Category Archives: Food and Drink

How You Know You’re in Texas

By | October 25, 2006

Whenever we go to San Antonio, we always eat at a Mexican restaurant called Las Palapas near my mother-in-law’s house. This is the back entrance to the restaurant. The sign on the door is a reminder that you’re in Texas. And I’m not talking about the No Smoking sign.

The Case of the Dirty Espresso Maker Screen

By | October 19, 2006

Less than two months after getting my C2000 back from Capresso, it started misbehaving. The first sign was taking about 5 seconds longer than usual to draw a coffee. Then, I noticed that the expelled espresso pucks had changed from being dry, nearly solid pucks to crumbly globs of wet grounds. Also, less coffee was… Read More »

Return of the Capresso C2000

By | September 7, 2006

About six months ago, my Capresso C2000 super automatic espresso machine started having problems. First, the expelled pucks of used coffee grounds were very crumbly and wet, when they had used to be fairly dry and, well, puck-shaped. Then, more coffee went into the coffee grounds disposal box then into my waiting cup. I looked… Read More »

Lanesplitter in the Temescal District

By | September 5, 2006

After bicycling about 35 miles through some of the hilliest parts of the East Bay hills, I had a massive craving for pizza. But not takeout. I wanted to maximize the flavor by eating pizza in a restaurant while it was still hot and crispy, preferably accompanied by tasty beer. A friend at work mentioned… Read More »

Shrimp Po-Boys

By | January 11, 2006

My favorite sandwich, and possibly my favorite meal of any kind, is a shrimp po-boy. A proper shrimp po-boy should be made with French bread dressed with shredded lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise (i.e., “dressed”) and overflowing with medium-sized, deep-fried shrimp. The bread should be a long hoagie style roll. Either a chewy roll or a… Read More »

Mary Mahoney’s

By | December 7, 2005

I spent the last couple of days in Biloxi, Mississippi, visiting my mother and checking out the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Mary Mahoney’s Old French House restaurant is one of the few restaurants that has reopened in the downtown section of town close to the waterfront. Last Saturday night my mother and I ate an… Read More »

Riverfood

By | August 23, 2005

Forget seafood, eat riverfood. My brother-in-law and I caught these two brook trout (and a couple other brook and brown trout we released) in the South Yuba River a couple hundred yards from our cabin this past June. They made a fine dinner that night for my wife and me. The South Yuba is stocked… Read More »

Crown Wok, Pacific Coast Brewing, and Soizic

By | March 20, 2005

Downtown Oakland is really turning into a vibrant area with great restaurants and bars. It’s always had a couple good restaurants and bars, as well as the Paramount Theater, but lately it seems like a new, great place has opened everytime I go down there. Last night, we discovered the Crown Wok Restaurant. It recently… Read More »

Barrel Tasting

By | March 7, 2005

Mmmm, toasted French oak barrels. A little bit woody on the finish and a tad fibrous, but still … No, we didn’t taste the barrels at the Russian River Wine Road Barrel Tasting, but we did taste an exceedingly large number of delicious wines that were still in the barrels. At David Coffaro’s winery, the… Read More »