Mom/Cathy comes to Oakland solo

My mom came out and visited us this past week. She flew out on her own via JetBlue from Syracuse. (FYI for all of you would-be visitors: a round trip via JetBlue is only $200.) Our new futon was delivered just in time for her to have a bed of her own. Of course I tore into the mattress with a razor blade trying to get all the packaging off of it. That's me, smooth.

Pretty much everything we did all week revolved around food in some way or other. The first full day she was here I took her to the Berkeley Bowl where we bought $150 in groceries, including the fixins for the roasted halibut and zucchini with butter sauce recipe we got from Martha Stewart. I thought the onion butter drizzle was a little too oniony, but Mom and Andy liked it. I really dug the salad we made. We bought California strawberries at the Bowl along with mixed greens. We tossed on some roasted walnuts and Annie's Raspberry Vinaigrette. Getting my iron isn't going to be too hard with salads like that in my life.

On Friday night we went to dinner at Speisekammer in Alameda with Rebecca and Matt. It's the most authentically German place I have been to (not that I've been to many.) I am vegetarian, remember, so I went for the beer. I expected a menu full of meat. Surprisingly, they did have a vegetarian selection. It only had two entrée choices, but at least non-meat eating was acknowledged. Mom got one of the veggie dishes: vegetable schnitzel with goat cheese. Tasty. On our way out we got to talking about height and took blurry pictures confirming that Andy and I are indeed the taller couple.

I am indeed 5 feet 9 inches. We measured me later on in the weekend to make sure, so I say that with renewed confidence.

Throughout the weekend Mom began to remind me how to sew (as something to do between meals.) Years ago she gave me her old sewing machine and I let it sit on the floor in our apartment in Nashua. Then I moved it to a closet in our house when we moved up town. When we downsized to our apartment out here I decided I better justify keeping the thing
(and please my mother) by actually using it. I signed up for a class soon after moving out here, but it didn't work out. The woman teaching the class meant well, but her teaching style is all about tough love. I'm not interested in learning my hobby from a perfectionist drill sergent type in a grandmother's body, so I quit. Learning from my own mother was, predictably, less scary.

My project is a bathrobe for Andy. The pattern is labeled "very easy" and that is precisely why I chose it. Andy was allowed to pick out his own fabric, hence the dog-bone fleece. (The bolt of electric tangerine was a few yards short of what we needed.)

I cut out all the pieces, pinned them together, and sewed away in the kitchen.

Periodically we used Andy to model his garment to make sure I was putting it together properly.

Mom directed me through about 90% of the project, but we were brought to a disappointingly abrupt finish when the sewing machine broke. Maybe I'm not meant to be a sewer right now.

Saturday morning we stuffed ourselves with veggie scrambles and multi-grain toast as armor for our visit to the farmers' market. We bought more food than we needed as it was. Everything there looks, tastes and smells so damn good, going on an empty stomach could be utterly poverty-inducing.

A sea of tomatoes!


Edible flowers!


One of those tomatoes has arms!


How many kinds of eggplant are there?


A little too pink for me this week, but gerberas are still my favorites.

Some things down there are pricey, and deservedly so. The organic smoked cheddar cheese, for example, costs significantly more than the Lucerne crap we pass by at Safeway. But other things are shockingly cheap, like this handful of garlic that we traded for that dollar bill.

Andy's yellow curry recipe calls for Thai chili peppers, and low and behold, he spotted some at the f. market. They come in large bunches and cost about $2. Andy asked the kid under the tent how hot the peppers are. He replied, "mild." When we got home Andy confidently chomped his teeth into one of the tiny red guys. He immediately spewed it into the sink yelling, "Mild my ass!" White boys don't know hot, I suppose.

We took a photo of the cactus that lives at the base of the stairs by our house. It seems to be sprouting fruit right now that have turned nice fall colors. By the looks of the rest of the plant, most of the fruit will fall off and some of them will flatten out and turn green. This could be a completely BS conclusion. I know pretty much nothing about cacti being from the east coast, I just think it's neat to have such a big one growing well right outside my house.

By the time we carried all our goods back up the stairs to our apartment, we were all hungry again. That's when we threw in all the berries and peaches we bought into the food processor to try out Mom's yogurt smoothie recipe. I had to get a picture of how it looked pre-blended, these are my favorite colors:

We threw in some other secret ingredients and came up with these in the end:

Yum.


With all the farmers' market action, sewing, and smoothie-making, Apollo used his free time to lounge around.

We got up early on Sunday morning and went for a run around the lake. All of us went. Andy, Apollo and I ran around the outside where dogs are tolerated. Mom took the longer, inside path, and ran the whole time. She works out a lot, but she's not a runner. We were really impressed that she did all 4.something miles without stopping once. (More than I did on my first few times around.)

After our run, we met up with Rebecca and Matt again and headed up to Healdsburg in Sonoma County to taste some wine. We hit up La Crema first. It's our favorite, I'd say. Or maybe it's just that we try their wine first while our taste buds still work. I am still trying to remember the name of the second place we tried out. It was completely empty and we got to taste wine for free (we noticed later they are supposed to charge $10.) The guy there was clearly knowledgeable about wine, but since we're beginners (euphamism for "people who don't know anything technical about wine",) he had just as much fun talking about Oakland with us instead of what he was pouring. They sell a $65 bottle of port there that I thought was amazing. That's probably because I typically drink from $10 bottles. Sunday confirmed that I really like port. It fits my sweet-toothiness.

After we had enough wine to feel tipsy, we decided it was time for a snack. We went back to the car and got Apollo and the cheese we bought. Then we got a loaf of bread from the French bakery in town.

We sat on the park bench and literally broke bread together. The weather was perfect in Healdsburg that day and we all felt quite content to kick back and enjoy ourselves.

After some more walking around in town we decided it was time for a more substantial meal. We settled on Black Bear Republic Brewery. When we got inside I realized that they brew my favorite (so far) west-coast beer there. Despite the fact that I had been sipping wine all afternoon, I gave in to the temptation to try a Racer 5 on draught. It was very tasty, but it did tip my drowsiness scale, causing me to nap most of the drive back to Oakland.

That night we took it easy at home. We sat out on our balcony for a while and noticed the moon over the city. Mom took a few pictures that are probably the best ones we have of our view at night so far...

Monday was Mom's last full day in California. We filled it up with as much as we could, but it flew by anyway. After a doctor's appointment I had in the morning, we went to the beach near the dump in Albany. (I think they might pronounce it AL-bany here, as opposed to the "correct" ALL-bany of the Empire State.)

This is a decently-kept secret dog park of the East Bay. Dogs are allowed to run leash-free in and out of the water in the park. It's quiet there, with a clear view of both SF and the GG bridge. Pretty gorgeous, really. This was the first time we have taken Apollo to any sort of dog park in a couple months. He has been acting aggressively toward other dogs while leashed lately, and a trainer we visited discouraged us from taking him to any doggy social hours. But, he hasn't been swimming in a while and I thought a Monday afternoon would be our best bet to try it out. He was like a pig in shit, as they say. He pranced around in and out of the water, grinning like mad. He didn't even mind the surprise butt sniff he got from a strange dog that ran up from behind him. In fact, they got along extremely well.

The other dog, we found out, is named Hazel. She's a 1.5 year old Blue Heeler (which I found out is another name for Australian Cattle Dog from that link.) She loves to play just like Apollo: chase chase chase.

Apollo must have forgotten that saltwater is not thirst quenching because he was pretty miserable when we left the park. He didn't seem to mind wearing his leash and gentle leader again (that black line over his face.) His discomfort is written all over his sad little face in this picture. I thought he was going to end up turning our back seat into a replica of our couch on the ride home, but he kept it together. Once he had some fresh water he snapped out of his glum state.

That is all I have for pictures at this point. There may be a few more, but my mom and her camera took off on Tuesday for the next leg of her journey in CO. We had a great time hosting her. It was sad to see her go, really. 6 days didn't feel very long.