In an effort to communicate more effectively with our friends and family from way up North we decided to create this blog to keep people in the loop...and recruit visitors.
Shortly before Thanksgiving, our 93 year old friend JoAnne asked us if we'd be willing to come live with her. (Big shock!) We said we'd give it a shot, but she wasn't ready for us to move in until January, so we thought maybe Thanksgiving day together would be an appropriate precursor. We started with a pancake breakfast...notice the ceramic filter cone fromprevious posts.
She lives in an older house, 1930's era, and most everything in the house is at least that old - including the kitchen! As you'll notice, it's a little short on counter space and storage so we had to carefully stage our cooking. We also had to get a little creative with cookware as she only cooks for one and has gotten rid of anything extra (due to lack of storage space I guess).
The supplies...
Making stuffing...
The bird...
And the table - JoAnne's very particular about having a well presented table.
When we returned to San Francisco, from our summer in San Diego, we started looking for a place to live - I never realized there was so much to finding an apartment! We looked at scores of places, all in relatively the same price range, but with VERY differing ranges of quality.
For any of you who've ever wanted to know what the inside of those Victorians look like, we've posted a few videos from our house hunting forays...
First apartment - top floor of a courtyard apartment complex in Cole Valley...
An apartment with lots of potential, but didn't work out - the ground floor of a nice Victorian also in Cole Valley...
We got discouraged with Cole Valley so moved on to the Sunset - here's a walkthru of a sizable house in Golden Gate Heights, on the edge of the Inner Sunset, that also had much potential until we started talking leases...
After several unsuccessful experiences in the city, we decided to expand our search to Marin - Mill Valley, Sausalito, etc. This video of the houseboat is for all you who're curious what the inside of one of those looks like. Unfortunately it had a slight, permanent lean as well as some healthy mold...
And then there was our favorite - the 6 VERY steep flights of stairs up to a house with no potential at all - imagine the heat bill! This was in Sausalito, on the side of a hill facing east and surrounded by overgrown vegetation.
Actually, our favorite was in Sausalito - another Victorian attic apartment with a deck over the ocean - sigh, that didn't work out either.
Our final Southern CA noteworthy event comes with a story better told in person. It involves Bob and some local beehives that had been, unbeknown to their owners, taken over by killer bees... we'll let the pictures tell the story.
Notice the rapidly increasing number of bees - the end result was several hours trying to escape the bees, multiple stings especially around the ankles and 2 days of recovery while the swelling reduced enough to walk!
Interesting tidbit: a paste of baking soda and water helps reduce swelling when you don't have any clay handy.
Our friends Logan & Heidi decided they needed a sun break from the SF summer fog, so flew down for the long weekend. I think we actually saw more of San Diego while they were visiting than we did the rest of our stay! We did introduce them to the joys of juicing and sent them home with a box of citrus, so they had a true taste of our life in SD.
We took them to the beach and the Farmer's Market, of course, then to the famous San Diego Zoo...
and to the USS Midway docked in downtown San Diego.
They also got to join us for our first (and so far only) trip south of the border for Sun. morning meeting - that was an amazing experience we heartily recommend... unfortunately we didn't take pictures.
We took a quick excursion north to Montana, to attend a family reunion, supply the San Diego Hinkles with some citrus (it's a hard habit to break) and to take in some gorgeous scenery!
As we were relaxing at a sidewalk pizza stop in Coronado, we happened to witness the Coronado Sandman at work on one of his sand paintings. It was too dark for a picture but was a very cool finale to our trip.
There are many things to appreciate about southern CA - the weather, the beaches - but I think we can safely say that our experience was truly enriched by the produce, namely the fruit trees that are many on the Diaz/Gibson properties. The bounty was truly amazing to those of us used to the sparse fruit offerings of the northern US!
There are orange trees, which means fresh OJ in the morning! Of course someone thought to encourage a little entrepreneurship with that morning OJ...
Then there were the peaches...
AND the peach pie!
The grapes and grapefruit...
the pomegranates for pomegranate juice...
the basil for pesto...
and the lemons for lemonade. Between the lemons and the grapefruit we had a massive juicing event, even breaking out the Sunkist commercial juicer!
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