I believe that it is truly difficult to find a bad Thai restaurant. It might be mediocre, but to find one you would actually rate as bad (food-wise) is hard. There are so many flavors layered and blended in Thai food that they generally will mask over other flaws. Even a drive-thru Thai place works for me when I'm in a hurry or low on funds. Luckily I've learned a few Thai dishes so that I can quickly throw a Thai curry together or a Thai salad.

Earlier this year I had my dinner group challenge and this year's theme had been to draw a famous chef from a hat. I drew local star, Mai Pham. In one of her cookbooks she had a recipe that they use at nearby Lemon Grass, a kind of fake green papaya salad - a spaghetti squash salad. 

Green papaya can often be hard to find even in our town that has plenty of Asian groceries. It can also be pricey. Mai Pham's chefs discovered that they could cheat by using spaghetti squash instead.



The final home game of the Sacramento Mountain Lions was a doozy. Tied scores throughout the game, they were down 13 to 20 with 29 seconds left on the clock and fourth down. They pulled it off and tied the game to go into overtime! They pulled off the win in just five minutes.

Before the game we had a small tailgate party of Twitterati. Since it was a simple tailgate and I wanted something that could be eaten cold and with fingers, I chose tangy chicken wings. Then it was just a matter of figuring out what type.

I decided to use the Jalapeno Apricot Jam I had made earlier this summer. What a great choice! Easy and delicious.  I'm sure you can use any similar jam, but it's so much better when it's your own.

Tangy Chicken Wings

1 4 lb bag of wings

1 8 oz jar of jalapeno apricot jam

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place a wire rack over a baking sheet/pan. Lay out wings evenly across the rack. Bake for 30 minutes.

Place jam in a bowl. Remove hot wings from oven and transfer batches into jam and toss them to coat them in jam. Return to rack. Place back into oven and cook for another 10 minutes. Baste with jam again. Cook 5-10 minutes more until glaze is nicely thickened and sticky. Remove and serve hot or cold.

What is your favorite chocolate treat? Cake? Cookie? Pie? Ice cream? Do you have a go-to recipe that you make all the time or that has been passed down? My go-to chocolate recipe is brownies because I like the moist density of them.

Every year Scharffen Berger chocolates holds a chocolate recipe contest. The last few years it was Chocolate Adventures, where you had to use their chocolate and a couple of unusual ingredients from their adventure list. I entered it two years ago with my peanut butter filled chocolate mochii. This year they decided to change things up and the contest is Elevate a Classic Dessert. The idea is to take a classic chocolate recipe and pump it up somehow to make it something truly new and outstanding.

As a kickoff to the contest, which was posted to their site on October 1st, Scharffen Berger invited a bunch of food bloggers and media to a San Francisco bakery tour. We visited four bakeries that use Scharffen Berger chocolate in their products. Each bakery created a new recipe just for us. After the tour we then returned for a cooking class with Top Chef: Just Desserts winner, Yigit Pura.

I ate well at SF Weekly's annual Dish event at the San Francisco Design Center in San Francisco. I'm not going to get into details, I'm just going to make you drool. You gotta admit, my new camera takes much better pictures.

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

This challenge was very similar to the one we did for the Danish Braid back in 2008, and very time consuming. This is one thing where I prefer to say, "Been there, done that, don't need to do it again." It's just so much easier to go out and buy them!

 

As soon I walked in the corner door of Sweetwater I was greeted by a loud "hello" from the bar. The bartender, Robert, was a very friendly with a big smile on his face. 

The last time I had been to Sweetwater was when it had been over in the East Sac area, about four years ago. The new location on 19th and S is definitely a nicer spot for grabbing the midtown crowd. Whenever I've been at Safeway across the street I've taken a gander to see people at the bar, so it appears to be surviving quite well. 

The reviews for the food had been rather mixed, and so will mine be. There were good and there was bad, making it a place that falls into a category of hit-or-miss. 

I started with the roasted artichoke. The split medium-sized choke arrived  perfectly cooked, but oily. A little lighter hand with the oil basting brush would have been in order considering that it comes with a small cup of butter and a small cup of aioli. There was a heavy hand with the aioli as well - too much tarragon.

I ordered their Cowboy Steak, a flank steak with chimichurri served with garlic mashed potatoes. This dish I liked. The steak was perfectly cooked to medium rare and sliced against the grain. There were a couple of tough bits, but I forgave that as I enjoyed the sweet chimichurri that graced it. The chimichurri was bright green to indicate the freshness of the parsley and herbs. The mashed potatoes were moist without being mushy and a bit lumpy to prove it was the real thing.

The creme brulee was a definite miss and the worst I've had in ages. Although it had a nice hint of lemon, the texture was gritty and pasty. 

As I said, it was hit and miss. Hit was the steak, miss was the creme brulee, and in the middle was the artichoke. Some have said that Sweetwater is more a watering hole than a restaurant. Perhaps. For a watering hole the food is better than bar food, but for a restaurant it could come up a bit. This was one visit, so it is worth another to give it another chance.