I felt nauseous from #1 being sick, #2 having two drinks, and #3 pigging out on Chinese leftovers last night, so I decided to just go to bed really early, at 10:30 PM (yes, that’s early to me, considering I normally crash around 1), and I dreamt of the perfect foamed milk, no doubt inspired by this image that the lovely Charmaine had taken.

Oh, cruel, cruel reality, for there is not a coffee shop around here that has replicated the wonders of the “cashmere perfect” froth. Ever since I saw that picture, I’ve been ordering cappuccinos at any and every coffee shop (or place that served reputable coffee) around. My conclusion is that I need to froth the milk myself, but the steaming mechanism at my work’s espresso machine is out of commission. Maybe, soon enough, I will find my perfect froth… but, for now, I will have my dark beverage the way Laurie likes it: “Black as the devil, sweet as a stolen kiss … no milk, two sugars.”

Being overwhelmed by work and social obligations has left me little to no time to play video games or to finish reading the D&D 4E Player’s Handbook; however, from what I’ve gathered from old timer players (namely my boyfriend), they seem to have stripped down a lot of things about D&D 4E. It seems, in his words, “dumbed down so that WoW players can start getting into D&D.” I can’t say since I never played the older editions, but he used to play 2E with his friends all the time. Some of the changes makes me a little sad, but I think our DM might accomdate for those changes We will see though. I am way excited to play, but I have to wait a week and a couple days. Why so far away!?

I absolutely detest the term/word, but I have to admit, I am such a foodie! T_T And you know it’s bad when you just spent almost $100 a person on dinner and don’t feel bad about it. Haaaaaaaaaaa this is not a luxury that can keep up, you know

For living in Berkeley for three years and being a fifteen minute walk away from one of the world’s best restaurants, you’d think that I would have had the opportunity to stop by and eat at Chez Panisse, right? Or, maybe you wouldn’t, considering that all college students are broke and poor and couldn’t afford such a luxurious meal … or so the stereotype goes, anyway.

For myself, it wasn’t the restriction of finances that kept me from going (hellooo credit debt!), or the nearly and seemingly impossible nature of holding a reservation for the place (must call exactly one month in advance, no sooner, at exactly 9 AM when the lines open, and with any luck, you’ll reach someone to take your reservation by lunch time), but rather … well, I have no excuse. Time, maybe? I was too busy being a rambunctious college kid to set aside time for Chez Panisse.

In any case, what better opportunity to go there than for your lover’s birthday? Well, I’m sure you could rattle off a few other incentives, but I phoned in a month in advance for a Saturday date, and of  course, no way in hell was I gonna get that, so I settled on a Tuesday night reservation, the day after Justin’s birthday (and, being that his birthday, which was on Monday, happens to coincide with Bastille Day, that was probably the best option). We officially are no longer Chez Panisse virgins, and quite proudly so!

Preface:
Chez Panisse is a restaurant built on Alice Waters’s philosophy that good food is simple–it is grown locally, fresh, and organic. Therefore, the restaurant uses mostly locally grown and organic ingredients. They never use anything off season, and the only thing in their menu that came from a far away place is wine. The atmosphere reflects this wholesome philosophy, as well–it’s rustic, comfortable, and charming, not stuffy, stiff, and sterile. It takes its French influence qiute seriously and, in addition to offering French cuisine and naming their restaurant a French name, they have old illustrated posters of French films hung at some places. The rustic quality traces itself in every aspect of the interior decoration–it almost feels like there’s a lot of wood/brick going on, instead of concrete and plastic. The fabulous philosophy behind this restaurant goes as far as its dinnerware–the plates are from Heath Ceramics, which is located in Sausalito, and the drink menu offers many brews from around the area. Of course, I have to acknowledge that I am extraordinarily spoiled; living in California makes it absolutely easy to buy locally and love it. The wines of Napa, the breweries of San Francisco, the artisans and craftsmen of all over, the farmers of San Joaquin Valley and most of Central California–seriously? We’ve been described as an economically self-sufficient state, and with good reason, too.

On top of all this great philosophy/value, Chez Panisse still manages to uphold a certain level of culinary expertise and craftsmanship that earns it a spot in the top 50 restaurants of the world, at #37.

Anyway! The style of this restaurant is based on two kinds of restaurant in one: The downstairs “Restaurant” and the upstairs “Cafe.” The Restaurant serves prix-fixed dinners that change everyday to reflect the season’s best offerings. It’s a little more formal, a little quieter, tends to be more expensive, and more difficult to get reservations for the Restaurant portion. The Cafe upstairs is a little more casual, the menu style is a la carte (meaning you can pick and choose what you’d like to order), the mood a little more excitable.

Tonight, we dined in The Restaurant. Today’s menu was somewhat special–it was an all-fish menu

Local halibut crudo with avocado and cherry tomatoes
The halbut was thinly sliced, dusted with minced chili, parsley and chives, doused in a sort of olive oil/vinegarette mixture. It was sooo soft and melted in my mouth. It came with a side of cilantro + avocado + cherry tomato salad. I’m not sure what dressing they used, but whatever it was, it did WONDERS. One bite of the cherry tomato and all this flavor just came bursting out! I’m not sure if it’s the tomato, the dressing, or both, but whatever trickery they used, it was quite effective

(No picture for this dish because I hastily dived into my dish, oops :X)
Tuscan fish and shellfish soup with wild fennel
Soothing, comforting, subtle–the flavors of lobster, crab, and scallop meld together in harmony, without one being stronger than the other, and the BEST BEST part of the soup? The sliced baguette with garlic aioli that was floating in the center of the bowl. The garlic aioli was out of this world. I don’t know how they made it, but each bite was like a piece of heaven TwT Even Justin, who abhors the taste of shellfish + crusteceans, took a liking for this one. Good job, CP

Yellowfin tuna grilled over vine cuttings; with porcini mushrooms and fried herbs
The main course. The tuna was cooked to perfection, the porcini mushrooms sauteed and flavorful, the fried herbs (onions?) delectable, all held together by a delicate sauce that I can’t explain because I suck and am not good at this yet. Well, actually, it’s more like I was too busy enjoying the food to extrapolate and dissect all the flavours, as I normally try to do

Santa Rosa plum tart with muscat sabayon
The dessert. My least favorite of the meal. It was absolutely tart. I’m not sure if it was supposed to be this tart, or maybe I’m not used to the taste of plums, but in any case, even the muscat sabayon (which looked/tasted like wine-based sweet cream to me) didn’t do a good job of balancing out the flavors. Sad. Luckily, dessert is my least favorite portion of any meal in general I prefer coffee for dessert plzkthx.

The check came, along with two truffles (hazelnut!) and two wild strawberries.

The two of us HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUSTIN <3And with that said, I am stuffed silly and absolutely exalted.

While we’re talking about fine dining, here are some restaurants I want to try out eventually…

• The French Laundry (this should be saved for a really special occassion though) – Always in the top 3 (they really need to redesign their website though!!) TOO MUCH FLASH PLZ.
• Bouchon the baby brother of The French Laundry
• Manresa (#35 in 2005)
• Emiles
• Kaygetsu – Apparently the Bay Area’s finest Japanese restaurant
• Bouchee and/or L’Auberge Carmel

I really, truly do love food ;_;

Excuse the gastronomic nature of this entry; I just have to post about these two places!

Curry House
10350 S De Anza Blvd
Cupertino, CA 95014
(408) 517-1440

We went to Curry House for lunch on Friday after I’d discovered that there was actually one in the Bay Area! Knowing that it was owned by the same company that makes the instant food varieties of curry and tofu, among other things, I knew not to expect Indian-style curry but good, Anglofied-Japanese (haha, thanks for the term, Charzu!) food. You wouldn’t find what non-Japanese people would perceive as Japanese staples here (i.e. sushi and bento boxes), but you definitely would find things like curry rice, hamburg steaks teppan-style, and Japanese-style spaghetti! (Refer to the full menu here)

Without further ado, some photographs!

Justin’s selection:
“Fried Shrimp & Onion Ring Curry – Deep fried shrimp and original onion rings with curry sauce and salad”

A close up of the tempura The onion rings are MASSIVE–each ring contains two rings of onion!

My selection:
“Spicy Omelet Rice – Chili chicken pilaf omelet”

I never thought to eat omurice with marinara sauce + ground beef! Haha.

Unfortunately, the rice wasn’t wrapped by the egg, it was just underneath it Ah, well, it was still good!

The total came to about $20, without tip and with a Shirley Temple (their drink selection is really fun!). Not bad! I would definitely return again. I think I’ll try the spaghetti next time

Tyme for Tea & Co.
37501 Niles Blvd.
Fremont, CA. 94536
(510) 790-0944
http://tymefortea.com

I had my reservations about doing tea time, even though I was obviously the most excited one of all my girlfriends to try it out. Two of our girlfriends were back in the area to visit, so we decided to catch up over some tea! And you know me, being a romantic and all, had been (almost unjustifiably) excited over this. “Bottomless” tea (haha, I’m so ghetto), scones, sandwiches, with no feeling of being rushed, and perhaps most importantly, a sanctuary for women to get together to catch up and talk–I mean, what more could I ask for? But the concept of frills, antiques, and lace made me feel a little nauseous inside. Did tea time have to be such a girly affair?

Nevertheless, we set out to try it, and boy are we GLAD we did! By the end of it all, my girlfriends thanked me profusely for planning this. I had no expectations myself and was just glad it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be–the interior decoration wasn’t overly gaudy, it was more homely and cute rather than stuffy and rigid.

We all ordered the Victorian Tea set, which consists of:
Beginning with a Scone
Crème Fraiche, Lemon Curd & Raspberry Preserves
Five Assorted Tea Sandwiches
Three Tea Pastries
Your choice of Tea

We should’ve figured that was too much food … -_-; haha. Oh well! We ordered mango tea, Earl Grey, English Breakfast, peach passion, and Tyme for Tea’s Blend (black with a hint of kiwi or something?). They were all pretty good ^_^ We passed our pot down to the left, and after we’d tried all 5 teas, we were pretty wired! Ahh, good times

My cup of tea, pre-sugar + milk

First row: Cucumber + Cheese tea sandwiches (dusted with dill)
Second row: Spinach/cheese/tomato? quiche, spinach turnovers;
Third row: Chicken sandwiches (yes, those are sandwiches, not banana bread pudding ), cheese and (something or other) toasted on baguette slices.

I suspect that very little dessert was consumed, at this point!

Faith, Vaishnavi, Lynh, Vy, me – Normal picture

Tea cup picture

MAGNUM er, sipping picture ;D

They have a hat bin in the back! So we put some on and took a picture

Overall, a really, really fun experience! We’ll definitely do tea again

I’ve gone to Los Angeles and to a birthday party in the past two weeks. My trip to LA was rather fun! Perhaps one of the best trips, even though it was a really short one. We ate at The Pantry (where I had the BEST sunnyside up eggs I’d ever had!), watched a hockey game (Kings vs. Canadiens–my first hockey game ever!), ate at Rambutan, and then went to Boulevard3 for some clubbing fun. The next day, we went to Downtown Pasadena, had sushi at Kabuki, and then shopped ’til we really had to leave at Forever21 there. I have to say, it’s the best Forever21 I’ve ever been to

For the birthday party, we had dinner at E Tutto Qua in North Beach and went to Apartment 24 afterward (which is where Dolce used to be). Interesting. The interior definitely looks a lot better than it did before. Unfortunately I hated the DJ’s tendency to mash things up Annoying.

Did a ton of shopping in the past few weeks too! I bought: 2 dress blouses, a rather sultry red dress, and a lace-fringed skirt from Forever21, a long sweater and a short, green satin dress from H&M, and a bunch of random accessories from Forever21 and World of Good. HAHA. Random last store This was I guess an attempt at getting my stuff together before I go to Las Vegas next week. I can’t wait for that :cool:

I have a couple of web projects on hand, my own personal projects (ugh need to find out what happened to my OTHER domain, and then I need to throw together another portfolio!), and schoolwork to keep me very, very occupied. In fact, perhaps a little insanely preoccupied But don’t mind me! I’ll get through it. Even though I’m not stressing over papers or exams anymore, the stress that comes post-education is a different kind of stress–the grown up kind. Sounds silly and obvious, but now the things you do really do affect you. For example, you can bomb a test in college but worst case scenario you can retake the class and be behind in graduation (and possibly have to come up with some sort of excuse for it when applying for grad school). At work, if you screw up, worse case scenario is you don’t get paid, you get fired and then you have to find a different job so that you can basically live. Yeap, that is some intense shit right there The problem is that I REALLY do need the money!

I need to put together my portfolio to apply for school (deadline is creeping up on me, shit!), and get a haircut this weekend. So, to do before I go to Vegas:

• Finish website #1;
• Finish website #2 design;
• Work out on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday mornings;
• Finish GRDES hw;
• Finish Programming hw;
• Take programming test;
• Finish the other GRDES hw;
• Get haircut;
• Put together portfolio!

Good luck to me!

Had a rather relaxing weekend with the boy, running miscellaneous errands and playing a lot of Rock Band and Professor Layton. I’m starting to miss the more aggressive video games. I may just log in to Steam and launch me some TF2 … sometime. Someday!

Here are some food pics to keep your mouth watering while you read my blog

So yes, if you couldn’t tell, we had brunch at Caffe 817 in Oakland. It was rather delicious, as always. This is one of our favourite lunch time spots to frequent whenever we’re in the area, mostly because they use such fresh ingredients and because their sandwiches are so refreshingly Californian-Italian. I always used to visit Ratto’s, which is the deli/grocery store next door, especially back when I used to work in downtown Oakland. Their sandwiches were also simply amazing, but in a different way. I actually never ate at Cafe 817 before, not at least until after I’d left the office in Oakland, and the only reason why I started having my lunch at Cafe 817 was because Ratto’s was closed on one of the days Justin and I were in the area. Oops! Well, it just gave the store even more business

I usually eat sandwiches here, but we were early enough to try out their breakfast menu. I cannot resist eggs benedict, so whenever I see it on the menu I immediately go for it. I love that they used proscuitto instead of Canadian bacon. The Hollandaise sauce was ligthweight, although a bit sour for my taste (it could either be the vinegar of the poached egg or too much lemon–at times I could taste both!) They obviously use an egg poacher, but I sort of have a soft spot for places who poach eggs the old-fashion way–in a boiling pan of water. Granted, it’s the more difficult way, but it always feels like you’re getting more yolk than white. All in all, it was still a pretty good breakfast. I’m at least glad I ordered it and tried it out

Justin’s sandwich was the grilled chicken panini, pressed in between Acme rolls, stuffed with artichoke and proscuitto. That’s always the safe bet to go, and Justin sure wanted something safe Haha.

Another culinary adventure I had was on Sunday afternoon, with Justin and Chandler, at Mini Gourmet, a mom-and-pop diner that’s sure to remind you of the good ol’ days, if you’re about 70+ years old. It’s the kind of place where everyone seems to know your name, and if they don’t, they at least try to be warm and friendly with you. They serve all sorts of American goodness here, ranging from an impressive breakfast menu to a full lunch and dinner menu. It’s not so different from Country Way, although the portions are somewhat more manageable than Country Way. I may consider re-visiting this restaurant again, after I get over the caloric intake I’d had

I’m starting to realize this blog is becoming more and more like a food blog than it is an all-encompassing personal blog, but you know what? I love food! I can’t help if it I want to write about food all the time … and post really yummy pics of them … mmmmmmmmmmm.

I’m such a glutton