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.