Wednesday, July 22, 2009

San Fran trip...

Boy, do I love San Francisco! Beautiful view, great food, great weather (luckily!), and an insane transit system. It's a five hour drive from our house. Pretty painless although we decided we would rather add on some extra time and take the 101 instead of taking the 5 which is brutal! How gorgeous is this view??!!


We stayed at our friend's house in South San Francisco (thanks T and J!). It was super easy to grab the BART into the city. We never waited over ten minutes to catch the train and it was really simple to figure out. LA is really lacking good public transportation. Look how cute Noah is with the BART pulling in behind him!

Once the BART dropped us off, we walked everywhere! Philz coffee (where every other coffee shop should bow down at his feet), and then hopping on the bus if we needed to zip across the city.
Of course we went to the Ferry Building and hit Hog Island Oysters. Such a great view and consistently good food. These were local sardines with a blood orange cream sauce.


Kumamoto's and Pacifics: the aftermath. Sipping on good white wine.

San Francisco has a very different vibe than LA.


So not only did Julie make us some great cocktails in "The Bar"....

but she made us this beauty to oooh and aahhh over....

Jonah and Annie also blessed us with a beauty, Seamus. (pronounced Shay-mus). He's 11 weeks old.


Jonah, Annie, Seamus, Noah and I walked down to Dynamo donuts in the mission. We ate 4 different flavors. The two best were apricot and powdered sugar and maple with bacon. Sounds weird, tasted great!



Noah's buddy Bob works downtown at a place called The Salt House. We ate poutine: french fries topped with bechamel and pork. Yummy!

Us at The Salt House.
A random shot of how cool SF is. On the bus with a pinata....
We visited Ray Potes, a friend of Noah's who is an insane photographer. He does "street photography". Check out his website: www.hamburgereyes.com
Noah's buddy Bob. He showed us a really good time. Had drinks at the Elixer in the mission and dinner at Front Porch. Southern Style...

We finally found the Chicharonnes! Locally produced pork rinds. Yum-mmy!
For some reason I found this scene very beautiful and very San Francisco. Homeless man catching a few Z's in a used book shop.
Noah and I scored an edition of "The Joy of Cooking".
We hit up Scala's near Union Square. Noah is friend's with the chef, Jen Biesty. This was a super sexy dish! Raw salmon and caviar with creme fraiche...
We left the city on Wednesday and drove through wine country. We tasted wines at Qupe and then had dinner at Los Olivos Cafe. We lucked into a wine tasting from Alta Maria and got to meet the wine maker. Insane wine!



Thursday, July 16, 2009

More activity in the kitchen...

Noah is testing out pizza dough for his soon-to-be restaurant. The dough rises in the fridge for a slower development. The result is lots of air bubbles and cavernous, chewy dough. He topped this one with an egg, prosciutto, green olives, and herbs.
Eggplant, coppa, feta, and mint.

Prosciutto, pickled peppers, and parsley. Look at the bubbly, golden crust!

The salad he served with the pies: romano beans, yellow wax beans and lima beans in a shallot vinaigrette.

A classic caprese.
I came home from work on Wednesday night and found Noah making these: tapioca with peaches, blueberries, and candied lemon zest.
One for my list of things I can bake: ginger bread cookies! Chewy and soft...

Thursday, July 9, 2009

It's a miracle!


I actually made something successful with yeast! Focaccia!!!

Friday, July 3, 2009

Oh boy...

Rumor has it that the Michael Jackson memorial scheduled on Tuesday is going to bring so many people into the LA area that all the ER's are staffing up preparing for the influx. I'm already working four of the next five days and they've asked me to come in on my day off. No thanks.