Category: Food

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Thursday/ beer and fried chicken 🍗

It sounds like at least fentanyl, rare earth metals and soybeans were discussed at the Trump-Xi summit today. Beijing will ease the restrictions on rare earth exports and start buying soybeans from American farmers again.
According to Trump, the relaxing of export restrictions on Nvidia’s latest chips was not discussed.

Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had beer and fried chicken with the CEOs of Samsung and Hyundai in Seoul, South Korea*.
It was clearly a marketing stunt, because there was a throng of journalists and photographers present as well.

*Samsung has a multi-faceted relationship with Nvidia, serving both as a supplier of memory and a foundry partner for specialized chips.
Hyundai will presumably use Nvidia’s chips for its self-driving cars of the future.
Does Tesla use Nvidia chips for its self-driving cars? No, Tesla does not use Nvidia chips for its vehicle’s self-driving computers, having switched to its own custom-designed chips in 2019. However, Tesla still uses Nvidia GPUs in large clusters for training its AI models, and has also recently purchased Nvidia chips for its new AI5 inference platform, which will be used in its new Cortex 2 AI data center alongside Tesla’s custom AI5 chips. – Google AI Overview.

Reporting from The Star (더스타 in Korean) magazine’s website.
I looked up the Google Streetview image of Kkanbu Chicken in Seoul’s Gangnam district. This is an image from 2018 but presumably not too much of the buildings and surroundings have changed.
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Saturday/ the bear necessities 🐻

Headlines and text by the New York Times. Photo by El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office.

The bear, which the sheriff’s office nicknamed Fuzzy, sampled as many flavors as it could get its paws on, the authorities said.

Tubs lay overturned, ice cream half eaten, the authorities said. Paw prints stretched across the black-and-white floor like stick stamps.

The deputies startled the bear, which stopped eating but could not find the exit. They shouted and shined their lights. Finally, the animal lumbered through the front door and back into the dark, the authorities said. The deputies followed to shoo it away from nearby buildings and into the forest.

—Mark Walker writing for the New York Times, about a bear found in the ice cream parlor at 4 am in the morning at Camp Richardson, a 128-acre resort in South Lake Tahoe, California.

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Thursday/ burgers and beers 🍔

Three amigos had beers and burgers at Elysian Capitol Hill Brewery tonight.

My beer is called ‘Little Guy’— a light American lager weighing in at 4.7% ABV.
The burger is a ‘smash burger’— a beef burger with cheese and the usual trimmings of tomato, lettuce and pickles.
The salad is pretty fancy but simply called their ‘house salad’.
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Saturday/ beers and pizza 🍕

Five amigos had beers and pizza at the Olympia Pizza & Spaghetti House III here on Capitol Hill tonight.
My beer is a Radeberger pilsner— served in a branded imperial pint glass (568 ml).

“Königlich sächsische braukunst seit 1872” translates to “Royal Saxon brewing since 1872”.
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Wednesday/ got to have eggs 🥚

When you cook an egg, the heat that solidifies its whites and yolks kills pathogens like salmonella and bird flu. That’s why food safety officials recommend cooking eggs until both parts are firm.
…
Recent data on salmonella-infected eggs is hard to find. One widely cited study from 2000 suggested that one in every 20,000 eggs carries the bacteria. This might not sound like a lot, but given how many eggs Americans eat — about 250 per person on average in 2023 — that risk can add up.
– Caroline Hopkins Legaspi writing for the New York Times

I cannot find Certified Humane* eggs anywhere anymore, and I settled for these ones below from Whole Foods.

*Laying hens must be uncaged and have access to perches, nest boxes and dust-bathing areas.

These eggs from Whole Foods were $6.49 for the dozen (of which one was in the frying pan already).
As of January 2025, eggs are significantly more expensive than last year, with the average price of a dozen eggs being around 53% higher compared to the previous year, reaching a price of $4.95 per dozen; this is largely due to ongoing bird flu outbreaks impacting egg production. {Source: Google Search Labs | AI Overview]
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Monday/ rooibos tea 🍵

I stocked up on a fresh pack of Freshpak rooibos tea* to keep me warm at night. I steep it for 5 minutes to get it really strong, and then I add milk and a little honey.
P.S. The cold weather has been relentless here. The temperature outside will drop down to 22 °F  (-5°C) tonight, which is record-low territory for February here in the city.

*Not a true tea, but rather an herbal tea. It’s made from the leaves of the Aspalathus linearis plant, which is native to South Africa.
– from Google Search Labs | AI Overview

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Saturday/ the Christmas market 🎄

Hey, on this winter solstice day I made it to the Christmas market at Römerberg. It was cold and raining, though, and I did not stay very long.
(It did seem that the inclement weather increased the glühwein sales volumes!)

Pictures:
Entrance hall to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main train station). There was a strong of police presence at the station. Hauptbahnhof station looked a little more ragged and rundown from the last time I saw it— especially the floors leading to the U4 & U5 subway lines’ platforms.
Poster for Messe Frankfurt (exhibition center) close by Hauptbahnhof station.
It’s two stops on the U5 subway line (turquoise train car) from Hauptbahnhof station to Römer/ Dom station to where the Christmas market is.  The U5 is getting a 2.7 km (1.7 mi) extension that will open in 2027.
Last picture: the S9 regional train (red train car) arriving to take me back from Hauptbahnhof station to Flughafen (airport) station where my hotel is, a 14-minute ride.

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Friday/ beers at Chuck’s 🍻

Happy Friday.
The five amigos got together at Chuck’s Hop Shop in Central District for a beer and a bite to eat from the food truck outside.

I’m in line inside to procure a beverage from the 50 or so listed on the screens by the counter. The non-alcohol Bitburger pilsner they had last time was not listed tonight, and I got the ‘Ladd & Lass : *Fresh Hop* West Coast IPA’ instead, even though it has 6.5% alc/vol.
It was Friday night after all, so why not have a *real* beer? 
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Tuesday/ Oktoberfest has started 🍻

Even at Oktoberfest— arguably the world’s most famous ode to alcohol— alcohol-free beer is on the menu. All but two of the 18 large tents at the festival offer the drink through the celebration’s 16 days.
The sober drink will cost drinkers the same as an alcoholic beer- between 13.60 and 15.30 euros ($15.12 and $17.01) for a 1-liter mug (33 fluid ounces) – but save them from a hangover.
– Stefanie Dazio writing for The Associated Press

Oktoberfest started on Saturday in Munich, Bavaria’s capital.

Here come the beers!
Seven of those giant 1-liter mugs in each hand, if I count them correctly.
[Photo by Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa, from Süddeutsche Zeitung online]
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Friday/ a widget in my beer 🍻

Happy Friday.
I cracked open one of my Guinness beers tonight.
I knew, more or less, what the little ball inside my can of Guinness beer was for, but thought I’d ask Chat GPT anyway. 

Hmm .. ChatGPT Is very enthusiastic about the widget (‘a brilliant solution’), making me suspect that it had lifted this answer in its entirety from the Guinness website.
That’s all right, though— at least I learned that the little ball is called a ‘widget’, and that it has nitrogen in.
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Thursday/ a beer run 🍻

Lately, I have had a hard time finding my favorite non-alcoholic beer in stores (Beck’s from Germany).
Below are three other beers I am trying out, now.

Here’s my quick take on each of these:
Guinness 0 A non-alcoholic beer striving for the iconic taste of Guinness Draught, rich and creamy with a velvety finish. It’s not ‘as good’ as the ‘real’ Guinness Draft, but I can get used to it.
Fremont Non-alcoholic IPA From Fremont Brewery here in Seattle. Florals with orange and lemon followed by some guava, grassy, honey and other sweet aromatics. Gentle sweetness and lightly bitter in light body. (Description from their website). I like it.
Stella Artois Liberté The non-alcoholic version of Stella. Water, barley malt, cane sugar, natural flavors and hops. The closest as a replacement for Beck’s non-alcoholic.
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Sunday/ positron beer ⚗️

A positron is the antiparticle of an electron.
It has all the properties of an electron except for the polarity of the electrical charge, which is positive. Therefore, a positron can simply be considered an electron having positive unit electrical charge.
– sciencedirect.com

I left home this afternoon with an empty and dirty car, and returned with a clean car— with beer in the trunk ☺️.
( I stopped at Brown Bear Car Wash and the Total Wine store in Magnolia ).

These is a plethora of beers and wines on the shelves at Total Wine. Here are some of my favorite beer labels.

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Wednesday/ here’s the beer 🍻

Happy Wednesday.
Four amigos played a little pickleball late this morning, and afterwards we went for a beer and a bite in Columbia City.

This beer truck was parked across the street.
Some office workers are making it a long weekend, with the Fourth of July holiday falling on a Thursday this year.

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Friday/ a mystical lion 🦁

Happy Friday.
Break open a cold one: a beer, a cocktail, an orange juice, a lemonade.

My beer from Jamjuree Thai restaurant tonight. The golden mystical lion on the Singha beer label was inspired by one of the four great lions in Thai literature. The lion is the the king of the legendary Himmapan Forest.
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Sunday/ Coquimbe, Chile 🇨🇱

We arrived at the port city of Coquimbo this morning.
Our excursion today was a bus ride along the shoreline into the neighboring town of La Serena, followed by a drive inland to the commune of Vicuña (pop. 25,000).

The Monumental Lighthouse of La Serena (Faro Monumental de La Serena) is located on the beach at the Avenida del Mar of La Serena. It was built between 1950 and 1951 at the request of President Gabriel González Videla.
The beautiful, parched landscape and cactuses, as seen from our bus on Route 41 on the way to Vicuña.
Lush green vineyards in the Elqui Valley.
We stopped by a pisco distillery on the way to Vicuña . Here is my sample of pisco sour, made from distilled muscatel grapes and lemon juice. Pisco is the national drink of Peru, but a version of it is made in Chile as well.
Here is the municipal theater house in Vicuña.
We were one of four buses full of cruise ship tourists had lunch at this restaurant. We had an empanada appetizer, followed by a large steak with rice and tomato salad, and papaya for dessert. Oh, and they served pisco and original Coca-Cola for drinks.
Back in Coquimbo, for our final stop at a little tourist market next to this church.
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Sunday/ a jaunt to U-district 🚇

Sunday is a good day to make a run up to U-district to check out the used book-stores and music stores (yes, they still sell CDs there).

I never did make it to the city of Xi’an (capital of Shaanxi Province in central China) when I was working there, to see the terracotta warriors.
Here is the cool window display, though, of Taste of Xi’an on University Way. One of their signature dishes is called paomo: a broth that we used is slow cooked with lamb, beef bones and whole chicken more than 10 hours every day.
Supreme, purveyor of New York-style pizza, also on University Way.
(New York–style pizza is pizza made with a characteristically large hand-tossed thin crust, often sold in wide slices to go).
A cosmetics store with Japanese brands, and a burger joint across the street.
University Way is in decent shape without too much damage, but man! some of the street blocks have back alleys that look downright awful (trash and graffiti).
The Varsity Theatre is in the same block that sits on the light rail U-district station.
Right behind it, the construction of a new 13-story office block with retail space is underway.
Not a pretty sight. This trashed entrance and empty space in a prime location, on the corner of 45th Street and University Way. It used to have a Bartell drug store inside. Evidently the Bartell store could not make enough profit even after being taken over by Rite Aid Corporation .. but I wonder how much effort Rite Aid really put in to keep the store afloat.
Here’s the northbound train at U-district station. Just a minute later the southbound train on the opposite track arrived and took me back to Capitol Hill.
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Thursday/ beskuit 🍪

I don’t always drink beer but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis
– From the Dow Equis beer commercial (and meme for it)

I don’t always bake, but when I do, I bake beskuit*
*’Rusks’ in English— made from dough, broken or cut into chunks or slices after baking, and then slowly dried in an oven.

I was tired of buying expensive biscotti at the store (for my coffee in the morning), and so I baked a batch of South African beskuit.

My ingredients for the dough: self-raising flour, buttermilk, a little whole milk, sugar (not too much), canola oil (instead of butter), eggs, a little baking powder and salt, and bran flakes (for a little fiber).
The dough is baked at 350 °F for one hour, taken out, cut up in chunks and put back in for 5-6 hours at 250 °F (with the oven door left open by a crack) to dry the pieces out.
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Monday/ at the roastery ☕️

Here’s the scene at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery on Pike street.
We didn’t get to see the roasted coffee beans spill from the roasting barrel into the giant cooling pan, but the place was packed with tourists and locals (a guy wearing a shirt with an Amazon Web Services logo on, for example).

Coffees from Sumatra, Malawi and Viet Nam were being brewed, and we picked Malawi. (My friends that are visiting Seattle, are from South Africa).