Subj : journey 2 To : ALL From : MICHAEL LOO Date : Sat Jun 17 2000 01:20 am My girlfriend Sharman arrived Thursday, and we got invited to various places to meet various people; few culinary surprises, except that we went to the Monterey Market in Berkeley, where there were probably 50 different kinds of fruit and 15 different varieties of mushrooms. I got some wild Oregon morels for lunch, along with white and yellow peaches, lychees, mangoes, a papaya, cherries, raspberries (regular and organic), strawberries, plums, and two kinds of apricots. Spent almost $50 at the fruit stand! But of course there were a couple dozen pounds of stuff. Saw Courtney Chesser and Fiona at Andronico's, where I picked up a couple bottles of Rodney Strong wines for a party. Turns out that the stone fruits are not great even in California: what ever became of the real peach? But I took the morels to some friends', where I made Morels with cream 1/2 lb morels, rinsed, dried 1/4 apricot, flesh only, minced fine 2 oz butter 1 c heavy cream 1/2 c stock 1 oz dry white wine 1 ds thyme s&p Saute morels and apricots in butter. Add cream and cook until reduced by half. Remove morels to a warm plate. Add stock, wine, and thyme and reduce by at least half. Season to taste. Return morels to sauce and heat through. Serve with bread. and swam(!) for a couple hours. We had the Edna Valley (San Luis Obispo) Chardonnay 1997, which was a medium-oaked, fairly fruity wine, and the Guenoc Sauvignon Blanc 1998, quite full-flavored and good with the richness of the mushrooms. The other highlight of our trip was a trip to Muir Beach and then the Stinson Beach Cafe, where the order of the day was Stinson Beach Amber, actually a fairly full-bodied red ale, and the oyster sampler: Hog Islands, which are small and intensely sweet, Tomales Bays, which are big and fat and extremely rich, with a flavor that reminds me of the canned smoked oysters, and Johnsons, which are longer and leaner but full of flavor. - - - Flew up to Anchorage on an almost completely full plane. Luckily, we had seats together, 5 C and D. The food was okay - I ordered the NLML (no-lactose meal) for both of us. What came: Tossed salad (okay, but not as good as the fresh-made one that was in the first class meal). Quinoa salad with marinated onions (quite good and quite unexpected). I thought the meal was over then, but it turns out that they had a main course as well - Sharman's was chicken in a nice shiitake, soy, and 5-spice sauce, and mine was chicken with marinara sauce (I guess they ran out of mushrooms or something). Spinach vermicelli came with, as well as a vegetable medley of carrots, parsnips, and zucchini. Dessert was a vegan chocolate chip cookie (sigh), but we were given a crack at the regular dessert as well - Mrs Fields' oatmeal raisin cookies and hot fudge sundaes. I had a cookie. The wines they served were Caliterra Cabernet 1996 (respectable but no great shakes) and the Louis M. Martini Chardonnay 1997, well oaked, vanilla scents, great legs, fruit up the wazoo - a really nice wine. Shortly before deplaning, I heard the flight attendants whispering: they had extra wine on board and were giving some away to what they deemed to be "nice" passengers. We got a bottle. It was warmer in Anchorage than in San Francisco! I'm going hiking from 8 to midnight tonight, and I'm told that it will be in the 50s. With fairly full daylight. In Anchorage, I've been catching up on work but had the time to see Bill Swisher for lunch. Bill is a pleasant Bodlesque sort of guy (not so big, bad, or ugly, though), pretty laid back as most of my e-friends are. We went to Twin Dragons, which is a Mongolian BBQ (neither Mongolian nor BBQ) with a buffet. The BBQ stuff is fresh-looking, but the result is stir-fry such as I make for myself all the time, so I left Bill to it. The buffet end was a mixture of good and not-so-good. The bean curd and brown sauce was authentic and delicious, as was the fried rice. Other things were a tad heavy on the batter and sugar: a couple of the dishes were like dessert with bits of meat. Sesame chicken and "T General chicken" were unbelievably sweet; Mongolian beef (onions, sesame) was a bit too sweet; Szechwan wings and chicken with almonds were both pretty decent. Oh, the meatballs with broccoli tasted almost like something my mom would have made when we were poor; this is not altogether a bad thing. The bill was an agreeable 10 a person, counting tip and an iced tea for Bill and an MGD for me. Another 1st class travel day for me tomorrow, then it's to Phoenix and so on and so forth. ___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30 --- * Channel 1(R) * 617-354-3230 * Cambridge MA * 130 lines * PostLink(tm) v1.20 CHANNEL1 (#15) : RelayNet(tm) * Origin: "THE WORLD BEYOND" - Leaving the Others Behind!! (1:250/502) .