Jul 20, 2008

Reading.

The test of our work is not the profit gained from it or the status we receive from it but its effects on creation. Are persons impoverished? Is the land diminished? Is society defrauded? Is the world less or more because of my work? We have become so accustomed to evaluating work in terms of productivity that we have little sense of its meaning in terms of creativity. We have for so long asked the questions of efficiency and profit that it does not even occur to us to ask the question of virtue. But Adam Smith is not canonical and Psalm 82 is.

-"Where Your Treasure Is", Eugene Peterson.

I've been doing a bit of reading lately, which I think is a good thing. I finished Peter Enns' "Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament" last month, and I thought it was an excellent book, and much more honest in terms of dealing with problems of Biblical interpretation than I tend to see in most Christian books.

Recently I've been trying to finish Eugene Peterson's book, which I was supposed to have read for my intern class a few years ago. It's one of those less honest books, that reads a lot out of a few lines of scripture. But at the same time, it's really quite encouraging, and I think he makes valid points.

Jul 13, 2008

Cheese

Cleaning up my stacks of junk revealed a cheese menu from Gary Danko. From flickr, it looks like the last time I went was back in August 06.

I had forgotten to take a picture of the cheese course. It consisted of:

gorgonzola dolce - italy
epoisses - cow's milk, Burgandy, France
cravanzina - sheep's milk, Langhe, Italy
carre du berry - goat's milk, Loire, France

I keep junk around for way too long.

Jul 1, 2008

Charlie Foxtrot

Happy Canada Day!

Last week, as I was walking back to my condo in the dark from the parking lot in the dark after dinner at my aunt's house after dinner, CRRRUNNNCH!!! Since the sprinklers come on in the evening, the snails come out to frolic on the pathways, and it's pretty easy to accidentally step on one in the dark.
Somehow I managed to step on six at once.

IMG_7334

On an unrelated note, I've been trying to work my way through all the tea I have stashed away. I've been a vietnamese coffee drip thing with the assam granules, and that seems to work ok, although initially the water drips right through until the tea expands a bit and slows the drip rate. It comes out reasonably strong, and I think I'm a bit overcaffienated this week.

IMG_7467IMG_7468IMG_7469IMG_7471
IMG_7472IMG_7473IMG_7474IMG_7475

I've been wanting to try out Kappa restaurant ever since I read the SF Chronicle review last year. We had gone looking for it once, but never found it, the little hidden location adding to the mystique.

This time, a little better informed, I found it easily. It's located up above the old Denny's in Japantown (now reopened as "New Danny's", but it looked like it was serving the same swill), beside a Korean karaoke bar. The restaurant consists of a row of bar seating for maybe 8, and a little small room with a tiny table. From the outside, all this hides behind a nondescript black sliding door, with no windows and no sign. The only clue is the japanese style lamp beside the door.

Inside we were welcomed warmly by the hostess. The tiny restaurant is run by an older japanese couple, who have been running the place for 23 years. The man cooks, while the wife serves and prepares desserts in her kimono. Intimate, serene, and homey at the same time, the ambience is probably one of the best reasons to come here.

I was hoping for kaiseki style cuisine, something that's a little harder to find. I've kind of developed a taste for at Toronto's Katsura and have been missing it here. The koryori style served at Kappa was still good, but not quite as splendid. We had the omakase (it's hard to order, the menu is written on the wall in kanji). The items were mostly simple and clean, but not as refined as I was hoping for. There were more deep fried dishes than steamed or soupy. On the one headline platter, there were a number of items that left me wanting much more. The other dishes though, were good, but felt plain. Click on the photos for descriptions.

Overall, the experience was extremely pleasant, although it felt a little more expensive than it was worth (although, one could explain that by the fact that we only saw 7 customers that evening, including us).