a late christmas present.

For Christmas, Micah gave me a subscription to Food & Wine. It said my first magazine would take 6-8 weeks to arrive, and they were not kidding. However, the first one has finally arrived, and I was so excited when it did.



I spent the following morning looking at all the pretty pictures and reading over the amazing-sounding recipes. And, when I got up for a brief moment, Nora decided that she had had enough of me paying more attention to the magazine than her.



Magazines like this one are best when read on a full stomach! I'm hoping I can incorporate a recipe or two into this week's menu.

julia child does it again.

It was a couple years ago that Micah bought me Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and we made a night out of making our own delicious French food. It has now become somewhat of a tradition to pick out new recipes each year for Valentine's Day and I'm pretty smitten on the idea. I have never been overly excited about this particular holiday with it's oodles of red and pink and cards and chocolate and weird stuffed teddy bears. So, instead of braving the crowds to get a table for a meal out, I quite like spending the time creating something together. And, it has been our experience that Julia rarely let us down.

This year we decided to spend a little more time on dessert. So we went with a light and airy chocolate mousse, chilled in martini glasses of course. My only comment about the mousse is that it was more of a mocha mousse than chocolate. The recipe called for 4 tbsp of strong coffee, and we either operate on a different scale of what strong coffee is or the recipe calls for too much, because it was way more than a subtle hint. Slightly (and I do mean slightly!) disappointing when you're really wanting chocolate, chocolate, but once it was accurately re-named as mocha, it tasted better.

The main meal was your basic meat and potatoes. The potatoes in this picture look a little like tater tots, my opinion is that they were much better than tater tots, as they were slathered with butter and chives. The steak had a red wine reduction sauce, and was also served with garlic butter. And the salad was simple with cucumber and mushroom and goat cheese.

It was the perfect way to celebrate with the person I love most.

Golden Gate Bridge.

Last weekend, Micah and I went to Mill Valley to visit some friends. Mill Valley is North of San Francisco, so our most likely route was over the Golden Gate Bridge. I love the this bridge. It does not matter how many pictures I take of it, I always want to take more, whether I'm crossing it or viewing it from a distance. And believe me, I have no shortage of pictures of this bridge.

It is majestic. It shines. It has this power that takes over me and makes me want to keep snapping pictures to try to capture it's greatness. And yet no picture ever seems to do it justice. No picture ever seems to demonstrate the contrast of such a single, massive structure to the thousands of buildings, large and small, that make up the San Francisco skyline.

I seriously wish I could do this bridge justice (perhaps if I were using a fancy camera and not just my phone). I think it's just one of those things that you have to witness in person. In reality, I don't see the bridge as often as one might think for a person living in SF. But, I guess that just makes it extra spectacular when I do.