Saturday, May 28, 2005
Cleaned out one of our closets in order to get rid of a lot of old junk. Did other house chores: trash, recycling. Mailed Tina a copy of the Alice Waters documentary. Brunch at Bagdad Cafe by myself: 2 eggs (scrambled) with sausage, home fried potatoes, wheat toast, orange juice. About $16 after a $3 tip. Ken was my server; he's friendly and very efficient. Decided on a whim to go to the Chocolate and Chalk Art Festival on Solano Avenue in Berkeley/Albany. The idea is you stroll Solano tasting chocolate things while browsing chalk art on the sidewalks. BK ("Oh, I did that two years ago") gave me an early warning—it's not a festival with booths and concentrated in one area. Well, it's still the same as before. Parking is very easy, but limited to 90 minutes, so I just parked at one end the first time, did a loop towards the center, then parked at the other end after 90 minutes, then repeated a loop to the center. I don't remember their website saying you had to buy tickets in order to get the chocolate things. While I bought mine, a woman next to me suggested that they have refundable tickets for those not spent at the end of the visit. I had trouble finding a toilet—there were no portapotties or public restrooms anywhere. (Best bets: a restaurant, cafe, or bar.) One of the ticket sellers said he would take our suggestions back to the board. When I had heard that Berkeley was having a chocolate festival, I presumed that this meant fine chocolate. Alice Waters, Scharffen Berger, maybe some other local gourmet chocolatiers. I laughed when I saw that 7-Eleven was participating in the festival by offering a Hershey's chocolate bar for $1. If you are thinking of coming to this event, don't expect any gourmet chocolate. It's kind of a scam in that way—just a way to get people over to Solano to discover all the businesses along there. And yes, you do need to go inside participating shops (which was supposedly indicated by helium balloons). I got a very small slice of Scharffenberger chocolate cake at Teance / Celadon Fine Teas tea house (510-524-1696, 1111 Solano Avenue, Albany CA 94706) along with some honey dan chong oolong tea. The tea house is very relaxing and beautifully designed with a unique fountain and small zen garden. The 3-pronged "fork" I was given to eat the cake was about a quarter of an inch wide and about 5 inches long. I suppose if you're going to serve extra small slices of cake, it helps to shrink the fork size too to give the illusion that the slice size is normal. The cake was delicious, as I had expected. Service was so slow I saw other customers leave because of it. I liked the tea so much that I bought some of the dried leaves to bring home. I took a few photos of chalk art. It disappointed me that most of the chalk art was simply logos of the Solano Avenue businesses. I did not take any pictures of business logos, no matter how beautiful they were. (Most were very simple but artistic drawings.) There were many drawings by children. I didn't see any drawings that captured my heart. I bought a 2-inch by 3-inch Mexican cocoa pillar candle for $7 from Pharmaca (510-527-8929, 1744 Solano Avenue, Albany CA 94706). The candle also has almond, clove, and cinnamon. It wasn't exactly a great deal, but I needed to use up the rest of my tickets. It smells great, and I'm sure Patrick will love it. There's a Pharmaca in Cole Valley, so I'm already familiar with this store. It's like a Whole Earth convenience store. I stopped at Cactus Taqueria to try the mole rojo chicken empanadillas, but I couldn't understand the woman behind the counter and eventually figured out that they were all out—a 20 minute wait, so I didn't. Took some more pictures, some of chalk art, some not. Drove back to SF. Traffic wasn't too bad—20 miles per hour for some spots. The bay bridge toll on the way back to SF was $3. Grocery shopping at Safeway on the way back. Went for a run in the early evening. I ran around Stern Grove, walked down the main entrance road, then back along the lake, then up the northwest exit. This was my first time running. I walked most of the way, really, but I did run for part of the time. I'm doing this primarily to get more cardiovascular exercise than simply walking. Dinner at home by myself: cashew chicken with fresh celery, onion, ginger, garlic; steamed rice. Chatted with Joel online. Dishes, laundry.