Blue Roses

Ahh, Berkeley

One of the things I love about Berkeley is its collection of totally unpretentious gourmet shops - the sorts of places where the staff are helpful, enthusiastic, and inclined to let you taste things. I try to visit the Cheeseboard, which features a long wraparound display case stuffed with cheese and a couple of racks of excellent baked goods, when it isn't busy. This enables me to ask for things like "a strong-flavored cheese that melts well" and see what delights the staff-owners (the Cheeseboard is, after all, a co-op a la 1969) come up with. They cheerfully offer samples of everything and never complain when I buy pieces barely larger than slivers. This is necessary, of course, because I have to leave with several different slivers, plus a bit of fresh ricotta and a loaf of pumpernickel and/or a cherry corn scone, and I simply can't eat all of my loot before it goes bad or disappears into the black hole at the back of the fridge.

Wine is different. I don't expect tastes of everything recommended to me, nor do I plan to buy only a glass and a half per varietal, but if I'm going to purchase a bottle untasted, I want it to be good and relatively cheap. This is where Vintage Berkeley comes in. They have never recommended a wine I didn't like, including remarkably drinkable Passover wine. Also, they don't sell bottles for over $25. Brilliant. Yesterday I walked in, found a jeans-clad twenty-something salesguy, and said I wanted two whites and a red that I would never have tasted before. He responded so admirably that I ultimately couldn't leave without two whites and two reds: a dirt-cheap white from Savoy that he claimed would taste like a Granny Smith; a Hungarian furmint, a grape with which I am thoroughly unfamiliar; a French red that I believe was supposed to be largely cab franc (California versions of which seem to cost no less than $50, at least at the wineries where I've tried them); and a Spanish carignane blend (or was the Spanish one the cab franc and the French the carignane? guess I'll find out later). Possible inaccuracies notwithstanding, it was a lovely shopping experience: low-key, informative, and very much worth the effort of lugging four bottles of wine half a mile home in a messenger bag with an unpadded strap.

If it isn't one thing, it's another

My travel karma is acting up again. This time, instead of my usual problems with transportation, I had three problem-free flights (Oakland to Boston, Boston to Washington DC, DC to Oakland, on a combo of JetBlue and AirTran). Instead, I got bed bugs - or, more precisely, I got bitten by bed bugs last night while staying at a fairly snazzy hotel in DC, the Washington Suites Georgetown, and now I'm afraid I've carried some back to Berkeley with me.

So instead of coming home, relaxing on the couch, and perhaps even preparing a much-needed home-cooked meal (we ate at some fantastic restaurants, but I'm craving my own food now), I'm now doing laundry at far hotter temperatures than usual, hoping like heck that my backpack, windproof jacket, and laptop case don't melt in the dryer, and I've quarantined my shoes and suitcase on the balcony until I figure out how to deal with them. I'm thinking that maybe I'll dry clean my corduroy-and-leather purse, but I don't really know how to wash bed bug eggs off of books, or my wallet, or my iPod, or my lab notebook. The ridiculous thing is that I don't even think any actual bugs came home with me - I haven't seen any, fortunately - but I'm paranoid about the possibility of eggs being nestled into the nooks of heaven-knows-what. Apparently infestations are ridiculously hard to get rid of, so my best bet is to prevent one.

Off to scrape liquefied backpack nylon out of the dryer. Wish me luck.

Recent Delicacies

Lemon-orange bread, which rose beautifully in the oven earlier this evening and is now falling steadily. Still tasty, and now I'm dying to go find some Meyer lemons and see if that's really what my lemons were, because the leftover bread glaze made absolutely delicious lemonade when I added a little cold water.

Homemade cashew chicken - who knew that the secret to the sauce would be open-in-the-fridge-forever red wine? Last year I thought I'd perfected it by adding fish sauce (and you need that too, don't get me wrong), but the red wine made it even better.

Mt. Vikos Manouri, a lovely Greek cheese that's like feta without the salty bite. I've nibbled so much of it that there's almost nothing left to cook with, but I bet it would be fantastic in my shrimp with tomato, spinach, and orzo, which started its life as a recipe on I believe the College Inn chicken broth cans, and which involved only chicken and spinach (and of course the chicken broth, used to cook the orzo) in its original incarnation.

Trader Joe's lowfat granola with almonds, which tastes like corn in a good way. But I'm trying to wean myself off of cereal for dinner (so convenient when you come home at or after 8 every night), hence the cashew chicken.

I need to go to the gym.