Day 2 - Now with minimal technology!

This is the first post that I have ever done by email. Email and
slowly tapped out on my phone. We finished our journey to Seattle
today (Bellevue, to be specific) and am staying at a relative's house
for the night. We will cross the border tomorrow and be in Richmond
for two days before coming back to the Seattle area for the weekend.
So another day on the road. Just a couple of observations:

- eating on the road usually consists of a lot of fast food, and our
trip is no exception. My parents aren't the most adventurous eaters
either so it severely limits the choices some more. We had McDonalds
for breakfast and Denny's for lunch. Considering the fact that my
sister has pretty much taught me to travel for food (her and Anthony
Bourdain), this is flat out embarassing. In my defense a bit, the
choices of eatery in southern Washington leaves a lot to be desire
(along I-5 anyway). And we HAD to have found the Denny's with
construction going on so my mediocre chicken salad came with a side of
power tool noise. I am expecting my eating to take a turn for the
better now that I met up with my sister. Hopefully I'll have better
news to report tomorrow.

(to prove my point, my sister flew up to Seattle and had lunch at
perhaps the best salumi place ever. I'll link to her post as soon as
she writes one)

- one more note on roadside eating. There are Subway restaurants at
literally every exit. It's either a standalone place or inside a gas
station. Terribly annoying when you are trying to find food to eat.
Talk about taunting...

- We are staying in a huge house and is more than comfortable, there
is even Wifi here but we were tired and rushed to bed pretty early, so
here I am rapping away on my phone on email. I will have to remember
to ask for access when we come back for the weekend.

- Hppefully when we get settled in Canada tomorrow I will have time to
throw a few pictures on here. Right now it would just be a gallery of
people asleep in the car anyway. If you really want to keep track of
things I am trying to keep my facebook and twitter acount (ak3700)
updated. Hey, what else am I going to do in the car?I love my phone....

The Pacific Northwest - Day 1

Just want to leave a quick note on day one of our adventure. I'll update this post with a few pictures later. 

I should have known, but this trip got off to a wonderful start when we went to pick up our car and the lady told us, "We don't have a minivan right now, but we have an SUV for you." Uhh... that is not going to work for six people. So she had to call the Berkeley location and ask if they had anything that sat 7. They did, so we went over there and found out that we were the proud renters of a Suzuki XL7. Sitting seven is really a stretch, as it's really a regular SUV with an extra row of seat stuck in the back. As you can imagine, this puts an even further cramp on luggage space, which was a problem with so many people going. So we finally all crammed in, a cooler and luggage taking the window seat next to Britt, and off we went....

Other than that, it was pretty uneventful up I-5 and out of California. We had dinner in a town call Weed that was funny until we couldn't find any restaurants opened. Another hour and a half or so we pulled into Medford, Oregon where I now sit in a Motel 6, borrowing WiFi from the Travelodge next door. (Motel 6 offers WiFi...for $2.99 a day. My head still hurts trying to wrap itself around that). On the plus side, there is a Dairy Queen across the parking lot that is opened until 11, so I am also enjoying a Peanut Blaster Parfait as well. Mmmm... another 6 or 7 hours on the road tomorrow before we get to Seattle, so I better head to bed. Hopefully tomorrow will go more smoothly than today. But then, you would have no reason to come read this then, would you?

Leaving...On a Jet Plane

...it's a fun song, but sadly no, we are actually taking a road trip. The bags are packed, and tomorrow we hit the road north to not-so-sunny Seattle/Vancouver. Will my kids survive the long drive? How many cups of Seattle's Finest coffee will I consume? Will I find some free WiFi to keep you all updated? We will all find out soon....

Quietly Mumble Happy Birthday Amongst Yourselves...

...That was what was instructed to everyone right before I cut the delicious homemade cheesecake (darn, forgot to take a picture) for Britt's birthday. She is not a fan of birthday attention, so a nice, quiet BBQ lunch is all she gets. It ended up cold and windy anyway (great precursor to our vacation, I guess), so we came, we ate, and we retreated indoors, where the warmth of technology kept us company.

Right guys?

Perfect Cookies?

As stated many times in this space, I am not the baker of the family. But if you start attaching words like "perfect" in describing your recipes, and fill the articles with science to back up your claim, you will have me interested. So perhaps when I get some free time, I will give it a try. I'll let you know how it goes....

(Of course, the recent mishap of my standup mixer's engine breaking will make this difficult. If anyone knows where a good place I can take the mixer to get repair, I would greatly appreciate it... and perhaps thank you with some cookies.)

Playtime?

The kids have a lot of barbie dolls and they play with them in all sorts of ways.

I do not know which way this is.

Sheperd's Pie

Had some potatoes around the house that were ready to bloom so I decided to use them along with some leftovers to make a quick sheperd's pie for dinner. Nothing especially exciting. What I actually wanted to bring up was that as I was leveling the mashed potatoes on top and getting ready to put it in the oven, I realized that I had no idea how to make those cool peaks with a fork that everyone seems to make that gets all browned and delicious looking. I ended up kind of plowing across them like I was getting ready to plant corn in them or something. Not quite the same. If anyone can show me how to make nifty peaks, please let me know....

Another Helpful Hint

When your parents tell you not to climb on, or jump off of the tree in your backyard, they probably have a good reason. If you don't believe them, you will only find out for yourself, the hard way.

In case you were wondering....

...yes, if you happen to be on the Wii Fit, getting some exercise, and you suddenly feel the urge to go to the bathroom, but you are in the middle of being weighed and couldn't wait and you accidentally pee on the Wii Balance Board....it's ok. The Board can take it. Wipe it up, and it still works.

I'm just saying, in case you were wondering.....

Farmer's Market

When you want to go to a Farmer's Market in the Bay Area, the Ferry Building Farmer's Market is pretty much the gold standard that others are compared to. With Hannah having been freed for the summer from her busy activities, we decided to take a trip out and enjoy the summer harvest of local farmers.



I support being a locavore as much as the next guy. I think Michael Pollan has a lot of very good ideas on how we can be more responsible with our the way we manage of resources. Looking at all of the organically grown food on display (look at those pepper! beautiful), I am definitely inspired to do more to support the local farmer. It is pricier than your local grocery store, but you more than make up for it in quality. I really wasn't looking to do a lot of shopping on this particular trip, but I couldn't resist buying a few tomatoes as thoughts of a BLT swirls in my head. (I LOVE a good ripe tomato. I can eat those things like apples. On the other hand, eating tomatoes in the winter time is one of the saddest experiences that I can think of) Then, amidst the abundant free samples, I also bought some potato-stuffed indian naan, some rhubarb that Britt turned into a crisp, and this love cheese sampler from Cowgirl Creamery. (I mostly took this to sow my friend Tim, who has developed a taste for fancy cheese)



Back to the sampling for a moment... You would think that all the samples of ripe nectarines, artisan cheeses, and even pickled green beans would be a meal in itself. But you know, sometimes the sampling works and it does indeed get you to buy more stuff. Besides what was mentioned above, I also tried a salumi "meat cone" from newly opened Boccalone. Excuse the blurry picture, I was having camera issues, but it's a paper cone with meat. Isn't that exciting enough of an idea?



So on a lovely summer day, I really can't think of anything better than spending the late afternoon/early morning strolling the Ferry Building. If it was inspiring to get me to wake up a little earlier on a Saturday morning, it's certainly worth a visit from you.

My First Souffle

For my last birthday, Britt gave me a strong hint when she got me a souffle dish. Being the strong willed type (and lazy, let's not forget to give credit to...ah whatever), I pretty much left the bowl unused for about a year. Then one day, while perusing some of my favorite blogs in my Google Reader (the greatest time suck mankind has ever known), I run across the Amateur Gourmet's attempt at a simple Ina Garten souffle recipe. What really sealed the deal for me, besides the basic recipe, are the step by step pictures that Adam took along the way. It's one of the easiest recipes that I think I ever followed.

Of course, that means that reprinting the recipes or too many pictures would be highly redundant. So here a just a few of how mine turned out, and I highly encourage you give this a shot. As mentioned in his post, there are kind of a lot of bowls and such involved, so clean up is a bummer, but I found that it was a great way to distract myself while I tried not peeking into that oven.



As promised, a simple recipe with very few ingredients. I had to substitute the cheese choice as all I had on hand was some lovely Swiss Emmenthal. I thought it worked out pretty well.



This was what it looked like before it went into the oven. This is also one of the few times that I get to play with the stand up mixer. Britt is the baker, so she is usually the one mixing things with it. It was great to just put the whisk to the egg whites and walk away to other things.



This was the final product when I took it out of the oven. I was hoping for more rise, but I think when I let Sara help fold the egg whites in the mixture, she was a little heavy handed and mixed everything in. It's OK though, I don't blame her or anything. It was a lot of fun letting both girls help throughout the process. Besides, the pretty rise only lasts a short time before the souffle cools.



See? No hard feelings...

Graduation Day

June is also the time of graduations, and it's no different in our household as Sara celebrated her promotion into kindergarten. It was challenging journey (she did have to repeat the grade), but she was able to buckle down on her studies and passed all of her finals. That finger painting exam had us a little worry for a minute there, but her excellent color composition and organization of her stick fingers really pulled her through.

Of course, all of that is ridiculous. As proud of Sara as I am for her accomplishment of progressing through school, it seems to me we put a little too much pomp and circumstances into this. The parents agreed to buy cap and gowns for their preschoolers, ones that will never be worn again, all for a ceremony that lasted all of 10 minutes. I remember when Hannah finished preschool they made paper caps and I thought they were the cutest thing ever. Why couldn't we do that now? It's preschool? Is there someone out there living on the streets because they were a preschool drop out and can't make art with dry macaroni? (that guy is probably running Microsoft of something)

Ramble all I want, the graduation took place with cap and gown, the kids look cute, and Sara is on her way to kindergarten in th fall. I can't wait to see her in another cap and gown next year for her promotion to first grade. And they say we aren't encouraging our kids enough....

Happy Birthday to.....Me.

If you are wondering where the barrage of posts are suddenly coming from, you should know that we are in the midst what is known in our household as "Alan's month." There are just more events involving me than those other eleven months, so it's a busy time. I already took you through my anniversary, and there is also my birthday, follow by Father's Day. There was also a time when I would graduate from stuff this month too (ah those were the days) so really, you are getting a break from me compared to years past!

For my birthday, I wasn't looking to do a whole lot. Turning 31 is a lot like celebrating 9 years of marriage. People aren't exactly focused on the present year as talking about an adjacent year. So I decided to just volunteer it as a good excuse to have a little BBQ at my house, which people seem to like to attend. If you are my friend, then surely you like to eat, which is really what we do at these things. My parents stuff us with meat, we try to balance it out with some sides, and we sit around all day eating. Here is me balancing out all the meat by providing a refreshing watermelon:

Well, that and me having way too much fun with a cleaver.



I did have a birthday cake too. I eventually shared.

Best of all, I found out I have a lot of very nice and generous friends. It seems that many of them got together and bought me what I always wanted: a digital SLR. The shipping didn't make it to the BBQ, but I was still pretty happy when I found out, as seen here:



The stupid grin is of a little boy that got everything he wanted for his birthday.

In case you are interested, or was an investor in this venture and want to know where your money went, the camera arrived Monday morning in time for my actual birthday. Here's another picture of my stupid smile upon seeing the package had arrived:



And the premiere of the very first picture taken:



Hey, it's not artistic genius yet. I'm working on it...

Anniversary dinner

Ah yes, the dinner. Eating a a big part of this blog and I would be doing a disservice to you all if I don't at least mention the slightly fancy meal that I had for my anniversary. After last year's extravagantly enjoyable dinner at Gary Danko and before next year's...uh... something special for a nice round 10 years, we weren't really looking for anything extra fancy. As luck would have it, the semi-annual (that's twice a year, right? I always get bi-annual and semi-annual mixed up) Dine About Town coincides with our anniversary so I looked for an interesting place to try. By pretty much random chance I went with One Market, who has a recent reputation around the city and I am a fan of it's locale...well, on One Market, across from the Ferry Building, where I always try to take a stroll if I am in the area. My sister's favorite casual meal, Foreign Cinema, will have to wait until next time....

Overall, I would say that One Market is a good reliable place for good food. It didn't blow me away with any of their offerings, but it was all well prepared, well portioned, and overall satisfying. The ambiance can be a little on the loud side as there are a lot of business folk who work near by who drops by for drinks and a bite to eat. It may seem unromantic to you, but Britt and I like the bustling crowd as we can people watch a little bit. I don't want to say we like to make fun of other people... well yeah, we do that sometimes...but when you are married with kids, getting out around other adults is part of the fun. There is always alone time every night after the kids go to bed. You know, those couple of hours where you are half asleep while the TV is on sitting next to each other? What is more romantic than that?

Oh, but back to the food. At One Market, the Dine About Town special allows a choice of two starters, two entrees, and two desserts. It's a great deal for getting a full meal at a reasonable price. Britt went with the white poppy seed encrusted skate wing (following a hilarious discussion of whether Skate was fish or fowl. Thank God for my iPhone). I scanned the menu and decided that maybe if I forgo dessert, I can get something else for about the same price, along with a side (which for me, can count as dessert. I'm a savory man). So after much deliberation, I decided on Alaskan halibut "Sous Vide" (which I learned, is like poaching, but with the food in a vacuumed sealed bag) over bamboo rice, peanuts, shitake mushroom, shrimp-coconut nage (another poaching like method). As I said before, it was solid and satisfying, if not spectacular.



The sides you see behind the fish are what are known as "Big Fries", and big they are. Britt remarked that they look like French Toast sticks and indeed they do. I wanted to try them because I had heard that fries at One Market were fried in duck fat, and who wouldn't want to try that? I can tell you now that ...I can't tell if they are fried in duck fat. It was a delicious fry, don't get me wrong. How they get just the right doneness inside and out with just a thick cut is something to be admired. I couldn't even eat them all even though there were only seven fries (to the equivalent of what seemed like 3 potatoes). Any uniqueness of duck fat frying though, I can't really say...

Finally, good thing one of us had dessert planned. The kitchen would never be able to send their congratulations if Britt didn't order the Peach Brown Butter Tart with blueberry compote as follows:



Aww what a nice touch. It was delicious too. I like good vanilla ice cream. And yes, we did try to eat the letters. The chocolate was hard to get off the plate, but it was delicious. After a brief, and intense discussion, we decided that licking the plate would just be a bad end to the meal.

So there you have it. Another year capped of (or is it kicked off? ah well, one of those) with a good meal, good atmosphere, and most of all, with my wife of 9 years.

Happy 9 Years!

Oh my god that picture is from a long time ago. Granted, technically, this was while we were dating so it's more than 9 years old, but this picture is way funnier than some stuffy wedding photo that I could have showed you. I always liked my wind blown coif that day... and if I remembered correctly, I hurled after the tilt-a-whirl that day too. How romantic....

So yes, 9 whole years. Certainly no less significant because the big 1-0 is looming. It's still a wonder to think that is has already been that long. I don't really have anything profound to say, other than the somewhat generic, "It goes by fast" or "I wouldn't have changed a day of it." In today's society, we may already be viewed as a couple who have "made it". Our marriage have probably lasted longer than about 30 celebrity marriages combined. At the same time, I very much look forward to what lies ahead for us in the next 9, 19, or even 90 years. I may have read it in a fortune cookie once, but I believe the best part of marriage is the journey. An adventure that you take with someone who can share in the joy and excitement of each day. So from that perspective, my trip is only beginning. Through 2 kids (and working on a third), and a few interesting places we've called home, I wouldn't want to go get more stamps in our passport of life with anyone else. So Happy Anniversary, honey! We are just getting started.

Oh, here is us today. Right before dinner which I guess I'll share next time...

Get it your way (if that involves a flame thrower)

Is there such a thing as, too hot and fresh? Walked into the strangest Burger King in Stockton the other day. I don't know what it was before Burger King, but the kitchen is off to the side away from the cashiers where you can't see them at all. Then Hannah's kid's meal comes in the singed bag above. What exactly are they doing back there??

Not fresh (or REALLY fresh) Onion

This why you should store onions in a cool, dry place....and probably use it within two weeks.

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!

Take Me Out to the Buffet...

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...

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 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!)



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....



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.



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!



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....

Root, Root Root for the Home Team...(or Adventure in Parenting, Part II)

Now I may just have been being snobby when I found it difficult to go to Hannah's school functions, but she started to play Little League and you would think this would be more up my alley. I mean, I love sports, especially baseball. I have two daughters but fortunately they seem to like sports so far so I was glad that Hannah wanted to play baseball this summer. But maybe it's because she is playing with mostly younger kids, and I just don't have the patience for youth sports at such a young age. It's hard for me to watch practice. It's really slightly organized chaos most of the time. It doesn't help that the league is new and not the most organized. Brittany can find the humor of watching kids run around in circles(as you will hear), but me, I am subjected to two hours of this three times a week and it's hard. It's very, very hard....



Is it the scrum that occurs after every batted ball? Is it the kid that doesn't even bother touching all of the bases? Is it my daughter just standing there swinging her arms? The choices are endless...