a return to productivity

It seems the more productive I am lately, the less exciting my pictures are. Thankfully, week 21 featured a mix of productivity and decent pictures...

First, a Sunday crumble. Cherries were just starting to appear at the markets in late May, so we finally got around to making the cherry almond crumble that I had bookmarked last year. And to go with it, we decided on an almond ice cream from the Bi-Rite Creamery book. Technically, the recipe is for cherry almond ice cream, but I figured there would be plenty of cherries in the crumble already. In the end, the ice cream was thick and intensely almondy. It clearly needed the cherries in it if it was going to stand alone. It went fine with the crumble, though, adding that creamy-sweet element to break up the tart fruit flavor. My favorite ice cream and crumble combination is still peaches, nectarines, and plums (and maybe a few blackberries) with nectarine bourbon ice cream, but this was a good one to start off stone fruit season.

141/366 cherry almond crumble

I was much less creative on Monday. All I could think of to shoot was the last of the two peaches we had gotten at Bi-Rite on Saturday. I ate one that day for breakfast and the other the next day. Not very exciting as a photo, but I was pretty excited to eat peaches again. (I'll be more excited when there are nectarines...)

142/366 what a peach

Tuesday was one of those days when I walked over the hill to Noe Valley to run some errands. This time, it was a cart full of pillows outside an antique store that caught my eye.

143/366 the pillow cart

Next, Wednesday morning was devoted to the delivery of our brand new desk! This is the one we picked out and purchased from Room & Board about 10 days before, on Mother's Day. Now, it sits in the dining room, waiting for Steve's computer to make the move from the office. (The flowers were from the closing performances I played for 13 on Sunday.) While it wasn't cheap, the desk fulfills Steve's requirement of having a keyboard tray at the right height—the front of the drawer flips down—and my requirement of not being ugly. It's not quite the same shade of wood as our kitchen cabinets, but it's close; and the stainless steel matches our kitchen appliances. The only downside is that there's not a lot of storage, aside from the keyboard drawer. We'll have to keep more things in our closets, which at least means that they'll be out of sight and out of reach of little hands. And I was especially glad to find out the following Saturday that the placement didn't interfere too much with my weekly pictures against the wall to the left.

144/366 new desk

On Thursday, I met Steve, Dan, Rob, Traci, and Carmen (with Elsa) at the Ferry Building for lunch. Rob and Traci had been talking up the porchetta sandwiches from the Roli Roti truck for quite a while, so it was clearly time that we all tried them. As promised, the sandwich was quite good. The mix of herby pork, caramelized onions, and arugula was great with the fresh bread. But it was such a big sandwich that I ended up eating only half for lunch, taking the rest home with me. It made a good—but again, filling—afternoon snack.

145/366 roli roti

Since we were at the Ferry Building that Thursday, I stopped inside for a cupcake from Miette to take home too. If I hadn't had half of my sandwich left, it probably would have been my snack that day; however, I saved it for Friday afternoon. That also meant that I had it to use as Friday's photo subject. I usually go for the gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, but the time of year called for a yellow cupcake with strawberry buttercream. I'm not a big fan of their plain buttercream frosting, but I really like their strawberry stuff. It's intensely strawberry-y. Of course, now that that craving is fulfilled for the year, I can go back to getting my favorite gingerbread cupcake next time.

146/366 cupcake time

Back to the land of productivity on Saturday... Dan, Carmen, and Elsa were out of town for Memorial Day weekend, so it was a good time for getting some heavy lifting done without worrying about waking a napping child downstairs. The goal for the weekend was to move the IKEA bookshelves from the office/nursery to their new locations around the house. We actually only got one done on Saturday, though: one of the bigger shelves, which we transferred to the living room. It replaced some more utilitarian-looking IKEA shelves that were there before, holding DVDs. That shelf got moved to the utility room to get loaded with construction-type stuff later, and I reloaded the living room shelf with DVDs, our Blurb books, and some of the prettier cookbooks.

I still haven't decided whether the ice cube lamp is staying on that second shelf... I don't particularly like the cord hanging down, and it's most likely too much trouble to try to punch a hole in the back of the shelf to thread it through. It might have to find a new home somewhere else.

147/366 the saturday project

Stay tuned for even more productivity in week 22! (baby steps...)