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What a nice January

Being from the Pacific Northwest, I'm used to the kind of winter where the skies are dull and the ground is moist from the constant drizzle. What a difference the California climate is, it was so nice this weekend Ponti and I went for a 5 mile hike at the old Quicksilver Mine site. It was quite a work out, with lots of 30-40 percent grades constantly going up and down. We did pretty good, but the wind was taken out of our sails when an old man with a cane blew right by us.





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1942 National Geographic story on Iraq

I received an old 1942 National Geographic compilation over Christmas and have been having a wonderful time reading through it. I found one article on Iraq that I thought was worth sharing.

This is only a snippet, the entire article is quite long:

Forty Years Among Arabs by John Van Ess

U.S. Army Engineers Busy in Iraq

Among the tasks of the American engineering corps under Brig. Gen. Raymond A. Wheeler is that of broadening the gauge of this railway to make it conform to the standard gauge prevailing on the main line north of Baghdad and in Europe; also the building of sidings, tunnels, roads, bridges, and increased port facilities.
Lots of fun remains to be had among the Arabs of Iraq for any American who looks beyond Main Street; fun with its generous, hospitable, warm-hearted people; fun with its young men, now wistfully looking toward America for sympathy and understanding; fun with its challenging problems of reconstruction; fun with its vast and almost untouched resources; fun with the shadows of its past lurking in buried cities, palaces, and temples; and fun with the shape of glorious things to come.

Rain Rain Go Away

Ponti and I were planning on going on a long 10 mile hike up the mountains over the weekend, but a terrible storm rolled in Friday preventing us from leaving the apartment all weekend. It really was bad, we didn't lose power, but many people we know did. Some of my co-workers came in today and said they still didn't have any power at their homes. The wind was so string it ripped the wind guard off the front of my car! Can you imagine that!? I was able to salvage the guard, it's now sitting in the back of my car... I'll have get it re-attached one of these days.

Hikes

Alright, so I haven't been able to do many food reviews lately... so how about I add in some normal every day stuff?

For Christmas, one of the items Ponti got was a fancy GPS tracking device to take on hikes and such. It's very whizbang, monitors your heart rate, calories burned, heading, location, distance, elevation, slope grade, etc. Additionally, we can download these GPS points to the computer and see our hikes on maps. On New Year's Eve, we went for a nice hike in the Almaden Quicksilver Park, it was 3.2 miles over about 1.5 hours, check out the map below:


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Today, we went for another hike, this time to the Los Trancero Open Space Preserve in the Palo Alto Hills. What a nice day, clear skys and mid 50's. A little chilly under the canopy, but once we got going it was warm enough. =) Here are some pics, and below is a map. First we went on the lost creek train, then went on a short loop called the san andreas fault hike. Didn't see any fault lines, but I wasn't looking too hard.




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Backlog of lunches

I was downloading some pictures from my digital camera today and I found a bunch of old lunch pictures that I never posted. They brought back some good memories, so I thought I would post them for everyone to enjoy.


This was a particularly good week for Cafe MOMA. All week long they served up a BBQ Chicken pizza that was really good. Sometimes it had too many red onions, but they were easily scraped off. As a main course in this lunch, I had a stuffed chicken dish that was excellent.


Again in this lunch was the BBQ chicken pizza, a staple this week. Also notice the veggies. =) The berry cobbler was good, but I honestly prefer a good strudel.


Despite the salad, this was a very good lunch. They were serving Maine Lobster on a buttered roll. Very very yummy! Also, they had watermelon shave ice! What a great meal for a hot summer day.


This one is a little hard to tell, but I think it's Hawiian pizza, a pulled pork sandwhich (which as I recall was skimpy on the sauce), and a grilled peach. Oh yes, Cookies & Cream ice cream.




What greatness, Mac & Cheese and two mini-kobe beef burgers!


Ah yes, bow tie pasta with peppers. Also Quesadilla with hot sauce. This was from a Mexican Monday at Plymouth. As I recall, everything was good, but it left me un-filled.

7/26/2007 - Lunch

It's been a while since my last post, I've been very busy at work and just didn't have the time or energy to let everyone know what I've been eating. Also, it's been a time of relative satisfaction with my food, which doesn't exactly motivate me to post. So what has brought be back? One word: RAGE.

Today I went down to Cafe MOMA for lunch because they had fish and chips on the menu. For you new comers to my blog, simple food like this is right up my alley. So what am I complaining about? First off, who the hell serves fish and chips with just the option of tartar sauce? Some people like their fish and chips with vinegar, personally I prefer it with ketchup. So, I went to the condiments bar and found plenty of hot sauce and mustard, but no sign of ketchup. No biggie, I went to the OTHER condiment bar confident that the ketchup would be there.... nope, again only mustard and hot sauce. Give me a break, I couldn't believe it. There was no vinegar or ketchup to be found. I had to leave the cafeteria and search two mini-kitchens before finding SIX full bottles sitting in one of the mini-kitchens. I should mention, all the while my ice cream is melting.

You'd think I would settle down after finally finding some damn ketchup, but it only set my mood. The fish itself was terrible. I don't know what the deal is here, the batter crust was limp and the fish tasted like nothing. To make things even worse, I found bones in my fish and chips. Okay, I only found one bone, but it makes me wonder how many I didn't notice. I was thoroughly disgusted. I'm sorry, but when the quality of your fish and chips is lower than those of frozen fish sticks, there's a problem.

I wish Gordon Ramsey would do an episode of Hell's Kitchen in Cafe MOMA so I could watch him yell at everyone.


I want to make one thing here clear, Cafe MOMA isn't all bad. They always have good deserts, and great sides. It's their entrees that are terrible. Also, every day Cafe MOMA makes fantastic breakfasts, the best breakfast served at Google hands down.