Beaucoup d’Amuses Bouche; More Shuck for your Buck; The Delicious DISH post

Today, I requested a split shift at work, so that I could meet my friend, Elissa, at the SF Weekly 5^th Annual DISH event [http://microapp.sfweekly.com/dish/2012/] that featured restaurants from around the Bay Area. Her friends and cousin were there as well, which made the event all the merrier. Elissa had gotten us tickets, because her uncle, who works at SF Weekly, wasn’t able to make it- thank you, uncle! I was so happy she invited me, because I get this natural high or instant elation when surrounded by culinary offerings- not having to pay for them doesn’t hurt much either.

                   

                           

                           

The event was full of foodies and featured restaurants and brands such as Farina, Mission Minis, and Zico Coconut Water. With so many things to taste, it was a bit hard to remember everything I served to my taste buds. Some of the dishes that stood out were the chilled cucumber soup with crème fraiche, the bitter lemon tonic water, and the oysters. The oysters.

Oyster station

I must say, the raw oysters on the half shell at the Farallon station stand out most in my memory because of the hilarious oyster massacre Elissa and her friends, James and Devon, committed. We were starting to head towards the exit, moaning about our stuffed stomachs when we passed by the oyster table. Since the event was coming to an end, the Farallon chefs were shucking all the remaining oysters and doling them out. This caught Elissa, James, and Devon’s eyes, and their mouths followed. They slurped up a few oysters and appeared satisfied, but the oysters kept coming, and it seemed they couldn’t resist the alluring gleam of the shells, so they kept eating. They were more impressive than the Walrus from Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum’s story, “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” in Alice in Wonderland.  Laughing, I asked Elissa how they could fit so many oysters after eating everything else. She replied, “They’re $4 a piece usually!” Moral of the story: “Don’t be a shmuck! Get more shuck for your buck!”

No Meat Week; Mean Meat?; The Fast Post

I haven't been making any meals with anyone lately, so I've been on a bit of a cooking up conversations fast. I also took this week as a break from meat after eating every kind of animal with my family last weekend. Chinese have a knack for finding ways to prepare every kind and every part of an animal. I'm not sure if this is just me, but I felt that I was more gentle and less aggressive than usual. Then when I started eating a little meat again, I felt a change. I would sometimes find it difficult to be caring and almost felt meaner. I've heard some vegetarians and vegans say they also felt less aggressive after giving up meat. I haven't done enough research to state this opinion with confidence, but perhaps people are more aggressive when they eat meat, because evolutionarily speaking, hunters had to have a certain amount of aggression to hunt and kill their prey. If anyone has more specific information on this, I'd love to hear what you've read or heard. Does meat make us meaner?

Lunch in Lake Merritt; Amateur Food Photography; The Patty Pan Post

This is going to be mostly a photographic blog post, which is quite fitting since one of my meal-mates, Sean, is a photographer. Last Sunday, he, my friend Elan, and I made lunch together at Sean’s gorgeous Lake Merritt apartment in Oakland, a place where everything is magically photographable. Sean cooked up some apple-wood smoked bacon, I brought veggies and organic chicken sausage (summer squash again!) to make a frittata, and Elan made some decadent brownies with brown-butter frosting. I tried to capture this all on my Canon G11, but I'm still an amateur compared to all the food photographers out there. Hopefully, practice and learning more Photoshop skills will help. It was a wonderfully relaxing Sunday afternoon, also enjoyed by Sean’s cat, Moses aka Mo aka Mojo (what I like to call him). The other kitty Ellie, preferred to keep to herself under the sink. Once we were all pregnant with bacon, eggs, and patty pan squash (my favorite summer squash- it reminds me of a Peter Pan collar), we took a walk around the bright blue lake that showcased all the panoply of Oakland wildlife including egrets, wild geese, and the more common species, picnickers. It was a Sunday well spent- with good food, good friends, and cats.

Sliced Patty Pan!

Makon Bakon

The bright green fava beans were hand-shucked by Sean himself.

     

Doggies and their paddlers

Me and my new cat shorts