Month: September 2005

9/25/2005

Oh, what a satisfactory binge. I met up with Lydia and Zack in San Francisco for FallFest. We ate and drank rather a lot. The whole thing was four hours long, so our schedule was:

12:00-1:00pm Eat and drink
1:00-2:00pm Sit and talk because you ate and drank too much during the first hour
2:00-3:00pm Having regained both sobriety and appetite, eat and drink again
3:00-4:00pm Sit and talk while Lydia regains sobriety (and saves our table), punctuated by Zack and Sarah making solo trips back to our favorite vendors for more food

My favorite food item was offered by Willi’s Wine Bar in Santa Rosa. They had this awesome lobster-bacon-corn soup. It was quite delicious. My favorite wine was probably the sauvignon blanc from Pepi Wineries, although my favorite winery was Roshambo. I also enjoyed some champagne from Gloria Ferrer. I’m not usually one for sparkling wines, but this was really tassty and didn’t give me a headache (the scourge of sparkling wines).

Let’s see… other food items that were good were a cold corn soup with basil oil from… somewhere, a panzanella made with truly excellent tomatoes from… somewhere else, another cold corn soup with a crouton spread with a goat cheese spread from Wente, a crab cake-puff with salad from… look, I’m not even going to try to remember things anymore, a sardine and tortilla crisp thing with a pepper relish, an apple brown betty, various chocolate thingies, chocolate-covered strawberries, watermelon stuffed with goat cheese, spicy pork pasta, various goat cheeses, and other things I can’t remember. I brought a notepad to take notes on what I was eating and drinking, but I was too busy eating and drinking to use it.

I have a beef with Grey Goose Vodka. So, it was nearing the end of the festival (there were like ten minutes left), and I decided that I was interested in getting one of the moxed drinks from GG for the road. I go up and start waiting in line, when the guy says that the bar is closed. I am disappointed and go sit back down with Lydia and Zack. Not a minute later, some other women go up and stand in line. And they get served! What the hell? Seriously, what the hell? I then got very angry and wanted to go talk to the guy, but I knew that me+anger+frustration=tears, so I didn’t. And now I’m blogging about it. Take that, Grey Goose!

After the Fest, we did some shopping. Jen had mentioned a while back that she loved the hair products at Lush. I’ve been looking for new products, so while Zack picked up We Love Katamari at EB Games, Lydia and I braved the overwhelming scents of Lush and bought some stuff. We both went with the Jungle conditioner- she has a lot of coarser hair, and I’ve got enough coarse hair to make me get a weird blond Jewfro on bad days. I went with the Blonde shampoo. I’ve forgotten what Lydia got. I tried it last night, and I like the shampoo, but the conditioner is too smelly. It makes me want to use Febreeze on my hair. Maybe I just used too much of it. My hair does feel nice, though.

I’m supposed to be cooking today, but I wore impractical shoes yesterday and my feet are paying the price. It hurts just walking over to the kitchen and getting a glass of water. Stupid shoes! You’re so cute and so painful!

9/23/2005

On Saturday, I’m going to the Fall Fest with Lydia and Zack. I’m looking forward to gorging myself. Mm, gluttony.

I’m going to be cooking a bunch of Indian food this weekend. For her birthday present, Ryan has asked for a bunch of lunches she can take to work. Sunday will be spent cooking, then.

I bought new rechargeable batteries for my camera (because I was a moron and threw my old ones out), only to find that my charger no longer works. ARGH. (And yes, I bought the correct type of batteries to use in it.) Now I have to go back to Target and buy a new one. Annoying!

We Love Katamari SPOILER!

Holy crap! I rolled up the King of All Cosmos! Now I just have to replay that level, get even bigger (or at least as big), and roll up the Queen. In case you want to compare scores, my Big Bang was 3582m 41cm 3mm. Edited to add that on Friday night, I did roll up the Queen of All Cosmos! But I didn’t break my record. Poo.

9/19/2005

This person scanned in all his mom’s recipe cards. That’s pretty cool. What is also cool is that he has pictures from Otakon of a couple Katamari cosplayers. Food and Katamari, what could be better? Nothing, that’s what. (Link brought to my attention by BoingBoing.)

On Thursday night, the family got together for a birthday celebration for Dad and Ryan. We had a potluck dinner- Mom and Dad made the entree, Jon and Ryan brought the starch and the vegetable, and I brought the dessert. Our theme was Italian, so the entree was eggplant parmesan, the starch was focaccia, the vegetable was a caprese salad, and the dessert was tiramisu. Top to bottom, this meal was excellent. I think it’s better than we would have had out.

I made the following pasta sauce last night. I had bought an eggplant the week before to make an Indian dish. Come last night, that eggplant was getting pretty old and I wasn’t in the mood for Indian. So I chopped it up and added it to a simple tomato sauce. It was good. Meaty- in fact I thought about calling it a sugo finto (mock meat sauce). I’ll be eating it for the next couple of days.

After dinner, I went over to Jon and Ryan’s to exchange the last of my tiramisu for the last of their focaccia (which I ate for breakfast this morning). Ian was visiting, which was cool. Ian is one of Jon’s friends from high school (in North Carolina- SO LONG AGO). Ryan made us all Mexican spiced hot chocolate which her parents had sent her from Zingerman’s, a truly awesome gourmet shop in Michigan. I talked about Katamari (of course, since I have no life outside it) and… cutting my fingernails. We ran out of conversation at one point and I offered some truly awful filler.

Warning! We Love Katamari SPOILERS! Kind of!

OMG, We Love Katamari. It’s pretty awesome. The controls are more sluggish than the first game, which sucks. You have to be pretty adept with the dash move in a few of the levels. The stages are many and varied. They’re all much shorter than they were in Katamari Damacy. The longest stage is seventeen minutes. Most are under six minutes, and there are a bunch of “do this as fast as you can” levels which should only take you a minute or two (well, ideally they’d take you under a minute, but I haven’t done that yet). There are levels under the sea, up in the clouds, in endless gardens, in an increasingly flammable campground, in snow, in darkness, and in space. The “make the moon”-esque level is incredibly awesome. There are tons of places to go and some really cool things to pick up. The world really IS full of things. Like Stonehenge. And the Taj Mahal. And someplace that looks kind of like Cloud City on Bespin. Hardest levels are the cowbear one and the “picking up only 50 objects, make as big a Katamari as possible” one. The fire ones are kind of hard, too. I kept going out, or people kept pushing me into the water. And the underwater one is kind of annoying because of the whole “you don’t fall as fast in water” thing. My new favorite cousin is Huey. He’s frikkin’ adorable. Especially when you put the hair streamers on him.

Tomato Sauce with Eggplant

Olive oil
1 to 1 1/2 pound eggplant, peeled and cut into roughly 1-cm cubes
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced or put through a garlic press
1/4 cup red wine
1 28-oz. can Trader Joe’s whole peeled plum tomatoes with basil, undrained
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
Pinch cumin
Pinch sugar
Salt and pepper, to taste
Grated parmesan and chopped fresh parsley, to serve

Salt the chopped eggplant liberally and place in a colander. Allow to sit for a half hour, then dry with a paper towel. Set a large saucepan over medium heat and add the oil. When hot, add the eggplant and cook, stirring, until the pieces have softened and taken on some color, 5-7 minutes. Remove from pan.

If the pan is looking dry, add some more oil. Add the onion and cook for about 5 minutes, or until the pieces have turned translucent. Add the garlic and cook for about thirty seconds to a minute, being careful not to burn it. Add the wine and scrape up any fond from the bottom of the pan. Stir in the tomatoes and all the sauce from the can. Use a spatula or wooden spoon to break up the tomatoes. Return the eggplant to the pan. Add the spices. Simmer for ten minutes or up to an hour or until however long it takes you to get the pasta done (could be no time at all if you timed it well, however, taking a little simmer time to let the flavors meld is always a good idea). Serve atop pasta with parmesan and parsley.

Tiramisu

Altered very slightly from a recipe by Tyler Florence

7 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup sweet marsala, plus 2 tablespoons
8 ounces mascarpone, softened to room temperature
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup brewed espresso coffee
1 ounce dark chocolate
1/4 cup brandy
1 teaspoon natural vanilla extract
48 ladyfingers
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Cream together egg yolks and sugar in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water. Add 1/3 cup of the marsala and continue to whisk until mixture is thick and doubled in volume. (This is basically a zabaglione.) Remove from heat. Stir in the mascarpone until completely blended.
In a chilled bowl, whip the heavy cream to soft peaks. Fold the whipped cream into the mascarpone mixture, to lighten.

In a small saucepan, combine espresso, chocolate, brandy, vanilla, and remaining 2 tablespoons marsala. Heat gently, and stir to dissolve the chocolate. Then, chill the mixture to cool it down, about 15 minutes. Quickly dip each ladyfinger in the chilled coffee mixture and arrange in a single layer on a 9 by 13-inch glass baking pan. Do not soak the cookies or they will become too moist. Spread 1/2 the mascarpone cream evenly with a spatula on top of the dipped ladyfingers. Repeat with a second layer of dipped ladyfingers and remaining mascarpone cream. Sprinkle top with cocoa powder. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours and up to two or three days before serving.

9/15/2005

Can’t talk. Too busy rolling.

Heh, I actually did make a dessert on Tuesday night (after I nearly made myself ill playing Katamari- stupid motion sensitivity!), but I don’t know if it’s good yet. Tonight we’re celebrating Dad and Ryan’s birthdays with a potluck dinner, and I chose to make the dessert. I really hope it doesn’t suck, because man, there’s a lot of it.