Birfday

Some photos from the birfday week.
The day after I skipped practice and decided to go to the farmer's market instead. This is a typical SF Ferry Building Sat farmer's market loot:

- lots o' ridiculously tasty locally grown organic fruits and veggies. My favorites are nectarines and the cherry tomatoes that taste like candy.
- half a dozen free range fertile eggs. Fertile eggs mean that the eggs are from hens that are housed together with roosters. The fact that there is more activity in the pen make the eggs the tastiest.
- Freshly baked bread from Acme
- Blue Bottle cafe that was locally roasted the day before purchase
- Rabbit rillette from Fatted Calf, also local (usually we get some sort of salumi or pate)
- half a roasted chicken to bring home to nibble on.



The weekend after the birfday I was treated to a little getaway up in Yountville, which is about an hour north of San Francisco in the wine country. We stayed in this super cute b&b called Lavender, had a little cave wine tour, and then basically gorged ourselves with food when not napping or sleeping. We went to Ad Hoc for dinner, which is the casual sister restaurant of Thomas Keller's legendary French Laundry. Here is a photo of French Laundry's garden right across from the restaurant where they grow some of the food. When we were there, we saw kitchen staff harvesting beets, and a chef lady going out to gather some herbs.


Dinner at ad hoc was fantastic. We had a salad with heirloom tomatoes, a main course with short ribs, a cheese plate and then dessert. I was a bit overwhelmed by the food and forgot to take pictures mostly. The next day, we went BACK to ad hoc for brunch, and had MORE ridiculously good food. When we saw that "steak and eggs" was the menu, we almost hesitated. Could we handle that much beef in like 15 hours? The answer was yes.


My favorite though was the first dish, which consisted of 3 different types of bruchetta: 1) tomato + mozzarella 2) anchovies + golden raisins + crushed almonds + some green shoots 3) pork tenderloin + radish. omg.


Then it was prime ribs steak and eggs.

To be topped off with peaches and cream with shortbread cookies. $38/pp for that is a crazy good price as far as I am concerned.

Anyway, after we stuffed ourselves we went to Bouchon bakery for even more food. And then we decided we had to move some, and went to Cold Canyon near Lake Berryessa to do a 4.5mile hike with about 1500ft of actually rather steep elevation gain.

Yeah that was a really nice weekend.
This coming weekend I will fly off to Penang Malaysia for my dragonboat world championships. I'm not quite excited yet, still rather stressed about getting work done and packed and everything... I think I'll get excited when I actually can feel Penang on my skin.

For now, another picture. This one taken today showing the range of yummy veggies we have been harvesting from the little backyard. We made a very tasty orzo with veggies type of warm pasta salad with them. The yellow thing is a squash, which is slightly longer than my hand. Everything is rather small, compact but super flavorful. We are proud!


Anyway, that's what I have been up to. And again it's midnight. Sigh.