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With increased rent (and, looking at our latest PG&E, increased energy expenses), we need to eat out less. Kelvin still eats out everyday at lunch, but for dinner, we need to grow up and make our own food. Despite this necessity, we’ve still managed to try quite a few places. There’s just so many options up here! Here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve tried so far. A couple of them were before we moved and were looking at apartments.

Big Joe’s Cafe

We had lunch here while looking at apartments. Pretty typical diner that serves breakfast all day. I had a generic breakfast meal, and it wasn’t bad or exceptionally awesome, so I don’t remember much about this place. I just remember some random lady started asking Kelvin weird questions about iPhone games because he was wearing an Apple shirt.

Everyday Beijing

We wanted to go to Santa Ramen, but we looked up an old address which put us at the end of B street in San Mateo. Santa Ramen is now at El Camino, apparently, so we looked for other options. Seeing a guy walk out with a giant pile of takeout boxes, we tried Everyday Beijing.

Kelvin and I both had noodle soups. I had beef noodle soup, which was decent but nothing exceptional. Kelvin had some sort of Szechuan noodle soup, which just looked like a bowl of red. It made Kelvin cry from the spiciness, but he claims to have really enjoyed it. Service was good, even though we were eating during their afternoon closing hours. Definitely would come back again.

Espetus

Kimi took me, Kelvin, and Clay here for our January birthdays. It’s all you can eat Brazilian meat, and it’s kind of like dim sum, where servers go around and ask if you want some of what they’re offering. We didn’t pay, but I’m assuming the place is expensive.

They have a salad bar and a neverending appetizer bowl that consists of a cheese bread, some strange French fry-like thing, and fried plaintains. I tried most of the red meats, and all of it was good. Sirloin + anything (cheese, garlic) was exceptionally delicious. I also loved their grilled pineapple; I kept asking for seconds on it!

Waiter brings giant stick o’ meat

For dessert, I tried their tres leches cake (a Latin American dessert I never heard of until very recently). It was like a milk sugar sponge, and it was soooo good. Sweet, rich, and dense, but yet not overwhelming. Kelvin and Clay also got ice cream because it was our birthdays.

If I had enough money, I’d definitely come back here again. Word of warning tho: this place will eff up your digestive system for at least a couple days. Sure, you can try to pace yourself or not overeat, but it won’t happen.

Silver House

The first place we ate at after we moved. We were craving more Chinese food and tried this place on El Camino. Pretty standard, but the food’s good. We had West Lake Beef Soup, Mongolian Beef, and Ma Po Tofu. West Lake Beef soup had a lot of cilantro, so Kelvin didn’t like it as much.

Wasn’t a fan of the sauce for the Ma Po Tofu, but there was a lot of ground pork and the tofu is really light and fresh, so I’ll have to try their other tofu dishes. Mongolian Beef would have been great except they put bamboo in the dish, which is kind of strange.

Instead of fortune cookies, they give you red bean soup at the end of the meal, which was nice for the cold wet days we had been experiencing. Plus Kelvin doesn’t like sweets much, so I got most of his serving too! The service was also good here. It reminds me a lot of Hong Fu’s service. We’ll come back here also, but we’ll have to try other dishes.

Noodle Shop

The Chinese name of this place is not Noodle Shop. It’s something like “Mao’s Family Dishes”, referring to dishes from Mao Zedong’s Hunan hometown. Yes, THAT Mao Zedong. In fact, his jolly Communist self is prominently featured on the front of menu. Kind of ruins my appetite, but whatever. It just means I won’t be taking my mom here.

Food propaganda

I had beef noodle soup again, and Kelvin (and later Avery) had rice dishes. The name “Noodle Shop” apparently was the name of the last Chinese restaurant that was here, and the new owners just kept the name instead making it more Mao. Which makes sense, because the noodles were incredibly mediocre and bland, even after I dumped a ton of hot sauce in it. The rice dishes seem pretty good, though. They have special rice dishes where the rice is steamed in tea leaves, adding subtle flavors to the rice. And the portions of the rice dish is huge. I’ll have to get one of those next time.

btw, all the Chinese options so far have been really cheap. Noodle Shop was $7 a meal, so I think this one was the cheapest so far.

Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot

This place sounded good, but man, what a mistake. I hate curry and Indian foods because of the overkill of spices and flavors, particularly cumin. As it turns out, Mongolian hot pot is exactly that, in soup form. They put all sorts of spices in their broths, making it taste like Chinese medicine. One of the spices is either cumin or something that tastes a lot like cumin. As soon as I walked into the restaurant, CUMIN. I could tell from the strong smells I wasn’t going to be fond of this place, but we tried it anyway. It was something different.

You order dishes a la carte, which is different. It’s like $7 to $9 per meat dish, $4 per veggie, and $4 or $5 for noodles. We got a beef/lamb combo, beef shoulder, napa cabbage, and flour noodles. It was about the right amount for us at the time, but portions weren’t very big. If we didn’t get noodles, I would have still been hungry. Ignoring the overwhelming mash of flavors, broth is not bad. Spicy soup is, well, spicy (flavor spicy, not hot spicy), and the non-spicy soup tasted like ginger and other Chinese herbs. It’s flavorful enough to not require sauce for the stuff you cook. I like Taiwanese hot pot a lot more: blander broths and flavorful sauces. I think they put a ton of MSG or salt in the broth, because some of the pieces I was pulling out was REALLY salty.

Overall, this dining experience sucked. First of all, parking is a BITCH in this part of San Mateo. It was like 8PM on a Tuesday, and it still took forever to find parking. Second, we were seated quickly, but were the closest table to the door. There was constantly a draft, and the restaurant was freezing despite boiling soups everywhere. Third, this place is expensive! It was like $17 a person for not that much food (which you cook yourself anyway). Fourth, anything that comes in the restaurant will smell like its gross spices for days. Clothes, hair, purse… all smelled like cumin :( Needless to say, I’m not coming back here again unless a friend is dying to try this place for some unknown reason.

Dessert Republic

After Little Sheep, I demanded a treat. I got pearl milk green tea and two egg puffs. I didn’t know what egg puffs are, but they’re basically poofy waffles. Pearl tea sucked because it was obviously a powder mix and not real milk tea. Egg puffs were yummy. I saved one for the next day, and they reheat well in the toaster oven.

Partially eaten egg puff

Heidi’s Pies

Yesterday, I made a disaster out of dinner, and Kelvin took me to get pie for a treat. I tried key lime pie since it looks delicious (if deadly) on Dexter. But Heidi’s key lime pie looks nothing like the ones I’ve seen before. It was a darker, slime-looking green, and very plain and unappetizing in looks. I thought key lime pies were more light and creamy. It was overly sweet and tart. Kelvin’s apple pie a la mode was much better, though it reminded me a lot of apple sauce. I think for pies, I’d rather go to Marie Callendar’s. The main selling point of this place is that it’s open 24 hours.

New thing I learned today: Tres leches cake has its name because it uses three kinds of milk: evaporated milk, condensed milk, and heavy cream.

This yummy educational tidbit brought to you by my food-obsessed TF2 friend, Bean.

(This post is a little late, but not as late as, say, the rest of my honeymoon posts!)

Before I met Kelvin, Christmas tended to be non-eventful for me. When I was child, my Taiwanese immigrant parents only celebrated Christmas for me as an American tradition. Once I became old enough where I was somewhat indifferent to the holidays, it was just a night to eat a nicer-than-usual meal. Even after I met Kelvin, Christmas was just an excuse to get my mom something nice every year outside of her birthday. I guess it doesn’t seem too strange when my mother is the only family I have in the US, but it seems like nothing when compared to the events American families plan out during the winter season. As usual, we had two family meals to go to, as Kelvin’s parents are divorced so there’s something going on for each side. I brought homemade stuff to both of them like I did with Thanksgiving; I guess 2009 was the year I decided to actually start contributing to these gettogethers.

The spread at Xmas Eve dinner

I didn’t try anything new for the Christmas Eve dinner with had with Kelvin’s father, but I made two quarts of ice cream I’ve made before (one each of honey pecan and oolong tea) since they were in need of desserts. We were fed well, considering the amount of hors d’oeuvres we had while waiting for dinner and the amount of food actually at dinner.

Hanabi (and her dress) having oolong tea ice cream

It’s tradition on Kelvin’s dad’s side to trade Christmas presents with family members on Christmas Eve. Before Xmas 2008, we would buy something for everybody in the family. That’s 5-6 people, not including the nieces. A couple Christmases back, we implemented a Secret Santa system where everyone (except the little girls) draws names at Thanksgiving, writes a wishlist of what they want, and buys presents for only one person, with a target $200 budget. People get one large item they want instead of a bunch of smaller items they might not want, and so far it’s worked really well. Last year, I got a nice apartment-sized breadmaker that I’ve unfortunately been underusing. This year, the item on my wishlist went out of stock, so I have to wait until January to get it. I’ve been refreshing the website that sells it everyday to see if/when it comes back in stock. (I want it so bad.) In the meantime, my Secret Santa (Kelvin’s stepmother Greer) gave me a sweet 4-book set of Williams-Sonoma books. I put Williams-Sonoma books on my wishlist since I’ve dug the ice cream one Anna gave me. The 4-book set I got has Pasta, Soup, Chicken, and Salad. I am especially excited about the Pasta and Soup ones.

Presents!

After dinner, I started on our assignment for the Christmas brunch, which was “appetizer”. What’s an appetizer for a brunch? I have no idea. Under Kelvin and Krang’s advice, I decided to go with mini-pigs-in-blankets. I also decided to be more hardcore and make the dough from scratch instead of using store-bought crescent roll dough. For the “blankets”, I used a dinner roll recipe from the bread machine book Kimi gave me as part of my Christmas present last year. The dough was kind of a pain to roll and cut into little triangles, but we managed. Unfortunately, something I ate in the last 24 hours didn’t agree with me, and I only got through 1/3rd of batch before going over to the couch and crashing in discomfort. Thankfully, Kelvin finished the rest of the batch for me. We had both accidentally napped after dinner, so it was like 1AM at this point. As much as I like the lack of store-bought dough flavor my dinner roll blankets had, next time I do these things last second, I’m just gonna buy the pre-made crescent roll dough. I did this for the Rock Band party, and it was SO MUCH faster and easier.

Kelvin ran out of dough for the last two weiners and
made some mutant-looking pigs-sharing-a-blanket

Christmas morning, we headed over to Kelvin’s aunt’s house for Christmas brunch with his mom’s side of the family. The mini-pigs-in-blankets were well-received, thankfully, and they tasted pretty good with sauces (mustard, ketchup, and some sort of wasabi mayo his aunt had). Kelvin’s aunt always offers up an impressive meal, and this brunch was no exception. Unfortunately, my appetite was still bad from the night before, and I think Pepto-Bismol ruined my taste buds because stuff was tasting strange (i.e. the nonalcoholic sparkling apple cider tasted alcoholic and yucky). I ate very little. After brunch and presents, we went straight home to nap and recover.

New Year’s had its share of events, too.New Year’s Eve, we went to Chris and Yoko’s for their party. I spent most of my time trying to beat Mario & Luigi 3, while everyone else partook in Rock Band and Words with Friends (yes, people were playing Words with Friends). We counted down the new year with an iPhone app and listen to Auld Lang Syne on Youtube (yes, we are this nerdy).

Words with Friends is like a disease

On New Year’s day, we went to my mom’s place for a hot pot dinner. I can always count on my mom for the least complicated of holiday events. We even got to say wish my grandparents in Taiwan a happy new year via Skype with webcams.

New thing I learned today: Skype makes money by charging for connections to landlines and mobile phones.

Thanksgiving was mellower than usual this year. We usually find ourselves going to multiple dinners, with my mom, Kelvin’s mom, and Kelvin’s dad usually having their festivities going on. This year, we only went to Kelvin’s dad’s dinner, as Kelvin’s mom was having dinner with friends and my mom was hosting a dinner with lots of Chinese-speaking folks that Kelvin would probably be uncomfortable around.

Before Thanksgiving, I was getting an itch to make a few things. This is rare, so I made sure to act on it as soon as possible. The two Thanksgiving related things I made were a Pumpkin Cheesecake and Honey Pecan Ice Cream.

I’ve been craving more pumpkin cheesecake ever since having a really good pumpkin cheesecake slice at Forbes Mill back in October. On Allrecipes, I found a recipe for pumpkin cheesecake that was highly rated and seemed somewhat similar to what I had eaten before. It turned out really good (at least I think so anyway). The crust for the pie is crunchy and just the right sweetness, and it held the cheesecake together very well. This cheesecake, like the one at Forbes Mill, was just the right amount of pumpkin-ness and cheesecake-ness. You wouldn’t be able to tell by how much of this cheesecake I ate that I’m actually not that found of either pumpkin or cheesecake.

I gave this cake to my mom for her Thanksgiving party. Unfortunately, everybody brought a dessert, so mine barely got eaten. I asked for it back so at least I could enjoy it. (My mom, who loves sweets, doesn’t like cinnamon, which means the cheesecake would probably be wasted on her.) Of course, Kelvin hates pumpkin, even the little bit that was in this cheesecake, so I had to eat the whole friggin’ thing myself (minus a large slice I gave to Avery and a slice or two that was taken at my mom’s party). This cheesecake is pretty good, but even a slice a day is rough for me. I cut up slices and froze them, so I’ll be ready if my craving comes back.

For Thanksgiving dinner, Kelvin’s stepmother made a pumpkin-cake thingy (she had no name for it, so this is actually what she called it) for dessert, so the only thing she asked me to bring was ice cream. The recipe for the cheesecake require a little bit of heavy cream, so what to do with the rest? Make ice cream! I took another recipe from that Williams Sonoma book that Anna gave me for my birthday. I went for the Honey Pecan, since it seemed neutral and would compliment any pumpkin dessert.

I forgot to take pictures of it, so this is the only picture I have, where a scoop is paired with some of the pumpkin-cake thingy. I went light on the sugar and honey because the last ice cream I made from the book was too sweet, but it probably needed more honey in the end. Regardless, my ice cream was well-received by the family, so I was pretty happy. I thought maybe they’re just saying it to be nice, but people got seconds. Kelvin’s dad, I think, loved the ice cream; he kept raving about the nuts in ice cream and finished every last drop left in the container.

Thanksgiving dinner was good, as always. Lotsa food enjoyed with family. Avery joined us this year, so he got to witness to part of the mayhem that is Kelvin’s family, two little nieces included.

Kelvin and the nieces, and Avery’s punch

The family at the dinner table (except Susie and me, who are cut off at the corners)

After the Thanksgiving dinner, we did what we spent the rest of the weekend doing: playing Dragon Age: Origins. Seriously, ALL WEEKEND.

I hope everybody had a happy Thanksgiving!

New thing I learned today: Mace is a kind of spice. It comes from the nutmeg tree, with the seed producing nutmeg spice and the covering of the seed making mace. Mace is basically a stronger-flavored, lighter-colored nutmeg.

Despite the cold weather, I’ve been craving green tea ice cream. I saw a recipe for Earl Grey ice cream posted on Craft, which reminded me that any tea + milk = yums.

The only tea I have sitting around is a bunch of fancy shmancy tea from Taiwan. My uncle is a well-respected eye surgeon in Taiwan, and apparently one of the perks of being a well-respected eye surgeon in Taiwan is that you get tons of expensive tea and booze that you’ll never drink from your appreciative patients. Pretty much every time we see him, we’re given more tea, most of which we’d give away because my mom isn’t into tea. Now that I’m a big girl who likes to drink tea, I keep some of it for myself, though I still have to give some away because it’s just too much tea.

From what I can gather from the box, the tea comes from Shan Lin Xi, some place in the middle of Taiwan up in the mountains. High mountain tea tends to be oolong, so I’m assuming it’s oolong even though I can’t find the characters anywhere on the packaging. (I’m not a tea connoisseur, so I can’t distinguish what exactly the flavor of oolong is.) I used some of this tea along with the green tea recipe from the Williams-Sonoma Collection: Ice Cream book Anna gave me for my birthday a while back. I made sure to cook the custard base longer time so it’d be more satiny. Last time I made a custard-based ice cream, it failed because it wasn’t creamy enough, and it froze into a giant vanilla block of ice… way too hard to scoop.

Texture was a lot better this time around. It still had a bit of a chunky feel and eggy taste, but overall flavor was good. It was a little too sweet, so I’ll probably add less sugar than the recipe says next time. Most importantly, it was very scoopable. However, I haven’t mastered the art of scooping ice cream, so my bowl of ice cream isn’t as pretty as the pictures in the Williams Sonoma book.

New thing I learned today: High mountain tea is tea grown at high altitudes. These are supposed to be more fragrant and smooth, and they can be brewed more times before losing flavor. Because of the limitations in location and time it can be picked, high mountain tea is limited in quantity and therefore pricier.

I had no idea that this stuff could be so expensive. If the tea I’ve got is anything like the stuff listed online, the 300g container I’ve got is like $70 to $80 of tea! (I’m just guessing; I’ve seen some 300g containers go for $40+international shipping on eBay.) Now that the weather’s getting colder, I’m excited to try drinking it normally.

I watched the Project Runway season premiere last month with my friends/ex-coworkers Robin and April at Robin’s apartment. They’re both subscribed to Farm Fresh to You, an organic foods delivery service in the Bay Area. Robin heard about it from April, who heard about it from a friend in her hockey league. Every 1-4 weeks, depending on your desired frequency, Farm Fresh to You delivers a box of mixed fresh produce. They have different sizes and box types, but all the produce depends on season so you get a variety of fruits and veggies all year. The website allows your choose and change your services and frequencies, and you can even list exclusions (like the absolutely repulsive mushroom) which they’ll substitute for something else. It seemed easy, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I’ve been trying to eat out less, both for health and financial reasons, and I have a lot more time to figure out what to do with things, so why not?

I had some troubles with the first box I got, but nothing completely surprised me after reading through all the Yelp reviews. They talked about misdeliveries, overripe or crushed produce, bugs… I got all of those in my first box!

Since I’m not working, I waited at home all day on a Friday (our area’s delivery day), eagerly awaiting my box of goodies. It never came, but I read in the Yelp reviews that deliveries can come in the middle of the night. I went out to dinner with Kelvin, and when we got back, Kelvin noticed a box on our downstair’s neighbor’s porch. I went to check it out, and it was indeed a Farm Fresh to You box. It was also the type I ordered, a small fast fruit & veggies box. There’s no address or name of the box, so if my neighbor happened to have to the exact same delivery as me, I was about to unknowningly steal their goods. I checked online to see that my address was correct, and the explicit instructions I left describing my apartment’s location was completely ignored. Who knows how long the box had been sitting there, and I’m lucky the apartment resident didn’t claim the unaddressed box.

Opening the box, I was a little disappointed to find the strawberries had been crushed. They were also very ripe, so I immediately washed them and munched on them. They were very sweet and yummy outside of the mushed parts. Everything else in the box seemed to be in acceptable condition.

I’m not used to preparing any fruits and veggies, let alone organic ones. A lot of the box ended up getting wasted because of my poor planning (for some reason, there were a lot of get-togethers with meals first two weeks of September) and paranoia of stuff going bad. It’s quite embarrassing (please don’t tell my mother), but I’m hoping I’ll get better as I get used to this.

First box minus strawberries

Box #1, small fast fruits & veggies 09/04:
Strawberries – Read above.
Heirloom tomatoes – I’ve never seen tomatoes outside of the typical red ones you see in the market. These tomatoes were huge and scary looking. However, they were also quite flavorful. I managed to use two of the three tomatoes, but one of the large ones got mushy before we found time to cook it. Kelvin used one of the large ones in his spaghetti sauce, and he was freaked out by the weird shape when cutting it. It tasted pretty decent tho.
Fresh basil – Strangely, their basil was a purple color. We used half of the bunch in Kelvin’s spaghetti sauce. The other half got wasted.
Green leaf lettuce – A giant head of lettuce I had no idea what to do with. I thought about sandwiches, but sandwiches only use like one or two leaf out of a bazillion. I attempted a salad with much of the lettuce and the smallest of the heirloom tomatoes. It was a total fail. The lettuce was really bitter, and I had a hard time eating it. Also, when I washed it the lettuce, I kept find small bugs in between the leaves, which annoyed me. (Are pesticides really that bad?) The rest of the lettuce was eventually tossed since I had no idea what to do with it.
Cherry tomatoes – I washed and snack on these. They were quite flavorful and good.
Green grapes – I forget exactly what type of grapes these were. I finally found time to wash them, but there were these disgusting webs all over the stems. I kept removing large sections of grapes, but I kept finding more webs! I couldn’t find a large enough section of non-webbed parts (and I didn’t want to look that closely in case I found something even nastier), so I ended up tossing the bunch :( This was wasteful, and I’m sad I was so lame. Next time I’m going to have Kelvin take a look and clean it, since I’m such a wuss at these things.
Cucumber – I waited too long to use this. By the time I figured out what to do with it (Korean cucumber salad), it had become all shriveled. It was a nice looking cucumber, too :(

Okay, first box was tragic, I know. I expected stuff to go bad since organic goods have less junk on them and go bad faster, but I was hoping to do better than this. I emailed customer service about the incorrect delivery, which they acknowledged and apologized for. I originally signed up for monthly, but I changed it to be every other week on the website so I can try this more often. The interface is a little weird, and I didn’t notice that it defaulted to the small standard fruits and veggies box instead other small fast fruit and veggies box. So I didn’t get what I wanted in the second box, which was delivered to the correct location this time ~5PM. However, I’m glad I ended up with the standard box, as everything held up pretty well, and we’ve managed to use (or are going to use) all of it.

Box #2, small standard fruits & veggies 09/18:
.5 lb Bosc Pear from Sacramento – I cut one up last night, but apparently they’re not quite ripe yet. Even still, it was very sweet, and it reminded me more of apple than pear. That’s nice because I’m not biggest fan of pears. I look forward to eating the rest when they’re riper.
1 cnt Honeydew, green Melon, musk from FFTY farm – I shared this with my mother, as Kelvin hates melons. I’m not a fan either, but I’ll eat anything sweet that’s cut up in front of me. What’s weird about this honeydew is that the inside was orange like a cantaloupe, when it’s usually a light green. The melon was only just okay; I’ve had sweeter melons.
1 pnt Mixed Medley Tomato, cherry from FFTY farm – These were yummy, except for the weird looking yellow ones. I was surprised because the weird looking yellow regular tomatoes from last box were quite flavorful.
1 lb Bunched Leek from Watsonville – I saw this and I was like, WTF am I going to do with this? I’ve never seen leek before in person unprepared, and I didn’t realize it was so huge. I found a random stir-fry recipe online that used up both the leek and peppers. We used most of the leek, tho I’m sure we wasted some in preparation. Despite appearance and texture issues with the sauce and meat (watery, brown sauce on tough meat), the stir-fry was actually quite good.
.5 lb Mixed, sweet Pepper from FFTY farm – One of the peppers looked like a red miniature pumpkin. Weird! We used them in the stir-fry with the leeks.
1 lb Yukon Gold Potato from Bridges – I haven’t decided what to do with them, but I’m glad they can sit for a while. I can imagine seasoning them with herbs and baking them… they look so yummy!
1 lb Sweet Potato from Fresno – Haven’t done anything with these yet, but will probably bake them.

We did much better with the second box! I’m going to keep trying this out, even though it’s not the cheapest thing. At $23 a small box, it’s comparable to buying your own organic goods at Whole Foods, though produce is closer to what you’d find at your local farmer’s market. I understand why people would prefer going to the farmer’s market instead of using this service: you can pick out your own produce, and all the produce you buy is actually what you want. For me, the idea of getting up in the morning on a weekend to pick out vegetables and fruit is absolutely appalling. I also like the randomness of the boxes, as it forces me to try new things and be creative. Hopefully, I get more deliveries more like the second box than the first box.

btw, I used a referral coupon to try out the service. You get $5 off your first delivery, and the person you refer gets a free delivery. If anybody wants to try it out, the coupon code is 6164 and mention the person who referred you (preferably me, lol). I dunno when/if it expires, but you can use it online or over the phone.

New thing I learned today: CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. This means the community helps support local farms and in return, they get a share of the local crops. Buying locally means less travel distances, which encourages fresher produce and less pollution from transportation.

I’ve always been fine with regular supermarket stuff; the whole CSA and organic trends still feel a little snobby to me. Despite that, I felt the variety and convenience makes it cool enough to try.