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.

This is probably the most amusing bottle I've ever drank out of. It's Ramune! It's a type of soda from Japan, and for once doesn't have an awkward name. (Calpis? Pocari Sweat? Geez...did you know that the only bodily fluid considered clean is tears?)

Googled image

Took awhile to figure out how the bottle opens, even with instructions, but I think that's part of the fun. It doesn't have a screw on cap like usual, but has a marble stopping the mouth, which then falls into the top half of the bottle which has indents so than depending on how you hold the bottle, you can control the flow of the soda. If you hold it completely upside down, the marble stops the soda from flowing.Talk about good product design. If I was a kid, I'd be trying to buy this all the time. I'd also probably hurt my hand a lot trying to get the marble out of the bottle to keep, but that's besides the point.

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Next, let's talk about music. Some of you were once or currently are interested in old school pop music, but check out who's still around.

Those albums were released just last year.What?! But somehow it's comforting to see that at least some bands are long lived. You know how most pop music is, quick to rise to the top, quick to fall into obscurity. They may not be as well known as they were in the 80s or 90s, but I think they are still pretty good. Take That has a more updated visual style, but Roxette still maintains their throwback style, probably a niche for them.

Besides that, I really enjoy it when you've been listening to certain bands for quite awhile, and you are able to see their progress over the years; some become technically better, some develop a more mature style or experiment with other styles with a good outcome, some change from having just teenage angsty messages to having deeper meaning in their lyrics.

Hello again, I've finally decided to update my blog. Looks like the chatbox to the side will not be in service for free anymore, so you'll have to leave your messages under each entry. Which is a bit of a relief actually, now I can save your comments here permanently and in their relevant entries, and also there's no more of the recent problem everyone's been having with spammed chatboxes.

So here's what I've been up to these recent weeks (months? oh no...I've been that lazy with updates?)

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Thanksgiving at Mandy's place. Much bigger party than I expected, people from 2 dorm units who then proceeded to each invite a few of their own friends, and everyone gathers to eat in the biggest room available.

Here's our spread; turkey, sausage rolls, broccoli (hahah...mine, see how much I care about people's health?), fruits, mac and cheese, pecan pie, red and green bean soups, tang yuen and punch. There was another pasta not in this picture which came later.
Tiny dorm kitchens oh how I don't miss you so.
And so the only way to be seated was on the floor, which I guess is the most comfortable way anyway.
We're playing Dixit. It's really fun and easy at the same time. Check it out.
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Also, I biked to Sausalito. Not many pics, but here are the few I have.

On the way to the bike rental place I came across the Occupy SF tent area. I don't pay much attention to the local politics, so I forgot that they would be at the Embarcadero.
One of the ice rinks put up for Christmas. This one is at Justin Herman plaza. The other one's in Union Square.
Biking across the Golden Gate Bridge. Apparently one way traffic is no longer in force for pedestrians, it's now one side for bikes and one side for walking. Lots of pro-looking bikers around Sausalito.
The Bay Model Center, with their huge model of SF. If I remember correctly, it was used to monitor tide levels, but was turned into a museum after computers were used instead.
So this is Sausalito, quiet upscale area. Kind of small though.

Look, a blimp!

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My Christmas was a little low key this year. I had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant with Xiao Wen and Gi (they found 2 Malaysian restaurants, but said both weren't as Malaysian as the Indonesian restaurant)They served Ais Campur (Kacang) with chocolate sauce on it. Then I went to see the Nutcracker ballet on the 27th. I think it's a little bit of tradition to see the Nutcracker during Christmas, plus I want to experience going to each of the entertainment venues around here (as in Opera, Orchestra, etc)
The City Hall is just opposite, and is dressed up for Christmas! Luckily the place was packed with ballet goers, or I wouldn't dare to display my camera here, it's (unexpectedly) a little bit of a dodgy neighbourhood.
They were blowing soapy snowflakes over the entrance in the spirit of the season.
Here's the lobby. Quite a varied crowd, working class people, parents with small kids(which little girl wouldn't want to watch a ballet?), students, people in cocktail dresses and suits, people in jeans and t-shirts.
The concert hall. Surprisingly I didn't have to sneak this picture. (In comparison, at the Broadway theater, you are watched like a hawk and no photos are allowed at any time even before the curtain rises-I think just a little slack in allowing people to take pictures is actually better for publicity though)

That said, of course there's no photos of the actual show. How was it? OK I guess, I think I always have too high expectations of live performances. It's fun to see a different take on the ballet even if you've watched it being performed by other companies. But I hoped the scenery would have been more elaborate, maybe it's just me, but when I hear 'The Nutcracker' I always imagine some over the top Russian styled candy land background.

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And New Year too. Happy 2012 bytheway!

The Macy's Christmas tree was up, so here's a picture of it. I think this is the first year they are using a fake tree, so that it can be reused every year. There's the skating rink next to it and some buskers performing music, so the atmosphere was pretty nice.
The streets were very crowded, and getting more so by the hour (and lots of drunks too, of course, not being dangerous, but making enough of an ass of themselves anyway) but we found a relatively empty car park to watch the fireworks from. Only thing is that waiting for the fireworks to begin makes you want so much to sit on the car rooftops around you. Oh yeah, and that night public transport was free, and so was car towing services, probably in anticipation of drunk accidents. Good idea.
Fireworks!

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And of course we have to finish with food pictures. I tried making ice cream (with egg yolks, half and half, heavy cream, sugar and vanilla extract). Turned out better than expected.
And then I tried pouring melted chocolate on them too, which helped since I was too stingy on the sugar. They stuck to the plate though, so maybe putting them on oiled plastic wrap next time will be better. But in theory if you do it well, you can transport the ice cream without it melting all over the place.