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For the benefit of Foodbuzzers out there who are heading to San Francisco this weekend — a little teaser. :-) [Part I is here.]

Cable Cars

Almost everyone I know who live or have been in SF have told me: Get on the cable car! What is the big deal?! Haha. The first time we went on there, I was squished in the middle and was too uncomfortable I swore that was the last time I was going to be there. Being smooshed and skin-on-skin with other strangers at the beginning of a warm day was not my idea of a great time. Thankfully, the succeeding experiences (what can we do? It was a cheap and easy way of getting around to the tourist spots we so wanted to go to!) with the cable car) were much more enjoyable.

The cable car was cute and rickety, as expected. The people, comprised of the operator and mostly of fellow tourists (which made me ask out loud whether tourists are the only ones who take cable cars), were half of the story and the fun of the ride. Our animated cable car operator above was a total hoot! He put everybody in a jolly mood with his stories and random hollers. He made us laugh. It was almost like a real tour bus. They should pay this guy extra, really. We were totally bummed when he had to switch with a sullen guy!

At one time, I was hanging on to the vertical rail and standing on the stepping board of the car. I made the most of it by using my other arm to take photos — do that with caution. It was really fun.

On the way to the wharf

Going back to Powell Station

Fisherman’s Wharf [map] [website]

They say it’s a tourist trap, but we went there anyway and met up with Kristen (DineandDish) and Katie (Goodlife Eats). We didn’t get to see the sea lions, but they did. It was just a quick ‘tour’ of the place. You get down from the cable car and walk to the pier.

Foggity-fog-fog right there. Yup, it was San Fogcisco, too.

The Ferry Building [map] [website]

I went crazy shopping at the Ferry Building.

I ordered ALL macaron flavors at Miette without a drop of guilt. Nope. Sorry.

Miette pâtisserie & confiserie

When I saw Katie holding chocolate covered candied orange peels, my brain just froze with this thought: Must. Get. Now. They really know how to make a girl drool. http://www.recchiuti.com

Recchiuti Confections

Yummy-nummy salted pig parts from Boccalone. REQUIRED PURCHASE: Nduja spicy, soft spreadable salame. I bought two of those, and holy eff, I really wished I bought five! I’m a hoarder of good things by nature, yes, but my god…I’ll take nduja on tap!

Boccalone - Tasty Salted Pig Parts

Stonehouse California Olive Oil

Ok, I only have an iphone pic of this (I just took it) so you can see. But don’t you forget to get the blood orange olive oil from that shoppe. Please. Do yourself a favor and get this:

Get.

Pauline’s Pizza

This is where we kicked off our Blogher Food weekend, having dinner with a group of amazing women and men who made the event worth going to. Thank goodness for the awesome Chezus.com couple and good friends — Denise and Lenny — who organized this meetup. Sure, we all went there for the food blogging conference, but when it comes down to it, the people you meet, the connections you make, the lasting friendships you build, and the laughter echoing the hallways are what really makes a blogging get-together worthwhile.

Really goot pizzah

Clock Bar

Like I said, the people really make blogging events worth attending. After the kickoff meetup at Pauline’s, Dana [DanaTreats.com], Kristina [Tennesee Locavore], Maris [InGoodTasteBlog.net] and I went for drinks by Union Square.

Although Maris and I made a bad decision ordering the drink that’s named after Hawaii’s unofficial state fish, we had a great time laughing our heads off. Thank you, girls!

Someone said on Twitter that Clock Bar is nothing special– and we really didn’t go there because it was a Michael Mina establishment. We just went in and had a blast. Didn’t matter where we really were.

That humuhumunukunukuapaua'a? Don't order that. It's like drinking a very floral drink.

SF MoMA

I made sure to stop by SF MoMA, which was something I’ve been dreaming of doing. I love art. I love art museums. And you know what else? I LOVE that I wasn’t escorted out when I took photos with my DSLR.

Quick note: Don’t forget to join our Fall giveaway for a cheese party! Contest ends at noon today (Oct 29), PST time. :)

This took a long time, eh? And I’m doing it in chunks, too. Before you know it, I’m back there and I haven’t finished talking about last month’s mini-tour. Haha. Oh well. Bear with this old lady.

So here some of my fondest memories of my first trip to San Francisco:

1. BART — my DUH moment

My love (and not-so-love) affair with San Francisco began at the BART station. I found myself putting a $20 bill into the card machine and I thought it “ate” the twenty and left me with a one-way ticket to Embarcadero station. Hello, dumb tourist! It’s different in Canada and I was thinking — “Uh, things are much simpler in Vancouver!” Haha. I eventually asked the guy beside me. “Your $20 is in that card.” OH. Duh.

The train is much wider compared to our Vancouver’s Sky Train and the seats are more comfortable for longer trips. Made me really wish Vancouver had the foresight to build wider trains.

Upon passing the different stations, I’ve learned what my San Francisco guidebook really meant by “microclimates”. One stop it’s sunny, the next it’s as hazy as my brain on a Sunday morning.
The day I arrived in downtown San Francisco, it was really windy and chilly and it made me wonder whether I accidentally flew into Chicago. I told a few other BlogHer attendees to bring clothes for the cold temps. Little did I know that on the day most of them were to arrive, it would be so hot. Yikes.

3. I found a friend: super awesome Kristina of Tennessee Locavore

Ask me what do I not love about her. I could not have gotten a better roommate from the roommate lottery. Seriously. I had a hotel booking and she got a last-minute pass to Blogher Food. I offered her a place to stay, and days letter she tells me that we can stay at a timeshare…for free! I know. I’m guessing this is good karma coming back for sending forth good karma. I like it. But that’s just the cherry topping to it all. Kristina and I hit it off right away because a) we have a lot in common; b) well, we’re foodies; c) she’s one person you won’t have a dull moment with. I love her! This trip would not be even half as fun without her. I miss this girl. I’m so glad we met, Kristina!

2. Tartine

I heard about Tartine for weeks before going to the city, and I remember Manggy tweeting that I must visit it. I’m so glad I had Kristina to go around the city with, because she definitely has an excellent list of foodie places to go to (also thanks to Anita for that). Tartine Bakery lived up to my expectations.

We split one ham and cheese croque monsieur:

And we took a bag of these ‘cookies’ back to the hotel:

3. Bi-Rite Creamery and their Salted Caramel and Creme Fraiche Ice cream

There are simply no words to describe how much I LOVE these two ice cream flavors together. I fondly remember the exact moment I tasted it and groaned with much delight. Where have you been all my life?! I’m not exaggerating.

4. Bi-Rite Supermarket

That was some serious good food haven. Heaven, possibly. We got some food to take back to the hotel, where we had a kitchenette.

Acme Bread loaf, dry-farmed tomatoes and Tartine Bakery macaroons

Burrata cheese that's made with cream wrapped in mozarella

5. Chinatown

Oh look! I took a video of the fortune cookie lady…

So here’s a story Kristina and I have about that fortune cookie place. We both bought some flat fortune cookies (basically they are fortune-less), she got one bag, I got two. Then I noticed the lady grabbing a handful and put them in my bag. So we headed out and while we were yapping I said, “Oh, let’s eat some of the extras she gave us.” Then Kristina said she didn’t get some. “Are you sure? Look at the bottom of the bag.” None. Whooops! We both laughed and thought she was discriminated against, and it was all because of the karma from her husband’s Asian joke earlier via crackberry. We had a good chuckle out of it.
Ok…to be continued…

I’ll give you a glimmer of hope that Yes, I’m still alive! September has been such a chaos of travel that, well, I haven’t seen my own kitchen in a month. One of the things I’ve been up to is traveling out to San Francisco for Blogher Food 2009 last September 26. I went there a few days earlier to check out the city, and let me tell you — it was one of the best decisions I made this year.

It was sunny and breezy last Wednesday while I was waiting for my roommate, Kristina, of Tennessee Locavore:

I loved San Francisco…the buildings, the food, ah…!

I’ll have more to post later, photos and audio from the Blogher Food sessions I attended. Stay tuned!

We are in the process of updating our blog theme, so if you see something not working that’s probably why. Thanks for your patience. :)

You might be saying — “Joy, it’s Christmas. Why are you talking about coffee tours?”

Well, friends, if you’re looking out the window and you can see this –

[Note: That sound at the end is not my breathing, it was the gush of wind!]

Wouldn’t you rather be thinking of sunshine, Hawaii and something warm — like coffee? I’ve been so busy here with all the Christmas shopping, work (which, trust me, tends to get really hectic before Christmas…why, whyyyy?), and trying to plan for the Christmas week ahead. I only even got our Christmas menu down pat last night! Now that I looked at the calendar and saw 21, I am starting to panic. Dan is coming here soon, and since then, we are going to be crazy busy with parties, food, and squeezing in time to do some tourist-y things. I’m severely nervous of how everything is going to turn out. I’m an OCD wreck like that!

I can’t leave you all behind though, not after the sudden-hiatus debacle of Fall 2008 when we seemed like we fell off the face of the earth. No, no, I promise. I’ve been cooking and baking a lot, and I even made sugar cookies to satisfy the sweet Christmas tooth. But I see everything Christmas-y in the food blogging world already and I am sure you will find great recipes among our food blogging friends. I will get to writing about cream puffs before Christmas, I hope. Because, that’s a super awesome treat which my mom used to make (she needs to get her baking mojo back!!! Hello, calling mom.).

Ok, for now…where were we? COFFEE! Oh, not just coffee, but Kona coffee.

Last October Dan and I visited the Bay View Farm coffee farm in Honaunau, HI. It was a really hot and bright day as you will notice in the photos below, but we braved it. And Dan The Tea Drinker and Non-Coffee Drinker enjoyed it. Hehe.

We were greeted by a really nice fellow who also happens to be a musician. Them talented people. Anyway, so he took us around the area and facilities for a better understanding of this beloved coffee that has wowed coffee lovers from all over.

It all begins with this, the hand-picked coffee cherries:

And for the curious, this is what a coffee plant (tree?) looks like, looking so lush and happy (hard not be if you live in Hawaii):

Their Kona coffee cherries are harvested from different small local farms. It is locally owned and operated.  Farmers leave their harvest here:

We witnessed the guy who dropped off these two sacks, as our tour guide nodded to him. Everybody knows everybody. There’s nothing here that resembles a big manufacturer or factory:

At the end of the day after all the cherries have been delivered, it will go through chute for a soaking process called wet milling.

The beans will be separated from the coffee cherry pulp.

The husks that have been separated are sent here right outside the building:

They are later taken back to the fields to be used as a fertilizer. The wet-milled, soaked green coffee beans are then brought to this drying deck for sun-drying. They are raked every hour for a week for them to fully dry. A week!

Once dry, they bring the beans to the next processing facility where the green beans are removed from the parchment [manly hands courtesy of Dan]:

The coffee beans are then sorted according to size, weight, and defects. Apparently, those with defects are sent to those who make “Kona coffee blend”. The primary Kona coffee grades are the Peaberry, Extra Fancy, Fancy, #1, and Prime.

After all that long process these sorted beans are packed for inspection, and sale or roasting at the farm’s own facilities:

And that’s the tour! Thereafter we enjoyed our own cups of coffee and bought bags to take home.

I hope you enjoyed this coffee tour via Gourmeted. Have a cup of hot coffee this afternoon and relax in the midst of the busy holiday week. Now I have to go back to reality and do some chores. :-) Aloha!

It’s summer and is it too obvious that cooking has been taking a back seat? In blogging years, this would have been MIA or a long sabbatical. If it were years ago, I’d be posting a “hiatus” message. [Bloggers from the days of yore: remember that?]

I’ve been seeing friends and keeping up with all the festivals the summer brings into this sun-deprived city of Vancouver. There’s the dragon boat festival last weekend. Believe it or not, carnival/fair food is one of my guilty pleasures. Roasted corn on the cob — gimme, gimme! Who can think of cooking when you can stuff your face with vendor food from these events? And in this multicultural city, there’s no shortage of delicious stuff to sink your teeth in — there’s Greek, Indian, Chinese, Thai, etc.

There’s also the Coastal Jazz Festival this time of the year and I went with a couple of good friends to see Kenny Colman last Monday night. It was a nice evening of music, wine and martinis. That’s how we roll.

Aside from that, I’ve been helping another good friend launch her Yoga Body products. Go check it out! We are going to be a vendor at the Camp Moomba Yogathon on July 12th. If you’re in town, drop by and say Hello. Try out the sprays and go buy some for your family, friends, and girlfriends. Even boyfriends!

What else…work, meetings…and all that jazz that comes with life. You know. ;-)

Cooking will commence soon, I promise. I have an alcoholic soup coming up and a classic Filipino cheesy bread treat called Ensaymada. Hang in there fellow hungry foodies!

Are you superstitious? Boo!

I was at Granville Island with my mom (that’s her reflection) last Saturday. I love that place because of all the interesting (artsy) things you can see and buy. We walked passed this art gallery and this one caught my eye. Are they trying to catch something?

Speaking of ‘interesting’, that same afternoon there were nude bicyclists leisurely riding around the island. No, I do not have photos and you are very welcome. Haha. Only in Vancouver, people. I could see that happening in Seattle, too. But then again, they’re not #4 World’s Best Places to Live.  I gloat. :) [C'mon, forgive me this one time...haha. I'm not complaining about the weather.]

Anyway, I’ll talk about food later. I promise! For now, off to enjoy some Belgian waffles and yummy cheeses. Yeah, who cares about Friday the 13th?

Enjoy your weekend!

I used to hate Mondays like the plague. I had anxiety attack-like symptoms that petrify me during Sundays that I don’t even get to enjoy that day. I know several people who dread Mondays and just know it’s going to be another ‘case of the Mondays’. Wow, way too many M-words. I’m happy to say that I’ve freed myself from that crutch.

My strategy the past few years? Schedule fun things that I like for Mondays, so I’ll have good things to look forward to, Like this:

This afternoon I’m going to get a few of these incredibly delicious donuts to bring for Dan. This is my absolute favorite donut in the whole world, and that says a lot because I’ve eaten hundreds of them. [Scary.] If you’re ever in Vancouver — as if I haven’t given you enough reasons to go — don’t forget to visit Granville Island. I’m also seeing a good friend later to talk about exciting things (haha).

How do you beat your Case of the Mondays?