7 posts tagged “food”

On Tuesday we made our annual trek into San Francisco for a holiday tea. This year we went to the Teddy Bear Tea at the Ritz-Carleton.

We had some time to kill before the tea, so we walked to Union Square and looked at the holiday windows. Unfortunately most stores don't do the amazing windows that I remember from my childhood anymore. Macy's did have some kittens and puppies, though, and that kept us occupied for quite a while.

The tea itself was great fun. Anya was most enthralled by the bowl full of marshmallows on the table for the hot chocolate. There was a near meltdown when I dared to suggested that she might want to eat some of her more nutritious food before consuming the whole bowl. As it turns out her tea food didn't have much more nutritional value than the bowl full of sugar and gelatin, and she turned up her nose at anything that wasn't completely processed and gummy.

The highlight of the tea was meeting the giant teddy bear and getting a hug. The Binky the gay (of course) elf was fairly entertaining, too. It turns out that the theme this year was "London Calling" so his show was an odd mixture of Christmas carols and 80's pop. It's somewhat disconcerting to hearing Jingle Bells morph into Karma Chameleon. Not really what I expected from the Ritz, but fun none-the-less!

We have just returned home from a few days in The Big Easy. Thankfully no one came down with a stomach bug unlike our previous two vacations! We a lot of fun even though the weather was either almost unbearably hot and muggy or pouring buckets of rain. Most of our pictures feature our main form of entertainment on this trip...food! We started our trip off sticky right with a requisite stop at Cafe Du Monde for beignets and cafe au lait. Anya was a little put off by the mounds of powdered sugar on top of her "special donuts", but that was easily rectified and she quickly dug in and seemed to really enjoy them.

We spent the afternoon wandering and exploring, capped off by a swim in our hotel's courtyard saltwater pool. Anya LOVED swimming and would have been happy to do that the entire trip. She started off quite cautiously with her water wings and various inflatable toys helping her feel secure, but by our last day she insisted on going in without any artificial or human assistance and was practicing floating on the top step of the pool. I think I need to sign her up for some real swim lessons before the summer is over! That evening Chris and I left Anya with my mom in the hotel (thanks, Mom!) while we enjoyed a delicious grown-up meal at Restaurant August.

On Wednesday Chris attended his conference (the excuse reason for the trip) and my mom and I took Anya to the aquarium where we saw lots of "fishies and penguins" among other things. Once again the afternoon was spent in the pool followed by more yummy fried food and strong drinks to wash it down.

On Thursday after a quick trip to the gym to try to combat some of the deep fat fried grease that we could feel clogging our arteries, we then undid the whole workout (and then some!) with brunch at the New Orleans breakfast institution, Brennan's. I had the three course meal which included strawberries in double cream, fried shrimp in hollandaise sauce, and bananas foster, of course! After brunch we took the streetcar through the Garden District out to Audubon Park and the Zoo. Again the rain was torrential, but since it was fairly warm , we decided to just give in to being wet. Luckily the rain let up after about 45 minutes and it didn't dampen our fun. We saw lots of great animals, including gorillas, rhinos, and elephants, which Anya had specifically requested to see.
All in all it was a successful and mostly relaxing trip!

We've had two great weekends in a row. The weekend before last was the Dipsea. Once again my uncle

came in to run the race in memory of my dad. This year he got into town just a scant few hours before the race started, and although the day was very warm he still managed to finish 247, which is a PR for him! We were all so proud of his performance.

As I mentioned last year the Dipsea finishes at Stinson Beach (in the linked post I mention the difficulty that Roy Rivers had last year in the race, I'm happy to report that he did much better this year and actually won the race!). This year we invited one of Anya's best friends and her family to join us at the finish line. The girls had a blast playing in the sand, the very cold ocean, and picnicing on the grass. Unfortunately I forgot to get any pictures of them playing :(. Next year we are thinking about renting a beach house for the weekend since everyone had such a great time.

This past weekend we had our annual photo shoot with the fabulous Terri Loewenthal. (See last year's photos here). Once again she was a complete pleasure to work with and took some really great photos of Anya and the whole family Here are some of my favorites

And the whole collection can be found here

After our photo shoot we decided to take advantage of our location and drop into Chez Panisse to see if they could fit us in for lunch. We got there right at 11:30 and lucked out getting a table. I believe that we were seated by Alice Waters herself! The food was delicious and Anya behaved really well even though lunch took almost two hours.
Father's Day was nice, too. We had breakfast at Peet's, ran some errands, went to the park, and had another yummy lunch. After a nap we met some friends at the park and then ordered pizza at their house while the kids played (mostly nicely) and we talked. All weekends should be so pleasant!

In the two weeks since Anya's birthday there have been some big changes in the Bubble Toes household.

The first change came when we replaced Anya's crib with a new big bed. She was getting perilously close to climbing out of her crib, so we decided it was time. She adjusted to the new bed with no trouble at all, and has not expressed any dismay at the removal of her crib. She stays in bed until we come to get her after naps and nighttime sleeping, which is great. A few days ago she told me "I like new bed" when I came to get her in the morning.

The second big change is that she is in "big girl undies" when at home exclusively (except when sleeping) with no accidents *knocks on wood*. She tells me when she needs to "pee pee" and goes to the bathroom on her own (I help her to wipe and pull down her undies). We are having some issues with pooping, but she has done that successfully, too. She has even made two trips of about 1 hour each outside of the home in her big girl undies with no accidents. The next big step is getting over the pooping phobia and convincing her to go on the toilet instead of her little bjorn potty. She is still a little bit scared of the big potty ever since an unfortunate flushing incident with one of her friends.

In non-milestone news we had a great trip up to Yountville to have breakfast pastries from Bouchon. It was fantastic! Four pastries split between two adults and one two year old isn't excessive, right? We devoured everything, but the "nutter butter" was heavenly! We then stopped by Whole Foods to do some shopping and Anya did a great job pushing her cart around.

And on a completely different note, now when she eats something sour she says, "Too sassy!", which I find super cute and I admit I have been encouraging the use of sassy in place of sour. It just sounds so much more fun and less judgmental!

Today we hosted a Valentine's Day playgroup celebration. It was great. We had tons of food and fun for both kids and parents.

I made little boxes for each kid filled with a board book, a stamp, v-day themed post-it notes, heart stickers, a few cookies, and mini m&m's for the parents.

Almost every Sunday Chris and I have the same basic meal for dinner. We start with a Caprese salad with Buffalo Mozzarella, tomatoes (heirloom if I can find them), fresh basil, olive oil, a spritz of balsamic vinegar and a liberal sprinkling of Murray River pink flake salt. After we have sopped up all of the left over oil and vinegar with fresh olive bread we continue our feasting with an ever changing assortment of cheeses. Last night the tomatoes looked so pretty I had to take some pictures. The first is before I added the olive oil, balsamic and salt, the second is the finished product.

If your Vox Neighborhood had a potluck dinner tonight, what dish, drink or dessert would you bring?

I think I would have to bring the Knob Creek Manhattans.