sacramento baconfest 2012
this past weekend was baconfest in sacramento! basically, a bunch of restaurants and breweries celebrate this wonderful cured meat by offering special plates and drinks featuring the magic ingredient.
first we headed to Magpie Cafe for their brunch. it was PACKED. we waited about 40 minutes for a table (it was worth it). navreet ordered a breakfast sandwich (above).
i ordered bread pudding with a side of scrambled egg. this was just right for breakfast; it was essentially bread-pudding in waffle form, then drizzled with maple syrup and adorned with bacon pieces. extremely sweet, yet creative. PROPS.
and yes, that is an instagram photo.
S. ordered a BLT (upper left) which came with some unusual ingredients. the inside had fried green tomatoes, and his side was…highly pigmented. we were all pretty puzzled by the purple potato salad. if you closed your eyes though, it tasted exactly like an ordinary one would…naturally, delicious.
C. ordered the pork belly salad with poached egg (lower right). i’ll tell you this: heaven is dipping pork belly into warm egg yolk and quickly eating it before any of it has a chance to drip on you.
after that, we headed to Pangea for more baconfest goodness. we arrived a couple hours before the ‘official’ designated time so it was quite empty. well, except for the group of dudes who were free-style rapping and filming themselves inside the brewery. i have a feeling we will be in the background of a HOT new sacramento hip hop video.
anyways… the above was called a ‘bacon suicide’ (blend of IPA’s + bacon strip). i personally thought this was okay. it didn’t really have any bacon flavor, just the aroma of it because, well, it’s right in your face as you drink it. clever idea though.
magpie cafe | 1409 r st. #102, sacramento, ca 95811
pangaea two brews cafe | 2743 franklin blvd, sacramento, ca 95818
artisan bread in 5 minutes a day
i don’t like carbs.
if i had to be more specific, i would say: i don’t support over-consumption of carbs, which is very easy to do. it has so many detrimental effects blah blah.
unsurprisingly, i hate baking desserts or bread. but it’s not just because of carbs.
it’s more ideological: the problem is you must follow the recipes EXACTLY, or else your output is going to be a flat matzo cake. where’s the room for creativity here? sure, you can use different flavors of frosting, add poppy seeds and bullshit like that, but really? these are all just feeble attempts to gain control of this fickle process.
that said, this 5-minute bread technique is kind of amazing. it’s very easy, it doesn’t require exact volumes of ingredients, temperature, or even rise time*, and it tastes damn good. it’s soo flexible, and that’s what i like about it.
i was very please to see this come out of the oven; this was only the 2nd loaf of bread i have ever baked in my life! the first time was during food chemistry lab, and it was definitely not as pretty OR tasty as this.
crumb shot money shot~ ;)
*recipe from foodess
heat shabu baru (sacramento)
first (real) restaurant date night !
i’ve been meaning to take navreet here for a while. finally, this past weekend, we drove through semi-sprinkling weather to HEAT SHABU BARU~!
we did the all you can eat option ($31) and ordered a couple drinks
raspberry soju: fucking delicioso
new zealand lamb
american kobe beef (my favorite for the night) and pork belly (navreet’s favorite)
& a yogurt sake-tini w/lychee skewer to round out the night.
heat shabu baru | 2416 18th st, sacramento, ca 95818
