behind the aluminum curtain

Everywhere You Turn

Around the historic center in Mexico DF, there seemed to be no sit-down restaurants. The streets were filled with people hawking food from trucks, baskets, stands, and people eating all over the sidewalks.

xmas cookies

I had a fun time making Christmas cookies this year, even though it meant neurotically cleaning and moving the cookies around from surface to surface because we have a serious ant problem. They love sugar just as much as me!



I fashioned a double boiler to melt chocolate for the first time, and I'll definitely be doing that again.

breakfast

Breakfast in the Westy. What a miracle to have toasted bagels and hot coffee first thing in the morning in our little campsite by the ocean.

just pick me up some sausage

ah, fresh produce!

A farm for brussel sprouts in Watsonville.

happy thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the one family event that is non-negotiable, more so than Christmas. It's kind of funny, though, because in our family, every day is like Thanksgiving. We loves to eat! This is on New Year's Day, 2009, in Malaysia.

s'mores!

One of my favorite things about being in nature is eating the most artificial things, like flaming marshmallows.

thanks for waiting

All I can think about lately is how much I miss this man and how excited I am to see him soon. Here he is, making me pasta at my parents' house:



We all know how much I love a man who can make pasta. I just think mine is so much cuter. Yay!

birthday banquet

Sunday was Juan's birthday, and I made us a picnic to take along in his camper van as we watched the sun set over the Bay. This is a dulce de leche cheesecake. I was so concerned with trying to take a proper photo that I forgot to tell him to make a wish.



I did sing, though.

relativity

My typical day the past few weeks involves coffee, lunch, coffee, dinner, and then QT with the love of my life.

The nice thing about being here in the Bay Area is that there are always surprise guests, like my cousin whom I saw a few weeks ago when I passed through DC.

ice cream men

This is in Pamplona, at the horse fair.

If I ever get to be this old, I definitely hope I'm living in a hot enough place to eat ice cream every day...and I'm going to eat ice cream every day. Oh yes.

ice cream man

This is in Madrid, another one of those moments that I am not sure anyone will think is funny except for me.

the king of kings

I touted some restaurants for my San Sebastian city guide, and this was my favorite place, Casa Tiburcio. Here's an out-of-focus shot (I blame it on all the steam in the kitchen) of the chef himself, Tiburcio, answering some questions for me about percebes, a shellfish found in only a handful of regions throughout the world.

happy hour, all the time

This is what we ate at least twice daily in the Basque Country: pintxos. Each item is around two dollars. I ate a lot of octopus, jamón, and washed it back with a lot of beer.



Mmmm...Basque country...

meat market II

A butcher stand inside the San Telmo Market.

saturday dins

I make a big feast at least once a week, and last Saturday I did the beer can chicken, a little trick told to me by a San Francisco urban planner one fine day on Angel Island. You don't need to season the chicken at all. You open an ordinary can of beer (Quilmes, pictured), pour out about two ounces and douse the chicken in it, then make holes on the sides about an inch below the top. Then you nest the chicken on it, vertically. As the beer heats, it comes out of the holes and keeps the chicken moist and delish...

fleximart

This is the covered San Telmo market. During the day it's mostly a tourist destination for antiques, but in the evening the antique stalls close and it is filled with fruit and meat merchants.



The porteños are very orderly when it comes to waiting in line. They don't even grumble too much about it. I've seen lines for who-knows-what wrapping around multiple city blocks. They are especially good at queueing for buses.

happy june

I am just not going to explain this photo at all. Because I really can't. It was funny that I was there, and it was funny that I was taking photos, and then it was even funnier that I found it all so funny.



It has just been one of those weeks, I guess.

munchies

Sunday we had a 3 p.m. asado, and on Monday I had a 3 a.m. hamburger at this 24-hour joint.



So yeah, you can get a basic burger for 5 pesos and 50 centavos (about US$1.50). But, if you're a gourmand like me, you get it "completa," with cheese, ham, and a fried egg...for 11 pesos. That's a lot of cholesterol for three bucks.