Tokyo Fish Market

I've been looking for a good fish shop in the Bay Area and usually get fish from Hudson Fish company which is a small family owned business. It's a Black owned business too which I like. The issue I have with Hudson Fish is that they're only around at the Berkeley's Farmer's markets on Tuesday and Thursday and their selection isn't huge. They're based out of Half Moon Bay.

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

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 Calpico 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.

Why I Hate Blacks/Asians

It's ok if I pull stuff down off my web site because it's my web site and it's for my personal use. If you want to follow along that's your problem. But you can't pull stuff down off the net if you're a company, Asian Week. Once it's up, it's up.

Anyway for my records, the two articles from Ken Eng, Why I Hate Blacks and Why I Hate Asians. He has one about white people too. I'll post my thoughts on race next time.

This is per SFGate's coverage of the AsianWeek story and backlash.

**UPDATE** Comments for this post are now off. Thanks.

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Why I Hate Blacks

Kenneth Eng, Feb 23, 2007

Here is a list of reasons why we should discriminate against blacks, starting from the most obvious down to the least obvious:

• Blacks hate us. Every Asian who has ever come across them knows that they take almost every opportunity to hurl racist remarks at us.

In my experience, I would say about 90 percent of blacks I have met, regardless of age or environment, poke fun at the very sight of an Asian. Furthermore, their activity in the media proves their hatred: Rush Hour, Exit Wounds, Hot 97, etc.

• Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years. It's unbelievable that it took them that long to fight back.

On the other hand, we slaughtered the Russians in the Japanese-Russo War.

• Blacks are easy to coerce. This is proven by the fact that so many of them, including Reverend Al Sharpton, tend to be Christians.

Yet, at the same time, they spend much of their time whining about how much they hate "the whites that oppressed them."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Christianity the religion that the whites forced upon them?

• Blacks don't get it. I know it's a blunt and crass comment, but it's true. When I was in high school, I recall a class debate in which one half of the class was chosen to defend black slavery and the other half was chosen to defend liberation.

Disturbingly, blacks on the prior side viciously defended slavery as well as Christianity. They say if you don't study history, you're condemned to repeat it.

In high school, I only remember one black student ever attending any of my honors and AP courses. And that student was caught cheating.

It is rather troubling that they are treated as heroes, but then again, whites will do anything to defend them.

—–

Why I Hate Asians

Kenneth Eng, Jan 12, 2007

It seems like an odd title for an article written by an Asian Supremacist, but there are very good reasons why I hate many of my own kind.

The first thing I hate about Asians in America is how so many of them want to suck up to whites. I have had fistfights and verbal altercations with many who discriminated against me and my people. Sadly, however, the Asians who witness or hear about these battles often hate me for being "hypocritical," and tell me that "two wrongs don’t make a right." Do these sycophants think it’s "cool" to mindlessly side with whites and blacks? Is it not enough that we have to fight against discrimination? Now we have to fight amongst ourselves as well?

The second thing I hate about Asians is how little pride most of them have. This may be the result of societal brainwashing, but whatever the cause, it must stop. I am repulsed when I see Asian guys speak with British accents in an attempt to sound sophisticated. British people can’t be all that sophisticated if they don’t yet understand the concept of dental hygiene. I am also sickened when I hear Asian people imitate Negro slang in an endeavor to sound "ghetto." Am I supposed to be impressed that such a person emulates the attitude of a supposed slum resident? More importantly, whatever happened to being yourself?

The third thing I hate about Asians is how apathetic many of them are in terms of honor these days. If I saw an Asian being stereotyped in a movie theater, I would immediately stand up and shout incessantly at the screen so that none of the white audience members could enjoy the film. When I saw a white man yelling at an old Asian woman a few months ago, I walked up to him and hollered slurs right back in his Aryan face. But most other Asians, I am disappointed to say, would rather just chuckle at their own stereotypes on screen and ignore the problems of their brethren. At the risk of sounding corny, whatever happened to the days of the samurai? When honor meant more than life? Whatever happened to the age of Sun Tzu when we used to kick ass?

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Asian race, but every race has its inferiors.

ownership of a web page

*draft* before I forget

Once a user downloads a web page, that web page is technically theirs to do whatever they want, print it, mark it up, annotate it, etc. Doesn't mean the content on that web page is theirs nor is the code, yes from a technical (I have it in my possession) standpoint but no from a copyright standpoint. Once a page is downloaded or even as it's loading, that user technically "owns" that page. This isn't any different from downloading anything off the web, an .mp3 file, a .xls file, a word document, a pdf file. Once a document is in my hands, on my computer, it's mine.

I'm curious to see if other folks agree or disagree or if I'm once again just stating the obvious. I'm not necessarily sure that what I've mentioned is clear or even necessary for folks to understand.

raf's badass butternut squash souffle

I've been making my own food, I just haven't been writing down the recipes as it's been a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Anyway, we've been getting a lot of butternut squash in our box lately so here's an awesome recipe I whipped up for it.  It's not really a souffle and it's not bread pudding either but it was pretty darn tasty, light and filling at the same time as weird as that may sound.

Ingredients:

  • 1 large butternut squash
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup milk or soy milk
  • tablespoon of melted butter
  • 1/2 cup of panko bread crumbs
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • good olive oil

Split the butternut squash, take out the seeds, sprinkle olive oil, salt and pepper and put in oven for 45 minutes on 325 degrees. Butternut squash should be face side down. Let it cool once that's done.

Scoop out the squash and put in a bowl. Put in the rest of the ingredients and mix everything in, eggs, milk, etc. Give it a good mix and make sure everything is incorporated in there.

Put the mixture in ramekins, small if you want it as a sidedish, a bit larger if you want to make it the main course. Put in the oven on 350 for 20 minutes until it makes a nice crust on top.

Serve with fresh rosemary and maybe a side salad of arugula tossed with olive oil/vinegar maybe some blue cheese and walnuts. Done.

Serves 4.

Rachel Ray watch your back.

MACプロ用ナイフ or MAC Knives

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.

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. :)

yakult

yakult

I've been going down memory lane, food-wise anyway, and stumbled on another food I ate when I was a kid. I don't remember how often I drank Yakult, it seemed like it was often.

I picked up a 5 pack of Yakult and sure does taste the same as I remember. I think the last time I drank Yakult was 20 years ago?

Yakult is supposed to be some probiotic and there's like beneficial bacteria in it. Kombucha is the same thing in terms of another beneficial bacteria.

Anyway, there isn't any proof around the health benefits of Yakult, it's just supposed to replenish all the good bacteria you may have in your digestive system. People have been drinking it for a while and nobody has died. Haven't heard people hitting 60 home runs in a year by drinking it though either.

Would love to know more, especially if you drink/drank Yakult as a kid in the Philippines? Why, other than it tastes pretty good? Is Yakult's marketing team just that good?

Ironman toys – the stick, foam roller, TP massage ball

It's no secret that training for an Ironman and racing an Ironman there's lots and lots of cool toys. I've written about my gear (bike, wetsuit, etc) already but haven't mentioned some of my other toys that keeps me going so here we go:

This is a group of stuff from TP MassageBall. It's a little pricey but consists of two rollers, a ball and this little foam block. I got this set up in Canada last year and had been eyeing it for a while. The large roller is for your IT band and quads (basically your thighs) and it gets in there deeper than a foam roller. The small roller is for that spot/tendon between your calf muscles and achilles. The smaller roller is also for your feet. The ball is for your feet for plantar fascia and can be used for your back or butt, but mostly for your feet.

I also use a foam roller. Megan is a friend of mine from IronTeam demonstrating a nice back stretch on the foam roller. You can do a lot with the foam roller for your back, shins, IT band, etc. People who do pilates use a foam roller a lot and lots of physical therapists or personal trainers have you exercise on a foam roller 1) to help out with balance, 2) it's a cheap massage tool. Because foam rollers are cheap, it's a definite must for Ironman training. Yoga places and I'm seeing them more in general sporting goods stores are places where you can get them.

I first tried out The Stick as we were doing a drive through of my first Ironman course in Canada. I was amazed at how good it felt using it for massaging out my shins, quads, and then also calves. It's great if someone else uses The Stick on you for your calves and hamstrings. The idea behind The Stick and also the TP Massage ball set of stuff is around trigger points and unblocking or stretching those out. I kinda call it "micro-stretching" because it's targeted to certain spots that are tight. They have multiple "sticks". I'd recommend the red (which I own) or the blue one (which is more flexible). If you're a runner, the Stick is a must have.

The reasons to have these tools are for faster recovery and injury prevention, plus they're actually kinda of fun to have as toys. In order, I got the foam roller first, then the Stick, and then the tp massage ball stuff — or cheap to expensive.

2007 Saturn Sky

I've seen a couple of 2007 Saturn Sky convertibles on the road and parked and I've done a double take each time. I'll bet the Saturn Sky is the "it" car for 2007, replacing the VW bug of a few years ago and the Mini Cooper of late. It's like the 1989 Mazda Miata and maybe it'll do the same for the Saturn brand that it did for the zoom, zoom Mazda brand.

The Saturn Sky photo gallery is pretty neat too. They've done a great job with it.

taho and sago

Taho is basically soft soy bean curd and you can find it at most grocery stores but getting it fresh is better. Sometimes I get mine from Hodo Soy Beanery at the Berkeley Farmer's market or at this Chinese grocery store in downtown Oakland. The first time I went to go pick it up at Hodo Soy, the vendor gave me this look like "you know what that is, you're Filipino." I gave him a glance that said "yup". Mind you, we're in Berkeley.

Sago is tapioca made out of cassava or yuca root? I think. It's pretty much flavorless and lots of those tapioca drink places or bubble tea places have them. There are bubble tea places in San Francisco and there's one near UC Berkeley, they're popping up.

The brown stuff I guess is just sugar, I never thought to ask what it was. It's some cane sugar syrup thing. All of it together and the fact that it's cheap makes it addictive. The taho supposedly originated from China and the tapioca was brought by the Spanish as cassava originates from South America.

Anyhow, I used to often eat taho and sago as a kid and I kinda remember the whole experience. We used to get it from a vendor who walked the streets yelling, "taho, sago". When I eat it now, there's a lot familiar about it and it's one of those foods that makes/keeps me Filipino.

It was cool to be able to find a good looking photo of it on Flickr. It's not necessarily the most photogenic food out there. If you want some taho and sago you can go to the Philippines or to Goldilock's Bakery, there's actually one in Mountain View on Rengstorff.

Ice cream in the Bay Area

I'm probably not the best authority but ColdStone Creamery and Ben & Jerry's doesn't cut it.

Go here:

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