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As a belated birthday gift, my friend Chad gave me an AeroGarden! It is a bit hokey, and gimmicky, but i embrace that! I am a sucker for kits. Anything in a kit really – all the camping food with the packets and small containers, first aid kits, sewing kits, even the cheese and crackers that come with the little red spreading stick. OOh, and those tuna cracker kits with the mini mayo!

The cute little AeroGarden video

Anyway back to my Gourmet Herb Garden… Within a few days i had little sproutlets.
These photos are from about 2 weeks in (taken last night):

Thank You Chad! 😎

“When Good Housekeeping analyzed sample sheets, it found manufacturers exaggerating their thread count by three to five times. They found one sheet that was labeled as having a 1,500 thread count, but it actually only had 300 threads per square inch.”

ABC News

Megan came over and we made some impromptu pina coladas. YUM!!!
that coconut creme stuff is good. and instead of pineapple juice we used fresh pineapple and made the drinks in a food processor.

more bottles over the fence. this time 12 pack sized. and a broken tree branch 8-(

dinner last night. our cupboard is bare. bare bare. so this is one of those meals created from nothing. something from nothing i like to say.

indian flavors. i made cous cous with some fresh cilantro sprinkled in. and potato, corn fritters with curry and cumin and fennel flavors. and a mint/cilantro chutney.

with dinner we had a very nice Cabernet S. that our dear ol’ friend Wes Hagen of Clos Pepe Vineyards made a while back. He is generally a Pinot Noir guy, so i was eager to try his Cab.

Dallas and i recently found Circolo on a hunt for neighborhood cocktails. We had been a couple times for drinks (i am a fan of their Key Lime Martini), and this time we decided to try out their dinner.

We started with the Circolo Ceviche Duet. Pretty tasty. I really enjoyed the fried yuka chips that went with it.

I ordered:
Lemon Grass Roasted Chicken
tequila reduction, corn bread and white onion relish, chayote dumpling.

I did not really get into my entree. When it arrived all I could see on the plate was chicken and more chicken. There were 3 pieces total. A huge thick breast, a leg, and a thigh – all in all, 1/2 chicken! holy cow! i was overwhelmed by my plate before i even started. underneath i found the extras – which i was unable to identify. it looked just like thanksgiving stuffing. Not too bad, but a little soft and bready, and not much in the way of offsetting the dry chicken. there was a sauce, which was good, but very little of it – not enough to make the chicken seem moist. Also there was no sign of a vegetable anywhere. the plate was all about the chicken. with so much of a focus on the chicken, i would have liked to see a little more care go into the cooking of it. It was dry, and the skin was a bit goobly goo in places.

i’m sure we’ll go back there for cocktails, and perhaps an appetizer at the bar, but i won’t bother with dinner again. there are too many restaurants in San Francisco to give them all a second chance.

this beautiful sunny sunday seemed the perfect day to have another couple over for brunch in the garden. the day was perfect. we had fresh flowers, pate, cheese, fruit, pastries, champagne, and really good company. the four of us were hanging out around our patio table when all of a sudden from the next yard over flew a 40 oz beer bottle (with beer) and hit dallas smack on the head! it bounced off his head and shattered on the ground beside us. dallas spent a few hours in the emergency room. the police came by the house and we filed a report, but it didn’t seem like they were going to do anything at all. 8-( i guess if anything ever happens again, we have this incident on file.

it really was a bummer how the whole day got turned upside down by our stupid jerk-head neighbors.

dallas is home now. he seems mostly okay (though a bit nauseous) . earlier, at the ER, he was complaining of spotty vision and a headache. he had to get the laceration cleaned out and then stapled shut.

here is a photo of dallas staple! (he’s so hardcore!)

Our plum tree is in full bloom!

Last night Charlotte graduated from “Puppy Intermediate”. This past week she was to learn a new trick of our choice. We decided to go with the bow. She performed it with a lure to perfection! Some of the other tricks that were performed by other puppies were shake, roll over, and sit pretty.

Here are a couple pictures of Charlotte in class: