Gay Guy in Seminary Day 160 (Dim Sum)

A group of us went into the city today for dim sum. It was pretty good, but I've had better. I now know that when people say there are "2 Chinatowns" in San Francisco, they are actually talking about 2 different areas of the same place. There's the main drag on Grant that is the "tourist trap" Chinatown where they sell all of the kitschy souvenirs, and the "real" Chinatown, which is actually on the periphery all around the "tourist trap" Chinatown, where you can buy vegetable and sea cucumbers and stuff.

Afterwards we went to a Chinese bakery. There was a sign outside of it proudly declaring that they were "the only bakery in the entire United States" that makes their own moon cake filling. This is important because "water is the most important ingredient in moon cake filling," and "Chinese water has many impurities in it," suggesting that all other moon cakes that you will be able to find will be filled with filling made in China. Also, "San Francisco water is the cleanest water in the world." They make their moon cakes this way even though it is "difficult & hard" because they want to provide tourists (and I'm assuming the local population, chinese and otherwise) with the best possible moon cakes that money can buy.

I've always loved moon cakes, ever since I was little, but they're often made with a salted egg yolk in the middle, which I never really cared for. I bought one without the yolk... I hope. For those that have no idea what a moon cake is, it consists of a very thin and tender pastry shell and is filled with a sweet, smooth, dense paste, usually made from lotus seeds, mung beans or black beans. I'm pretty sure these are not the kind of black beans you will find in a Mexican restaurant, but I'm not really sure what kind of beans they are.

*sigh* Fine, I'll Google it...

According to Wikipedia, black bean paste is mung bean paste with black food coloring... Now I kind of wish I never looked it up...

Anyway, the bakery had an item I never imagined I would see, and would probably never think of on my own. They have chocolate covered moon cakes!!! I, of course, had to buy one. It was sooooo good! I can't believe I've never seen one before! Now that I have, the pairing just seems so obvious. BTW, I am eating my moon cake as we speak. I was writing and I could hear it calling my name. You can't ignore a moon cake when it wants to have a word with you.

In other news:

Faith and I finished the Hebrew parsing quiz today and practiced reading the part of the Hebrew Bible that the professor is making us recite in front of the class. We're going to work on the extra credit portion of the quiz tomorrow and practice reading some more.

I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with Terra, Faith, Ian, Jeff and Matthias. Chris walked in towards the end, and Tom and Kimberlee popped in for a few seconds in the middle. It was a very interesting premise and I thought it was well done, but it was kind of slow and a little too long. There was also this weird sub-plot involving a hurricane that was just extraneous to the whole thing. I tried to find a parallel between it and the main story, but was unable to. It should have been edited out of the script.

I found a mushroom that looks like a pile of spaghetti and some black elfin saddle mushrooms that look like little brains on top of veiny grey stalks by Holy Grounds. I'll post pictures the next time I do a mushroom blog.

Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 14 (First Forays into San Francisco)

I've been here for just over a week now and I barely made it into San Francisco today. After church this morning, my next-door neighbor Ryan and I decided we would try to figure out the public transportation and explore the city. We wanted to take the ferry across the bay, but we arrived 2 hours early because the ferry has a limited schedule on Sundays, so we sat at a bar and had some beer while we waited.

It took about an hour to get to San Francisco from Larkspur and cost $8.50 one way. We got to San Francisco around 2 p.m. The cool thing about taking the ferry is that you get a free two-way bus pass good for that day, but we didn't end up using them.

We went to chinatown and had a late lunch, then shopping so Ryan could buy some chopsticks. After that, we walked to Pier 39, which is a total tourist trap, but still very cool. They have a special section of floating platforms just for the sea lions to lounge on. There were hundreds of them, all piled on top of each other, barking away, completely ignoring the dozens of people gawking at them only a few feet away.

There a lot of extremely specialized shops at Pier 39; one store only sold socks, and another only sold magnets. We went to a chocolate shop where I bought chocolate covered marshmallows and chocolate pasta, which I am EXTREMELY excited about!

The weather has been really hot lately, but the heat wave seemed to let up today and it was pretty cold in San Francisco. I was so used to the heat though, so I neglected to bring a jacket. As the day wore on, it kept getting colder and colder, but we couldn't get back to the other side of the bay until 7:15 because of the limited ferry runs. The only other option we had that day was to go back at 4:40, and we didn't want to head back that soon. However we sort of ran out of things to do and still had about 2 hours before the ferry was scheduled to depart for Larkspur.

So, we tried to hide out at Sur la Table while we waited, but the mall was closing and we got kicked out. Because we were cold, we went to Peet's Coffee next for something warm to drink. Now, I have to admit, this was my first time at Peet's Coffee because I'm a pretty avid Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf fan, but Peet's Coffee may have converted me. Their tea selection is AMAZING! Today, I tried the Ancient Trees Organic Pu-erh tea, which was very rich and musky and fragrant. Next time, I'm going to try the Golden Dragon Oolong.