Pan fried clams with garlic and ginger

I was making this Canonese seafood dish, pan fried clams with garlic and ginger. In order to not end up having a big bowl of clam water, I put the clams in the boiled salt water first. As soon as the clams were cooked, I transferred them in a container and drained the water well, then stirred garlic, ginger, pepper and onion. I added the clam at the end and mixed with Shaoxing wine, chicken powder, and Laoganma chili oil source. Yum...:)

Avila Street Halloween

Here are pictures of Trick-or-treating at Avila Street on Saturday, the official Halloween night. Avila Street is just a few blocks from where we live. It is always a hot spot in the city for kids to get Trick-or-treating, but we saw the biggest crowd this year, perhaps because Halloween is right on a Saturday. The neighbors converted their garages into "ghost house" and set up candy tables outside of the house. Kids in costume were crazy about getting candies and lined up to ask for treats. Some home owners even built a mini ghost maze. Live "ghosts" hid at the corner and grabbed us surprisingly. It was quite fun to walk through those garages.

Do you notice something funny in the picture below?

ILM Halloween

We went to Eric's company party last Saturday (one week before the actual Halloween, strange). The best costume of the night was the movie "Up" family. The mom was Carl; the son was Russel. Guess where the dad was? Haha, inside the house.

Our costumes were a mountain boy and a tennis player. We met Eric's co-worker, Max and his fiancee, Linda. Linda speaks Cantonese and was originally from Guangdong as well.

California Academy of Sciences

Last Saturday Eric and I went to California Academy of Sciences. We experienced the awesome universe in the Morrison Planetarium. The show, Journey to the Stars brought us to experience the dramatic lives and deaths of stars. It was a fun ride to the edge of universe and back .

It was also lovely to walk around the Water Planet. Dozens of small and big tanks allow us to take a peak at the life of fish, reptiles, amphibians, and insects. My favorite is the beautiful sea dragon.

A day at Tomales Bay

We had a wonderful day at Tomales Bay a few weeks ago, beginning with a perfect hike from Tomales Point trailhead: warm, sunny, and less windy...! We could see the surf, ocean, seagulls, AND tule elk. The Tomales Point tule elk reserve is one of the great places to watch wildlife around the Bay Area, just a bit more than an hour's drive from San Francisco. This 9.5 mile out and back hike is moderate and pleasant.


I was totally excited to see the elk and was told that now is their mating season, so the males and females  are frequently grouped together. At an observation point, I saw more than a dozen female elk sitting close to each other, and one male elk sitting about 10 feet away checking them out.

A huge antler of a male elk was shown at the observation point. The ranger told us antlers fall off once a year and they grow bigger every year. I asked him if they just picked up antlers around the reserve once in a while. He said federal law prevents people from taking any antlers with them. Huh, this didn't seem to answer my question.

After the hike, we took off to Heart's Desire Beach for a picnic with Booboo's picanic basket. This was a fantastic place for a lunch break. Believe it or not, Heart's Desire Beach is one of the few beaches in the Bay Area which doesn't put your life at risk with icy water temperatures and rip tides. It is a white stretch of sand running along a calm, sheltered stretch of Tomales Bay.

Our last stop of the trip was The Marshall Store, my favorite oyster joint. These oysters are as local as it gets! They raise them on their oyster farm just up the bay. The view from the deck is very peaceful.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋快乐！！

We had a small Mid-Autumn Festival celebration at home, so I thought it might be nice to put this as Caofer's first blog entry. Our old blog has expired, so we decided to try Google's. It is quite intuitive and so far so good. We will post our adventures, hiking pics, and other misc here. Please come back often to check our updates!!

I made a small meal at home for the two of us on Saturday: “宫保鸡丁”(spicy chicken) and “芥兰”（a Chinese vegetable）. We also had moon cakes and brownies(popular American dessert). That's funny to think about when east meets west (hope it doesn't clash too much:).

罗域建议我应该在博客中掺多点中文，做到中西兼顾。提高英文的同时复习中文未尝一件坏事。

欢迎来到CAOFER的新博客！以下是我们庆祝今年中秋节日的中国餐。甜品是大班芝麻月饼和brownie（受欢迎的美式巧克力甜品），有酥脆的外皮和柔软的蛋糕状夹心。