Laundry day

My first attempt at laundry was a couple weeks ago at a laundromat nearby. Naturally, I had procrastinated for weeks and had accumulated enough things to separate into a light and a dark load. I abandoned that idea two and a half strenuous blocks later, when I saw that each half-hour wash cycle cost $2.75 and stuffed my meticulously separated clothes all into one miserably full front-loading machine. I won't elaborate on the resulting level of cleanliness of my clothes, but I learned that I should probably do a smaller load next time. 

Today, I drove to Daly City to visit the fun laundromat in the huge shopping center with a Target and a Japanese housewares store which sells most of the delightfully miniature items in their inventory for $1.50 each. I could not resist purchasing a mandolin (the blade was sharp!) and a julienne tool. 

The mandolin has already provided me with at least fifteen minutes of entertainment and some thinly sliced test vegetables to munch on. The julienne tool turned out to be no more than a glorified grater, but given that the mandoline has about 5 other functions (scalloped edge cutter, peeler, ginger grater, etc) I still feel like I got my money's worth. 

Four-day weekend adventures

Because I was being a cheapskate and because I just saw my family at the end of October, I decided to stay here for Thanksgiving. I was kind of nervous about finding someone's Thanksgiving feast to mooch off of and having anyone at all to hang out with, but everything worked out. The family friends I had stayed with in Sunset invited me to their dinner, fed me delicious Russian-inspired Thanksgiving food, and claimed to enjoy the persimmon tart I had baked for them. 

In a nod to consumerism and a halfhearted attempt to burn off Thanksgiving dinner calories, I hit up the mall in the city center on Black Friday. I'm pretty proud of my purchases, which included a pumpernickel bagel, one item of clothing, and postage stamps. 

Today, a couple of coworkers and I visited Sutro Baths - the ruins of a swimming pool built in the 1800's - and did a brief hike nearby. Later, in search of adventure and also some kimchi, I braved the Bay Bridge for the first time since that terrifying drive on my first day here and went to Oakland. Leaving the city at 2:30 was actually pretty bad planning because by the time we were done meandering around and waiting for me to decide whether I wanted pickled radish, it was nearly 5 and getting back to my car before we were officially in downtown Oakland at dark required some pretty brisk walking. 

One of the things I've been enjoying the most about San Francisco is the number of novel or unfamiliar items in bakeries and other dessert-serving establishments. I've made it a goal to try these things as I encounter them and I'm going to keep track of them here. Today's find was a comically unappetizing black log at a bakery in Oakland's Chinatown. It turned out to be a gelatinous sesame seed paste roll, which was interesting to try but not something I would get again. 

Finally, a blog

So I had planned to start keeping a blog again once I moved to San Francisco and my life got more exciting than the work + class + homework + d-hall routine I had going in college. As it turned out, my first couple of months here got way too exciting, so I decided to postpone the blog creation until things settled down.

Of course, with the settling, my routine actually became even more pared down than before - now it's work + evening at home. But if you'd like to know how my day at work was or what I had for dinner, you've come to the right place.

In case anyone is curious about the name.. Sometime over a year ago, as I would browse one of my favorite food blogs, I kept coming across different sandwiches made with some fascinating kind of bread I'd never seen before - it had a crackly patterned crust and a pillowy interior. After some research, I discovered the bread is called Dutch Crunch and it's a staple in the Bay Area. Fast forward a few months later - I had a job interview in the area, or in other words, the perfect chance to try the sandwich! After my interview, I tapped in the name of an eatery I had looked up earlier into google maps on my phone to get directions and... ended up at a random 7-11 with no idea where I was, definitely no sandwich, and also no dollar bills for the bus back. The job I had interviewed for appealed to me for many sensible, career-related reasons, but it was also a chance to come back, make amends with the city, and finally get that sandwich.