Abalone Harvest

Aaahhh... fresh Abalone harvested right out of the Bay. SQ, along with 6 other guys, went to harvest abalone this morning. I heard the garage door open and close at 3am -- yes 3am (not a typo)!! After a 3-hr drive up North, the guys suited up head to toe, climbed down a steepy cliff, braved the freezing waters, and walked along the slippery rocks to catch these creatures. The wonderful news was that within 15 minutes, all of the people got their 3 abalone (the daily limit). There is a limit due to fear of overfishing. Abalone is "hot commodity" in the Chinese community. Although it is illegal to sell your catch, some people still do it. I heard that the market price is at least $50 each. Each abalone also has to be at least 7 inches wide in diameter. The 3 SQ got were around 8-9 inches. According to the seasoned harvesters, it was easy to find them this time. They picked a good spot. They then drove home - another 3 hrs back to SF. By the time they were driving home, I was still in bed :)

SQ had a good experience for his 1st time abalone fishing. For me, I had a good experience eating them! We gave 1 of them to my mom - she probably will cook it with chicken soup. SQ cook 1 today for dinner 2 ways: (1) stir-fry with mustard greens, and (2) deep fried w/ tempura batter. Yum yum yum! We left the last 1 in the freezer for another time!!

The Trade off

San Francisco tries to save money by cutting down street cleaning services in some neighborhoods. In the Sunset, instead of street cleaning once a week, it is now once every 2 weeks. The City saved $1 million a year. But what the officials didn't factor in is the revenue they lost in Parking tickets. The loss is about $3.8 million a year! How ironic. Someone obviously haven't thought the plan thoroughly enough.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/22/BA8H177731.DTL

Buca

It has been years since I last dined at Buca di Beppo on Howard & 4th. You just got to have a big group to eat here because the portions are so big. Thank goodness I have such a big family. We came here last Thursday to celebrate my dad's birthday. There were about 25 of us ... and boy oh boy, I was STUFFED walking out the door! We had calamari, brushettas, pizza, pasta, you name it... the meal was probably my whole week's worth of calorie in-take!




But it was fun...gotta love hanging out w/ the family.

The Tong Family
(P.S. These family pictures are harder and harder to come by)

Goodbye Rite Aid

Both my husband and I are super-bummed today to find out that the Rite Aid on Geary Blvd has stopped selling their delicious ice cream. The reason is that the store has been bought over by Walgreens and Walgreens don't serve ice cream. So depressed. This was our favorite place to go for a big scoop of yummy ice cream and it sold for only $1.19. Not only was it affordable but the taste of the ice cream was soooo good! The ice cream tradition was from Thrifty... When Rite Aid bought Thrifty, they continued the famous ice cream. But now... the ice cream was not part of the buyout. Goodbye Pineapple Coconut. Goodbye Pistachio Nut. Goodbye Dark Cherry. I will miss you.