Food

My wonderfully food nerdy friends on Chowhound have put together a Google Maps edition of Oakland taco trucks. Oh man, I want a burrito right about now.

Man, I should have pitched this to NPR! But still, it’s def worth a listen. All Things Considered, September 18, 2007 · Taco trucks are a new destination for gourmands. They are celebrated in blogs with maps of where the best trucks park. In Oakland, Calif., many fans embark on late-night taco treks.

Salon: But that was then. This is now. Which is the other reason I’m eating Taco Bell tonight: I want to sink my teeth into the culture clash between past and present — the whiter, more monocultural society we were, versus the hyphenated nation we’ve become. Taco Bell harks back to the Wonder Bread America of 1962, when the chain was founded on the assumption that real Mexican food was too slow, too spicy, too unpronounceably foreign, even in the…

While I’m not much of a coffee drinker myself, I was introduced to Peet’s Coffee at a very young age. My grandparents’ home, perched alongside Claremont Canyon, is about a 20 minutes’ walk from the fourth location of Peet’s Coffee, on Domingo at Ashby Ave in Berkeley. When our family would gather around holiday times, we’d make the trek down the hill to Peet’s. The adults would get their lattes, while the kids would get their hot chocolate. Peet’s was…

If you’re in San Francisco or Los Angeles, you can catch my piece at the top of the show on the Salinas taco truck situation at 6 pm tonight on KQED (88.5) or KPCC (89.3), respectively. It’ll air in Salinas on KHDC (91.5) on Tuesday at 5 pm. Or, if you don’t feel like doing that, you can listen on the Latino USA site here! Big ups to Melanie Wong, David Boyk (who if you listen hard can be heard…

Salinas won’t be shutting down its taco truck scene. Yay! However, New Orleans isn’t so keen on its taco trucks, reports the LA Times [via Daniel Hernandez] Still, I think David Boyk put it best: “I just don’t understand people who hate Mexicans. Mexicans are fucking awesome, and people who don’t understand that are assholes. “

Enjoying a quesadilla con pollo and a pretty serious strawberry margarita at the Blue Mesa Grill. Michael Jackson’s Thriller is on the stereo. Seems like a good way to kill an hour, hrm?

ZOMG! It’s official! My life is now complete — TJ’s is moving in to the old Albertson’s location on College Ave., opposite Zachary’s, just north of the BART station! That means that there’s a TJ’s within a 15 minute walk of my house. SWEET!

Remember those octopus tentacles I mentioned earlier? I wasn’t kidding.

I spent the afternoon making miniature potato knishes to take to a Passover potluck this evening. Happy Passover to all my Jewish friends, and to those who are celebrating just for fun (like me).