Oh, Starbucks

i like you in the morning
to warm that ocean chill
i like to think i do not need you
but still
my tastebuds especially crave the bitter taste
of the El Salvador roasted by the Beachside Cafe

i wish i didn't like Starbucks
but it's so damn consistent and bold
there are so many wonderful coffee shops in san francisco
and in other cities, i am told
but yet Starbucks is the impetus to our coffee-cultured-nation of fanatics,
and now I wonder what our buzzing American culture would have morphed into without it.

This is what I do....

When my husband goes to work on Sunday nights.

The things you realize as you get older

I eat a lot of chocolate. I love chocolate, and I'm not ashamed.

I buy this chocolate a lot. It's Ritter Sport (WTF kind of name is that?), and it's the dark chocolate with hazelnuts. It is shown here paired with cheap white wine (with a cool label), from Trader Joes.

I had a good realization today about this chocolate. I don't like it. I don't even really know what it tastes like and probably could never identify it in a blind taste test. But, I LOVE hazelnuts, so I eat it because I try to get as many hazelnuts per bite as possible. I eat around the chocolate to get to the hazelnuts.

From now on, I will buy hazelnuts and spend my calories on ice cream and expensive Trader Joe's wine.

More on this to come.

Beer at Bluegrass

Warren Hellman gives us the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park every fall. He pays for this entire event, which attracts thousands of people.

He died in December, so today was a tribute concert for him.

The wind was blowing, but the sun was shining. We played paddle ball and drank my favorite CA IPA while listening to awesome music. It was the iconic, NorCal day.

A Delicate Constitution

A few years ago, in August 2010, I went to the Santa Cruz Board Walk for the birthday of my friend, April Orbison. I think it's best that I prelude everything with a few key points about April Orbison:

1. She is from Texas.
2. She ate a lot of corn-dogs growing up and could NOT believe that I had never tried a corn-dog before.
3. She loves to booze heavily and often.
4. She is, by far, the funniest girl I have ever known

I thought her decision to have her birthday party at the Santa Cruz boardwalk was excellent. Not only did it symbolize her dedication to fun, celebrating her 32 birthday by giving herself and her friends full permission to act like children (who like to drink) was very true to her character. April told me that the best birthday present I could give her was for me to eat my first corn-dog in her presence. I wanted to deliver on this request, and so I was really looking forward to this day. Before I ate a corn-dog, however, I thought it would be a good idea to drink about 2 beers and ride a few roller-coasters. You know, pre-game a bit, in the spirit of April Orbison.

The corn-dog went down nice and well. There were many photos, laughs, and comments from other party-goers such as: "how the hell did you never eat a corn-dog until today?" To which I answered: "Corn-dogs are for white trash." (I was kidding, of course...okay, maybe not.)

We were waiting for what would be our last ride (was it the Torpedo?), and I started to feel it come on. It was a first a headache. I went on the Torpedo anyways. (And, as we waited in line, we entertained ourselves with the newly released fat-booth app for the iPhone - laughing so hard that I almost peed my pants probably did not help my cause). Then I had nausea. When Paul and April finally dropped me off at my car, which Manuel had parked in the prissy, manicured Jackson Square Park, near La Mar SF where he worked, it was not good. That day, the tulip beds of Jackson Square park received a few doses of Shayna's corn-dog vomit. My dog, Rolo, then tried to eat it up. Needless to say, I never made it to the margarita and chili party that was planned for after the SC boardwalk. Hell, I barely made it home. I pulled over twice because I thought I would puke.

Since that day, April told all of my friends that I, officially, have a "delicate constitution." I have been trying to prove that statement false for a few years. But, unfortunately, it's true. If I drink one night, I am hung -over the next day, regardless of the quantity consumed. (Not that this keeps me from drinking multiple nights per week, as one would reasonably think.) If I eat something with just a wee too much saturated fat, I have diarrhea. If something is over-salted, I get a headache.

Why is this pertinent to today, February 18, 2012? Today, I went for a long walk in the morning, ate a bagel, cooked up a bunch of healthy food (cauliflower puree, apple-kale-chard juice, tomato and avocado salad with yellow peppers) but ran out of time before I could eat anything. I took my exchange student, Juanjo, to a movie. We got popcorn, two large sodas, and pretzel bites with "nacho" cheese dip, which is essentially Velveeta. After the movie, we went and ate pizza from Roundtable. It was, no doubt, the Walmart diet, but hey, it was one day.

One day? If only my body could think like that. I have a massive headache, diarrhea, and I might throw up. I feel AWFUL, and the only reason why I can write this post is because I am laying totally horizontal, in the dark, and downed 2 Excedrin migraine.

I have a delicate constitution, and it sucks. Why did my mom feed us such healthy, stupid food as kids? Why the frigg wasn't I allowed to eat corn-dogs? God damn the person who introduced me to Whole-Foods in college. I resent those stupid hippies (read: my college friends) who supported my decision to go Vegan for a few years. Farmers markets in San Francisco are truly for the weak who are seeking to become even weaker. My life is devoid of fun, and it is now probably going to be longer because of all the stupid healthy food I eat.

Burma Super Star

Some say it is overrated. Others will wait more than 2 hours. The restaurant staff are not the nicest, but they don't have to be. The food is amazing. The salads of 15 separate ingredients. The flavors are like nothing you will ever experience again.

Burmese food is delicious, and Burma Superstar knows it and owns it.

Oh, and Mitchell's coconut ice-cream, shown above, is out of this planet.

Orange Citrus

Why I love oranges, clementines, minneolas, etc:

• Refreshing taste
• Color
• Health properties
• Thirst-quenching-ness
• Smell
• Juiciness

Things that I like to do with these guys:

• JUICE! - My favorites are: carrot orange, kale-orange, beet-orange, mint-orange
• Salad dressings with a combination of: soy sauce, cilantro, fresh cracked-pepper, goat cheese, parsley, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, olive oil, different types of vinegar, chives....etc
• Fresh orange juice cocktails (mimosas, pisco cocktails, and gin preferred for my taste-buds. But lots of peeps love whiskey too.)
• Put them in salads with pecans, sesame seeds, spinach, and wontons.
• Peel 'em and eat 'em. Vitamin c directly to the blood stream.

Things I want to learn how to do with these guys:

• Marmalade
• Vitamin C facial masks, scrubs, and lotions
• Reductions for deserts.

YUMSERS!

It all started with at soup

I never really considered myself a cook. When people would ask me: "do you cook?" I responded: "Yep!" Of course I cooked. Who doesn't cook? You really have to be pretty god damn lazy to live 30 years and respond to that question, honestly, with a "nah, I don't cook." But was a I a cook? Like,the noun and the verb? No.

It all started with soup. Carrot ginger. Then potato leek. Then sweet potato leek. I started getting adventurous with Root Soup (ingr: sweet potatoes, yams, turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions, stock, rosemary and cumin). The roasted eggplant and roasted red-pepper was a killer. Butternut Squash went savory once then went sweet. Cream of asparagus (without the cream - or milk for that matter) was a twice-in-one-week kind of soup, and the second time was for breakfast. Carrot dill was super healthy and energizing. It was a few days after carrot dill, third day of leftovers, that I realized I am a cook.

Now I realize that my Italian bloodline affords me all the essential DNA for cooking. My instincts kick in right around the time the garlic starts to frizzle in the extra virgin olive oil. I don't have to think much, I just know what to do next....(well, most of the time). Recipes are suggestions, bare bones of an idea. I like to seek them out for inspiration, but I never follow one step-by-step, two times in a row.

I am starting this blog to keep track of recipes so that, if one day I open a restaurant, I will have a bunch of MY OWN recipes from which I will draw upon. I'll probably write about lots of other yummy things that are not my own, too. Oh, and I already thought of other food-related topics that I want to share. Be prepared for soup praising and new soup trials. (Thank you soup.)