spring, nearly sprung

Phew. March blogging is finally done, so I can move on to April. For some reason, I just wasn't feeling it for most of March. ("It" being the pictures I was taking.) A lot of that probably had to do with the weather, which was pretty much the winter that we hadn't gotten during the actual winter months. But April brought more springy weather and a renewed motivation to try harder with my daily pictures. During week 14, in short, things were looking up.

Steve had picked up a huge bag of pea shoots at the farmers market the week before—the perfect garnish for a spring dish. In an attempt to use more than just a couple of the pea shoots, I did a search for recipes and found a Pea Shoot and Shrimp Risotto. That ended up being lunch on Sunday. It was good, but I think my favorite part was the actually the shrimp sauteed with garlic.

92/366 pea shoot & shrimp risotto

While I would have preferred to take my monthly calendar picture on April 1st, Sunday was already covered with the food photo. That meant the calendar shot was pushed to Monday, which gave me more time to think of ideas for backgrounds anyway. I settled on using the green chairs in the dining room—inherited from Carmen & Dan—to bring out the springy green in the calendar's picture.

93/366 april

I wasn't feeling very ambitious on Tuesday, but I made myself at least go for a walk around the block to look for pictures. I figured I would go back to the alley nearby, where I had noticed an interesting mural a couple days before; that would be an easy subject. (I had recently learned from Dan that the neighborhood cat Aroara often lurked on that street, and we had seen her there on Saturday when I first saw the mural.) So there I was, taking pictures of the mice-on-a-plane art, when Aroara automagically appeared. Obviously, I moved on from taking pictures of the mural and took some pictures of the cat.

94/366 aroara's alley

Wednesday's big event was dinner and a show. The show was The Caretaker—a rare straight play in our season of musicals. I must say I'm not a huge fan of the cerebral plays where not much happens. I definitely prefer musicals. As a result, dinner at Zero Zero ended up being the star of the night; it was certainly more picturesque anyway. In fact we got the best table, by the window, which was perfect for photographing our very seasonal dishes: little shell pasta with peas and mushrooms (and black truffle butter!) and a "Stockton" pizza. The pizza was my favorite, so that's what ended up being the picture of the day. (Click through at the caption if you're wondering what the toppings were.) We followed it with some vanilla soft serve topped with cherries, but I didn't bother with pictures of that for some reason.

95/366 the stockton

I went to Glen Park on Thursday afternoon, in search of something I had seen at a gift shop there before. On this trip, I decided to save some time and take BART to the neighborhood. I walked back via Church Street, though, since Glen Park isn't much for pictures. I ended up with a shot of a liederhosen-wearing chocolate bunny in the window of the German specialties store. After all, Easter was coming, and nothing says Easter like a liederhosen-wearing chocolate bunny.

96/366 liederhosen bunny

Good Friday was next, and Steve had the day off, unlike in previous years. In honor of the occasion, we went out for lunch at Mission Cheese. Two grilled cheese sandwiches later, we left happily full and with a few nice pictures on the ol' memory card. I think this was the most pleased I've been with my pictures from there. I got a good shot of the bar, the bussing station with some ranunculus flowers, and the one below of Steve's sandwich.

97/366 good friday

I wasn't quite so lucky on Saturday. Steve and I went to the Ferry Building farmers market, in search of spring produce like peas and strawberries. Unfortunately, those were still a couple weeks away. We also struck out with our plan for Easter dinner. Steve was going to get a rabbit and prepare it porchetta-style, but everyone else had already bought all the rabbits at the Ferry Building and at Drewes Brothers. When that plan fell through, we ended up getting a panchetta-wrapped pork tenderloin from the Fatted Calf stand instead. At least I was able to get a couple pictures of some produce at the market, even if it wasn't the produce we were looking for. (Move along.)

98/366 radishes