We heard some sad Menlo Park news today (on top of the horrible news about what's going on in the Southeast; we've both donated money to Red Cross, but it doesn't make me feel much better. It's just so sad and scary). Apparently Kepler's, a wonderful local bookstore, closed yesterday without any warning. That place was so awesome--not only were they locally-owned, but they brought in lots of authors for book signings (that's where I saw Nigella Lawson and Harold McGee).

We like to walk to Cafe Borrone (next door to Kepler's) for lunch on the weekends, and we will certainly continue to do that, but it won't be the same without Kepler's next door. No more buying the newspaper and doing the crossword puzzle while sitting outside. We're going to miss Kepler's, as will many other Bay Area residents.

Wedding stuff du jour:

Music. Trying to find interesting but appropriate instrumental pieces on iTunes. I want to have something other than the usual music (Bridal March, Canon in D), but I'm not finding anything very exciting. As Patrick pointed out, nobody's going to remember what we played at the wedding unless it's really outlandish, so I shouldn't spend too much time on this. But I still want it to be just right.

Wine. We made our wine choices based on recommendations from friends and the Internet, since we aren't wine lovers ourselves. One of the wines we picked is supposed to have notes of smoky bacon (Cambria Julia's Vineyard Pinot Noir), but I know I shouldn't get my hopes up. It won't really taste like bacon. Stupid wine!

Officiant. Thanks to Erin and Patrick, Erin was successfully deputized earlier this week, so that is taken care of. I'm very grateful to Erin for being our officiant! This is going to be a good ceremony (once we write it).

It has been a long but productive week. I'm looking forward to the three-day weekend.

Patrick stopped by Kepler's this afternoon, and apparently there's a rally planned for Tuesday at 5pm to show community support, and then everybody will go to the City Council meeting at 7pm to try and figure out a way to bring Kepler's back. I don't know if anything will come of it, but Patrick and I are going to go. Yay, community involvement! Also, savekeplers.com seems like a potentially interesting website.

We made a good dinner tonight. It was based on an article I read in Natural Health while getting my hair highlighted at Juut this morning (originally I was going to get it all done last week, but the colorist I was scheduled with left Juut, so they had to reschedule me--but I got 50% off for the inconvenience!). The article was about eating 6 mini-meals a day instead of 3 big meals. It's supposed to increase energy and burn more calories. I can't find the article I read online yet, but this one says similar things, but with fewer pretty pictures of food. I'm not interested in dieting (though I would like to lose a little weight), but I think it sounds like a fun and healthier approach to eating. I might try it once the wedding is all done with and I have time to plan ahead and prepare all the snacks and stuff. Or maybe I'll never do it. You never know with me!

Anyway, one of the recipes in the article was for Sesame-Encrusted Grouper with Bok Choy, which looked tasty. I couldn't find the exact recipe once I got home, but I used a modified version of this recipe for the fish (which turned out to be orange roughy, since there was no grouper to be had at the store), using both white and black sesame seeds, and this recipe for the bok choy. Patrick also made some delicious mashed potatoes to go with dinner because we have an excess of red potatoes due to our weekly box deliveries. He used butter, buttermilk and milk in the mashed potatoes, and they were so good! He says the secret is lots of butter, unfortunately. We topped them with chives from our garden.

After dinner, we were dismayed to learn that orange roughy (and grouper) are on the do-not-eat list. Normally I carry my Seafood Watch card with me, but I didn't have it with me today at the store. Poor roughy! It was tasty though, as was the rest of dinner.

Tonight I'm going to make apple pie using the Damn Fine Apple Pie recipe from In the Sweet Kitchen. I hope it turns out well! I haven't made pie in almost a year, I think. I used to make it once a month when Patrick and I lived apart, whenever he'd come visit. I don't know how he has handled being pieless for a whole year!

I love lists!

• I've been reading overly much about New Orleans these past few weeks and haven't been sleeping well because of it. I wish I could make it all better. If you haven't seen it, interdictor's livejournal is a really interesting read. He and his coworkers stayed in the city during the storm and have been providing news updates and images from inside the city. It's really impressive how they set up a functioning operation in the middle of the devastation.
  
  
• We had our second Black Krim tomato from the garden today (yeah, the plant took a while to warm up to the idea of making tomatoes) side by side with one of Patio Hybrid F's many tomatoes. Patrio Hybrid F makes good tomatoes, but Black Krim's are my favorite. They're just so sweet and delicious. I want more! Dona still hasn't produced any ripe tomatoes, but she has plenty of green tomatoes. We have high hopes for them. When our summer garden is done for, I think I'm going to plant a bunch of different greens. I hear those do well in Bay Area winters, and I love me some greens! Our collard greens are still pretty dinky, so maybe they'll keep growing this winter.
  
  
• We've got our wedding music all picked out. We stuck with mostly acoustic stuff, since it's an outdoor wedding. Some classical music, some guitar covers of more modern stuff. I'll post details after the wedding. I'm happy with our choices. I also bought most of the songs from Backed in Black from iTunes (acoustic-guitar-playing women and AC/DC songs are a surprisingly good combination; same goes for Johnny Cash songs), but we couldn't figure out a way to incorporate any AC/DC into the wedding. Too bad!
  
  
• We're off to Pacific Grove for the weekend. Patrick is going to do the Pacific Grove triathlon, and I'm going to enjoy 2 days of delicious breakfast at Martine Inn. Patrick only gets fancy breakfast one of the days, which is too bad for him! I'm very much looking forward to relaxing this weekend--no Internet, plenty of Patrick, beach, and aquarium time.

We had a great weekend! We drove down to Pacific Grove on Friday afternoon, and after a little trouble with a closed freeway exit, Patrick registered for the triathlon, and we checked into The Martine Inn (the same place we stayed when we got engaged last year). We got there in time to have some snacks during their wine and cheese time. It was good stuff--like bacon-wrapped apricots and spinach and cheese phyllo triangles. I like the Martine Inn :)

We had dinner at Fandango because we'd been there before and liked it. But this time wasn't so great. I guess they saw that we were young and not dressed up and assumed we weren't high rollers. We didn't get very good service. Meanwhile, they fawned over their middle-aged, well-dressed customers. I don't like restaurants with a double standard! They do have good chocolate mousse though.

On Saturday, Patrick woke up super early for the triathlon. I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the inn. It was as delicious as I'd remembered--unfiltered apple juice, freshly baked cinnamon muffin, granola with strawberries, and Monterey eggs--a kind of egg and cheese souffle with salsa and sour cream on the side. We could care less about all the antiques and silver they have, but I love their food! Plus everybody who works there is so nice. And they have great views of the ocean.

I walked down to the triathlon and got there in time to see Patrick finish his last bike lap, and then I cheered him on during his 3 run laps. I wasn't able to take very good pictures of him because he's too fast! By the time I took the picture, he was out of the frame. Here's one of his elbow as he completed the first run lap, and then there's one of him right before he got to the finish line. I guess he'd slowed down enough by then.

He improved his time over the LA Triathlon last year, so I think he's happy with his performance. I'm so proud of him!

After he got all cleaned up, we went in search of a place to have lunch. We ended up at Zocalo in downtown Pacific Grove, and we both liked it. They have really good horchata (which we both grew to love after having it on tap in our dining hall at Mudd). I had lobster tacos, and Patrick had carne asada tacos. Both were really good, but unfortunately, neither of us was super-hungry, and we couldn't finish everything. How sad! The tortillas for the tacos were handmade, and they were nice and soft.

Then we lounged around in our room for awhile and took a nap together, which is so nice but something we rarely do. I guess when we're at home on the weekends, I feel like I need to get stuff done, but on vacation it's okay to take a nap. We also had some tea and cookies, freely provided by the Inn. There were even sugar cubes for the tea. I love that!

After the napping and tea-drinking, we walked down to the aquarium (we have free admission because we're members) and checked out the sea otters and Outer Bay, our favorite parts. It was pretty late in the day, so it wasn't as busy as usual, which was nice. We had to kill some time, so we looked around the gift shop. I really liked these prints by Tom Killion of the Big Sur coastline. They only had them as notecards and journal covers; I probably would've bought one if they had them framed. On second thought, after seeing the prices on his website, maybe I should've just bought the notecards because his prints are expensive. Oh well!

We chose Vivolo's Chowder House for dinner becaues their menu looked appealing (Martine Inn has a big stack of menus for local restaurants). It turned out to be a little less fancy than I'd expected, but it was a fun place anyway. There were paper tablecloths and crayons on the table, so I colored before we got our food. Fun! We split a steamed artichoke, and then I had a bowl of seafood bisque and some unexciting Caesar salad, while Patrick had a bread bowl of clam chowder. I think he chose better than I did. The bisque was fine, but nothing special. I guess it's just good sense to order clam chowder when you're at a chowder house.

After dinner, Patrick took advantage of the Inn's hot tub and soothed his sore muscles. I hadn't thought to bring a swimsuit, so I just dipped my feet in. There was a lady in the hot tub when we got there, and we engaged in small talk with her, even though we're not too big on that normally. She was pretty interesting, and we had some stuff in common, since she'd lived in Menlo Park when she was younger.

This morning, Patrick got to enjoy the fancy breakfast as well. This time, we had apple juice, croissants, granola, and baked French toast. Yum! I think they just serve the same thing every weekend, since we had very similar food last time we stayed there, but whatever. It's all good stuff!

We decided to head home after breakfast, but we took the scenic route, driving up Highway 1. We passed a bunch of cyclists doing the Big Kahuna Triathlon, one wearing a grass skirt. There were some rough uphill stretches, but I guess they knew what they were signing up for. At least the scenery's nice, and the weather was pretty cool. Still, I was happy to be in a car and not on a bike.

We stopped at Pescadero State Beach for awhile. Neither of us had been there before. It's a nice little beach. We found a log to sit on and just relaxed and talked for awhile and then walked in the sand until we were ready for lunch. What a good way to spend time :)

We headed into Pescadero for lunch. It's this cute little town off of Highway 1. Patrick has been there before on his longer bike rides, and he had heard good things about the olallieberry pie at Duarte's Tavern as well as the artichoke bread at Norm's Market. I really liked it in Pescadero--they had huge fields of pumpkins growing, and there were mysterious wooden signs of a girl and a goat. We followed the signs, and they led us to Harley Farms, which was sadly closed at the time. I'd admired their goat cheese at Draegers before--it's decorated with edible flowers and herbs, but I'd never realized they were local. I hope we can visit someday. They certainly do have goats--we could see them from the road. I love their marketing strategy, and I love the fact that local businesses were cool with having the signs on their roofs and fences.

Pescadero's downtown is miniscule. We went to Made In Pescadero, which had so much beautiful stuff that I'd love to have in our home, but all expensive. They had this great furniture. We especially like the stuff by Marcus Jones and the Meier Brothers (they had this unique wall art which was just a beautiful veneer of wood, framed). They also had great pottery and textile work. Maybe we can go back someday when we're in the market for non-Ikea furniture.

We went to Norm's Market and bought some hot-from-the-oven artichoke bread, which we're going to have for dinner tonight along with some salami and fancy cheeses (not from Harley Farms, but from someplace in Petaluma, which isn't that far away either). I hope it's good! It sure smells good.

Next door to Norm's was another market which had this great fenced in eating area attached which was just a lawn with a bunch of picnic tables and flowers. It was so nice and inviting. And I think there was a guy cooking ribs out on the grill! It was tempting to go there for lunch, but instead we went to Duarte's, in search of good pie.

Duarte's has obviously been around for a long time. It feels all small-towny and unpretentious, which makes sense, since it's in a small town. I was excited to find that they had abalone on the menu. You may recall that I wanted to try abalone a while back, but it was all too expensive. We ran into the same problem with our most recent visit to Monterey--they had it at Fandango, but it was $75, which made the $50 lobster tail sound cheap (we ordered neither). But at Duarte's, they had an abalone sandwich for only $25, which is outrageous for a sandwich, but very reasonable for abalone. So I ordered it. I was so excited to find abalone I could actually afford! The sandwich consisted of toasted bread with battered and fried medalions of abalone (with fries on the side!). Abalone is firm and doesn't have much flavor. My verdict: it's good, better than fish, but not worth the price tag. I would eat it again if it were free, but I probably won't order it again in a restaurant. I'm happy I got to try it though. Patrick got some really good artichoke ravioli, and I would definitely order that if we returned to Duarte's (which I think is almost inevitable because Pescadero is so damn charming!). I'd also like to try the Crab Cioppino, a house specialty. It was pretty expensive though. I guess all that seafood costs a lot.

Oh, the pie! We split a piece of olallieberry pie for dessert. We were pretty full, sadly, but it surely was good pie! Good crust, yummy filling (olallieberries are similar to blackberries and very flavorful). I think it deserves all those rave reviews.

After lunch, we headed home, taking curvy backroads and enjoying nature. I love living here :) We have a good life, and this was an especially good weekend.