peach pie and cutie pie

Now that I'm truly officially moving to SF and quite soon, I've got to get around to all the little easy bay things I have yet to do, or the things I love. So today I went to the Albany shoreline trail and walked lil cutie pie around, then stopped by Berkeley bowl to get stuff for dinner and pastry testing (chicken with ras el hanout, smoky eggplant puree with homemade tortilla chips, salad greens, peach leaf custards). I can't quite decide...peach leaf Bavarian or peach leaf panna cotta. I don't like panna cotta, but people do and they're certainly more trendy than the Bavarian, plus I've worked with them and there's no muss and it'd be easy to bang out and pour on top of peach caramel or peach gelee (want to do gelee...don't quite know how and fear it'd be the same cloudy consistency and pukey-orange color as the peach juice they sell at Frog Hollow). At any rate I figure I should at least know what peach leaves taste like before I muck around with them at work.

After Berkeley bowl I stopped by Sweet Adeline for the most adult chocolate chip cookie experience I've had in a long time. It was a chocolate oatmeal cookie and it was nice and gritty from the oatmeal, chewy in the middle and crispy toward the outside and I kept getting chocolate smeared all over my fingers while I drove, but it was really good. Callebaut, maybe? Not Scharffen Berger 70%, which I do enjoy.

It's too hot for eating. Even if the food is going to be really good. I get this way in the summer, all whiny and wilted.

(n)ice milk

The peppermint cookie ice milk turned out a lot better.

Still a little iciness/graininess to the texture, but it scoops really well and the creaminess dominates the ice taste. I'd like to try someone else's ice milk, because I feel like by its nature (having the same sweetness as ice cream, but less milkfat) it's got to be grainy. Ice cream depends on milk, yolks and sugar in order to have a smooth and creamy mouthfeel. Taking away one of those while not altering the others, doesn't that have to mean grainy? You know, that frostbitten taste...

Sweet Adeline looks really good. I might try to go there after my appointment in Berkeley today. That or head over to the gourmet ghetto and the cupcake place upstairs on the corner where the Peet's by the Chez Panisse is (love the vagueness of directions from my boss), and pick up some nice bread from Acme so that I can make sandwiches to take to work for lunch.

Vietnamese food in Oakland tonight with the roommates.