This is KPBS Midday Edition. I am Maureen Cavanaugh. For some it's a picnic in a park, others it's sharing a glass of wine on the beach at sunset. Whatever your idea for rent romantic meal, now is the time to plan a. Valentine's Day is this Sunday making it less likely you will not have an excuse to celebrate the day in a special way. If you need help of turning up a dinner or what treat says I love you, we have help at hand. Joining me is chef Bernard from the Marine room. Welcome. Always a pleasure joining you here. Michele Parente is dining and lifestyle reporter at The San Diego Union-Tribune thanks for coming. Thank you. Makes it a romantic? First of all you have to have the right surrounding, make sure you have your champagne chilled, and then after that bring the roses or the favorite flowers. When it comes to the meal, it has to be exotic. It has to be on. You bring a little bit of caviar if you love caviar or beautiful shellfish. Then I would go with oysters for shellfish. They are great aphrodisiac. You have to have the two people in the right mood because otherwise it does not work. And for you what would make of romantic dinner for you Michelle? I think going out to dinner with Bernard. You made it sound so romantic. I want to ask you more about aphrodisiacs, shop. Are the foods that spark desire? I think there is, especially if you look at aromatics, Ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, chocolate, coffee. A lot of those were actually used in ancient time as medicine, and they became aphrodisiacs. Some of them are still used as medicine. It's all about how you use it. For example, if you are cooking fish, and you marinate that fish with me so and Ginger and you bring the centrists, it -- citrus it will be really liked. Then the Ginger will start to warm you up. If you have a nice drink with that, you will be steaming. And it goes on. And then it goes on to chocolate, Michelle, because chocolate is mentioned as a food of love. You think it only works on women? Absolutely. Have you ever seen a man when you bring chocolate to him? He's very happy. I am thinking of one in particular. It's a sensuous experience eating chocolate. It is. If you don't over indulge. Of course you know chocolate can leave you feeling a little bloated and that is the last thing you want on Valentine's Day. If you want to spice things up on Valentine's Day what are some of the things you've already told us, chef, that you would do? I would have a nice chocolate soufflé for sure for dessert. A nice port wine or a nice dessert wine, anything that you would be able to really talk about. That it has to be a well-balanced meal. So you still need to have your greens. You still need to have your salad and the right protein for it. I like seafood because you can really, it's a light protein you can really enjoy. You can also spice it up how you want. So there is a lot of space mixture that you can do at home. If you take some card mom a little bit of not make, some fennel pollen, fennel is very hot and really good for ladies. Fennel is -- fennel seeds gets everything rolling. So if you have a keyword salmon with fennel, and you prepare today, you can serve it on croutons and to some crème fraîche with citrus, top it with caviar, and it will put it in your mood. Do you think French cuisine is the most romantic? It depends on the time. Up until 2 AM, it is romantic. Are there certain romantic foods, we think of champagne and caviar, and you told us about the fennel. But is a change from one cuisine to another? Yes Middle Eastern spices for example, or if you do Indian food, they have all those ingredients you get together. They have Ginger, coriander, Manila, a lot of almonds, walnuts, all those are fantastic. All different cuisine have their touch of love. In Asia if you have the beautiful chicken Ginger coriander soup, it's going to put you in the mood. It's going to be beautiful. Let's talk about winds, Michelle. What types of wind would you recommend to share with the date of Valentine's Day? Only in the wine world would peering wine and chocolate be controversial, but it is. There is a very big divide between those who think it's a great romantic pairing and others, Karen McNeil wrote the wine book calls it a match made in[ Indiscernible ] . I love to drink wine with dark chocolate. The tenants match. But get a fruity, GME wine like a Zinfandel and it replicates the fruitiness in the chocolate. I have drink the wine from a urban winery and it was chocolatey, there were notes of violate. And I thought this would go really well with chocolate. I think sparkling wine or sparkling rosé, a nice moon Nampa, it's pink and beautiful. It has a light strawberry flavor to it, have some chocolate covered strawberries with it. Tawny Port, that would be a beautiful pairing with chocolate and nuts. You also don't have to eat chocolate and drink wine. You can use chocolate in your food. Chipotle chocolate raw, or spicy mole live -- as a rub would be good. Does rosé create passion or is it just the thought? I love rosé because you can serve it from the beginning of dinner to the end of dinner for the right balance. If you're going for red meat, you need a big red wine. But the way that you approach a bottle of wine, you uncork the wine how you put it into the class, and then you touch that class to the lips, you are sipping it. Usually I would say if you are into with your partner that you look into each other's eyes. It's so amazing. It's an amazing way to start the night. But the other thing that is really amazing if you are having that glass of wine or champagne outside, then you can really enjoy your sunset, friends or family, and what we should not forget is the kids. Because married, kids, it's a Valentine, and you are sharing the love. You are sharing the love of the family as well. When we talk about Valentines we talk about chocolate, Michelle, a lot of people will just run and by a drugstore kind of a -- can you give us an idea of the difference between the kind of specialty chocolates that you have been reviewing lately and not just running into the drugstore in the last minute and getting that off the counter? Even in the drugstore there is a big difference in what you get. A lot of the chocolates that are made into Easter eggs and hearts are very waxy. There is very low cocoa. There are a lot of additives. But if you got a little box of seas, who wouldn't want that, but we are very fortunate here in San Diego that we with -- that we have all of these artisan chocolatiers. Michelle long run with her sweet petite confections, beautiful spectacular tasting, refined. Chocolate should be fun. But we have eclipse chocolate, and the list goes on. And discernment of -- [ Indiscernible Name ] we are very fortunate. They come up with very fortunate combinations. There is a lemon fresh mint white chocolate that is absolutely delicious. There is chipotle chocolate. There is it sea salt caramel. Nothing better than a sea salt caramel. You are making me very hungry. I'm always hungry. Perhaps you don't want to prepare your own meal on Valentine's Day. Since you are here and from the Marine room, what will they be doing on Valentine's Day? Back we are doing a five course tasting menu that will include a lot of seafood. There will be some beautiful it as well. For desserts we are doing a trilogy. We have three different desserts on a plate, chocolate pyramid, a sorbet blackberry import to refresh, and another little surprise. I cannot give every way. It's creamy, sexy, velvety. It's very good. What I love about chocolate is you can play with chocolate. If you buy a nice bar of high-quality chocolate, you still have a few days to experiment with it and it becomes your chocolate and you sharing your love with your partner. You could use chipotle, in different spices. Star anise is great. Going back to cardamom, you can add so many different things and play with some of these amazing fresh herbs that we grow in our backyards. With the chocolate? Oh yes, Thai basil. What is that. Black pepper, you can do so much. Lemon verbena, you can have fun with the bark. Melt the chocolate your ingredients on top, break it into little chunks and wrap it up with a little hard on it. A little kiss and while -- voilà. Valentine's Day falls on Sunday so we can go out and have lunch. Any suggestions on that? Every restaurant on town is presenting a beautiful menu. Wrench to me does not feel as romantic. Maybe that is for the family. That would be a great thing to do. But to me Valentine's Day is dinner. With wine and chocolate. That is what life is all about. We are here for a very short time, this is the special time we spend together and we celebrate our passion and love. There's only one glitch into the story, it should happen every day not only the 14th of 14 February. Like to ask you chef Bernard about your new love. She is a skinny BBC line that came wandering into the restaurant. Tell us about her. She is doing very well. She was underway by 20 pounds. When I saw her she didn't -- I didn't know she was underway. She looked healthy. So SeaWorld came and picked her up. This is where I got the news that she was underweight by 20 pounds and she had an eye infection. I went to see her yesterday. She gets her love to everyone listening. She regained 4 pounds already. Most likely within the next six weeks three weeks, she is going to be back to her normal weight. Marina Is her name. When she is back to normal weight, I will go with SeaWorld and we will take her out in put her back in the wild. She was looking out the window, and then she went jumped on the big cat. I asked her -- then went -- banquet, I asked her if she wanted dinner. It is important that we take care of our sea creatures. Thank you so much for giving us all your love and good advice for St. Valentine's Day. Thank you Chef Bernard Guillas and Michele Parente . Thank you both very much. Thank you. Be sure to watch KPBS Midday Edition at Thank you.
It’s hard enough for students to get accepted by California’s top universities. But for some, the costs can be even more daunting.
The program Achieve UC aims to show low-income students that college is within reach.
The program's event Wednesday at San Diego High School felt like a pep rally. Cheerleaders and the school band came to get students excited about going to college.
Organizers told the audience of more than 600 students how to get into a University of California school and how to pay for it. Tuition is close to $15,000 a year at UC schools, but Achieve UC speakers said there is financial aid.
Juan Gonzalez, UC San Diego's vice chancellor of student affairs, said programs like the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan can pay the tuition of low-income students.
"To help families and students that come from families earning less than $80,000, their tuition is covered," Gonzalez said. "They will not have to arrive on our campus worried about tuition."
Gonzalez said the only thing students should be focused on is doing well in class.
