I Heart San Francisco

In celebration of our ten year wedding anniversary, Brian and I took a trip by ourselves to San Francisco. There's a lot to see and do there, so I did my research beforehand by checking out some guidebooks and planning our itinerary. So many books dedicated so many chapters to dining in this city. There's truly something for everyone in San Francisco. For this reason, I wasn't surprised that every time I told someone we were going to San Francisco they mentioned something I must eat while there--clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl, dim sum in China Town, seafood at Fisherman's Wharf, and Ghirardelli chocolates, just to name a few. Well, I'm proud to say that I did indeed eat my way through San Francisco. And this blog will serve as proof. Yes, I took photos of everything I ate on vacation. Yes, sometimes I had to use the flash. Yes, I may have been a little shy about it at first, but it's San Francisco after all. Apparently, shy people are not allowed so I quickly got over it.

Sunday evening, we stayed close to our hotel and had dinner in Union Square. My trusty guidebook, which we were never without, recommended Kuleto's, an Italian restaurant specializing in seafood dishes. We were not disappointed. In fact, my two favorite meals were my first and my last in San Francisco. My Caeser salad was a bit surprising, though.

My mother would have died! My father would have sent it back. I, however, initially looked at Brian with wide eyes and then cautiously dug in. Sometimes I talk a good talk, but I'm no foodie and I apparently had never had a real Caesar salad until then. The anchovy certainly makes it a little fishier than I've become accustomed to, but not necessarily in a bad way. The real thing is much tangier than the paste. And I like tangy. For the main course, I had the risotto with shrimp and scallops and Brian had the linguine and clams. It was the best risotto I've ever had; it was creamy but not too rich, and the shrimp and scallops were fresh and cooked perfectly. Brian really enjoyed the linguine and there were easily between 30 and 40 clams in that dish. The service was top-notch which made a pleasant dining experience that much more enjoyable. If ever in San Francisco again, we're going to Kuleto's. Okay. Breakfast doesn't count. Our hotel offered a free continental breakfast and we took advantage of it. I didn't take any pictures. Bagels and instant oatmeal are decidedly unimpressive.

For lunch on our first day, we had to go to Boudin for the chowder bowl. Clam chowder with fresh clams in real San Francisco sourdough bread. No further explanation is required. Are you drooling yet?And because this was our first day and all, we really overdid it on the walking. Truly we did. See this post as confirmation. To reward ourselves, we stepped into Mara's Italian Pastries in North Beach (aka Little Italy) for a cannoli. Yum! But really, I've never met a cannoli I didn't like. And why yes, we did take a bite out of it before remembering to snap the photo.
We were exhausted but rejuvenated when Brian's cousin Aaron picked us up for dinner. He took us to the real China Town (a few blocks within the Richmond District) to the Shanghai Dumpling King. We were having such a good visit and enjoying the food that I kind of spaced on the photography. Below are the lemon chicken and noodle dishes. I forgot to get a photo of the Shanghai dumplings and the spicy green chives dumplings, but it doesn't matter. Although dumplings vary in flavor, they all pretty much look the same. These tasted fantastic. The photo above is of the sugar egg puff complimentary dessert. It tasted great but was a little on the greasy side. Go figure, huh?

Tuesday morning we visited the de Young museum. We didn't eat there, of course, but because this is a food blog, I'll show you one of my favorite pieces there:

Next we headed over to the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. We had some tea, crackers, and cookies at the tea house. The snack was the spicy oriental snack mix found in most bulk bins and convenience stores, and the cookies were of the sesame and cashew variety. Although not very impressive, the tea was hot and felt good after walking around the chilly garden.

Per Aaron's (and my guidebook's) recommendation, we ate lunch at Pluto's in the Haight. Our vacation diets up until then didn't include too much roughage so the salads were a welcome change. It's basically a make-your-own salad place except that they make it for you. My protein was roasted turkey (and it tasted like Thanksgiving!) and Brian loved the grilled portobello.

Our dinners that night were a let down. We wanted fresh seafood so we went to Fisherman's Wharf. Apparently only one of San Francisco's top-ten seafood restaurants is at the Wharf. We thought Neptune's Palace would be a safe bet, but the only real reason to go there is for the view. Brian's coippino was lackluster and my sole would have been tasteless without the sauce, which happened to be overpowering. And my mashed potatoes were not hot. All in all, the food was very disappointing but we were able to watch the fog roll in and then out within the span of 90 minutes.
But, somehow, the world-famous Ghirardelli dark chocolate hot fudge sundae we had later that evening made everything better.

On our last full day of vacation, we went on a twenty mile bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge and through Sausalito and Tiburon. During our stop in Sausalito, we treated ourselves to a scoop of ice cream at Lappert's. I tried a new flavor combination that, frankly, I'm sorry I didn't think of first--banana caramel chocolate chip. It's like all my favorites rolled into one. Brian had raspberry brownie.

Once we finally made it to Tiburon, we had lunch bayside at Sam's Anchor Cafe. I had $17 fish and chips and Brian had a $16 fried oyster sandwich. They were okay, but we almost had to fight the seagulls for them.

That night we had dinner in North Beach. Aaron (and, again, my guidebook) recommended Sodini's. I had the gnocchi and Brian had penne with prawns in a white wine sauce. Both dishes were delicious, the atmosphere was cozy and homey, and the service was warm and attentive. It was comfort food at its best!

On the way back to the cable car stop, we popped into Mara's again for a tiramisu to go. A couple hours later, this dessert topped off our vacation.I can't wait to go back and try more of what San Francisco has to offer.

Elizabeth's Favorite

We all have at least one--a dish that tastes so good but you hardly ever make it because: a) it can't be whipped together in less than a half hour, and b) it contains ingredients you don't normally have on hand. Making and serving this dish is almost like an event. We tend to save these dishes for special occasions or when we want to impress someone. This is my special occasion dish and it's one that I must make every year on a certain October day for Elizabeth's birthday. It's so good, though, that I make it probably every other month because we crave it and go crazy over it...except for Matthew because cheese is pretty prominent in this recipe.

I'm speaking, of course, of Giada's Lasagna Rolls. I watched her make these on her show once and I was tempted to lick the TV; I might have if it hadn't been so dusty. The theme of that particular show was 'Italian Fast Food,' and I can tell you in no uncertain terms that this is not Italian fast food. It certainly doesn't taste like Fazoli's, but you just can't make lasagna rolls fast. As if you need proof, the first step is making a bechamel sauce. Then you have to mix the filling together, and cook the lasagna, and line the noodles with the filling, and roll them up, and top them with her Quick Marana Sauce (Wait! Making that sauce is the real first step.), and finally bake it for 35 minutes and let it cool for 10 minutes. And she calls it fast food.

Heck, Giada can call it anything she wants. She's a chef after all, so maybe this is fast food to her. It doesn't matter. They taste amazing and Elizabeth eats spinach with relish. (I do hope you know that she's not eating it with minced pickles.) It's her favorite.

Will Work for Food

How do you like my garden? Okay. I admit calling this my garden is like a mutual fund investor saying he owns PepsiCo. Since we moved into our house nine years ago, Brian has dreamed of a garden. I've experimented with herbs a few times (no, not that way), because I've been told that "basil and cilantro just go crazy here." Maybe it would work if I sprang for the plants, but we just started with seeds indoors and the plants die as soon as we take them outside. That reminds me of the time I brought a tiny little oak tree back from Pittsburgh thinking I'd grow a huge oak tree in my Arizona backyard. My dad said, "You're taking that tree to Phoenix? Why don't you just throw it in front of a bus?" Ahhh, I digress.

Jennifer was showing off her garden lately, and I was a little envious. I wish I was able to plan a garden, research how to take care of everything, know when to plant what, and commit to watering it, because let's face it, if you skip one watering the whole thing goes up in smoke (almost literally--it's that hot). Then, this opportunity arose. This garden is my friend Leslie's. Actually, it's hers and mine and another family's. She and her husband (who knows what he's doing and does everything the right way--which is obviously a huge benefit for me) planted this garden about six weeks ago. Yes, six weeks ago and look at it! Zucchini, peppers, onions, herbs, tomatoes, corn, watermelon and squash for all.

All I have to do is pull weeds, and I'm pretty sure I can handle that. I must really be getting into it because they went away for the weekend and I offered to water. The kids and I went over this morning and it was like a day down on the farm on a county island in suburbia. These horses are her neighbors', but the kids sure liked talking to them.

About seven years ago, long before it was fashionable, I participated in a CSA program. Once a week I drove out to The Little Farm in Gilbert at Higley and Queen Creek Roads and picked up a bag of whatever grew on that farm that week. We ate all kinds of lettuce, greens, onions, and squash, but there were also lots of turnips and beets. Occasionally, we'd be lucky enough to get pecans and fruit, but what we loved most of all were the farm fresh eggs. And oh my, look who lives on Leslie's farm!

And look what I earned today!

I know what's for breakfast tomorrow.

Here's a photo of my very first earnings last week and what we did with it. I just sauteed the zucchini in olive oil and seasoned it with kosher salt and pepper. Simply delicious.

Who would have thought I'd have such a productive garden?

Check it out!

I've been pretty lazy lately. To see amazing cakes, click here.

Desserts All Around

Our PTO hosted a potato bar for the teachers last week as part of Teacher Appreciation Week. I asked one of the officers if they had anything lined up for dessert and I offered to make something. She thought it was a good idea. Then she told me the lunch would be for 65 people and said, "Do you still want to do it?" Oh, sure. I'm not busy or anything. No, seriously. I was very happy to do it. Even if I was up a little too late that night and didn't even get to watch any of my Thursday night shows on Thursday night. Hey, teachers are more important than TV.

I ended up making some cookies and cupcakes because they thought the teachers would prefer something they could eat on the run. I hate to beat a dead horse here, but these flower cupcakes are the cutest cupcakes I make so here they are again. I also made some oatmeal raisin cookies and my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe ever (which just happens to be low-fat!). I've gushed about that chocolate chip recipe from Cooking Light before, but my mother told me about these oatmeal raisin cookies. The recipe on the lid of the Quaker Oats container is the best homemade oatmeal raisin cookie I've ever had. And apparently, the teachers agree. Some even asked for the recipe and, sadly, I had to tell them where it came from.

I made some more oatmeal raisin cookies today for my MOMS Club service project. Every year, we take dozens of cookies to a local hospital's NICU. This is the third year our club is doing it and it's a service project that means a lot to me. Two and half years ago, I was a mom in that NICU and I received cookies from another MOMS Club. I asked our club to pay it forward and we've been doing it ever since. Here's what it looked like the first year. That crazy gal is my soon-to-be sister-in-law (wow, that's a lot of hyphens), Meg. And check out Matthew in this photo! He's six months there. Meg just graduated from college this weekend so please give her a whoop whoop, or whatever the kids are saying these days.

Spaghetti, Anyone?

Did you ever have one of those days? I have them a lot.

Why Can't I Make Breakfast?!

I have some catching up to do for the last week or so. I'll go in order and start with one of our recent breakfasts.

I should admit that making breakfast is not my forte. I can't really make a pancake. Isn't that weird? To not be able to make a pancake? I mean, I do make them, but they're not like ones you'd get in a restaurant--all evenly cooked, fluffy and golden brown. Mine come two ways: dark and crunchy or pale and soggy. Yum, right? To be fair, I was making my pancakes from Bisquick. Although I grew up on Aunt Jemima pancakes, Brian' mom used Bisquick. And, like a few other things I converted to for his sake (Colgate over Crest, Lever 2000 over Jergens, real rice over Uncle Ben's), I started making pancakes out of Bisquick. I read Alton Brown's baking book and had the revelation that the reason my pancakes are no good is because I'm not making them from scratch. So I tried his recipe and it was even worse than the Bisquick version. The batter was so runny that I had to keep adding flour to it. He may be on to something with that measuring with a scale method. I'm sorry I don't have the evidence to share the results with you, but believe me, they weren't pretty AND I forgot to add the salt. They seriously tasted like nothing.

Last weekend, I tried his recipe for waffles. They tasted good, but not too much different than Bisquick's. And with his, there was a heck of a lot more measuring to do than Bisquick's.

Why does the coloring look so uneven, you say? Well, I'll give you a hint. It has something to do with that big puddle of batter to the right of the waffle maker. See it? Here's a better angle.

I followed his recipe exactly, but perhaps his waffle maker is larger than mine or maybe my disher isn't 2.5 ounces. I've been meaning to check on that. In any case, after the first waffle, I realized I had to let the batter sit on the iron a few seconds before I closed the top. That eliminated the Niagra Falls effect and caused the uneven coloring (because the bottoms of the waffles were nice and brown). They still tasted good and my family loved them. I just had to suffer through comments from Elizabeth and Brian like "Well this is a fine mess" and "What happened over here?" I'll let you guess who said what.