Bondfire Club Does Indian

Our Bondfire Buffet Club ventured to a non-Chinese buffet.. and dove into the spicy cuisine of Bombay Garden.

It was filled with vats of all sorts of colorful sauces, stews, mixtures, fried foods and rice dishes. Each was brimming with lots of flavorful smells and textures.

Unfortunately I can't do spicy. I mean, I like a little 'kick' in my foods so it wouldn't be bland and all.. but some of these dishes were too much for me. Of all the dishes they offered (and since it was a buffet they had a lot), only a few suited my palate.

Butter Chicken - not spicy but too buttery for my taste

Fried Vegetables- not spicy

Navratan Korma - veggies with cashewnut gravy had a little kick to it

Pongee: a rice mashed type dish -non spicy

Chicken Dum Biryani - also has a little kick to it

My friend enjoyed the baingan bharatha (roasted eggplant mash with onion & tomato) and the butter chicken. Even the tandoori chicken was a bit spicy for me. But the dessert was quite flavorful.

Mango Ice Cream

Overall, we give Bombay Garden a 2.5 bibles rating. No waiting for a table, the naan bread was warm and delicious but not much a selection for my palate.  The kids had to go home and eat 'dinner' again.

All of the Lights

Global Winter Wonderland is new in the Bay Area this year. Located in Great America's parking lot are many beautiful structures and characters that represent the Christmas Holidays and famous landmarks throughout the world.

Produced by International Culture Exchange Group, these structures are made from everyday recyclable materials. Almost every structure on the festival grounds is a Chinese lantern. From their brochure, 'the iron structures were bent and welded into a variety of shapes and sizes. The crew wove and attached the internal lighting elements before the silk, each piece cut and sewn by hand based on the design, and glued into place and then embellishments were added.' Other structure materials were teacups, soup spoons, CDs and recycled cans and bottles.

Phoenix

The Phoenix was made out of porcelain bowls, plates, and spoons.

Phoenix Treasure Vase

This structure was made by filling little apothecary bottles with colored water.

Tree of Life: The tree tops were made out of recycled plastic bottles.

Statue of Liberty

Eiffel Tower

Golden Gate Bridge

Dragon Boat was made out of recycled CDs.

Grandma Ma with all her grandchildren at the Peacock Bazaar

Birds, Birds and More Birds

As we headed to my in-laws' home for Thanksgiving, we traveled across the Golden Gate Bridge and headed to Schollenberger Park for some bird watching.

It was a clear sunny day!

Beautiful landmark!

Emily was so excited to go to this place. This was the highlight for her on this stay-cation.

Red-winged blackbirds were everywhere in the tulle.

Black-necked stilt

Seagulls galore!

Swans afar

Large white pelicans

More black-necked stilts

Mallard Ducks..  I stand corrected by my bird enthusiast: These are Northern Shovelers

We had surprise visitors joining our excursion. Matthew's brother, sister and her kids.

Enjoying a delicious 14-lb bird. 

Fond Childhood Memories

Merry Christmas my dear readers! I am so thankful for you and pray that you have a joyous holiday. Jesus is the reason for the season. God bless you all!

Most of my childhood memories were about shopping... grocery shopping... in Chinatown. Not the new part on Clement but the one at Portsmouth Square, Broadway, Stockton and Grant Ave.  It was a place where my family traveled to once a week to purchase fresh groceries, pastries, and meats. This was the place to go since 99 Ranch or Marina Markets were not in existence.

I developed strong arm muscles since my siblings and I had to help carry all the bags of groceries to the car.  

As you can see, there are no shopping carts available. There's not even enough room for a stroller on the sidewalk.

Bakeries were my favorite places; those pink cardboard boxes filled with sweet pieces of heaven! My favorite was the custard egg tart called 'dan tat'.

During the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, the ONLY moon cakes I eat are ONLY from Eastern Bakery. I'm pretty picky about my moon cakes.

A favorite hole-in-the-wall place my parents love to go to is Hing Lung Restaurant on Broadway.
The place is not the most visually hygienic but they make delicious, cheap Cantonese cuisine.

Their store front is a kitchen where the won ton noodle soups are made fresh daily along with their congee or rice porridge(jook) and rice noodle rolls (cheung-fun).

Preserved egg & pork porridge

Shrimp with Scrambled Egg Chow Fun

Roasted Duck Won Ton Noodle Soup

Crispy Fried Dough Rice Noodle Roll

More "Noodles"

Our second ramen restaurant, which also received very high stars on yelp, was called Katana-Ya located downtown and around the corner from our hotel. You can tell it's pretty good by the amount of people standing outside to wait for a table. The street was pretty deserted until you hit this place.

This restaurant was literally the smallest restaurant we have ever eaten in. We counted all the seats which did not go up to 30. There were tables that normally would fit two persons where they crammed five. A tight-squeeze was an understatement.

Luckily, we, a family of four, got seats at the sushi bar. It was much more spacious than the tables.

Something different about this ramen place was that they offered menu items other than ramen. They had rice plates and sushi. Matthew and I ordered combo plates which included a bowl of chasu ramen and another item. Matthew choose a salmon roll while I chose fried rice.

Both were delicious but I still preferred Orenchi.

To Be Continued...

TCHO and More

TCHO... pronounced "Cho" is a new (started in 2008) chocolate company in the Bay Area. They specialize in 'dark chocolate' and it's factory is located at Pier 17 (next door to the future site of the ExplOratorium). They give free tours to the public twice a day. It's a very informative tour about how they came about, where they get their 'cacao' (pronounced 'cow' beans) and how they develop their chocolate and market it.

More importantly, they teach us how to appreciate and evaluate the chocolate. It's like wine tasting. You just don't gulp it down. You need to savor the experience. That's how they teach you at TCHO.

First you Smell it (90% of taste is smell). Then you Look at the consistency of the chocolate. Does it look shiny or does it have white powdery stuff on top of it? If it does, that means it's tempered incorrectly. (Not a good sign.)  Next, Listen to the chocolate as you break it. Good chocolate makes a clean, bright snapping sound. Last but not least is Taste: if chocolate is overly sweet or vanilla-flavored it defeats the purpose of eating 'chocolate'; Is it bitter? Bright?  How does it melt in your mouth? What is the aftertaste like?

They make six different types of dark chocolate and the most eye-opening ones for me was that the fruity and nutty chocolate flavors have absolutely NO nut nor fruit mixed into it. It's all naturally flavored from the cacao bean. I am not a dark chocolate fan but the fruity one I really liked. The Fruity flavor had 68% cacao and it's cacao beans come from Peru. I liked it even more than their milk chocolate which I felt was too 'milky'. [Larry, my serious chocolate connoisseur friend, what do you think about TCHO chocolate?]

Lovely hairnets for hygiene purposes

Lots of candy in mini packs for sale

After the tour we went to Sears Fine Foods (considered a SF Institution since 1938) for brunch.

After our delicious meal, we explored the City like tourists.

Can you guess where this place is?

The largest Nordstrom's ever.. at least in this State.

A cool interactive store window. Just press the buttons and watch the scene move and change.

Enjoying two Beard Papa's!

To Be Continued...