Category Archive: foodie

A night of live jazz

Our dear friends Carleigh and Scott (who have been pleasantly surprised with their recent fame on the blog 😉 ) took us out to Savanna Jazz Club in the Mission on Saturday 10/23 for dinner, drinks and live jazz. We saw Suzanna Smith and her quartet play and they were fantastic. Some of you probably know that one of my dreams is to become a jazz pianist and I would lovelovelove to be a part of a jazz group one day playing at a local jazz club so it was so great seeing live jazz. I just need to get to practicing the piano more!

Dinner was…so-so. Maybe that’s why we didn’t see anyone else ordering food! Oh well, lesson learned.

But the drinks were delicious!

My “Bossanova” with mango rum and cinnamon sugar around the rim. Yum!


Scott and Carleigh
Me and Kevin

While we were inside the singer announced the SF Giants’ win and the whole place erupted in applause. When we left the club later that evening the street was filled with excited (and probably drunk) Giants’ fans–honking their horns, hanging out their car windows, and standing in the middle of the street waving huge Giants’ flags. Remind me not to be in the Mission during their final game of the World Series! 😉

Can’t thank Carleigh and Scott enough for such a wonderful evening…you two are the best!!

Back in SF in time for my birthday!

Me and Lola drove back up to SF on the 19th, just a day before my 27th birthday.

Kevin rolled out the red carpet for me to celebrate my 27th year…balloons, flowers, a birthday banner and a box of Junior Mints (my absolute FAVORITE candy). He is such a sweetie, thank you so much Kevin!
That weekend we went together to pick out my birthday gift: a food processor! I’ve been wanting one for a while now and I am so so so excited to now have one. I broke it in with a roasted red pepper vinaigrette recipe (found at this link) and I am in LOVE!

Cleaned up the counter space so that I can keep my new toy out on display and easily accessible since I know I’ll be using it at least once a week.
So shiny…
Fresh roasted red peppers, garlic, balsamic vinegar, salt + pepper…yum!
The vinaigrette on top of a bed of fresh romaine lettuce with heirloom tomatoes and fresh grated parmesan with a side of homemade mac ‘n cheese
(courtesy of my lovely sis)…AMAZING!!

Coming up this weekend is homemade pizza dough and pesto sauce to make pesto, crab and tomatoes pizza…can’t wait!

Now onto the birthday festivities…

The day of my birthday Kevin had the day off of work so we hung out at home just lounging around and it felt so good to spend some family time with him and Lola! Jessie also had the day off of work so she joined us for a picnic in the backyard: she provided the homemade portabello and kale pasta (tasted like beef stroganoff, amazing!) and we provided the sauteed brussel sprouts, mushrooms, garlic and red pepper flakes creation. Kevin had to leave for school that afternoon 🙁 so me and Jess spent the rest of the afternoon/evening together. After catching up on “Modern Family” (LOVE that show!) we got all prettied up and went out to meet some of her friends at Bistro St. Germain in the Haight. It’s a cute little French bistro with some great food and wine (I opted for some beer). One of our friends (her name is Lisa too) and I decided to be brave and split an escargot plate. They were drenched in butter and herbs (thank goodness!) so they weren’t half bad. Would I get them again? Probably not. But I can say I’ve had snails now! After a delicious dessert shared with my sis (and the restaurant singing “Happy Birthday” to me 🙂 ) me and Jess headed out to Bottom of the Hill for some live music. One of Jessie’s favorite artists, Scout Niblett, was playing and it was a great show. One of the most amazing things that happened that night: me and Jess found two $100 bills just hanging out on the ground at the bar! So after some stealthy moves, we pocketed the dough and split the profits. Who woulda thought that we’d end up $200 richer that night?? Jessie treated me all night and I can’t thank that girl enough for helping to make my birthday splendid!

Me and Lisa rethinking our food choice…
Here goes nothin’!



My birthday was fantastic and I have two of my favorite people to thank for it. Love you two!!

Windmills and wine bars

Kevin asked work for Saturdays off (woo hoo!!) and we spent our first Saturday together (on 10/9) in our old stomping grounds: Golden Gate Park. This time we decided to check out the part closest to the ocean since we’re so used to hanging around the same ol’ parts (near the museums and Stow Lake).

Is that really necessary? I doubt anyone will be looking towards a sign in the event of a tsunami. Just run like hell away from the water, duh!
Lola is never happier then when she’s out with us at a park

On one of my long runs the weekend before I ran past this random windmill in the park and we decided to check it out during our visit.

We made Lola jump into this hole in the side of the windmill. She’s such a good girl, she’ll do anything her mama and dad ask her to do! 🙂

Loving the sunshine and the time together

That night we took a drive down to Los Gatos to visit Jessie at her wine bar, Enoteca La Storia, for some dessert and wine. It’s in a little shopping center and it’s a ridiculously cute and comfortable space for getting together and enjoying some wine.



I had a burgundy wine and Kevin had a Malbec…yum!


We then shared some carrot cake bites (delicious) and sflogliatella (an amazing treat!–here’s a random video I found online about them if you’re interested in learning more).

Jessie seemed right at home back in a restaurant and serving–I’m so happy for her!

The check comes in this cute little book

We had such a great time and loved visiting Jess at her new job, can’t wait to visit again!

7 mile run, beach walk and bowling

On Saturday 9/11 I started my morning off right–with a 7 mile run! The training for my half-marathon was starting to get intense with a weekly long run and this was my longest ever. I looked up another runner’s route on run.com and really enjoyed my run outside of my neighborhood (which can get boring after a while!) and outside of Kezar Stadium where I’d do some of my shorter runs. I had to take a little printout of the map with me to make sure I didn’t get lost. 😉 All I could think during the run was how amazingly beautiful the park was and how incredibly lucky I was to live in this city and to run in a place like this.

The run was extremely successful, so much so that I agreed to go for a couple mile walk with Carleigh and her dog Bailey along the beach in Pacifica! I mapped the route on run.com so check it out here if you’re interested. 🙂

Beautiful!
Carleigh and her adoring fans

The night we got some sandwiches at Phat Philly in the Mission (Cheez Whiz on a philly sandwich? Sure! Waffle-cut fries with a beer cheese sauce? Of course!) and then spent the rest of the evening at Serra Bowl bowling alley.

Proof that I kicked Kevin’s butt! 🙂 Unfortunately we were kicked off the game but you can clearly see that I was in the lead. 🙂

Carleigh wasn’t too impressed with our bowling skills 😉

Jessie’s big move to San Jose!

Jessie decided to shake things up a bit and move from San Jose Avenue in San Francisco to the city of San Jose and Kevin and I helped during her big day. On 9/4 we packed up a Budget rental truck (Kevin was a pro at fitting all her antique furniture, the only thing left over was her kitty Mars and a vacuum cleaner, pretty damn good!) and made our way about 40 minutes down the freeway to her new place.

Jessie’s now-ex-roommate Jessie in her old room saying goodbye to Mars

The apartment Jessie now lives in is a studio in an old historic mansion…so cool!




After the big move Jessie treated us to lunch at Zeni Ethiopian Restaurant–soooo good!


Jessie landed a job at Enoteca La Storia, a wine bar in Los Gatos, and needed to make the physical move down to San Jose to be close to her new gig. Kevin and I visited her at work and I’ll post pictures of that visit soon. I am so so so happy for Jess and so proud of her for taking chances and making such a big change in her life.

The Edmonds family visit

The second week of August brought us the entire Edmonds family for a visit. Unfortunately the circumstances weren’t the happiest as we were gathering for Kevin’s Grandma Margie’s funeral in Half Moon Bay (see earlier post about her life here).

Dorothy and Thomas flew up Friday morning 8/13 and we spent some time driving through the Presidio. We also spent a bit of time in the lobby and gift shop of the Walt Disney Family Museum. We were going to go into the museum but for $20 a person (!) we decided to just explore the huge lobby and gift store instead.


That night George flew in and we had an amazingly delicious dinner at Zante Pizza. The Edmonds family were pleasantly surprised by how delicious Indian pizza can be and I think we made fans out of them (or was that the huge Taj Mahal beers talking?? 😉 ).

On Saturday morning 8/14 we joined the rest of the Edmonds family (Judith, Sarah, Joshua and Katelyn, Uncle Dave and Aunt Ellen, and Uncle Bob) in Half Moon Bay for Margie’s funeral. It was a foggy day but it seemed fitting for the occasion. It was so peaceful and quiet at the grounds and the only sounds we could hear were the few birds chirping in the area in between those who said words at the grave site.

Margie’s beautiful urn and American flag
The peaceful grave site

Kevin reading a poem



The program that Kevin made

After the funeral we all caravaned back up to Daly City for brunch at the Boulevard Cafe (at the recommendation of Carleigh). We had a really great time spending time together and reminiscing about the amazing life that Grandma Margie lived.

Me and my adorable nephew and niece
Dorothy showing Joshua some family photos from the scrapbook I made
Dorothy saying a few words
Katelyn, Dorothy, Judith, Sarah, Joshua and Thomas

After spending the afternoon at our apartment catching up and soaking up the sun that decided to come out we went out to dinner at Balompie (our favorite Salvadorean pupuseria) and once again the food was a hit!

Some of the creepiest statues ever! These are in front of a house just a block up from Balompie. Creepy!!
So of course Joshua took this as a photo opp 😉

Like father, like son!
Noogie time!
The girls

We then decided to ditch our cars and take the F train from the Castro to Fisherman’s Wharf. We took a quick stop at the Ferry Building and then made our way to Ghirardelli Square for some late night sundaes.

Katelyn, Judith and Josh on the F
The Ferry Building in all its glory 😉
A girl’s bathroom photo opp of course! 🙂 That’s me, Dorothy, Judith and Katelyn in the reflection of the hand dryer.

(Almost the) whole family on the F! It was kind of funny riding this with them as I ride this every day to and from work.

George and Dorothy’s choice: banana split!
Kevin, the anti ice cream guy, chose to enjoy a nice big coke. Sarah and I split a dark chocolate mint sundae. AMAZING!!

The next morning we said our goodbyes to Judith, Sarah, Joshua and Katelyn as they made the drive back down to Long Beach. George, Dorothy, Thomas and us then made our way across the bay to eat some Casper’s Hot Dogs in Albany.

Now THAT’S what I call a hot dog.

I had only had them out of the fridge before and I was excited to experience them straight from the restaurant since I’ve had to hear the family rave about them for years! Although the turkey dog I got was tasty, I still am not a huge fan of the crunchy exterior of the hot dog but all the fixins were great nonetheless! Shortly after that we said our goodbyes to Mom and Dad as they caught a plane back to LB and we spent the rest of the day with Thomas (I’ll update in another post shortly).

All in all, even though the circumstances weren’t happy, we had a wonderful family reunion nonetheless and we really enjoyed hosting the family up in our neck of the woods.

B & B’s visit

The first weekend of August we were visited by our favorite couple ever, Brianne & Brian! They stayed with us Thursday through Sunday so it was a great chunk of time to spend with those kiddos. 🙂

The first day I had to work so Kevin and B & B went to the Exploratorium to act like kids for a day. That night after work we met up with Carleigh in Union Square and had drinks and dinner at an Irish pub (can’t remember the name of it). We then treated ourselves to some Mitchell’s Ice Cream since they hadn’t tried it yet. We’ve got ourselves a couple new fans! 🙂


On Friday while Kevin and I were at work, B & B did some exploring in the East Bay on their own. We then met up that afternoon to do some exploring in North Beach/Chinatown.

Yes it is August and yes we’re bundled up like we’re going to the North Pole 🙂

Our first stop in Chinatown: House of Nanking! We had heard rave reviews about it and were not disappointed. Soooo tasty! Just don’t be fooled by the name of their scallop dish “Tower of Scallops”…it was only three freakin’ scallops! Other than that, we were super impressed (just not with the service, but what can you expect?)



We then walked a mile or two to North Beach and hung out at our regular spot Mara’s Italian Pastries.

YUM!!!!!!
Our lovely posed photo (check out the tripod our camera is on, haha!)
Here’s our goofy shot…guess Kevin and Brian didn’t get the memo!
Being goofs in front of some window display in Union Square
They look like they could be locals! 🙂

On Saturday we went to visit Kevin on his lunch break since he had to work 🙁 We went to eat at La Boulange Bakery.

Delicious tuna melt!!

Then B & B and I were off to explore the Sutro Baths.



Brian rock climbing

Then we did some exploring (by car mostly) through Golden Gate Park.


And where do you think we went to dinner? Goood Frikin Chicken of course! It’s where we take all of our lucky visitors.


After dinner we made the trip out to Concord for Terri and Scott’s poker night. The newbies (B & B) got beginner’s luck and walked away with the pot!!

We had such a fantastic time with those two and we miss ’em already! Can’t wait for their next visit 🙂

Good eats: Ike’s Place

So anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE sandwiches. Lunch is my favorite meal and honestly, if I could eat a sandwich for breakfast, lunch and dinner…I would.

Me and Jess decided to check out Ike’s Place, a sandwich shop both of us had heard of in the past and luckily we were both craving sandwiches at the time so we decided to give it a try.

Let me just start out by showing a pic of the line we were in:

That blue building towards the right? Yeah, that’s the sandwich shop.

From start to finish we waited for one hour to get a hold of our sandwiches. Now that’s dedication! And apparently they are always like that.

Their sandwiches are not cheap…but they are huge. I ordered the Manage-a-Trois sandwich (Halal Chicken Breast, Real Honey, Honey Mustard, BBQ, PepperJack, Swiss, Smoked Gouda) which was highlighted on that show Man vs. Food (see clip below!) and Jessie ordered the Jessica Rabbit sandwich (Vegan Breaded Chicken, Stuffed Jalapeno Poppers, Franks Red Hot, Ranch).

Our thoughts? All I can say is that we had to force ourselves to not eat the second half of the sandwich because we were both extremely full from the first half but the sandwich was SO GOOD that we didn’t want to stop!

Was the sandwich worth the $11.11 (which included a bag o’ chips as well)? Hell yes.

Road trip down south

On Friday 6/11 Kevin and I had the rare opportunity to spend an entire 24 hours together uninterrupted by work or school! 🙂 Kevin not only had the day off from work and wasn’t in school at the time but it was a furlough day for me so we decided to take advantage of the day and take a road trip (just like old times!)

Instead of going north to Marin County like we always seemed to do in the past, this time we set our sights further south: to Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Pescadero and Half Moon Bay.

Lola has grown by leaps and bounds in terms of her comfort level in the car–no more car sickness and scaredy-dog! She’s up and about sniffing out the window like a normal dog now and she’s now discovered how much she loves being right between us on the armrest

Lola, our favorite co-pilot

Beautiful view off the 9 Highway towards Big Basin

The state park was gorgeous–we loved all of the fresh smells and how quiet it was driving through there. We were a little frustrated, however, by the park once we got there though. On their website it said that dogs were allowed on some trails (some trails) but didn’t distinguish which ones. When we got to the park’s HQ we were surprised to find out that dogs are only allowed on one trail and it’s a paved road! 🙁 Then we found out that parking was $10 and the trail map was $5 (neither of whose prices were on the website, of course) so since we could only go on one sad little trail with Lola we decided to skip the fees and just drive through and enjoy the sights. We’ll be back though (without Lola in tow of course) because it was so beautiful!

After driving through all of funny small towns (Bonny Doon anyone?) we ended up on Highway 1 and drove up the coast towards home. We stopped off at a small beach to do some exploring.

A little video of our rock-climbin’ pup


Lola, the beach bum

Can you tell it was w-i-n-d-y?

Apparently my chin smelled like food, haha

One of the stops off PCH that we knew we wanted to make was to Pescadero that my mom and her boyfriend Steve had visited on their last trip up to SF.


Arcanegli Grocery is a really cute little supermarket that has some of the most amazing breads and spreads.

There wasn’t a ton to do so we just walked up and down the main drag and I took some random photos…

…like of this rusty fire hydrant.

…and of this person’s garage that I was really into, haha.

Our last stop before home was Half Moon Bay which we actually weren’t super impressed with! Maybe it was because we were tired and starving and the restaurant we ate at (Spanishtown Mexican Restaurant) was less-than-stellar (great service but bland food!) I guess we’ll have to give it another shot in the future. 🙂

It was so nice spending some daylight hours with Kevin! Can’t wait for another day like this to come along (hopefully it won’t be too long!)

Things we’ve been up to…

On Sat. 5/22 Jessie and I were invited to brunch at our friends Carleigh & Scott’s place. It was Lola’s lucky day because she was invited along as well! She and Bailey spent no time getting reacquainted and ran through their apartment the entire time we were there! Thanks so much Carleigh for the amazing brunch!


The next day, Sun. 6/23, was a very sad day indeed…it was the series finale of the tv show LOST! Kevin and I have been watching the show religiously since season 2 (we used to watch it at my mom’s house every week with my mom and our friend Kim and we even got two of my mom’s exchange students hooked on it!) Since living in SF we’ve joined Jessie’s LOST fan group and have really enjoyed our weekly get togethers. Last year we had a dress-up day where everyone came dressed up as their favorite LOST character. I would’ve loved to have come dressed as Desmond as he’s my absolute favorite character, but I didn’t have enough time/money to make it look good. So for that party I dressed up as Ana Lucia who I think I most resemble. So for the series finale Jessie wanted to host another themed dress-up party but didn’t want to repeat the same character theme–so this time it was funeral-themed! Everyone came dressed in their best funeral get-up to mourn the loss of our favorite show. Jessie was extremely cute in her outfit (as always!) and since I didn’t have any cute black clothes, I just wore a simple black top and smeared my mascara and eye liner to make it look like I had been crying!

A photo shoot with Jessie’s cat Mars before the show…


Me and Jess mourning the loss of LOST (that’s mascara around my eyes, no I didn’t get two black eyes!)

Almost the whole group, there were a ton of people there! 11 people total

With Kevin’s new work/school schedule, we don’t get to see each other too often 🙁 He works 5 days a week, generally 6:30-3:30 (including every Saturday and Sunday). Then when he’s in school, he has class from 4:30-10:30 each night Monday through Friday! For a few weeks he’s got a break before his summer class begins, so it’s been really nice having him home at night so we can actually enjoy dinner together. But even with that, it feels like we never have any actual daylight hours to hang out and go places like we used to basically every weekend. Last Mon. 5/24 I went to work in the afternoon so we had an entire morning together, so we took full advantage of it and had a little day trip! We drove out to Mount Davidson which is the highest point in the city of SF and it’s a gorgeous hike.

Lola’s become quite the passenger in the car these days (she’s improved by leaps and bounds since we first got her when she would get carsick every time we got in the car!)

A fallen tree on the hike

On the top of Mt. Davidson there is a HUGE white cross which is on property not owned by the city. I had always figured it was just a religious group’s doing, but the plaque next to it stated that it is there in memory of the 1.5 million people killed during the Armenian genocide.

Kevin’s standing at the bottom of the cross, you can just barely see his head and shoulders…now you see how freaking HUGE it is??

It was a great, easy hike on a beautiful crisp morning

Family portrait
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