Food and Love

So...I want to tell you guys about the night I got engaged. :) When I took these pictures I didn't know it was going to be the night I got engaged but I was excited to use them in this post.
It was our two-year anniversary and Mark surprised me (or tried to surprise me, but I was pretty sure about where we were going - and very happy to see when I was right!) by taking me to Chez Panisse! Any foodie in the Bay area (and many places beyond) would understand my excitement.

Okay, so here's dinner, in order:

Cherry tomatoes. All by themselves. The food here is so simple. Oh, and it's prix fixe.

Summer squash tart with dried cured olives and mesclun

A white wine the (server? sommelier? we weren't really sure!) wanted us to try and we really liked it

Pacific grouper with new potatoes, green beans, and sauce bourride

Mark's expression while eating fish, which he doesn't even normally like (this is a good expression, although it might look like he's in pain)

Grilled Wolfe Ranch quail marinated in juniper with polenta, Little Gems braised with pancetta and roasted porcini mushrooms

My view of the kitchen. This one's going on Flickr!

Very happy. And full.

Cloud 8. Cloud 9 comes later :)

Cloud 8 1/2 was when we got to tour the kitchen! Too bad the quail chef's face is blurry

There were some ladies having dinner in the kitchen. They were friends of Alice's I guess, and there were no tables available, so they got special treatment :)

They were all so nice!

I guess I forgot to take a picture of dessert. It went too fast. This is coffee (specially blended for Chez Panisse by Blue Bottle) with cherries and mini biscotti)

Here's cloud 9! This picture was taken about 2 minutes after he proposed on Indian Rock, by a bunch of high schoolers who were very excited for us. :)

He put pink sapphires on the sides because pink is my favorite color :) (and yes, I painted my nails after the fact)

Hand over my heart, which this ring is connected to :)

Food sites I want to remember

http://pastoralplate.com/
The pick-up sites for this CSA are not convenient for us, but what is convenient is that I can just order whenever, I don't have to subscribe to a monthly service. So I figure if I ever know I'm going to have some free time on their next delivery day and I can drive to go pick stuff up, I can order.

http://www.zerocater.com/
Our company is so bad at ordering food. Someone always forgets to pay ahead of time and then the admin person designated for pick-up ends up having to put it on their credit card, or someone forgets to order in time, or someone couldn't figure out where to go...this place would just be so much easier.

Love them want them

http://www.lunchbots.com/

What's becoming the daily website update

These all come from Fab sales.

http://www.formeusa.com/
Totally looking into a Father's Day present from that one.


http://www.kikkerland.com/
This stuff is totally cute.


http://www.pure-fiber.com/
Mmmmm.


http://www.oplusd.com/
I love me some witty stationery.


http://lemonlegwear.bigcartel.com/
I'm kind of excited about the knee highs.


Okay I should probably stop now. :)

Exciting.

I just discovered two new websites.

http://www.taskrabbit.com/

Yes, I just applied. Hopefully I'll become a TaskRabbit soon!

And:

http://www.vayable.com/

So cool! Next place I go, I'm looking into this. Well, if I'm going to one of the places they have something for. Note it, future travelers. I already sent it to my friend Sarah for her honeymoon fun.

Thank you, San Francisco Chronicle!

The day I tried to overwhelm Connor with awesomeness. It sort of worked.

My cat has been a total jerk lately, meowing all damn night or starting up early in the morning, jumping up on surfaces he's not supposed to be on, continuing the meowing all day...so pretty much we're exhausted and we kind of hate him right now. Mark said he's trying to tell himself it's training for having children. Luckily I've already been thinking that about Connor for a couple years now.
Earlier today I thought I'd try to kill him with kindness. We think he's been meowing his ass off because I let him go outside by himself a few times and now he's had a taste of freedom. I'm not going to let him do that anymore for several reasons (this meowing thing being one of them) so I thought I'd try to make the indoors more interesting. I made a trip to Pet Club and bought him:

omg it's so good

organic cat grass, which he buried his face in for about ten minutes and then promptly threw up:

didn't see that coming, did you?

(bet you've never seen a picture of cat barf in a blog before, have you? sorry. it's not so bad. it's all part of the entertainment value you get here at Discovery.)

omg it's so beautiful

a new scratcher, which, as you can see in this picture, he ignored for a while, and...(this is the big reveal)

Hex Bugs! Trust me, get one or two of these for your cat. It will be his new favorite toy. Mark got a couple for free from work a while ago but Connor ran the batteries down and I went to CVS once to see if they had them (they're those tiny little weird circular ones) and they didn't and I think we've since lost them. So I just went out and got some more. I found them at Toys 'R' Us. They're kind of expensive for cat toys but luckily they were having a buy one, get one half off sale. They also apparently sell the batteries, so now I know. Now that I look at the Toys 'R' Us website, they're two dollars cheaper there, so get them online, dudes. I paid $8.99 for ones that are $6.99 on the website. Here's another picture of Connor and his enjoyment if you aren't sold yet:

Whatever, it might not look like much, but he's having the time of his life, trust me. It wasn't fun for me when the damn thing got stuck between the bookshelf and the wall though. I thought it was a goner for a few minutes and I was just going to have to listen to it buzz until it died. I'm not gonna lie, I had a few moments of small panic before I told myself to calm down, this was not a crisis. I was able to flick it out with a drumstick, believe it or not. Like a real one, not one made out of chicken.

Speaking of chicken, I'm hungry. Where's Mark with my damn dinner?

I knew it...

 

God. It's my new favorite video.