I had a Trader Joe's Chicken Chile Verde Burrito for a light lunch.

For dinner, I continued my Bay Area dining "Death March". With exactly 6 weeks left to go before our move to Austin, Tina and I hit San Jose's The Grill on the Alley (172 S Market St, San Jose, CA‎ - (408) 294-2244‎). I went there because I had heard from several people that they serve the best steak in South Bay (along side Alexander's Steakhouse). We started with their jumbo lump crab cake which tasted like it was all crab and no binder. The crab flavor was so good that it was almost like we were eating fresh crab. No fancy flavors, just crab and a few herbs to balance the flavor. The sauce was smooth, creamy, and didn't overwhelm the crab flavor. Very simple and straightforward flavor, but excellently prepared.

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: March 4, 2009 (The Grill on the Alley)

For lunch, I went down to Crossroads Cafe (699 Delancey St, San Francisco, CA‎ - (415) 836-5624‎) and got a Garlic Bagel with Egg and Bacon.

Later in the afternoon (around 5:30pm), I had second lunch which was a Cold Tuna Sandwich (and salad) that I had picked up along with the bagel at Crossroads Cafe.

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: March 3, 2009 (Crossroads Cafe)

I picked up some hot food from Bayside Market for lunch: Sausage and Penne, Mac 'n Cheese, and overcooked Brussels Sprouts.

Dinner was leftovers from last night's Chinese food - fried rice, sauteed Chinese broccoli, and Schezuan shrimp.

For lunch, we grabbed some food from Erik's DeliCafé. Tina had a Pilgrim's Progress sandwich while I ordered a Marakech Express (a hot pastrami sandwich served with sprouts and red onions in a pita).

When dinner time rolled by Tina ordered some food from Tong Soon Garden (3240 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA‎ - (408) 615-9988‎), and I went to pick it up. She ordered the dry scallops and egg white fried rice (she loves this rice), stir-fried jielan (Chinese broccoli), Szechwan Shrimp (my request, didn't know what it was when I ordered it - it's breaded and fried shrimp cooked again in a sweet and spicy sauce), and chilled Pig's Trotters. I also had some left over XO Seafood Fried Rice from Sino with my food.

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: March 1, 2009 (Erik's DeliCafe, Tong Soon Garden)

For brunch Tina and I headed over to Charlie Ayers's new restaurant Calafia Cafe (855 El Camino Real, Palo Alto, CA‎ - (650) 322-9200‎). We ordered the Five Spice Chicken Fideo for Tina and the Lamb Sausage and Eggs for me.

Five Spice Chicken Fideo

Lamb Sausage & Eggs

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: February 28, 2009 (Calafia Cafe, Manresa)

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).

Click here to read the rest of
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.

Click here to read the rest of
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.

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: February 25, 2009 (Parcel 104)

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.

Click here to read the rest of
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).