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I had lemon verbena ice cream and blood orange sorbet at a place called Milk in LA. Both were excellent, and went well together even. I am gonna have to try making some ice cream of my own, since i have a thriving lemon balm plant in the backyard that should work about the same.

We have been in Kansas City the last few days, and we have consumed large quantities of MEAT in all its midwestern glory. Posts to follow, once our colons have re-established contentment and well-being enough to allow coherent photo downloading.

This dinner isn’t really anything special, but it’s representative of the summer season and the general state of things:

grilled chicken thigh with salt and garlic
baked salt+pepper fries (Alexia brand frozen; not bad, but not compelling)
grilled onion and zucchini plus cherry tomatoes and fresh thyme
the garden’s first tomato, foodnerd style with olive oil, salt and pepper

This is one of the more notorious specialties of Hawai’i, but I’ll tell ya, these little buggers are awfully tasty. And handy, too — when you can nip into any convenience mart and snag a portable block of tasty handheld carbs+protein+fat, for less than 2 bucks, and be back on your way to the beach, there ain’t nothin’ not to like about that.

I think every single spam musubi we bought on the islands was different than the others, which is hilarious. Some have teriyaki sauce, some have panko crumbs, some have egg, some have furikake, some are plain. Sometimes they’re in the hot case, sometimes out at room temp (rarely in the fridge, these people are respectful of their rice).
But my most favorite of all of them was the first, the hot-case teriyaki-brushed spam musubi clearly handmade by someone at the Kukui’ula Market on Kaua’i, between Kahoa & Poipu. They were the most flavorful, thanks to the play between sweet-savory teri sauce and salty-savory spam, and the rice was warm and soft and held together just right. The nori got a little chewy, but i can overlook such a flaw. Once we found these, i think we ate at least one every day the rest of the time we were on Kaua’i.


(more musubi photos to come)

I was a bit worried that I had ruined the raspberries by putting them in the freezer.

We had a pretty good bounty this past summer, but at the time, every berry that I didn’t get to eat felt like a sacrifice of the greatest magnitude. And they looked so sad in their plastic container, frost and ice crystals forming over them, suffering the indignity of having their integrity ruptured by the expansion of the freezing juices, and getting accidentally thawed when the freezer door didn’t quite shut properly.

It turned out to be worth the wait, as their fruity tartness blended nicely with the simple creamy sweetness of the Häagen Dazs vanilla ice cream that we also had in the fridge. (An interesting contrast to a few days ago, when it seemed too sweet when I had some with some oreos.)

It was like you could taste a bit of summer in every bite, the snow, freezing rain and sleet outside notwithstanding.

Since hedge is Korean, and her friend H is also, we allowed them to take us to H’s favorite Korean place in Oakland: Sahn Maru, 4315 Telegraph Ave. (‘Cause you know how we hate the Korean cooking – NOT.) Wow. Yum. We got a dish of cold pork and oysters with kimchi pickled vegetables, which was much tastier than the version of that dish I’d had at WuChon in Somerville. We got some seafood noodle soup for tallasiandude, to address his noodle craving.

Hedge ordered a stew that she tells us is a guilty pleasure in Korea, since it came to exist because of desperate poverty during the war, when people were hungry enough to pick through the castoffs on the army base and throw whatever scraps of hot dog and spam they could find into the stew pot. It actually tastes great, the oily savoriness of the spam and sausage making a nice contrast with the tangy kimchi and broth.

There was also one item in the array of very good pan chan that truly rocked my world. It was a dried-then-reconstituted turnip shred in a spicy chili-powder brine. The dried turnip gave it a sweet chewiness/crunchiness that knocked me out. Delicious!

And as the sweet at the end of the meal, this place brings you a cold cup of sweet spiced liquid, with a few chinese dates and pine nuts floating on the top. It’s completely unexpected and completely refreshing, just the thing you want after a rich spicy meal.

Hedge wanted to have a fancy dinner in the Ahwahnee Hotel dining room, and I was totally down with that, so we dug out our civilization-togs and headed over. The food is okay, but under no circumstances is it worth the price tags put on it simply by virtue of being served in a gorgeous late-1920s grand lodge dining room.

We had a caesar salad and a seared scallop on tomato for starters. Both tasted good, but the scallop wasn’t very seared, floppy was more like it, and hedge sent hers back for more cooking since it was essentially raw (I didn’t mind, I kinda like it that way). The mains were super-luxe in their descriptions but conceptually very much within the expectations of a wealthy but timid middle-american eater, and unfortunately weren’t particularly well executed. Tallasiandude had a huge rich pork chop with an interesting and tasty savory tart and savoy cabbage alongside, but my Kobe beef with forest mushrooms was a weird presentation of pre-sliced meat (i don’t want to say gristly but it wasn’t what you’d call tender) piled onto garlic mashed potatoes, and the mushrooms (all morels) seemed like they might have been dried, which was sort of a drag considering it’s springtime mushroom season. And considering the $35 price.
I sound very negative, and I guess I am, but i do think that at half the price, I would have been much less inclined to be so nitpickingly critical. Or perhaps if they would shoot just a bit lower, and actually hit the mark they intend… but it’s a hotel dining room (probably run by an out of state catering company like the Curry Village dining options are), and I guess I’m now a hotel-kitchen snob: all my highfalutin restaurant dining of late is starting to show.

I believe that today I reached a new pinnacle of nerdiness. Tallasiandude and I played an online version of Settlers of Catan (the board game that MonkeyBoy & MissLudmilla got us hooked on during our trip), against a bot, while talking on speakerphone. I was never a gamer in high school or college, but at this point I am seriously regretting all that wasted time in my adolescence.
However, my overweening nerdiness is about food. And I believe that on a couple of occasions that obsession, put into proximity with hedge’s obsession, I might have been in danger of harshing tallasiandude’s vacation mellow. I tried to keep it reasonably in check, but what is a hike without local artisanal finocciona and handmade lomo and old amsterdam cheese and marinated artichokes and Acme bread? Duh. 🙂

We stopped for camping — sorry, I mean “camping” — provisions at Market Hall in Oakland. Bloody hell, what a store. We needed lunch first and got some premade sammiches and a pile of really good walnut-driedfruit-bluecheese salad. And then we addressed the salumi case (lomo meticulously sliced & arranged, finocciona, Niman Ranch landjaeger, country pate – eaten with hedge’s homemade pickled ramps). And the cheese case (old amsterdam, goat gouda, sharp english cheddar, and a stinky melty goat round wrapped in leaves). And the prepared food case (marinated whole artichokes, green beans almondine). And the spreads (lima bean skordalia), and the breads (multigrain & plain rounds, plus a chive/onion flatbread fried golden), and the fruits (oranges & grapefruits), and the trail mixes (organic of course), and the imported cookies (specifically Gingernuts, yum yum yum). It kept us in fabulous breakfasts and lunches for four days, no refrigeration needed. Hot damn.

I’ve been away on vacation since the middle of May, so my apologies for the lack of posts… but i have been eating my way across northern California with insane gusto, so there’s an avalanche of posts to come. MonkeyBoy has advised that I get a mini tripod to help out with those low-light restaurant photos, and I think I will take that advice, because an alarming number of the restaurant photos look like complete and total crap.
In any case, we had three lovely meals before we left, all at hometown favorites.

The night I hit Boston we stopped at Taiwan Cafe and got my favorite fu-chou fish ball soup, a tilapia in spicy sauce that tallasiandude had stumbled upon during a prior visit, and a plate of sauteed green beans that had me bouncing in my chair with the sheer pleasure of them. They were perfect, just the right doneness, and with a very clear, forward saltiness that came at least in part from the tiny dried shrimp. If you get nothing else at Taiwan Cafe, get these beans. Yum!

Another night we went to the Blue Room (watch out, link has &@^#%@ music!) to have dinner with one of tallasiandude’s classmates, and to sit at a table attended by another of his classmates. We had a lovely meal — the Blue Room is nothing if not reliable — with standouts being some grilled octopus, some liver-rific raviolis, and the bizarre but wonderful raisin-caper mash on top of my halibut.

And the night before we left, we joined up with littlelee and spleen for some korean kimchi treat in the fancified new Wu Chon House. I suspect some change in chef, due to minute variations in dishes, though the food is still as fantastic as ever. We had kimchi bokum of course, and a plate of bulgogi and another of kalbi. One of the pan chan was a braised beef that was just terrific, and the fresh kimchi was one of the most delicious i have ever eaten. It was nice to be home.

Ok, so… due to my posting of the Thanksgiving day bacony-goodness on Flickr, I was alerted to the Flickr BACON group, a group dedicated to pictures of bacon.

How freakin’ awesome is that? I mean, is that not like the best idea ever?

Well, actually no. No it’s not. The best idea ever is Bacon Night held at a barcafe in Pittsburgh. (Although, credit where credit’s due — I wouldn’t have found out about it without the Bacon group.)

“Yeah, so… The Harris Grill on Ellsworth is now doing this promotion… Tuesday nights, free bacon at the bar. No, really, I’m serious. Free bacon. In a basket. They keep bringing it.”

Holy crap. No wonder Pittsburgh is considered to be one of the best places to live in this country.