Moving Day

Gone to http://berkled.blogspot.com/

A Uniquely South African Slow Meal

A meal in South Africa is a more leisurely affair than an Italian is willing to endure. Dinner takes around 3 hours if you are lucky to go somewhere with an efficient kitchen. It takes more than an hour to ninety minutes to order. Your waiter will refuse to let you order the main course until you've had several round of drinks.

So when you have to work until 8 and wake up at 5 in the morning to go to terminal, it only makes sense to have a meal in. But first I had to replace my faulty phone in the room- too quiet to hear a thing and without a volume adjuster. After thirty minutes, I happily dial 17 but the woman insists on taking the order in my room! After half an hour, she comes and plunks her elbows down on my bed to take my order. And to make sure my meal is in length of the South African style, she brings my dessert in after in a third trip. I enjoyed it.

Pudding Week

In preparation for partying the inauguration tomorrow, I have dutifully stirred two batches of chocolate pudding- one with cow milk and another with hazelnut milk. I will be making Obamanana pudding for Brook's party tomorrow. Just yesterday I broke through the pudding barrier- all this time I had a block in my mind about double boilers and hours of laborious stirring. Actually the magic is corn starch- I previously believed corn starch was a non-food to be strenuously avoided in life in the category of nitrites and MSG. Not so my friend. Not so.

My easy recipe from the Moosewood is just stirring 1/3 cocoa, 1/3 sugar/ 3 TB cornstarch and 2 cups milk for 10 minutes over medium heat. I found another recipe for butterscotch tapioca pudding which I am saving to treat myself for Wednesday.

Killing the Bay

I was surprised that C had our linens come out so brilliantly white. "You just gotta be toxic sometimes," C said knowingly. I guess my environmental years of avoiding bleach are over.

Salamander Census

Today I lifted a paving stone only to find a family of crickets, a slug, and a sleepy salamander cohabiting underneath. It looked quite cozy. Well- may the salamander is known to snack on a few crickets now and then. But I am now inspired to design the perfect salamander living quarters from all my paving stones.

Memories of Soonchun

My mother told me that when she was a little girl, she used to go with her mother to the yarn store in the fall. Walls crammed with yarns of so many colors, such stores no longer exist. My grandma would pick out the yarn for the year to take to the knitters store. Back then, machine knit sweaters were more expensive than hand knit so grandma would order machine knit sweaters for the entire Cho clan.

Indian Rock Picnic

Starting the day right with steak and eggs with a few capers from Aeolian Islands, Clees and I huffed and puffed up to Indian Rock. Actually Clees leisurely pedaled while I had a heart attack. A strenuous cycle is all worth it when you have a basket filled with MT TAM triple cream, last of the autumn figs, and some obligatory almonds and dried cherries. I brewed some cocoa with hazelnut milk. Berkeley living is easy living.