I forgot to have lunch today. Ended up having an avocado smoothie at a random Vietnamese smoothie/tea/coffee place. Avocado smoothies are really good (this was my first) and seem to be quite filling.

I had been preparing tonight's dinner since Monday. For the last five days, I've been marinating chicken drumsticks in buttermilk with herbs and spices. I then battered the chicken with some flour and more herbs and shallow fried them in peanut oil until golden brown. Then I transferred them to a wire rack in the oven to finish cooking (and allow excess oil to drain).

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What I Ate: February 27, 2009

I couldn't decide on what to eat for lunch, so Papa suggested that I eat pork. Unable to come up with a concrete food item I asked for something specific and the first thing he suggested was "Pulled Pork". So, off I went to the nearest place where I thought I could get a pulled pork sandwich - Armadillo Willy's (161 E El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, CA‎ - (408) 245-5300‎) which as a California-based chain that supposedly serves up real Texas barbecue (although I've never liked it and I've been to Texas several times in the last year and the barbecue doesn't taste like the stuff I was getting out there). No matter, I was going to just get a pulled pork sandwich (Papa didn't say it had to be "good"). It was a little dry, but otherwise not to bad. I opted for a corn salad as a side dish.

Dinner was on my own as well since Tina went out with her team from work. I tried to figure out where I could go that normally Tina wouldn't want to go. I ended up choosing Sino (377 Santana Row # 1000, San Jose, CA‎ - (408) 247-8880) since it's sort-of Chinese food. Tina prefers her Chinese to be authentic. Like pizza (I like many different styles), I think there's room for various kinds of Chinese food, and they can all be tasty. Sino (a bit more Asian than P. F. Chang's) is an upmarket Western-influenced Chinese restaurant. We've had their dim sum (not the best but extremely accessible - I'd recommend it to first timers to dim sum) as well as a typical lunch, but I had never eaten dinner there. The bar was packed with people and the music on so loud I thought I was going to a concert. I ordered a couple dishes and, although pricey, it's not bad especially if you're looking for a fun, hip place to eat Asian flavors while being waited on by attractive, friendly staff and surrounded by a good looking young crowd.

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What I Ate: February 26, 2009 (Armadillo Willy's, Sino)

Harold and I headed over to Parcel 104 (2700 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, CA‎ - (408) 970-6104‎) for lunch because they came up as a possible contender for best hamburger in the Bay Area. Harold and I both ordered their Harris Ranch All Natural Chuck Burger with Aged Cheddar and Fries ($15).

The burger was good, but not any better than any decent burger. The meat was quite tender and had a great mouthfeel, but unfortunately, lacked seasoning. The burger was served with melted cheddar, lettuce, red onions, pickles, and ketchup & mustard on the side. Harold and I both wish there was a more exotic or flavorful sauce to accompany the burger. It's certainly not a bad burger by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not better than The Counter.

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What I Ate: February 25, 2009 (Parcel 104)

I remember hiking for several hours with my friend Jeremy through caverns, over hills, along dry river beds, and finally climbing up over these rocks to get to this location - Zabriski Point - only to find a parking lot with 5 or six cars and a dozen tourists taking pictures. I remember say something like "I thought you said the hike was the only way to get here! We could have driven here?" and Jeremy said, "I wanted you to go on the hike." Can't help smiling at that memory.

Tripod, unrecorded exposure on Velvia 50, 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 lens

More network outages. All day today again! AT&T is sending someone out tomorrow to check the lines. Weird that around 9:30 the network came back.

Lunch was the last of the left over Shepherd's Pie.

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What I Ate: February 24, 2009 (Truya Sushi)

When I got up this morning, my internet was out. After trying to revive it for an hour (and calling AT&T only to have them tell me the "line test is good" and keep asking me if my browser loads any pages when clearly my router can't even acquire an IP), I gave up and tried to do some work. Sometimes rebooting the DSL modem fixes the problem, so every thirty minutes, I'd do that. Finally, at around 1pm, I decided I couldn't wait around any longer and went out to run some errands. I grabbed some lunch on the way back: McDonald's Big Mac and a milk.

Around dinnertime, I started preparing Salisbury steak for dinner (while calling AT&T again - they made me unhook the router and plug a machine directly into the DSL modem, I played along and did all the things they wanted me to do (what was the point if I wasn't getting an IP?!?) until the tech support guy ran out of things to try. Then the guy finally said "I'll send this on to the maintenance team. I had a note on my system that said at the start of the call to forward to maintenance, but I was hoping to fix this." I was a little exasperated. An hour later, the maintenance team calls and says there was an outage in my area that the customer support people didn't know about because they "just handle software issues" and then my internet came back.). The "steaks" were a little tough - I used pure ground beef. Next time, I'll spend a little extra time mixing in bread crumbs, diced onions, and a little egg to produce a softer more tender patty. I prepped a gravy from the fond and added cooked mushrooms. Served with a butter lettuce & baby spinach salad and two slices of left over pizza from Crossroads Cafe (more like cheesy foccacia bread).

For lunch, we had the Sunday Brunch buffet at Acapulco (1299 Lawrence Expy, Santa Clara, CA‎ - (408) 249-2001) because Tina liked the tortilla soup we had last week. I got a mix of breakfast foods as well as some tortilla soup and a freshly made corn tortilla filled with carnitas and al pastor.

I ended with a made-to-order omelet with spinach, mushrooms, and bacon.

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What I Ate: February 22, 2009 (Acapulco, Subway)

Handheld, 1/180 sec at f/11 on ISO 100, 17-35mm f/2.8 lens

While running some errands, we found ourselves at Fry's Electronics and hungry for some lunch. We ordered a couple sandwich combos at the cafe in the middle of the Sunnyvale store (the combo is a great deal - $5.99 for the sandwich with a drink and chips or cookie; a sandwich is normally $5.99). We bought to combos and switched halfway through. I started with a Turkey and Avocado on white bread with jack cheese. I've gotten this sandwich before, and it's always been decent except I always find the bread to have a tough crust.

After eating half that, I proceeded to swap with Tina and I ate the hot pastrami on rye with Swiss cheese. The pastrami was excellent on the toasted rye bread. I'll definitely get this sandwich next time.

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What I Ate: February 21, 2009 (Fry's Electronics, Jai Yun)

I had lunch with Harold today… but didn't have any place in mind when I met him. We decided to just randomly drive until something caught our eye. We noticed a few places we hadn't tried yet but didn't look like we'd want to risk it and a few places that one or both of us knew were just no good. Somehow at the end of it all we ended up at Arby's - a place I hadn't eaten at in at least 15 years. I ordered a Bacon Beef 'n Cheddar sandwich with a side of Potato Cakes (instead of curly fries).

The sandwich wasn't very good. The bread was really soft and the bits of onion on the bread tasted a little odd (maybe it was too sweet). The beef was fine and so was the bacon, but the cheese was a little sour and tasted more like American cheese than cheddar. Overall, the flavor was a tad bland. I really liked the potato cakes though. They are essentially extra thick hash brown patties. Too bad it comes at the price of 1 gram of trans fat (for the two cakes).

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What I Ate: February 20, 2009 (Arby's)