ABC's 'Commander in Chief' sinking into lame-duck status

ABC's 'Commander in Chief' sinking into lame-duck status
Well, that is really too bad. Seems like only situational TV can offer honest discussion about politics - exploring ethics and morals where real media, and sadly our real leaders fail. This and West Wing were good commentaries on our social / political beings. So long.
What will we see next? Goofy leaders in sitcoms? Or more "Reality" shows that aren't?
(Cranky looking sad)

Beer Menu at Suppenk�che

Beer Menu at Suppenk�che

Ah, beer.... This Easter weekend, my partner and I traveled to my favorite US town (San Francisco - hey I lived there for 14 years and still love and miss it). We met my little friend Charm and her beau for some beer drinking fun at Suppenkuche - German cuisine and all beers either German, Dutch, or Belgian. Mmmmm.
WAIT STAFF: Very busy, but our drinks were never over-delayed. It was Saturday and when we got there around 5:30 pm it was already a full house with only two empty tables in the front dining room.
FOOD: Rich fare - a pork dish with a huge 'dumpling' that was a stuffing ball and sauerkraut. Naomi had a leg o' lamb with kale and onions and mashed potatoes. Hard bread and butter was there as well. We shared a "bee sting" cake that was light, fluffy, and sweet. Sweet always goes with beer, that or salty.
DRINKS: We tried many different kinds of beer, only two in a bottle. Naomi tried the smoke beer and stuck with that, having another one. Unfortunately, I'm not a German speaker and remembering the long name is impossible, nor is it up on Suppenkuche's web site. I started with a Weltenburger Dunkel (Weltenburger is a name and Dunkel means brown), then Charm had one later, while I switched to a Belgian Trappist beer, Leffe. The Dunkel was full of flavors and had a sweet hint. The Leffe was traditional and lighter than a barley wine, but strong flavors. As I like my Chimay, I liked this as well. Charm started with an Optimator, a good standby and Scott had a beer that was a bock starting with a K that unfortunately didn't make the website either. Lastly, Scott finished with a Celebrator. 4 people, 8 beers of 7 varieties. We took the BART and Muni so as to minimize any risks associated with driving.
Cranky will give the Suppenkuche 4 happy faces.

Sushi in Irvine

Mitsui -
Quail Hill Pkwy (off Sand Cyn and I405) in Irvine - while on a business trip, always eat comfort food, for me that's SUSHI. Mitsui is well decorated, accomodating large and small groups. I was with an 8 person group.
WAIT STAFF:
Ethnic, helpful with suggestions, prompt.
DRINKS:
Beer and saki, what else? The usual, Asahi reserve and some nigori saki.
FOOD:
The stuffed tomato, not really a tomato, was one of the most delicious things I ate there. Red tuna, wrapped to look like a red tomato stuffed with crab meat and a scallop atop. Some small amount of sauce (was it orange?) and a bit of tobiko. The rolls were all interesting and good. The nigiri, unagi was all I ordered in this style, was generous.
Price was right - so overall, Mitsui gets 4 happy faces from cranky pants.

Out of Town Eats

Rockin' Baja Lobster
April 13 - in Irvine for business. The training class I was helping train had a night out and 18 of us went out to the Newport Beach Pier area to grab some grub. Now, Newport Beach has great memories for me as I spent a few teenage summers hanging out there. The fondest for me is staying with the Buuck's at the rental they rented each year. OK, I could go on and on about that and them... but, I'm here to write about food and eateries.Rockin' Baja Lobster has quite the theme - and that theme is BUCKETS. Buckets o' beer (6 for the price of 5, about $3.50 each, not bad, actually) and buckets o' shell fish - most of it fried. Fried slipper lobster tails (that would be crawdads on steroids), shrimp fried, the crabs were steamed or boiled, no chips and salsa, all you can eat ceasar salad, and family-style servings of refried beans and spanish rice (no other choices of beans).
WAIT STAFF:Young and helpful, somewhat forgetful about water, but other than that, they worked hard.
DRINKS:Hey, this was business, so I had only one beer, a Negro Modelo. The beer menu was not huge, but some variety. The drinks looked interesting - pitchers of margeritas, but the 3 different mojitos sounded yummy - but I was driving, so only the one beer for me. Perhaps I can come back and have a mojioto.
FOOD:As described above, made to be served fast - but the quantities only sound big. A bucket of shrimp (Shrimp Lover's Bucket) is $16.95, and like all buckets, is half filled with paper, so the food is at the top two inches of the cute galvanized quart-sized buckets. The buckets were pretty much the same with paper and food, except the snow crab, but they are long. I had the Lobster Lover's Combo, a fried lobster taco, which was good, only fried, a lobster enchalada, and a cup of lobster and corn chowder. I got beans and rice with that and the salad and salsa bar. It wasn't so bad, $13.95 is reasonable for lobster. I think the fact that the restaurant is not generous with the ubiquitous chips rubbed me wrong. The best part of the salsa bar was chili butter, smeared on a tortilla was tasty. Eighteen people produced a bill of $463.88. ouch.

Rockin' Baja Lobster gets one happy face on the cranky scale. It would have gotten two happy's except the no-choice of rice and beans and zero free chips was just not generous enough for this theme restaurant. (It must be the tourists who get sucked in, I don't see locals comin' back)

Rate the Hyatt Long Beach, CA

http://longbeach.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/index.jsp?src=tig_lgbrl_brand_google
Cranky was sent to a conference in Long Beach, CA. Since the conference was at the Hyatt, I stayed there. Just a few observations:
OVERALL: Nice setting, great rooms.
GOOD: The most comfortable beds, elevators aplenty and fast. And very very clean.

BAD:
Why do all hotels still have the most awful coffee on earth in those little coffee makers in the rooms? Why oh why? When most of them serve a brand name (Starbucks) on site, do the rooms still have awful coffee?
This is a very nice hotel, yet, it seemed like the Hyatt was trying to make money off of every little trivial thing. #1, no drinking fountains, so you have to buy bottled water - just plain everyday bottled water - $3.00 (come on, this isn't a movie theater).
I would also think the Hyatt, being so high end here in Long Beach, would have free internet, WiFi, but no, they teamed up with T-Mobile for the cursed $9.99 a day service.
Drinks at the bar? $6.50 for nothing-to-get-excited about wine.
It was ridiculous the way the Hyatt nickeled and dimed us guests.
*** That said, I would still come back because the rooms were so good and clean and comfortable ***

Return to the Kasbah Lounge

kasbah

More on the Kasbah Lounge.
One good visit deserves another, so we have been back twice more. We brought friends both times, once sitting at a table, the next time in our favorite place on the cushioned bench with low tables.
WAIT STAFF: They were busy both times, yet attentive. On our second return trip, I felt like we were getting our food in a hurry and felt rushed.
DRINKS: Kasbah has been out of their featured Mediterranean beers, with only one available, for the last two months. Too bad. If they could not make it more consistent, they should have had the menu say "ask us about our Mediterranean beers.' Just a suggestion.
FOOD: In addition to the other dishes we already love, we had Stuffed Dates and Kefta. Excellent. The fiery cheese dish is also a hit. The only strange thing was this; the dates were small and seemed to be breaded before fried, and there were six of 'em, on our first return visit. The second time, they were almost tempura style, large, only four. But both times, equally delicious.
The Kasbah still rates all the happy faces Ole Cranky gave it last time. It is someplace I'll take adventurous out-of-town guests to.

Sacramento's very good burger places

STOCKTON BURGER
It is better than Ford's. When I moved here some friends said Ford's was the best, but I disagree. Stockton is good, old fashioned, big bun, meat patty the same size and juicy. Just plain ole' cheddar cheese, iceburg lettuce, tomato, and thousand island dressing. Perfect. Steak cut fries only tops it off. No nonsense interior area to dine and at lunch it was filled with a true mix of people. They serve a teriyaki chicken plate that I will have to try sometime, it looked good and a lot of people were ordering it.
Cranky thinkgs Stockton Burger deserves 4 happy faces.

Dining at the Kasbah Lounge

kasbah
Now that is more like it!
After a stressful week, I just wanted to go someplace peaceful and forget the week. We ate here on March 10, 2006
The link above takes you to the website. The decor is not as glamorous as, say Dar Maghreb in Los Angeles, the restaurant itself is not very large, but this is one pleasant place. Various seating available, from tall tables and stools (with backs), bar seating, table seating, or the best of all, row type seating on a low cushioned bench, with cushions for your back and a low table for two. The only draw back is those little tables, they seem wobbly, and there isn't much room if you have more than two dishes of food going at once, plus your drinks. We chose the comfy seats where we could lean back and just watch. There are light sconces everywhere, projecting soft light, the seating along the walls has drapes of material overhead to give a tent-like feeling. The items along the walls fit in with my perception of what a Moroccan eatery would look like. There are small votive candles on the tables (one per table) but the lighting is soft to the point it makes reading the menu difficult. Perhaps bigger print, certainly I would hate to have more light spoil the atmosphere.
WAIT STAFF:
Prompt, not overly intrusive when they check on you, and offering suggestions on drink and food, friendly (young, my gosh).
DRINKS:
The menu listed 5 foreign beers, but only two were on hand. My partner tried the lager from Morocco and, although it was yellow beer, said it wasn't too bad. I had one of the Kasbah's signature drinks, an aged rum from Brazil with mashed up lemons and limes. It was perfect, and served in a large round goblet, so one was plenty - and at $8.50 I didn't want to pay for two.
FOOD:
Of course, we want to try a little of everything, so we had Fatima's Palette, which was three 'dips,' hummus (very good), lebne (a yogurt based dip, also very good), and baba ganoush. The baba ganoush was strange, it tasted like an avocado dip and I think I would have preferred something different like tabouli. There was never ending pita bread wedges. This dish was $9.
We also had Merguez, for $9.50, it was 4 skewers of lamb sausages, red onion, red pepper, and lime and kumquats (or lowquats). The mix of a bite of sausage and kumquat was delicious, and 4 skewers was plentiful, glad to see a good amount of food.
Lastly, we had B'stella rolls. Usually B'stella is more like a pie, but this was the same crust, with almonds and cinnamon sugar mix sprinkled atop, and filled with chicken and egg. $8 for 4 fat rolls was a great value. It tasted delicious.
CRANKY RATING:
Overall - this place gets 4 happy faces from ole cranky. Price was right, food plentiful and tasty. I will definitely be sharing this spot with friends and out of town visitors.

Incidentally, this is the place with hukas I spoke of a couple of critiques back. Tonight it was too chilly to sit outside and enjoy one - of course, with hot sweetened mint tea... maybe in a future trip.

Tapa The World/index

Tapa The World/index

February 24, 2006
Click on the above link, and see the next place we dined at.
TAPA THE WORLD, cafe and bar, Spanish and World Cuisine. Right next door is Kasbah Lounge. Tapa has beer and wine and the bar staff has to duck next door to the Kasbah to access a full bar. Just before we left, Tapa had live music, a fella playing Spanish-style guitar; pleasant. There was outside seating, that would be small tables on the sidewalk (fenced in with a short iron fence). It was cold, so we went inside. It was packed, but there were openings at the bar, so... Once again, we were at the bar and, of course, that means appetizers for us.
HELP STAFF:
Staff was cheerful, the bar guys were busy, but the did not do too bad a job of getting to us. The only problem with staff was catching their eye for a refill and the bill. The host was very cheerful and really drew us in.
DRINKS:
I had the beer of the month, Lagunitas' Hairy Eye. Not normally a fan of Lagunitas, this one was good, so I had two. Naomi had one as well, and some other beer that I can't remember.
FOOD:

Doesn't cheese of the day from Spain sound good? I thought so, but what we got when we ordered Queso Español del Día was 4 not too thin slices and some greens. That was it, 4 thin slices. What was strange is, the bread served (kinda like chips and salsa). Which one complimented the cheese? You would have to try both to figure it out, and one didn't. There was a baguette cut up and some peppery, soft bread. The peppery bread, good as it was, did not compliment the cheese, it hid it. Patatas Bravas, potato cubes with a spicketchupup, exactly what the bartender said it was, and it was tasty. Pinchos Morunos, a pork skewer with a dry rub ochiliesis and cumin. It was good, but very dry and should have come with a sauce. Kobe beef was very good. We had desert, Chocolate Strawberry Addiction, well worth the price.

PRICE: I was very surprised at the high price. The cheese dish was $5.50, probably the worse ratio of satisfaction for the money. We dropped over $70 there, so I am certain we had other appetizers that I can't remember. I think they charged for the extra bread.
Overall, Tapa the World gets only 1 happy face from ole cranky pants here.

My restaurant adventures in Sacramento

Background: I once lived in a suburban part of Los Angeles. It is hard not to think of the whole LA basin as anything but one city because everything looks the same. The cities blend together. I had moved to one of these cities and began, what came to be known by me and my girlfriend, as the TEN WORSE RESTAURANT TOUR. I had similar experiences in San Francisco, as well. So, why not share my critiques of Sacramento (my new home town). This doesn't mean that all the places I've been have been bad.

Late January, 2006-
"CELESTIN'S restaurant and voodou lounge" - cute spelling of voodoo and all. I dined with my partner on a Friday.
Celestin's has a full bar and patio. I saw sidewalk seating, behind low iron fencing, so I can't say if this is the patio (I did not check out back... next time I will be more thorough).
HELP STAFF/BAR STAFF
It was cold out and not many were sitting outside. There was friendly staff to greet us. The crowd was young and I believe I was the only over-50 person there. We sat at the bar as most tables were already filled at 7 pm. The bar help was attentive and my only complaint would be we had to wait for a while to get refills on drinks as the passing of an hour and a half meant more customers ordering drinks; it took a while to get the final tab, well after the time we wanted to leave and our drinks were empty.
DRINKS
I had the mojito - ok, I had two. There were excellent
My partner had a draft beer, Jamaican Red, which was good, then she had a sangria, which she also liked. I agree with her assessment.
FOOD
We felt the best thing for us would be appetizer and one of the many gumbos on the menu. We went with the house gumbo, a mix of shrimp, scallops, tilapia (whatever that is) chicken and kielbasa sausage. It was quite good, just spicy enough and I was happy that the scallops were big enough to tell they were scallops. The appetizers we chose were: sweet potato fries which were awesome, grio (marinated chunks of pork, served with an interesting sauce) which was tasty, and fritailles (a combo of grio, the fries, crispy fried plantains, and lamb fritters) which we enjoyed.
PRICE: Appetizers were all under $10 and ranged from $9.5 for the most expensive fritailles, to the $6 for the sweet potatoes. The house gumbo is their most expensive, at $16.50 (the other versions featuring only two of the meats in combination are $12 and $14). For the food, and the clean cheerful atmosphere, the people watching opportunity (for them and me), good drinks - more than I like to pay, but it is cheaper than getting an airport beer - I would say the expense was a good trade.
CELESTIN'S gets 3 "happys" on the Cranky scale . That would be 3 smiley faces, but I can't seem to make those in the blog :-) :-) :-) .

SF Gate: News and Information for the San Francisco Bay Area

SF Gate: News and Information for the San Francisco Bay Area

Do you know how hard it is to find you 'hometown' newspaper in Sacramento? Delivered to the house is double the home delivery rate when I lived in the City - transportation costs is the reason.
It is chaper at the news stand - but those are unrealiable. The jam, or in the rain, the papers get wet.

Home for the Holidays

What do ya think? Decorating for Christmas for the first time in about 15 years. Sacramento
 

Weeee 

Wishin' 

A Battle Over Programming at National Public Radio

A Battle Over Programming at National Public Radio

Balanced? As in Fox networks "fair and balanced?" Oh Puleeze. Presenting different views is not presenting truth. In-depth analysis and truth / fact finding is the number one reason I pay attention to NPR, and the mail reason I do not listen to trash radio, which includes Howard Stern as much as it does Rush Limbaugh.

The censorship continues to build. This is almost as scary as the beliefs of many members of the religious right that they have the right, nay, the duty to burn up the earth because it will hasten armeggedon and the end of days.

AMERICAN HOME SHIELD IS A JOKE

American Home Shield, IS A JOKE.

Well if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. My partner asked me if I was starting to feel like I bought a lemon with this old house. I am starting to wonder it that isn’t true. The same phrase bears repeating, ‘but it’s an old house, things are outdated and always need attending to in an older home.’ I believe it is a tradeoff. I get the charm of an older home, established trees, and lots of windows. The trade is, with the established trees, I get tree roots invading the old terra cotta (or clay) sewer line that the previous owner failed to deal with. I get weird wiring in the electrical panel, like too many things on one circuit. At least the windows are new all around!

Let me get to the title of this “essay.”

AMERICAN HOME SHIELD is a rip – off. If you are buying a house, don’t waster your money. I have dealt with the same company on two different houses and never had a good experience. The first house, sewer issue. It was old, had a clay main sewer line, the standard for the ‘day,’ which in this case, was the 1940’s. I used American Home Shield to come out and clean out the sewer line after living in that old house (the one I left in SF), but any subsequent clean outs were not going to be covered. That means, if I had to call out American Home Shield, they would not cover the cost for the service charge, which, by the way, was quite a lot less than the current charge of $45. The old service charge, if I can remember, was about $30.

After living here, in Sacramento in the house I bought, for two weeks, the sewer line from the shower developed a stoppage. That was it, nothing would drain. My earlier rant about the prior owner knowing about the sewer only touches on my frustration. On top of that, it is the expense. When I bought the house, the prior owner, Nancy Sanchez, and I split the home warranty insurance. That’s about $450.00 each. I called American Home Shield to get service on this problem. First complaint is the phone log-in, it takes forever and you have to deal with a complicated menu. I guess that cuts down on overhead when you don’t have a person to talk to. Ok, so I expect to get a call from a “technician” some time soon. Technician is the new name for a plumber, or an electrician. A plumbing company calls and will send some one in two days. I have to arrange for showering at a friend’s house. When the plumbing company calls my partner is home and, as I had done with American Home Shield, explained that there is a stoppage in the bathroom, specifically, the bathtub will not drain. The plumber shows up and complains that he did not know it was a stoppage problem and he doesn’t have the right equipment. He leaves to get the equipment and comes back about 3 hours later. Not knowing the only problem we specified does not inspire a lot of confidence, we should have asked what he was told to fix.

The plumbing ‘technician’ find a clean-out opening and snaked the sewer line from that point to the street. This was totally outside of the confines of the house. The stoppage did not clear; gee could it be that the stoppage was between the shower drain and the outside sewer line? Why yes, that makes sense, doesn’t it? And what did the technician say? Oh, he can’t snake that, the service is only for the outside sewer line snake. He can’t get on the roof, he can’t send a snake down the exhaust pipe (whatever that thing is on the roof). The technician said that the bathtub is backing up because it is the lowest point and, pretty much, he did all he can do. He recommended calling another plumber with a camera to see where the problem is.

What, call a real plumber? Is that the answer? Apparently so, as my partner had a plumber out in an hour, as I called the city to come and find the street clean out. The very next morning, the real plumber ran a camera down the exhaust on the roof and guess what he found? A stoppage RIGHT AFTER THE SHOWER DRAIN, just where we asked the first plumber to check. That stoppage was cleared, as was another small one beyond that. Unfortunately, there will need to be a sewer replacement in my future and it will be costly.

My conversation with American Home Shield that next night was along the lines of, what the heck do you cover? I got this out of it: American Home Shield’s plumbers will snake out the main sewer line only. There is no replacement of plumbing, outside of the boundaries of the house, covered. Yet the specific stoppage was within the boundaries of the house, the service does not allow for clearing it. That is pretty stupid. You know what that means to me? Just get a “real” plumber whenever you need anything plumbing related, because all you will get is a main sewer line snake-out for $45 with American Home Shield.

Joke number two, and part of my first sentence, if it isn’t one thing it is another, is the electrical outage I experienced on Saturday. Naturally it happened on a weekend, ensuring the maximum of costs to me, the new homeowner. I call a couple of electricians and left messages. I called only the ones that advertised in the yellow pages that they were 24/7 operations. There must be a lot of work for electricians, as everyone was out and would call me back, strange, though, no one did. After about an hour, I remembered this issue might be covered by my American Home Shield warranty. I called and dealt with the electronic recording menu and finally got a phone number for an electrician. It was a 530 area code and the mechanical voice told me that a technician would call on Monday to arrange service. Since I had NO LIGHTS, NO REFRIGERATOR and nothing but a few outlets worked, most of them in the bathroom, this was not a satisfactory service. I had to repeat “operator” over and over at the phone until a real live person at the American Home Shield call center answered. When I said Monday would not do, that I considered my issue more of an emergency, the young man said he would consult his supervisor. I waited on hold for a few minutes, and when the young man came back on line, he said my electrical problem was not an emergency and that I could run an extension cord to an operating outlet for my refrigerator.

I admit this last thing was just too much for my already frustrated and stressed emotional state. Although I did not swear, I said something like ‘you’ve got to be kidding me. You are suggesting I run an extension cord? American Home Shield is a joke. The service for the sewer is just like this electrical problem.’ Then I just hung up before I got into screaming at the kid answering the phone. It isn’t his fault he works for a JOKE. You know what I want? I want my $400 bucks back. Because I have paid $45 for a service call from a plumbing company that only snaked the main sewer (hey, I suppose that was a bargain, it needed doing). I paid $325 for the camera work from a real plumber and $275 for the electrician who came out Saturday evening and took care of my problem.

I guess my karma is running backward for now. I used to say I’ve been living right because I had relatively good luck. This is the bad luck.

May 7

Good heavens - playing in the OC, at an "Imperial" function - drag queens everwhere. Never have you seen such tall, ornately dressed 'women' as these men. It is a culture I do not profess to understand.

The good of it would be the charity fundraising they do. The bad of it is, it is just an excuse to party. Raising money for the causes has its value, and I would have to admit, that alone is worth it. But it really is a giant social gossip club.

Not being very associated with the groups, I am easily bored with the affairs. I mean, how many drag shows can one go to? None of these people are my friends, so they don't engage in serious discussions. There is much to much alcohol drinking going on, everyone talking about everyone else, and all fake pretenses about how was a big shot where and when and how important this person is over that person. I don't believe in all that, thinking I am just as important as the next person.

Oh well. I can't even say "at least it is cheap entertainment" because it ain't. I only do it because the one I love does it.

Tomorrow is another day - who said that? Oh, yes, it was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.

January 22, 2005 

No title

Still making the move, unpacked boxes, paper that wrapped baubles and the stupid things that we can’t seem to throw away, and the items that don’t seem to belong anywhere, stacking up. Decisions have to be made, where do I put the bottles of half filled olive oil, sesame seed oil, and pepper seed oils? Just how old are these spices? When was the last time I used them, hell, when was the last time I needed to use them? Since when did I think I even remotely liked to cook?

I used to just love my old place, the kitchen, THE VIEW.

the sunset i left