Navi has a mustache!

This is a bad photograph, but I found this really awesome chew toy for Navi the other day at the petstore! It is a black kong toy, and you can stick a little treat inside to drive dogs extra crazy. The funny thing is there is a mustache attached to the ball, so when the dogs are holding it in their mouth it looks like they have a mustache! How silly!

Kites!

Today we took Navi to the beach, and it was so windy we decided to see if we could fly the kite! Navi was a real champ with fetching today, and she chased a big log that Tim threw into the water.

We walked her around the entire peninsula at the beach, and then got the kite out. I was the first to fly it! This is our new quad-line kite, and its very hard to fly! We crash it quite often. I'm not yet very good, but I can sometimes get it to spin...the hard part is stopping the spin before it goes out of control and crashes.


Timmy is much better than I am.


He can make the kite swoop all over the place! He is also much better at making the kite spin and do all sorts of acrobatics. He's working on making it hover upside down!

The funny thing is when we used to fly our double line kite, Navi never was scared. We never really crashed the kite, so she never really cared where the kite was. When we got the quad line kite, we had a few moments where Navi was frantically sprinting away from the kite which was spiraling madly in midair (and making lots of noise) crashing into the ground at high speed. Navi has since figured out that the safest spot to be is by the person flying, because the kite will never crash there! She sits by the person flying and watches the kite in the air! It's very cute. We like the kite a lot - I have to practice quite a bit more though so that I don't crash it nearly as often!

EBOTS!

I've joined a soccer league! This soccer league is called EBOTS and it stands for East Bay...something or other. I don't really know, but the league focuses on providing recreational play without too much concern about who won. There are no referees, there are no dangerous plays allowed, and they encourage players of all skill levels, which is perfect for me because I'm not that great! The only hitch is that the league focuses on older people - so women have to be over 21 and men have to be over 30. I don't mind, but it's just unfortunate that Tim can't play because I think he'd really like the league. My first game was today, and it was so much fun! I can't wait to play next week. The games are full field, full length, and I played right midfield, which was a lot of fun.

casey visits, again!

I woke up today and was restless for my day to start. Casey and I decided we'd meet in downtown Berkeley at 12:30p. Then he said that he'd be there at 12:45p, and then he realized that his foot was hurting him so badly that it was taking him longer than he thought to walk from the caltrain station to the bart station, so he said he'd be there at 1p!

I had ricotta to get rid of, so I decided to try making ricotta pancakes and see what they were like. I mixed up the batter, made a pancake, and hated it! It was nice and light and fluffy, but I don't think I'm a big enough fan of ricotta on its own to like it. I tried to rub some strawberry jam on it and roll it up, but I just didn't like it enough. Tim wasn't the biggest fan, but he figured he'd eat a few. I made him some, and gave him three ricotta pancakes with strawberry jam, some pistachios, and a mango lassi for breakfast. I just had cereal, pistachios, and mango lassi.

Tim decided he'd come along to meet Casey. I wanted to take Casey sake tasting and then to pyramid to taste some beers after getting lunch in Berkeley, so I decided to drive because Casey wouldn't be able to walk that far with his foot the way it is. We took off, and Pam called Tim just as we left and decided she'd meet up with us for lunch. We all met near the Bart station, and since Casey loves to try beer when he is traveling, we decided to get lunch at Jupiter's because they brew their own beer. We found a table, sat down, and ordered three 13" pizzas. The waitress looked at us funny and said, "you know that's a lot of pizza, right?" but we weren't worried because Tim eats a good amount, and Casey eats even more than Tim. We had a great conversation while hanging out in Jupiters, and the pizza wasn't bad, either. One pizza had spinach on top, and I don't know what it was, but it just didn't taste very good. The other two pizzas were much better, and to the shock of the waitress, Tim and Casey managed to polish everything off, including a spinach-artichoke dip appetizer that was delicious!

After we'd finished eating and chatting, we paid and headed off. We all went to the sake factory because there aren't many places where you can go sake tasting! Casey and Tim each tried a different course of sake. Tim has been there so many times now and always likes it, but for Casey it was a new experience. His tasting course went from dry to sweet, and when he got to his last sake, I told him it was my favorite sake in the place. It was a plum sake that has hints of cherry and almond in it. Of course, he drank it and was astonished by how sweet it was. I don't think he liked it nearly as much as I appreciate that stuff!

After sake tasting finished, Tim, Casey and I piled back into our car and headed over to Pyramid for even more beer! We went to the bar, and chilled out for a while there. Casey got a sampler of five of the beers, Tim got a mug of some beer, and I got a mug of root beer that they had on tap! It was delicious! I liked it so much that I decided to get a growler of root beer. I like growlers, and I never have an excuse to get one because I don't drink much beer. I like the bottle a lot, and I really like root beer, and it ends up being cheaper than buying the bottles I buy. So now I have a growler and whenever I want a lot of root beer, I know exactly where to go!

We were pretty exhausted and full at this point, so we took Casey back to the Bart so he could go home and rest his foot. Tim and I headed home and I made some of his favorite cookies! He really likes chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips, and I haven't made them for a really long time. I whipped them up quickly, and then lazed around reading. We made a quick dinner that neither of us could finish, and then I pretty much passed out for the night. It was a fun day!

saturday!

I woke up around 8a today, and didn't want to get out bed because it was so warm and comfortable. I laid there staring at the ceiling enjoying the tranquil moment but then Navi started kicking in her sleep which got annoying fast and finally got me out of bed to enjoy the morning. I got in touch with Casey and his foot was hurting so badly that he wanted to stay at home and rest instead of go out and explore, so we decided to wait until Sunday to meet up again. I made the batter for buttermilk waffles, made myself a few, and sat on the couch watching episodes of Ugly Betty and relaxing. Tim finally rolled out of bed so I made him some waffles and got to planning out the day. The Berkeley website said that there was a chocolate and chalk art festival in the gourmet ghetto, so I figured we could bike through and see what it was like. I also wanted to go to the indian grocery store, the farmers market, and sur la table, so Tim and I decided we'd hook up the bike trailer to bring the dog along and bike through the gourmet ghetto to see the festival and figure it out from there. Tim finished his waffles, we laid around for a little longer, and eventually we got the bikes ready, got the dog into her trailer, and set off!

The festival was either a total flop, or it started really late in the day. The street wasn't closed off at all, and all I saw were 4 restaurant employees drawing on the sidewalk with chalk outside their restaurants. I didn't see anything to do with chocolate, so I was pretty disappointed! Tim and I decided we'd pedal over to Viks to get takeout, see if Pam wanted to grab lunch with us, and eat in the aquatic park. Pam had just woken up but she came out to join our picnic! Tim took Navi to the park to secure a table while Pam and I ordered food and bought seven cans of mango pulp. When the food was ready and my bike loaded with the mango pulp cans, we headed over to the aquatic park to meet Tim. We didn't want to walk all the way around to the road that crossed the train tracks with all the food and three cups of mango lassi, so we decided to carry our bikes over the train tracks. We had so much stuff and my bike was so heavy (because of the mango pulp) that we had to take turns walking across the tracks so that the other person could rescue the crosser if anything went wrong! Pam crossed first, I gave her the mango lassi cups, then I carried my bike across the tracks. When we wandered over to where Tim and Navi were, we were greeted by a very excited dog that smelled absolutely disgusting. Stinky sat under the table while we all enjoyed our delicious indian takeout on a beautiful day. After we finished eating, we sat around chatting for a while and somehow seasonal allergies came up. Pam said that if you eat raw, unfiltered local honey, since you are eating the pollen that you are around, your body learns to stop attacking that pollen and your allergy symptoms go away. You can pick up local raw, unfiltered honey at the farmers market, so I decided to try to pick some up. We headed over to sur la table first to get some tart dishes for something I wanted to try baking, and then Tim decided that he wanted to bike Stinky to the beach so that he could make her swim in less smelly water so we wouldn't have to give her a bath. He headed off, and Pam and I headed to downtown Berkeley to visit the farmers market.

The farmers market was just about to close, and the man who has a honey booth hadn't come that day. Pam picked up some apple cider and ice cream, and we both parted ways and went home. We still had plans to make pistachio tartlets with creme fraiche whipped cream and strawberries, raspberries, and pistachios on top, so we decided we'd meet up a little bit later since she needed to put her ice cream in the freezer.

I pedaled home and baked in the sun while climbing the hill home. When I got home, I think I downed a full liter of cool water. Tim and Navi hadn't gotten home yet, but I wasn't worried. I wrote up a list of the ingredients I would need for dinner (chicken in a white wine sauce with broccolini and salad) and for dessert. I also wanted to go to Target because they recently renovated to have a full grocery section and I was curious to see what it was like. Pam and I decided we'd meet at Target, and just before I left, Timmy got home upset because he had lost his glasses at the beach. He was too upset about it to be able to communicate clearly what had happened, so I just continued on my way and figured I'd hear about it later.

Pam and I ended up having to go to Target, Trader Joes, Lucky, and Andronicos to get everything we needed. The "grocery" section of Target had a few of the essentials that we needed, but you can't expect Target to have fancy produce and things like creme fraiche. I had looked for creme fraiche at Andronicos sometime in the past week and couldn't find any, so I knew I'd have to go to Trader Joes for that. We headed there after Target and got most of the ingredients, but of course we couldn't find broccolini. Lucky is right next to Trader Joes, so we tried to find broccolini there, but we had no such luck. I had seen broccolini at Andronicos, so we ended up heading there on the way home to pick some up. We finally got home with all of our ingredients and I started making dinner because I knew Tim might want to go to a party in San Francisco, and I wanted dinner ready before he left. He ended up not going, so it didn't matter. The dough for the pistachio tartlets needed to chill for a while before it could be baked, so Pam got started on that while I made dinner.

Dinner was so-so. I really, really liked the white wine sauce, but the chicken breasts that I used were really thick, so the texture was a little iffy because you basically fry the chicken in the pan until it is completely cooked. I really need to get a wooden mallet so that I can pound my chicken to be thinner. I think I will make this dinner again sometime and pound the chicken breasts to be pretty thin. I think it will be delicious and tender then! The sauce was really great, so I think I would make buttered noodles with this dinner in the future because they would taste great with the sauce.

Dessert was delicious, but it did not go as planned. We didn't get enough pistachios into the tart dough, so it was too sticky. We couldn't roll it out and put it into the tartlet tins, so we ended up molding it into the tins by hand. It wasn't too pretty, but it got the dough into the tins. We accidentally misread the temperature in the recipe, and baked the tartlet tins too high. When Pam told me the temperature was 475, I wondered to myself, wow, that seems kind of high. I'd never really made a tart, though, and sometimes you bake pizza at 450 degrees, so I figured maybe I didn't know enough to doubt the temperature. Well, 10 minutes later, our noses told us that something wasn't cooking very nicely and whoops, the tart crusts were ruined! I figured that the whole idea of the creme fraiche on top of tart dough with strawberries and raspberries on top was similar enough to strawberry shortcake, so I decided to quickly whip up some buttermilk biscuits. Those came together and were baked quickly because I make them so often, and then we enjoyed those piping hot covered in strawberries, raspberries, and creme fraiche whipped cream. Yummy! I've never used creme fraiche before, and I thought it added a really nice touch! I might try to use it in a cake sometime and see what I think!

After this, we were all pretty pooped, so Pam headed home and I headed to bed with a good book.

casey visits!

Casey is visiting his mother in San Francisco for two weeks and today he came over to East Bay to spend some time with us! We picked him up at the Bart station, and decided to head over to the beach to play with the dog. Tim was throwing a little block of wood for Navi to fetch in the water, and after a while, Navi dropped the piece of wood at Casey's feet instead of Tim's. Casey picked it up and launched it into the water, and Navi looked at it and decided that she didn't want to go after it! Tim threw another piece of wood into the water, and she ran to fetch it. After she got it, she decided that she did want the piece of wood that Casey threw, after all. So she paddled over, took a few minutes to decide which piece to bring back, and came back with the original block of wood. Casey decided that his throws weren't good enough for Navi, and let Tim play with her instead. After a while, Casey took another throw that Navi didn't snub, and we decided to leave while we were ahead!

After playing with the dog at the beach, we piled into the car with our wet, stinky dog and headed over to Solano Ave to grab some ice cream and walk around. I got a delicious cup of vanilla and chocolate frozen yogurt swirl with chocolate sprinkles and in my excitement for ice cream, I never registered what Casey got. I'm sure it was delicious, anyway. After we'd walked around for a while, we turned our minds to figuring out what we should have for dinner. We considered burritos, but then I started talking about our trip to China, and how when we got back from China I was dying for a very american meal and made Tim drive me to in-n-out for hamburgers! This got me discussing the book I had read that detailed the history of in-n-out and after a long spiel, we decided that we'd get in-n-out for dinner because Casey had never eaten there before. It's something you just have to do while you're in California! We piled back into the car, and drove to the nearest in-n-out. When we arrived, I went to order for the three of us and badly confused the cashier, who in turn badly confused me. It wasn't too big of a deal though because the cashier was really friendly and managed to get the order perfect, somehow! So a few minutes later, Casey and I emerged from the building with our food and found Tim and Navi at an outdoor table and had ourselves a picnic. It was yummy!

At this point, we were all about to fall into a food coma, so we dropped Casey off at the Bart station, and headed home for the night.

swimming!

I haven't been swimming in a while because of the trip to China, so even though I wasn't terribly in the mood to swim, I decided to meet up with Jordan for a workout. Timmy decided to meet up with us. We got to the pool around 6p, and started swimming. Jordan showed up late, and by that time, I had already swum 900 yards. 900 yards isn't very much, but since I hadn't wanted to swim too much, it was kind of depressing to already have 900 yards under my belt when Jordan showed up. Timmy decided to leave, and asked me if I wanted to grab dinner. He had to go to the library, so we decided that Jordan and I would swim for 30 more minutes and then meet Tim to grab dinner somewhere on Telegraph Ave. Jordan and I did some workout for 25 more minutes or so, and even though it was a short workout, she could tell that my heart wasn't terribly into it. We got out of the pool, changed, and met up with Tim and walked to a nearby indian restaurant. The food was good, and the conversation was great. We had a lot of fun! When we walked out of the restaurant with happy tummies, we saw these two guys sawing through a bike lock, which was a little suspicious. We figured that if it was our bike, we'd rather have the cops investigate us for cutting a bike lock than have our bike stolen, so Jordan called the campus safety. The guys managed to cut through the lock before the police came, so we all figured the police would just forget about it...but they kept Jordan on the phone and all of a sudden as we were walking, these four policemen come out from nowhere and stop the two guys. They sat them down on the curb, took a witness account from Jordan, and figured out the situation. It turned out that someone had put an additional lock onto the kid's bike in order to steal it later, and that the bike was truly his. Oops. I always think it's amazing how many people will just walk past someone sawing through a bike lock, though, so I'm glad Jordan called campus safety even though it turned out that it was their bike all along.