Happy Thanksgiving

Yesterday Colin and I made a pumpkin pie from scratch, even roasting the pumpkin and everything.  That was the last thing that my oven baked.  Late last night I was going to pre-roast some veggies, but the oven wouldn't get warm.  Anthony determined that the igniter was out, should be easy to replace.  However, no one would be open at 10:30 pm to sell us one, and certainly no one would be open on the holiday.  I was so tired and tried not to sink into despair.  Emily remembered that my nifty microwave also has a convection oven feature, and I thought, I can do this.

It all turned out great.  I was very thankful for the precooked smokey Greenburg turkey.  It took a while to rotate the roast veggies, stuffing, and then roast potatoes.  The broiler in the oven still worked, so we reheated the meat on the bottom of the oven with the broiler on.

We had:

Greenburg turkey
Ham (Colin ate SIX BIG slices)
Gravy with cream and herbs
Alice Water's mushroom stuffing
Roasted sweet potatoes and acorn squash
Green salad with arugula and tomatoes from the garden
Cranberry Orange relish (new and improved)
Roasted rosemary potatoes
Colin's pumpkin pie
Henley's pecan pie
Italian carrot cake
Chocolate cheesecake
3 types of Pinot Noir

I always make my stuffing/dressing with mushrooms and herbs, and was excited to find Alice Water's version, similar to what I've attempted.  Instead of broth, though, she uses milk, which made it like mushroom bread pudding.  AND I used my truffle salt that I got in San Francisco, and that made all the difference!

I love how much my kids have come to love this holiday, full of food and family and gratitude.  Colin said, as he returned to the table with a plate of seconds, "Thanksgiving is AWESOME!"  Bring on Christmas!

NaBloPoMoBust

OK, I fell off the PoMo wagon.  We've had multiple house guests, parties to host, home improvement projects, as well as all the usual activities.

I am slightly sad not to have made my commitment this year, but please know it is because I am having WAY too much fun.  And this is just the start of the crazy holiday rollercoaster!  Hopefully, I'll come up for air occasionally between now and New Years!

NaBloPoMo Haiku

Fran's farewell party
Third time's a charm, still so fun
Prosecco goes POP!

Lame Day 20 post

Tired from work
Tired of cleaning the kitchen (and Anthony does it a LOT)
Tired of NaBloPoMo

Excited about Emily coming tomorrow
Excited about (farewell) party for Fran
Excited about new paint
Excited about Thanksgiving

Happy Hour

I usually end my appointments with some sort of query to make sure we've covered everything -- do you have any more questions for me?  anything else before I walk you up front?  see you in a week for your recheck!  --something along these lines.

Today I ended my second to last appointment with, "Is there anything else you need?" since I just answered a bunch of questions and did some refills.

The cat owner sighed, and said, "Well, I really need a margarita..."

Sorry, you'll have to go down the street for that!  Ha!

The gift that keeps on giving.

So my wonderful mother watched my children while I was gone AND cleaned my house.  There was a time this would have embarrassed me, but now I just feel gratitude.  She also changed all the sheets and did all the laundry.  Today being Wednesday, the day I usually make a feeble attempt to clean and straighten the house, I suddenly found myself with all this freedom.  It was great to just relax with houseguests (Lindsey and Fran), then do some food shopping and cooking, before the kids came home for their usual Wednesday after school activities.

I am thinking I really need to find a maid service!

Who's on Primo?

Colin says to Fran: How do you say 'no' in Spanish?

Fran: No

Colin: No

Fran: No

Colin: What?

Fran: Que?

Colin: What?

Fran: Que is what in Spanish

Colin: No, I mean no

Fran: No

Colin: What?

Home again

The end of the vacation always sucks.

Flying from West to East sucks.

But coming home to two little kids, jumping up and down like cheerleaders, arms waving, voices shouting, happy hugs -- totally worth it!

Special thanks to my mom for making this mini-vacation possible - in more ways than one!

Weekend in brief

SATURDAY

Sleep in!
Shopping
Lots of walking
Farmer's Market
Wine and Cheese tasting
L'osteria del Forno for dinner (our long time fave in North Beach)

SUNDAY

Sleep in! (again!)
Rent bikes
Golden Gate park
Presidio
Golden Gate Bridge via bike
Sausalito
Blue & Gold Ferry
Sea lions!
Martinis at the hotel restaurant bar
Thai food (someone at the bike shop told us about a local Thai dive.  We ordered FOUR entrees.  There were so many good things on the menu, we wanted to try them all!  Plus, we'd skipped lunch.  And, we biked for 6 hours today!  We ate 75% of all the dishes.  It was SO GOOD but the best was the green curry.  And, $40 for 4 entrees and 2 beers, in SF.  Nice end to a long weekend.)

Oh what a night

I have to tell you about our excellent meal last night: I had heard buzz about Flour + Water from people like Ruth Reichl, so I had to check it out.  The restaurant is small and warm, lots of earth tones and candles, and lots of shared tables.  The wine list is nearly all Italian.  We started with a margarita pizza with arugula.  The crust of this pizza was transcendent.  Thin, crispy, chewy, and dotted with scorched bubbles, steaming from the woodfired oven, gently wilting the fresh arugula on top.  I had been to the bathroom and could smell the pizza as I approached the table from 10 feet away!  Then we split the papparadelle pasta, which came with a wonderful ragu with tiny bits of pork shoulder as tender as jelly.  The housemade pasta was so good, perfect in texture and flavor; it really could stand on its own.  We were seated close to the semi-open kitchen, and I loved watching the chefs calmly churn out dish after dish, sharing tasting spoons of the entrees before they plated them up.  The only hiccup was that the side of oven roasted yams came long after our entree was finished, but that was OK since I was happy to eat them as dessert!  Tiny orange cubes, browned corners, anointed in brown butter, sage, salt, and parmegiano reggiano kept my belly warm for our walk to the concert.

Pomplamoose apparently booked this show months ago, before they achieved cult status on YouTube.  The little cafe was already packed to the gills - standing room only, no one else getting in - nearly 2 hours before they were set to go on.  We managed to belly up to some of the cafe windows, and actually this turned out to be a primo spot - we had a direct view of the stage, and they opened some of the windows so we could hear pretty well.  I don't like the deafening aspect of live music anyway, and there is no way my short self could have seen much being inside.

They had a great drummer with them, and the show was excellent - high energy level, amazing keyboarding, solid vocals.  I did miss all the harmonies that you get on the videosongs.  In person Jack is even more crazy and caught up in the music - his whole body jiggles, and he could not stop rapidly jumping up on his teeny tiny stool to egg on the crowd, then slamming back down to manically play the keys.  And Nataly is even more his foil: calm, introspective, strumming her bass and effortlessly singing.  Jack was so wild and sweaty at one point he even took of his pants and remained that way the rest of the evening. (he did have boxers on)  We met them briefly afterwards, and they were of course gracious and joyful, just like they are on their videos.

While they were clearly overwhelmed by the turnout to their show, we were not surprised.  Their last show only had about 40 audience members.  No doubt their next will be even larger, and not free.

We wished we could have had Anna and Colin there (since they are huge fans), but we doubt they could have lasted for this late show, especially with the time change.  Also it would have been so hard for them to see, although maybe two little people could worm their way to the front.

One last note -- Nataly announced their last song, and then said well, we have actually one more, but it would be too difficult in the crowded cafe to leave and come back for an encore, so they were going to go ahead and play the last two songs, but then that was really it, OK?  Ah, so refreshing!