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.

a quilt in progress, part 1

A little over a month ago I finished writing up a 30 by 30 list, that is, 30 things that I want to do/accomplish/experience before I turn 30. As of right now, I have yet to mark anything off my list, but this past weekend I started one of them. One of the things on my list is to make a quilt. I've been interested in quilting for over a year, but until recently I just couldn't muster up the courage to dive in.

The weekend before last my parents were in town. I took my mom to the big (and I mean 4-stories big) fabric store downtown. It's a bit overwhelming and intimidating when you're flying solo, but having my mom there was much more reassuring. She's experienced in sewing herself, so it was helpful to have her lend her expertise. Plus it's just more fun to fabric shop with another person, to get their opinion, to have another perspective.

She helped me pick out and limit down the fabrics I chose to make my very first quilt. And here they are!

I decided for my first quilt to do something slightly smaller in scale, so I chose to do a lap quilt for my living room. The color scheme in the room isn't that well defined, but there are some oranges/rusts, golds, tans, and blues. So those are the colors that I tried to keep in mind when picking out fabric.

The quilt pattern I chose is a pretty basic pinwheel design. So my first step was to cut 80 squares, which I will then cut into triangles. I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't take me longer to cut out all the squares. Having the mat, ruler, and rotary cuter were lifesavers. I can guarantee that if I had had to cut those pieces by hand with a pair of scissors, my quilting hobby would have ended in a matter of minutes.

My next step is to cut all these squares in half to make 160 triangles. But then comes the fun part of designing the pinwheels and creating different color combinations.

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.