Mario's La Fiesta Restaurant

One of my favorite places when I'm craving a burrito. Yummy, good-quality and good-sized burrito for under $4. It comes with tortilla chips and salsa too. Their salsa's too spicy to me though.

French Crullers

I love those things. They're the only kind of donut I actually like. They have a texture similar to that of cream puffs--they're hollow and slightly sticky on the inside...and they melt in your mouth. Only problems: they usually have too much glaze, and they're not good for you. I found a place that sells them (a while back, actually) in Berkeley just off of campus--at Sufficient Grounds (with little icing)! Once again, I do not have a picture of that one so two pictures of one from Judy's Donuts back at home will have to do (with too much icing):

I <3 Hershey's Chocolate

My new favorite chocolate is Hershey's Cacao Reserve Ultra Thin Squares (dark chocolate). They are really thin (look at how thin that piece standing up is!), which could be bad because you feel as though you can eat a lot. SO good.

Fat Apple's Pumpkin Pancakes

Call me crazy, but after reading The Daily Californian's article, "Pancake, Capital 'P'" and other rants and raves on Yelp, I absolutely had to go try Fat Apple's pumpkin pancakes myself. It's complicated why I went alone, but I'll just say that it's easier to just order, pick up, and take off when you're by yourself. Plus, I wasn't sure if anyone would be willing to WALK all the way there with me. So anyways, since I didn't get myself out of bed this morning to work out before work, I decided to walk all the way to Fat Apple's as my form of exercise for the day. I should probably do more, but anyways...so after work I went up to the northwest side of campus to Fat Apple's. I made sure to order a short stack (to go) over the phone about 15 minutes before I arrived because I had read on Yelp.com that it's always busy on Sundays. So I made it there...and it really didn't take all that long to get there. The weather was perfect, and it was very easy to find (it's right on the northwest corner of MLK Jr. & Rose). The bakery next door to the restaurant part of Fat Apple's is where you pick up your to go orders, so I looked briefly around at their pastries. They all looked good, but not good enough to convince me to buy any of them. Anyways, the short stack consisted of 4 small pancakes for $5 something, which is expensive for their size, but they were as good as everyone said they would be on Yelp. They weren't spicy, and the maple syrup (I think they added something extra to it) went really well with them. I managed to revive my camera for 3 seconds and snap the picture above.

I tried making my own vegan pumpkin pancakes (vegan because I didn't have eggs) last night, but I added too much cinnamon. So now, after having eaten these pancakes, I have satisfied my pumpkin pancake craving. I love food articles. Thanks, Daily Cal.

If you want that vegan pumpkin pancakes recipe I just linked the original recipe from Grouprecipes.com up there. Here's my recipe (I made some changes):

1/3 cup whole-wheat flour
2 tsp brown sugar
1.5 tablespoons sugar (original said 2 tablespoons)
1.5 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/3 cup canned pumpkin
2 tsp. vanilla extract (original called for 1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice and 2 tsp maple extract)
boiling water, as needed (not sure how much I ended up using)
** I used too much cinnamon! Just use like 1/2 tsp**

1. Heat non-stick pan over moderate
2. Combine dry ingredients in medium bowl
3. Add pumpkin and extract, followed by enough boiling water to achieve a batter consistency
4. Spoon about 2 tbspoons batter per pancake onto hot pan and brown on both sides

Japanesey: J-Town Food (Summer 2007)

Dessert pictures first!

Taiyaki from San Francisco's Japantown (it's a fish-shaped pancake filled with either a red bean paste or chocolate...I got the chocolate one):


Click HERE for some random person's picture of taiyaki being made. Looks better than my pic. Mmm.


My favorite Japanese chicken dish is oyako, which, sadly, means something like "mother and child" donburi. It's basically chicken, slightly raw egg, onions, and rice:


The katsu don, which ended up being pretty much the oyako but with bread crumb-covered chicken cutlet instead of just plain chicken:


Curry (sorry about the flash!):

Starbucks Pastries!!

* Please note: I did not eat all of these in one day.

I am so good at procrastinating right now. Terrible...I know.

I splurged and bought a blueberry scone from Starbucks on my way to work today. 440 calories, 140 of which were from fat. 23g of sugar. Tasted a little bit like lemon for some reason. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't anything special, and, given the nutrition facts, I will most likely never get one again.

I also tried the Starbucks pumpkin cream cheese muffin a few weeks ago (also right before work). I should just not go to work, huh? Haha. There are TWO stores--one on each side of the office. I should just have more self-control. Anyways, here's a picture of the pumpkin cream cheese muffin, although I stole it from pumpkinpassion.com, which I just discovered today! I love it!


So...the pumpkin cream cheese muffin: I usually don't like spicy pumpkiny things (I love pumpkin without the fancy spices), but I loved this. Obviously it's not low in fat or sugar, but the flavor was excellent. I think the cream cheese made it too much. Too rich...and it was kinda random because it was gooey and soft and the muffin was rigid. The pumpkin seeds on top were coated with sugar, which made them tasty. Too bad the nutrition facts depressed me for a few weeks. 490 calories. 24g fat. Nasty.

Also tried ONE petite herb cheese scone (my first savory scone!...I think). Good, but nothing amazing. Expensive. Can't remember how much. Just ONE was 100 calories. Goodness.

Another time, I had the pumpkin scone. 480 calories. 15g fat. 21g sugar. Ugh. So good though. I could live without all of the icing though.

Here is the Starbucks pumpkin scone recipe.

Sorry...I'm giving up on trying to find a picture for each pastry. Maybe later?

Bottom line: I'm impressed with Starbucks's pastries, but I will definitely only eat them once in a while.

Bierocks

More fluffy than flaky even though these look flaky...

These are SO good and yet SO simple and easy to make. They're basically ground beef and cabbage stuffed inside fluffy bread and baked. The dough alone is pretty tasty. I like my bierocks stuffed with filling, but for this dough I don't mind too much if the dough is a bit thicker than usual.  Here's the recipe I used (I can't remember where I got this from):

BIEROCKS

2 lbs. ground beef - I tend to use no more than 1.5 lbs
1 cup chopped onion
4 cups chopped cabbage
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper

Cook ground beef, onion, cabbage, salt and pepper until browned. Roll out dough and cut into large circles. Put 1/4 cup meat mixture in center of dough. Pinch closed. Bake until browned, approximately 20 minutes, at 375 degrees.

DOUGH:

2 pkgs. yeast
1 tsp. salt
1 c. warm milk
4 c. flour
1/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. warm water
1/4 c. butter, softened

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Set in warm place. Add warm milk, butter and salt; let stand for 10 minutes with yeast mixture in it. Add flour and sugar. Let double for 50 minutes. Makes six large ones or more smaller ones.

I made these about a year ago and several times since then, and I will definitely make them again.