Living in California in Fall 2015

[Happy Ent]

So, just out of curiosity, is there anything you're finding surprisingly positively different?

 

You mean about the US: Easy.

 

Everybody is insanely, mind-boggingly open and friendly and positive. My Northern European cheeks are aching from smiling so much. Awesome feeling.

[DanteGabriel]

 

Everybody is insanely, mind-boggingly open and friendly and positive. My Northern European cheeks are aching from smiling so much. Awesome feeling.

 

That may be more a regional thing.

[Kat]

 

That may be more a regional thing.

 

I dunno, but considering most people I've talked to in the U.S. think that people from the Bay Area are unfriendly, you'd think that other regions would come off more favorably.

[Maester Yobjascz]

Finally found some time to check the boards and saw this... I grew up in LA, went to Cal Berkeley, and spent a good number of years in the Bay Area.  It sounds like you're still in La Jolla, enjoying Southern California.

 

In addition to Disneyland, there's also the San Diego Wild Animal Park and Legoland (which might be amusing if you haven't already been). Other than that, I highly recommend spending some time at the beaches. The Berkeley area has a couple of decent beaches, but there's an order of magnitude difference in quality (and temperature). Walk Venice beach for the craziness. The beaches in San Diego and Orange County will be great for simple beachgoing. You can also head north towards Santa Barbara.

 

For the trip north, as stated by others, the basic routes are I-5 (through the central valley) and Route 1 (Pacific Coast Highway). Visiting the General Sherman might be perfect for the Entish, but it really takes the better part of a week. Sequoia Nat'l Forest is pretty far east, and well out of the way of the direct paths back to Berkeley. Otherwise, PCH is is the scenic route, but long. My drives between LA and Berkeley were on I-5. Almost exactly halfway between the two is the small town of Coalinga. This was my favored stop along the way. Places to eat are In&Out (burger chain) and Harris Ranch (a farm/ranch turned restaurant and hotel). 

 

Once you're back in Berkeley, I highly recommend taking a trip up to Muir Woods. It's a relatively short drive (probably 1.5 hrs from Berkeley), and a nice hike with great trees and scenery. It'll also allow you to stop at Sol Food in San Rafael (in Marin County); excellent Puerto Rican food. Another must-see is the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It's closer to a 2.5-3hr drive south, but well worth it. If you have time, you can try a trip up to Lake Tahoe or out to Yosemite. Tahoe you can reasonably do in a weekend, but Yosemite ideally takes more time (in a pinch, you might be able to see the highlights in a long weekend).

[JonSnow4President]

 

I dunno, but considering most people I've talked to in the U.S. think that people from the Bay Area are unfriendly, you'd think that other regions would come off more favorably.

I've had good results with all of the South (as long as you don't act snobbish), the Midwest, and the Southwest, and great experience with people from the Pacific Northwest.  It's only the Californian's and the Northeast I wouldn't consider openly friendly, but I'm comparing them to the regions above, so it might just be they only seem unfriendly by comparison.

[Happy Ent]

Quick update: We have now dug our roots into the soil of Berkeley, on Walnut Street (i.e., [i]Juglans[/i]).

[DanteGabriel]

 

I dunno, but considering most people I've talked to in the U.S. think that people from the Bay Area are unfriendly, you'd think that other regions would come off more favorably.

 

Funny, I live in a region (New England) that is almost universally regarded as unfriendly. I thought the West Coast had a reputation for people being nice and willing to socialize with strangers, but maybe the Bay is an exception. :)

[Cuellar]

 

Funny, I live in a region (New England) that is almost universally regarded as unfriendly. I thought the West Coast had a reputation for people being nice and willing to socialize with strangers, but maybe the Bay is an exception. :)

 

 

I think a lot depends on your race, and also any area that only caters to tourists is going to be a lot friendlier vs places with industry and tourism being secondary (NYC, LA, SF, etc).  IE California total production is something like $2.3T, $100B being travel related (which may count Californians' travel in it). 

 

I found the south as being relatively extreme, either people are fucking shitheads or super friendly, with little in between.  

[Happy Ent]

Update on where to shop:

 

[i]Andronico’s[/i] (one block from where I live) has 5 different choices of Wasa [i]Knäckebröd[/i] crispbread, as well as fresh yeast. (That’s right: yeast seems to be a specialty item in the US, unavailable in most supermarket chains. But now we found it. Well, it was sold out, but should be back on Friday.)

 

[i]Trader Joe’s[/i] has a product called “European Style Whole Grain Bread[/i].

 

Still missing: somewhere to buy Durum flour.

[Arbor Gold]

Did you enjoy yesterday's little earthquake?

[Happy Ent]

The earthquake was great!

[Tears of Lys]

How great was it?

 

 

I got so used to them that when they hit in the middle of the night, I didn't even wake up and acknowledge them. 

[I] Earth shaking?  Soooo boring.... [/I]

 

 

:P

[IheartIheartTesla]

I've felt earthquakes in a few states in the US now, but the California ones were the first time I experienced a 'rolling' earthquake. All the others have been 'shaking' earthquakes. Not sure if that is a real thing, but was definitely how I felt.

[Happy Ent]

Another success! I have a package of fresh yeast in my hands.

 

(This is used for baking bread. As in actually good bread, not the sorry stuff that you can buy in the US.)

 

The product costs 2.29 USD for a package of 17 g.

 

In comparison, 50 g yeast is available readily everywhere, in the smallest minimarket I can think of. The price is 1,95 DKK in Denmark or 1,95 SEK in Sweden.

 

If you do the math, the price per 100 g in Sweden is 3,90 SEK, corresponding to 47 US cent. The US price for 100g would be 13.47 USD. 

 

So yeast is a whopping 29 times as expensive in the US. I find this amazing. This of course explains why nobody is baking bread, because the ingredients themselves cost more than buying the finished product! (Not even accounting for the time spent baking.)

 

Even more grotesquely, the US yeast package contains corn starch. You can’t make this up. The most basic ingredient known to man, needed to actually bake your bread from scratch – because the US products are both depressing (boring texture and taste) and suspect (what did they put into it?) – they completely superfluous and bizarre corn starch is already in there!

 

I’m getting increasingly depressed. 

 

ETA: Before US tax, of course.

[Fragile Bird]

Well, they have to find uses for all that corn, ya know....

[Jo498]

If you find the time, read "The omnivore's dilemma" by Michael Pollan (ISBN: 978-0143038580), especially the first part about the crazy subsidized corn monoculture in the US. The book is very good but somewhat longish.

[Lord of Oop North]

I move that the thread be re-titled "Living in California: The Quest for Yeast"

[Tears of Lys]

My dog has yeasty paws. Does that count?

[Lady Olenna]

One of my cavaliers has yeasty ears the other has yeasty paws. They smell like a bakery. Our Vet has profited nicely this month.

Speaking of baking bread, I baked a loaf in this handy dandy contraption I found at a thrift store called a Bake A Round. It's pretty neato. I used Bob's Redmill dry active yeast. I don't think it has corn starch. It works well.


I'm not sure if there is a Sprouts grocery store in the Berkeley area but that's where I do a lot of my shopping here in Los Angeles county. Their prices are great for produce, even the organic. And they carry a lot of the more natural products.

Anyhow, if you have any questions about California feel free to ask. Im happy to help if I can.

[Lyanna Stark]

Well done HE! I had a similar quest when I moved to the UK, another country of Absolutely Horrendous Bread. While I eventually found that the largest Tesco supermarket stocked rye flour and even stuff like buckwheat in tiny packets in the "health" section (which apparently was mostly targeted at people with lactose intolerance and potentially diabetes) I had to give up the fresh yeast hunt and learn to live with the depressing dried stuff. 

 

Corn starch in yeast though...well, wow. That's....really strange. Not even the UK can top that with my tears over "brown flour" being dyed wheat flour and not rye. If you are willing to go down that route, the dried yeast is actually not that bad. Or well, once I got over my first breakdown, I got used to it. :P  It's the same type of culture as the fresh one (according to what I could find of the intrawebz, funnily enough in an article by someone slamming store bought yeast in general for being a "terrible and destructive monoculture" bent on the destruction of real flavourful baking, which can only be achieved if you are a sourdough-baking hipster household, apparently) only dried. I found that I can wing it pretty well with just using it the same way as fresh yeast, but with slightly warmer liquids. It generally rises a bit slower, so for rush jobs like home made pizza and emergency rolls for the children, it may not be a good idea. However, for other types of baking it has worked well for me. A caveat though: I have never used dry yeast to kick-start a sourdough, or as the hipster dude in that magazine would say a sell-out, faux monoculture sourdough, but I admit to taking shortcuts that way and to living in a gastronomical wasteland. I did read in my cookbook from the 70s (inherited!) how to dry part of your own sourdough and then use it as kick-starter for future sourdoughs, so I sort of imagined it being similar to use store-bought dry yeast to kick-start stuff. A bit slower, but totally doable.

 

So, have you actually found decent rye flour? Durum flour is so upper middle-class. :P To me that's just one step down from insisting on Manitoba wheat flour for everything!

 

Also: how are the packages in the US? I imagine them as being totally enormous and that you can find everything in extra large family packages! The UK has the smallest packages of everything. In Sweden I normally get packages like 1 kg of butter, 2-5 kgs of flour, but the flour packs in the UK were generally 0.5 kgs, the butter I think I managed to find 250g as the largest. The only large packages were things like chips (and horsemeat burgers :p ).