Tasting 1-2-3: Val's Burgers

Our dinner at Val's Burgers. Val's is a cute diner that's been around for over 50 years. Cash only, basic menu, great pricing, great service. A must visit when you're in Hayward.

Rootbeer float. It came with a mini Andes mint too.

 Strawberry Milkshake. It came with more in the tumbler. Very impressive if you can finish this during your visit there.

 Baby burger. They have the baby burger, mama burger, and papa burger. We asked for grilled onions. $0.75 more, but they give you basically a whole grilled onion. Tastes great with it too.

 Chili Cheese Fries. Seriously, this plate is huge.

 Onion Rings. One of the best I've ever tasted. Some restaurants will cook it a little too long that the onion is too soft, so that when you bite into it, you pull the whole onion out, leaving just the fried batter. Val's cooks it just right so that the onions are still crunchy, making it easier to bite off.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Baked Chicken

A few days ago, I decided to make some baked chicken wings. Something simple and easy. I found this rub in one of our recipe books, but we didn't have all the ingredients. The recipe called for paprika, all spice, garlic, and some other ingredients. Surprisingly, the rub even had some spices that I wanted to experiment with and thought it might make the wings taste delicious. (That ingredient will stay secret. muahaha.) So I did some substitutions of my own and hoped it wouldn't ruin a good batch of chicken wings.

The outcome was super delicious. I baked it in 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. The crunch was just right to me. Next time, my husband wants me to try and fry the wings for a bigger crunch. Although I think I did a pretty good job in coating the chicken, I also want to try and do a better job. Possibly just double the amount so I have more to coat the chicken with.

Can't wait for the next time to test out this rub again.

SF Street Food Fest 2010

Okay, so last weekend was the SF Street Food Fest. It was hosted by La Cocina. The food fest was basically to help advocate mobile food vending companies, otherwise known as the "Taco Trucks". Which is pretty odd, because not all mobile food trucks sell tacos. Not all the tents were mobile food companies, but there was a good chunk. Because of all the food that people were going to eat, who better to sponsor the event than Pepto Bismol?

Now, I usually try and avoid San Francisco as much as possible because I hate driving there, because the traffic and the roads suck. It's just so stressful getting there. However, for a Street Food Fest that happens to be walking distance from bart, I had to take the trip up there.

This was worth the trip. I'm also glad that we decided to get there when the food fest started. Within 2 hours, it was packed! I don't know how people with strollers did it. We could barely get through by ourselves. Complete chaos.

Before...

After...

I seriously couldn't see my way through! We found out later that they have a deal where you can buy VIP passports that will allow you to just cut in line. Wish we knew about that earlier because the lines were insane after an hour. 

If you wanted to drink alcohol, you were confined into these "Beer & Spirits Garden" areas that were scattered around the place.

Global Soul had some great food. We tried all 3 of what they had to offer. The basil citrus cooler was very refreshing. You was mixed very well between basil and citrus.

The suicide sticks were basically grilled Serrano peppers. I didn't try it, but my husband did. At first he was fine, until a few minutes after he had eaten the whole thing. Apparently the taste lingers. Especially when you have lots of seeds in your pepper.

 The Mojo Cuban Tri-Tip was delicious. Very soft and tasty. I'm not sure what that sauce was, but it complimented the tri-tip just right.

Endless Summer Sweets was were he had the funnel cake. Mmmm.

They sold kettle corn too, but we didn't try any.

 The funnel cake was surprisingly not so sweet for me. The whip cream was slightly different too because it wasn't as fluffy, but it did the job.

 It was also pretty fascinating to watch the guy make the funnel cake.

Namu had my favorite of the day and the worst of the day. Namu is actually a restaurant in SF. Well, let's start with the worst. Their Green Tea Lemonade did not taste like Green Tea at all. It was just a plain lemonade. It wasn't even good lemonade because it was a little too watered down. 

The best of the day was the Korean "tacos" Namu had. Their tacos had rice, kalbi short ribs, daikon, kimchee and some other stuff inside some toasted seaweeds.

My next favorite was the fried chicken with harissa from Aziza.

The seasoning on that chicken was great. Plus, the skin was fried just right to have a good crunch to it. The corn was just, okay to me. Not bad. I was more into the fried chicken though. It definitely had more flavor than the corn.

We had this curry dish from Azalina's Malaysian. Spicy star anise curry. This actually had a little kick to it after awhile. Not too bad.

I didn't try anything from Purple Hibiscus, but someone from our group did. Apparently they had one of the best items in there. A Scottish Egg. This was basically a huge hard-boiled egg covered in a sausage. It looks like it would make a fabulous to-go breakfast. Seconds were contemplated.

For dessert, we had some Bi-Rite Creamery popsicles. They make organic popsicles. The peach one was pretty good.

Funky Monkey had a great van. They gave out their dried fruit. I have yet to try the packet I took from them. I'm waiting for just the right time to eat it.

The two things I forgot to take a picture of was our Mexican Chocolate Creme Brulee from the Creme Brulee Cart. My cousin ditched us and went straight for that cart. We were glad she did because once it was an hour into the festival, that line was insane! We wouldn't have been able to taste the goodness that was the Creme Brulee Cart. I now follow his tweets to find out where they will be next. Hopefully they don't just stick to SF locations.

The other one with no picture was the empanada I had from Sabores del Sur. The meat was so tender and the outside stayed crunchy the whole time. I never liked it when I would get empanadas that would get slightly soggy because of all the juice that just sits in the empanada. Sabores' empanada stayed warm the whole time I had it too. It never got cool towards the end of it.

There were a few places that we wanted to try but did not have any time or the line was consistently too long. There was Roli Roti, basically a rotisserie truck. Check out all the meat just rotating in their truck!

 There was also Curry Up Now. An Indian truck. I wanted to taste their curry. Next time.

Kung Fu Tacos was a food truck that one of my friends has been wanting to try but the line was way too long when we got to it.

Someone in our group came back with this bacon covered hotdog and I have no idea what place this was from. This was supposedly their "mini" version. We thought it was just going to be half a hotdog. We were obviously wrong. He came out with a bargain. Must find out where this came from.

Overall, this was a great 2nd Annual SF Street Food Fest. Can't wait for next years. We may consider the VIP passports for next year too.

Healthier living

Yup, that's what we're trying to do now. We had recently started working out and our energy has increased, we've gotten a little stronger, but the abs are just not getting better. So, we've decided to bring in the diet. For the past two days, our dinners have been all veggie dinners. I wish I had remembered to take a picture of yesterdays dinner. I made a stir fry veggie dinner which came out a lot better than I thought. I put curry, sesame seed oil, vegetable oil, soy sauce, and a few other ingredients in the dressing. Next time I'll try adding onions.

Today was a straight all veggie salad. No chicken to top it off with. Let's see how long this health kick lasts...

Quail Eggs

 Quail eggs are such wonderful, small snacks for me. When I first tried them, I thought it was a little weird because quails are small, cute birds. However, they are actually tasty. Sometimes I like to eat it with salt, but I really like them all by itself. You can just pop them into your mouth and be done in a bite. Or, I also like it with fish sauce, tomatoes and rice. Yum!

I don't have them too often. It's usually if I happen to see it at the Farmer's Market near our house.

Yellow Raspberries

I never knew yellow raspberries existed until this Tuesday. We had breakfast at work and the cafe that caters for us brought a plate full of fruit. One of them being yellow raspberries. First I ate a blue raspberry to make sure my tastebuds remembered what it tasted like. Then I ate a yellow raspberry. I must say, for my taste, I'm not sure if I like it. It's definitely tasty, just not my preference.

Yellow raspberries are a lot more sweet than a regular raspberry. No tartness at all; just sweetness. I'm wondering if I was not as fond of it because I was expecting a tart taste instead of a real sweet taste.

My curiosity still lingers, so I may try it again next time I come across this unique fruit. But I most likely won't be the one to purchase them...

Whole Wheat Pasta with Roasted Eggplant and Tomatoes

I bought some pretty eggplants at our local Farmers Market because I wanted to have us begin eating healthier. I've never cooked eggplant before, so I went searching for some recipes.

 The recipe I found was actually pretty healthy. No meat and the pasta was even whole wheat. Overall, it wasn't that bad. The whole wheat pasta really made a difference to me. It wouldn't have tasted the same with regular pasta. I could have done a lot better, but this was my first try with eggplant. I also made more pasta than topping, so it didn't really work right. Until next time eggplant.

Some notes for when I make this again:

• Use more eggplant
• Use more tomatoes
• Use more olive oil

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