Today was Memorial Day and I had a BBQ. I figured it’d be a good reason to clean the backyard – and indeed, we did, which makes me very happy. We even put up the new hammock I bought last year.
Our friends Desiree and her kids were over, as well as Parker, Donovan and their kids. A good group.
Desiree brought a salad and brownies for dessert. I made a potato salad, which everyone liked. I also barbecued some chicken thighs using the method outlined here. I didn’t make the BBQ sauce but used E&J barbecue sauce instead. I managed not to burn the chicken this time (OK, I only burnt it a little), and it tasted pretty good. I did have to adjust the time, as thighs cook quicker than a whole chicken.
The main dish, however, were blue cheese burgers. This time I used ground beef and also added bacon bits (fried bacon that had been crumbled) to the blue cheese and made the burgers with 1/2 lb of meat each. They were huge, but people did eat them. Mike thought they were “awesome”.
I had some corn to grill, but I completely forgot about it. Oh well.
Author: marga (Page 61 of 112)
Today was not my day. I made both ribs and peanut butter ice cream, and both of them were a failure.
For the ribs, I used this recipe for Memphis Style Ribs, from the BBQ Bible, a book that has given me many a good recipe. However, either the instructions of how to cook the ribs were wrong, or I just didn’t know how to follow them, for I completely burnt them. They were pretty much inedible. I still have a rack of spareribs and I will have to find another method for cooking them.
The problem with the peanut butter ice cream was not the recipe, but me. I just overcooked the custard base, This created a heavy custard with almost (but not quite) a chalky consistency that would not aerate or freeze properly. The results weren’t bad per se – it tastes good – but it doesn’t quite have the consistency of ice cream. Still, I’m finishing it. I may try the recipe again sometime, though I’ll probably look for a simpler one.
Tomorrow is Memorial Day and I’m planning on cooking several things (burgers, chicken, potato salad). I’m a little apprehensive now. Wish me luck!
Wednesday evening we went to the Downtown Farmers’ Market again. This time they had family entertainment and a few different stands, including one that serves coffee drinks and another one selling beautiful baskets. There is also now a place selling corn-on-the-cob, which the kids enjoyed.
Mike and I had the teriyaki chicken and beef at Meyers BBQ stand. They were both quite good, but not exceptional. The meat was very thin, tender and a little fatty. The portions were large enough for dinner, in particular if accompanied by rice. Chicken skewers are $6, beef $7, add $2 for a large portion of fried rice (which wasn’t that good).
The International Food Market opened on the little outside mall where Prince Dim Sum House is located, a few months ago. I went to visit it a couple of weeks ago after having lunch at Prince.
The store is not very big but has big intentions. It sells Greek, Asian, Middle Eastern and Mexican products. You can find Indian spices and Mexican spices (not on the same isle), cheap avocados and fresh eggs, lots of boxes of Greek products and so forth. Their inventory is pretty eclectic and you really need to drop by (or, more conveniently, call) to see if they sell something in particular. I think the market will be most useful for Greek and Middle Eastern products, as there are plenty of stores specializing on Asian and Mexican products in town. I don’t know how big the market is for what they do offer, and I’m concerned that the store may not survive. The woman who runs it, Eleni, is very nice and I’d like to see it succeed.
Now a note to my readers: please let me know of specific markets in San Leandro (and vicinities) that deserve to be visited and mentioned in this blog.
International Food Market
14624 East 14th Ave.
San Leandro, CA
510-352-1600
M-Sa 8:30 AM – 7:30 PM
Su – 10 AM – 6 PM
My friend Lola and I went on weekend trip to the Gold Country last weekend, and spent Sunday morning wine tasting in the Shenondoah Valley. We hit 6 wineries, had a wonderful time and discovered a new and fantastic wine growing and wine making region. Pretty much every wine I tasted was good to very good, at one of the wineries I found some of my favorite wines ever. I was astounded, because I thought that that little known region would produce sub-par wines, I was definitely wrong.
Another great thing about tasting in Shenondoah is that none of the wineries had tasting fees and most of them offered a lot of wines for tasting. Indeed, after the first winery I limited myself to tasting four wines per winery, as I wanted to be able to hit as many as possible without getting tipsy.
Amador County specializes on Zinfandels, though Sangioveses and Barberas are also quite popular. Most of the Zinfs I tasted were very good, hearty yet balanced, and in the future I’ll look for Amador County when I go Zinf-buying.
Lola and I spent a nice weekend in the Gold Country which culminated with a late lunch in Auburn. We basically headed to the old town, and had lunch in the first place that caught our eye – we got lucky, because Auburn Alehouse serves very good food.
The restaurant is stylish, and doesn’t really look like a beer joint. We were seated by the window and had a nice view of the antique market going on that weekend. Though the place was somewhat noisy, it was pretty relaxing for us.
The menu offers sophisticated versions of American classics. For example my burger was made with Kobe beef. Prices are a little high with appetizers averaging $8-9, sandwiches for $9-12 and main dishes from $10-25. But portions are very large and you feel you get your money’s worth.
As I mentioned, I ordered the Kobe burger, a 1/2 lb patty that comes with bacon, avocado, American cheese, tomato and lettuce ($11). I substituted the fries for onion strings ($1 additional). The burger was cooked a little bit browner than the medium-rare I ordered, but it was still very juicy. The meat itself was very tender, but I otherwise could not distinguish a special taste to the kobe beef. The whole thing worked very well together, and I enjoyed it. The crispy onion strings were severely underseasoned, but they were good with some salt added. In all, I enjoyed the dish and would order it again.
Lola had the BBQ pork sandwich ($8.50) with a side salad. The BBQ pork was excellent, very flavorful with an intense BBQ sauce. I’d definitely order it myself. She liked the salad which had a simple vinaigrette, she particularly enjoyed the arugula and felt the greens were quite fresh. She also couldn’t finish the whole thing.
We decided to skip dessert as they are all quite pricey ($7.50!).
I’ll definitely eat here again next time I find myself in Auburn.
Auburn Alehouse
289 Washington Street
Auburn CA
530-885-2537
http://auburnalehouse.com/
Restaurant Reviews
Yesterday my friend Lola and I went to California’s Gold Country, for our yearly girls’ weekend out. We drove east until we heat 49, and then north. We stopped in Sonora for lunch. We picked Alfredo’s as it was the first restaurant we walked by after we parked.
Alfredo’s occupies a very nice room in historical downtown Sonora. The main wall is brick with recessed shelves here and there displaying Maya and Aztec ceramics. Other walls have orange hues and there are couple of large stereotypical Mexican wall paintings. It’s both stylish and informal at the same time.
Service was very good, the waiter was very attentive – and chips and drinks, and then food, came quickly to the table.
The major problem we had with Alfredo’s was the food. It was just bland. Nothing had been adequately salted or spiced – it’s as if they were cooking for middle-American seniors with high blood pressure (which may be their target audience, for all I know). The menu was your typical Tex-Mex, with entrees at $9 to $12.50. There is also a children’s menu.
I ordered the Botana Combo ($8.75), which included four different appetizers: a good portion of guacamole, 4 beef taquitos, 1 plain quesadilla and 3 bacon wrapped shrimp. None of it was good. I love guacamole, but this one needed some lemon to perk it up. You could taste the corn tortillas on the taquitos, but the meat filling was to bland to come through. The quesadilla was just a cheese stuffed tortilla, with nothing to make it special. And while I didn’t try the shrimp, as I don’t like shrimp at all, Lola thought they were quite mediocre.
Lola had the same complaints of blandness vis a vis her entree, a combo plate of a beef tamale and a chicken enchilada ($10.55). She described the enchilada as “just an American enchilada” and while she praised the fluffy and light masa of the tamale, she thought the filling was bland and unsurprising.
As you’d expect, we wouldn’t stop at Alfredo’s again – but if you prefer bland food, this may be the place for you.
Alfredo’s Mexican Restaurant
123 S. Washington St.
Sonora, CA
(209) 532-8332
As I reported before, San Leandro has a new Farmers’ Market, this time downtown. The downtown market is located on Parrot street, in front of The Englander and will operate throughout the summer on Wednesday evenings from 4 pm – 8 pm. The market was inaugurated yesterday, with a ribbon cutting ceremony involving the local politicos.
I think I like this farmer’s market more than the one at Bayfair – which seems to be getting smaller. For one, it has more activities for children – including a stand where you can get elaborate balloon animals/characters made for only $3, another where you can get a caricature made for $10 (this was not a cheap trip to the FM) and one with face painting and so forth (which we fortunately avoided). They also have activities for adults, yesterday was cooking demonstrations (which I didn’t stay for). They’ll also have family entertainment, live music and wine tastings in subsequent Wednesdays.
As you would expect, there were several fruit and veggie stands – lots of ripe strawberries, cherries and even raspberries. There were a couple of bakeries, one stand selling honey, one selling Indian breads & spreads and another one a variety of dips. There was a flower stand, a fish stand and an egg stand – which means that if we miss the quail eggs on Saturday, we’ll be able to get them on Wednesdays.
As far as food went, there is a tamales stand, a stand selling foot-long hot-dogs and teriyaki sticks ($6-9, I think) and The Englander has a burger stand. Unwisely, we decided to eat at The Englander instead, so we didn’t get to actually taste the food from there. Next week.
I’ve heard rumors that Zocalo may open a stand at the farmers’ market to sell its beans.
Here are some pictures of the market:
My sister Kathy is in town and she likes me making her rum-based mixed drinks in the evenings. I seldom do it, and I’m not always successful, but last night she was insistent so I searched through the net for something I could do with the ingredients we had at home. What I came up with was this recipe for Pink Paradise, which I modified to suit the ingredients available at home. She liked it and I made her quite a bit of it 🙂
- 2 oz Pineapple Juice
- 3 oz Cranberry Cocktail
- 2 oz Coconut Rum
- 1/2 oz Orgeat
Mix everything together. Serve over ice.
I’ve driven by Coffee Time countless times, but I had never had a reason to stop here. I usually do my coffee-drinking at Zocalo, and I rarely hang out in the Marina area. However, today I went to lunch with my friend Aamani to Zen’s Filipino Cuisine and we wanted to get a coffee, in lieu of dessert, afterwards. So Coffee Time it was.
Coffee Time is a very small coffee shop. Inside there is barely space for a counter, a tiny kitchen and a few knick knacks. The place has character, however, like something you’d find in a beach town. There are three or four tables in a small covered patio outside, right next to the parking lot. It’s a very relaxing place to seat in a sunny afternoon – even when you get to witness a police arrest (they did it very quietly).
I didn’t ask Aamani how her iced coffee was. My peanut butter chocolate drink was mostly air, but it was refreshing enough. Not sure if I’d order it again. But if I lived in the neighborhood, I’d definitely frequent the place.
They serve a variety of sandwiches for lunch, perhaps one day I’ll give them a try.
Coffee Time
2105 Doolittle Dr
San Leandro, CA
(510) 895-5997
San Leandro Restaurant Reviews
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