eccaleobion

COME ON AMERICA, GO OUT AND VOTE TOMORROW!

Paul and I will be voting provisionally on campus since we never received our mail-in ballots.

I should just like to note that moving sucks. Always. It’s like a bloody rite of passage.

Anyway, Paul and I are moving into a really lovely, brand new apartment building. The problem is that that place won’t be available for move-in until 9/15. Our lease for the current place ends 8/31 and we’re … at least starting to… move out tomorrow. The plan is to move our stuff in boxes and suitcases and bags to our old roommate’s new place since they’ll have an empty room until winter quarter. Paul is coming down this weekend (he’s at Cisco in San Jose), whereupon we’ll hopefully be moving the last of the breakables by (zip)car and then, once we both get back (me on the 17th from Ohio, him on the 19th from San Jose), then we’ll move our stuff into the new place.

I got back from my internship on the 11th… and didn’t really start packing until yesterday. It was a bad idea. Hee.

Unfortunately, classes start on the 25th so it’s not a whole lot of time to furnish the place once we get back. Paul’s given me executive power over decorating (SO EXCITED!), but it’s still a lot to accomplish in a week. But this was the only way that we could find a cheap enough place and keep the pool table. And we are both big on keeping the pool table.

Nevertheless, I have to admit I’m super excited. But man, packing and unpacking sucks more than the moving itself, I think. What in the world am I supposed to do with Paul’s laptop dock?? I’m afraid to touch the thing, but I have to do something with the books it’s sitting on and take the hutch off the desk. o___O;;

Yesterday was my 20th birthday, and to celebrate, Paul took me out to an Italian restaurant in downtown La Jolla called La Dolce Vita. The restaurant itself is situated in a small terraced alleyway that wasn’t quite a street (it looked like it grew out of the gap between two buildings) filled with little boutiques between Prospect Rd. and Rosalyn Ln. between the Coast Blvd and Ivanhoe Ave. The restaurant also had outdoor seating warmed with tall brass braziers, but we opted to sit inside. We didn’t get to see a whole lot of the restaurant because we were seated at the third table from the door and the restaurant seems to be a rather elongated shape with all the tables next to walls. The decor and ambiance were really nice though, so it seemed cozy, not squished.

I liked the waiter, who was a middle-aged, somewhat dark and stern Italian looking man who responded to Paul’s first attempt at humor: “we won’t be needing [the wine list] since they don’t sell us wine in this country yet” with nothing but a slow nod. I assume that the wine list was brought out for Paul since I don’t look anything like 21. Paul is convinced that his scruffy beard (which admittedly was at least trimmed before we went out) makes him look incredibly manly and sexy.

Anyway, the waiter asked us what we’d like to drink (we had water) and then brought us some freshly baked bread (very soft Italian baguette, sliced) with their signature sun-dried tomato dipping sauce. When I first saw the sauce in its little pink dish I was very confused and somewhat alarmed. I’d never been to a restaurant that served bread with anything other than butter before and the dipping sauce looked alarmingly like pureed chilies in oil, down to the little dried yellow seeds. But, I figured I’d try just a little and was really pleasantly surprised. I didn’t make the connection to sun-dried tomato until Paul said it, but the stuff is a perfect sweet tomato with a tad of salt taste and the consistency is very nice. It was extremely hard to not gobble up all the bread with the dipping sauce before actually ordering any food. The restaurant sells this dipping sauce, so we took home a jar and everyone we’ve showed it to has absolutely loved it as well (so, I don’t think it’s going to survive past Thursday’s dinner).

La Dolce Vita’s menu consists of appetizers, salads, pizza, pasta dishes and main courses. I admit I didn’t pay much attention to the salads, but the list of appetizers was quite hard to choose from. They have two different grilled eggplant dishes, calamari, bruchetta, etc. Paul and I finally settled on their La Fantasia for two, which consisted of a combination of very classic Italian antipastos: marinated, grilled onions, tomatoes, red bell peppers, artichoke hearts and mushrooms with honeydew melon, prosciutto and salami, and a tomato slice topped with a slice of mozzarella and a fresh basil leaf. Everything was really good, especially the red bell peppers and tomatoes and the prosciutto was one of the best I’ve had. I am also going to start making those little mozzarella basil topped tomato slices because not only are they really good, they’re super cute. Also, the “for two” dish was absolutely huge and we actually decided not to eat all of it in order to save room for our actual dinner, so I would suggest sharing the “for one” dish.

The pasta and main course (or secondi piatti, I think) menus consisted of a lot of very classic Italian dishes and a good mix of seafood. Paul was smart enough to ask if their pasta was homemade and we found out that the spaghetti and linguini is just regular store-bought fare but the ravioli and gnocchi are homemade. So, he suggested that I go with the Ravioli di Mare, described as “homemade seafood ravioli in a pink champagne cream sauce with baby shrimp and scallops” while he went with the Grigliata Mista.

The Ravioli di Mare was a pretty generously sized dish with medium sized scallops and six or so ravioli. I tried one of the shrimp first and thought that the pink champagne sauce was a little too salty for my taste, and the shrimp a little on the hard side (but I’ve very hard to please when it comes to shrimp). I expected the salty sauce to bother me the entire time, but the scallops were excellently cooked, almost to a melt-in-your mouth texture and were complimented by the sauce quite well. But the real star of this dish is definitely the ravioli, bar none. I am not sure what is in them, but Paul seemed to think that it was crab. In any case, the ravioli were excellent. The outside pasta was cooked a little softer than Paul’s version of al dente, which I appreciated, and the filling was smooth, a little buttery and almost creamy. It combined with the sauce really well (as long as you didn’t spoon copious amounts into your mouth) and the too salty taste practically melted away. It was pretty amazing.

Though La Dolce Vita doesn’t seem to have a dessert menu, they do have dessert. I had a really tough time deciding between homemade tiramisu and cheesecake, but as Paul said, real homemade tiramisu is a whole lot harder to come by than good cheesecake, so we went with that and also ordered single espresso shots (even though it was dinner, not lunch). At this point Paul and I were discussing that La Dolce Vita seemed like a B+/A- restaurant. The food and atmosphere were good for the most part, but the food could be better.

The espressos came first in really cute somewhat upside down cone shaped espresso cups. At first, I was a little surprised at how little there was, but once I tasted it I understood why. I had to add an entire two packets of sugar to a volume about 1/3 of the usual single I make for myself at home. Paul was pretty impressed with this extremely strong, dark espresso, but unfortunately the waiter didn’t know what kind it was. Paul thought it was the illy dark roast, but I thought it was pretty damn strong even for illy’s dark roast (I’m allowed to say this because we drank the illy dark roast for like… half of Fall Quarter and most of Winter Quarter), so I suspect it was Lavazza. I also suspect that they have a really, really nice coffee grinder and a much better epresso maker. I admit I haven’t had many different kinds of espresso, but it’s the densest, darkest one I’ve had yet. But I have to say, I was pretty impressed - I had to add sugar because it was bitter, not because it was acidic.

I was so excited when our waiter brought out the tiramisu. It was a very generous portion sliced from a rectangular cake, smothered in piped whipped cream and sprinkled with cocoa powder so you could see the designs in the cream. (I really wish we’d brought a camera!) First of all, the whipped cream was clearly freshly made - you simply don’t get whipped cream like that out of a can - and was buttery smooth amazingness without being too sweet. I also appreciated that there was just enough cocoa powder so you could taste it but not enough that you would choke inhaling it accidentally or awfully bitter. The cake itself was amazing. It was chilled and clearly had been well soaked because when you forked a piece the cake oozed.

So yes, the tiramisu earns La Dolce Vita a solid A- from me and I highly recommend it.

Afterwards, Paul and I were so full (you have to watch out - the main course sort of sneaks up on you about halfway through dessert) that we walked around The Cove for probably about an hour before heading back home. We found two cute little bistros to check out for freshly baked pastries and also found an interesting looking Thai place next to Sushi on the Rocks (where we went for my birthday last year) and decided that we’ll try the Thai place next. =)

So. I suppose this is what’s going to be my new blog. I decided to install a new instance of wordpress instead of keeping everything I had. I was able to make the backups work… but I want to start fresh.

So… this will probably be like this for a while. At least until I get back to San Diego. Maybe. We’ll see what happens.

And why the hell I decided to call this thing “chemiluminescence…” I have no idea. Probably because I’m doing Western Blots with HRP chemiluminescent detection and they’re not working right now.