[Photo] Mumm Napa Winery

My family came up to visit me this past weekend and we took a trip to wine country. [Disclaimer: I am no connoisseur in wine, the information I'm presenting here is the information that I remember from the tour.]

While we were in Napa Valley, we took a tour at Mumm Napa, where they pride themselves in making sparkling wine with la méthode traditionnelle, or the traditional method that is used in the Champagne region of France. In other words, their sparkling wine is basically the same as "real" champagne. La méthode traditionnelle creates sparkling wine with very small bubbles, which is ideal and is one of the key characteristics of Mumm Napa's wines. One of the big differences is in the grapes that they use. They use the traditional three varieties, pinot meunier, chardonnay, pinot noir, plus pinot gris, which is not so traditional. They make 15 different kinds of wine, using a variety of blends of those four grapes. There was a lot more I learned about the process and what not, but I don't want to bore you with all the technical aspects.

During the tastings, I had some of their juice because I'm not of drinking age yet. I must say, their sparkling juices were amazing. On my first sip, I drank it like I would normal juice, just straight. However, I realized that I wasn't getting the full flavor profile. After swishing the juice around in my mouth, I was pleasantly surprised. The juice had a very full-bodied grape flavor without being overbearingly sweet. I let my family taste it and some of them said they preferred the juice to the sparkling wine itself.

Here are some photos I took during my visit.

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[Food] M&M Blueberry Donuts

Remember that pizza from last week?

Well, that's no pizza...

Bam! Feast your eyes on these blueberry donuts from M&M Donuts in Anaheim, CA. They open at 9 pm and you gotta get there early to beat the lines. These little guys are POPULAR. Sometimes the lines will cause two hour waits. I've seen the drive-thru line wrap around and continue through the parking lot of the plaza. At about $8 for a dozen, the price to flavor experience ratio is off the charts.

Ugh. Just looking at that cross-section excites me. The donut tastes like a fried blueberry muffin. The outside is crispy and glazed while the inside is soft and pillowy. Everyone knows that's the perfect combination of textures (think crisp fries with mashed potatoey [that's not a word...] insides). They're good cold the next morning, but are exceptionally extraordinary when they are hot and fresh. It's impossible to eat just one, you have to control yourself you have to eat a whole dozen.

You know that these donuts are the best just because they come in a freaking pizza box and are made by a cute old Chinese couple. Now, back to last week's post. These donuts with that blueberry crumble Haagen-Dazs ice cream? Just kill me now.

M&M Donuts 1614 W Katella Ave Anaheim, CA 92802 (714) 490-0718

NOTE: I plan to update at least once a week now on Mondays. Hoorah! No need to wait for weeks for new posts! Of course I reserve the rights to not follow through with this, but I really want to stay committed to this.

[Food] Late Night: Ice Cream Cravings

So what do you do when you want ice cream right before you go to bed? You just go and get it! As I was looking into the freezer, debating between Mango and Coffee, this Blueberry Crumble caught my eye. That limited edition royal purple lid whispered carelessly into my ear, "I'm what you want."

Sadly, it was gone before I thought to take photos (you looked at photos of an empty ice cream container). Meh. Let's just say it was delicious. You got the bright, fruity blueberry flavor right off the bat and finished with a slight bit of tartness and crunchy shortbread pieces. It was a flavor-texture-sensory foodgasm. It would have gone PERFECTLY with what I'm going to post about next time. Look forward to that on Monday. For now, here's a teaser photo.

Ice cream and pizza!? Edwin, what's wrong with you? Let your imaginations run wild.

[Music] Livingwater Album Recording

Last Thursday I got the opportunity to go into the studio at Expressions College with my church here in Berkeley, Livingwater. Studio time was graciously given to us thanks to our producer, Sean. We were supposed to record chorus vocals for all the tracks, but due to technical difficulties and the need to record instrumentals, we couldn't lay down too many tracks. We did get Mickey Cho's (see my post on Mickey Cho and The Nehemiah Band) 8 bars on "Set a Fire," which was filthy (as in freaking awesome) as always.

When I stepped into the studio, I felt like the cliche kid in a candy store. It was my first time in a real studio, so all the high end mics, preamps, effects, and whatnot made me develop a serious case of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome).

[Edit] I guess I should mention that I also took some video footage. That some of that might go into a behind the scenes DVD that might come out with the album, so look out for that as well!

Click here for more photos in a slideshow!

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[Food] Deep Fried Party

What do you do when you have nothing else to do? Throw a deep fried party, of course! I'm back in town so a couple of my good friends and I got together to fry up some cheese sticks a la Epic Meal Time.

We went the super simple route. Basic flour and egg dredge, Tangy Carolina BBQ Lays, and cheese sticks.

Crush up your chips of choice. My friends tried Doritos last time and told me that they got soggy too fast.

Set up your dredging stations.

Coat generously. We decided to go for a double dredge then lays method to get more crispiness. Here, Andrew demonstrates his method to optimize Lays coating on the sticks.

We got a bit adventurous and wrapped some cheese sticks with some turkey breast.

Ready to fry!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8fJb0bQHGA]

Get them sticks in that there oil. Make sure the oil is hot enough; test with a a small chip crumb or something of that sort.

While they were frying, we made some Nutella sammiches to snack on.

Here's glory shot number one. Just fry until they get gold and the cheese is melty.

Here's a turkey wrapped one.

Glory shot number two.

We had some peppermint patties, so we just fried those up as well.

Andrew was still hungry so I cooked up a quick cheese stick and chip crumb omelette for him. Nothing special.

[Photo] Oakland Chinatown Photo Walk

I went to Oakland's Chinatown with a few friends over the weekend for a casual photowalk. I know I haven't posted in a very long time, so here's a ton of photos! [slideshow]

Full resolution photos are available for viewing on my flickr page.

Feedback in the form of constructive criticism is always welcome, and please let me know if you prefer viewing the images as a slide show or if you want individual images or thumbnails instead.

[Food] Southern Californian Food Adventures

Disclaimer: this will be a photo heavy post with few words. You can assume that everything was ridiculously delicious (it was). Enjoy.

Tacos Tamix in LA

Al pastor

Al pastor alambres

Al pastor tacos

Al pastor quesadilla

Buche, cabeza, al pastor

Buche

Al pastor burrito

George's breakfast burritos in Fullerton

Photo by my sister at www.janetcho.wordpress.com.

Soondooboo at BCD

Original Pancake House in Anaheim

Corned beef hash and eggs

Blueberry pancakes

Some home cooking

Bacon wrapped rice cakes

Beef wrapped spicy rice cakes

In-n-Out

[Food] Nation's Giant Hamburgers

I'm a bit backed up on blog posts right now and have been rather busy lately, but today I bring to you my review on Nation's Giant Hamburgers.

After last week's Nehemiah Band concert (see previous post), a bunch of us headed over to Nation's for a post game meal. The restaurant has a very nice old school diner feel to it. I love restaurants like that.

I got a cheeseburger because that's just the standard item to judge any burger joint by. If they can't make a proper cheeseburger, they probably won't be able to pull other things off. The burger took a bit of time and wasn't very cheap (close to $5). However, when I got my order and unwrapped the little gift, a little grin snuck its way onto my face. The first thing I noticed was they oily sheen on the bun. YES! That's one of the indicators of a good burger. It's gotta have that greasy shine all over it. The burger comes with standard fixins: lettuce, tomato, raw white onion (you can get grilled if you want), and albiet, a lot of mayo.

The burger itself was pretty awesome as foreshadowed by the grease. None of the toppings interfered with the flavor of the burger itself, which is very important to me. You have to be able to taste the beef. The cheese and other condiments only bolstered the flavor of the burger. I gotta say, I was extremely hungry, so that might have skewed my thoughts, but oh well, it was delicious. The buns were very soft, which I oddly enjoyed. I normally like a bit of crunch in my buns (I always get x-tra toast on my buns at In-n-Out). Overall, the burger just worked for me. It was simple and delicious. No need for any exotic mushroom or foie gras nonsense here.

We all got a chocolate creme pie to share. Awesome. Nation's is known for their pies. The one inch thick layer of whipped cream on top with a custardy, chocolatey cream filling, and a flakey pie crust. Sweet (it was). Must I say more?

Oh yeah, I love pie.

Nation's Giant Hamburgers 1800 University Ave Berkeley, CA 94703 (510) 843-7326 www.nationsrestaurants.com

[Music] The Nehemiah Band and Mickey Cho at Cal

The Nehemiah Band and Mickey Cho played at New Church here in Berkeley, CA on Saturday, Feb. 5. Knowing that the Nehemiah Band boys were coming up, I contacted Ki, their manager, to see if I could take photos. In the back of my head I was hoping that they would have their own photographer so that I could just second shoot and not have so much pressure...but of course their in house photographer couldn't make it. Fantastic! I got to the venue surprisingly early and met some awesome people that were helping out. The guys were a bit surprised to see me. I am a LA native and they probably didn't expect to see me in Norcal of all places.

This was my first time actually hearing Mickey's music. I had heard of him before, but wow, this guy can spit. His songs are powerful and flow so well. "Not For Sale" was especially moving. It's a song about modern day human sex trafficking. His friends Hanna Baek and "The Legend" were also amazing. Check him out at www.mickeycho.com and support him by buying his music.

The Nehemiah Band put on an energetic live show as always. Every time I see them play, I'm blown away. You don't always see a band with stage presence like these guys. Oh yeah, and they're Korean. Say whattttttttt!? They played some of their standard meat and potatoes songs, which you can't ever go wrong with. However, they also threw in "Chinese Girl," which is their version of "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Disney's Mulan, and "Rice, Kimchi, and Eggs" with their new Power Rangers intro. Pure greatness.

After the show, some of us went to Nation's for burgers and pies with Mickey and TNB. Expect a (favorable) review of Nation's in the near future.

Some notes on the photos: The lighting conditions weren't the best, but I was able to work around it. When TNB came on, there was almost no light on John (the drummer) and Gilbert (the bassist), so there are far fewer photos of them. I shot with my D7000 and 35mm f1.8 between ISO 4000 and 6400, f/1.8-2.2, and 1/100 and 1/200 shutter speeds. There's quite a bit of noise in some of the photos, but I did what I could to clean most of them up (e.g. go black and white).

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[Music] Hieroglyphics at UC Berkeley

The smell of weed permeates the air. Wisps of cigarette smoke rise from the crowd. The bass kicks in and you feel it in your body.

The Hieroglyphics Crew came to Cal on February 2 thanks to SUPERB Productions. Sproul was packed, but then again, I did get there about 10 minutes late. As I walked around before the show started, people came up to me and asked "who are these people?" and "are they a new group?" Obviously, the majority of the people watch were just rolling through and decided to watch. To answer your questions, Hieroglyphics is an underground rap group that started in 1991 in Oakland, CA. Why they asked some random Asian kid about the group, I'll never know.

The group was scheduled to come on at 5 pm, but of course they didn't start playing until later. I only stayed for an hour or so because there were too many people, so I didn't get to witness the greatness of the whole show. However, while I was there, it was excellent.

Quick note on the last photo. Notice the symbolism of three here? Three lights, three doors, three eyes. (This sentence would have been at the end, but it was acting glitchy and now showing up.)

Site Updates

Hello to all my beautiful readers. As some of you may have noticed, I have a new URL...my own domain name, edwincho.com! This is thanks to my wonderful sister at janet-cho.com. Let's segway into the second announcement. She graciously got me the domain name for hitting 1,000 views on my blog! Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone! It probably seems like a small number to some of you, but I never thought my blog would be this well received. Expect some new posts in the near future, I've been a bit busy with school, but I'll do my best to update for all of you. Til next time, Edwin.

[Food] Late Night: Classy College Food

It's 2 am, so don't expect a long post. Our floor got some sushi from Nude Sushi delivered, yep they deliver sushi late into the night. That's probably the only good thing about this place. I got a Crazy Monkey Roll, which is tuna, salmon, unagi, and masago. If you must get sushi late at night, stay away from the fresh fish, it ain't that great. [Edit: I just noticed that I said if not to get the fish if you want sushi...I wrote this at 2 in the morning. Forgive me.] I'll probably go with an avocado and cream cheese roll. To complement our sushi, we made the tradition Korean cup ramen. Always a winner in my book.

Nude Sushi 6228 Telegraph Ave Oakland, CA 94609 (510) 547-6833 www.getnudesushi.com

Hours Mon-Sat: 5pm - 3am

[Food] Bongo Burger

I made a visit to Bongo Burger on Northside with some floor mates the other day. I heard good things about this little chain, so I looked forward to it. Looking at the menu, I was a bit confused. Burgers and Persian fusion?

I got past the odd mix of cultures and got a bacon burger and fries.

Here's a close up shot on the burger. Sexy, eh?

As I sunk my teeth into the first bite, I immediately noticed how crunchy the sesame seed bun was. The bun itself was alright, a bit too crunchy for my personal taste. I couldn't taste the flavor of the patty through all of the other flavors, but once I got a bite of the patty by itself, I was pleasantly surprised, mainly because I couldn't taste it before. The patty had a nice, charred flavor to it. I couldn't taste the bacon until I got half-way through the burger. Once I hit the bacon, it was a flavor explosion. Bacony goodness. Bacon makes everything better. Overall, the burger was just above average. I wish the flavor of the meat cut through more; it was too muted. The bacon is what saved the burger for me.

The fries aren't that great. They are of the flavorless, crinkle cut variety. I do give them this, they are crispy. The ranch really brings them to life. The ranch sauce here is reminiscent of George's back at home in Fullerton. Thin, not thick and laced with crack. Not your typical ranch. Perfect.

They proudly (and obviously) serve Niman Ranch beef.

The Persian Burger seems to be rather popular here. It's made with lamb and is served on a long, baguette style bread rather than a bun. Perhaps I will try that next time. The burger and fries (surprisingly) filled me up, but the price seemed a bit steep for what it was. The total for the burger and fries came out to be about $8, which in my opinion is a tad bit too much for a fast food style burger. But then again, my standard is a #1 at In-n-Out.

There are two other locations around the UC Berkeley campus.

Bongo Burger 1839 Euclid Ave Berkeley, CA 94709 (510) 548-3400

Hours Mon-Fri: 8am - 10pm Sat-Sun: 8:30am - 10pm

[Food] Bette's Oceanview Diner

Last week a few of my suite mates wanted to grab breakfast, so we headed over to Bette's Oceanview Diner. Like most places here in Berkeley, it was a small place. We waited for 45 minutes or so before we were seated. The host was a rather interesting character, I'm not going to say much more about him. The place had a very nice classic diner feel to it with counter seats and booths. Don't expect to take a big party here, unless you want to sit outside; the booths will seat 4 people. There's also a giant slice of pie hanging of the ceiling. Awesome. Onto the food. Note: I sadly didn't have my camera with me (great forward thinking, Edwin!) so these photos were taken on my friend's phone. Sorry for the image quality, hopefully this won't happen again.

Roommate #1 got the two eggs with ham, toast, and homefries.

Roommate #2 got the Philadelphia Breakfast, which was scrapple, poached eggs, grilled tomatoes, and a scone.

We were seated around 11, so got to choose from either the breakfast or lunch menu. The suite mate got a sandwich (sorry, I can't remember which one he got) with potato salad.

I was obligated to get the Mexican Scramble because of my Southern Californian roots...and it came with house made chorizo. The Mexican Scramble was scrambled eggs with cheese and salsa, chorizo, flour tortilla, and I substituted some homefries for the black beans. The eggs were nice, fluffy, and a bit runny, which is perfect. Who eats fully cooked scrambled eggs anyway? The chorizo was well seasoned, but it was not greasy enough. Chorizo has to be swimming in a pool of orange nectar; the whole plate should have been orange. But it was still very good. You health nuts would probably prefer this breed of chorizo over the pure bred Mexican variety. The flour tortilla was nothing special, definitely a good receptacle for delivering the contents of my plate to my mouth. Finally, those homefries were pretty magical. Cooked just right, soft on the inside with an ever so slight crust on the outside, then topped with cold sour cream. Wizzow! They must have been sprinkled with crack.

Bette's is a great, cute breakfast place. If you are ever in the area, you should definitely check it out. Prices are a bit high for college students, but it's worth at least one visit. Oh, and be prepared to wait for a seat. During your wait, you could walk around the area, which is very nice and is full of furniture stores if you are into that kind of thing.

Bette's Oceanview Diner 1807 4th St Berkeley, CA 94710 (510) 644-3230 www.worldpantry.com/bettes

Hours Mon-Fri: 6:30am - 2:30pm Sat-Sun: 6:30am - 4:00pm

[App] iProcrastinate

I just checked out the Mac App Store and found this little app for free today. It's called iProcrastinate and its great to say the least. It's a productivity app in the form of a simple organizer for various tasks that you have to get done. I love that it is complex, yet simple at the same time.

The leftmost column is dedicated to subjects. In my case, I have all my classes listed here. The center console is where the meat of your info is: each task. The top right section is dedicated to steps one needs to take to fulfill the particular task. Finally, in the bottom right, you will find a space to attach documents related to the task at hand.

You can color code each subject (I think of Gmail labels) and prioritize each task based on importance (Low, Medium, High). Each level of priority will then be color coded according to importance (green, yellow, red, like a traffic light). You can assign each task a due date and make a reoccurring task repeat due dates.

You can also sync your iProcrastinate to a mobile device (e.g. iPhone, iPod Touch) after you purchase the app for the mobile device for $0.99. If I had an iPhone or used my iPod more often, I would definitely get that app to sync with.

Overall, this app is totally worth the $0.00 I paid for it. I've been needing an organizer, so this was perfect!

www.iprocrastinateapp.com

[Food] Kirala

Before my family headed back home, we had lunch at Kirala. Upon entering, we were greeted by the friendly waitstaff. It's a small, popular restaurant, so it was crowded. The complementary hot matcha was definitely a plus.

We started off with the Rock'n Roll (eel, yellow tail, avocado, with tobiko outside) and the Spicy Scallop roll. The Rock'n Roll was flavorful and had a great mix of texture. I wish the spicy scallop roll had bigger pieces of scallops, but it was still a good roll.

My mother got the kitchen special, which consisted of fried oysters and shrimp, chicken teriyaki, udon, and rice. I tried some of the chicken and it had a nice kick to it once the sweet faded out. I really enjoyed that mix of flavors.

My sister had the sushi special Chirashi, which had salmon, tuna, shrimp, tamago, ikura, tobiko, and another kind of fish I can't recall. I tried a bit and the sushi was excellent. Better than most of the sushi places I've been to down south.

I had the katsu-don. It was good, but pretty standard, nothing too special going on here. In fact, I think I prefer the katsu-don at Koraku in Torrance better. The katsu itself was very good. It was a thick cut of flavorful pork, but overall, the dish was just run of the mill.

My father had the tonkatsu entree, which was great. Same katsu that went into my donburi.

Overall, Kirala was awesome. Definitely not somewhere I would go every day because I'm a poor college student.

Kirala 2100 Ward St Berkeley, CA 94705 (510) 549-3486 www.kiralaberkeley.com

Hours Mon-Fri: 11:30am - 2pm Mon-Sat: 5:30pm - 9:30pm Sun: 5pm - 9pm

[Food] My First Week Up North

My lack of posts as of late has been a result of moving up to college! I'm up North now and wanted to do a quick post about the food I've been eating outside of the dining commons. My comments on the food will probably be very concise and general. Upon arrival, we stopped by the Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant.

We had some dim sum, honestly, I don't know what everything is called, but that's how it usually is at dim sum places. We had the pork and shrimp shumai, various dumplings, rice paper rolls in XO sauce, and the taro cakes.

This was the amazing view out of the window that we were seated next to.

The food was good, pretty much on par with the other dim sum that I've had in the past; there was nothing that really stood out, minus the view. The rice paper rolls in XO sauce were fairly new to me, I've never had that dish at a dim sum restaurant before, but my mother had made it at home once, so I was familiar with it.

Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant 3199 Powell St Emeryville, CA 94608 (510) 655-3388 www.hkeo.us

On our visit to San Francisco, we went to the Pier Market on Pier 39.

We started off with some calamari. I've had better calamari in the past, but it was definitely good.

The rest of my family had their famous clam chowder. I tried a little bit and wow, it really was good. Definitely different from the chowdah that I had at the Black Pearl in Rhode Island (which was also great).

I had the fish and chips. The fish was pretty good, but a tab bit over-battered. I definitely got full fast. The fries (or chips) were reminiscent of Burger King fries, not a bad thing at all.

Pier Market Seafood Market Pier 39 San Francisco, CA 94133 (415) 989-7437 www.piermarket.com

More posts to come. I still have to cover two more restaurants.

[Music] Behringer Tube Ultragain Mic100 Preamp

This will be my first product review. Well, I guess I wouldn't call this a review per se. More like a warning, I'm not even going to take photos. Just don't buy this. Don't. I got the Mic100 because I needed a preamp and this one was cheap, but it made my recordings hard to use. It's full of noise; whenever it's plugged in, you get this horrendous hum. It also didn't warm up my recordings, but gave them a tinny sound instead. I used this preamp on my latest recording, "Rocketeer," which I put up here two posts ago. I had to put some EQ on the tracks to counteract the tinny properties of the preamp and add the shaker to cover up the hum. The recordings were salvageable, but I would not use this box again. I'm returning it.