Oakland Walk (Part 2)

Yesterday I mentioned that Evan and I were heading over to Oakland Chinatown to check out a Chinese New Year cultural festival. I thought that it was going to be a street festival and so I was eagerly looking forward to stalls bursting with bright red and gold rabbit decorations, pinwheels, cell phone accessories, colorful flowers, and street food. To be honest, I was really only interested in the street food. Unfortunately yesterday's festival was not what I had envisioned: it was contained to a room above the Chinatown library and was pretty much over by the time we arrived. So much for a lunch of dim sum and street food.

Instead we went to lunch at Breads of India and walked around the city.

We ended up in Jack London Square where we discovered The Find, a once a month antiques fair. I had a great time checking out vintage clothing, jewelry, plates, scarves, embroidery hoops, and more. The vendors had a lot of great stuff, but unfortunately for me, their prices reflected the value of their items. I want to go back next month though. It's always fun to look.

Webster Street.


Construction in Downtown Oakland. Webster Street.


Oakland Tribune building.


Neat Art Deco architecture. Webster Street.

I love this building. I noticed it for the first time yesterday. There's a lot of really great architecture in downtown Oakland, all you have to do is look around.

Spring is coming! I love daffodils and they're popping up all around town. Fairyland, Bellevue Ave and Grand Ave.

Grand Lake Theater.


Grand Lake Theater.

Some neat slap tags:

Farm Fresh Diary

February 12, 2011

Woke up early today to my tummy craving something savory for breakfast. I thought for a moment and then an idea popped into my head: farmers' market dim sum. "Yes, farmers market dim sum sounds like a deliciously brilliant idea," my tummy said to my head. And my head agreed.

Before I could indulge in my dim sum breakfast, I needed to pick up a few other things:

Apples. I've decided to stop buying apples from the supermarket because I'm constantly disappointed by them. I ran out of money last week during my trip to the farmers market and so I went without apples this last week. And boy did I miss them. Today I picked up 2 pink ladies and 1 fuji, and I'm looking forward to munching on them this week.

Mandarins. Easier to peel and more predictably tasty (in my experience) than oranges. If the sample mandarin slice is an accurate representation of the mandarins for sale, then I am going to be very happy with the ones that I picked out. We'll see.

Breakfast for Evan. He wasn't so keen to the dim sum idea, so instead I set out to get him some potato paratha. Unfortunately, the stall from which I usually buy this was just begining to set up when I arrived. I didn't want to wait for them to set up and so I searched for an alternative. My search ended about 30 seconds later when I found a vendor giving out samples of vegan bolani. Now, I couldn't just buy a potato bolani without trying it first--how terrible would it be, I thought, if I bought this bolani and Evan didn't like it. We don't eat vegan very often (read: at all) and so I had no idea what difference a vegan preparation would have on this type of food. The samples were delicious! Evan liked his bolani and I don't think he even realized it was vegan.

And last but not least, my farmers' market dim sum:

Tru Gourmet Organic Dim Sum offers a wide variety of treats: dumplings, pot stickers, buns, pancakes...They all looked so good that I didn't know where to begin. So I took the easy way out and ordered the Chef's Choice Sampler: 10 dim sum selected for me by the Tru Gourmet crew. At $15 this decision was a bit of a splurge, but when you think about it, it was also a great deal. The price and quantity of dim sum per order varies slightly: some were $5 for 3 pieces, others were $4 for 2. And seeing how I couldn't make up my mind on which dim sum I wanted, the Chef's choice won out as the best option for me.

The girl who completed my order was kind enough to describe what was in each dumpling, but I have to admit that I don't really remember. All I can say is that most of them had some type of seafood, one had pork, one had chicken, two were filled with leafy greens, and they were all delicious (except for the one with mustard greens).

As I walked home I thought about my breakfast to come and decided that the only thing that was missing was some condiments. I quickly whipped up two dipping sauces: sesame soy sauce with green onions, and sambal oelek soy sauce. I ultimately ended up combining the two; very tasty and perfect for my dim sum. Though I made sure to take a small bite of each morsel before dipping them into my sauce so that I could experience them in their true, uncarved block* state.

After a dim sum morning Evan and I are off to check out the Chinese New Year celebrations in Oakland Chinatown. So I guess it's looking more like a dim sum day. Delicious.

* Tao of Pooh reference.

Iron Craft Challenge Wednesday

I am pleased to announce that I just submitted photos for the first ever Iron Craft Challenge Crafter Contest. The theme proposed by Kathy and Susi is "winter." I have to admit that my idea for my project didn't come easy; I had to think about it for a few days: what can I make that is quick, wintery, cute, and clever? And then it hit me: a great deal of the country is suffering through harsh winter weather, and we had a wicked cold snap here in the East Bay earlier this winter. Why not make warm and cozy winter wear...for parking meters?

I had seen a similar item on a blog a few months ago and I loved the idea of making a cozy for a parking meter. Besides, even parking meters need some love when it's cold outside. So I picked up my crochet hook and started hooking...in the crafty sense, of course.

I have to admit that I'm not 100% satisfied with the final product--it's a little small. But I think that it turned out pretty well considering that a) I didn't take any measurements, b) I improvised the circle granny sqaures, and c) this is the first time I've done anything like this.

I installed the cozy this morning while I walked to work. Some people stared, most walked right on by, a few stopped to see what I was doing. Three passersby offered a few words; coincidentally their comments were my favorite of the day.

"Why are you making it pretty?"
*a little stunned* "Why not?"

"Is this your project?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess."
"Oh cool! I love yarn bombing!"
"Aw, thanks..."

"Keepin' it warm!!!"
"That's the idea."


(The first one is my favorite!)






A lot of great projects have been submitted thus far. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed that enough people---even a handful would be great--like my submission enough to win me that sweet, sweet prize.

Week of Crafts

Sorry about the delay in getting this post up. I completely forgot to do it last night and it just occurred to me that today is Tuesday. Here's why: I worked nearly 11 hours yesterday to put on our Annual Stakeholders Meeting and didn't get home until 9pm. As for forgetting that today is Tuesday: I'm attending a volunteer management training session on Thursday and so I made today my day off. Understandably, my internal calendar is all mixed up. At any rate my crafty to-do list is ample this week. Here is what I would like to do:

Tuesday (also known as tonight)

• Make ice cream! Cook's Country sent me a "complimentary" issue; it has great recipes, including one for easy chocolate ice cream. According to the recipe all I need to do is melt chocolate, some dissolved espresso powder, condensed milk, and vanilla extract, and then mix in soft-peak whipped cream. Then you pour it into a air tight container and pop it in the freezer. We'll see...
• Finish my project for Iron Craft Challenge #6-Iron Craft Winter Contest. I've been working on it since Saturday and I'm really excited to share it with my fellow Iron Crafters on Flickr. Sorry, no sneak-peak pictures. You'll have to wait until tomorrow when I post it on their Flickr group and this here site.
• Start (and hopefully complete) and order for some Heart "Felt" Valentines.

Wednesday

• Install, photograph, submit, and post my project for the Iron Craft Challenge. (Super excited to do this one!)
• Pop the Valentines order in the mail.
• Continue to scan the recipes that I've been working to digitally preserve.
• Make the pizza dough recipe published in one of Cook's Illustrated latest episodes.

Thursday

• Choose a page and fill it with posts.
• Clean up my desktop and upload pictures to my Flickr. I've been exploring groups and members on Flickr, and I have some pictures that I want to contribute.
• Get Valentine's in the mail.

Friday

• I'm sure I have something...I just can't remember it right now.

Saturday

• Make chicken stock.
• Do some crafty stuff.
  

Sunday

• Check out Homeroom--the newest, neatest restaurant in Oakland. Why such accolades? Their menu and culinary emphasis is macaroni and cheese. *be still my heart.* My first trip to Homeroom will be with my dear friend Christina and I am so extremely excited about it. I love mac 'n cheese so naturally this will quite possibly become my favorite place in the world--besides my mom's kitchen, of course. I'll make sure to bring my camera along. Stay tuned for a Homeroom/mac 'n cheese post sometime in the near future.

This Week in Crafts

Week of January 31, 2011

Hearts and Buttons

I kept myself pretty busy this week...and I almost accomplished everything on my crafty to do list.

I finished my valentines/project for the Iron Craft Challenge (#5), but didn't submit pictures of my completed project. I started the creative process a little late and wasn't able to take pictures until Wednesday evening, a.k.a the day they were due. Poor crafting decisions and poor lighting=no submission this time. I need to rethink my crafting schedule. But, I did take pictures of my Iron Craft Challenge project on Thursday.

Heart "Felt" Hair Clips a la The Purl Bee

On Wednesday I composed and emailed my response to the Iron Craft Challenge's "Let's get to Know Each Other" call for submissions. A somewhat edited version of this craft-centric autobiography can be found on my About Me page.

Speaking of which...

I added a bunch of pages to the blog. Did you notice? One of them is fully functional and the others will be full of links, pdfs, and text in the coming weeks. What do you think?

I continued to scan my great great grandmother's recipes. I've noticed that she did a lot of cooking with dates. I'm guessing that she either really liked dates or they were more popular during the beginning of the 20th century than they are now.

On Thursday I worked to revamp my new sweater with some snazzy buttons. Here is what it looked like:

Comfy, military inspired knit jacket/sweater. Atrocious buttons: shiny, floppy, and somewhat battleworn. But it was on sale and I figured I could find some nicer buttons with which to replace these crappy ones.

I picked up 14 of these buttons from Piedmont Fabric on Thursday after my appointment at Kaiser. They actually had a number of buttons that would have worked nicely with this garment, but these won my heart. Plus they were reasonably priced (.95 each).



12 strategic snips and 1 hour later and I had this:



















A comfy modern sweater with classic buttons. These buttons were made for this sweater. The others: heading to Creative Reuse.

Continuing this re-vamp theme, I beautified my new cell phone. Evan bought me a snazzy skin and hard case. Both arrived this week and I was eager to put them to good use.

Oakland Walk

Upon finishing a breakfast of challah french toast with raspberry jam, applewood smoked bacon, and coffee, I settled down on the couch for a day of catching up on my blog feed, cleaning up my desktop, editing photos, and working on my to do list for this week. Evan thought differently. He wanted to go for a walk. And I can't blame him: he works from home so by the time Saturday rolls around he's itching to get out of the apartment. Plus it was really, really nice outside. So I closed my laptop and put on some walking shoes and away we went. Here's what we saw, did, and enjoyed on this sunny, warm Oakland day.

Someone is revitalizing this food joint. It's been vacant for years and has been a big eyesore. It's really exciting to see the positive changes that are taking place, though I am really annoyed with the amount of attention that it gets from hoodlum graffiti taggers: it gets tagged every time the owner puts on a new coat of paint. I hope it stops and/or they catch those jerks.

Grand Lake Theater.


Grand Lake Theater. Evidence of the revitalization efforts on this Oakland landmark.


Grand Lake Theater. New coat of paint and new bulbs.


Beautiful day in Oakland.


Religious nuts in Oakland. Webster Street and 17th-ish.


Tay Ho Restaurant.

Tay Ho Restaurant. #8: Ground pork and woodear mushroom mixture wrapped in soft rice noodles, more rice noodles, bean sprout, cucumber, mint, and basil salad, shrimp popover, sweet potato tempura, and pork cake. Very, very tasty (and economical), especially with sambal oelek and hoisin sauce. The fizzy lemonade was very tasty, too.

Thumbs up to this street art.


Old Oakland historic building. Current residence of Breads of India.

Old Oakland. 9th and Broadway. I love this two-tier sidewalk and wrought iron fencing.

Old Oakland. 9th and Broadway. Beautiful historic architecture.

Classy lamp for sale in Chinatown shop. They had tons of great stuff, this was one of the best.

Hello Kitty Ramune soda found at Sweetheart Cafe. It was very unfortunate that we could get the cap off; I was looking forward to some refreshing Hello Kitty fizzy goodness because it was warm and I was thirsty.

Farm Fresh Diary

February 5, 2011

Picked up some great stuff from the farmers' market today.

Heirloom carrots. I've been on a bit of a carrot kick lately and these heirlooms taste so much better than "regular" carrots.

The onions were too pretty to pass up.

Mixed leafy greens. I've been eying this type of mix for a couple of weeks now. I have been experimenting with different varieties of hearty leafy greens and so getting a bunch of this mixture was just the logical next step.

I also picked up a loaf of bread from Panorama and some bacon from Range Brothers.