Eating: Lunch at Della Fattoria (11 July 2009)

Della Fattoria
141 Petaluma Blvd
Petaluma, CA 94952-2904

Eating: The Girl and the Fig in Sonoma (July 11, 2009)

With a half hour wait ahead of us, we ordered some drinks and a lovely cheese platter, which came with slices of baguette and our choice of three cheeses (I picked one each from the cow's milk, goat's milk and sheep's milk sections) as well as some homecured salami and prosciutto. A great start to the meal, washed down with some sparkling wine. The wait wasn't too long, and anyway, the waiting area was pretty nice and comfortable.

We shared a starter of mussels with garlic toast.

R picked the set dinner, which started with some smoked trout.

My mom had the duck confit.

The main part of the set dinner was seared ahi tuna.

My dad's steak. Perfectly cooked.

I ordered bouillabaisse, a nice light dinner for a change!

The dessert that was part of the set was a fig clafoutis and caramel ice-cream.

But to add to that, we ordered this "mille feuille" that had cherries, pistachios and a lemon verbana cream. It sounded different and it was. Very refreshing and a fantastic end to this birthday dinner!

Sago Gula Melaka

Oh it's been so long since I've had Sago Gula Melaka. I'd never made it before and was surprised at how easy this dessert is. Loved it!

Cloudy days

Are best taken with a hot beverage, in this case, apple tea from Turkey, served in this beautiful hand-painted tea cup and saucer (thanks to my mom, who brought them from Turkey to Singapore, and now to California).

Nasi Lemak and Beef Rendang

When you can't get it, you have to try to make your own. Although not lemak enough.

Summer Salad

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.

With a strawberry and spinach salad.

Snack trip

We've got an early start tomorrow so I made some snacks for the road trip. First up, some oatmeal raisin cookies (using the recipe from the oatmeal tin - surprisingly rather good and mmm.... chewy).

And a butter cake. Google pointed me to this recipe over at Rasa Malaysia, which in turn came from About.com.

I didn't quite follow the (rather vague) instructions, because, as my mom always said: wet ingredients first, then the dry. So that's what I did. More specifically, blended the butter till soft, added the sugar, blended that a bit more with the electric hand mixer, then added the eggs, milk and vanilla extract. Then sifted the flour, baking powder and salt into the wet ingredients. And mixed that all by hand (my hand mixer's 'low' speed is an underestimation of its power - 'low' is hardly low at all). And about 53 minutes later, butter cake. The smell of baking lingered for most of the afternoon. And as I settled down to a slice of cake and a cup of tea, I realised that this was the taste, the texture, the comfort that I had been hungering for for most of the week, I just didn't know it.

Better late than never

It's taken me a week to post these pictures, but here are some of what R and I did last weekend, a lazy lazy one with some fun in the kitchen on the Saturday, and a nice hour-long walk on Sunday.

First, on Thursday I made chocolate banana cake (from a Bill Granger recipe, which in case you're interested, has been posted in full here. I added some chopped walnuts into the mixture, and served it on its own. It's quite rich already, with the chocolate chips.)

Then on Saturday, we whipped up some waffles with my new toy, the hand mixer (I was toying with buying a very coveted Kitchen Aid stand mixer, but with our stay here not a permanent one, and the whole electrical appliances thing being quite different here from Singapore's, I think I'll wait to make the investment when I'm more settled. It is after all, quite pricey. This one was far more affordable, and can do the whisking/beating I need for now.)

And our other new-ish toy, the waffle maker, which is actually some years old, and comes courtesy of R's parents.

Ok so this wasn't the first batch. The first batch got stuck because the top half of the waffle maker wasn't oiled. It was however, still edible, but just not as pretty. These waffles were from the leftover batter that we stuck in the fridge for Sunday.

For dinner, we headed out to San Mateo to hit the Japanese supermarket, and returned with some lovely and quite affordable sashimi.

And made our own sushi, mostly of avocado, crab stick, Japanese cucumber and Japanese mayonaise.

Not pretty but pretty tasty!

Saturday in Santa Cruz Part Two

We walked off the lunch (well, at least part of it) at the beach.

And then we put it all back on again when we had a late dinner at Chocolate. This required a very patient 50-minute wait for a table, most of which I spent at the lovely Bookshop Santa Cruz next door. They had great staff recommendations all around the store (also available on their website), and a nice selection of books and magazines. I picked up the current issue of Zoetrope All Story, which has a Latin American focus.

Sesame chicken salad

Asparagus torta with salad.

'Belga' hot chocolate - like drinking nutella.

The Dessert Orgy - gelato, chocolate cream pie, coconut cream pie, cherry pie, tiramisu, a very dark and rich chocolate cake and chocolate truffles. It was a good selection, and I'm glad it wasn't all chocolate, which would've been far too sinful. Dessert was definitely the highlight of this meal and I would return again, but probably have dinner elsewhere.

Chocolate
1522 Pacific Ave
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Saturday in Santa Cruz Part One

Saturday morning started out with a drive down some winding roads and ended up at the Mystery Spot. It's supposedly a place with some kind of gravitational anomaly. The tour involved the use of levels and a billiard ball to illustrate various things that I wasn't quite paying attention to. It was mildly entertaining but wasn't quite worth the wait nor the $5 parking fee.

It was after 1pm by the time we left, and we were all pretty hungry, which probably accounts for why a heap of appetisers were ordered at The Greek. There were garlic fries, mussels, beans, greens, sausages, tarmasalata and pita bread.

R's main - lamb gyro.

I had the moussaka, which came with more carbs - pita bread, rice and potato. Not too bad, pretty creamy and packed with eggplant. But I think I prefered the appetisers, especially the sausages and the tarmasalata.

Of course I didn't manage to finish my meal.

We ended with some baklava, which was a bit of a letdown, as it was barely buttery.

The Greek
435 Front St
Santa Cruz, CA 95060