Left Coast Leener

Went to eat at Fresca last night with some Israeli friends. They insist that they're not religious but traditional, so they all keep kosher. Not necessarily the bless-your-oven and properly-butcher-your-meat type of kosher, but they refused to have dessert because there were only dairy options, and we all had meat. But get this: they had shrimp, calamari, little octopuses (octopi?) and other unkosher kinds of seafood - is there even a kosher kind. Make up your minds, people!

On the plus side, it was all delicious. I ordered most of the dishes myself and I'm please to say that everyone was very happy with my selections. The sampler of 6 seviches was fucking awesome, and because I ordered, I left off the ones with avocado and jalapeno and happily sampled all of them!

Russians eat soup with every lunch (or it might be more correct to say dinner in this context), but Americans have it as a meal. I've never even heard Americans delineate everyday meals into the three courses that Russians do.

Meanwhile, Andy doesn't usually like soup, but I do, so we compromise and I make it infrequently. Usually, he eats it on the first day and I have it for lunch for a few days thereafter - I tend to make a big pot.

Here are some soups I've been liking to make lately:
Avgolemono
Creamed spinach soups of various kinds (or kale, too)
Ochazuke
Easy borscht: store-bought borscht soup base plus diced beets, cucumber, hardboiled eggs and sour cream (OK, it's actually more like холодник)
And maybe some other ones I'm forgetting. Maybe my brain turned to soup, too.

ETA: Thank you star_invention for reminding me of my other favorites:
Miso (with tofu and rice or noodles to make a full meal)
Chicken soup with matzoh balls
Creamy tomato
Various kinds of mushroom

After a total of 15 years of living in San Francisco, I finally made it to the infamous Stinking Rose.

So NOT worth it!

If you're going for that ambiance, then sure. And when I say ambiance, I mean stupid, drunken tourists. One of the people I was with tried to argue that she's also drunk and not exactly local, but she wasn't remotely as stupid as the pubic I encountered there.

And the food wasn't worth the expense and the parking troubles, either. I've been dying to try the chicken with the 40 cloves of garlic - the thought of spreading sweet, gooey, melting roasting garlic on toast was more than I could resist. The notion of garlicky mashed potatoes was appealing. But alas, the garlic, although there were more than 40 cloves thereof, was merely warmed through. The bagna cauda appetizer was the spreadable quality of garlic I was looking for, and that's what I ate. And added to the mashed potatoes. The chicken was good, but hey, even I have recently mastered good chicken, so I wasn't impressed. And no toast!

Andy had meatloaf. It was OK and not that garlicky. He also added a shitlot of garlic to his mashed potatoes.

By the time dessert time rolled around, I was kind of wanting a tiramisu, but since we're at the fucking Stinking Rose, we should get garlic ice cream, and we did. I did like the savory caramel sauce, I love a good caramel. The ice cream was OK, but either my tongue was worn out from the other garlic, or all that was in it was a sharp aftertaste, but I wasn't impressed with that, either.

We should have known something was up when one of the first things the waiter pointed out was the garlic, parsley and oil relish that adorned our table. You know, just in case your food wasn't garlicky enough.

In other words, don't bother. I should have gone ahead with my original plan to experiment and make the 42-clove chicken my damn self.

In the recent NYT article Why do Russians Hate Ice, the author with the unlikely last name Simone neglects to mention the most asinine of reasons why this is so: Russians think that the cold begets the cold, as in the virus. Now, I have no scientific basis handy to deny that if the body is cold it is more susceptible to viruses - mostly because I know the opposite to be true, as in we have fevers for a reason. But the heating of ice cream and the constant fear of drafts and the wearing of чепчики that plagues Russian children are in my opinion completely unwarranted and downright cruel. The whole thing really reminds me of the plot of Похороните меня за плинтусом, which is a book about an exercise in child cruelty by love.

My high school biology teacher, who taught me the only vestiges of science I remember, always told us that we can go dancing naked in the freezing SF rain and no illness will befall us if no source of infection is present. I believe him, and I say this as a person who caught their first cold in at least 2 years during the hottest days of the year.

Now, there are such aspects as brain-freeze headaches and the watering down of drinks that are perfectly valid reasons not to consume ice. It's also true that in many cities the quality of ice is at best uncertain and at worse certainly terrible. But this should not and does not apply to all things cold, which can and should be enjoyed by the people (provided their teeth are insensitive enough).

How many of you saw this and immediately thought of me? As if I didn't have enough reasons to hate Michele Bachmann!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Moment of Zen - Michele Bachmann Loves Celery
www.thedailyshow.com

If anybody local is going to Ikea anytime soon and feel like picking up a treat for me, I want Seaweed Topping. It sounds mysterious and a little nefarious, but it looks just like black caviar, except it costs $1.99. It doesn't taste much like black caviar, but the texture and saltiness are pretty satisfying. They also have Herring roe for the same price, so some of that would be great, too. In fact, no less than 2 of each, please. I will certainly pay you back!

Объясните мне, пожалуйста, суть пельменей в горшочке. Они там в бульоне что ли? В соусе? У меня и так обсессия на пельмени, но я в этом вопросе жуткий консерватор - немного масла и сметаны. Кстати, я думала что я раньше рассказывала какой у меня муж извращенец - ел пельмени с соусом песто и пармезаном. Но недавно оказалось что это ему надоело и теперь он их есть с гремучей смесью бальзамического уксуса и сметаны. Хоть ближе к истине.

I constantly see, hear and read about how much people like Russian chocolate. Sometimes it's the stuff from their childhood, sometimes it's the newfangled aerated stuff. I just don't get it. It totally tastes bland to me and I don't like the sort of stuff that usually gets added to it. I just found in my snack drawer 2 chocolate bars that were given to me as "just because you did me a favor" gift with such a context where I was expected to be endlessly grateful to the gifter and be very excited. Well, they're both quite disgusting, even though theoretically they are both things I like - dark with nuts. And no, they're not old.

I remember way back asking in my LJ about Russian конфеты and not getting anything useful as an answer. In terms of those, I have happily stuck to the dry коровки caramels and occasionally, a waffle cone filled with mousse. But none of the chocolate-covered items appeal to me, be they containing wafers or other tooth-breaking implements.

It's not that I don't like Russian desserts altogether. Some I do, some I don't, like most people. I adore meringues, for example, and I will do many things for Napoleon. But this obsession of bringing chocolate bars as gifts and asking for them to be brought from Russia while claiming that nothing local is as good or better, that I just don't get. Maybe they add some special nostalgia chemicals to them.

In other disturbing news, my gray cat is being extremely whiny and needy and is trying to eat books and paw me in the face. I hope she's not pining for chocolate.

Мне кажется что моему мужу нравится нямка. То есть та нямка которую он попробовал и та которую я ему теоритически описывала. Оливье с майонезиком, мясо по-французски, "пицца"... Конечно, если там нет рыбных продуктов. Еще не познала его реакцию на слоеные салатики и "украшенные" блюда, но я думаю что если сами ингредиенты его не будут смущать, остальное не помеха.

А вообще, let's face it, муж любит майонез. Это похоже у них фамильное. Даже мои котлеты с ним ест (ну, и с тещиным хреном тоже). Представляю что бы было если бы он до конца был знаком с концепцией нямки, или хотя бы читал по-русски.

I'm not a huge fan of peaches, but I'll watch and try to make just about anything Good Eats. I like Alton Brown so much I don't even care that he's a krazy kristian. I had a few apples and I improvised this upside down cake recipe. My changes (besides swapping he fruit) included making them in a muffin pan and replacing ginger with cinnamon. There will be no pictures since they're quite ugly and already half-eaten. In retrospect, I should have let them sit longer and let the batter seep in more.