I was just in the Alameda Safeway doing some shopping, and decided to see if there were any wine bargains to be had. Last year I got a wine for over 50% off which ended up being pretty good - so I thought I'd try my luck again. I found a deal almost as good - the 2005 Hawk Crest Cabernet Sauvignon was on sale for $10, $15 off the regular price of $25. So I bought it.

I come home to find out that all retailers sell this wine for about $10 - so either Safeway sells all its wines at 2 1/2 times regular retail prices, or just ups the prices of those it wants to put in sale, to make them look like a better bargain. Yes, I feel foolish - but I learned my lesson. I will never buy wine from Safeway again. I hope the wine is at least good.

It's blueberry season and the blueberries at the farmer's market are wonderful - though expensive at about $9 for a pint? a quart? I just know it's a big bucket. But this week Safeway also has them on sale for $6 for a 2.5lbs box. They are from Canada, but they are just as good as the locals. So I got one of those boxes too. Now I have blueberries coming out of my years! (thanks god they are so good!). Anyway, I thought I'd use some making blueberry pancakes and I found this recipe at epicurious.com. It's *very* good. The pancakes came out light and fluffy, without that obnoxious metallic taste of pre-made mixes, and they had a great blueberry flavor. The best thing is that it calls for the type of ingredients you have at home anyway. I modified it a little bit, but it's basically the same as the original:

Ingredients

My house is a mess. Always. Every day. No matter how much I clean, it's always a mess. I say this as way of explanation of why I haven't, and don't see myself hosting dinner parties in the near future. I just can't manage to both clean the house and have people over all in the same day.

I have, on the other hand, been very much in a cooking mode lately - so I've gone back to my international food project -, only now I'm following it by cooking single dinner dishes for my family. It makes it a little difficult to come up with a full menu - appetizers, main dishes, sides and dessert - but some of the cuisines I'm cooking don't really lend themselves to mutli-course dinners anyway. I am hoping that by making the project part of my everyday cooking, I will start advancing it on it more quickly than in the past. After all, it's taken me 8 years just to do 2 letters.

This past week I've cooked Balti cuisine and Caucasian cuisine. The former is a style of food cooking and serving created by Indian cooks in England - as far as I can gather, it's very similar to what we get at Indian restaurants in the US. Next on the menu are Cantonese dishes - my first foray ever into Chinese food. I'll also be cooking a couple of Awadhi dishes and may indeed go back to some "A" cuisines for which I didn't have enough recipes to make a full meal.

Balti Menu
Caucasian Menu

It's available at http://www.marga.org/food/int/canton/

This morning Michaela wanted to bake - which is pretty amazing because she usually disappears when Camila and I start making anything. She wanted to do it all by herself (or mostly, she still can't read a recipe) and she wanted to make cookies. I barely had any ingredients - definitely no chocolate chips - so she suggested we make sugar cookies. I found this recipe on epicurious.com (my favorite recipe site), which had the advantage of requiring few ingredients. It did call for cream of tartar, which I didn't have, but I substituted with lemon juice with perfect results. Indeed, the results were amazing. I loved these cookies and I'll definitely make them again when the occasion calls for sugar cookies. Do note that they are a bit more crispy than your regular sugar cookie.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
  
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  
• 1/2 cup sugar
  
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
  
• 1 egg
  
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  
• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
  
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  
• 1/2 tsp. salt
  
• 3 tsp. lemon juice
  
• Water and additional sugar
  

Instructions

In an electric mixer, mix the butter with the oil and sugars until well blended. Add the oil and vanilla extract and mix well. Sift the flour, baking soda and salt into the butter/sugar bowl. Mix well. Add the lemon juice and mix once again.

Put the dough in the freezer for 20 minutes, or in the fridge for at least 30.

Pre-heat the oven to 350F. Grease two cookie sheets.

Place 1 Tbsp. of dough in your hand and roll into a ball. Place onto the baking sheet. Repeat until the dough is all used up.

Pour water into a small bowl, and sugar into another. Take a glass with a flat bottom, wet the bottom in the water and then press it against the sugar. Press the glass bottom on each cookie ball, each cookie should be about 1/4" high.

Place the cookie sheets in the oven and bake until they start to brown, about 15 minutes. Cool down completely before removing.

As I said before, I'm done buying wines at Safeway. But before that realization, I got a bottle of Firefly Ridge Pinot Gris, which was supposedly 40% or so off (I think I paid $8 or so). Of course, now I know that Safeway gives inflated regular prices to off-brand wines they get in bulk, to then discount them heavily. Scammers.

Anyway, I couldn't find any information at all about Firefly Ridge winery online. And all I can tell from the bottle is that the grapes come from the Central Coast and the winery is in Livermore and Ripon.

Now, as to the wine. It was crisp, light but with some body to it, easy to drink and with hints of fruit. It was almost sweet and almost bitter, but not quite. Its acidity came forward when drank in conjunction with some broiled lamb chops. In all, not an unpleasant wine, but not particularly interesting. I'd drink it, unless there was a better choice, but I wouldn't buy it again.

Mike, on the other hand, didn't like it at all, and was concerned at how much we paid for it. Live and learn.

I had a lot of mint left over from the Balti Lamb with Peas and Potatoes I cooked few days, and I wanted to use it up. So, of course, I went to epicurious.com and looked for a recipe that called for mint. Savory mint lamb chops is what I came up with. It was simple and got great reviews. The only minus is that it didn't use that much mint.

Well, I made it last night and it was absolutely delicious. The lamb chops were tender and very, very tasty. You couldn't taste the mint at all, but the marinade really enhanced the lamb flavor. In all, I loved them and I will for sure make them again. This time I served it with steamed broccoli.

I followed the original recipe closely, though I did not include the cayenne pepper, as my kids won't eat anything spicy. The reviews also suggested that the chops were better without it.

Here is the recipe:

Mint lamb chops

Ingredients

Earlier this week I noticed that a small cheesesteak restaurant had opened on Bancroft near Dutton, and today I had the opportunity to go give it a try. It was an OK experience, it's a place I'd go back but not rush back to.

Al Attles' serves hoagies and rice plates, and on this occasion both Mike and I had the steak & cheese hoagy ($8). We also ordered a portion of onion rings ($3.25).

The onion rings were fine. The breading was less flavorful than what I would have liked, and they weren't served with ranch dressing, which I would also have liked, but they tasted as if they were made with fresh oil. They weren't greasy, which I did like.

The hoagies were also much less greasy than those served at other local establishment. The meat was mostly lean, the vegetables (grilled onions, green peppers, lettuce and tomatoes) fresh, and the sandwich quite large. It was a bit unwieldy, however, and the meat kept falling off, so I mostly ended up eating a veggie sandwich. The flavor was fine, the meat (when there) was a bit overwhelmed by the other flavors, but all in all, I liked it. It didn't awe me, though.

Service was very good. The small restaurant doesn't have anything resembling ambiance, but it's a cheese steak restaurant after all.

Al Attles' California Cheese Steaks
571 Bancroft Ave.
San Leandro, Ca
510-639-3458
M-Th 11 AM - 7 PM
F 11Am - ?
Sa 12 - ?

I'm more than pleased to announce that the San Leandro Adult School will have four cooking classes for the fall semester. The classes will be on Indian Cooking (9/13), Malaysian Cooking (10/4), Thai Cooking (10/18) and South East Asian Cooking (11/8). They are all taught by Jenny Sim, a Chinese woman from Malaysia, who lived in Thailand for a long time. You may recall (or not), that I took two classes with her (on SE Asian and Malaysian cooking) last year. I enjoyed them a lot. And they have the advantage of being *only* $35 - which is /very/ cheap for a cooking class. The classes include all the food, BUT they don't have a kitchen at the adult school - so the instructor has to bring an electric wok and a camp stove.

Anyway, I'm planning to take the four classes - every time you cook different dishes. If you want to take them, you can register online at http://www.asaonlinereg.com/sanleandro/Classes.asp?txtAction=LoadSections&txtCourseGroupID=3&txtCourseCode=1425.

I just checked them out and Castro Valley Adult School has a bunch of cooking classes - some also very affordable ($40 or so). They are mostly on pastry, but they have one on pastry & one on sauces. I'm probably going to take the latter. I hear that they do have a room with multiple kitchens for these classes. Info at:

http://www.cvadult.org/culinary.html

Today at noon Mika and I found ourselves at Zocalo, with an hour to wait before picking up Camila from daycare. We hadn't had lunch, and Mika was hungry, so we studied the alternatives in the area (Bancroft & Dutton). There is Paradiso, which is good but expensive; Villa Portofino, which is not open for lunch, Al Attles' California Cheese Steaks, where Mike and I had had lunch yesterday, and the Cornestone Cafe. Clearly, the Cornerstone Cafe was our only choice (OK, we could have walked a couple of blocks and eaten at Mae's Soul Food or Tuttle's Sea Garden, but I didn't think of it, and I don't think Mika likes fried fish/chicken anyway). So to the Cornerstone Cafe we went. All in all, we had a nice meal and I'd go back with her there again.

The Cornerstone Cafe has a pretty short menu, it includes some salads, soups, pastas and sandwiches, as well as daily specials. They also have a brief kids' menu, heavy on angel hair pasta. Mika had the plain angel hair pasta, with butter and Parmesan ($3). She was very happy with it, and ate every single bit. The portion was a bit small, but it did come with bread and butter.

I once again tried the burger, this time with cheddar cheese and avocado. I ordered it medium rare, and it was a bit overdone. It was moderately juicy and it tasted better than I remembered. In all it was fine, better than what you get at most coffee shops, but not particularly great. I didn't like the fact that the burger was ready at least 5 minutes before the pasta, and they let it sit in the counter so they could serve both together. They really should work better on their timing.

The burger comes with your choice of salad, fries or something else. I went for the fries and I didn't like them. They were a bit dry and unseasoned.

Mika had a fresh-squeezed lemonade, which she liked, but found too sweet. I had a coke.

We ate at the counter and service was great. The waitress and the guy behind the counter kept checking on us, and making conversation with my little girl.

Best of all was the bill, $15.50 for the two of us. That's definitely a bargain for that type of restaurant. As I said, yesterday we ate at the Cheesesteak place and spent over $22 - granted it was for two adults, but still.

Cornerstone Cafe
600 Dutton Avenue
San Leandro
510-562-2535

Original Review

I put a bunch of new restaurant reviews online. Many of them are from my trip to the wine country this year, so I decided to create a web page exclusively for restaurants in Napa & Sonoma. It's available at http://www.marga.org/food/rest/napa.html. Mike (who edits my reviews) still owes me a few more, but for the time being here is what I have:

Bear Republic Brewery Co.
Good burgers at this famous Healdsburg eatery

Bistro de Copains
An upscale restaurant in Occidental managed to serve me a cold steak

Howard’s Cafe
Also in Occidental serves a pretty nice breakfast

KC’s Downtown Grill
Good coffee shop food in a dead town, Windsor.

Ravenous
Good food and a relaxing dinner at this Healdsburg gem

Sunflower Caffe
Great gourmet sandwiches in a funky patio

And coming back to the bay area, I posted a pretty old review of:

Sonoma’s
A San Leandro restaurant that unfortunately does not live up to its potential.

and a more recent review of:

Verbena
Good food in an office building in downtown Oakland

I've been waiting for Pho An-Ha, the new restaurant at the corner of East 14th & Estabrook to open for several months now. All the restaurants in the immediate vicinity of my house are of questionable quality, and I don't always want to cook. I figured, if Pho An-Ha is any good, I'll patronize it often.

I was in such hurry to try it, that I took the girls there for dinner last Friday night - opening day. The place was very busy, almost all tables were taken, and yet the service was responsive and attentive - though do bear in mind some of the wait staff has limited English. Still, it seemed like the whole Vietnamese community in San Leandro had come over for dinner, and they handled it very well.

I was a little bit disappointed with the menu. It's pretty heavy on pho and other noodle soup dishes ($5.75-$6.75), and I am just not one for soups. In addition they serve grilled pork, chicken and/or shrimp over rice (most $6.25-$8) or vermicelli ($6.75-$7.50). There is the possibility of getting beef stew over rice ($6.25), but that's about it: soup and grilled meats. In other words, not much in the way of variety.

I ordered the grilled pork with vermicelli for Mika and had the Pork chop with rice. I also ordered the grilled chicken appetizer ($6) to share. My conclusion was that the meats were quite good, but the portions were on the small side. The grilled chicken, in particular, consisted of 3 tiny skewers of marinated chicken that would not compare favorably (in size) to the sate you get at Thai restaurants. Still, they were almost as expensive as an entree, but they were served plain (though along with your typical vinegary sauce). In comparison, you can get a much larger portion, served with veggies, for a couple of dollars more at Le Soleil, our favorite Vietnamese bistro.

The same can be said about the two main dishes we ordered. The meats were very flavorful and very nicely grilled, but the portions of actual meat were quite small - not a good deal in comparison to Le Soleil.

I should note, however, that each diner gets a free soda (not necessarily a good thing when you are having lunch with little kids - they don't offer juice or even lemonade as an alternative). They do have strawberry milkshakes, however. The one we had that night - before Mika spilled it all over the table, the floor and herself - was delicious, almost as good as those at Vo's. But when we went a couple of days later just to get a couple of shakes, someone else was making them and they weren't that good. Camila didn't even drink hers (which really, given how caloric these things are, wasn't a bad thing).

The restaurant itself is devoid of ambiance. The place used to be a video store, and later a hip-hop clothing store, and it hasn't changed much. There are a couple of large screen TVs mounted on the sides, though thankfully the sound was turned off while we were there.

Service, on the other hand, was fantastic. After Mika spilled the shake on herself, we hurried home to change her, promising to come back later (we live a hundred feet away). We did, and I guess they hadn't believed our promise, for they had cleared our table and stopped our orders. They were so apologetic for that, however, that they hurried our orders, gave us more free soda and discounted our meals - and they didn't even include the shake we'd wasted on the bill. So yeah, I feel a little bit bad writing that the place is not necessarily a good value.

In all, I liked the food at Pho Anh-Ha and given the proximity to my house, I imagine I'll eat there often - but it won't replace Le Soleil as my favorite Vietnamese restaurant.

Pho Anh-Ha
2089 E 14th St Unit A1
San Leandro, CA
510-357-6888
M-Su, 10 AM - 9 PM

San Leandro Restaurant Reviews

Bay Area Restaurant Reviews

We had this wine last night at Rick & Anne's restaurant in Berkeley. It was modestly priced at $28, and we all loved it - even I, who does not in general like Merlots. This one in particular had a full body, was quite fruity without being sweet, and it was very well balanced - a hearty wine. There was little acidity and no tannins I could discern. I checked and it's about $16-19 online. Apparently the Safeway close to my house has the 2003 on sale for $15 - so, even though I promised never to buy wine at Safeway again, I may pick up a bottle next time I go there.

Every time I go to Argentina, I bring back a bottle of dulce de leche liqueur. I'm not big liqueur person, but dulce de leche liqueur is amazingly delicious.

Today I saw a couple of bottles of Dulseda Dulce de Leche liqueur in the bargain bin at Safeway - for $12 a bottle - and given that my last bottle has been finished several months, I decided to buy it. It turned out that $12 was a bargain, bottles of dulseda start at $20 online. It also turned out to be delicious. It's made with rum, rather than whole alcohol, which makes it smooth and creamy, without a sharp alcoholic bent. I really enjoyed it and, if it wasn't for the fact that it's only early afternoon, I'd have drank a whole glass. We need to return to Safeway, and I hope the other bottle is still there, so we can snatch it.

During our trip to the wine country last month, we visited Cline Cellars, where we tried some very interesting wine. We generally liked them, so when I saw their 2006 Zinfandel at TJ's (a wine we hadn't tried), I figured it was worth $8 (or so). I think it is.

I like the wine. It's not my favorite, but it's nice. It's full bodied and dry, with fruity undertones. There is some acidity and some bitterness, perhaps a bit too much of the latter for my taste. But all in all, a good wine for the price.

Yesterday I made some strawberry ice cream from the Ben and Jerry's ice cream book, and it was amazingly delicious. I'm not really a fan of strawberry ice cream, but this one was out of this world. I'm sure part of the reason was that I used fresh strawberries bought that same day at the farmers' market. Definitely use fresh strawberries if you can.

Strawberry Ice Cream