Lunch at Berkeley: Bear's Lair

It's still raining.  It hasn't stopped raining since last week.  To say the least, I'd prefer it to stop.

This is by far the worst view I've shown in my series of lunches on campus.  You can see Zellerbach Hall, though, which is a lovely place that is often filled with schoolchildren on weekday field trips.  However, if it wasn't apparent above, my displeasure with the weather has grown quite substantial.  The real indicator, though, that I'm at my limit is the coffee in the photo's foreground.  I rarely drink hot beverages let alone hot coffee.  I wasn't even in need of the caffeine.  I just wanted to feel warm again.

The coffee tasted about as good as a one-dollar coffee can - harsh, not particularly strong.  I didn't help it by adding artificial sweetener.  My hope was to make it palatable, but I wasn't willing to wait or stir long enough for real sugar to dissolve.  In the end, I had a rather unpleasant coffee to badly accompany the turkey and salami sandwich that I had packed earlier in the morning.

Give me sunshine, and I'll give you UC Berkeley.  Pray, conjur, dance, whatever, just do something to help me get out of this gloom.

Lunch at Berkeley: Rainy Day

Two things to fess up about right away:  Yesterday's photo was taken with my phone because I didn't want to take my camera out in the rain, and this photo was taken yet again from the Daily Cal newsroom.  Rain really gets me off my game, and yesterday was no exception.

To be fair, I don't dislike the rain.  I like being warm and in bed on a rainy day, and I wouldn't be the only one in trouble if we went through a drought.  But I've worn glasses since the second grade (yeah, that's a while ago), which have kept me from enjoying being in the rain from then on.  I used to wish that those gag glasses with the windshield wipers were real, but it wasn't meant to be.  A few spots of rain are usually no big deal; any more rain and my corrected eyesight is basically nullified.  I prefer not to carry an umbrella because I have a tendency to leave them behind, but I really don't have a choice if I want to keep my glasses dry.

And then there's my desire not to get wet and not to eat a cold lunch.  No umbrella can keep you entirely dry from the wind-angled rain, and apparently that's the norm up here.  I actually intended to go out on Sproul Plaza since other news staff members were going to be out there tabling, which I would have done if I had packed a sandwich or something else I could have eaten cold.  What I had, though, was Kraft macaroni and cheese with bacon, and that definitely needed to be eaten warm if not hot.

So I stayed inside.  I took the photo in front of a window near the news editors' desks, one that overlooks Lower Sproul Plaza.  Even on a gray day, the campus is gorgeous.  The expanse of buildings gets lost into the fog, and the hustle and bustle below dissipates into a pitter-patter chorus.

A new frontier

Apologies again for today's picture.  I took it before I had decided that I want this blog to be more about my experiences with food instead of the food I'm eating.  Also, sorry that this one is a little stale.  I'm working through a back log of photos so I can tell the stories I'd like to.

Saturday night was not the night on which I would break in the kitchen at my new apartment.  That's probably the only time the word "new" will be associated with this apartment - every time a fire engine drives up Dwight, I wonder if it'll be stopping here.  Oddly enough, the kitchen was new.  It was one of the first things that caught my eye when I first got in that door.  The granite countertops and range still adorned with plastic protectors were far more appealing than the big bedroom or airy balcony.  But there was no way I was going to get any cooking done.  Aimee and I left from Los Angeles at 6 a.m. and got into Berkeley around noon, unloaded box after box, ate late lunch and bought a bed and mattress at Ikea, picked up the rest of my belongings in San Francisco, unloaded those damn boxes, built my bed, then went to sleep.  Nowhere in that schedule was there room for going to the market let alone cooking.

The next day, Safeway was the only place I wanted to go.  Of course, I had to go back to Ikea to get the desk I wanted the day before but couldn't get because it was out of stock, but I enjoyed my time among the refrigerated cases.  I bought with reckless abandon fort two reasons:  I had a vehicle with which I could transport my purchases, and my parents gave me a Safeway gift card before I left.  Food filled my shopping cart, ideas for meals for the week filled my thoughts.

I bought a rotisserie chicken because it was on sale, and I knew my time in the kitchen would still be limited because of all the minor tasks I had to get done (It never seems done when you move in to a new place, does it?).  When I got back and unpacked all of my purchases, I realized I had some taco seasoning left over from last semester, so I decided to make soft tacos with the chicken.  The parts that required work were the beans and rice, though those weren't particularly difficult.  A little bell pepper and onion here, a little garlic there, and it was done before we knew it.  The chicken was even easier - Aimee shredded it off the bones, and I threw it in a pan and after cooking down some of those veggies listed above (They go well in everything, right?) then tossed on the seasoning.

The picture will tell you that we're not entirely settled yet.  It was taken on our coffee table, which I'm pretty sure is a patio table given its stone-tiled top, because we don't currently have a dinette set.  It's not so terrible - the TV is there, after all, and a fairly comfy couch - but it screams of incompletion.  Perhaps that's why it was so satisfying that the dinner plates were so composed, everything in its place:  tacos with the proper accoutrements, beans adorning the rice, my fork ready to dig in.