Where Bacon is King

Last Friday was my boss Lauren’s birthday. Therefore, we put together a few surprises for her. We did the obligatory cubicle decorating which was pretty over the top. We decorated with a Hawaiian theme since she would much rather be in Hawaii then with us (but, then, who wouldn’t). So, we replaced her chair with a Adirondack type chair, decorated with streamers, balloons, a hula skirt around her desk, beach music, some pineapples, 1 hula girl, the 6 ft. palm tree (which reappeared after bay to breakers) and about 20 leis. It was quite a spectacle. I think it was my team’s best work yet.

However, the biggest surprise were the bacon surprises that my coworker, JC, created the night before. We have a running joke about bacon because Lauren loves her bacon. For a while, she was having at least 3 strips of bacon every day. Eventually, she had to give that gig up, though. I think she was afraid of the Angina that might result from this habit. Anyways, JC had slaved over cooking 4 lbs of bacon (I am not exaggerating, check her Facebook status, it read “cooking 4 lbs of bacon” last Thursday night). She used this bacon for two masterpiece recipes:

Exhibit #1 The Bacon Weaved Placemat

Exhibit #2 Bacon Maple Chocolate Chip Cookies (Yes, that is a bacon slice topping each cookie. The cookie also has bacon bits baked in)

Even though I don’t normally eat meat, I often make an exception for bacon. How could I not try one of these cookies. They scared me, at first. However, they were surprisingly moist and tasty.

My boss said she was going to take the bacon place mat home, pop it in the oven so that the bacon was crisp and then start eating it. I suppose if she doesn’t arrive at work on Monday, we should check her home to see if her arteries clogged from all the bacon grease.

Finishing in the top half

This last Sunday, we decided last minute to run a 5K in Golden Gate park. I even convinced my boss to do the run as well. The race started at 9 AM and once the race began I was booking it. When I looked around me, everyone seemed to be running so fast. One person after another was passing me…and I wasn’t passing anyone. Oh…it was painful and such a blow to my self esteem. I kept telling myself, “Someone has to be last, I guess it might as well be me”. The entire time, I kept pushing myself to run a little bit faster and keep up with the people ahead of me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep up with most of them. I didn’t pass one person until about the last quarter of a mile. In that last leg, I saw the finish line and started to sprint the last 200 yards or so. Kevin was already there cheering me on. I was motivated by the big digital numbers displaying your time… mine was UNDER 30 mins! Well under 30 minutes, actually. I came in at 29:02 which is a 9:20/mile average. That is better than I thought I could ever do. I came in #31 of 74 women. My speedy husband came in at 21:22, a 6:52/mile pace. That is just ridiculously fast (IMO). He came in #37 of 116 men running.

We both made the top half of in our gender. We were sooo proud… and sore for the next day or two (probably due to the fact that I started the race too fast). These times were definitely personal bests for us in these last five years.

Who knew Cadbury and Toblerone chocolates were Filipino?

Last Friday, Kevin and I went to some live comedy where the headliner was Rex Navarette who is a pretty popular Filipino comic who grew up in the bay area. The comedy club is walking distance from our house and I got discount tickets from a website called “Gold Star Events”, so, it seemed like the perfect Friday night outing. I warned Kevin that the crowd would be really Filipino though and some of the jokes might go over his head.

Rex Navarette started his set with “How many people are Filipino?”. Nearly 85% of the audience raised their hand and he followed this up with… “Who is taking care of the patients at Kaiser, then? ” (If you didn’t know this, the two professions that Filipinos dominate are Nursing and the postal service). Anyways, while the comic was going through jokes regarding going to the Philippines, he started to talk about “Balikbayan Boxes”. Balikbayan boxes are the big boxes that Filipinos end up substituting for luggage when they fly home so that they can fit as many gifts as possible in them. Go ahead, check out a line at San Francisco airport near the Philippine Airline terminal. All you will see are big boxes wrapped in gray duct tape and woven rope. The comic went through the various jokes of what goes into these boxes from Spam, Vienna Sausages and Corned Beef (typical Filipino favorites). Then, he talked about chocolate. He mentioned that you fill the next layer of the box with Cadbury chocolates … and if you are more successful, even Toblerone. Now, my family fits this stereotype, for sure. We always had boxes full of both Cadbury and Toblerone, but, I had no idea they were a part of Filipino culture. I just thought that my mom liked these chocolates! My sister and I would get treated to a white chocolate Toblerone bar every time we went shopping at the dept. store, Fedco, as kids. Go figure, how did these British and Swiss chocolates ever make it into Filipino culture? I learn something new every day.

Anyways, Rex Navarette is well worth seeing for any Filipinos. His jokes are not broad enough to fully understand if you didn’t grow up in a filipino family though.

The perfect bread and other adventures in food

I thought that I would end up writing about food a lot more, but, somehow I’ve been sidetracked by many other more exciting things. However, I did venture into some unchartered territory in the kitchen in the past week. For one, both Kevin and I have been trying to make bread with our new bread maker. Actually, its my new bread maker that Kevin got for me for my birthday, but, somehow, he seems a lot more excited about it seeing as it was a present he picked out for me. I’m not complaining if he wants to cook though!

My first loaf of bread was a sunflower seed bread. I read through the bread maker handbook and tried to follow all of the directions. The book specifically said, “The secret to great bread is exact measurements”. So, unlike many of my other culinary adventures, I was rigorous about my measurements from leveling off the measuring cup of flour to sitting the measuring cup with water on a table and looking at it at eye level. These are small details that are good practice, but, I almost never follow. To cut to the chase, my first loaf of bread looked beautiful, but, it was way too dense. Kevin made loaf #2. He tried plain white bread but, left out the dry milk powder and substituted the liquid for lowfat milk. This loaf never really rose. Kevin tried again after we got dry milk powder. With this loaf, he tried to activate the yeast first. Loaf #3 … defeated us again. It looked great for a while, but, then collapsed near the end of the baking cycle.

With a score of Bread maker=3, Us=0 wins, we were starting to hate the bread maker. Isn’t this supposed to be easier? On Saturday, I decided to try a lemon honey loaf. This time, I made a few changes:

1. I measured the flour by pouring it into a measuring cup rather than scooping it out of the bag. The scooping action apparently packs in the flour and you get more than you need.

2. I used regular salt rather than sea salt.

3. I spread the yeast all over the top rather than putting it in a small pocket in the flour.

Voila! The perfect loaf! Bread maker=3 … Me = 1 win! Here is my perfect, lovely, yummy, loaf of homemade bread (with a couple of slices already taken off):

This past night, I made some sweet chard and ricotta raviolis with a sage/butter sauce. I thought these tasted alright, but, Kevin went back for seconds, so, that was a good sign. It must be the loads of butter in the final sauce that he loved. I got the recipe from epicurious.com. It originally came from Gourmet magazine. In my opinion, I think I’m not actually a good enough cook yet to take on these recipes on a weekday when I have about an hour to get dinner ready. Our kitchen is pretty small too, so, the counter space is really limited.