keeping busy

With the arrival of Steve's parents on June 8th, things got busier. We started off the new week that Saturday with a visit to the Ferry Building farmers market—one of the more memorable things we did with Bruce and Bonnie the year before. Like last time, the four of us went over to the Ferry Building around 10:30am and waded through the crowds to buy some things for our lunch, which we ate at home. Unlike last time, I actually remembered to take a picture of our spread before we started eating. We had goat cheese, white cheddar (not pictured), meat sticks, bread, pate, roasted almonds, Queen Anne and Bing cherries, strawberries, nectarines, and pluots. I love this kind of meal, especially when the fruit is good like this. And I don't hate our kitchen table in this shot as much as I usually do! (I wish I could nudge the container of strawberries down a bit, though.)

162/365 indoor picnic

I took more food pictures on Sunday at lunch, but it was just Steve and me that day. At my request, Steve made an Indian Carrot Salad from Jamie at Home. It was certainly pretty, but the recipe could have used some adjustments. The "spicy" ground lamb wasn't very spicy or particularly Indian-flavored; it needed some more spices and some onions or something to round out the flavors. The salad was also kind of difficult to eat, with the long slices raw of carrots. Despite those things, it wasn't a complete failure. It just wasn't as good as the Roast Carrot Salad or the Lamb Kofta Kebabs.

163/365 indian carrot salad

On Monday, Bruce and Bonnie started to help me with the sanding and plaster repair work in the hallway. It was the last main part of the house that still hadn't been painted. (The entry stairway, utility room, and half bath are a bit lower on the to-do list.) I had done some sanding around a few of the doors earlier in the year, but I had run out of steam pretty quickly. Anyway, Bruce got to work fixing the many cracks in the plaster walls, while Bonnie and I sanded more of the door trim. Since my day was filled with dust, I didn't take any (acceptable) pictures until after dinner. We all went to SouthEnd for burgers, and we saw a few of the neighborhood cats on the way back.

164/365 kitty-palooza

Steve and I had tickets to see Tales of the City at ACT on Tuesday night, so we went out to dinner at Fifth Floor before the show. I had been wanting to try the place, since it had gotten good reviews after switching chefs. The new chef used to be at Chez Papa Resto, and we had liked his food there. It turned out, we liked his food even more at Fifth Floor. The menu was divided into options for three courses; so we shared two first courses, one second, one third, and a dessert. (That was more than enough.) Everything was fabulous, but the beet salad with its various flavors and temperatures was one of my favorites. For dessert, the almond beignets with cherry jam were a very close second, but the beet salad was more colorful and innovative.

165/365 fifth floor beets

We had another night out on Wednesday, when we went to see Stephen Sondheim's Company at the Embarcadero movie theater. This was the production with Neil Patrick Harris, Stephen Colbert, Patti LuPone, Christina Hendricks, etc., along with the NY Philharmonic. It was great, and it was nice to see a really well written—and well acted—musical. (I felt that Tales of the City the night before was in need of some more work.) Since movies aren't very good for photo ops, I took a picture of dinner again. Or rather, I took a picture of waiting for dinner to arrive. We ate at Mijita in the Ferry Building and sat outside, watching the people and the ferries.

166/365 el venado

We were back to work on the house for a full day on Thursday, having taken Tuesday off and only working in the morning on Wednesday. Before the parents arrived for the day, I took a picture of the hallway from the top of the stairs. We'll call it a "before" picture, even though some work had already been done. As you can see, that's a lot of doorways to sand, and 1.5 doorways on each side aren't even visible in the foreground here.

167/365 before

Friday's picture also ended up being taken before the parents arrived for the day. (This time, they came just for the afternoon to work.) Steve had made some pickles out of the little multicolored farmers market carrots, so I just got those out and shot some of the purple ones. We ended up eating them with roast beef sandwiches the next week, but they would have been good with our farmers market picnic the previous Saturday.

168/365 carrot pickles

End of week 24. Moving right along...