Saturday was the Chinese New Year street fair in Chinatown. The parade was supposed to start at 5pm (strange, that's after sundown- either they want to have lots of lights on their floats or they're waiting for people to be back from school and work, I guess). I went earlier to have a look at the stalls.
On Grant Avenue- the most touristy street in Chinatown. I was hoping to find lots of street food and traditional artwork for sale, I even made sure I had a slightly empty stomach to bring with me, but there wasn't a single food stall there (ok, except the kettle corn and candy apple stalls, but that doesn't do) Instead there were lots of boring stalls such as big companies giving away free reusable bags or having lucky draws, casinos companies having mini lotteries and some free health checkups. I kind of suspect they are catering to the notion that a lot of Chinatown residents will be older people who are kiasu about getting free stuff. But really, we need some joyful CNY atmosphere in here. Even if the parade is so late that it's pass Chap Goh Meh.
There's a lion dance school near the parade route, so we can see the performers getting ready. This is how they hold the dragon suit;like a Chuppa Chup stand.
Here they are getting the lion suit on. It's a little strange and fun to see Caucasians and African Americans taking part in the parade too.
And here they are going to the parade starting point.It's going to get difficult to shoot good pictures in the dark later.
So nevermind about the absence of good stalls at the fair, Chinatown has lots of traditional chap fan shops and bakeries around, so I just got my dinner there.
And then the parade starts. These are screen captures from some videos I took, a little easier to get sharper pictures.
The parade was pretty good actually, lots of colourful processions, plenty of lion and dragon dances by professional troupes and schoolkids-some made their own costumes, which was cute. And lots of good brass bands too.


The procession was about 3 hours long. It was getting pretty cold by then and I was getting stiff having to stand in the jostling crowd carrying a heavy bag (I found the Chinatown library and a big bounty of books and cds I like while waiting for the parade to start) but they had firecrackers right at the end, which made the wait worth it.
I haven't seen those traditional strings of firecrackers before(a string of 1000 firecrackers, I heard someone mention), so I was a bit scared of how loud it would be. They dangled the string from a crane so that it was in the middle of the street. Then you have to compromise the best place to stand, somewhere between the back crowds pushing you to the front because they want to see clearer, and the front crowd pushing backwards because they don't want to get burnt. And of course it has to be lit by the mayor of SF. That was a fun way to end the night, along with the super long dragon they saved for the very end of the parade.

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I have some food pics, so here they go.
Nasi Pattaya. Wonder if it really came from Pattaya? It's fried rice in an omelette. I added mayo, tomato sauce and cilantro on top, mostly because I had to finish them before they died in my fridge, but it tasted good that way with the extra toppings.
Cucur Badak. Sweet potato balls coated with sesame seeds and deep fried. Similarly I wonder where the name came from, because it makes me think of a rhinoceros being poked.
Imam bayildi. Deep fried eggplants stuffed with vegetables which is roasted. It's a Turkish dish that translates as 'the imam fainted', supposedly because the dish was so good, although there are other less flattering theories about why he would have fainted

Awhile back, I read this book- 1001 foods you must taste before you die

It was a fun read; each food has it's own half page column with a picture, background information and description of what it tastes like. The taste description doesn't help you much since it's so hard to describe tastes exactly (although if you've tried those food you'll probably think "oh yeah, that's right"). And also eating for real is nicer than just reading, but it's good to whet your appetite and curiosity first. It's compiled by an international panel of food journalists, so it's fun to leaf through especially if you want to try something new and are or will be in a foreign country. Unlike other books they don't just list freakshow food like fried bugs or organs you never even knew existed, but instead offer up a more mature selection like fruits unique to a country or notable artisan cheeses from different parts of the world. It also helps you identify food you've seen before but don't know what they are called, maybe because you can't read the foreign language sign.
And then there's all that nice to know trivia that you can spring on your friends when bored. Like this shellfish that is abundant around these parts- the geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck), the biggest and most long lived shellfish of them all, and so called 'penis of the sea'. Talking about suggestive looking edibles, there's also the coco de mer, which looks like a woman's ass.
Another interesting fact- cranberries are harvested by flooding the area they grow in. Pretty neat.
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Yesterday, I also found this fun dessert- cake pops.Looks like a promising party food. Here's a recipe

All pics gleaned from Google

The other day, I went around a supermarket produce section looking for random ingredients I haven't tried before, and I settled on these; 3 kinds of squash- spaghetti, delicata and acorn. And then I bought them without any plan for what to do with them next.

I've been a bit curious about spaghetti squash, and I've heard that once cooked, you can scrape the flesh out with a fork so it looks like strands of spaghetti. So cooking it was half the fun, just to see what would happen.
I fried up some kale and carrots because they were starting to look sad in my fridge, but it went surprisingly well together with the squash. The one on the left is just for fun because I had coriander leaves and a square plate. The squash doesn't taste or feel like spaghetti of course, it's more like julienned turnip.
As for the acorn squash; roasted with butter, salt and brown sugar. The delicata is stuffed with garlic risotto. And I still have left over spaghetti squash for a soup and one more unknown use (maybe a salad). And also an accumulated box full of seeds to be roasted later! So I used up all 3 squashes today. That was satisfying.

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Another project was to replicate some of the vegan milks I've been trying so far. They are quite expensive if you buy them from the supermarket, but very cheap to make. I found 2 of those recipes online, for rice milk and oat milk. Simple enough, all you do is boil the rice/oats with lots of water, then add vanilla, salt, sugar and a spice to your taste- cinnamon for rice or nutmeg for oats- and blend
(Ignore the bottle's label, it's from another drink)
It came out alright, but then you realise it isn't as healthy as you would like, because it's basically sugary water with some other flavours. I guess at least if you buy it from a supermarket it comes with all kinds of vitamins and minerals added artificially. The 'heart healthy' claim on some oat milk packages is a little bit of a stretch though, there's only a pinch of oats and a mound of sugar in there so more likely you'll get some heart disease than cure it by drinking oat milk. Even oatmeal brands admit you have to eat oats at all your meals for like a week to see any difference at all. The rule is: do whatever it takes to keep them coming back for more, I guess.

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As a sort of emergency junkfood, I remembered a recipe idea from the newspapers back in Malaysia, which is making a sort of cake in a cup. Just add whatever ingredient you would put into a cake, but in smaller quantities, and mix them together in a cup. Then microwave for a minute, and you're done! You can put anything in it, but it goes best if you add cocoa powder and chocolate chips to it to make a sort of chocolate cupcake in a real cup. I found out, though, that it's better to leave out the egg since that makes the pastry rubbery when microwaved. And also a slightly undercooked, slightly gooey pastry is more fun.
I put oats in mine this time and ate it with peanut butter.

Had a tour around the Mission district today, which is the Spanish area. It's well known for graffiti all over the neighbourhood, but especially is Clarion alley.

Another landmark in the area is the Mission Dolores basilica, also the oldest building in the neighbourhood.

It's an adobe style building with clay walls and wooden rafters. The rafters here are painted with vegetable pigments and lashed with rawhide. This is the chapel part.

And this is the basilica part.

Really nice contrast of red stained glass and blue painted interiors.


The museum holds some religious relics and Native American items. One of the things I found interesting is the traditional version of dice, which is to throw a bunch of sticks decorated on one side or walnut shells on the ground and count the number of sticks/shells lying on their backs.
There is a small graveyard which holds some notable residents of the area from the Gold Rush period.
A small Native American hut for display in the graveyard. It has good insulation.




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Next, I went window shopping along Valencia Street, which turns out to have lots of interesting shops. So here's a list where you can see what they sell, from their website. Very tempted to take pictures of their shops, but they wouldn't appreciate that. I have some favourites from the hippie Haight-Ashbury stretch as well.

Lists of interesting shops around San Francisco:

Paxton Gate - horticulture, taxidermy and art. Exotic plants in glass balls, Taxidermy unicorns and flying monkeys. Mission district.

826 Valencia - pirate gear. Without a display window and almost without a name, quite easy to walk pass. But fun to shop in, with witty pirate ship rules framed up around the shop and selling things like pirate hooks, iron locks and pickled leeches for your every ailment. Apparently born from a writing workshop. Mission district.

Loved to Death - taxidermy and memento mori. Taxidermy mice playing cards, Victorian photographs, gilded bird skulls as necklaces. Haight-Ashbury.

Kidrobot- graphic tees and collectible toys. Cute shirts, figurines and pop culture miniatures sold in blind boxes. Haight-Ashbury.

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More new foods to try. I dunno what to make with them yet, but I'll find out. Fennel, chard, celery root and parsnips.

Being in a foreign country, one of the things I like to do is try out new food, whether traditional food from other cultures or modern concoctions dreamt up by vegans. Here's some of the stuff I've come across.

Bagels- I know, jakunfied, but I have to try them at one point or another. Do they sell them in Malaysia? Anyways, they are bread which is first boiled and then baked.

Pumpernickel-a very dense type of bread, kind of looks like the bumpy non slip material used in childrens' playgrounds, but surprisingly still crumbly. It's baked at low temperatures for very long periods of time ( full 24 hours)

Rice cheese-there's a lot of vegan alternative food being sold here, but so far I haven't had any good experiences with vegan cheese. If it's supposed to be an alternative of something else, that's what it will ever be after all. But it's not as bad as one of the soy cheeses I tried before, which tastes kind of like your mouth after you throw up.

Japanese Plum flavoured pasta sauce- sounds very weird, but actually, if you've had Chinese plum sauce chicken, it's the same thing. So if you put in meat,and imagine your pasta is rice, it's pretty normal after all.

Teff- a very small grain, which you can eat like oats. It has a slightly nuttier flavour.

Bulgur wheat- used mostly in middle eastern cuisine, I suspect. Usually I use it to make tabula kisir with chopped vegetables and crazy amounts of herbs. You don't need to boil it, just pour in hot water and wait for it to expand.

Flat leaved Italan parsley- to go with the tabula kisir.

Fennel-that's the chopped up thing on the board. The feathery fronds are used as a herb and the bulb can be eaten as a salad and tastes weakly like licorice.

Hemp milk- I've tried almond and rice milks so far, so what is hemp milk? Sounds a little dodgy, I know. Google it and you might come up with some website selling marijuana growing kits or something. Nevertheless, it isn't drugs, so no worries. Tastes kind of like soy milk but with a stronger flavour, and supposedly it's very nutritious.

Endives- haven't started on those yet, so no comments so far. They shall be a salad in the future with some mozarella de buffala (water buffalo cheese) and rocket leaves.

Yerba mate- a South American tea like drink. Kind of hesitant at first, because...doesn't it look a little like tongkat ali? But from the can, it's benefit is in keeping you alert (caffein), so in the end I tried it. Didn't feel any physical or psychological change after that. It does taste like JustTea though, if you're wondering.

Gjetost- a Norwegian cheese, probably one of the most expensive cheeses I've tried so far. I remember it being mentioned in one of Roald Dahl's books from when I was little, and he was waxing lyrical about it, so I was very curious. It does taste a lot different from other cheese, kind of like condensed milk and caramel.