Bakesale Betty is just a couple blocks away from me, so it’s very dangerous. It’s over in Temescal and it took over a location that used to be Merritt Bakery and before that a cell phone/pager store. Temescal is a “transitional” neighborhood and it’s transitioning to be quite the new/hot/Bay Area bohemian spot due to Bakesale Betty, Pizziaolo, Tagine, Dona Tomas, Genova, Lane Splitters, Dollar Cleaners!, and several happening Korea places, etc.

Bakesale Betty has this now super famous chicken sandwich. It’s a fried chicken sandwich, with jalapeno coleslaw on Acme bread and it costs $7.25 or $7.50 I can’t remember. Everyone in Oakland knows about it and people are coming in from San Francisco checking it out.

Bakesale Betty also has great oatmeal cookies, scones, and everything is good.

You may get lagniappe (an extra cookie or a lemon bar or something) if you’re served by the right person (or maybe Bakesale Betty and her girls think I’m cute…that could be it).

When we first saw Bakesale Betty, we totally thought she was going to go out of business really quickly because all she sold were lemon bars and these sticky date puddings. They were good but who banks their business on lemon bars and sticky date puddings. Now Bakesale Betty really helped make Temescal cool– you should see how their business is set up and the lines outside their door.

Bakesale Betty has a jingle. All companies should have a jingle. I want a jingle.

Bakesale Betty incubated her company through the farmer’s market circuit. Quite smart! And Farmer’s Markets really are becoming a place where new businesses do incubate.

Bakesale Betty has befriended the Fire Department 4 or 5 houses down the street. The Firemen come into Bakesale Betty’s often so everyone knows not to f*ck with Bakesale Betty. One of their best moves.

I like this computer. c|Net gave it a good review, a 7.9. Here it is on Dell’s web site. I’m currently running a white MacBook. I also have an IBM X31 ThinkPad. I may get one of these XPS m1330 laptops but I’d like to get another MacBook (to replace my current one) probably in October this year or January next year. I want to wait until Leopard is pre-installed and then get Parallels for it too. I have a feeling the MacBook will get a good upgrade pretty soon.

Anway, one of the nice things about being in software is that it’s easy to justify computer purchases. :-) Oh, and it’s too bad these Dell laptops have to have Windows Vista installed. They really need to start putting in the option of a Linux OS installation as well. I’d pay for Ubuntu and Windows Vista installed.

I pulled down previous posts on this book (for no good reason), The Paradox of Choice. If you’re in software, marketing, general business, or just having issues, I recommend this book.

Top Takeaways

• For people in business, basically saying that there’s a pretty big opportunity in just making life simple and easy for people and to not give people *so* many choices. Life is already hard as it is.
• This book kinda tells you how to make choices or at least helps you understand what you’re doing, profiles you in how you make choices, and provides really good insight with real examples. Almost every page, I’m like yup I can relate.
• Basically reinforces that life is tough.

One last thing.  Taste is so hard to figure out.  Yelp and Amazon reviews are starting to not be so helpful anymore.  From a quick search perspective, reviews are still good.  Getting any more details on a product, service, restaurant, etc, better off getting a recommendation from a friend or hopefully finding others who consistently have the same taste as yours (which are usually friends).

So over to Matfer Bourgeat products. We got a 7 1/2 quart “sauce” pot (we use it as a stock pot) and I like it a lot. We got it from Pastry Central but I think there are probably cheaper places to buy these pots.

I christened the pot with this killer mussels with saffron and mustard recipe. The next day cooked some pasta in it and none of the pasta stuck to the bottom, sign of a good pot.

I’ve found a fish market I like finally, Tokyo Fish Market. They have Hawaiian and Japanese foods too like shisho leaves, Yakult, Calpis soda, Portuguese sausage, and sashimi grade fish including ankimo (fish liver) and sea urchin. The fish I usually like buying is Loch Duarte salmon and they have it fairly cheap here.

Tokyo Fish Market is on San Pablo Avenue in Albany, near REI and off the Gilman Street exit. The trip for me seems worth it if I can’t find what I want from Hudson Fish.

Yelp has a good set of reviews on it.

SFGate article on Tokyo Fish market

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I found Tokyo Fish Market via my long runs. I’ve been running a 12 1/2 mile loop of late during the week and I run down San Pablo Avenue which goes through Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, and Albany. It’s amazing what you see in 12 1/2 miles including the Berkeley Hills, the UC Berkeley Campus, the hood, folks smoking pot/dealing drugs, children playing, people running and walking their dogs, missing bus stops and finding fresh fish.

Note to Gen: I tried the Strawberry Calpino drink. Pretty darn good. The peach and mango I’ll try next.

Another note: The best time to buy fish is Friday and Monday. That’s when everybody gets their fish, Friday deliveries for the weekend, and Monday deliveries for the week.

When you first start off buying house stuff, it’s probably for college and you end up with a knife from the dollar store. Maybe you get lucky (or you’re rich) and you get to buy nice stuff off the bat.

The next phase of accumulating stuff is when you get married or single but grown up a little bit more. Usually you’re still not sure what to buy and get whatever is marketed to you, e.g. All Clad cookware, whatever.

That’s a long way of stating I’m looking to upgrade our knife set, after a couple tries, and hopefully getting a set of MAC knives — a chef’s knife, slicer, and paring knife from the pro series. I’d like to get a yanagiba knife too eventually, probably in lieu of a slicer.

MAC knives are made in Japan and are highly regarded by chefs like Thomas Keller of The French Laundry/Per Se and Charlie Trotter out of Chicago. They’re also not that expensive in comparison to some other knives 0n the market.

A couple more things:

• It’s funny that the brand is MAC. Owning a MacBook and other Apple products and then have MAC knives seems a little too Mac-ish.
• Buying a MAC knife is interesting because I can buy it off of Amazon but I see that it’s cheaper to buy them here at Chef Knives to Go. How do I verify this business? Well, the store is hosted on Yahoo! Shopping. They have a number to call. So I may give them a call and probably will do business with them. Do I care if their checkout process is encrypted? Yes. Do I care where they got their cert? No. Am I using a credit card that covers me against online fraud and online purchases? Yes. I could also buy these MAC knives from a more local store in Sacramento — they own the MACKnife.com domain but the knives are also more expensive there.
• Knives are cool.

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I have a few more “domestic” and food things to write about that I want to get out of my system. I do like writing about products, partly because some really great/good products get buried by marketing machines who tout inferior or just ok products e.g. BOSE speakers. The other fun part is seeing my product “reviews” actually getting up there in various search engine’s results. A side goal is to maybe get some free stuff. I could do with a free year’s supply of Yakult. :)

Go here:

• Mitchell’s Ice Cream – San Francisco, near 280
• Sketch Ice Cream – Berkeley, 4th Street
• Ici Ice Cream – Elmwood, Berkeley
• Tango Gelato – Piedmont Ave, Oakland (also in SF on Filmore)
• Joe’s Ice cream – Geary St, San Francisco
• Tucker’s – Alameda (only ‘cuz my friend works there)

There’s a Lappert’s in Sausalito. That’d be the only chain I’d recommend.

California – Gary Danko, Lalimes, Chez Panisse (is there a good everyday type place?)
French – French Laundry: tasting menu
Bistro style – Cafe Claude, Jojo’s: steak frites

Northern Chinese – Shan Dong: Shan Dong chicken, hand made noodles, dumplings
Vietnamese – Le Cheval, Slanted Door
Korean – Oghane, My Tofu House

Thai – Lotus Thai
Indian – still need to find
Italian – Trattoria La Siciliana

Taqueria – Cactus Taqueria: burritos, fish tostada; Taqueria Ramiro and Sons: super carnitas burrito
Mexican – still need to find maybe Guaymas, maybe Dona Tomas

Pizza – Zachary’s

Burgers – Christophe’s
Steak place – still need to find

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Other

Bakery – Crixa cakes
Coffee place – Blue Bottle

(This post provides some tips for enjoying Disneyland based on my experience from a recent trip. It assumes many things like bringing kids and wanting to enjoy most of the many rides that Disney has to offer.)

The worse thing would be to go to Disneyland this Summer, pay all that money for the tickets, hotel, transportation, and spend your trip waiting in line for 45, 60, 75 minutes at a time for rides in the 90+ degree heat in Southern California…with kids. That sucks. The alternative is to plan ahead, get on all the cool rides, have your kids remember the rides and not the long waits, and have fun.
With that here you go:

1. Go buy this book. Read it inside and out, and don’t forget to take it with you. This Unofficial Guide to Disneyland book includes information about all the rides, nearby hotels, plans/routes for your trip, food choices, and it will save you so much time you won’t believe it.
2. Learn how to use FastPass and use it. Basically FastPass are tickets that you can use for later in the day but you get to use a special FastPass line when you go back later. For instance you can ride Splash Mountain first thing in the morning (very little wait), grab a FastPass after you’re done, and go ride Splash Mountain again in the afternoon when it’s really really hot. In the afternoon the wait is 60+ minutes or longer and with FastPass you cut in front of everybody and get on in 5 minutes. You can only get so many FastPass tickets per visit so learn how to use it.
3. Don’t be afraid to go back to the hotel in the afternoon and even eat lunch outside the park. You can break up the day into two visits, a morning visit to Disneyland, and a late afternoon-evening visit. You’ll totally avoid the peak which looks to be 11-3pm and it’s also when it’s the hottest out.
4. Have a plan for each day that you visit Disneyland for all the rides you want to see. Go to the most popular rides first when the wait in line will be the shortest, this includes Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Indiana Jones, and the Matterhorn. You don’t have to stick to the plan 100%, but it’s just really good to have one.

That’s all there is to it. The book has the rest of the info like when to go e.g. mid-week is best like a Wednesday-Thursday, it has details on California Adventure and Universal Studios, and also tips on how not to lose your child.

A few more things:

1. I think the best age to take kids to Disneyland is between 8-12 or second grade through seventh grade. Anything younger and your kid is probably too short for the rides and Disneyland can’t be cool if you’re 13.
2. We stayed at the Sheraton Anaheim and it worked out well. The Disneyland hotels are pretty pricey and so the Sheraton was a good value given it’s location.
3. 2 days is about right for Disneyland. One day is way too short and three days is a little much.
4. There’s an IHOP, a Denny’s, and a Subway outside the park with more reasonable costs for food. Or you can try and find some fish tacos which is a Southern California thing.
5. Before you buy that Disney schwag (for yourself and not for your kids), just ask yourself when you’d see yourself wearing that Mickey Mouse polo shirt or hat. If you work for Disney, that’s one thing, otherwise, it’s kinda lame (if you’re 13 or older anyway).
6. Here’s our trip report and you can kind of tease out what our plan was based on it.

I hope this was helpful :)

Kailua is a great place to stay when visiting Oahu for folks looking for a “real” Hawaiian experience, enjoying the local life and just hanging out on beautiful beaches. Kailua beach and Lanikai beach (same area) are two of the nicest beaches in the world and not too many folks around which make it even nicer.

more photos

Highlights:

• Lanikai and Kailua beaches: blue clear, relatively calm waters. Swimming areas and great views of the “Mokes” islands and flat island. Lots of activities like kayaking and windsurfing available. Not crowded at all. Surprisingly and happily very, very few people on the beach. Stop by Kalapawai for coffee and snacks before heading to the beach. Also check out Island Snow for shaved ice.
• Buzz’s Steak and Seafood was surprisingly excellent. Ate there twice. Lanikai Juice for smoothies and their Acai bowl was also very good. Maladasas, or Portuguese donuts are excellent from Leonard’s Bakery. Also, Boots and Kimo’s for breakfast in Kailua was also yummy, banana pancakes w/ mac nut sauce is their specialty.
• Kailua’s Thursday night Farmer’s market was killer. We had our best dinner of the night there and got a pork lau lau plate for $9. We spent maybe $30 that whole day on food. Rachel Ray has nothing on me.

Lowlights:

• Stay away from all the tourist traps especially Polynesian Cultural Center and their luau. Waikiki is cool for people watching but that’s about it. There are better beaches out there.
• Sam Choy’s restaurant (his flagship one) was pretty disappointing. Sam Choy is like the Emeril Lagasse of Oahu but Emeril’s restaurants are actually pretty good. I wasn’t impressed at all with the dinner we had. Wasabi cheesecake topped w/ Ahi poke, that would be a cheesecake w/ raw fish on top. Enough said.

Logistics:

• Used Kayak.com and Orbitz to shop around and we finally booked our flights directly w/ Hawaiian Airlines. Used Budget for car rental, and stayed at Papaya Paradise B&B (actually her daughter’s place right next door – she also has vacation rentals) in Kailua. I don’t believe there are any big hotels in Kailua, it’s a relatively small town and not very touristy at all.
• We also went to Haunama Bay for snorkeling. It’s a nice beach/location as well. The North shore also has some great beaches but not very swimmable. Waimea Bay is nice as is Sunset Beach.
• Weather wasn’t the best in May, cloudy w/ intermittent showers. Another week or two and it would probably have been a little more perfect.
• We missed out on hiking Diamond Head this time and hanging out at North Shore beaches some more.

This is my second or third post on footwear. I only own a few pairs of shoes, that’s why I guess I talk about the one’s I do have. Anyway, I talked about Keen sandals the last time, and they’re great, I wear them just about every day.

It was at Ironman Canada though where we ran into the Men’s winner, Chris Lieto at the airport that I saw these sandals. He was wearing these Crocs (picture in the photo isn’t me) in a bright yellow. They looked really funky, and I thought they were like some special Ironman secret.

Anyhow, I saw these sandals at a store and I think I’m going to grab a pair. They’re very chic looking and I saw another person wearing them today during lunch. They’re not going to be for everyday wear. Just for wearing after working out and for going to the beach.

We had a sommelier recommend the wine, a 1999 Calera Selleck Mt. Harlan Pinot Noir. We had about 4 or 5 more people fussing over us too, serving us bread, water, food, the cheese course, welcoming us, open the door to the bathroom — service was pretty good.

I had caviar/oysters, lobster, duck, cheese and this killer chocolate mousse with marscapone sorbet. Tine had risotto, frog’s legs (yum), and souffle.

It was our second time at the restaurant and hopefully not our last. I’ll come up with an excuse to go there again next year. It’s a pretty ridiculous dining experience.

So back to the bathroom. Gary Danko is probably the best place to go to the bathroom in San Francisco. The bathroom is well decorated, they play new age music so if you need to go #2 you’re all relaxed, there’s a water fountain, lovely hand soap and lotion, rolled up individual towels, and little Gary Danko stickers on the toilet rolls that are folded up. I wonder if we can get some of this stuff done at the office.

I thought it was time for a change and couple weeks ago, I started wearing Keen sandals. They’re very comfortable and seem to be well designed. I do hope they last a long time or I’ll just have to pull out my Birkenstocks again.

Thanks to Scott Collins on the tip.

- ordered (not yet bought) a new car
- cast iron dutch oven for camping (on sale! @Amazon)
- GoldTouch keyboard (ergonimically sound)
- Humanscale keyboard tray
- Tom Bihn cafe bag (it’s NOT a purse!)
- iCurve laptop stand

Our home office is coming together and becoming ergonomically correct. Already have Steelcase Leap chair that’s pretty awesome and our furniture is nice too. I have some more kitchen stuff to buy and then get some more shirts to wear to work. It’s getting to be pretty bad when I have Firefox and Mozilla polo shirts as shirts I wear on the weekend (not that I mind, but just shows I need more clothes).