Bakesale Betty

Bakesale Betty
5098 Telegraph Avenue
(Southeast corner of Telegraph & 51st)
Oakland, CA
Website here

Ohh my goodness. Janet told me to try this many months ago, and then she brought some cookies into the lab a few weeks ago. Everything that I tried was delicious, so I decided to go myself later, and I finally ended up going with Gail and Cheri on 5/21/09. SO GOOD. They hand out FULL cookies, scones, etc. as free samples to everyone in line!! We then proceeded to make homemade strawberry shortcake.

Here's my fried chicken sandwich (more pictures of it below):


People sit at ironing boards like this one:


One of the best cookies I've ever had (pecan shortbread cookie):


Lotsa employees:

Baked goods:

Strawberry shortcakes:

You can sorta see my lemon slushie. The sandwich was bigger than this picture shows:

See? Huge and delicious:


WOULD DEFINITELY GO BACK!!

Golden Curry Sauce With Vegetables

Consumed on 4/14/09

[Edit:] Daniel says that he always adds other foods to these instant curries. My parents and brother do that too. I'll do it next time. haha

This was my first time making curry (well, I was still cheating; this wasn't from scratch) on my own. Hmm...pretty easy...but nothing amazing. Good for being a just-heat-me-up kind of thing.
* For Cheri & Gail: "Heat that up!"* It woulda been better if I had added something...like fresh potatoes. Got this at...hmm...I really don't remember. How sad! Somewhere in Berkeley though...and it must have been on sale.

Beard Papa's Pumpkin Cream Puff

Beard Papa
845 Market St
San Francisco, CA 94103
Website here.
Yelp ratings here.
New Berkeley location too at 2399 Telegraph Avenue

4/11/09

Pumpkin-flavored things are sooo good. Beard Papa has really good green tea cream puffs too sometimes.

Dinner at Alborz

Alborz (Persian Cuisine)
2142 Center St
(between Oxford St & Shattuck Ave)
Berkeley, CA 94704
Yelp ratings here.

5/9/09 with Kurtis

Tziki-like sauce, butter, raw onion, and ... pita?

My meal ("Shirin Polo With Baked Chicken rice mixed with almonds, pistachio, raisin, orange peel and saffron"), which was delicious...except for the overload of orange peel:

Kurtis's meal ("Fesenjoon With Chicken roasted ground walnut simmered in pomegranite sauce"), which was delicious:

I just took this pic because it made me feel so grateful for digital cameras. Definitely would not want to paint my meals like this:

Creations

Creations
2370 Shattuck Avenue
(between Durant Ave & Channing Way)
Berkeley, CA 94704

5/18/09 with Bonnie and Minh-Chau

They charge by weight, which is awesome, but then you have to be careful not to load up on too many toppings. What also sucks is if you just want a little bit because the cup they give you is huge...so you're strongly encouraged to spend and eat more (dangerous!). My toppings were mochi balls, blueberries, strawberries, and peanuts. The froyo came out much faster than that of Yogurtland, although Yogurtland only charges $0.30 per ounce, while Creations charges $0.36 per ounce. I prefer both of these places to Ryno's, Yogurt Harmony, and Papamingo.

I wanted to try a bunch of flavors...so I got squirts (gross word, by the way) of blueberry, plain, chocolate, vanilla, and green tea:

The topping options (those squirt bottles contained stuff like honey--not mustard & ketchup):

Ryno's

Ryno's
2380 Telegraph
Berkeley, CA 94704
Yelp ratings here.

Can't really see the mochi on top, but oh well. Can't remember the price, but it's cheaper than Papamingo, which is just southeast of Ryno's on Channing. I still prefer Yogurtland and Creations. Thais got a strawberry milkshake that she said was good. No picture (sorry).

Yogurt Harmony

Yogurt Harmony
2259 Shattuck Avenue
(between Kittredge and Bancroft)
Berkeley, CA 94704
Website

Sunday, 4/12/09 (after we ate this)

mine on left...ian's on right. cute asian girl helped us. ian didn't know his would be so humongous. can't remember the price, but creations south on shattuck is cheaper and has more yogurt and topping options (same w/ yogurtland on bancroft). will post about both places soon.

Mini Twix Bars from the Dollar Tree

One of my favorite candy bars.



Have you ever looked at the individual layers like this before? Unwrapped, one of my favorite Food Network shows, said that Twix bars have holes in their cookies because they come off the racks or whatever more easily. So supposedly they aren't cheating us of a few crumbs of cookie on purpose/to be cheap.

Ghirardelli's Milk Chocolate with Caramel Filling Square

Scharffen Berger Cacao Nibs

Fattyyyy! 12g of fat per 2-tablespoon serving! I love these though. Bitter and not at all sweet, but they smell wonderful, and they have a nice crunchy-but-not-too-hard texture. Alex M. likes to grind these nibs with his coffee (he adds cinnamon and honey too). I would eat these as a snack if they weren't so expensive and fatty. Apparently it's $9.50 online, but it's $8-something at Andronico's and $7.89 (??? I can't remember the exact amount) at Berkeley Bowl. I bought mine (well, I got it for my parents) at Berkeley Bowl, of course.

Scharffen Berger is closing, by the way! Or are they closed already? I know they don't offer tours anymore and that their factory store is closed. They used to give awesome free tours with generous free samples. If you're confused about what cacao is, go HERE for information.

I found a delicious-looking cacao nib brownie recipe. You can also toss them in salads or use them instead of chocolate chips or nuts.

Finally...the chocolates from Yuya. :D


Had trouble figuring out what this one was, but the top layer was (milk?) chocolate, and that second layer had a kind of sugary coconut-y texture.

Shoot...I can't remember this one. I think it was chocolate mixed with some kind of berry, but maybe that purple color is just throwing me off.

Can't remember this one either. Looks like it'd be a coffee-flavored truffle though:


This spicy one was my favorite! Spicy chocolate is the best!


This one looked like a booger on the outside, but it was pretty good. The outer layer was made of who knows what, but there was a thin layer of some kind of nutty, caramelized toffee-ish thing...with smooth chocolate in the middle.

Sunday, 5/14/09

Mina made me a hummus-cranberry-turkey-spinach-matzo sandwich for our Psych 110 study session that we had the day/night before our final exam. It was SO good!!

Cal's Nikkei Student Union Banquet 2009

Friday, 5/8/09

Durant Hotel

2600 Durant Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94704

Yuummmm

BEST PUDDING EVER! Mocha? Coffee? Intensely choco-coffee-y (??):

Freeborn Hall 2nd Floor 2005-2006 Reunion

@ Wendy's Berkeley house
Saturday, 5/17/09
7pm

We finally had a reunion after 3 years.

My plate (I kept going back for more of Wendy's mac 'n' cheese and Ian's watermelon though):


YUMMMY FOOD!! Thanks, everyone! More food came later too...like Ian's water, sodas, watermelon, and melon.


Not pictured: Dama's Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Mint Chocolate Cookie is a reeeally yummy flavor.

Salt Water Taffy From MC

MC went to Boston this semester for an interview and brought me back some taffy (so sweet of her...corny...I know)!

Team Potluck: Post-Championship WIN

Saturday, 5/9/09 @ Val's apartment (she's our setter).

This time we had a brunch potluck! Banana pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes, corn, sweet potatoes, mangoes (?), cinnamon pull-apart muffins, fruit salad, orange juice, aaand...hmmm.... I'm sad I didn't get a good pic of everything. Mary's fruit salad was so colorful and pretty (it had melon, strawberries, and grapes in it). Those potato-looking things are actually my cinnamon pull-apart muffins, which ended up falling apart. :( Link to my baking blog's post on the baking process to come.

You can sorta see Pat in his spiffy black GQ-style shirt and Dale:

Team Potluck: Pre-Championship Game

Saturday, 5/2/09 @ Mary's apartment (she's one of our outside hitters)

Intramural volleyball team potluck dinner: Guacamole...fancy spaghetti...peanut butter /chocolate, coconut/pineapple (?), & "Loaded" chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream flavors (supposedly one of the healthier chocolate chip cookie dough ice creams, by the way)...wine...chocolate chip cookies...SE Asian dishes (a beef salad wrap and some kind of yummy curry)...and coffee cake. And drinks.

I rarely put up pics of people on this blog (it is a food blog, after all), but this pic has all of the vballas (well, half of the team, but all of the players who attended the potluck) AND all of the food in it. Yay!


Kat & Mike. Dang...I didn't get a pic of James C.'s spaghetti (it's under the white cover).