Project Crab Rangoon: Episode 2

While Marit was visiting, we took a trip to a local Chinese Restaurant on College Ave. in Berkeley - called King Yen.

This experiment is quickly getting depressing. We ordered the "Crab Cheese Puffs" on the menu. And we got....crab cheese puffs. Something that ACTUALLY had crab in it. WHAT?! Clearly not a crab rangoon. Here are the official results: (sorry - no pictures!)

1. Cream Cheesiness: barely there. barely cheesy. nonexistent. where cheese should coat your mouth with creaminess, there was only crab juice. yuck. Grade: D
2. Crabbiness: WAY TOO CRABBY. actual crab - not imitation crab. normally, this would impress me. not tonight. high crabbiness factor, but not in that rubbery rangoon way. Grade: C
3. Wonton Quality: thick, overcooked, bubbly surface - way too crispy and dark brown. ew. bad show, King Yen. Grade: D
4. Wonton Shape: little packages - not delicate like chez Becky - but thick and heavy. kind of gross. Grade: C-
5. Duck Sauce: definitely varies by coast. red, syrupy, and with a dollop of MUSTARD on the side. i wish i had a picture of this - it was a bowl of duck sauce syrup, and half of the syrup was splashed with yellow liquid mustard. kind of gross. marit secretly liked it. Grade: D

OVERALL GRADE: D

Seriously, it was disgusting. But to be fair (unlike Becky's) the rest of their food was top notch - really delicious, with fresh veggies and meat. not like some of that overdone, heavy grossness i'm used to tasting as chinese fare. Maybe it's an inverse relationship: quality of chinese food>
the better the chinese food, the worse the rangoon?

the search goes on, but i'm already starting to despair. and looking forward to some rangoons when i go home in may. if i can make it until then!

best weekend EVA

well, i was going to go to tahoe. but then i got a call from marit (my dear friend who lives in tahoe) that she'd been working 14 days straight and was hoping to come west for some r&r. she sounded so bummed!

tracy was, as always, the accomodating, gracious friend and host, and welcomed my friend and excused me for the weekend ( was going to go to tahoe with her and jesse).

so, marit and i chilled. went to a sociology frat house bbq and party on friday, which was hilarious - due largely to the formidable karaoke machine in the dining room. we danced, we ate, we yelled "every ROse has it's THORN!" and we "sang.

THEN on sat, i took marit up to muir woods for some redwood action. clean, moist air, energizing eucalyptus and massive, enveloping trees. it was beautiful. then we hung out at stinson beach and ate the most satisfying hamburgers i've had in a REALLY long time.

we came home, got sushi and watch the olympics/friends on dvd. it was the perfect day!

sunday was another chill day with marit. and i'll tell you, it is SUCH a gift to have so many people i care about meet eachother and interact. tracy and the powell-baldridges are my west coast family - no question. marit is part of my east coast family. she's my best friend leia's younger sister, and has become a good friend of mine. she's a kindred spirit in silliness and self-reflection. she is a solid, true friend, and she also knew me way back when (15 years ago!!!). it was like food for the soul. (not like my soul isn't already filled to the brim with goodness lately!!).

unfortunately, i forgot to take pictures. hopefully i'll get some from marit soon.

other highlights:
1. i went out with the car crash guy on weds......email me for the juicy details (and there are juicy details. heheh).
2. my parents are coming in 2 weeks, and i COULDN'T BE MORE EXCITED!!!
3. i've been WORKING, so this blog thing is a lot harder...but still worth it!!!
4. i just bought a plane ticket for an april trip up to orcas island (outside of seattle) with one of my absolute bffs, maddy. so i really am just BURSTING with good energy.

gosh, another packed week/end

i'm not sure i know where to start! i guess with the good news: i have a temorary day job! and it's in an organization that i actually care about! the Performing Arts Workshop in san francisco does a lot of the same type of thing that the Julia Morgan does- artist residencies in public schools, weekly workshops with students, and they've just come out with a report showing how arts learning (their workshops) affect student achievement in school. very cool stuff. i've been working with their program director and executive director on a conference this summer about art, social justice and youth (called "making art, making change"). their program assistant left unexpectedly, so i'm filling in. it's lousy office work (not the program development stuff i'd love to be doing), but it's money (HURRAH!) and it's an excellent opportunity to network and show that i'm a good worker. i'll be there until at least apl 7.

also - i chaperoned caitlin'e middle school party on friday night, so poor tracy wasn't the only adult in a houseful of shrieking 7th graders. it was pretty funny. but exhausting (so many hormones - the girls all look 17 and the boys all look 10, but really they're all 12-13).

on saturday i went to a 'swearing festival' with jess h. and tristen and tristen's friend (see pic of jess h. rockin' out to obscenities). that's right, a swearing festival. sounds cool, right? WRONG. it was sooooo lame. they made the collossal mistake of having an "open mic" - where anyone who wanted to could take the stage and rant obscenities for 1 min. it was soooooo annoying, including the obligatory d&d master bay area anti-bush nerd with a mullet. the fish and chips were FABULOUS, but we waited about 40 min for them. all in all, an anticlimactic night.

the next day, Wonderful Women's Brunch in SF with jess and friends. Jess organizes this event every month and we get together for brunch (obviously). this time we were at "q", a restaurant in the richmond district of sf. so much fun! a few smithies and new friends and the food was fabulous. you know how i like brunch (see pic).

Finally, i went to the coolest wedding ever. Sabrina Klein, the Executive Director of the Julia Morgan, who has literally taken me in to her personal and professional families, was getting married for the second time in her life, and everyone was invited. but this wasn't just a wedding between two older people. this was a family marriage. Sabrina's adopted son, Keefer, was on stage with his parents the whole time, got his own tux, and shared in the ceremonies. they got rings, read vows, and keefer got a silver necklace which they both placed on his neck, saying the vows they wrote specifically for him.

it was really beautiful, and very participatory - with peformances by friends and family, including a piece put together by a documentarian friend, who interviewed friends and family involved in tom and sabrina's story. he then took those interviews, devised a script out of them, and had actors (also friends) play the parts of parents of the bride and groom, as well as longtime friends. together, their words told the story of tom, keefer and sabrina. It was beautiful and sweet tho' a little long (the munchkins in the audience were definitely restless).

somewhere during that wedding i realized i had stumbled on a family here. "Sabrina invests in people." someone told me that day. and i could tell how true that was - both from my own expericne and the experiences of others there. it was one big, warm, beautiful display of social capital. people were dancing and singing and creating art and cheering, and also networking and talking about how this school could work with this art organization, and how this artist could come into that classroom. i met the young woman whose parents i met on a mountain in oct - she's coincidentally dating an artist i observed in the classroom when visiting with the Julia Morgan program - and they introduced me to the head of Kaiser Permanente's Theater Education Wing. I saw Stephanie and Louise, with whom I've been working at the Alameda County Office of Education, and Louise introduced me to the Superintendent of Schools. it was a beautiful harmony of differing communities becoming one - which, ironically, is the goal of our conference this summer.

"i'm so, so happy that you're here." sabrina said it to me, and i know that she meant it. she also made every other person there feel loved and welcomed and warm, because that's just what she does. she invests in people. and we can only be grateful to return that investment.

crazy, crazy night.

sooooooo.....i know that y'all back east are snowed in and everything, and i'm a little bit jealous. but last night i just had the craziest time that i feel obligated to tell everyone about it.

it started innocuously enough. i went on a date in sf with one of the guys from my tahoe ski trip. took the train in because traffic was horrendous. had a fun time, smooched a bit, (but to be honest i'm really not sure i'm super into him, tho' he's very cool, sweet, considerate, etc.), but generally had a good date. missed the last train home, so he gave me money for the cab ride back to my car in oakland. i got lost with the cabbie on the way to my car. get to my car, get in a CAR ACCIDENT in a shady part of oakland on my way back to tracy's house. (i was in the right lane, car ahead of me in the left lane turned into me to get into the gas station on the right hand side). caused a commotion on the streetcorner (where apparently everyone hangs out at 1am).

this one guy who was riding his bike by at the time stopped and helped out. as i was talking to the folks at 911, he heard that i had a 617 area code and asked if i was from boston - turns out he grew up in dorchester and brookline. and now his parents live in cambridge. and he lived in porter square for a little while. or something. i was distracted. when i was just about ready to go, it went kind of like this.

me (to brookline bike guy): "ok, well, i guess i'm going to go. thanks for your help!"
brookline bike guy: "do you want to get a drink?"
me: "um....ok."

so we met up for a drink down the street (he biked, i drove). which was actually pretty fun, and then i drove him and his bike to his place, where i kissed date #2 and gave him my number.

WHAT?!??! WHEN THE HELL DOES ANYTHING LIKE THIS *EVER* HAPPEN TO ME?!?!?
step 1: date
step 2: car accident
step 3: date

yikes. it was pretty funny. now i'm pretty worn out. but can't help chuckling about it to myself, like, all the time. (even though now i'm totally worried about cars, money, and insurance)

oh, yeah, and i got a haircut.

TAKE BACK VALENTINE'S DAY

last sun, tracy and jesse and i went to a "heart show" at a local gallery in berkeley. all these local artists were displaying their heart-themed creations. some of them were really cool - like, scraps of old letters from the 1800s collaged into a heart. most of it was collagy stuff - pieces of paper strung together in heart form, or scrapped together. there was a greeting card that had a picture of a piece of wet pavement in the shape of a heart.


now, i spent many formative years wearing black and swearing off pink and being generally gloomy. because it was cool. but i've come to the conclusion that gloomy is NOT cool. gloomy is gloomy. and hearts should be reclaimed for the single ones. so, i'm going to make some of my own heart art (here are some pics of stuff tracy has around the house), and i am going to wear a red velvet dress on valentine's day, and i am going to go out and drink a pink martini of some sort.

SO THERE.

Project Crab Rangoon: Episode 1

Since arriving on the West Side, I have been craving something I never really thought I would crave: Crab Rangoons.

Apparently native to New England, Crab Rangoons are "Chinese" food appetizers - cream cheese and crab inside a crispy deep-fried wonton roll. In Boston, you can find Crab Rangoons at just about every asian-themed restaurant: Thai, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese - doesn't matter. They all have 'em.

Here? I asked for Crab Rangoons at one restaurant and caused mass confusion. However, upon further investigation I discovered "Crab Cheese Puffs" and "Fried Crab Cheese Wontons" listed on a couple of Chinese restaurant menus in the area. This is when I devised Project Crab Rangoon.

Over the next few weeks, I will test all crab and cheese puff-like menu items at area restaurants, in the search for my old friend, the down-home Crab Rangoon. Rangoons will be graded on each of five characteristics:

1. Cream Cheesiness: smooth, rubbery, cheesy, or crumbly
2. Crabbiness: smell and taste of crab (not really important in the enjoyment of a rangoon, but seemed important to note)
3. Wonton Quality: crispy, thin, wafer-like, or thick and bubbly-surfaced
4. Wonton Shape: triangle rangoons (signature of the world's best rangoon producer, Kowloon in Saugus), or corners folded up to make a pretty little package, or haphazardly crinkled together
5. Duck Sauce (this seems to vary by coast, as well): orange-to-red coloring, consistency, thickness

Tonight's subject: Becky's Chinese Restaurant on College Ave, Rockridge (in Oakland).

Becky's seems like a new local restaurant, so they had something to prove. The results, however, weren't pretty.

1. Cream Cheesiness: absolutely disgusting. I'm not kidding, it was really bad - both in taste and consistency. Rubbery, not at all creamy, and tasting not at all like cheese, but like something gross. GRADE: D-
2. Crabbiness: aside from the pink flecks in the cheese, there was no evidence of crab presence. GRADE: C
3. Wonton Quality: light, crispy. Much more of a "higher class" wonton - such that you would see at thai restaurants, not your run of the mill chinese wonton. GRADE: B
4. Wonton Shape: the delicate little package, excellent presentation. GRADE: A-

5. Duck Sauce: Reddish, thin, not super-sweet. GRADE: C
OVERALL GRADE: D (this isn' really an average, but the cream cheesiness grade really overrules all others)

Plus, the fortune cookies were stale.

Becky's has lost one customer. Bummer, cuz they were close to home and no one seems to deliver Chinese food around here. The search for the perfect Bay Area Crab Rangoon continues!

there's something familiar about today

when i woke up this morning, something felt vaguely familiar about the blue, blue sky sky. and the chilly morning air. and my sleepy eyes. and my bare feet on the cold wood floorboards. i don't know exactly what it was. but it made me think of those spring mornings during my senior year of high school when the sky was always a crisp blue in the morning - even though it would warm up later on. and i wore my mom's old beachy cotton sweater and my dad's old courderoys and drove my '86 gray rusty chevy station wagon to school - usually annoyed at my brother for running late.

and everything was green, green, green, even in the early morning. the dewy grass that was too long in our front yard (because one of us hadn't done our chores and mowed the previous weekend). the dew that soaked the toes of my docs and the cuffs of my pants and made everything chilly. the smooshy ground, still moist from the melted snow, swishing under my feet on the way to the car.

listening to the WERS coffeehouse in the car on the way to school, annoyed at tim for being late, annoyed at tim for taking up space and blocking my view of oncoming traffic from the right at wampum corner, annoyed at tim for wanting to change the radio station. (i was often annoyed as a teenager).

forgiving all annoyances when we stopped at cumby's for a french vanilla latte straight from the machine - which was running well if the stream of coffee didn't look like a stream of brown water as it filled your cup (press the button, wait for the spout --- yes!! it's working today!). clearly made with heavy cream, and sweet enough to wake me up for the first two periods of school, tim and i sometimes indulged - on days when getting up for school was particularly difficult.

getting to the center of wrentham and trying to decide - was it faster to go straight to the only traffic light in town and then take a left, or to take the sneaky lefthand veer before the light? or the super-sneaky shortcut behind the town tennis courts , risking a lefthand turn in rush hour traffic next to dunkies.

and then finally getting to our part of the parking lot, and parking with all of my friends. and saying hi. leia's big boat of a black grandma sedan (super kitty), julie's little box of a car, whatever piece of crap emmet was driving at the time, paige's sleek black former parents' car. and paul, adam and shaun pulling up in some little thing blaring german punk music at 7:30 in the morning.

i don't know why, but something about the sky today really reminded me of those mornings.