pavilion.

But I think I’ve finally found a reason, and that reason is the Cheeseboard Collective. Apparently this place makes only vegetarian pizzas, and only one kind of pizza a day.

Cheeseboard’s mushroom, onion, goat cheese, and mozzarella pizza

Now I wish I had more opportunities to live in Berkeley (and S.F.) and experience its unique culture. Sure, Davis has been named one of the friendliest cities in the U.S. and “America’s Best Biking City” and I learned to ride from one end of campus through to the other end with no handlebars (what up?!), but does it have a Cheeseboard Collective? Nope. Zachary’s Pizza? Nope.

Zachary’s mushroom and spinach Chicago-style deep dish pizza, atop Berkeley at Lawrence Hall of Science

Food aside, Berkeley is now awesome also because Reid took me to the John Legend EVOLVER tour concert at the Greek Theater. He had gotten tickets back in June for my birthday :)With the given name “John Stephens”, the singer later adopted the stage name John Legend, so you can only expect a certain level of showmanship and self adulation - like referring to himself in the third person or stepping onto the top of the Yamaha grand piano during his finale. /Cringe. It was a bit over-the-top, and at the end he introduced all his musicians by name and concluded with “…and I am John Legend!”—the crowd swelled with applause and cheers, and admittedly, yes, I did too.

What else can you expect from a man that sings, “You can’t say that I don’t love you, just because I cheat on you”?

It was an unexpectedly nice treat that India.Arie opened the set for John Legend. I actually hadn’t heard of her before but easily recognized her music. Right off the bat you could see the stark contrast between India.Arie and John Legend. She was down-to-earth, casual, and personal, and her back-up singers were curvy women with beautiful, rounded voices. Flashing lights and glamor surrounded John Legend and his backup dancers called “The Tasties”—you can make your assumptions of what they looked like. Regardless, John Legend can sure play that piano and sing those love songs :) Perhaps too many in the audience took the “PDA” song too literally—sometimes it’s better when it’s publicly…we just don’t care, we just don’t care!

We have one week of summer left, but I’m already celebrating the hints of the fall season. It rained yesterday and the everything smells fresh and cool. I’ve got my boots and my black and brown wardrobe ready for cooler days, and I grabbed a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks today. Yep, it definitely feels like fall. Hip hip hooray!

Things to look forward to:

Do you know how good these cookies are? I skipped blogging about the John Legend Evolver concert to first blog about these cookies. THAT’s how good they are. It’s basically baked peanut butter in the shape of a cookie. It’s delicious and it takes 4 ingredients and about 15 minutes to make. That’s a dangerous combination. A dangerous and delicious combination.

Thank you, Joy the Baker, for undoing anything I ever do at the gym.

The frequency of my blogging seems to have steadily diminished since I first started this site. I suppose I could say that I’ve been spending time away from the computer and have thus abandoned my blog… And for once, I wouldn’t be lying! Summer has bestowed upon me the inability to sit still, and Reid seems to believe that I actually enjoy the sun and being a social being. Whew, is he wrong or what? Just kidding, Reid—I swear. Anyway, I won’t promise to update more frequently—I’ll only set myself up for failure—but I do want to keep tabs onwhat I’ve been up to.

It’s kind of a shame that I’ve spent my entire life no more than 40 miles away from San Francisco, but have spent so little time in the city. I blame my parents who have probably vacationed overseas more times than they’ve visited San Francisco! (Dad will probably email me right after I post this blog to correct me on my exaggeration here.)

1980's: Check out Ma's awesome vintage sweater!

However, it does seem like I’m making up for lost time lately. Two weekends ago, Char set up a crab fishing trip at Municipal Pier. What blows my mind about this is that you can walk away with free crabs! If we were in China, I don’t think there’d be a single crab left at the pier if you could do this, regardless of legal restrictions on type and size of crabs caught. However, the cost of crabbing manifested in different forms; we battled cold weather for four hours and ended up with only four crabs that were barely 4-inches across their back (the legal size of crabs). FOUR CRABS.

Despite the frustration of having to throw back 2 deliciously large Dungeness crabs and many others little crabs, and being unable to stop a sea lion from ripping a tightly-secured chicken drumstick from our net, the subsequent meal of boiled crab dipped in garlic butter was well worth all the trouble.

Tips for next time: Use KFC chicken for 1) eating and 2) delicious oil and fat to attract crabs. Bring a book or some form of entertainment. Leave the net out longer to let the chicken fat smell travel in the water (we were impatient and pulled up the net every 5 minutes).

Last weekend, a trip to Half Dome at Yosemite was cancelled due to forest fires, so instead we went to San Francisco yet again. This time, we took a ferry out of the SF Ferry Building and headed out to Angel Island where “my people” came through back in the 19th century. There was none of the usual overcast weather that’s so typica of SF, but it was instead beautiful, blue, and extremely warm. The hike around the perimeter of the island offered some pretty awesome views of the SF skyline, Bay Bridge, and the Golden Gate Bridge—makes me wonder how it took me more than 20 years to get out to the city!

Not to worry though, I’ll be back this weekend when Kim visits and we go to Aziza. Have I mentioned how much I like this place?

I love the summer; with the warm weather come cool foods, cold drinks, beaches, BBQs, and summer dresses.

Reid drove me down to LA the previous weekend before last to visit Kim! It was also my first time really walking around LA, as most of my previous trips have been to just to visit relatives during Thanksgiving when I was younger. Reid beat me to the blog post (again), so I’ll just punch out some of my highlights:

1. We went to the Santa Monica pier, where I rode a ferris wheel for the first time. According to others, it’s kind of weird that I haven’t been on one before. So we changed that, but it wasn’t as glamorous as I imagined it to be. It probably seemed cooler in Grease or the animated movie Charlotte’s Web when I was younger simply because I had never been on one before.

2. The one time I did drive through LA with friends was 8 years ago on the way to Tijuana, Mexico for a service trip, and we stopped at this amazing place called Diddy Riese. I dreamed about that place and its $1 icecream cookie sandwiches for 8 years, so my only request in LA was to go back to Diddy Riese. The sandwich is now $1.50 but I think it would sell for $5 anywhere. I had Espresso Chip icecream sandwiched between a peanut butter cookie and a macadamia nut white chocolate chip cookie - and it was beautiful.

I was so happy when I was eating this, except that Kim and Reid made me walk while eating.

3. Din Tai Fung - Now I understand the hype surrounding this place. The xiao long bao at this place are p-e-r-f-e-c-t. Yet another reason to love Shanghainese cuisine!

4. Reid really wanted to drive back up on highway 1, since both of us had never gone that way before. It took 12 hours to get home, with a nice dinner stop at Cannery Row in Monterey, but it was really worth the beautiful views of the California coast in stark contrast to the barren hills flanking the linear, quicker highway 5.

A bit of a "Marilyn Monroe" moment

This past weekend was fun too, except for the part on Saturday where Reid dragged me out to go hiking out to the Dish in the Stanford Foothills during the hottest part of the day. Okay okay, it was more like a 3 mile walk and it was actually pretty nice to get outside. Also on the upside, when we finished the walk, he went and surprised me by purchasing the grill he’s been eyeing! I had also been wanting to purchase a grill since I moved into Sunnyvale last year, and since we cook a lot together on the weekends and it’s been too hot to cook in my kitchen, he finally bit on a good deal. Sweeeeet. Just in time for a mid-summer barbecue? :)

Yes!

Can you tell where my priorities are by the size of the pictures I post? :)

OH and on Sunday, a couple of friends went to Santa Cruz to cheer on several friends that were participating in their first sprint triathalon. We got there only minutes after they finished, unfortunately, but the beach was still fun! Throwing around a frisbee “bee” reminded me of my dad and I doing the same thing in our backyard more than 15 years ago! I’m still just as terrible as I was back then, but I take comfort in consistency.

Action shot with the "bee" (Reid, I'm pretty sure "bee" is midwestern slang..)