Desserts for sale!

This summer I've been making cupcakes & selling them at gilman. They've all sold out, and lately I've been selling 2 dozen before the 2nd or 3rd band has started. Here are a few of my favorites:

Chocolate cupcake filled with a peanut butter butter cream, with a peanut butter chocolate ganache, topped with a pb butter cream swirl.

Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting topped with raspberry purree & a fresh raspberry.

Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting topped with chicko-sticks.

Chocolate mint cupcakes with a mint butter cream icing topped with a mint leaf.

summer dinner

I've been trying to do two things lately: eat healthier, not cook meals that take more than 20 minutes (hot stoves in the summer are the worst). This tofu veggie stir fry with cous-cous was an attempt for both of these things. I think it turned out pretty well.

I pressed the tofu (but not for long enough because I was impatient). While the veggies were cooking a little I marinated the tofu in soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, sesame oil, hot sauce, garlic & cumin. I added garlic, crushed red pepper, salt & pepper to the plain cous-cous . I stir fried the veggies, sauce & tofu together. It didn't take long at all.

I am eagerly awaiting new entries from other LNP members-I hope they come soon...

Vacation pizza is the best kind of pizza

Trader Joe's garlic & herb dough
Homemade tomato/pizza sauce
Swiss-Cheddar smoked cheese
Olives
Fresh Tomato
Red Peppers
Kidney Beans
Onion
Crushed red peppers

yum yum yum.

7/29 - Sick Dinner

Being sick is the worst, especially in the summertime, double especially when you're on vacation. Yesterday for dinner I had lentil soup, bread with smoked gouda and ginger ale.

7/27 - Love & Haight

What a clever name for a sandwich shop. Or just a shop on Haight in general. Very, very clever.

I had never been here, which is surprising. I had a very good vegetarian sandwich that wasn't terribly expensive. Sourdough roll, veggies add avocado, with "chicken" steak. The steak was hot but not too hot to wilt the vegetables. It had a nice contrast of hot & cold. The fake meat didn't make me feel grossie like some kinds do (ahem-Great Wall-ahem). I really enjoyed my sandwich.
PS: I took this picture on the "food" setting on my new camera. It's kind of dark. I increased the exposure to make it lighter for the next picture. It looked exactly the same. Maybe I just don't have a trained eye in the art of digital cameras.

7/22/7-Sharing Snacks

Today I made tofu sticks and brought them to the punk dj day at the Missouri Lounge. They were eatin up real quick like. I got the recipe from Mel's vegan blog and adapted it a bit. I pressed tofu for a long time, dunked in a flour mixture (wheat flour, cumin, garlic, salt, pepper, nutritional yeast), then a liquid mixture (soymilk, siracha, apple cider vinegar, soy sauce), then back in the flour mixture. Drizzled with olive oil & baked. Afterwards I put lemon juice on them & topped with cilantro and chives. Yum yum yum.

7/12/7 - Dinner

I've been trying to come up with more things to bbq. Earlier this week, it hit me. Paninis! And just when I thought that was all I could come up with, I saw a tv cook make some sort of bbq potato salad. So that's basically what we did yesterday. It was delightful.


We thinly sliced potatoes, put olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic on them and put them on the bbq. They were better then I thought they would be. The sandwiches had: cheese (provolone, smoked guda, and/or mozerella), fresh basil, tomato, avocado, grilled zuchini and onions. We drizzled olive oil on them and rubbed the bread with garlic. We put a cast iron skillet down on top of it to panini-fy it. It was great. Another bbq triumph.

7/1/7 - Snack?

Before the bbq we decided to go to Bay Street as Kristin had a coupon for the Sunglass Hut (which isn't a hut anymore, by the way) and her fancy phone broke so she needed to go to Cingular. Paul and I visited Issac at the bake shop and got free cupcakes. Then we went to Cingular. In the back there is a play station set up for kids. I sat down at it with Paul and started building train tracks. We realized they're probably really germy so we stopped. I looked across the table, and this is what I saw:
Fried chicken. Hanging out on the table. Just hanging. Maxin' and relaxin. With some encouragement from Drew & Paul, I decided to take a picture. After I snapped this fabulous photo (literally maybe 5 seconds later) this little boy comes running up to me with a chicken bone sticking out of his mouth and says (in a passive whiny sort of high pitched voice), "hey that's my chiiicken." He then grabs it and runs away. Drew's (and Kristin's) reaction follows:
While, I am aware this wasn't MY meal, I felt it was my responsibility to share his meal with the last night's patty community.

July 1 - BBQ 'za

Today we triumphed. What was almost a failure turned into a complete success within minutes.

After careful planning and what I thought would work perfectly, we attempted to bbq pizza on a charcoal grill. After trying to light the bbq for maybe 45 minutes (and failing miserably) we reluctantly decided to bake the pizza. I felt defeated. However, after realizing it was in fact, lit and hot, Kristin & I put our pizzas on the grill next to the bread to make bruscetta. It heated the toppings really fast, possibly too fast. It had a completely different taste to any pizza you bake in the oven (obvies). I can't really describe it but I made everybody try it to see what I was talking about. It was just, different. But better than a normal pizza by far. The bruscetta also took on a different flavor, totes next level. We triumphed. I can't wait to do it again.

Pictured below: bbq pizza with Trader Joe's herb dough, olives, artichoke hearts & kidney beans, and bruscetta. I should have taken a picture of the grill marks as you can't really tell that it was bbqed.

A Radical Sabbatical

I'm away surfing

JBay until the 13th of July.

I will

on posts when I get back.

Dinner - 6/??

This was dinner a week or so ago. Vegetarian chili from Trader Joe's (which was much better than expected), corn on the cob & cornbread with honey on top. It was good.


In other news, apparently I'm the only last night's patty contributor that still eats...

6/4/7 - Summertime Dinner

Grilled cheese on homemade wheat bread with avocado, romaine lettuce & cilantro (both from my garden). Corn on the cob. Salad with cashews, dried cherries & avocado, with Annie's Goddess dressing.

I've recently realized how good fresh baked bread is. It's pretty easy to make (this one didn't turn out as well as the one Juliette & I made, but it was still good) and it's so good when it comes out of the oven. It makes the house smell good & I decided I should wear an apron when making it, so that's also exciting.

Favorite summertime foods:
corn on the cob (especially cooked on the bbq)
cherries
peaches/nectarines (especially on cereal, cheerios double especially)
otter pops/big sticks
lemon soy yogurt with frozen raspberries mashed in
macaroni salad

5/28 - Breakfast

Homemade wheat bread (that Juliette & I made the day before) toasted, with homemade jam (that Britton, Juliette & I made the week before). Can't beat that.

5/26 - Overboard

Saturday I hung out with Paul all day. Drew joined us for some evening activities. Our eating habits that day were out of control. It started with a donut around noon from the corner donut shop at 55th & Shattuck. After a few hours of going around town, we went to lanesplitters.

Here I got a zip tune up. A thin slice & a salad for $3.25. Not so bad. L.S's in the day time is pretty great. But for some reason it turns to garbage after 5 or 6pm (as I believe is apparent in Ryan's post about our L.S's dinner a few months back).

After lunch we rode to the liquor store & I got some ice cream & Paul got some weird gummy candy. We played Tony Hawk, went to Concord and came back to meet up with Drew. We went to Peet's but since I don't "get" coffee, I was along for the ride. After watching some of Asphalt Jungle, we decided to go to in'n'out.


This is where I went over the top. Grilled cheese without sauce, add grill onions. Plus fries. It's the best. After I ate it, Paul & Drew still had another burger/grilled cheese to eat. I mentioned that another one sounded good. They agreed & I purchased. However, as soon as I purchased, I immediately regretted it. 2 grilled cheese? What was I thinking? I wasn't hungry. But I ate it in the car on the way home. My stomach wasn't my #1 fan on Saturday, May 26th. We also ate this around 9pm & I went to bed 2 hours later. I had weird dreams & I blame my stupid amounts of food before bed.

5/27, Sunday, I tried to make up for it by eating a little bit better: cereal, cherries, homemade baked tortilla chips with homemade salsa, homemade bread & half a quesadilla. oh woops, I also ate ice cream. I need to cut this shit out. Seriously.

5/25 - Lunch

Every Friday I go to lunch with Marc. For some reason he absolutely LOVES the Telegraph/campus area. After working on campus for 2.5 years, I'm pretty over it. But he will never be. We always run into weird UCB girls he knows or weird hip kids that he talks to. He loves Blakes, the pasta shop in the Asian ghetto (specifically because they have pictures and he only likes to eat at places with pictures), but most of all, Quiznos. At lunch he tells me some weird stories about the past weeks adventures that never disappoint. Today was what I expect out of lunch with Marc. Quiznos & mind explosions.

Marc always gets some sort of chicken sandwich with bacon, white cheese, white bread and some white dressing/sauce that looks pretty gross.

Apparently Quiznos is good if you eat meat, but I don't. Therefore, I'm left with a veggie sandwich with mediocre guacamole and some vegetables. I don't like cheese on sandwiches or mushrooms in general so I'm left with wheat bread, guacamole, lettuce, tomato & olives. Great. Really, really, great.

Today I got the usual, veggie on wheat. I ordered a small because I was going on a bike ride after & didn't want to feel gross. But they gave me a bigger one accidentally. I ate the first half & picked apart the second. (Side note: it didn't matter in the end that i ate most of it. I fell off my bike in west Oakland & retreated home covered in dirt and some bruises with a temporarily busted bike).

The last picture is Marc featuring his white sandwich. He's so happy. Quiznos makes him happy. Since it was our last lunch for the summer (he's moving to Montreal) we/he had to go there.

5/25 - Breakfast

I eat this every day at work. Cereal with a banana (preferably an under ripe one with a tint of green to the peel), plain soymilk & cereal. Usually it's a mix of lots of cereals (rice krispies, corn flakes, honey oat stuff, grape nuts trail mix, etc.) but today was just honey oat flake things. Not sure what it's called but it's good. I like cereal at work a lot.

05/07 - Glacier Trip - Arby's

Arby's is a rare bird in the fast food landscape. It looks like a fast food joint, smells like a fast food joint, but certainly doesn't taste like one. The grub tastes "fresher", as if they took the time to cook and prepare your meal, rather than nuking everything in the microwave. I can't explain it. Arby's rates third behind A&W and In 'n' Out as my favorite fast food. We visited a couple Arby's on our trip on the way and back from BC, Canada, and I was never disappointed. Johnny drooled everytime we passed one.

Arby's has a good thing going for them as underdogs, but I think they could use an image change. Instead of the cowboy motif, they should switch to pirates, call themselves Arrrrrrby's. They could serve fish tacos, offer rum with the cola, and include lime wedges with every meal. And they'd have a bitchin pirate hat on the marquee.

"Avast, mateys! There be food on the horizon. I spy an Arrrrrrrby's off the port bow!"

5/22/7 - Dinner

Trader Joe's really is the best sometimes. At least their pizza dough & sauce is. This is probably one of my favorites: garlic/herb dough with olives. This 'za was made with about half of the dough that comes in a bag and will feed me for about 2 meals (the leftovers are dinner tonight).

I used to use a cookie sheet to bake it on, but it would get soggy sitting on the sheet after it was cooked. This pizza pan was under $10 at target & was a great investment. It really adds to the crispness of the bottom of the crust both that night & the day after. It also seems to cook faster, which is good because I'm pretty impatient. Or maybe it's because I put it on the bottom rack, I'm not sure.

I always try to make the dough into a circle so it looks like a real pizza pie, but it doesn't usually work out for me. I'd like to work on that. I also need to clean the stove top.

PS: How are the caps, Luke? Better, right? RIGHT?

5/22/7 - lunch

aimee found this recipe for penne pasta with ricotta & asparagus in the nytimes. she made it last week & i enjoyed it, even though i've never really liked ricotta before. i made it yesterday & adapted the original recipe a bit (whole wheat pasta instead of normal, added broccoli, crushed red peppers, minced garlic, replaced skim ricotta with whole, etc). i liked hers cold, but i think the skim ricotta sets up differently, so this is served best heated. the parmesan cheese melts nicely when heated and the asparagus & broccoli are cooked perfectly so they still have bite to them.


the picture makes it look like gross mush, but i assure you it's lovely.

4/23/07 - BBQ Monday at SF City Hall

After lunch, Ryan, Johnny, Luke and I drove over to SF. We parked my car at the cheapest lot we could find in the Tenderloin and made a hairy five minute walk through the rings of hell and finally made it to bourgois heaven at H&M on Powell--Luke bought a sweet pinstripe suit and walked out the store wearing it proud and loud...

...to the Goldman Prize ceremony at the SF Opera House. Johnny and Ryan had left and Luke and I were each other's dates for the evening. We endured a mildly entertaining, yet inspirational, two hours of honoring activists, enviros and economists fighting their own good fights in different corners of the world.

Between the awards, a 'rope dancing' troupe dressed in red dropped from the ceiling like so many spiders. Yawn. The dancers would've been better received if they had dangled over the crowd with free champaigne. We heard there was food and drink at the after party across the street...

...at City Hall. We swam the crowds, swiping up sushi, roast beef 'boule' sandwiches, quiche, chicken on a stick, salad with sesame sauce, chicken salad, and a selection of premium red & white wines. The crowd was thick and vicious. It was as if none of these rich people had anything to eat that week.

I staked out a perch on the stairs and Luke dove repeatedly into the sea of free food moochers, bringing back seconds and thirds and kept my supply of fine wines flowing.



Luke was a pro, had every station and their selections of edibles mapped out. If you look close at the above pic, he's in the thick of it (next to the flower arrangement in the center).

Aria was on the inside. Her company helped put on the show and she got us tickets. Thanks Aria.


I was surprised to find my car intact back in the Tenderloin.

05/01/07 - 05/03/07 - Dinner

I've discovered how good Trader Joe's is. For a few nights this week, I've made pizza. .99c dough, some hot Italian sausage, and some Canadian bacon. What a feast! Pictures to be put up soon. I really need to explore the options of Trader Joe's some more. I can't wait for the one in Rockridge to open.

04/29/07 - Dinner Update

Update on La Cascada. It may have moved ahead of Baja Fresh - not that hard - but it's still not very good. My steak tasted like beef jerky and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. It was a step up from the first time I went there, though.

4/23/07 - Lunch

Luke and I drove to Oakland to drop off a load of my crap at my future apartment. When we showed up we happened to run in to the current occupants, Johnny Sanders, and Ryan Maddox (my fellow eater), who had cried his way home from work 'cus he was feeling sick.

We all decided on J in the B for lunch. It's a blessing and a curse that this joint is situated 100 yards from the apartment.

TV shows these days look more and more like video games.

Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, fries, & a chicken sandwich; they all taste the same (good), make you feel the same (like shit) and they look the same. Not much has changed there. I have a poor diet.

4/18/07 - Dinner

Chris Miller visited the ranch and brought me his extra wok 'cus his girl already has one. Woks get me hot.

Rice simmering, I heated sesame oil in the wok, and chopped half an onion, no tears, thanks; threw the onions in along with peas in the pod and some week-old kale. The kale was like spinach, fluffy and voluminous at first, but it shrank once wokified. Dribbled teriyaki sauce over it all, and sprinkled salt, and pepper on top.

What the fuck am I doing? I have no clue. I didn't poison myself and it tasted just fine. Not to be mistaken for a true dish that I would perhaps cook for a girl on a date.

We've been scraping for scraps around here so I hunted around the nooks and crannies and found a packet of freeze dried soup in the back of the cupboard. How old is this MRE shit? Does it matter? Just add boiling water? Done. Dinner is served.

04/04/07 - Dinner

I've really got to learn to stick with the french toast at Crepevine. Their hamburgers are amazingly dull. The bread they put them on is too hard, and they just aren't cooked right or something. The good thing is that they come with potatoes, but I wish the french toast came with potatoes. Hm, I'm in a pickle. I'll have to stick with the french toast.

04/01/07 - Lunch

One of like eight stops on the way back from LA. What can I really say about In&out? It's in&out. A staple. There were a ton of cheerleaders around us, because I think there was a cheerleading competition in LA during that week. Having them around really made for a nice eating atmosphere. It was like being in a monkey cage.

04/01/07 - Breakfast

In a rather fortunate mix up, the Wilshire Grand overbooked us. Because of this, we got a bigger room (though it was the living room of a penthouse suite), a pass to the lounge (though it was two couches and a tv playing an Antonio Banderas movie), free valet parking, but best of all, free continental breakfast. Not everything was very good, but the basics were good - bacon, sausage, and chocolate milk were winners. Hash browns and orange juice? Not so much, OJ was sour or something, and hash browns didn't really taste like anything. Once I found what I liked, I ran with it. Thanks Wilshire Grand.

03/31/07 - Dinner

After hitting the galleries (Damien Hirst in Beverly Hills, and Mark Ryden in Hollywood - both were very good), we met with Katie but didn't really have a plan to eat anywhere. No one knew the area other than going to Canters, which I was really up for again. So I called Cassie Wu. Being a foodie, I figured she'd know where to eat. She directed us to Santa Monica to a place called Bad Dad's or something. Word of mouth said it was the best burger in town. It ended up being a bar where we couldn't really sit down, so we were stuck on a quiet Santa Monica street with dwindling options. We went to an extremely unremarkable Italian place. Bland bland bland. Highlight was seeing the waiter poor water from two feet up. Nice, dude.

03/31/07 - Lunch

Last Night's Patty hits the road. We're in LA and went to Canter's. A 24hr Jewish Deli on Fairfax. So good. So much better than Saul's in Berkeley. Canter's is like the orthodox jews, while Saul's is just like the Goldstein's that live next door to you. POSERS. Pastrami sandwich was so good. Still loving it. And it's cheaper than Saul's, always a plus. AND it's right next to Supreme. Beat that Saul's. That's right, you can't.

03/30/07 - Dinner

Now what kind of madness is this? Zachary's twice in like two weeks? This is simply obscene. Too much greatness for me to go on.

03/29/07 - Dinner

This is an Thai Eggroll I ate. I ate it up. I think there was pork in it which is always a plus. Add that to the fact that there were minimal vegetables to get in the way, and you have a tasty little treat. This place we went to was in close proximity to Chez Pannise and Gregoise so I figured it would be good, by osmosis or something. It was alright, though my only basis of Thai comparison is from Tuk Tuk, which I cleverly like to refer to as Suk Suk. I'm the best.

My Main plate was a pork dish (again). Not too bad, and I think the dipping sauce or whatever it was was pretty good and complimented the meat very well.