The little things

Don't know if it's because of this little person growing inside of me but I've been noticing lots of teeny tiny things lately. Here's a sampling.

adorable colored pencils at Marwen

my first peppers!

book by my former student Samantha Serrano, now studying photo at U of I

Words

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
― Mark Twain

Hayward, WI 2010

 

 

The meal that blew my mind

Since we only had one night in San Francisco I really wanted to have a special meal somewhere. I know there are so many great restaurants in the city, it was really hard to choose. But based on where our hotel was (Union Square), I decided to make us a reservation at Sons & Daughters. I had read about this place before in Food and Wine and read really good reviews. I don't typically go for restaurants that only offer tasting menus- I usually prefer more rustic, simple food and I can be really picky:) But this place offered a vegetarian tasting menu also so just in case I didn't like the regular one, I knew I had another option. Here are both menus.

I ended up choosing the regular menu because with the exception of one course (pork belly), everything else was seafood or poultry, which I eat. I decided to give Matt my pork and try everything else. I'm so glad I did! The whole meal was seriously amazing. Matt did the wine pairings which he said were awesome. As soon as we got back to the hotel, I wrote down a more full description of the menu because the ones above don't do it justice. So here it goes, I didn't take any photos but here's one I found- so pretty!

1. Marin miyagi oyster with lime and thai chili granita and salted watermelon foam, buttermilk chicharon with trout roe and smoked cream

2. Ft. Bragg sea urchin, seaweed, herbs, sea salt, cucumber, dashi vinaigrette

3. Marigold greens gazpacho, herbs and edible flowers, radish, fried Tomales Bay mussel (this was accompanied by a small piece of house made toast that came with butter topped with sea salt and was so insanely awesome, maybe my fave thing all night.)

4. Roasted beets, cucumber, yogurt, pickled mustard seeds, herbs, vadouvan (this came with a little house made sourdough roll)

5. Pork belly, farro, spring peas (whole and pureed), coyote mint, cauliflower, espelette pepper (the pork belly was off to the side so I got to give that to Matt and eat everything else)

6. Squab, pickled fennel, tangerine, marcona almond puree (this came with a house made pretzel roll)

7. Stonefruit semifreddo, pickled blueberries, blueberry meringue

8. Fromage blanc napoleon, wild strawberry, raspberry, lemon, vanilla bean ice cream

*9. Our bonus bite was a chamomile lavender madeleine

SFMOMA

We got back from our trip to California a week ago and I'm finally getting caught up! I have tons of posts coming up but I wanted to start with some photos from our trip to SFMOMA. We saw a huge retrospective of Mexican Photography that was really interesting, I loved some of the more contemporary images. I didn't take any photos in that show so the following are faves that were fun to see in person.

This was a piece in entryway, the view as you were looking up.

This is the same piece but viewed from a mezzanine. There was actually a projection of two boxers on the hanging lights.

Barry McGee

Margaret Kilgallen

Matt enjoying some coffee on the gorgeous rooftop terrace

Rooftop terrace

Anselm Kiefer

This last images reminded me that there was a documentary made about Kiefer called Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow. Here is the trailer, I'm hoping it makes it to Netflix soon!