Today was my first Super Happy Dev House (SHDH), which is an event that happens once a month where a bunch of developers get together in a big house somewhere in the San Francisco bay area and develop stuff. What kind of stuff, you ask? Whatever they want, of course.
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One of my favorite places to go biking is along the Stevens Creek Trail here in Mountain View. Most of the route is on bike trails so I don’t have to worry about people in cars trying to murder me and I avoid the loss of momentum that comes with intersections. Plus, it’s pretty! Here are some recent photos: Continue reading
I’ve gotten close to perfecting my garlic mashed potato recipe. It occurred to me the other day that when I simply add minced garlic the flavor tends to come in short bursts. Instead, this time I incorporated the butter, cream, and garlic before mixing them into the potatoes. I’ve followed a few recipes recently that called for steeping things in warm cream to bring out the flavor so I thought, “why not do that with garlic?”. Here’s what I did:
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Last weekend Katie came down from Sacramento and the three of us (yup, Dave and the Katies) went hiking around the Foothills. We let the GPS do the thinking, which first led us to the Palo Alto Foothills Park, where we were turned away because we are not Palo Alto residents. The park ranger pointed us in the direction of the the Pearson-Arastradero Preserve that is open to the public. I got some pretty sweet scenic shots on the way there and while hiking:
At our wedding almost two years ago I was overjoyed to have Raghavan Iyer in charge of the dinner for our reception. I still hear from friends about how much they loved the food in the buffet so I was excited, when going through my recipes, to find instructions for each of the dishes we had at the tasting with Raghavan.
So far I’ve only made one of these dishes, but it was one of my favorites. It was surprisingly easy and turned out well both times I’ve made it. I accidentally bought sliced almonds instead of blanched almond slivers, but it turned out great nevertheless. The following recipe is from Raghavan’s book The Turmeric Trail: Continue reading
The first couple times I went to Trader Joe’s I really didn’t get what all the fuss was about. I found it crowded, difficult to find things, and didn’t really see much I wanted that I couldn’t get somewhere else, in some cases for the same price or cheaper.
Sarah pointed out that it’s a good place if you’re looking for something very particular that is hard to find elsewhere. Also, that those particular items, which would normally be terribly expensive because they are hard to find, are actually reasonably priced. This coupled with the glowing recommendation from Chef Nanci Wokas who presented the cooking class I took Monday night (and who also apparently drove her RV to NOLA to cook for people after Katrina) convinced me to give it another shot.
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It was rated 4.3 stars on Netflix which is pretty rare so I decided to give it a shot. Not only did I wonder why it had been rated so highly, I hated it. Really really hated it.
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Behold, my favorite shot this week:
Taken in the bathroom at Orchard Valley Coffee in Campbell. They have a mirror on each wall facing each other creating an infinitival effect.
This is one of those rare cases in which the graininess of my little point and shoot came in handy. I increased the contrast and sharpened it up to show off the grains and the punchy color of each. I’m sure there’s some fancy name for this. Maybe I’ll look it up and add it here later so I sound smart.
A little bit of wisdom 