Lightweight Eats

I've been back in California for the last week. Dan had the 4th and 5th off of work, so we enjoyed a long weekend together before I head back to CT this coming weekend. It is a short visit home, so we made sure to pack it with lots of fun summer activities.

(In CT, the mosquitoes are so prevalent I try to stay inside all the time. Otherwise it looks like I've contracted chicken pox.)

Over the long weekend, we probably biked 50 miles. BART (the local transit system and our primary mode of transportation) was on strike through Friday afternoon, but we weren't going to let that stop us!  On Thursday, we biked across Oakland and through Emeryville to the north side of Berkeley. We enjoyed a coffee at Peet's, perused the Crate and Barrel outlet and Sur la Table, and picked 3 liters of wild blackberries.

Friday, we made our way back to our old neighborhood to visit the Friday market. There, we scored two huge bags of organic broccoli for a dollar each, plus $1/lb stone fruit (peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, etc) and $1/lb organic tomatoes. Grapes were also starting to pop up, and we got a big bag of them.

(An old photo. More shorts and t-shirts this time of year.)

The afternoon stop at our local grocery store scored us a huge bag of squishy grapes (~5lbs) and squishy pears (~4lbs) for 99 cents each. We processed and froze these for future smoothie making. Yum!

The broccoli met its doom on the grill that evening, along with some tasty tofu skewers and corn, straight from the garden.

Saturday, after a morning personal record on the erg, we struck out closer to home, popping over to Alameda for a celebratory coffee date at Julie's Coffee and Tea Garden. We enjoyed a long walk around the island and finally replaced Dan's bike pedals!! (They were a bit spiky before and epic shin destroyers.)


Sunday, we wrapped up the weekend with a trip into San Francisco. Dan took the ferry into work last week because of the BART strike and really enjoyed the ride. It's a bit more expensive than BART, but we though we'd take it into the city as a treat. The wind was a great way to cool off and it was super easy to bring our bikes in with us.

The America's Cup is going on right now in San Francisco, so we walked over to the public viewing area. Most of the activities had already wrapped up for the day, but it was fun to see some footage of the boats in action. It looked like an absolute blast.

For dinner, we enjoyed fresh Acme baguette and other tasties from the ferry building's many vendors. We finished up our day with a bike ride up to Fisherman's Wharf, back to the ballpark and then onto BART and home.

Looking forward to enjoying time with family and friends, and getting ahead on the garden work prior to my departure. It looks like I might miss most of the productive season in the garden, from cucumbers to green beans to tomatoes to corn. I'm hoping for a warm September and October to help extend the growing season past the end of racing season.