More San Francisco... and... pie

Here are some more pictures from my friend of when we went to San Francisco!

That tower up there is the Coit Tower. This tower was built in 1933 for Lillie Hitchcock Coit, a volunteer firefighter of San Francisco.

This is the Transamerica Pyramid, the tallest skyscraper of the San Francisco skyline, completed in 1972. Its current tenants are Bank of America Merrill Lynch, ThinkEquity, and TSG Consumer Partners.

This is just a nice view up one of San Francisco's many hills. So many hills.

Here's the pie I baked. Next time I want to try to make one of those pretty lattice type crusts.

I used a great crust recipe from one of my coworkers that didn't even require a food processor, just a pastry cutter.. and this berry filling from Joy of Baking, except I used blueberries, blackberries, boysenberries and strawberries. Can't wait to make another pie for my family when I visit next week... we'll see what kind of fruit I use for that one :).

Tomorrow I'm going to the Obon Festival. I'll let you guys know how it goes! Have a great weekend.

San Francisco and other things

Here's a more expanded look of my little San Francisco excursion.

Here are some boats from Pier 39, my friend took this picture. The view of the mountains from Pier 39 is so pretty, and it's so nice to just go and see the water.

Here's a picture from the Pride Festival, which was that weekend. People were dressed so colorfully and really had a lot of fun.

Look at that interesting outfit! People were taking pictures of this guy left and right.

I will post some other San Francisco pictures later. :)

Friend's mom sent me a cookbook from Baton Rouge! This was the highlight of my week. She got it from a restaurant over there that she visited. So thoughtful. :)

It's got recipes for stews, rice dishes, seafood dishes, vegetable dishes, even some dessert dishes. I immediately made the Shrimp Jambalaya.

Due to the interesting method of simmering some onion, garlic, celery, and bell pepper in oil for a while, and then simmering it a while longer (40 minutes!) with some tomato paste and water, the shrimp and rice mixed in (shrimp first to cook for 20 minutes, then the rice at the end) came out this deep, dark color, with some fresh green onion and parsley to give it a pop of brighter color. Somewhat reminiscent of "dirty rice," I would imagine. There are a lot of ways to make jambalaya and this was quite good, with some hot sauce mixed in.

My housemate and I went to this farm today called Emma Prusch Farm Park because he thought it was going to be a farmers market but it was just a farmstand with vegetables. Still kind of fun to go and visit, the park itself is lovely (not pictured) and they have all kinds of birds wandering around.

This is a mama bird of some sort and her little chick. :)

A little peek at the farm. 

A goose! Brings back memories of being chased around by geese at Waller Park back home.

Also lately I have been enjoying crepes. Deb's crepe recipe is easily adaptable to savory crepes with the omission of the honey. The other night I made crepes with roasted asparagus, spinach, and zuchinni from the garden. Tonight I made a simple crepe with turkey lunchmeat, some pieces of fuji apple, and a little monterey jack cheese. Protip: if you ever don't really feel like cooking a big meal but still want something light and satisfying and not frozen or "just-add-water," make some crepes! 

Chocolate & strawberry dessert crepe I made a long time ago. 

So, fun times... now back to studying... so I can try to get ahead before I go and visit Santa Maria in a week and a half. Hope you guys are ready to have a good week!

San Francisco Main Public Library

My main objective in visiting San Francisco last weekend was to look around at the San Francisco Public Library for a class paper. It is an amazing library with six floors and services for people of all abilities and cultures. Books are offered in about 30 different languages, and there are library centers dedicated to the deaf, blind and those with learning differences.

This is the library from the outside. It is located in the Historical Civic Center District. This is a very convenient location, because it's close by to the Financial District and Chinatown. Also, a good friend of mine lives near this area.

This is the inside of the library. I love the skylights that let the sunshine inside. It makes everything seem so bright and cheerful.

There was a gallery exhibit in the African American Center of artistically designed cigar boxes that I thought were really pretty.

This is the outside of one cigar box. You can tell the artist took a lot of time to decorate it. It reminds me of an antique jewelry box.

Here is the inside of a cigar box. This was a really interesting collection, and when I have time, I'd like to look up some more information and history about it.

 Here's a glimpse of the microfiche/microfilm section. Patrons need special permission to access these files. Government information, you know.

 As you can see, the library hosts lots of events. I enjoyed seeing all the brightly colored fliers.

Next post, I'll share some more pictures my friend and I took while walking around San Francisco. :)

Sneak Peek

I have been unbelievably busy these past few weeks keeping up with summer classes and work. I feel like I'm running a race and just barely keeping up with my last breath. Yesterday, though, I allowed myself a whole day of fun, visiting several districts of San Francisco: The Historic Civic Center District, Nob Hill, Tenderloin, Tenderknob, North Beach, The Financial District, Chinatown, and Fisherman's Wharf. That's at least four miles of walking, and my legs are reminding me today, but it was worth it to share these places with a good friend of mine who just moved to San Francisco and had not done a lot of exploring yet.

I am still waiting for all my pictures to transfer over to my email, but in the meantime, here is a sneak peek to show what's to come...

An entry from an old fashioned card catalog at the San Francisco Main Public Library...

Outside of a market in Chinatown....

Washington Park in North Beach....

So, I definitely got my fill of San Francisco for the time being. Stay tuned for more! What did you do this weekend?

Weekend cooking/baking

Hi readers! I hope you are having a nice weekend. I wanted to make some new things this weekend, so I made some curry on Friday and some cherry muffins today.

This is a green curry made with coconut milk, plus garlic chicken and green bell pepper mixed in. It was a bit spicy because I didn't add in the sugar like the directions with the curry paste suggested, but I added it in after to the rest of the batch, along with some lemon juice that kind of balanced out my own serving.

These muffins, though, came out perfect. I used a cake recipe from The Joy of Baking, and adapted it to muffin form. What I really like is how nicely the lemon zest comes out in the flavor of the muffins.

Tomorrow, my coworkers and I are going to get dim sum! Tonight, my housemates and I are having a barbecue, too. So, more fun times ahead.

The Pros of Cons

This weekend was FanimeCon... "con" being shorthand for "convention." I didn't buy a badge this time, because it's this first time I've actually lived in San Jose (where the convention was held) and I didn't know how much time I'd actually want to spend over there, since I wouldn't need to stay in the hotel with my friends. So, I just hung out with my attending friends a couple times and took a couple pictures. We went to Pizza Chicago again-- twice. Great pizza. My friends are really pros when it comes to cosplaying, or dressing up in costumes. They got really into it. They'd have totally different costumes for different days. I was just happy to be there and marvel at the creativity.

This is a friend of mine at a past con, cosplaying as this character named "Golbez."

I didn't know these guys from another past con, but you will recognize them as Mario and Luigi. They had the voices down really well, too!

This is one of my other friends from a past con. She played Snape from Harry Potter.

Ariel and Ursula from The Little Mermaid. There's a unique costume idea!

Here are some robots of some sort. Transformers, maybe. Those costumes must have been heavy!

So, that's fun. It was nice to have an extra day off work. I didn't really do anything, just relaxed and read a book and some cooking blogs. Hope everyone else had a nice holiday!

Boogie on the Bayou, and more sushi

Well, the festival was okay. It was really hot that day, and there were a lot of people. It was crowded because there was not very much space on the narrow street in which the festival was held, plus a lot of people were at the festival all at once. A lot of the same booths were there as I saw in Mountain View. There were a few New Orleans/Southern food booths....

......and one little Jazz band that made an appearance before wandering off...

.....but it wasn't as exciting as my friend from work had hyped it up to be. He was really disappointed because he lived in New Orleans for years and it is a lot different than this festival. I had an ok time though. I got some really good jambalaya, and there was a gelato place along the street so I got some gelato. I got to choose 3 flavors for my size, so I chose: white chocolate raspberry, creme brulee, and tiramisu. As far as I'm concerned, nothing is a bust if there is gelato involved! I could see myself going back to Campbell just to get some more of that delicious gelato.

It has gotten even easier for me to make sushi with practice. This week, I made coconut curry shrimp sushi with cucumber and avocado, topped with a chipotle mayo sauce. Eating that delicious, spicy jambalaya at the festival just made me realize how much I like spicy/really flavorful foods, and I should cook that way more. Using multiple spices together to create unique flavors is really an art, and it's an art I want to learn.

On Saturday, a friend came into town to visit me and we went to San Francisco. We walked to the Mission district and got dinner at Bar Tartine. I heard it was a good restaurant from one of the blogs I read. It's kind of one of those "hidden gems," because on the outside it's just this unmarked, inconspicuous little shop. I knew we were there because the map function on my phone told us we were there, but I had to ask a security guard nearby exactly where it was, and we were right next to it. Their dinner menu is really specialized, it's just one page. My friend and I shared a biscuits and gravy dish with potato and herbs that no longer seems to be on the menu, and the stuffed chicken with stewed smoked sausage, sauerkraut, mushrooms and sour cream. These dishes were just packed with flavor, so even though they were not huge dishes, we were quite full and satisfied by the end. Two servings of bread before our dishes came out helped too, I'm sure.

This weekend is Fanime again! That is the anime convention held here in San Jose that I went to last year. It will be nice to see my friends and all the people in fun costumes. I realized I never shared any pictures of people in their costumes, but next post I will post costume pictures from this time and last time I went.