Yes we know how to show a gal a good time – Part 1

This past weekend, friend from Texas and prom date came to visit us.  Prom Date is probably one of the most drama free and delightful people you will ever meet.  Spending time with her is a joy because she’s up for anything and happy to stay in.  As she was only in town for a brief two days, we wanted to give her the best of the Bay Area.

So as soon as we picked her up at the airport, we whisked her into San Francisco for a long leisurely lunch as Bar Bambino.  Ok, I’ll have to admit we were showing off a bit because we knew the staff there.  We called West Coast Rebecca to see if she would join us and found out that Bellisima would be coming in soon.  It was great to feel like such an insider, being greeted by the Chef Christian (who gives great restaurant recs) and spending some quality time with the cheese person and his delightful girlfriend.  Yes, our version of Cheers is an Italian gastropub.  We are SOOO NorCal.  And the food?  Well it was spectacular.  We got the cheese and salumi platter, the fried squash blossom (seriously ricotta filled goodness!!!!!), poplette di melazane (eggplant balls – DIRRRTY), and their bread plate.  On top of that we all had glasses of sparkling rose wine.  It was a two and a half hours of great food and great company.

Afterwards we went to a home décor store on Fillmore to buy a Marimekko shower curtain.  You see, I have this thing for Marimekko.  My grandmother had a Marimekko comforter that I loved (and my cousin has possession of).  While normally I like soft earth tones, I have a particular affection for Marimekko’s bold colors and huge graphic statement.  J gave me some Marimekko fabric for my birthday and we decided to get a Marimekko shower curtain.  It was great to go to that part of SF because it was a neighborhood with great funky stores, many of which carried art from Prom Date’s favorite artist (an SF native).  Following the excursion to Fillmore street, we went to the Presidio where I ran the Presidio 10K and had an amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Driving the scenic 49 mile highway gave us awesome views of the rocky California coast.  We then went into Oakland to show Prom Date our new house and commissioned her to do a painting for our fireplace mantle in the dining room.  We made a deal that I would make a quilt for her to get a piece of art.

Ok.  Dinner was beyond spectacular.  We took Prom Date to B where we knew we would be taken care of and really shown care and love.  It was great talking to all of the staff.  We knew we wanted to get a print from Valerie, our waitress who is also a photographer, and we did another trade where I would finish a quilt that her grandmother started for her in exchange for a print.  Score!  While we ordered a large amount of food, we did get the “friend of the chef treatment” Saturday night.  We started by sharing the pulled pork, cherry and goat cheese pizza with balsamic reduction. Seriously, it’s a classic, yet inventive combination of sweet, salty, and sour all on a great crust.  And then we got an intermezzo from Chef Caleb (with some encouragement from Valerie) of a crab and leek tartlet.  For entrees, I had the pork belly with pea puree ravioli and sautéed dandelion greens while both J and Prom Date had the chicken roulade.  Because B’s menu is seasonal, you need to get the chicken roulade NOW.  It’s SO good. The chicken is moist and tender and full of flavor.  We ended the evening with J and Prom date sharing the flourless chocolate cake which is really some REALLY good fudge.  Delish!

It was a great day and one where we realize we have this great community of food people.  I will say that for dinner we already ordered a generous amount of food and then Chef Caleb added another course.  Damn you chef Caleb and your awesome cooking!  We were so full!  We did have to apologize for the state of our apartment as we are a week away from moving.   Woo!

New Find – Omnivore Books

So during fava bean fest, J and I were following west Coast rebecca to her house and went through Noe Valley (a particularly picturesque and residential part of SF).  Along the way, we saw a sign for Omnivore Books. I had to physically stifle the urge to stop the car and pull over.  A bookstore for cookbooks!

A few weeks later our friend L came for a visit from DC and as we were planning our day, L said she wanted to go somewhere to find an obscure cookbook.  That was enough reason to head into SF and find Omnivore Books.  And what a find it was!  There were all manner of food books, new and used.  There were cookbooks, memoirs, cheese guides, and guides to butchering.  The only thing you won’t find – Food Network books (except for Barefoot Contessa).

I’m glad this place is in SF because I would be there all the time.  The owner is crazy nice and really helpful.   She took us around and talked to us about the history of the space – it was a former butcher shop (complete with huge scale).

On top of that, this place is what I want my kitchen to look like – warm, sunny and filled wiht light.  Check it. That is EXACTLY the color I want our kitchen to be.

Dear Glee Showrunners

Your show is very appropriately named and I love it almost unabashedly. Even though I was never in showchoir, I am a total showchoir/a capella junkie. You captured showchoir as a competitive sport to a t. The acting and direction seems spot on. One major quibble though – why set up a showchoir that is so fricking diverse only to spend a grand total of four minutes on the folks who aren’t white and straight? Seriously, you set up some very interesting characters and I totally believe in your ability to turn them into real characters. So why don’t you give them more than one line each?

Ok Parkway Manor Boyz – It’s ON!

Because the boys in Oakland just bought a house!  Yesterday, J and I went to the title company and signed all the papers.   Tomorrow, our real estate agent will be handing over the keys and the hosue will be ours!  Yes this is the same house we were agonizing over earlier.   On top of being the classic California craftsman style house, the house has a a garden with a Camelia bush, roses, calla lilies and a Meyer lemon tree.  I can’t wait to start planting an herb garden and bulbs.  Hmm..I wonder how well peonies will do on the West Coast?  In any case, my goal is to have has many flowers in our yard as the boys at Parkway Manor.

By the way, I am so loving Glee on Fox.  if you don’t unabashedly love that show, you are dead to me.

Enough talk, here’s some pictures of the house.

Here’sthe kitchen

Here’s the garden

Birthday Dinner Lesson Learned

Always trust West Coast Rebecca’s restaurant picks.  So May 11 was my birthday but J was really sick that night and I was tired from work so we just stayed in a vegged out.  But Friday was the more formal celebration with West Coast Rebecca.  I asked that my present from her be that she choose the restaurant.  Since Bellisima works in the food industry, WCR would have an awesome pick.  We initially chose Garabaldi’s in Rockridge but the chef where Bellisima works recommended Lalime in North Berkeley.  Lalime it was because this was inside information.

The food at Lalime’s is a Latin twist on California cuisine.  Fresh, local ingredients with things like jicima, poblanos and lime.  At 7:30, we all headed to Lalime, located on a cute and resident stretch of Berkeley.  I already had high hopes for Lalime looking at the menu and seeing the crowd.  This location wasn’t a busy street like Shattuck or College.  A successful restaurant in this part of Berkeley had to earn it’s customers.  As the night went on, Lalime delivered.  And delivered. And delivered.

It all started when we arrived and were seated.  There was a festive sprinkling of birthday glitter on the table.  WCR was stressed about choosing a wine but chose a winner with a nice Italian white that went perfectly with the food. We all decided to go with the tasting menu and get two orders of the Hawaiian tuna involtino.  Basically it’s like a sushi of raw tuna that surrounds jicama, cucumber, avocado, and arbol chile.  Perfect!  For some freshness, we chose their green goddess salad to go along with the rest of the menu.  While the salad was great, the involtino was spectacular.  The ingredients really shined and they were really bursting with flavor.  This was indicative of Lalime’s minimalist style.  They backed off and let the ingredients speak for themselves.

The tasting menu went as follows:

Salad of prawns, avocado and grapefruit

Grilled sardines, guindilla vinaigrette, olive toast

Baked poblano chile with summer squash, mushroom, chèvre

Selection of artisan cheeses: Brillat Savarin, Robiola and Bleu de Bocage

The standout on this was a tie between the poblano chile and the prawn, avocado and grapefruit salad.  The poblano chile had a lovely tomatillo sauce tempered with crème fraiche.  The dish was surprisingly subdued in a good way.  The chevre and the sweetness of the chile was really at the forefront as opposed to having spicy or acidic flavors.  The salad was just perfection. Everything was perfectly ripe and perfectly cooked.

J and WCR ended the evening splitting the warm chocolate fondant cake with Frangelico Anglaise, chocolate-hazelnut ice cream.  It’s like a molten chocolate cake but done right.  REALLLY right.

It was a great evening with thoughtful service, a nice atmosphere and excellent food.  Will definitely go back and try an entrée.

Fava Bean Fest

So last year, when J and I were visiting San Francisco to determine whether we would move cross country, West Coast Rebecca made a great meal of orichette with anchovy and fava beans. I’ve been loath to eat fava beans because they resemble my much-hated lima beans. I ate them last year and realized I love them. I’m a big fan of peas and fava beans have that springtime freshness of a good pea with a little starchiness. They taste great and ever since having a great pea puree, I have been itching to make a fava bean puree.

Here’s the rub – fava beans are a pain in the ass to prepare. They are not a weeknight supper deal unless you buy them pre-shelled. You see you have to take them out of their pods and THEN blanche them and take their translucent jackets off of them. This cries for a fun day dedicated to fava beans. That’s what J, West Coast Rebecca and I did Saturday. We went to the Allemany Farmer’s Market where we picked up ten pounds of fava beans (which ends of translating into three pounds by the time you’ve shelled them). Along with the fava beans, we got salad greens, sorrel, green garlic and mint.

The menu for the fava bean fest was as follows:

Fava bean puree with sorrel and mint on crostini

Pancetta salad with fava beans and aged balsamic

Ricotta gnocchi with fava beans and green garlic

This was spring time in a plate. Better yet, I am inspired to paint the guest bedroom in our soon to be purchased house fava bean green with chocolate brown accent pillows. The sight of shelled fava beans in a dark brown bowl was stunning. You do have to set up a fava bean meal as a fun, social activity because otherwise, it’s pure drudgery. Between shelling the beans from the pod and then removing their jackets it’s two hours of work. Admittedly, we shelled ten pounds of pods. We could have gotten away with half that amount but if you are going to shell fava beans, you might as well shell a lot of them. I’m still fiddling with the fava bean puree recipe. It had a nice savory flavor but I need to up the herb content to get that springtime freshness (oh god that sounds like a feminine hygiene commercial!).

In the meantime here’s the ricotta gnocchi recipe, happily adapted from epicurious:

Gnocchi:

• 1 pound (about 2 1/4 cups) fresh ricotta cheese

• 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup all purpose flour

• 1 large egg

• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

• 1/2 teaspoon salt • Pinch of ground black pepper

• Pinch of nutmeg

Sauce:

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

• 1 tablespoon butter

• 4 stalks of green garlic or green onions; white and pale green parts finely chopped, dark green parts thinly sliced

• ½ cup of fava beans

1/4 cup dry white wine

• Shavings of some nice sharp pecorino

• 4 tablespoons chopped fresh sorrel and mint (any combination)

For gnocchi: Here’s the thing, People are crazy afraid of making the gnocchi heavy but because you are using ricotta instead of potato, you can add a lot more flour. I added two more tablespoons than the recipe called for. This was also because it was a rainy day and the gnocchi really needed the flour. Place ricotta in strainer set over medium bowl. Chill until ricotta has texture of wet clay, at least 1 hour but overnight is awesome. The idea is that you poke the ricotta with your finger and the dimple stays in place. Mix ricotta, 1/2 cup flour, egg, and next 5 ingredients in medium bowl, adding more flour by tablespoonfuls until dough is slightly sticky (the recipe says to not add more than 4 tablespoons full but I added two more and it turned out fine). Cover and chill 30 minutes or up to a day ahead)

Sprinkle rimmed baking sheet generously with flour. Transfer dough to lightly floured surface. Cut into 4 equal pieces. Using hands, roll 1 piece on floured surface into 3/4-inch-wide log. Cut log crosswise into 1-inch pieces. Place gnocchi on prepared baking sheet, spacing apart. Repeat with remaining dough. Cover gnocchi with plastic wrap and chill at least 1 hour and up to 1 day. Even better, stick the tray in the freezer and let freeze. It works out fine and it will keep forever.

For sauce: Heat olive oil in large skillet over high heat. Add green garlic; sauté until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add chopped fava beans. Sauté 1 minute. Add wine; stir until almost all liquid is absorbed, about 30 seconds. DO AHEAD: Can be made 2 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature.

Working in 2 batches, add gnocchi to large pot of boiling salted water, stirring to prevent sticking. The key is to get the pot on a low boil as opposed to a vigorous boil. Just bring the water up to a vigorous boil and then turn down to medium. Boil until gnocchi rise to surface of water, then continue boiling until cooked through, 1 minute longer. Using slotted spoon, transfer gnocchi to skillet with the sauce. Add the sorrel and mint. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to plates and sprinkle with additional cheese.

Tratoria ala Sciliana

So this place is next to our real estate agent’s office and she raves about it.  Because I am competitive and a friend of J’s has tried hundreds of restaurants in San Francisco alone, I insisted we go to a place we hadn’t tried before.  We were well warned this place is popular and therefore crowded with a long wait.  Thus infomred we headed out there at 7:00 pm on a Saturday night.  Yes we are masochists.

We waited 35 minutes  for a table and we could hear the poor host fending off irritated customers.  It appears the people taking phone reservations aren’t closing the loop with the servers.  It’s a madhouse and Saturday night is a time for the birthdays and bachelorette parties to happen.

Luckily there’s a whole lot of pleasure to go with that pain. The food is beyond excellent.   It has the down to earth heartiness of a spaghetti and meatballs place iwth the refinement of flavors of a high end Italian place.  And they have a specials list as long as their regular menu.  We started with the antipasti to get a sense of their skills.  Assessment: WAAAAY positive.  They do amazing things with eggplant.  Their caponata is to die for.  Simply amazing.  The flavors are fresh and robust and there a good variety of caponata, calamari salad, and smokedm eats and olives.

As great as the antipasti was, the actual meal was even better.  J had a pasta special of sardines, olives, and hand made pasta.  It turns out the stuff on top of the pasta is actually ground into a savory sauce that is salty and intense.  It’s a truly original flavor that we loved. I myself had a well made order of lamb chops and sautee vegetables.  Certainly well made but nothing as revelatory as the pasta dish which was amazing.

J ended the meal with an order of their tiramisu made by the owner’s mother every morning.  He reported that it was the best he ever had (better than MINE).   Sadly, this place is only open in the evenings and it’s TINY.  But if you eat a little something beforehand to deal with the long wait, you will be rewarded.

House Hunting Diaries Part 2

Whew that was a cliffhanger I left you at. So here’s the deal. We put an offer on the house in Berkeley. Someone else put an offer $15,000 higher than ours and they weren’t asking for closing costs. That freed us up to put an offer on the Oakland house.

Because the owner wanted the deal done quickly, they gave us an inspection report that showed a little over $10,000 worth of repairs. That scared us, but we put in an offer at what our real estate agent recommended and asked for closing costs. The owner came back with a counteroffer that was $5,000 higher and no closing costs. As we thought about the work we would need to put into the house and having no closing costs, we decided to hold firm and were prepared to let go of the house.

And then we got a counter counter offer from the seller that offered $5000 towards closing. And we talked to our real estate agent and went through the inspection report and realized we didn’t have to get everything done immediately. Given that we would get a monster refund check in 2010, we could space out the repairs and renovations over the next year. After watching a zillion episodes of House Hunters and Property Virgins, I knew that an additional $5000 in the asking price would result in something like $10 more a month in monthly payments. Which I why I want the cash up front!

So we said yes to the new counteroffer and got our inspection done to make sure that the repairs really were going to cost what we expected. They turned out fine. In fact, we’re probably going to do less renovating in the kitchen than we thought. So we talked to our loan consultant and talked to another loan consultant who will be getting us a better rate and we’re underway. The house is being appraised right now and I consider this a win-win situation. Either the house appraises and we move forward with the sale or the house doesn’t appraise and the seller has to drop the price. Otherwise, by the end of June we’ll be part of the landed gentry.

For you homeowners out there (I’m looking at you Scott and Jason), what does owning a home REALLY cost? Being renters, J and I don’t have to pay for water and we’d need to get homeowners insurance. And then there’s the getting a repairperson out when things go wrong. Has the tax break made up for the increased fixed costs?

Off Topic – The House Hunting Diaries

So I’ve been making offhanded statements about the fact that J and I are trying to buy a house. That is funny because this is seriously THE THING THAT IS SUCKING OUR LIVES. Seriously, not only are we looking at real estate listings every free moment we get, we are watching HGTV 24/7. As first time homebuyers, we’re in a great position. Yes, we are one of the few people that are benefiting from a crappy economy. But for us, as for any other gainfully employed first time homebuyer, there’s never been a better time to buy.

This all started about a month ago when we decided to hunker down and talk to a loan consultant. We found a great one at Bank of America. After getting some documentation from us, the loan consultant sent us a good faith estimate and we were on our way. As soon as we found a house we wanted to make an offer on, the loan consultant would send us a PDF of the pre-approval letter for the amount we would be offering. SCORE!

We then decided to us a realtor I will call Sassy Redhead, who worked with Muffin and June to get their adorable house. One Saturday she took us to something like ten houses in the South Berkeley/North Oakland area. This was an eye opening experience as many houses in Berkeley (with the better school district) were shitholes. There were plenty of shitholes in North Oakland as well but really the houses in Berkeley were SCARY.

During that round of house hunting we found the dream house. It was beautiful. A classic craftsman style house with a breakfast nook in the kitchen and a finished basement. It was light and airy and well maintained. It even had a Meyer lemon tree in the backyard. It was owned by a couple of lesbian social workers. We were ready to jump on the house then and there. And then we went home and looked at the crime statistics. And then we thought about the block and the fact that the next door neighbors were actually a metalworking shop with a car on the lawn. And talking with relatives (one of whom is a real estate agent), we would make the cardinal mistake of buying the nicest house on the block. So we declined to make an offer even though it broke our hearts.

We seriously considered two other houses, one close to Muffin and June on a very good block. We called this the yellow house. And another in a fancier part of town that was renovated within an inch of its life. The yellow house was on a really nice block, I’d give it a B+ but the owner decided to make every bad design decision that you could possible make – bad carpeting, peel and stick tile, peel and stick tile ON THE WALLS, small chopped up rooms, pink grout on the bathroom tiles. But the block was great and the house had quite a bit of spaces as well as two (ugly) bathrooms). The green house was the polar opposite. In a fantastic neighborhood, the house was tiny, tiny tiny, but renovated as if it would be in Architectural Digest. So we made a lowball offer on the yellow house and they came back to us with a counteroffer that was WAAAAY more than the house was worth given what would needed to be done with it.

We were all set to make an offer on the green house. Once we learned that we would get an even lower interest rate than on our good faith estimate AND we could buy a point off the interest rate, the green house looked better and better. And then we got the termite report. 30K worth of repairs. YOWZA. Considering it was at the top of our price range, we wouldn’t have any money for repairs.

So this weekend we went on another frenzy of house hunting. We saw four houses, three in Berkeley and one in Oakland all within a couple of miles of each other. Two of them were the standard Berkeley shitholes. Even our real estate agent, who knows her fixer uppers, was horrified at one of them. But the other two were really promising and that puts us in a pickle. One of them was an owner who was either going to sell it to us or find new renters. It was in the same neighborhood as the yellow house and it was adorable. Similar feel as the dream house in the crappy neighborhood right down to the Meyer lemon tree in the backyard. What was great about the house was that the current renters clearly were taking care of it. They made fixes to the roof and tended to the garden with a lot of love. In fact, their daughter was born in that house seven months ago. Yes, in the house. How’s that for good karma? The plus side is also that the seller will not be jerking us around. There’s no holding out for better offer. She will take our offer or give us a counteroffer. The down side is that it’s a one bedroom and the kitchen needs work.

The other house is four blocks away from the first house. It’s been rehabbed with a bonus room and an additional bathroom. It’s in a good neighborhood in Berkeley so we’d get into the Berkeley school district. Like the green house, it’s been updated so there’s not much work to be done on it. Like the green house, it’s totally at the top of our price range. The downside is that it looks pretty competitive and that there would be a bidding war.

The pickle we are in is that we have to choose which house. Both seem equally good given their pluses and minuses. I have always said that when you have a hard choice like this one, there isn’t a bad choice. We would be happy in either. But we won’t have the option of making offers on both and seeing who gives us the best counteroffer. So that’s where we’re at with the crazy house stuff. I hope you won’t get sick of the house updates but this is our life at the moment.

The Challenge – Wrap Up

This was a great exercise more us to look at what we eat and what we spend. One thing is for sure, food is our biggest cost. At the very least it’s our most variable cost. I’ve always said we pay for convenience and convenience is well worth it. However, I am also realizing how completely easy it is for me to bring my lunch to work as opposed to going out for lunch. I like leftovers and eating something over and over again doesn’t faze me in the least. Even better, I have used my urge to go out of my office for lunch to go out of my office and do errands stuff like mailing packages and going home to get my medication or any number of house hunting things. When we last left us, we were having turkey burger night for Thursday. That worked well and I decided to augment the beet salad with some carrots sautéed in butter and a squeeze of orange juice. AWESOME!

Friday, I marinated salmon in nuoc mam, sambal olek, and rice wine vinegar. I seared it on both sides and let it cooked through in the oven as I roasted some asparagus and made some quinoa with chicken broth and coconut milk and a little red curry paste.

Saturday was where it all fell off the rails. After a morning of house hunting, we were hungry and decided to go to Saul’s Deli, an only-in-Berkeley organic free range deli. We shared an order of chopped liver (yes I LOOOVE liver in the chopped liver and pate forms) a salad and an egg salad sandwich.

Being in North Berkeley, aka the Gourmet Ghetto, we decided to hit the Cheese Board collective, where we got a nice cheddar and two buttery Alpine style cheeses. For those of you reading from the East Coast, there’s this thing called customer service that people in the Bay area and the South kind of excel in. It’s amazing. The Cheese Board collective is a historic store that comes right from the same page in history as Chez Panisse. It’s packed with people. Nevertheless, our person was totally friendly to us. We were vague about the cheeses we were interested in and she just kept giving us more tastes. She told us about her trip to Hawaii and we told her about our cheese tasting at Bar Bambino. I remember going to an equally crowded Cheesetique in Del Ray and feeling completely harried and rushed, not just from the person behind the counter but also from the other customers. Admittedly, the Cheese Board is literally a collective with each worker having an equal stake in the company and every one making the same amount of money. Yes, only in Berkeley.

After that, we decided to go to the Berkeley Farmer’s Market to get our produce (and more balsamic vinegar!). On top oft hat, the nice man at Bear’s Paw vinegar gave us a small bottle of reduced fig syrup. That is good stuff. It’s perfect poured on top of a nice blue cheese. After a week of eating out once, we just didn’t feel like eating in and decided to go out. We went to a Chinese restaurant in Berkeley’s Elmwood neighborhood. Nothing to write home about but it served its purpose.

Sunday, I went to Trader Joe’s to get the rest of our groceries. For dinner we had a cheese plate, salad and a hearty bowl of roasted tomato soup.

Here’s what our costs shook out to: Trader Joes – $98 Farmer’s Market – $30 Tuesday night dinner – $68 Saturday Lunch – $30 Sunday Dinner – $50 Total – $286

The cost of going out for three meals is more than buying groceries for the entire week. Pretty sobering isn’t it.

Our costs this week are as follows: Trader Joes – $58 Farmer’s Market – $30 Cheese Board – $17 Already the Trader Joe’s run is less because I am buying off a list.