photos

camping at big basin

phil November 8, 2010

I went camping at Big Basin in August:  Noisy campground neighbors, a fun long hike and good food and company.bagels on the toaster

I couldn’t help being amazed by this little toaster.  It looks like the “Stansport Folding Camp Stove Toaster”.  Though a little slow, it made toasting so much more fun.

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A photo from the hike.  I have tons of the trees, redwoods and so on, but I think I like this photo more than the others.  We took the Skyline to the Sea Trail and checked out the waterfalls.

figs and corn on the grill

Black figs on the grill

grilled figs and goat cheese

black figs off the grill with goat cheese

looking up at night

The sky was pretty.  Here’s a long exposure of redwoods lit by the campfire.

Amsterdam

phil October 14, 2010

I went to Amsterdam earlier this year.

Photos from a weekend in Amsterdam:

I stayed at Hotel Arena.  Its most recent incarnation is a swanky-looking modern hotel.  Glass bathroom doors, a lofted bed.. The building was built as an orphanage with a chapel in 1890, and then was converted into a home for the elderly in 1950.  It became a youth hostel in 1982 and then somehow became privatized and then underwent a drastic transformation in the last couple of years.  The hotel is sort of on the outskirts of the Centrum but it’s only a 10-20 minute walk or so to most areas.. and of course even quicker by bike.

Here are a few of the other things we saw on our first evening.  It was near the solstice and daylight lingered to a ridiculous hour.  I think it was about 11:00pm when dusk started to settle in.

Kitty, on a dumpster covered with somehow color-coordinated tags and paint.

I don’t remember where this was taken, but I am guessing it was on Weesperstraat.

stickers on a red door.

Probably still along Weeperstraat.

And of course there were bikes.  This may have been along Sarphatistraat, but I just don’t remember anymore.  We heard a guy get hit by a car near this intersection the next night – scary, but he walked away and the car drove away and that was that.

More photos from the Netherlands and Belgium to come, eventually.

Fort Bragg

phil September 26, 2010

I went to a beautiful foggy wedding in at the botanical gardens in Fort Bragg yesterday:


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huddling because it was breezy and chilly


Eat Real Fest 2010 Part 3 – Pig Butchery Competition

phil September 25, 2010

This is part 3 of my photos from Eat Real Festival 2010. For part 1, click here, for part 2, click here.


Dave the butcher and Dan the butcher from Jim N Nick’s BBQ faced off in the pig butchery competition on the afternoon of Sunday the 29th of August.

one of the judges holds up a loin:

Anya Fernald does the play by play:

more dave the butcher:

Dave the butcher liked this one:


One of the judges.  Judging:

These guys were really getting into it:

A few more shots of the pig butchery crowd:

a ride to pt. reyes station

phil September 19, 2010

We finally got back on the bike and did a long ride last weekend.  ~88 miles to Pt. Reyes Station and back.

fog in the morning in the Presidio:

fog on the golden gate bridge too, of course.  It cleared up as soon as we were finished crossing.

The Nicasio reservoir.  Our group split soon after – we went to Pt. Reyes Station, the rest to Petaluma and then Santa Rosa.

Old St. Mary’s church + Corvette

Riding back across the bridge that afternoon was a little hairy and a little wet, but this scene was absolutely wild:

this part was a bit scary with the tourists and the fog:

Chrissy field on the way back:

Latte at Blue Bottle in the Ferry Building to end the day:

Taste of Temescal 2010

phil September 17, 2010

This year’s Taste of Temescal was Tuesday, September 14th.  For $30 (proceeds went to the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, Good Cents for Oakland, Lion’s Center for the Blind, Emerson Elementary School, Claremont Middle School and the Oakland Tech PTO) you got about 20 tastings of enough tasty food to get painfully full – if you chose to eat it all yourself.  (Note to self:  split the ticket next year)

Los Malcriados, playing in front of Aunt Mary’s Cafe:

“Texas Caviar” (black-eyed peas), salpicon (shredded beef? pork?), and a sweet potato bar from Aunt Mary’s Cafe:

Remedy, serving scones, some of Ritual‘s La Folie drip coffee, and artful barista poses:

Chioke from The Dime

DJ Crimson and The Dime in front of Kasper’s Hot Dogs on 46th:

Raciel from Tara’s Organic Ice Cream serving a variety of flavors – vanilla bean, chocolate, lemon verbena, turkish coffee, blueberry mint, and strawberry and mango sorbets.  Blueberry mint’s my favorite, but I went with the sorbet this time.

Barlata had paella again..

The akido institute was not serving food.

Scream Sorbet, who are opening their store “soon”.  (it’s all good, they’re still at the farmers markets)  I had a delicious citrus fennel sorbet.

Bakesale Betty.  I had their chicken pot pie and banana bread, but only ended up with a picture of coffee cups.  they are so damned nice.

Eat Real Fest 2010 Part 2

phil September 11, 2010

This is part 2 of my photos from Eat Real Festival 2010.  For part 1, click here.

After his Chinese Noodle Pulling demonstration, Chef Gordon from ARK Chinese restaurant in Alameda started a watermelon carving demonstration.  The stage MC joked that he’d be going at half-speed so that the people in the audience could observe his technique.  He specified that he’d be carving a peony:

I like seeing the watermelon rind scraps all strewn about.

A little chunk fell out as Chef Gordon was carving.  He explained that he usually uses less-ripe watermelons because they’re firmer and thus less likely to fall apart.

Chef Gordon also threw a carved carrot into the mix.  He said these need to be fresh so they they’re still firm and crisp.  Here’s a bird:

I did some walking around after watching the demonstration.  Here’s some roast pig, ready for serving from Chop bar:


Here’s a hen (taxidermy?) in front of the Food Skills stage in the Urban Homestead area.  As seen on Oakland Local.

Goods from the prizewinners of the Urban Homestead competition:

Samples for the crowd from the Melon Mania workshop in the Urban Homesteading area.

Elote to be:

What comes next?  Half eaten elote:

Mogo BBQ:


 Lobster roll from Sam’s Chowdermobile.  My favorite food of the festival.

Gigantic Gerald’s Paella Pan.  You could fit a family of 6 on it!

shot of the eat real 2010 crowd:

Carne Cruda performing at the Lawn Stage – They were goofballs.


Eat Real Fest 2010 Part 1

phil August 29, 2010

Eat Real Festival 2010 was amazing.  Jack London Square was beautiful.  Oakland is beautiful.

Here are the photos:

Food Vendors and the Marketplace

Sometime Emeryville vendors Primo’s Parilla showed up with their meats and grill.  They’d recently run into some sort of permit issue with Emeryville regarding the grill but that wasn’t a problem at Eat Real.

Folks from Boccalone (“Tasty Salted Pig Parts”) had a small stand:

Toussant from Besto Pesto providing samples of his pesto with super-delicious organic rigatoni pasta from the pasta shop

Rachel and her crew from Blue Chair Fruit selling some wonderful jams (including black fig, strawberry-pink peppercorn, and spiced burbon-tomato)

This guy was getting ready to make a watermelon salad in the Marketplace area:

A sale at Marshall’s farm natural honey:

The Taco Guys had a sweet paint job on their truck.

Chinese Noodle Pulling

In short, the Chinese noodle pulling demonstration was amazing.  At first, being unfamiliar with the art, I was almost bored – this guy is just kneading dough.  But then, he started doing some twists and stretching..

Chef Gordon from ARK restaurant in Alameda, CA gets to work, starting with a lump of dough.

pretzel-like:


In a short amount of time he went from what appeared to be a few strands of dough to hundreds of noodles:

I was able to get an aerial view of part of Jack London Square.  Super-crowded.  It’s an interesting contrast compared to how empty it normally seems.

This is Dave the Butcher participating in the live pig butchery competition against Dan the butcher from Jim & Nick’s BBQ .  Apparently he liked the photo enough to tweet/facebook update about it: http://twitter.com/davethebutcher/status/22709779717

Cool.  More photos of the butchery competition to come in the next post.