Ron and I still work on dishAdish from time to time. In fact, we’re in the process of launching dishAdish vegetarian. It’s the same layout and data as the regular dishAdish, but only displays the dishes marked as vegetarian. I think it will be an interesting feature to be able to find the best vegetarian dishes at a given restaurant.

Since last weekend Mary and I haven’t had a chance to look for the peregrines downtown. From the Yahoo Group it sounds like they are starting to venture all over San Jose, though they still seem to return to City Hall for the night.  I do have a few new pictures from last weekend in my San Jose Peregrine album.

We have been checking on the burrowing owls in Alviso near the “Magic Fence”. There are a few burrows in the fields near the fence, and at least one group of fledglings. We have seen as many as three fledgling at once. They are really cute. The burrows are really close to the road and sadly, at least one of the fledgling has been hit by a car and killed. One of the people we met through watching the falcons downtown has also been watching the burrowing owls. After the incident with the car she posted a bunch of signs around the area asking people to be more careful and watch for the owls. Fortunately now that the young are flying a bit they seem to be spending more time in the field away from the road. There are more pictures of the burrowing owls in the gallery. The albums are separated by year and the 2008 album is broken down by day.

Today, as an extension of Mary’s birthday, since she had not had a chance to celebrate it with her family yet, we went to the Scharffen Berger factory in Berkeley. Joining us were Mary’s mom, dad and brother. We had a 10:30 AM appointment for Scharffen Berger’s factory tour.

If you are not familiar with Scharffen Berger, and you like dark chocolate, you should really check them out. The company was started by Robert Steinberg and John Scharffenberger in 1996. Robert was a family physician, who was exploring new interest after a run-in with Leukemia. John had been an organic grower and wine maker, with a successful sparkling wine label, Scharffenberger Cellars, which he had sold in 1995. Together they started making chocolate in Robert’s kitchen using a toaster oven, coffee grinder, mortar and pestle, an electric mixer. They eventually opened a factory in South San Francisco, making chocolate with vintage European machinery and selling it locally. Eventually they moved to the larger facility in Berkeley. [Sources: Factory tour and Scharffen Berger — Our History]

The tour started with a brief history of the company similar to the previous paragraph. The guide also mentioned that Scharffen Berger was acquired by Hershey in 2005, and was not part of Hershey’s Artisan Confections Company (which also includes Joseph Schmidt Confections and Dagoba Organic Chocolate). To many, this may seem like a total sell-out, and in fact I have seen articles suggesting it is (see Hershey’s “White Sheep” Brand–Scharffen Berger on BusinessWeek). However, as pointed out in the tour, the Scharffen Berger operations are quite independent, and they still make chocolate the same way they have for the past decade, but now they have more money for expansion and greater distribution.

In any case, the tour was great. In addition to the company history, we learned all about the cacao plant, it’s history and variations, and how it is used to make chocolate. During this discussion, we had the chance to sample their 3 main chocolates: 70% Cacao Bittersweet, 62% Cacao Semi Sweet and 41% Cacao Rick Milk Chocolate. We also got to try some cacao nibs, which are simply cleaned, roasted, and lightly crushed cacao beans. We took a tour of the factory, though being Sunday, nothing was actually running. It was still pretty interesting to see the equipment, which is rather quaint compared to the bulk chocolate manufacturing facilities. The tour ended in the store, where we had an opportunity to sample a few more varieties, including Nibby (with cacao nibs), Mocha (with Sumatran coffee beans), and Milk Sea Salt Almond. There were also samples of their hot chocolate and ganache. As an added bonus, we got to wear some really stylish hairnets.

After the tour, we had lunch in their cafe, Cafe Cacao. They have a variety of breakfast and lunch dishes. The food was good. I had a ham omelette and we all shared some yummy sweet potato fries. Mary had a pork sandwich which was pretty good, but nothing special. After lunch we went back to the Scharffen Berger store to pick up a few items to try later. We even got a Dagoba chocolate bar with dark chocolate (74%) chiles and nibs in it. That should be interesting…

Over the Fourth of July weekend, Mary and I went to the North Coast of California to see the Redwoods (more on that to come later). On the way, we stopped in Eureka, CA for the night and had dinner at a fun little place called the Samoa Cookhouse. It’s an old lumber camp cookhouse, and they even have a bit of a logging museum (see picture in the right).

The eating area is made up of a bunch of picnic tables and chairs. Unless you have a really big group (10 or more), you will be sharing a table with other people. This is part of the fun. The food is served family style using big plates and bowls and you can get more of anything you want. However, the food is shared only within your group.

The menu is fixed for a given meal (breakfast, lunch or dinner) on a given day. When I was there they served bread (fresh baked and yummy), salad, beef barley soup, peas and corn, baked potato, fried chicken and pork steak. The fried chicken was awesome and the pork steak was sort of country style (pan fried and smotered in white gravy). They ran out of apple pie, so we had to settle for chocolate pudding. Stop there if you get a chance!

I’m actually not at Panera Bread. Today I am at Barcode Fusion Café. It is primarily a pearl tea place. It’s much closer to home than Panera. I used to come here all the time, but it gets a little loud and crowded in the late afternoon. There are usually a bunch of Asian’s here playing some sort of card game or another. I’m not really sure what it is they are playing.

Barcode is pretty cool. They have free wireless and a big flatscreen TV playing a mix of Chinese and English music videos. There are also some cool, hand-painted murals on the walls. They have a ton of pearl teas to choose from. They also have some pretty good box lunches like katsudon and teriyaki. A combo comes with the main dish, rice, fried tofu and a drink of your choice. It’s pretty good, especially the little fried tofu cubes. I had a picture of the combo I ordered today (chicken teriyaki), but somehow I managed to delete it. Of course it’s all gone now!

Man do I love pearl tea. I know I have mentioned pearl tea before, but for those that don’t know it is an iced drink made with sweetened tea, milk and tapioca pearls. I have also heard it called boba tea and bubble tea. The tea can come in many different flavors like black, green, jasmine, etc. You can also add flavors to it like mango, strawberry and chocolate. Today I am having a honey milk tea. The pearls are small balls of tapioca about the size of a marble. They are generally dark brown (not sure why), and the good ones are sweet and almost the consistency of gummy bears. You drink it with a fat straw which you poke through the sealed plastic lid (not all places do this, but I think it’s an important part of the experience). If you’re really good you get pearls with every sip, and if you’re really, really good, then you finish the last pearls with the last drop of tea!

Well, I guess I’m not getting much work done today. Oh well, I need to recover from a late night of working anyway. For more on that, you can check out my International (Ad)Venture blog.

I seem to spend a lot of time at Panera Bread these days. I’ve been going there for lunch then hanging around and taking advantage of their free WiFi service. They have pretty good sandwiches there. Here’s what I have tried so far:

Smokehouse Turkey Panini -plenty of smoke here, and how can you go wrong w/bacon?
Turkey Artichoke Panini - it’s like a spinach-artichoke dip bread bowl with turkey.
Frontega Chicken Panini - like a white sauce pizza
Chicken Olivada - like a Greek salad, my favorite so far
Sierra Turkey - Really great bread, but a little less spicy then I hoped for

I may have had the Tuscan Chicken as well, but I can’t remember now. It seems similar to the Frontega Chicken Panini.

Both the broccoli cheddar and French onion soups are great! And you must try a cinnamon crunch bagel! I also like the I. C. drinks, especially the I. C. Cappuccino Chip! I don’t even like coffee, do I? The Iced Chai Tea Latte is pretty good, but not as good as Border’s Cafe (I do miss Border’s Cafe, why did they switch to Seattle’s Best?). There are still so many things to try at Panera! Good thing I go there so often…