who needs to eat on their birthday?

Last Sunday was Micah's birthday and to celebrate I planned a trip to Alameda Island to visit St. George Spirits, a fancy pants distillery almost in our backyard. And, well, the trip did not go exactly as planned, but we still had a lot of fun and I think you could call his birthday festivities a success.

We started out the day with a trip to the gym. I know, right. The gym? We are at the beginning of our sprint triathlon training and neither of us wanted to skip the workout. Anyway, we did a short swim and a short run and then bussed it across town to catch the ferry to Alameda. The plan was to get over there and have brunch, but I had sorely miscalculated the distances to the restaurant we were going to go to and then back to the distillery. We tried to call a taxi, but that did not work. So, here we are, having each eaten a banana and an energy bar, hungry post workout, and there was no food in sight. We didn't have much of an option than to walk over to the distillery that was about 1 mile away.

Lo and behold, we get close and spot an ice cream truck. Perfect!

Chips and ice cream, that will hold you over for about 10 minutes.

The distillery has an amazing view, looking across the bay, of San Francisco.

The tour was fun and informative. Not to mention it's just pretty plain cool to see the inside of the old hangar that now houses the distillery.

Every distillery has a shark, right?

St. George Spirits got their's from a company that makes the prototypes of animatronics. This shark was the mold for the one created for the movie the Deep Blue Sea.

And then we got to the tasting. I'll admit it probably would have been a little more enjoyable had we had food before the tasting. But, we went slow, enjoying ourselves, and drank lots of water too. All the beverages we tasted we're fabulous. The two we enjoyed the most (and bought bottles of to take home) were Buddha's hand (a citrus-y infused vodka) and a coffee liqueur that uses coffee beans from local roasters (it is insanely yummy).

Afterwards, we walked the mile+ back to the ferry, made our way back to SF, and immediately bought food (real food) to eat. Hey, we got to eat an actual meal before 5pm, I'll count that as a success?

We then went home and got ready to have some friends over for cake and ice cream. I made a cake (which I maintain is an essential part of every birthday). Unfortunately my mad decorating skills could not mask the not-so-moist-cake. I blame the recipe, I shouldn't have tested out a new recipe...

Happy Birthday Micah!

a quilt in progress, part 2.

I did some more work on my quilt this weekend. After cutting out all those squares, I needed to cut them into triangles. It was monotonous work, but thankfully it didn't take too long to accomplish. Again, it came in handy to have my trusty rotary cutter and cutting mat.

The basic gist is that all those triangle pieces will get sown together in a pinwheel shape.

See all those triangle pieces. I'm pretty excited about them.

One of the things that I've already learned about quilting is that the whole process is an exercise in patience. Each phase of quilting (so far) hasn't been difficult in the technique required, it just takes time and patience to measure and cut and measure and cut. I like that there is a rhythm to it, even if it is slightly mechanical. I also like the idea of little pieces being used to create something big and purposeful.

North Beach food tour.

Friday I had a staff retreat at work. It started off with tea and light snacks and from there moved full throttle into an afternoon of overindulgence at various eateries in North Beach (Little Italy). I really enjoy the occasional day when I get to be a tourist in my own city,

Our North Beach food tour started at Caffe Roma. And according to our tour guide, San Francisco is the capitol of coffee...although I'm pretty sure that there are a number of other places that would disagree with that statement, particularly places like Ethiopia (where coffee was born).

Anyway, we got the opportunity to get up close and personal with Caffe Roma's coffee roaster, while our guide talked about the roasting process and his uppity (I can point that out, because I have them too) views of coffee and how long beans are good for, etc. It was an interesting experience as the whole time I was thinking about a documentary I recently re-watched called Black Gold (which I would highly recommend by the way). The documentary explains the coffee trade and the ways in which commodity prices, international trade agreements, and the mega large coffee buyers in essence make sure coffee farmers never receive a fair, living wage in exchange for their product. Its basic premise supports the consumption of fair trade products. Which is a great place to start thinking about change, but in my opinion not a place to stop (not that you really asked for my opinion).

Moving along....

Next we strolled through Washington Square, past St. Peter and Paul Cathedral, over to Liguria Bakery; they've been around since 1911. They had already sold out and closed up for the day. Supposedly they sell out every day around 10:30am! But, luckily, our tour guide has the hook up and had some secret key to allow us to get to taste the wonderful goodness that is their foccaccia bread.

SO GOOD! We had the mushroom and pizza kinds, and both were phenomenal!

Next up on our culinary tour, was another bakery. We got to go behind the scenes and get up close and personal with one of the largest ovens I've ever seen. I'm sure it was some kind of health/sanitary hazard to have us back there, but it was interesting none the less. That is until the oven got turned on and in a matter of minutes became about 150 degrees back there.

After inhaling too many carbs to count, we made our way over to Z. Cioccolato. We got to see them made some fudge and they gave us some samples too. Unfortunately, I've never been a fan of fudge. In fact, I think it's disgrace to the candy/sweets realm. The consistency is just disgusting and the taste is downright overwhelming. So instead I took a picture of all the taffy they had, wish we had gotten samples of this instead!

The only natural thing to do when you've had nothing of real substance is to get a fish taco, which is exactly what we did. The guide took us to Nico's Tacos. It was a nice to have a bit of protein. And, I do mean a bit. I could have easily eaten about 5 of these.

The show stopper of the day though was by far the cannolis. Umm, hello, I have been missing out on this for years! The place is Victoria Pastry Co. and they literally make the cannoli when you order it. It is fresh my friends. Crispy shell with sweat pastry cream and chocolate chips and dusted with powdered sugar. Unbelievable! This culinary indulgence was worth enduring enjoying the whole tour.

And once you've eaten four pieces of foccaccia bread, one piece of sourdough, one biscotti, one fish taco, one blessed cannoli, and 3 mini slices of bread dipped in local olive oils, there will still be room for pizza.

There will always be room for pizza.

Especially, pizza that has sauce that is as good as the one pictured above from Cinecitta.