ten gifts for ten years

Para mi marido después diez años.

❤

1. paper

a card declaring my love

2. cotton

prepaid dry cleaning for four shirts

3. leather

cord tacos

4. flowers

tiny air plants

5. wood

tasting (and cocktail mixing) spoon

6. candy

xocolatl de David

7. wool/copper

copper wool for the cast iron

8. bronze*

cast pewter bird feet

9. pottery*

another coffee dripping cone for his collection**

10. tin

another tintype portrait

(his first one shown here is amazing)

❤

*loosely interpreted

**learn David's drip coffee method here

round up: meanwhile, back at the ranch

School starts soooooon. I'm mortified about how fast this summer has flown by. Two weeks of camp plus two and a half weeks of (wonderous) vacation doesn't leave much time in between to be as lazy as I'd like us to be. We live in a bubble, provided by David and created by me, and the thought of Stella going back to school in three weeks brings tears to my eyes whenever I think of it. We are SO spoiled, I know. We've been doing what we do best over the last two weeks: nothing.

Breakfast.

Fort.

Lunch.

Art.

Dinner, sliced and roasted.

The first night of Stella and my new tradition, midnight snack + giggles. ♥

I added palpable space to our small kitchen by moving the booze. Who knew?

A day at the California Academy of Sciences. Here they are there a little over a year ago. They have grown!

Twenty nine day old baby ostrich. Wow!

After seeing Brave. How beautiful.

He's a toy robot.

I struggle all the time with the fact I'm not bringing in any money, or really living a modern grown-up woman's life at all, and that I am happy as a clam here all day while David is commuting and working his ass off. It's the best for our kids, it's certainly the best for ME, but is it the best for all of us in the long run? It's a big deal. I don't have a single minute of regret, except for David's commute, but I wonder if one day I will. I wonder why I find it so easy be lying on the floor with the kids all day, playing this or that. What is this? Sometimes I seriously wonder if I am some strange woman-child, and if people see me that way. I bought the book Maternal Desire by Daphne de Marneffe years ago to try to sort through (and justify) some of these feelings, but I was always too busy to read it. Sometimes to assuage my guilt over my good fortune I remind myself that I worked SO hard and SO long for very little for a very long time, and that right up until Oliver was born I was still pulling all-nighters. Taking care of these two kids has been the biggest respite I could've hoped for. Not really having to use my head is a very peaceful place to be.

I can't really imagine feeling bad about having taken complete advantage of these last three years to be with these two, and to grow myself exponentially. But what if, years down the road, we end up with less to give Oliver and Stella than we would've liked, because I stayed home. It's really hard to see what hindsight will look like then. It's a tough one. I am (we are, really) looking for ways to start to tip the scales a bit. It's been a GREAT ride, but like I've said before, it's probably time for me to put my big girl pants back on and just NEVER forget how lucky I have been. Too bad I can't get my thighs into ANY pants, at the moment.

cornbread cocktail donuts + a big anniversary

A couple-a-three things to say here.

I am the proud owner of two donut pans given to me by new friend Giselle, owner of local Rare Device (awwwwesome). I wanted them so I could make/bake donuts. Haven't gotten around to doing that yet. 

The other day on the walk home from school I asked Stella what else we could use the donut pans for. She started riffing and before you know it, I've got a new blog series called "Five New Uses For Your Donut Pans". Amazing little brain of hers. 

I don't have time to implement them all at once, so here's the first one. Donut-shaped cornbreads. Genius. We all love the corn-shaped cornbread they serve with cocktails at a family favorite restaurant here in San Francisco, The Front Porch, and that you can also order their homemade pickles. Well, I already made homemade pickles, so tonight I put this all into action for a great little snack before dinner.

I used this recipe here, a good, flour-less cornbread recipe that is meant to be crispy. The key really is to butter the HECK out of your pans and to preheat them until the butter is bubbling/boiling so they start to crisp the batter before you even stick them in the oven. And to pour your batter thin-like. I'll get to that.

 Like I said, butter the pans well, even the hole area. These things are a little sticky

(but also resilient after being pried out). They don't crumble apart. Good deal!

 I think you can use any old cornbread recipe. My quick research found that cornbread is more authentic to some without the inclusion of flour (and with white corn meal), so I didn't include flour. And also, this one had buttermilk. I actually don't know why that's a plus, but buttermilk has never done me wrong.

 Do you see that bubbling there in the corner? That's what you want. Be careful,

the pan should be smoking hot after you've preheated it for 10 minutes or so.

 I sprinkled half of them with cayenne pepper and salt. Get creative, but skip the salt

(on top), it's not necessary for once. The heat made these extra nice to eat.

 I went for about a three-quarters of an inch of batter in each pan, plus or minus.

 Fifteen minutes later I had mixed some drinks, pulled the pickled radishes out of the fridge, and pried these treats out of the pans. It took a little work, but only one of the dozen ripped apart. Grease those pans twice! Don't they look so yummy? They were! The pickles and a bitter gin and tonic really brought the whole thing together.

Speaking of bitter, check out these tiny and uniquely shaped bottles of Sanbittér.

This stuff is wild. It's like Campari and soda, but non-alcoholic. It's sweet and

mostly bitter, and a perfect complement to this spread.

Hardcore donut enthusiasts, please take these and dump them in your Fry Baby so you can confidently call them a real donut. I know they are not!

So, the other thing I wanted to mention is that our anniversary weekend is here, and that all of our celebrations have been foiled. Stella's big end-of-the-year performance is tonight, and tomorrow we meant to spend our ONE DAY A YEAR without the kids by lining up a string of (mostly) free babysitters. Last year we spent a glorious ten hours thrifting, eating, going to the movies, and getting in and out of the car without having to fasten or unfasten a child's seatbelt. We spoke without interruption (boy, is that getting old). It was wonderful. 

Somehow that didn't work out this weekend. People have finals and business trips and weddings to go to, so we are out of luck and hoping for next weekend. It's kind of a bummer.

I did do one clever thing. It's our ninth anniversary. I looked up traditional anniversary wedding gifts, and the ninth year is pottery. Our friend Mike, who was visiting this past winter, is an amazing potter (look here!). He saw David's love of the hand dripped cup of coffee (look here!) and when he returned home created a one-of-a-kind coffee dripper, partially based on David's specifications. Coffee gear + gorgeous pottery made by a friend = awesome ninth anniversary gift. I can't wait to give it to him!

I'll leave you with this. Happy Anniversary, David. Here's to many more. I love you!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

ideas for cinco de mayo: sangrita, served two ways!

I am married to a hottie from Jalisco, a total Tapatío. He likes to have a little fuertecito every now and then. And when the days are warm, he likes to mix it up with his homemade sangrita.

I convinced mi merry marido to share his secret recipe with me, and we made a delicious spicy batch. If you like to drink a Bloody Mary, you might like this. If you're looking for a refreshing way to beat the heat, you might love this. You can either sip it with your tequila, or mix it in your beer. It can be varying levels of spicy, depending on the batch of jalapeños you get, or if you replace the vinegar with, say, chili water, as David did recently. This sangrita has a nice orange tone up front, backed by tomato, with a nice, spicy kicker.

INGREDIENTS (makes a nice sized pitcher, and a little sangrita goes a long way):

8 oz. tomato or vegetable juice

8 oz. orange juice

3-4 jalepeños

2-3 tbsp. white vinegar

juice of one lime, more or less

tequila

beer

 The ingredients. The basic recipe is one part o.j. + one part tomato juice plus one-half part a combination

of three puréed roasted jalapeños topped off with vinegar. Add a squeeze or three of lime.

Use your comal, or a cast iron skillet, to blacken all sides of the jalapeños.

 When all sides charred, take off of heat and set under a bowl to

steam out of their skins. Takes about ten minutes.

Peel and purée. Our blender is almost twenty years old, so we don't get

much of a puree until later when there are more liquids in the blender.

 This is three roasted, peeled and "puréed" jalapeños in a half cup measuring cup.

Top this off with the vinegar to make a full half cup. Again, what is shown here
is not puréed, due to our inefficient blender, but your jalapeños should be well
puréed at this point!

Put the orange and tomato juices, the jalapeño/vinegar mix, and a squeeze or two of lime juice into the blender, and REALLY purée. Pop that back in the refrigerator to chill.

When you're ready to drink, here's what you do. First, beer.

 Assembly your bar: Tecate tall boy(s), limes, shot glass, pint glass, sea or rock salt, pitcher of sangrita.

Wet rim of glass with lime and salt the rim. Fill a shot glass with sangrita.

 Fill bottom quarter of pint glass with beer. Add entire shot of sangrita. Finish filling glass with beer.

 Garnish with a lime wedge (or maybe a pickled jalapeño).  Drink it up while it's nice and cold!

And now the tequila version. Real simple.

 Procure bottle of tequila and pitcher of sangrita.

 Pour a nice hefty shot of each.

Sip away! Remember, sip sangrita first, then tequila. And repeat!

I'm working up several Cinco de Mayo ideas this week. Check back and click here to see them all. Salud!

bar crudo again

crudo:

a raw fish dish dressed with olive oil, sea salt, and citrus juice, and sometimes vinegar.

My mom and aunt still being in town, David and I got out Saturday night to Bar Crudo. It's a two and a half block walk from home, and it is our favorite (well, there's NOPA, too, but NOPA had a two hour wait by the time we got there). We eat at Bar Crudo whenever we can. From the food to the wine to the service (like NOPA) it never disappoints. 

Ono w/ grapefruit, jalepeño relish, micro cilantro, black lava salt (L); arctic char (this is incredible) w/horseradish crème fraiche, wasabi tobiko, dill (R).

Seriously. Eat as much of the arctic char as you can.

Northwestern oysters up next.

This is an ever-evolving menu. Our jaws dropped when we saw bone marrow on the menu. We ended up eating two orders of the delicious stuff. David grew up eating marrow, and the first time I tried it, years ago, I was sold. So delicious.

The gigantic beer list.

 Prawns. Look what's lurking in the background. Liquid crack!

 This clam chowder is THE BEST CHOWDER and possibly THE BEST FOOD I've ever tasted. You won't understand until you try it. I grew up in New Hampshire. I know all things clam chowder. But this, this is it.

We were such amazing guests, apparently, that our wonderful server comped our dessert. A tray of chocolates and two glasses of Moscato. We did a good job on it.

I would've loved to show you my new Stop Staring dress I wore on our date from another angle, but I am just not photographing well right now. Must be something about not sleeping well or getting old, or what I really think is happening, the iPhone takes terrible photos of people! We took several photos at dinner of ourselves, and I couldn't use any of them. Here's the back, the front is even more adorable. 

What a meal! If you live in San Francisco and enjoy raw fish and great cooking, you've got to get out to Bar Crudo. It's still secret enough that you can get in on a Saturday night with a minimal wait and no reservation. It's incredible.


We are so happy to have my mother here, and the babysitting is an extra bonus. Here's what was waiting for me when we got home, of course: