It's Good Karma-

Vegan Cafe.


This post is long overdue. I've been eating at Good Karma since I moved to San Jose. They showed me how much can be done with tofu. I have to admit that I haven't eaten there often in the past few years-ever since they moved from 7th and Santa Clara to 1st Street.

When I moved to SJ 5 years ago (can't believe it's been that long!), Good Karma was owned by a nice older Vietnamese couple. I used to go there after work and eat dinner for five dollars when I was a poor volunteer and that was as much as I could spend on dinner.

GK is owned by some hip younger white guy(s)? now and it's got a new location and style to match. They have live music and art shows and they used to have bingo nights. The food is pretty much the same and the prices are still great but I just haven't had the same loyalty since the switchover.

We had some GK again tonight though and it was like old times. I had tofu scramble and Thai curry. John had spicy basil tofu and tofu in black bean sauce.

I need to get back soon and get some peppery turkey (that used to be my favorite on sandwiches) and try the Jamaican jerk tofu and spicy roasted red pepper hummus.

We tried the tofu chocolate mousse pie. I've been wanting to try this since I saw Jessica eating it once. It's really good--and I definitely think I could make it myself.

¿Qué es eso?

Actually, I probably said "Que es ese?" which is "Who is that?"

I was trying to ask "what is that?" I wanted to try some new pastries at Suvianda, but I've had some I didn't like in the past so I was trying to figure out what I was buying ahead of time. I tried to ask the lady at the bakery in Spanish, and then she answered me in English.
She said "bread."

So yeah, I knew I was buying bread-like items, but my criteria for today was to buy the ones that didn't have any sprinkles or filling.

I chose this one because I thought it looked like a pig.

I knew I wasn't imagining that they were all shaped like pigs so I asked the girls at the check-out aisle. I think they said it's called "puerquito," which makes sense, puerco=pork=pig, puerco+ito= little pig. The little piggy that came from the market tastes like gingerbread and molasses. I like it.

This one just looked flaky and delicious, like it has a nice egg wash on it, and it was tasty and light.


And this one I was just curious about.
It tastes like a very fluffy scone and slightly lemony.

The check-out girls said it was empanada, but that's not what it is. They were just basing that on the description that I gave them that it was triangular. The empanadas looked good though. Those are just the stuffed pastries with sweetened fillings. (The Mexican version.) They can be filled with pretty much anything though, kind of like a samosa in other cultures.

Betty Crock(er)

In my Thought Control in Contemporary Society class we recently read a chapter called Working up an Appetite by Naomi Aronson from a book entitled A Woman's Conflict: The Special Relationship Between Women and Food.

Aronson points out that Betty Crocker was an image created by General Mills in the 1920's to appeal to women.

Betty Crocker represents the highest development of the feminine principle that social engineering has to offer. The name "Betty" was chosen because "this is one of the most familiar and somehow the most companionable of family nicknames." Her personality was designed by consulting psychologists. Betty Crocker was to represent the giving impulse, the source of sustenance, 'the mother figure to whom normal men and women turn all their lives to find the springs of confidence."
A well-known commercial artist was hired to giver her a face. The portrait was designed to appeal to all European ethnic groups: her brow and skull were Nordic, her eyes Irish, her nose classic Roman. As General Mills exclaimed, "the perfect composite of the twentieth-century woman."

(Reminds me of Mad Men!)
The overall message of the article was that it was the time in American history that women became consumers rather than producers. Up until that point, women were relatively self-sufficient when it came to providing for their families and they had a position in the household that was complementary to their husbands work on the farm. After this point they became consumerized and more dependent on their husbands for money.

I've been meaning to start making my own bread for about a year, but this article motivated me to become a bread maker. (Aronson explains further about the bread connection.) I hope that it will become something that I do regularly, but for now I'm just pleased that I created one semi-successful loaf of honey wheat.

Two for one Vegetable? Can't Beet That!

I'm trying to make a dent in my ongoing list of new foods to try. Mercados Suvianda on 6th and Santa Clara in downtown SJ has provided all of the following new food experiences. They carry specialty items to cater to Latin American clientele and they also have many Asian foods.

Beets
I have had beets before, but I've never made them myself. I boiled some beets, let them cool and sliced them. We ate them with avocado slices and a homemade yoghurt sauce (also a first), it tasted awesome but it looked kind of ugly. Also, I learned that you can eat the greens on the beets as well. I might try this soon because I saw some good looking beets at the farmers market.

Flan
Seems strange that I've never had flan since I see it all the time. I'm not a huge fan but I'm glad I tried it. It's just not my type of dessert, I'd rather have something more complex and less gelatinous.



Key Limes
I've wanted to try these for years, ever since I read about them in the Consuming Passions book about southern cooking. Author Micheal Lee West had never had a fresh key lime because they are so hard to find. Suvianda sells them by the bag once in awhile and sells them separately right now. I had to take advantage of the opportunity to use real key limes so I used them to make key lime pie. These little guys are great, they have the taste and smell of lime candy, but sour, of course. I guess the artificial flavor is based on key limes rather than Persian limes (the ones you usually see in the grocery store.)



Asian Pear (known by several names, like apple pear and papple)
I think of this one as a snooty fruity because it often comes with its own little net wrapper to protect it. It was expensive--probably close to $3.00. I really enjoyed it, it's like an extremely juicy apple with the flavor of a pear. I was afraid it was going to be a bad experience like the grapple, but I would eat this again.

Manila Mango
Awesome! It's a smaller mango with the texture of an avocado and a yellow skin. It's not fibrous like a regular mango so no need to floss afterward. I am a manila mango convert.

Farmers Market

I had a little bit of time to check out the new farmers market today and I was pretty pleased with it. It was mostly strawberries and root vegetables for sale, which makes sense for the season in California. There were some stands with prepared food and vendors selling tea, olives, bags, handmade soaps, and the like.

I didn't get any strawberries because they're 99 cents a package at Suvianda right now, but I will definitely be trying the organic strawberries next week. I bought some spinach but I'd like to see some mixed greens and tomatoes in the future. For the first day and the hot weather, I think it had a good turn out and was really well organized. I'm looking forward to more variety in the weeks ahead. The organizers were cleaning up when I got off of work tonight and they did a great job, you'd never know they were there.

I hope the San Jose State community takes advantage of this. In my ethnographic methods class last semester we had to interview students and faculty about their health and it was a recurring theme that people wanted fresh and local produce options. It's hard to get the word out though so I'm wondering what's being done. I haven't seen or heard anything on campus yet.

right out the front door...

-The San Pedro Square farmers market will be back next Friday.
-The corrected press release follows:

City Hall Farmer's Market 3-7:30pm Starts Tues 4/21/09

The Tuesday Market provides a full-city sustainable marketplace that uses Earth Day as a jumping off point to promote greener lifestyle messages like living/working/buying local, eating organic, building/using renewable resources, and supporting green businesses.

Partners include City of San Jose Environmental Services Department, Metro Newspapers, San Jose State University, the San Jose Downtown Association, the San Jose Downtown Residents Association and other stakeholders

This is an opportunity to adopt new practices and improve the quality of our environment for a sustainable San Jose. We encourage you to walk, take convenient VTA Public Transit, or ride your bike to our free bike-parking area. If you must drive, we have two-hour parking validation for shoppers only.

The Tuesday Market is a "ZERO WASTE" event. Please bring your own reusable shopping bag or basket.

Tuesday Market is located on 5th St. between San Fernando Street and City Hall Plaza, and will be held every Tuesday from 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. beginning April 21, 2009.

9 - week pilot program through June 16

full 20 - week program through September 1

Nap(a)

As in, I needed a three hour nap after a day in Napa. Today's field trip can be described many ways, but I'll just go with "interesting." Overall, it was a fun day, but 95 degree weather, bus rides, loud/bad music, and wine drinking is a disastrous mix.

The many stories from between and after the vineyards, i.e., the bus rides, shouldn't be repeated in a food blog. Let's just say I was really glad that I had Roxy on the trip, a fellow anthropology student and co-worker. I think we felt like the only students who were going to make it back to San Jose with any shred of dignity.

Nevertheless, there were many highlights to my day. The itinerary was pretty straightforward. The wine class met at 7:45. As a reward for getting the highest grade on the midterm I got a mimosa on the bus ride out of San Jose...at 8:30 in the morning...after 2 hours of sleep. It took about two hours by bus to get to our first winery, Mumm Napa. After Mumm, we headed to Bell Wine Cellars, where we had lunch delivered from a local grocery store/deli. Then, we finished our day at Rutherford Hill.

Mumm was okay, they specialize in sparkling wine and Carlos Santana has a wine with them. I thought it was funny that they sell Carlos Santana stuff in the winery store, so if you need some Santana bongos...



Bell was the really impressive part of the day. Owner and hands-on winemaker Anthony Bell gave our group a thorough tour of the place, from the vines to the barreling process. Originally from South Africa, Bell grew up on a vineyard and had also made wine in Europe before he moved to America. He was really passionate and honest about his work and I probably learned more from listening to him speak than I've learned in class all semester. So, if you see some Bell on a shelf or a menu, you can feel good that there's a humble and hardworking guy behind the label.



At Bell we also got to go into the wine bottling truck. This is not how I imagined that wine is bottled. This truck is like the equivalent of a blood mobile or a book mobile, it pulls up and does it's business for the day. They fill the bottles, cork them, and label them right in this fairly small truck right in front of the building.

Our last stop, Rutherford Hill, was most impressive for it's caves. That's where we did most of the tasting. They do a great port and chocolate covered blueberry combo during their tasting.

Napa was actually not what I expected, but I would definitely like to go back someday. I think I always imagined it to have vineyards sort of hidden in the hills but in reality the wineries are right next to each other, Opus One and Mondavi are right across the street from each other. It's just like neighborhoods upon neighborhoods of grapes, I even saw some homes that opted for grapes instead of grass.

A couple of final thoughts, 1) I think all of the money is in growing your own oak forests for barrels rather than in wine-making, and 2) I think I should get an A in this class for making it through this bus ride, which can be briefly sampled here:

Burgundy, France

One of my classes this semester is Wine Appreciation in the Hospitality and Recreation Management department. It's got to be one of the funner classes in the CSU system (besides surfing and the one where you camp in national parks) and I've actually learned quite a bit about wine. We do blind tastings on 2-3 new wines every week and learn how to describe what we're smelling and tasting.

We had to do a group project about geographic locations and the wines they produce. I was in the Burgundy group and I was hoping to include a photo of Ron Burgundy in the PowerPoint but it didn't work out. I did learn a lot about burgundy though.

One of the more challenging aspects of the project was pairing food with the burgundy. We chose to do vegetarian pairings and that made it more difficult. With the white burgundy (Chardonnay) we did mushroom quiche and with the red burgundy (Pinot Noir) we did French pasta salad as the food was supposed to match the region. I made the pasta salad before class and it was kind of nerve-racking. It consisted of rotini pasta, french shallots, french baby green beans, french goat cheese (see the theme?), roasted bell peppers, toasted hazelnuts, and a dijon vinaigrette.

I chose this salad mainly because I thought the goat cheese would be complementary and because Dijon is the capital of Burgundy, hence the vinaigrette. I thought it tasted awesome but I don't think our sommelier-lecturer was much of a fan, although I think he's just a meat-guy and wasn't into the idea of vegetarian wine pairing. Tomorrow the class is going to Napa Valley for a day-long field trip so it will probably be back-to-back wine entries.

I thought this was kind of cool, I accidentally dropped the remote on my wine glass this weekend and it broke in the perfect spot (and showed me that I need to vacuum between the chairs.)