Yesterday I made dulce de leche ice cream again. This time all I did was mix two cups of cream with dulce de leche. I can't tell you how much because I did it by pouring and tasting, but it was probably 1 1/2 cups. It was a little too much, though, but not much. The results were great. The ice cream is incredibly creamy and very dense - haagen dazs dense. Indeed, it tasted quite a bit like haagen dazs. It didn't get hard on my freezer nor did it crystalize. But it's too dense to eat much of, which is good as this sing is pure fat and sugar. The other problem it has is that it melts quickly at room temperature. But it's soooo good.

Finally, making it is quite expensive - much more than buying ice cream at the store. But I'm glad I tried it. I'll probably make it again, this time with chocolate flakes (I didn't have any of those at home).

I'm not a big pork eater in the first place, but once in a great while I'll have pork ribs or pork tenderloin. No more. This article by Rolling Stones magazine has convinced me not only that eating pork is unethical, but that it's also bad for my health. Thanks god my children have only had it a handful of times in their lives.

Here is an excerpt:

Smithfield's pigs live by the hundreds or thousands in warehouse-like barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens. Sows are artificially inseminated and fed and delivered of their piglets in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty fully grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment. They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs -- anything small enough to fit through the foot-wide pipes that drain the pits. The pipes remain closed until enough sewage accumulates in the pits to create good expulsion pressure; then the pipes are opened and everything bursts out into a large holding pond.

The temperature inside hog houses is often hotter than ninety degrees. The air, saturated almost to the point of precipitation with gases from shit and chemicals, can be lethal to the pigs. Enormous exhaust fans run twenty-four hours a day. The ventilation systems function like the ventilators of terminal patients: If they break down for any length of time, pigs start dying.

From Smithfield's point of view, the problem with this lifestyle is immunological. Taken together, the immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs' immune systems. They become susceptible to infection, and in such dense quarters microbes or parasites or fungi, once established in one pig, will rush spritelike through the whole population. Accordingly, factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds -- oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin -- diseases would likely kill them. Thus factory-farm pigs remain in a state of dying until they're slaughtered. When a pig nearly ready to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the slaughterhouse under its own power. As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat.

According to Mike, there is a sign at Andy & Joe's Restaurant saying that the restaurant is for sale or rent. I'm not surprised, as every time I walked by (and as it's on my way downtown I walked by it a lot) it was empty or semi-empty. Alas, if they didn't improve on their food, I'm not surprised. The restaurant business is hard and you need to offer a superior product to make it. If you do, like Le Soleil, staying alive shouldn't be a problem.

I think there were a couple of other things that andy & joe's did wrong (apart from offering mediocre food). One was to offer the same type of food that you can get at other established restaurants downtown. And it wasn't a destination sort of food, like Vietnamese, Thai or Indian may be. The other was to not advertise widely at first. That's when they need to get the word of mouth going. Putting flyers in area businesses and homes would have helped them. And finally, they priced their offerings too high.

The location may be a problem, too. This is the third restaurant in a row that fails there. The first one (since we've lived in San Leandro), Casa María #2 was closed down by the health department, briefly reopened afterwards, and then moved to a different (and one hopes cleaner) location. I haven't been there again.

The second one started as Kolbeh, offered mediocre Mediterranean fair. Though I wished the owners well, their food just did not convince me. Apparently it didn't convince others' either, as they closed it and revamped it as a Mexican restaurant, Taqueria. They had a strange scheme, they served burritos and you paid $1 for each ingredient you wanted. That made a meat and guacamole burrito a bargain, but an "everything" burrito quite expensive. Alas, the pre-cooked meat wasn't that great either. I was sorry to see them go, I liked the owners, but it was also inevitable.

And now Andy & Joe's.

But alas, I don't think the problem is the location. I think the problem is the mediocre food that all these restaurants are serving. And the lack of imagination. Do we need a burger place downtown? Ummm, no. Do we need another taqueria? Los Pericos practically has the whole San Leandro market. What we do need, if anyone is listening, is an INDIAN restaurant. There is one in Hayward, Favorite India, which delivers to San Leandro - but it's not the same as having one here. Plus an Indian buffet would do well with the downtown business crowd.

And here is a radical idea, how about an Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant? As judged by who attends the library story time, San Leandro has a large Ethiopian and Eritrean population. That provides a built-in market for a restaurant. Add to that all the Berkeley-transplants who live here, and you have a winner. An Ethiopian restaurant could offer a killer lunch buffet as well.

A Persian restaurant could be a great addition, as well, though I'm less sure there is enough of a market for it.

But anyway, restaurant entrepeneurs take notice, here is a space you could turn into a good and much needed restaurant with some vision.

On a different note, I've learned there is a new Jamaican place in town, but when I went looking for it I didn't find it (not surprising, given how I am). Friends ate there, though, and they liked it. I'm hoping to visit it soon and give you a report.

Last night we got take out from New Hong Kong. I always order the same things, orange chicken, szechuan beef, sesame chicken, orange chicken, and then I'm a bit disgusted by the gooiness of it all. This time I decided to try something different and got the crispy chicken ($6 for half a chicken) and the ginger beef ($6.50). I also got the pork buns, chicken chow mein for the kids, and an order of free fried wontons.

The pork buns were good, as usual. They are steamed and they have a pretty high ratio of bread to stuffing, but they are good none the less. The friend wontons are crisp and very good with the sweet-n-sour sauce they came with. Pure fat and a guilty pleasure. Can't comment on the chow mein 'cause I didn't try it. But both the crispy chicken and the ginger beef were very good. The chicken was moist and had been nicely spiced (but it wasn't spicy), and it's skin was almost crispy enough. As it was, you could skip it and all that fat. The ginger beef had a light ginger flavor, and was nicely complimented by the green onions. The one problem is that there were just too many scallions and too little beef. Still, I'd order both dishes again.

This week Mike and I took a mini-vacation to the northern California wine country. We spent three days wine tasting, in Napa, the Russian River Valley and Mendocino. Of necessity, we visited only a few wineries, but you can read my notes from them. Alas, I'm in no way a wine connoisseur and I'm completely unable to taste any of the dozens of flavors experts can discern in wine. Berries? mango? licorish? I can't find them. So don't take my reviews too seriously. In reality all I can say is what I liked and what I didn't like, which may be very different from what you like. I tend to like full-bodied wines, neither light or heavy in tanins and with a well defined oakiness (which I didn't find at all in this trip).

Anyway here is my report from Napa. Reports from the Russian River Valley and Mendocino will follow.

On the second day of our wine country trip, we headed to the Russian River Valley. I'd been there only a couple of months before, when my friend Lola treated me to a wonderful girls-weekend-out for my birthday, and I was eager to go again. I found the wineries in the Russian River Valley more relax and more friendly than those in Napa, and I was there purely for relaxation (OK, and wine tasting too).

Last time, the helpful manager of the West Sonoma Inn, where we had stayed, had recommended we go tasting at the wineries on Olivet Road. We hadn't managed to do it, but it made sense to try them on our way from Calistoga. So there we headed.

On our third day in the wine country, we tried the wineries in the Anderson Valley in Mendocino. I had never been to this part of California before and enjoyed the wine tasting experience very much. None of the wineries we visited were as beautiful as those we’ve been to in Napa, Sonoma and even the Russian River, but they were nice, friendly and relaxing experiences.

We started at Yorkville Cellars a small family winery that sells organic wines. It’s run by an English lady and it’s been there since 1986. They mostly sell at the winery, local shops and restaurants. We’d had organic wines before and had not been particularly impressed by them, so Yorkville pleasantly surprised us. The tasting room itself was small but featured a veranda with picnic tables and a view of the vineyards. They had a very friendly black lab greeting you. Tasting was complimentary and they gave us good sized pours.

As you can discern from my postings below, Mike and I spent three days traveling through the Napa Valley, tasting wine and relaxing. We had a few really nice dinners, and more conventional lunches. But as I swore to review everything about the trip (to make it even more fun for me), here are my notes on our Wine Country Lunches.

Sunday we were in Napa and had lunch at Giugni's Deli in St. Helena. This is our favorite sandwich shop in the whole world. *Every* time we come to Napa, we go eat there. Napa may be filled with culinary delights from north to south, but we will never know them because I will never have lunch at a place other than Giugni's. It *is* that good.

As you know, I recently took a trip to the wine country and the mendocino area. Here are the restaurant reviews from that trip.

Mendo Bistro is a bistro in Fort Bragg, Ca, which lets you chose what you want to eat and how you want it cooked.

Timber Cove Inn Restaurant is the restaurant of the hotel of the same name located about 15 miles north of Jenner, California. There is nothing else in the area so the restaurant gets away with charging ridiculously overpriced but still good food.

Solbar in Calistoga offers high-end interpretations of American Cuisine and mostly gets it right.

La Hacienda is your typical Mexican Restaurant in Cloverdale

We had a great lunch at the Mendocino Hotel Garden Room in a beautiful bee-filled garden.

And a disappointing lunch at the the Station House Cafe in Point Reyes Station, with extremely underseasoned food (but in another beautiful garden).

After our trip to the wine country, Mike and I seem to be getting into wines. We'll see how long it lasts. But we're happy with our half a dozen collection of good quality reds, 3 sweet wines and 2 sparkling. Not very much, specially if we start drinking it up. Alas, wine is not hard to find :)

Last night we opened a bottle of Tobin James 2002 James Gang Reserve Zinfandel. We had won it the previous day at a charity raffle.

It had a very strong fruity aroma, and was somewhat sweet, with a strong hint of plum. It was smooth, somewhat acidic, and really nice to sip by itself. It also went well with dark chocolate, marrying in your mouth. I thought it might be too fruity/sweet for the red meat we were having that night, but they went very well. The wine dried up and let the taste of the meat win over. Very good. Mike liked it too.

I first tried Beringer wine when I went wine tasting at their impressive operation in Napa many years ago. They give a great tour of their facilities - or at least they did back them - but their wine seemed inferior. Outside the winery, it's certainly affordable. Last night I wanted to drink some wine with our steaks (steaks two nights in a row, courtesy of Costco's large sizes), but I didn't want to open another bottle of expensive wine (and for me expensive is anything over $10), so I decided to open this Beringer bottle that somebody had brought us. It wasn't that great.

It didn't have much of an aroma to speak off, and the taste itself was very mild. Low on tanins with a bare hint of oakiness. It did improve when drank with the steak, assuming a complimentary role. I'd drink it again, but with food.

Mike finally returned to me a few restaurant reviews I wrote early this year. He edits them for me, as he thinks my prose is definitely in need of help. These are:

Adagia is nice restaurant in Berkeley with a dining room that looks like an Ivy League cafeteria. Good food too.

Le Cheval is a popular Oakland Vietnamese eatery, its food wasn't as good as I remembered, though.

Spettro is another popular Oakland restaurant, this time eclectic Italian. I liked it.

Fringale is an upscale French Basque restaurant in the city. Our dinner was good if uneven.

and finally

Angelinas has become our favorite place for a pizza with the kids, not in the least because they are very child friendly.

Tonight I was left alone at home with nothing to eat, and Mike suggested I get some Indian. As the kids, who don't like Indian, are not home, that seemed like a good idea.

Favorite India is my favorite Indian restaurant, so it's very fortunate that they are both in the area and deliver here. I've been ordering from there since it opened several years ago, and I'm seldom disappointed. This time I wasn't.

I ordered my usuals, lamb korma, chicken tikka masala and a mixed grill (yes, I was alone, but they have a $25 minimum for delivery). All three were good, the sauce in the lamb korma, in particular, was excellent, very creamy, very deep and balanced. The tikka masala was also very good and balanced, with a hint of acidity. The mixed grill was a little on the dry/overdone side, however. My sweet lassi was good, a bit watery but I expect that's from the ice melting while I waited to drink it. The kabuli naan was particularly good today, filled with nuts and cherries.

In all it was a very good meal and I'm stuffed and have lunch and dinner for tomorrow! :)

I'm not a big fan of white zinfandel, call me a snob but to me it tastes very much like a wine cooler. That's not bad in itself, I like wine coolers, but they shouldn't go around calling themselves wine ;-).
But a bottle of Eagle Canyon White Zinfandel mysteriously appeared in my fridge (I assumed somebody brought it over some time and I just put it on the fridge), and I figured I'd give it a try tonight. I didn't dislike it.

The wine itself is nice. It's very floral and fruity, with strong hints of peach and of strawberry essence (the fake stuff, not actual strawberries), perhaps raspberry as well. It doesn't taste at all alcoholic, and it has a clean finish. The problem with the wine is that it's too damn sweet. It's almost like a syrup, or a dessert wine at that (though it lacks the substance and complexity of such wines). It's nice to sip, but you definitely can't drink much of it. That may be a good thing, though :) It also doesn't go well with cheese, at least not with brie, though the cheese did cut into the sweetness.

What I find weird is that I wasn't able to find out anything about the Eagle Canyon winery of Manteca. I can tell from a couple of sites that this is a cheap wine (maybe $5-6 a bottle), but I can't find anything else about it or its winery. Weird, eh?

In any case, I wouldn't buy it myself but I'm going to finish the bottle (not all at once, though :)

Mika must have had these cookies before, because she knew exactly what they were when she pointed them out at Trader Joe's. She laughed at the suggestion that they were actually for cats, despite the cat on the label. They are very good and addictive, with a ginger flavor that kicks at the end (how come she likes them?) Not particularly healthy, though. But they do come in comical cat shapes.

I really like hot brie, at least what I've had at Horatio's, and I've been having a craving for some since my last visit to that restaurant (which I think was on my birthday, in May). I knew that a supermarket product wouldn't be the same, but I had no idea it could be so inferior. The pastry itself seemed underdone and heavy, while the brie was light and uninteresting. I didn't even think it was worth it to bring down my very expensive balsamic vinegar to mix with it.

In all, I won't buy this product again.

As you probably know, I love to cook international foods, and one of the places where I get recipes, in addition to invaluable information about how and what people eat is the Cultural Profile Project from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. The project provides a myriad of information about the cultures of each of very many countries. Included here is information about their food, what they eat, when and so forth. It's definitely worth checking out if you are interested in what others eat - and those others, of course, can be your neighbors.

My friends Lotty, Regina and Vienna (and occasionally our friend Frank) and I get together monthly for tea. Sometimes we go out and sometimes we do it at our homes. As many places as we try, however, we always end up going back to Lovejoy's.

There are many reasons for this. One of them is that Lovejoy's is the most comfortable tea room we've found. It looks like your quirky grandmother's living room, and the place invites you to stay and linger for a long time. Another is that the service is superb, a little bit contrived in that they are super-friendly, but your tea is topped and your requests are quickly fulfilled. But probably the main reason we keep going back to Lovejoy's is that the food is superb. Their scones are always warm and fresh and just fluffy enough. Their chicken salad sandwiches are even better than mine. And their tea - I always get the English Breakfast - is quite good as well.

Today was not different than usual. We went at 3 and stayed until they closed (must have been around 6), talking and enjoying the food, the ambiance and each other. We'll probably be back soon.

Once again, Vienna, Lotty and I went to Lovejoy's for tea. Yummm. The tea (English breakfast) was excellent, and the large, warm scones with double Devon cream and strawberry preserves, are out of this world. Indeed, I ordered the cream tea so that I could get two scones :-)

The tea services are pretty expensive, in particular after you compare them to The Golden Tea Garden in Hayward, my new tea hang out, but the atmosphere is so relaxing, and the scones so good, that it's definitely worth going there as an occasional treat. Still, given the limitation of their menu, I think the Golden Tea Garden is a better choice for little girls (who love cake), so I probably wouldn't bother taking Mika there.

Lovejoy's Tea Room
1351 Church Street
San Francisco CA
P: 415.648.5895
http://www.lovejoystearoom.com/

Original Review

If you are not convinced I'm not really into wine, you'll probably be after looking at my poor wine "collection". It's not really a collection as such, just a bunch of wines meant to be drank. I figured I'd blog about them here, so that I can remember how much I paid for each one of them and where I got it, so I can know which ones deserve a special occasion. And for me a $20 wine is a special occasion wine.

Cheap TJ wines

2005 Les Caves Joseph Bordeaux (bought 'cause it's similar to my last name)
2005 Black Mountain Malbec, Wastson's Grove
2005 Zarafa Pinotage

2005 Gladiatore Frascati (liked the bottle)

Zonin Proseco Brut
Villar Carlotti Prosecco
Piper Sonoma Brut (got as gift, $11)

Better wines

2000 Atlas Peak Vineyards Sangiovese, Napa Valley

2002 Casola Lopez Malbec (my cousin Betiana Lopez gifted it to me in Argentina)
2004 DeLoach Sonoma County Zinfandel ($35 or so, bought at winery)
2003 BV Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon (I think $20, Mike likes it)
2003 Chateau Souverain Dry Creek Valley (was 50% off at Safeway, $20 original)
2001 Yorkville Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon (bought at winery)
A syrah we bought at Roederer and that's too high up in the closet for me to look at.
2001 Fife Meritage (was $15 at Safeway off $32)

1999 Roederer L'Ermitage Brut ($45 bought at winery)

Sweet wines

Westover Port (someone must have gifted it to us, doesn't say which kind, must be around $20)
2005 V. Sattui Muscat (bought @ winery >$20)
2005 Navarro White Riesling ($29 small bottle)
Lustau Dry Amontillado Los Arcos Sherry

We had that for dinner. Mike liked it, so did Camila. I thought the seasoning was too salty, but I'd buy it again. I served Mika plain mahi mahi, she has a problem with anything that's in the least spicy (read "seasoned"). It was a struggle to get her to eat the fish - she had to really understand that that was all there was for dinner - but she finally did it and did not complain she didn't like it.

I served the fish with steamed broccoli and it was wonderful to hear Camila repeating "I want more broccoli". Mika used to like it too at that age, but she stopped liking it with age :(

The Easy Bake Oven I bought Mika for Christmas has been recalled for the second time - this time permanently. Soon they will send me a box to send it back to them in exchange for some amount of credit on Hasbro products. Problem is, I have a bunch of mixes that came with the oven plus a couple of more they sent me when they sent the "fix" for the problem. They are really expensive - $7-$11! -, and I want to use them up. So, I suspect in the next couple of weeks I'll be doing quite a bit of "easy baking" with the girls (don't worry, I don't let them anywhere near the oven by themselves).

Today we baked the yellow cake with chocolate frosting, pictured in the left. You can see below how the cake actually turned out. It didn't rise very much (surprise, surprise), but the chocolate frosting was yummy and the two went well together. My little girls were happy with it. They decorated with a cat cookie and pretended it was a birthday cake.

I bought this wine because "Katz" is Mike's name, not knowing absolutely anything about it, not even what kind it was. I wasn't planning on drinking it tonight, but I realized at a late hour that the recipe I was making called for white wine, and I had this one already chilling. Alas, only later I found out that many Qualitatswein are late harvest wines, more fit to be served as dessert than with a meal. Indeed, my first thought when I started sipping it is that this would make a good dessert wine.

The bottle does not indicate what type of Qualitatswein but it's not terribly sweet. Or rather, I thought it was very sweet when I opened it, but it mellowed out after dinner. It's very floral, with strong fruit overtones - peaches and apricots - and a very smooth finish. It's pretty good as an after dinner drink and I'd have it again.

Mike, OTOH, thought it almost tasted like a Chardonnay and he did not think it tasted like a dessert wine at all. Granted it was considerably less sweet that the majority of these. He thought it was easy drinking, and not that sweet.

I bought it at TJ's, and I *think* I paid $7-8 for the bottle.

Tonight we had pork chops with a white wine-dijon sauce from the Les Halles Cookbook, which once again I borrowed from the library. It looked like a relatively simple recipe and it turned out to be delicious - though I had to make a couple of substitutions. I served it just with peas - the only veggie I had at home - and unfortunately one of the kids ate just peas, while the other one had only a couple of bites of plain pork. They don't know what they are missing. The following is my version of the recipe (which doesn't differ that much from the original). I used gherkins instead of cornichons as I couldn't find the latter at the supermarket, and instead of a high quality concentrated chicken or veal stock, I used "better than bouillon" chicken base. I also omitted the single chopped sprig of parsley that the recipe asked for (to add with the cornichons) because I wasn't going to buy a whole bunch of parsley to just use one sprig.

Cote de porc a la charcutiere

-1 tbsp oil
-1 tbsp unsalted butter
-4 rib chops of pork
-salt & pepper to taste
-1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
-1 tsp all purpose flour
-1/2 cup white wine
-1 cup chicken stock
-2 tsp Dijon mustard
-10 cornichons or 5 gherkins thinly sliced

Preheat oven to 375. Add a tablespoon of oil to a large, oven proof sauté pan and heat. Add the butter and melt. Add the pork and cook on high until golden brown, about 4 minutes. Turn and brown the other side. Remove the pan from the heat, and place it in the oven. Cook for about 8 minutes, until done.

Remove the chops from the pan, put in a platter and cover loosely with aluminum foil to keep warm. Make the sauce.

Return the pan to the heat and add the chopped onion. Sauté until golden. Add the flour and stir for one minute. Add the wine and deglace, scrapping all the brown bits at the bottom of the pan. Add the chicken stock, mix well and reduce the liquid by half.

Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the mustard. Add the gherkins and any juice remaining from the pork chops. Mix well and serve the sauce over the pork chops.