Author Archives: Renate Valencia

Europa in Orinda

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Reuben at Europa in Orinda, California

Matthew and I drove over the hill to Orinda today.  Orinda is an upscale little city a bit deeper into Contra Costa County that I have always heard good things about.  We thought we’d check out the food situation there.  The drive was nice, if a bit hair-raising.  I hate driving on freeways and try to avoid tunnels and bridges, so we took windy, country roads that permeate the East Bay Regional Park District.  The area we drove through is so beautiful and so unspoiled, it was hard to believe we were only a few miles from cities right near the Bay Bridge.  Driving that high-elevation route with its two-lane roads in the dark or in rainy weather might have you sleeping with the fishes, if you ask me.  Orinda is attractive and quiet with a small downtown with an old theatre and some shops and restaurants.  Strangely enough, there was a Hofbrau, called Europa (64 Moraga Way, Orinda).  We were hungry so we ate there, and I have to say it was fine, but not as good as Harry’s Hofbrau (any of the locations) and perhaps on par with Brennan’s in Berkeley, but certainly not worth a special trip if you live on our side of the hill.  There was good turkey, which is essential, as well as decent turkey gravy and mashed potatoes.  Matt had a Reuben, which was generous and tasty, he reported.  We were kind of bummed because we wanted something more interesting than Hofbrau, but, not knowing the town and seeing little obvious choice, we suffered from not doing our homework.

Orinda theater in California

I turned 46 today and it’s Halloween

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Ice cream cake with pink writing

Today is birthday number 46 for me.  Oh, God.  I remember being in fourth grade and daydreaming about the future, thinking that in the year 2001 I would be 40 and that that was so old that life would pretty much be over.  I think I made some notes about this while in geography class working on textbook questions for the chapter, “Sandra and the Golden Wheat.”  The truth is that I’ve never been happier.  I’ve had a pretty good run thus far, if you overlook a few disasters and several minor catastrophes.  I would not want to be 18 again.  When I was 18 I should have been enjoying it but instead obsessed about assorted nonsense.  Let that be a lesson to all those out there who are young:  you may think things about you suck, but they don’t.  You’re golden.  They will suck, however, when you’re 46, so wait until then – though with some luck you’ll realize that excessive vanity is a gift that keeps on taking and get over it all.

The $3 cupcake

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Cupake with milk chocolate icing

I baked my version of the $3.00 cupcake today using the sour cream cake recipe from The Ebony Cookbook (1978), by Freda DeKnight, and a basic milk chocolate buttercream recipe from school.  Just to be interesting I used pans with odd shapes, like a ghost mini cake pan that springs into action every Halloween.  The cake was a bit rubbery so next time I’ll try a pound cake batter; most cupcake batters are just too soft for my taste.  Incidentally, this is one great cookbook.  No pictures, but a treasure of recipes, especially if you want to make things like coffee cakes and biscuits.  Plenty of good ideas for chicken, too.

Downsizing mayo

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I’m really mad right now.  For some reason I did not know that Best Foods/Hellmann’s had downsized its mayonnaise.   Usually I’m on top of this kind of thing, especially when it comes to something good.  As I’ve said many times, if you use mayo, buy Hellmann’s or Safeway Select.  Period.  Do not buy Costco’s premium mayo unless you like it really, really heavy.  It is very close to homemade, which I am not a fan of, oddly enough, but maybe you are, so there you go.  Anyway, I was sitting idle, which certainly can invite the devil in, and noticed that mayo was on sale at Lucky; the flyer was in front of me on the coffee table.  The add said something about the “15 oz or 30 oz size.”  I’m like, WTF?  Mayo comes in half-pints, pints, quarts, gallons and so on.  Those sneaky &*$#@’s really inflame me.  If they want to make more money (and we all know Unilever is hurting, right?) then they should raise the price, but don’t try to put one over on us.  This also messes up cooks, who need n cups of mayo for a recipe.  I wonder if I am so behind the curve here that other manufacturers have followed this lead – or if Unilever was following another’s lead.  Note to self:  go to Safeway tomorrow and look at all the mayo.  I’m wondering if those fools had the nerve to downsize the 8 oz jar to 7 3/4 oz.

Pickles from NYC

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5 gallons of real pickles from Guss in NYC

5 gallons of real pickles from NYC

Today I made like Peter Riegert in Crossing Delancey:  my 5 gallon bucket of Guss’ Pickles arrived from New York.  These are the real thing – fermented in brine with NO VINEGAR.  Decent pickles here cost an arm and a leg, are hard to come by and, since I didn’t make any myself this summer, I had to have them express mailed to me.  Why 5 gallons, you ask?  The shipping is so pricey that it is not cost effective to purchase individual gallon containers – plus, they keep for months and we were only interested in the full sours anyway.  That’s why.  I’m writing this entry three days later and I think we are down a couple quarts, at least, so this will not be a problem.  I divided up the large pail into smaller containers, so we should be set for quite some time.  Guss’ Pickles is a New York City institution, having operated on the Lower East Side for years.  If you want to order them, here’s the site:  www.gusspickle.com.  Note that Guss’ pickles is a bit like Ray’s pizza in that you will find many operations using the name in one form or another or making this or that claim, but the guys in New Jersey who’ll mail you pickles can be traced back to the founder, Izzy Guss.  If you want the whole spiel, just Google “Guss’ pickles” or check out the Wiki entry.

Guss Pickles from NYC

Guss' Pickles from NYC