Any interest in Baconcamp?

food, geek 6 Responses »
Jan 222009



I am on a Diet Series~, originally uploaded by elsakawai™.

Inspired by Arial Waldman‘s cupcakecamp (which was in turn, inspired by barcamp), I’m thinking of hosting baconcamp. I recently attended Baconfest, which was SO MUCH AWESOME. It would be fun to bring this celebration of all things bacony to this geek community. However, I’m not sure if there would be enough interest in it, so I made this little poll.

Technically, it’s 2 polls. A 2 question poll is considered a “survey” to polldaddy, and you can’t embed those things on a blog. They are popus. *shudder*

What you can do to make baconcamp a reality:
– pass this poll (these polls?) around. The more interest in it, the more likely I will execute.
– email me at karen[at]karenism[dot]com if you want to help organize

BTW, the above photo by Elsa is one of my favorite bacon photos ever.

Posted by Karen at 7:02 pm Tagged with: ,

There's more than just Chevy's

food, travel No Responses »
Jan 062009

I was chatting with a djsteen last night, who had the misfortune of eating at Chevy’s for dinner. There’s nothing wrong with Chevys and it’s easy to make the mistake since it is right next to Moscone South and they have commercials on TV. However, there are a lot of yum yum places to eat around that are not chains.

Be sure to check out Dining About Town. The deal is 3-course lunch for $21.95 or dinner for $34.95 and some of the best restaurants participate. Last year I created a detailed map, but I’m too lazy this time.

If you’re at Macworld in San Francisco right now, here’s a list of tasty places to eat. They are listed in order of ease to get to from Moscone.

Walking Distance

Green tea
Green tee fro Samovar

Working Girls Cafe – 100 Spear St – delicious sandwiches
Thirsty Bear 661 Howard – tapas and home brewed beer. It’s right next to Moscone and can accommodate large crowds
Samovar 730 Howard (inside Yerba Buena Gardens above the waterfall) very peaceful, great view, slow service. They serve a wide selection of teas from all over the world and sandwiches/salads.
B Bar- next to Samovar. mmm delicious oysters, and sandwiches. Both Samovar & B are slightly pricey lunch experiences.
Bloomingdale’s food court-underneath Bloomies. Even though it’s a mall food court, there’s no Panda Express here. My favorite places are the Korean BBQ, Thai Corriander, the gelato place and Asqew.
Harvest & Rowe – 55 2nd Street good salads and cupcakes
Whole Foods – 399 4th St. a variety of hot foods, soup, and a salad bar all for $8 per pound
Belden Place – Belden. a cute little street filled with decent restaurants, no car access, and lots of outdoor seating

Easy bart access

Sundried tomato pasta
Sundried tomato pasta at Mavericks

Hog Island Oyster Company – inside Ferry building. fresh delicious seafood, view of the water
Miette – Ferry Building. exquisite desserts
Maverick’s – 3316 17th Stquality ingredients turned into great classic American food, like friend chicken & pulled pork sandwiches
Pancho Villa – 3071 16th St best tacos in San Francisco
Little Star Pizza – 400 Valencia fantastic pizza, generally a long wait. I dream about little star.
La Traviata – 2854 Mission Street. really good italian, great ambiance

The mission has many, many good places to eat and drink.

Worth traveling
These places require cab use (busses are unreliable)
Absinthe – 398 Hayes St. simply delicious. I love this place
Millennium – 580 Geary St. fine vegetarian dining. Absolutely amazing. You won’t miss the meat.
Nopa – 560 Divisadero StI’ve never been but many friends loooove this place
Golden Era -572 O’Farrell St. delicious vegetarian Chinese food, moderately priced.

Other suggestions? Comment below!

Posted by Karen at 5:31 pm Tagged with:

Thanksgiving craft time

food, video 5 Responses »
Nov 252008

For those of you who missed out on the classic paper turkey in elementary school, here are instructions. If you do remember making this as a wee innocent child, it’s worth doing again. Many of us are in such a hurry to be grown up that we lose our wonderment and delight for simple activities.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by Karen at 6:56 pm Tagged with: , ,

Feeling new

food, video 9 Responses »
Nov 212008
A little treat for my birthday
Celebratory cupcakes

Every time this date rolls around I start to stress. Should I be further in my career? What am I doing with my life? Is this the right path? Am I happy? The thoughts, worries, second-guessings eat away at me for weeks on end. I am cranky, temperamental, and long for the days when I was younger. This year, these feelings crept into my life months before the dreaded date. This year, I decided to apply my nervous energy into working on the sub-optimal components of my life.

I now feel comfortable and happy staying at home while others go out. Gone is the creeping feeling that I am missing out on something if I am not constantly social. As of today, my credit cards are completely paid off, and I’d like to keep it that way for a long time. I am learning to willingly sludge through chores because they ultimately benefit me, despite my inclination to crawl into bed and nap. I guess this is what it means to be an adult. Those darn responsibilities. There is a long road ahead, and with society’s emphasis on youth, I sometimes need to remind myself that experience and maturity is far more valuable than physical beauty.

Despite all this growing up, I refuse to let go of youth. Youth in the sense of appreciating beauty, trying new things, enjoying simple pleasures. After so many years of feeling old, this is the first time I feel new.

Happy birthday to me.

Posted by Karen at 2:52 am Tagged with: ,

Pumpkin hunting-some tips from an experienced hunter

food, video 2 Responses »
Oct 262008

Adult hunters are far more adept than children, so the pumpkins tend to group in safer arears. Because of this, the best place to hunt for pumpkins is in the suburbs where there is a much higher percentage of children than in the cities. Take a look at this video for some practical tips for your next hunt:

Pumpkin hunting is an old tradition in our family. This is my sister keeping an eye out for attack pumpkins, while my brother gets really close and comfy with the pumpkins to pick the best one out.
Pumpkin hunting with the sis and bro

As you can see, we are all very serious about this sport.

Posted by Karen at 5:17 pm Tagged with: ,

Baconfest

food 3 Responses »
Oct 222008
bacon apple pie

I made a bacon apple pie for baconfest. I used about a pound of bacon for the 8 inch pie. There is no top crust because I was feeling lazy, although the apples dried out a little in the oven. Next time I will put a top crust. I bacon-bitted (chopped & cooked) the majority of the bacon and threw them in with the sliced apples, some lime and cornstarch to marinate. When the pie was close to done I laid a few strips of cooked bacon on top. When making your own crust, I discovered it is much better to use pastry flour instead of all purpose. The crust comes out less bread-like and flakier.

Other foods at the party included sushi, mac & cheese, stuffed mushrooms, cookies and pancakes, all with bacon in them. The list is huge, but I’ll stop here. I mentioned offhand that it would be great to have a site with all the bacon recipes for the year with photos, comments, and whatnot. Steve23 told me I should make it happen and that “this is a do-ocracy”. The statement really struck a chord with me. Good ideas are cheap and it’s all about the follow through. I’m at a point where I feel like so many parts of my life are out of my control, and it’s really nice to be reminded that this is just a perception issue.

Bacon man

Aside from the art, costumes and fireshows, what I love about burningman is that everyone is encouraged to contribute. It could be as simple as bringing treats to give to people and scales up to making some giant flashing flaming thingy. This type of creative energy and empowerment is exactly what I need right now. I don’t go out much these days, and I am so very very glad I chose to go to this event. Not only did I get to spend time with some of my closest friends, I ate more bacon in an eve than anyone should in a month.

I only have one photo, since I find the flash of the camera is sometimes disruptive and distracting. Bacon Man was made by Diva & Steve with 30 pounds of bacon. More Bacon Man photos here

Posted by Karen at 4:58 pm Tagged with: ,

Bacon on my mind

food 6 Responses »
Oct 132008

chunks of delicious bacon

I’ve been spending a lot of my free time playing with bacon. Prather Ranch bacon is so far my favorite. The Niman Ranch variety is comparable. However, I found it strange that Niman Ranch isn’t a place as I always assumed, but a concept. Being heavily interested where my food comes from, this bothers me a little (though not enough to not buy their stuff).

Whenever I’m handling thick delicious bacon like the above, I am tempted to eat it before it’s cooked. It just looks and smells so good and it doesn’t look raw. Thus far, my hypochondriac germaphobe nature has prevented be from doing so. This post is nothing more than short homage to bacon. I love it.

Posted by Karen at 5:35 am Tagged with:

For the love of pumpkins

food, video 5 Responses »
Oct 072008
Sugar pumpkin

As much as I love living is San Francisco one of it’s low points for me is highlighted in this season. Every grocery store I go into outside of San Francisco there are multiple huge crates overflowing with giant orange orbs. The selection in San Francisco is pathetic. There are at most 2 or 3 dozen pumpkins per grocery store. Sure, Whole Foods may carry more oddly colored lumpy heirloom pumpkins, but I’m looking for the classic icon of Halloween, something I can satisfyingly sink my knife into.

I have also been searching for sugar pumpkins. They are smaller pumpkins optimized for baking. How am I supposed to make pumpkin pie? With canned pumpkin? Yuck. I am so sad about the lack of pumpkins in my life. I just want to rip out the gooey innards of a nice round orange pumpkin. It seems like too much to ask of SF.

:(

Posted by Karen at 2:55 am Tagged with: , ,

Dinner at Nobu

food, travel 2 Responses »
Sep 272008

Black cod in miso
Dennis, a friend and I went to Nobu in New York last month and I’m just processing the photos now. This place is absolutely delicious. Everything we ate was amazing and I highly recommend trying it. Service and drinks were both great. The black cod (pictured) was sweet and savory and melt-in-your-mouth good. The only failure was dessert. We got gelato in wood chip, green tea and black sesame. They were all horrible. The peach soup was decent. Say no to dessert and yes to everything else. The next time I go to LA I really want to try the Nobu down there.

(more photos from Nobu)

Posted by Karen at 4:21 am Tagged with: , , ,

View from the Fairmont

food, video No Responses »
Aug 222008

Here’s a little video timelapsing two hours of San Francisco from the 25th floor of the Fairmont hotel.

I love timelapse videos; I wish more cameras had that as an option. Pretty much anything sped up is more interesting. Science has proven that it is on average 42% more interesting, increasing with the fewer frames captured per hour, with the resulting video being a minimum of 10 seconds long. Take a look at this sandwich video:

Now imagine if it were in real time. Ya, way more boring. Imovie06 (I’ve given up on imovie 08. it’s terrible) has the ability to timelapse. You record a video and specify how many frames it takes a minute. This is much easier than recording a full video and then speeding it up.

Timelapse is the awesome

Posted by Karen at 5:20 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,
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