Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Sharing Spam Musubi


Sharing Spam Musubi
Originally uploaded by Alanmine
Nothing says Spring and warmer weather than fair season. We are warming up ourselves at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown in San Francisco. Fairs are big on crafts and culture, but honestly, we go for the food. While I didn't find the Japanese take on Funnel cake, I did expose Hannah to the wonderful world of Spam Musubi. No matter what your feelings are towards Spam, wrap it around some rice and you are pretty much good to go...

....The Apsaragus festival is next. Please don't let me have to use the port-a-potty too much!

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Take Me Out to the Buffet...

Getting Ready to Eat!

The Oakland A's has decided this season to join a growing trend among Major League stadiums to offer an All-You-Can-Eat section. For one flat fee, you can choose to knock off yet another one of those pesky deadly sins off your list with ease. It just so happens that my work decided to organize a little outing to a baseball game, and took advantage of the group rate to make all the food even more of a deal. So I rounded up my daughter Sara to come help me try what $35 can get your average, hard working baseball fan besides the A's brand of baseball.

(side note here. The A's always has a better campaign than the Giants. It makes a Giants fan like me jealous. The A's always have a clever campaign that really engages their fans (all 36 of them) out there. Don't even get me started on the Giants "Gamers Play Here" campaign. Gamers don't whine about their teams inability to sell themselves, and apparently they also can't hit they way out of their shirt.)

Anyway on with the food...or rather the three flights of stairs you have to walk up to get the section. A stroke of genius really, get the fan's heart pumping a little bit before clogging it with an over abundance of food. Lawsuits averted!

Pictures speak louder than words here, so I'll let Sara show you what is on the menu...

Nachos!

First, we have the nachos. Not quite stale chips. Gobs of warm cheese from a can. How can you go wrong? (Does that count as a Haiku?)

A Rare Soda

A rare chance for Sara to drink soda. The only non-carbonated choice was Powerade. I'll take clear soda over the blue anti-freeze any day...

(You notice the tiny paper shot glasses they used to sodas? You would think since it's All-You-Can-Eat they would just give you a big cup. Go Green, Coliseum!)

Hot Dog!

Now that we are warmed up, the hot dog is next. Sadly, they serve the same hot dog as the Dollar Days at the park. Tiny little things that might as well have a toothpick in it. With a 4 item limit on every visit to the concession window, my personal first visit involved 3 hot dogs and a drink....

Ice Cream

Next come the highlight of our meal, the ice cream sandwich. If it wasn't melting so fast in the warm afternoon, we would have gotten more than one at a time. Simple cheap ice cream sandwiches, but one of those things that I rarely splurge for at a game, so it was nice to get one. We haven't sampled everything yet, so we decided to go back for a second one later.....if we had any room left.

Popcorn

For some reason Sara always ask for popcorn at baseball games. I wished it was Cracker Jack myself. Decent size bag. I kept thinking to myself, this would have cost me 6 bucks at the theater!

Peanuts

No Cracker Jack but peanuts! At least some tradition holds. Little paper bags of peanuts. Would have been better warm, but I might have just been pining for too much nostalgia.

That's all we could handle. One of everything. We left with the popcorn and peanuts and the ushers made us throw the popcorn out before we left. I totally understand not letting people leave with food during the game, they wouldn't want people to be hooking up their friends in a different section, but the game was over, and they would rather me waste the food than bringing it home to eat. Fortunately the peanuts were in my pockets and they didn't notice (just happy to see you!). Out of spite, of course, I then gave the peanuts away to Zach who was sitting in another section. Take that, Oakland A's!!!

So in conclusion, it's probably not worth the $35 regular price. But for $25, we got what we paid for, which was cheap food, a sunny day, an A's win (versus the Eating Champ himself, C.C. Sabathia), and for Sara, a big stomachache when she got home....