Her Birthday from Her POV

Well, Dan gave you the basic rundown of what he did for my birthday - it was amazing! Not only did we spend the whole day eating (but not overeating - which was impressive) but he planned out a really detail heavy experience. Considering that I'm most often the planner/details oriented/organized one of the two of us, I was happy to not have to do so for a day. Anyway, Dan mentioned the list of the 100 best things to eat in SF. The list can be found here if you really want to read it. Before my birthday food extravaganza, we had had 10 of the items already (#2, 6, 35, 40, 46, 49, 53, 63, 74 and 97 if you really care). The list hangs on our fridge, and I occasionally look at it, but it's not what we focus our trips to the city on. Besides, I have a long enough list of restaurants I'd like to try all around the Bay Area that list doesn't need to be any longer, thankyouverymuch.

Anyway, the morning of my birthday, we left the apartment about 50 minutes late, me already stressing out about ruining all the timing of Dan's elaborate plan. Seriously, all the way into the city I was worrying about it, and Dan was totally fine, of course. I felt better when we got to our first stop for brunch and we got seated after only a couple of minutes.

Brunch: Buckwheat crepes and French cider at Ti Couz (#88)

This is an amazing creperie in the heart of the Mission, that serves all sorts of sweet and savory crepes. I was a little hesitant to get a savory crepe, because most of the crepe places I've been, they use the same crepe recipe for both types of crepe, which really confuses my mouth. Eating eggs and whatever else rolled up in a thin, sweet pancake is weird - I don't like sweet and savory all at one time. Happily, their menu talked about the different types of crepes they make, so we ordered one of each - sausage, tomato, cheese (savory) and pear, chocolate nibs, and brown sugar (sweet). Also, they make AMAZING cocktails. The bloody marys the bartender was making were epic, and I had a Ti Couz cocktail which included blackberry puree, champagne and vodka. If you come visit us, we will probably bring you here.

After we left, we walked maybe five blocks until we hit our next stop, which was a bakery that has sort of a cult following in SF, and I'd actually been wanting to try it for awhile, so Dan already was doing really well.

Morning snack: Morning Bun at Tartine Bakery (#8)

The place was completely packed, which was to be expected for a Sunday at brunch time. Before we left that morning, Dan had told me that at one of the places, he was probably going to have to limit me to just a couple of choices and this was the place. I have no willpower in bakeries. I want to try everything! But, this time, knowing we would be eating more, I refrained from getting the bread pudding, or the croissants, or the everything else and settled for what we came for...and a couple of macaroons (they're little!) The morning buns are incredibly soft and flaky without tasting like straight butter, even though I know they use plenty, and then they top them with an orange flavored glaze. Droooool.

We walked a block over to Dolores Park to eat our pastry and generally people watch. It was a beautiful day and there was lots of SF "uniqueness" to watch. Afterwards, we hopped on bus and went North to...a bar. Confusion.

Pre-dinner cocktail: A Fernet at R Bar (#71)

I think the first time I read this on the list, I assumed it was a mixed drink. Wrong. It's actually just a shot of a type of liquor, fernet, which I had never heard of. And you probably haven't either, but it's an Italian liquor that for some reason, is super popular in SF. This particular bar, which is just your average non-descript bar, apparently pours about 25% of SF's total consumption of it! It tastes...completely different from everything else I've ever had. And I fail at words to describe it really, but a few days later, I saw this Boston Globe article on Fernet, which is a good quick read. The bartender told us a lot about it, and served it to us with a ginger ale chaser, and told us to just throw the first shot back to see if we liked it. Tasty! We each had two and then headed on, almost ready for dinner. This picture below isn't of the booze, because we didn't take one, but just of some of the bottles the bar goes through every month.

We walked another few blocks, and ended up outside what looked like a small, family run Thai restaurant. Dan told me he planned to order an item here to go, and then we could take it near where we would be eating dinner and eat it as an appetizer. Good planning.

Appetizer: Papaya salad with salty crab from Sai Jai Thai (#27)

Ok, when he told me what he was ordering, I was psyched. I love love love papaya salad, and I love crab. How could this possibly go wrong? Knowing that I like spicy, but simply can't usually handle it, Dan even ordered it medium spicy so I could enjoy it. And this is where things went wrong. We took the salad down to the waterfront, opened it up and...my eyes watered from smelling it. I had one bite, basically started crying from the spice and couldn't eat anymore. Dan had maybe 3 bites, and then had to go beg for water from a nearby restaurant, who totally turned him down. Seriously, I tasted spice anytime I coughed for the next half hour. We think we may try again, after telling them NO spice because I bet it is really good. (We did bring it home and Dan tried again a couple of days later...he got through half and then drank all the milk we had and 4 glasses of water)

So, Dan told me then that we had to get to our dinner reservation at 5:30, but that we had to hurry through because we had to be somewhere else at 7. I was starting to worry about getting way too full...but I shouldn't have worried.

Dinner: Shaking Beef from the Slanted Door (#7)

This restaurant is in the Ferry Building, right on the water by the Bay Bridge. It has been on my list of restaurants to try for a long time, and is currently one of the "places to go" in SF. Dan apparently had to call a few times and talk them into giving us a reservation, since they were all booked up, but he managed and we got one for right when they opened for dinner. We had a few different dishes but the highlights were the ones in the picture below - squash rice cakes and shaking beef. The squash was pureed, combined with rice, fried, covered with fresh coconut. Could have had them for dessert. The shaking beef was a beef and vegetables dish, in lime sauce with rice. Yummo.

So, because we had gotten there early, we were out of the restaurant in plenty of time, and we started walking a few blocks to wherever we had to be at 7 PM. Like I said, I was thinking we were off to eat still more, but I was wrong.

Dessert: "The Bathing Ritual"

Dan had found this awhile before my birthday and shown it to me, but I never thought we'd actually go do it. Basically, the spa is on the top floor of a hotel, and they have huge tubs that are outdoors on a balcony. There is plenty of cover, if you choose to undress to get in, but when you're in the tub, you can see the sky above you. The tubs are Infinity tubs, so you can completely fill them, and water just spills over the side, and refill on their own (like Infinity pools). oh. my. gawd. They are amazing. See picture in previous post.

Happy Birthday to me.

Her Birthday from His POV

What do you get a foodie for her birthday? If you said dinner, you'd be wrong. At some point a few years ago, birthday dinner turned into a week of dinners to celebrate.

She is constantly reading food blogs, aware of the newest restaurants, and even knows the names of top chefs in not just San Francisco, but the entire Bay Area. People, she knows where Chez Panisse gets their eggs from! No pressure or anything on my part to surprise and impress.

Fortunately, there's this list of the 100 best food items in San Francisco. It's on our fridge in fact. It's not even a list of the 100 best restaurants; no no, 100 of the best specific individual menu items at 100 different restaurants - the fries at one place, but the burger at another.

I planned a food tour of SF for the entire day, from brunch to dinner. 5 dishes off the list, an entire day of eating, and a special extra surprise to end the night. I was very conscious that we could easily overeat too soon and not make it through the whole day. It was actually a thrilling logistical challenge to spread all the food out, plan all the travel on public transportation, and still ensure we could make our reservations throughout the day. I mapped out a route, had timetables, made contingency plans... we're pros here and ready to do food tours and vacation planning for hire or all of our guests when you visit.

I'll leave you with a teaser and let her discuss the food, but there's a reason these items are on the list. They were delicious!!! (Ok, one did got a bit awry, but it sounded so good.) Brunch, snack in the park, drinks over football, appetizer outside by the bay, and dinner on the pier in time for the sunset.

And a special surprise to relax after all that food.

Maize Maze

I think KK has been boycotting writing until I take the time to contribute more. For all you loyal followers, we've clearly been way behind in our posts... sorry about that. We have a lot to catch up on!

Now that it is December, let's talk about Halloween! It is always a fun time for us, mainly because we pretend everybody partying in their crazy costumes are all out celebrating KK's birthday. I found something we'd totally

never normally do, so naturally I wanted to do it. She was of course a little hesitant of my crazy idea. A gigantic maze of corn! C'mon, how cool is that!?!?

It was actually really amazing to walk through. The corn is so high, you really can't see anything else, but you hear other people's voices and lots of screaming little kids. OK, perhaps that does sound a bit scary. It took us a solid hour to wind our way through the whole thing. Granted we made some purposeful wrong turns in the beginning to get good and lost. They stay open so you can do the maze at night too... guess what we're doing next year!?!

Just to give you an idea... this was their maze in 2006. To give you some sense of scale, those things that look like bushes at the bottom are actually trees.

A quick game of hide and go seek.

An overlook bridge built into the maze.

Meow?

City Walk: Potrero Hill

Another day, another city walk post. This area of San Francisco is called Potrero Hill, which is south of the downtown area of SF, and is a bit more industrial than other walks we've been on. It is also a really tight knit residential community, and supposedly where the "up and coming" folks in SF want to live. It is pretty obvious that if you want to live on the top of the hill, your income better be up as well.

A fun fact about the neighborhood is that is was entirely unscathed after the 1906 earthquake and fire, so big numbers of people who lived in the city at the time migrated here. Tent cities popped up, and many people never left. So, this neighborhood's history is really ethnically diverse, where other areas tend to be more homogeneous in background.

This building used to be a recycling center, but is now an office building, and also holds a culinary institute. When the offices were built, this feature on the ground level was added to "give historic perspective"

Me on a colorful bench created by the residents of course, in the mini park at the very top of the hill (300+ feet).

A shot of Vermont Street, which is actually the windiest street in the country. It's just much harder to get to and not nearly as pretty as Lombard.

One of the bonuses of living in the Bay Area - this community garden is on a residential street, which takes up at a lot that could hold a single family home. Where else would a garden hold more precedence than another house?

Views, views, views!

Our starting and ending point. A compass rose made of....beans?

Congratulations v.12

A bit of a belated welcome to Madeline Alayne Foster! She was born on October 17, weighed 5 lbs, 1 oz and was 18 inches long. She's home now with Meredith, Geoff, Chloe and Delilah. This is her Halloween look. Hopefully we'll get to meet her soon :)

Highlights of home

So after the Gorge trip, and working a couple of weeks, I headed back to the East Coast for a week. Dan didn't come with, because when we were making plans, we were unsure about his work stuffs. It ended up being a good thing - he got called for some interviews while I was away! Funny how it all works out.

Anyhow, my main reason for coming home was to celebrate my grandma's birthday, which the whole family came in for. We all stayed for a couple of nights, hung out at my aunt's house, watched some football, went to church and a very fancy dinner. I didn't even know they had fancy dinner spots in Johnstown, but they do! Where I ordered a prime rib side (like surf n' turf) and they brought me a prime rib the size of two people's heads. Seriously. AND, my cousin Megan's boyfriend, of two months, came to everything! Met the whole family (which as many of you know, is kind of overwhelming with my family), came to the fancy dinner AND brought my grandma flowers. It was so cute. He's a keeper.

But overall, my grandma had a great time and didn't have to make one single meal or do a bit of cleanup. Successful weekend.

Other exciting happenings:

I got to visit with Kelley, Laura and the boys for a few hours. They are SO BIG. Not in a "what are you feeding them?!?!" way, just in a "gosh, kids grow so fast!" way. We opened the door and they crawled (!) over to me, and I had to lay down. They are easily the cutest, most adorable, happiest, want to squeeze them babies ever.

Got down to Blacksburg to visit for a couple of days to do lots of buying Tech gear, driving around and exclaiming at new buildings, reading at the river and such. So relaxing. Blacksburg in the fall is wonderful. I stayed with Tony who has the best dog ever (second to Parker and Cosmo, obviously). Anddddddddd she sort of loves me.

Met Lily, Chris and Holly's daughter. She is also a ridiculously happy baby. Except in the car seat, but whatever, no one's perfect. Most of the time, she giggles and smiles at everyone and has smooshable cheeks. It's pretty great.

Pacific Northwest: Miscellaneous

While we drove all the way up to Washington primarily for concerts, we did manage to do some other stuff too.

In between the second and third shows, we took a side trip to Idaho. Because...when the heck else would we ever be in Idaho? Granted, we didn't get very far inside the border, but we visited a really cute lake/resort type town (who knew they had them in Idaho??), went to lunch, took pictures for proof, and then left. Idaho, off the list. No, we did not have a single potato at lunch. But the people were very nice.

On the way back from Idaho, we stopped in Spokane, because we wanted to go on the ride! Spokane has some pretty awesome waterfalls running right through their downtown area, and they've figured out how to profit off of them - the Spokane Falls Skyride. It's basically the same as the skyrides you see at amusement parks, when you want to get from one end of the park to the other. So you get a really nice view of the waterfalls, up and close and personal like.

Spokane also happened to be having a fair when we rolled into town. Who doesn't love a fair? Or fair food?? I was all excited to have funnel cake, or crepes, or whatever, when two girls walked by with strawberries, dipped in chocolate, on a stick. It was AMAZING. It took us a really long time to find the booth - named the "Shishkashack" for their "Shishkaberries." You can get them dipped in chocolate, chocolate with sprinkles, nuts, oreos. Whatever, I'm just hoping they get another cart and come live in Berkeley outside my apartment. They were amazing. Dan got dark chocolate with white chocolate swirls, named, I am not making this up, the "Halle Berry." I have a picture of it, but it's not as sexy as this picture of me with my oreo berries. hawt.

After the concerts were over (sad), we left Washington, only to have hundreds of miles to go before we actually got home. But as I mentioned before, we stop at every possible attraction, or scenic overlook.

Exhibit A: Scenic overlooking the Columbia River

Exhibit B: Multnomah Falls

These falls are the second highest year round waterfall in the US - 620 feet high. (I'm so glad I remember to get pamphlets so I can report these facts back later to you). The bridge (the historic Benson Bridge) was first built in 1914.

So yeah, Pacific Northwest, pretty awesome. Don't tell Dan, but I'm already planning our trip back next year.