The Daily Sabs

Our pal Amy (the golden girl roller derby queen below) is packing up
10+ years in the bay area and moving down to southern California with
her fiancé Berto (that's him in the banana suit). Before they skip
town, chris and jessi decided to throw them a party. Being that it was
also Halloween weekend, Amy told us all to dress up too. This year
Randall and I decided to go as professor Layton and Luke, Randall even
stayed in character and drank all of his wine out of a teacup.

There were a lot of great costumes (a parliament of owls, Elvis, and a
trio of candy bars to name a few), but my favorite had to be the pair
of yips. The two homemade yip costumes were so cool and fun. They even
had the yip noises down, it was totally rad. You know what else was
pretty rad? Lily's pig-nosing the glass door. Oink oink!

Amy, I hope you had a smashing farewell party and good luck with the
move, and new job, and wedding and everything else going on!

I love that I work somewhere where folks get to dress up for Halloween. Pretty much, I love any excuse to put on a funny costume. This year I decided to go as Luke from Professor Layton. As Randall said, "Will anyone at work know who you are?" Answer is, not too many. But that's okay. Erin here was one of the folks who did know who I was. It's pretty obvious that she's princess Leia, and when I told randall that was her costume, he immediately said, "woah, get a pic of Luke and Leia." That randall, he's a genius.

You know who else is genius? The sales team. They all showed up as brian. Also Molly, as our very own retail therapist.

Wanna see more Sugar HQ costumes? Miss anneh's snapped shots all day. Check out all the pics!

It was sort of a jampacked evening, and yet completley calm at the
same time. First up was a trip to thrift town where I scored a great
(read odd and vintage and yes polyester) dress and the rest of my
Halloween costume. Next I met up with Randall and we stumbled upon
street food for dinner. Arepas, paella, bread pudding and lemonade to
top it off. It was a total random discovery, and a super tasty one at
that. After dinner Randall and I stopped by the house and then headed
down to the regency ballroom to see unkle. The sound there wasn't
great, vocals were crazy muddy, but there were a couple of epic
moments. Lonely soul was kind of awesome, and in a state closed down
the house. I wish I could've gone dancing afterwards. Bridget, you
should've been there so we could've danced our pants afterwards!

Tonight, at skeeball, the team we were supposed to play couldn't make (something about tickets to the world series or some lifetime memory like that). They did their rolls the night before (for league rating), but if your team isn't there you automatically "lose." I put it in quotes because the league doesn't score by how many wins, just overall points at the end of the season. However this means our team, there in tri-force, were the default winners. It doesn't mean anything to the season, but it did mean we got sweet winner pins. And besides, Randall and Laura earned theirs, me not so much (second worst rolls ever), but hey i still got my sweet winner's pin.

This evening Tod and I had detention and stayed at work late. This
meant I didn't get home until around 8:30. Although there was a quick
stop at the grocery store to pick up potsticker skins. I made the
filling the other day but didn't have any skins. Originally I wanted
to go to the Asian grocery store to get the brand of skins I like, but
with the detention I had to settle for what was at safeway. They came
out pretty tasty anyway. I should know, I ate an entire bowl of them.
So fast, I didn't even get their pictograph.

This evening the dk and sabs and sometimes Randall movie series headed
over to the variety screening room to checkout the social network.
Weaver was running the screening and Jimmy was meeting us there with
the wine. I'm actually surprised I hadn't seen it, also impressed by
how much I enjoyed it. It's a story I was vaguely familiar with and it
was interesting to see unfold. I also have a special place in my heart
for Aaron sorkin snappy dialogue, which this was full of. In fact it
starts off so fast I almost got lost. Just almost.

Have you seen it? What are your thoughts?

Well, at least chris, jessi, and wee Desmond are. I am just a robot
fan who showed up for the wee robot's second birthday. We played robo
ball, but Desmond's cousin made up the rules as we went along. Somehow
I needed 38 points to win and he only needed 4. These robots sure are
tricky.

Ps. Andy won for creepiest robo-mask ever.

Pps. The glowing shaking ghost toy was a big hit with the kids and
Karina.

This morning I picked up miss anneh and we headed out on a tasty adventure. Many months back, for her birthday gift, I told anneh that I would take her on a SF macaron/macaroon (the French kind) adventure. They're pretty popular these days (I keep seeing articles saying they're going to be the next cupcake, but have yet to see evidence of them actually being the next cupcake), and it seemed like there were a bunch of places to try. So we set out for six places to do a great taste test.

First up was the macaron triangle of Hayes Valley. It's strange, on one corner there are three macaron establishments: Paulette, Miette, and one of the many La Boulange. Next we headed to Thorough Bread and Pastry, Patisserie Philippe, and Sandbox Bakery. We also tried to get the Lady Kiss over at Noe Valley Bakery, but they didn't have any.

Once we had our treats procured, we headed back to anneh's with our winnings (two from each place, one plain and one fun) and a bottle of rosé. It was time for analysis.

We started with one we were pretty familiar with, La Boulange. Their outposts are everywhere in the city, so we'd both had them before, multiple times. This time we got the vanilla and the coffee. The vanilla really should've been called almond, it was gooey and sweet and tasted just like marzipan. Actually, it tasted more like a vanilla Tootsie Roll, either way I kind of hated it. The outsides weren't quite right either. The coffee flavored one was definitely more delicious, but the whole thing was chewy like a caramel (the inside were definitely caramely). I would eat that one again, but wouldn't touch that vanilla if i had to.

Next was Paulette. They've got an outpost here in SF, but the macarons are actually made in Beverly Hills and shipped up here. That part is kind of disappointing, as it would be nice to know what they taste like fresh. We tried three flavors here (pumpkin we ate while out and about), vanilla, and coconut. No pictures as we ate them too fast, but they were nice. Their outsides had enough crunch and the insides the right amount of chew. The pumpkin one was a bit much, in the same way that pumpkin spice lattes are. Perfect for the season, but not necessary year round. The coconut was almost overwhelming, but the vanilla was kind spot on.

After Paulette's, we moved on to another old favorite, Miette. Miette has an outpost at the ferry building also, so both Anneh and I were familiar with their treats. Here we tried the vanilla and the rose geranium. Both of these are great, and I love the way they taste. Their outsides are lumpy looking, and are lacking the smoothness of a traditional macaron. As anneh says, it looks like they're trying to trick you into thinking they're healthy, as if they were whole-grain macarons or something like that. In addition to being lumpy looking, the insides are not the same paste-like filling found in most macarons. Instead they're like buttercream. While they are delicious treats, it's almost seems like they aren't the same type of cookies as the rest of them.

Once we worked our way through the Hayes triangle, we moved on to Thorough Bread's vanilla/chocolate combo, and their lemon. They actually serve them frozen and you need to wait for them to thaw before you can eat them. The vanilla/choco combo was hard to cut through, and was sort of a chewy mess. It had a nice flavor though, but was sort of unmemorable. However the lemon was delicious. The filling was tart without being overpowering, and the outside had a nice crispness to it, but with a dry inside. This was probably my second favorite one of the day. Also they get bonus points for the awesomely bad pun.

Next up was Philippe's. They didn't have a vanilla, so we had to go with hazelnut as our plain and decided on cassis for our fun one. First of all these guys are huge. Gigantor, almost double the size of the miette. Their texture is nice though, the crust had the right crispness combined with the perfect chew, but the filling melted on your tongue too quickly. Also the size was sort of overwhelming, making the ratio of crust to filling a bit wrong. I think if the size was tweaked a little, these could be my favorite. Although, to be honest i didn't like the flavors of either of these, but then again I kind of dislike hazelnut, and the cassis was too sweet/artificial. I mentioned that the cassis looked like a hamburger, and anneh said she thought it actually tasted like one. Clearly, it's been a long time since vegetarian anneh's had a hamburger.

Last up was Sandbox Bakery, which is actually Christopher David Macarons. The ones there were hands down the most visually appealing. The tops are sprinkled with a shiny sugar, which us magpies were immediately drawn to. There were four flavor options (pear, chocolate, grapefruit with star anise, and butterscotch), and we decided to try them all. The texture was pretty good on all of these, but the flavors were a bit too sweet. The pear actually was quite tart too, in that tongue curly sort of way. The chocolate was good but forgettable, and the anise in the grapefruit was odd. If anneh thought the last one tasted like hamburger, then I have to say this one tasted like duck. Chinese duck. I'm sure it was the anise flavor, but it wasn't awesome. What was awesome was the butterscotch. I don't even like butterscotch and that thing was downright delicious. I would dare say it was my favorite of the day, but I don't know if it was the "best" macaron in SF. It was however the most delicious thing. Anneh thought the flavors were too quirky and trying to hard (she likened it to Humphry Slocombe and their weird flavors. Quirkiness over quality she says. Well i put those exact words in her mouth, but that was essentially her sentiment.

Overall, seems like the best, most traditional macarons in SF are the ones you can find at Paulette. However, i think it's fair to say there are a lot of great options. Pass on the La Boulange ones though, I went back and tried it after i ate the others and it was terrible in comparison. I was sort of surprised by that, but anneh agreed too.

And if you know of another great macaron here in the city, let me know. I know there are a few more lurking about waiting for us to nom them.

Oh wait, we're not, the oven isn't working again. So much for nerd
Friday frozen pizza. (we always keep one in the freezer for days when
we get home late and don't want to wait for delivery to arrive.)
instead of filling our bellies with pizza and beer, and our souls with
movies and video games, we're sitting around starving and drunk,
waiting for the pizza guy to take forever to arrive. Oh well, at least
it's cozy here.

In today's world apparently. Our email went down and the giants game
was on and the next thing I knew, I was the last person in the
department.