Lots of food photos this week.  Tuesday, I got to eat lunch at Chez Panisse and Thursday I got to take a food tour of the Gourmet Ghetto, a small area in Berkeley where there is lots of terrific food.

Mecca.  I met Tracy and Allison there.  We had a lovely lunch, the space is so pretty and we had terrific service.  I have to say, I was underwhelmed by the food.  I know it is simple, I was ready for simple.  I like simple.  Nothing was bad, just not what I imaged Chez Panisse would be.

Pizza with wild mushrooms and gremolata.  The mushrooms were stellar, the rest was, um, underwhelming.

The best part about lunch, aside from the lovely company, was a jar of these of these candied citrus peels.  I don’t think I would ever had had the patience to make them myself, so I am grateful to have them!

A soup of my own creation – so good I made it twice.  I know I owe you LOADS of recipes but this one will be first up.

I also sautéed up a big batch of tofu.  Tip – use extra firm, marinate in tamari (or other soy sauce) for about an hour.  Dry fry in a non-stick pan, taking care to keep turning the tofu so it browns on (almost) all sides.  If you think tofu is mushy or flavorless, try it this way.

I went on a Gourmet Ghetto tour with Edible Excursions and the amazing Sarah was my leader.  The Gourmet Ghetto is a small few blocks radius area in North Berkeley around Chez Panisse.  Many restaurants and food shops have sprung up around there in the years that Alice Waters has been changing America’s ideas about food.  The tour was a really nice mix of old traditional places and new start ups and we had many many good bites.  I was incredibly full by the end and had learned a lot.  The above photo is of an amazing chocolate tasting at Alegio Chocolate.  We had lots of samples but I was blown away by their simple 70% chocolate which only contains cacao and sugar.  We tasted it alongside another “premium” chocolate that has vanilla extract in their chocolate and, after Alegio’s, the competitor tasted like perfume.

I like ice cream as much as the next person but it surprised me that the best thing I ate all day was the gelato at Lush Gelato.  We got to taste as many flavors as we wanted and then got a cup to take outside with us.  I tasted every chocolate flavor (because tastes don’t count, right?), then settled on the chocolate orange sorbet and the apple sorbet.  I was totally blown away by the chocolate sorbet – incredibly creamy and very subtle orange flavor.

Potato Puffs.  Think fried mashed potato balls with a tartar sauce like dip.  Crazy good and addictive.

This is the sign at the Cheeseboard Collective.  Those are all cheese that are available on a given day.  That place is amazing and inspiring.  It features a pizza everyday (one that people wait in line for), as well as terrific baked goods.  We got to taste their sourdough and it was super sour and crisp.  I bought English muffins to take home and some of their pizza dough because, as easy as it is to  make your own dough, it’s even easier to buy it.  My boys Freaked Out about the muffins.  They are amazing.

The pizza that day.  Mushrooms, ricotta salata, scallions, sesame oil.  Doesn’t sound like it should work but it did beautifully.  Much better than the pizza I had at Chez Panisse.

One of our favorite holiday traditions when we lived in Seattle, was to go to our friends Jenn and Jos’s house.  The decorated their beautiful house with incredible gusto and good taste.  They always strung these little mittens across their fireplace and I was enchanted by them.  Each year, I would ask where they got them and each year I would forget to buy them.  Jenn and Jos came to visit us about a month ago and they brought us our very own mittens.  I was so touched.  Each one is filled with a little gift and the boys have LOVED opening them.  See San Francisco in the background?

I knew I was missing Cheryl’s cookbook on my bookshelf.  I didn’t know that I was also missing all of these other ones.  Turns out they were all partying together in a forgotten box but are now in their rightful place.

Last week I had to give up my beloved Washington state plates.

It was Graham’s birthday.  I wrote a post about him.  Thank you to all of you who commented or emailed.  I appreciate all of you.

Birthdays around here mean lots of treats.  There was ice cream at the best place in Berkeley.

Cupcakes in the classroom.  (Some of the kids didn’t like the frosting.  WEIRD.)

There was a birthday cake with two kind of homemade ice cream, chocolate glaze and homemade toffee.

The boys started karate.  When they first came out in these outfits, I almost died.  They were so proud.

Their favorite part of that experience was the fact that we went through a drive-thru and they got to have french fries.  Their first fast food.  Spencer said, “Mommy, why do these taste so good?”

In other news, I have a persimmon tree in my backyard.  Unfortunately these are the type of persimmon that need to be super ripe to use and the birds are eating them before I can get to them.

It was a spectacularly rainy weekend in the Bay Area.  Like scary rainy.  There were rivers off rain pouring off the Oakland hills and puddles the size of small lakes on the streets.  Our house held up with no flooding and no leaking.  Phew.

How was your holiday?  Or, if you are not American, how was your week?  We had a busy holiday week in Seattle and a quiet week before that.  I’m going to squish the two together in one post.  By the way, above is my new neighborhood with its new sign outside the BART station.  You can also see my two little monkeys who always want to climb on it.

Places I Ate:

Friends came to town and we decided to do a dinner in San Francisco.  I got this restaurant recommendation from a trusted source but it was sadly not a win for me.  Our friends, who both got the fried chicken, thought it was great.  If you are vegetarian, don’t go to Maverick.

THE perfect place if you are missing Seattle, happen to be in Seattle, and want to eat Seattle food.  We had a terrific meal with our friends John and Lauren at Sitka and Spruce.  It was a favorite of mine when I lived there and there is a good reason for that.  Everything I ate that night was amazing.

On the other end of the spectrum, Claim Jumper.  It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving; we were simultaneously celebrating birthdays for my mom, Graham, my niece, and sister-in-law; we had four kids who were crazy excited to see each other and Claim Jumper was perfect.  Baked potato and salad, all the way.

Certainly the loveliest meal I had was at my friend Julie’s house.  She was a doll and hosted a lunch for me and a few friends who happened to be both in town and not wrangling kids on a Wednesday morning when there was no school.  True to Julie’s amazing hospitality skills, we had terrific snacks, a truly inspired and well balanced lunch complete with a favorite bottle of wine, and a beautiful table to sit at and enjoy each others company.

Things I Ate:

I ate a lot in two weeks.  ‘Tis the season, right?  I didn’t take pictures of most but here are a few.

The truly wonderful Sarah took me to a terrific taco joint (helmed by a former Chez Panisse alumni – only in Oakland) where we shared a quesadilla stuffed with squash and this amazing salad.  You know how much I love salad and this was one of the better ones I’ve tasted.  Persimmons, pomegranates, jicama, cucumber, perfect avocado (I love California!), crunchy sweet seeds, springy butter lettuce, and the perfect super tangy dressing that seemed to not have any oil in it, yet clinged so nicely to everything.  I WILL be attempting to recreate this.

What do you know?  Another salad.  This one has a (short) story.  We were due to fly out of Oakland at 10am on Monday but something went wrong with our airplane and they cancelled our flight.  We found this out after we had been waiting at the airport for two hours.  We were able to get on a 5pm flight out of San Francisco and because we had parked right at the Oakland airport (I love a small airport!), we piled back in the car and went in search of lunch.  We decided to go to Lake Merritt, a part of Oakland that we had not explored yet, and of course settled on Mexican food.  It is the de facto choice when the boys are involved.  I almost always order some form of taco salad and this one was a stunner.  Needed salt though.

This was my plate at Julie’s.  Mushroom tart, incredible brussels sprouts salad with pickled onions (she sent me the recipe, I’m making it soon), her version of the No-Knead bread with walnuts and truffle oil (amazing!), my friend Jane’s celery root salad, and a sweet little corn muffin with honey butter made by my friend Deb.  THAT my friends, was a meal.

Oh my.  Obviously I didn’t eat this, but I sure did drink it.  Our friends who came to visit will be getting married in February.  It will be a doubly sweet wedding because their marriage, thanks to the inspired voters of Washington state, will finally be legal.  We needed to celebrate that and what better way to do it than with a truly special bottle of bubbly.  I’ve only had Dom three times in my life and it is a very special thing.

Things I Made:

Cookies.  Not chocolate.  Still good.

Pumpkin bread courtesy of Ashley.  It was super moist and I loved the seeds on top.  I have to say I like my favorite better though.

The cake I wished I could have made for Thanksgiving.  If only it could have survived a plane flight.  My mom looked up the original recipe and it was indeed from Sunset from 1976!

Miscellaneous:

Lake Merritt.  Megan, once an Oakland dweller and now a Seattleite, calls it “ugly Greenlake”.  I think it has its own charm.

These days I feel like there are very few surprises in life.  And even fewer in the mail.  Bills, catalogs, an occasional food magazine.  Harry and David sent me a note saying that they were going to send me three exciting boxes in the coming months.  I was floored.  Even more so when the Washington state apples arrived.

My dad playing the airplane game with my boys.  It is one of the silly games that is impossible to explain, both the mechanics of it and exactly why it makes the boys giggle uncontrollably.  This is what grandparents do best.

Guess what?  Last post was my 700th.  Whaaaat?  Do we even count anymore when we get that high?  I guess I do.  As always when I hit these milestones, I want to thank you for being here.  When I was waiting in line to meet Deb last weekend, before we bailed because we didn’t want to wait three hours, two lovely young women recognized me from this blog and said hello.  I can’t tell you how happy that made me.  I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to read your comments and emails and to know that yes, in fact there are people out there reading what I write, making the recipes that I post.  It is terrific and I sincerely thank you for being along on this journey with me.

Last week started off warm.  I decided to honor the 80+ degree day rather than the calendar with my shoe choice.

I spent a morning at the DMV beginning the process of getting a California license and license plate.  Randy thought I should bring our marriage license with me which, as it turns out, I needed.  It has killer whales on it.  I love that.

Farmers’ market in Berkeley.  The variety of what is available there is shocking and inspiring.  Of course I bought some of those shelling beans.  They are one of my favorite ingredients.  (See this stew.)

I also bought some basil to make pesto.  I thought I had missed the “buy lots of basil for little money and make pesto to store in the freezer” window, but that window is open longer in California.  This is, by the way, the best way to store basil.  In water like flowers and leave it out at room temperature.  Change the water if you have it out longer than a few days.  Mine kept for five days before I got around to the pesto and was as perky as the day I bought it.

Speaking of pesto, throw a couple of raw spinach leaves in with the mix and it will keep your pesto from turning brown.

Snail.  On my front door.

Rain.  That feels like the November I know and love.

Enough said.

Navy blue nails and the ring I got for my tenth anniversary.  We bought it in South Africa.  (I still owe you one more post from that trip…)

We went to a Cal game on Saturday night.  Before moving here, I might have said Berkeley game.  Because Berkeley is what the rest of the country calls the university that is in Berkeley.  Am I right?  Here they call it Cal.  Anyway, the game started at 7:30 and it was freezing out.

So the boys had to have new hats.

Family shot.

Ghiradelli chocolate on sale.  It is the favorite chocolate of the folks at Cook’s Illustrated.  Did you know that?

I burned my finger while making quesadillas for the kids.  Not a bad burn at all, but still a burn.  Spencer disappeared after lunch and came back with a band-aid for me, then he drew me this picture, and then he got me a glass of water with ice.  I almost never pat myself on the back for being a good mom but I did that day.  Clearly all the hugs, and wiped noses, and kissed boo-boo’s have made an impact on him and have helped give him a surprising amount of empathy for a 5¾-year old.  In other news, I am the only person in my family who has hair and all of us have arms coming out of our heads.

Laksa.  Rice noodles and lots of veggies + tofu in a coconut milk broth.

Oooh boy.  This one is late.  I thought about just not posting my Slice of Life because it was kind of a quiet week and it’s Wednesday already, but I fear I am slipping down the rabbit hole of not posting.  Not good.  I miss you guys.  I miss writing.  I know that “I’m sorry I haven’t written” posts are (snore!) so boring, so I will spare you and promise to do better.  I have so much food backlogged that I want to tell you about and I double pinky swear and cross my heart that it is coming your way.

Eyes in my front yard.

Given the choice, I would wear a dress everyday.  Well, I guess I do have a choice but I don’t have a lot of day dresses.  I found this one, black and simple, in Oakland and I lurve it.

Spencer and a buddy at the school Halloween party.

Graham in the Halloween parade.

I bought these shoes last year in Seattle.  They are super comfortable.  I guess shoe shots are going to be a constant in the round-ups.

A super tasty barley dish from the new Jerusalem cookbook.  So good.

There was a little restaurant on the main strip in our neighborhood that I never got to try.  That is the bad news.  The good news is that it was bought by the folks who own A16 so Oakland is getting its very own A16.

Our school auction was on Saturday.  The theme was Hollywood.  Some people dressed in costume, others just got super glam.  I decided to channel my inner Louise Brooks and go 1920’s style.

Graham wrote his own name on his hot chocolate at Starbucks.

“Close the door!”  (What I used to say in Seattle.)  “Leave the door open!”  (What I say in Oakland.)

Denise and I waited an hour just to buy a book and then were told that we would have to wait in another line to get it signed.  We took one look at the line snaked around the block, twice as long as the one we had just waited in, and bailed.  Bummer because I really like Deb’s site and was looking forward to telling her so.

Isn’t lemongrass beautiful?  It also has one of the best smells in the entire universe.

Chile Tomato Jam – the lemongrass went in there.

Cashew Fried Rice with that amazing jam.  I almost never make fried rice and I’m not sure why.  It is awesome.  That recipe, and more – so much more! – coming soon.  Really.