I wanted to make a note that this applesauce recipe is really good, except it has a little too much sugar in it. That could also be because I used old fruit. We had 9 apples stockpiled from weeks of box deliveries. Not a good scene. But now we have lots of too-sweet applesauce stashed in the freezer for the long winter. It's delicious, in small amounts.

I can't believe we're getting married in two weeks! How did that happen? I think we'll have a wonderful wedding and honeymoon, but I'm eager to be done planning and worrying and just get to the good stuff!

This weekend, I'm going to put together our menus, place cards, and thank you cards (they're all printed and cut out, so I'm getting there). Then the only big thing left is the ceremony, which is close to done.

Patrick has been so awesome about helping with the ceremony. I was getting frustrated working on it, and he stepped in and made some really good progress. What a man! It's coming together; hopefully we'll get a draft to Erin (our officiant) within the next week so she has time to get acquainted with what she'll be saying. Apparently she's been having nightmares about us not getting the ceremony to her until the day of (and then telling her we hadn't written a ceremony and that she should just wing it). At least that won't happen :)

Us going on vacation for almost 2 weeks does not bode well for our garden. We don't have any 10-year-olds eager to make a buck in the apartment complex, so there won't be anybody around to water it every day. It's not such a big deal though, since the summer is pretty much over, and it's time to start our new winter garden when we get back! I still feel kind of bad about it, since our plants are still growing. I feel like I'm betraying them. But we're going to make the most of them. Within the next two weeks, we're going to make pesto with our huge basil plants, have a small meal of collard greens, and make either fried green tomatoes or green tomato chow chow, if I'm feeling daring. And I guess I'll just cross my fingers and hope that it rains a lot while we're gone so our vine doesn't die. It can handle drought better than our garden plants can.

We went out for sushi last night (we have a bunch of great restaurants within walking distance of apartment, which I love so much!), and then we watched The Day After Tomorrow, which was scary. Stupid global warming! Luckily, we also rented Fever Pitch to watch today, despite Patrick's objections, so I'm sure that'll make everything better. No natural disasters in that movie, and plenty of Drew Barrymore!

I decided that instead of making bread bowls or cornbread for our chili get-together last night, I would leave the bread-making to Safeway and make cupcakes instead. We haven't had enough cupcakes recently. I ended up making the Yellow Cupcakes with Simple Chocolate Frosting from Baking Illustrated. The frosting was a whipped ganache (fancy word!)--equal parts of chocolate and hot heavy cream mixed until smooth, chilled for 45 minutes, and then whipped for 2 minutes in my new mixer! The cake batter was pretty standard, but it included sour cream, which is always exciting. Yet another mixing opportunity!

I love our stand mixer so far! I need to find more stuff to mix. And the cupcakes went over really well. The frosting was especially good (it's hard to go wrong with chocolate + cream). My only complaint was that the cupcakes didn't look very pretty, but I don't know if that's due to a problem with the frosting consistency or if I just need a better frosting tool than the back of a spoon. But appearance is really secondary to taste, and these were good! I'll definitely make them again.

This evening we had a tomato tasting (or a tomato flight, if you will). It consisted of two tomatoes from Patio Hybrid F, two from Dona (finally! Unfortunately, most of her tomatoes are cracked, which I guess means I haven't been watering her enough despite my best efforts, but we just cut the cracked part out), and two Roma tomatoes from our box.

Not to insult Organic Express, because I love them, but their tomatoes sucked compared to our homegrown tomatoes. Ha! I guess we're tomato snobs now. We're already familiar with Patio Hybrid F--it's pretty acidic and very flavorful. Turns out Dona is sweeter, but still acidic, and Black Krim (as I recall) is sweeter still.

I'd say Black Krim is my favorite, but he doesn't seem to produce many tomatoes. That's probably my fault. I think based on our tomato growing experiences thus far, we won't try growing another Dona. Her tomatoes taste good, but she seems fussier than the other plants. (You know, it's weird--I think of Dona as female and Black Krim as male, but Patio Hybrid F is gender neutral to me. I guess Patio Hybrid F isn't a really evocative name.) I should really keep a gardening notebook rather than writing about this here!

This weekend Patrick's going to make chili, and I'm planning on making something (be it cornbread or bread bowls) to accompany it, using our new KitchenAid stand mixer! Yes, one of the quintessential wedding presents. It's finally mine--I mean ours--thanks to my mom and Alan! I'm trying not to be materialistic about wedding presents because we really don't need any more possessions, but it's still exciting to get shiny new stuff that'll last us for a long time, compared to all our Target housewares from college. But we would absolutely be excited if people donated to a charity (heifer.org being one of our favorites) on our behalf instead--that kind of present would make us feel good on a whole different level :)

Anyway, the mixer is the Caviar color, which is dark gray with subtle sparkles, which hopefully won't go out of fashion with time. Not that it really matters if our kitchen appliances are fashionable, but I care for some reason. Patrick has requested that I make more cake now that we have a mixer. I'll try to oblige...I think it would also be amusing to get the sausage stuffer and food grinder attachment and make our own sausage, but I doubt that'll actually happen. I don't know the first thing about making sausage--like where do you buy the casings? Oh, it looks like this website will tell me everything I need to know. But maybe it's better to stay blissfully ignorant about what goes into sausages.

We're making good progress on planning our wedding ceremony. Mostly I'm just taking ideas I like from different websites, and then we'll go through them and decide what we like the best. I don't feel too bad about it being a mostly unoriginal ceremony, since weddings are all about tradition anyway. Plus it's easier this way :) We'll try to include parts that are unique to us as well.

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.