Leftovers Sandwich

When I have people over for dinner, more often than not I'll make this tomato-cream pasta recipe. I usually have most of the ingredients (except for cream) on hand already in my pantry, it's easy to make a lot of it at fairly little expense, and it's totally delicious. Probably not something you want to be eating on a daily basis, since there's cream and butter in it, but in moderation or on occasion it's very filling and satisfying. (Note: I add frozen peas, for color and a little extra green-vegetable kick. And I like it with cappellini/angel hair pasta.)

Of course, since I tend to make a whole ton of it to feed my hungry guests, I sometimes end up with extra sauce and don't really know what to do with it except put it on more pasta. The last time I made it, however, I figured that I had nearly an entire loaf of bread I needed to eat, and a chicken breast left over from another dinner. Now, the sauce is pretty thick, since I use diced tomatoes not puree, so VOILA! Sandwich!

All right, so my food photog skillz need some work. Whatever. This was just the leftover sauce with sliced baked chicken breast on whole wheat bread. Yum!

Love at First Bite, North Berkeley, CA

Wow, I said I was going to be better about this blog, and look - it's been more than a month since I posted last! I guess I've just been gathering lots of new material to post about. Expect a bio/about post to get put up soon - I'll be linking it permanently in the navigation on the right but I think it's a good touch-base post, just for me. That'll get posted as soon as I edit it!

Now, onto today: exactly one month ago today, Jesse and I went to Love at First Bite, a delicious little cupcakery located on Walnut between Cedar and Vine Street in North Berkeley. The place is a little difficult to find since they're actually tucked behind another shop or two on a deck/patio, but the removal from the street is really lovely and a refreshing break. Additional access is by stairs on Vine.

We had just had a feast from Cheeseboard Collective (not the pizza, actually, but some of their excellent cheese assortment and some baguette pieces) and were ready for some dessert. Our choices were the Red Velvet and Bunny Love cupcakes. According to the website, the former is a "very red red velvet cupcake made with Guittard cocoa, topped with seductive cream cheese frosting." It was indeed delicious and very moist/light/fresh, as well as adorable:


The second cupcake, Bunny Love, is described as a "carrot cupcake with pecans and pineapple, frosted with classic cream cheese frosting." Seriously, ours was so good, even better than the Red Velvet cupcake, that I didn't even get a chance to get a picture of it before it got snarfed.

Love at First Bite (Yelp reviews here) has seriously taken cupcake-baking to new heights - again according to their website, they use "the finest, premium ingredients in our baked goods - Nielsen-Massey Madagascar and Mexican vanillas, Guittard, Schokinag, DeZaan and Callebaut chocolates and cocoa, premium Saigon cinnamon, Philadelphia cream cheese, and real butter, eggs, cream and milk from local dairies." And in addition to serving 12-15 different flavors of cupcakes daily, you can also find cookies, cakes, and cute baking/serving accessories for your own cupcake party. Seriously, my next birthday? Totally going to have a cupcake party.

Check here for ordering/package deal options, visit the store Tues-Sat 10-6 and Sun 11-5 (closed Mon), and contact them for more information if needed.

An Experiment: Steak

I've always been a little wary of cooking meat, especially since as a child I was a vegetarian until age ten. And after that, it was always my parents who handled the meat, and who served it in delightfully pleasing forms alien to my concept of any raw or butchered animal.

As everyone who knows me is probably sick and tired of hearing by now, I recently read this incredible book called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Now, I'm not a fan of her fiction, but this nonfiction account of her family's year spent eating only self- and locally-grown foods is not only incredibly inspiring but also very honest about the pros, cons, and possibilities of her family's venture. One chapter deals with the slaughter of the first round of heirloom turkeys pre-Thanksgiving, and while the account is indeed bloody the farmers display an incredible amount of gratitude and respect towards the animals they raised humanely and subsequently use fully.

Now, I'm not saying I'd like to slaughter my own meat, but I'm certainly getting more acquainted with the idea of cooking meat myself, especially since Star Grocery (near where I live) stocks Niman Ranch beef and other local meats. I've never been particularly picky; recent months have seen me fall in deep passionate love with sushi (previously abhorred), attempt to put zucchini in nearly everything (previously dismissed as "useless") and even make the extra effort to taste things like shrimp (of which I'm still not really a fan). In keeping with having a healthy diet, and living cheaply, I'm trying not to buy too much meat, but it's become considerably easier for me to deal with handling it when I know it's been treated humanely during its lifetime. Plus, between spinach and the occasional meat dish, I'm probably not going to have to start taking iron supplements anytime soon!

Here's a solo dinner I cooked up a few weeks ago: chuck steak pan-seared (just seasoned with salt and pepper), arugula salad with avocado and feta and lemon dressing, and ice water! Seriously, I forget to drink water so often, but drinking juice feels basically like pouring sugar into my veins so I try to avoid it most of the time.

Miss Alison, in Two Parts

This was a day for picnics; for mac n' cheese, for guacamole and chips and sitting by the lake as the sun goes down.
miss alison lives here and here.

Tuesday Collaborative Dinner

Had a couple of girlfriends over for a quiet dinner the other night. We made mini-burgers (sliders?) with homemade spicy puttanesca sauce, fresh basil, and goat cheese; also salad and Kashi pilaf (which is quite crunchy and tasty). And raspberry sorbet for dessert! Perfect.




Also this surprisingly fun sparkling wine that Caitlin got:

Blender Inauguration

My father treated me to a Bed Bath and Beyond shopping spree a few weekends ago; the catalyst for the mission was to find me a food processor/blender. Well, needless to say, we were successful, and this was one of the first results: cauliflower soup!
Subsequently, pesto!




All in all, a very satisfying set of culinary experiences.

Procrastination Dinner

A few girls and I got together a few weeks ago to study and work on our various term papers for our Baroque class - (un)fortunately we got distracted by our mutual love of food and ended up just creating a feast for ourselves instead. Well, what can you do when you live so close to the Gourmet Ghetto and Cheeseboard?


We made spicy pasta puttanesca (the secret is to add a little brown sugar when you're browning the onions), sautéed summer squash and bell pepper, and I added a little bit of mock boursin cheese on the side of my plate. And tangelos, Ritter dark chocolate with hazelnuts, and ginger tea for dessert! Maybe we didn't get any work done...but hell, it was worth it.

Portland Ephemera - March 20th-26th 2009

Ahhhhhh Portland! My hometown of the heart, so to speak. Stumptown Coffee, of course, is one of the major reasons to go to Portland, but instead of going to the original watering hole or any of the satellite Stumptowns, I prefer to get my fix at the Fresh Pot. Attached to the Powell's Books on Hawthorne, the Fresh Pot is the perfect place to get a cup of coffee or an espresso drink (pictured here) and settle down with a book or your laptop.

Taking MAX back from dropping Jesse (the boyfriend) off at the airport and reading John Berger. Portland has pretty excellent public transportation, with buses that go all over the five (yes five) quadrants of the city. And MAX, the light rail system, is reliable and also goes pretty much anywhere you need to go.

We took a trip out to the coast - the drive was incredibly intense since we drove out of Portland drizzle and into a snowstorm. We drove to Seaside, which is actually a horrible little carnival tourist town, but luckily we escaped quickly and drove out along 101. Hilariously enough, we found a town called Cooterville! No joke! Unfortunately, GoogleMaps doesn't believe me that it exists; I think the population was something like 12 people anyway. The coast was incredibly beautiful, all tiny towns that reminded me of Bolinas in West Marin.

Right near my friend's apartment is this bar called The Pub at the End of the Universe, and ever since I lived in Portland summer of 2007 I have wanted to go there and have a beer. Luckily, this time we did (and had an incredible dark cider that I can't for the life of me remember the name of), and we found this awesome sort of scratchy graffiti on one of the seats. Definitely one of my favorites!

I miss Portland...I have a feeling maybe I'll end up there when I want to raise kids, but for now the life and variety of the Bay Area, as well as the proximity to my family, are more relevant to me and to my process of figuring out my future.

Summer...

How I miss it...

Bittersweet Cafe, Oakland CA

Bittersweet Cafe is a tiny mecca for chocolate lovers tucked away into Oakland's Rockridge district. With friendly employees, an impressive array of chocolate bars and a growing selection of house-made confections, Bittersweet is the perfect place to spend a rainy hour or two.

Bars are divided into three sections: Dark, Milk, and Surprises! The particular chocolate pictured below is an Earl Grey-infused dark chocolate, with tiny crunchy nibs for added texture. There's a benefit here to spending too much money on chocolate; I don't know if it was just a Valentine's Day special, but we bought four bars and got a free aluminum tin to keep them in!

Divine ended up being my favorite - pure dark chocolate, with a really sweet and mild aftertaste; we got another bar that was 70% cacao (read: delicious) but was a little too acidic for me.


Besides their impressive array of chocolate, Bittersweet is, after all, a cafe. Go with any one of their chocolatey drinks, including Spicy! ("Hot and spicy, a kick of pepper and a hint of cinnamon and rose"), and you won't be sorry. They also supply Blue-Bottle coffee for all of your caffeine needs.

(First image from the Bittersweet website, second from my camera!)