Brunch

Hey there! :)
I'm giving a big happy smile to all of you who read my previous couple of more depressing posts and wanted to make sure I'm doing okay. Thanks for all your lovely thoughts! However I should fess up that most of the time, my life is truly awesome and filled with happiness. You have to understand that my writing is... kind of like... blowing into a tissue when one has a cold. If you only see the piles of tissues, it might give the impression I'm a cesspool of sadness; but really, I am more the better precisely because the snot is out, and not in. I am, most of the time, overwhelmed by how wonderful life is.

For example, today.
I woke up in a pile of love, comfort and purrs. With leisurely delay, the day started with a tree lined walk along Laguna to Hayes Valley, one of my favorite places in the city, and a fresh Gibraltar at the Blue Bottle kiosk. Then it was Bar Jules, a place we haven't tried before, for brunch. Someone-awesome-not-me got the scrambled eggs with prosciutto and arugula; I ordered the baked eggs with pulled pork and potatoes with radish salad. We sat at the counter, shared a cup of delicate tea, while watching the chefs do their magic over the open kitchen (where there is a wood fire griddle). Our food took a while, so the lady at the counter gave us a glass of prosecco mixed with strawberry juice on the house (think mimosa but way better). It was a very nice gesture, but I did not mind the wait at all, since I was thoroughly enjoying my time smelling freshly picked peonies while s-a-n-m translated the secret copulations of linear equations (in particular, the Conjugated Gradient Method) into plain English for my curiosity. The food at Jules was remarkably tasty. Then we also visited miette, the local confiserie (yes, i said confiserie) and bought a pistacio macaron and a box of lavender honey nougat, before walking back up the hill.

Later in the day, after s-a-n-m consorted with the linear equations some more and I finished my shirt design obligation, we stopped by the Embarcadero Ferry Building on our way home. We got some mascarpone, sheep milk ricotta and St. Pat from the Cowgirl Creamery, and some freshly baked pain epi (as in the picture on left) and rustic sweet baguette from Acme. What for? We are going to make some homemade raviolis while eating some tasty toasted bread with cheese on it.

When we got back to home base, s-a-n-m went to water our garden (the tomatoes are in green lumps; the carrots are small yet DELICIOUS; one strawberry is coming about once a week; and one can start to glimpse the future harvest of zucchini, tomatoes, squash and lemons) and I donned the apron to start making the pasta dough. We are making two batches of dough to make three types of ravioli: 1) ricotta with herbs 2) mushrooms with shallot, thyme and mascarpone and cube of homemade stock 3) crab meat with mascarpone. I can now say I can knead like a champ, and s-a-n-m as always can cook like a real chef. A couple of hours later, we enjoyed some wine with our friend and shared some ricotta and mushroom raviolis with our also homemade ragu. zomg. The crab ones we froze for a later meal.

But yeah. Talk about being whiny... I know.
This is not a routine Sunday, but it is also not unique. I live very well; and on most days really, I do count my blessings and try not to take any of this for granted. I am very happy, and thanks for thinking of me when I had to blow clear my figurative nose to appreciate a fuller, clearer breath of what I have, what I enjoy, what I love.