28 Weeks

Rich and I just started looking seriously for baby paraphernalia this weekend. There is a dizzying array of choices of carriers/strollers. Also, we need to decide on some bedding scheme so that the baby can sleep in our room for the first few months (bassinet, moses basket, cosleeper, whatever).

We also went to the Silent Film Festival again yesterday, which was a nice break from baby decisions.

Anyway, here's a belly pic at 28 weeks (yesterday).

25 weeks

Weekend activities

Rich and I finally took advantage of our birthday present from David last year, which was a gift card giving us access to a menu of "experiences" in the San Francisco area.

Rich took a flying trapeze lesson at the San Francisco circus school. Here's a little video of flying Rich. Now he want to take lessons.



I chose to do the archery lesson for two, so I took Alice to the Archery Range in Golden Gate Park near the ocean. Our instructor, Ed, was very thorough and methodical in teaching us, so we had pretty good success hitting the target from distances up to about 30 feet. We both also hit the bullseye a few times.

Archery is a good sport for pregnant women, since it only requires the arms and shoulders. Highly recommended, especially since flying trapeze was out. Rich points out that flying trapeze results in every muscle being sore the next day (or 3), as well as some fancy bruising behind the knees.

Here's a posed shot by the target before getting started.

And here's an action shot as we're both preparing to take a shot.

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Summer Pie Time

For about a year and a half Rich has been welcoming the new seasons by baking pies with the produce that comes into the market. I've been mostly eating the pies and giving a thumbs up. Here's Rich's second-to-most recent pie, which was strawberry rhubarb (my favorite).

This past weekend we went on a pilgrammage with some friends to Swanton Berry Farms U-pick fields between Santa Cruz and Pescadero. The ollalieberry season was just starting, and the strawberries were in full swing. Rich comprimised his all-ollallieberry pie dreams because they weren't sweet enough and baked a strawberry-ollallieberry pie which may have been his best pie ever. However, it was a pie for eating, not photographing.

Here's Rich and friends with our haul at the berry farm.

Just for fun...

...here's a belly shot from Kathryn and Gil's wedding last weekend, when I was 21 weeks along.

Ok, I'm telling the internet

Sorry for the long time no blog. Rich has been posting his 140 character or less thoughts on Facebook, but Facebook sucks and I've got news that I don't want to tell Facebook:
We're cautiously but happily expecting a new member of the family on or near 10/10/10.

Here are some of our 20-week ultrasound pics.

Oh, and it would appear that our first child will be a masculine child (to quote Don Corleone).

Mastering the Art

Long time no blog.

I guess I've been chattier lately on a finer granularity, on Facebook. It's a bit easier to say something brief.

So there's loads to catch up on (and lots of pictures that I need to go through, which seems to be a recurring theme), but I won't get too into that now, except to say that we enjoyed our 2 week trip back east for my nephew Matt's Bar Mitzvah and then traveling around seeing friends and seeing the fall colors. I will get pictures up eventually...

But the topic du jour is food. After coming back from Europe we had gotten pretty excited about French food and had a desire to expand our cooking horizons a bit. But we hadn't managed to get around to it much. Seeing "Julie and Julia" kind of reminded us again and prodded us to consider it more. Reading "My Life in France" (one of the books that the movie is based on), which my sister-in-law Laura got for us, also helped.

So a little while back we checked "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" out of the library, to give it a test drive. We were pretty impressed with some of our initial efforts (Ratatouille, Garlic Soup) that we decided to go ahead and buy it.

So this past weekend we dived head first into a major cooking extravaganza, Beef Bourguignon. It's quite an undertaking. Start to finish it was about 5 hours of prep time. But it's not really that bad -- a good chunk of that it's just sitting in the oven cooking. A big enough chunk that we easily were able to sit down and watch a movie ("Whatever Works", Woody Allen's latest). And apparently the dish only gets better if you let it sit around a bit, so we made the main course ahead of time on Saturday, and didn't have that much work to do on Sunday, when we were serving.

But we didn't just stop there, and before we knew it, we were planning a 5 course meal. At times some of the minutia of our planning conversations were perhaps a little embarrassing -- trying to figure out what wine to use for the Beef Bourguignon (it takes a full bottle), or what kind of mushrooms to use (how can Julia possibly just say "mushrooms" -- I guess she couldn't anticipate the dozens of varieties that we have to choose from in Berkeley), or obsessing over what kind of bread to buy for the appetizer, and was it appropriate to use the same kind of bread for the croutons for the salad (we ended up with just one kind).

Regarding the wine, I've always been of the opinion that while it's silly to use too nice of a bottle of wine for cooking, you should also have some minimum standards, and not use anything you wouldn't want to drink. We couldn't find any inexpensive Burgundy reds at BevMo, but I found one bottle of Burgundy for $7 at Trader Joe's, and decided that that would surely be drinkable enough. We poured most of the bottle into the dish before it went in the oven, but I saved a little taste for us to sit down and enjoy with the movie. It smelled decent, and had the right color, but when we actually tasted it, I was pretty horrified -- it was not a very good wine, to say the least. Way too acidic and lacking in flavor. Definitely something I wouldn't want to drink a bottle of. Well, it was too late to do anything about it, and as it turned out, the dish was still amazing. So maybe it's a good thing we tasted it after adding it, because if we had done it the other way around, we probably would have just dumped the whole bottle. Nevertheless, next time I think we may try something else, to see if a better wine makes it even better.

There's one scene in the movie where Julie has this revelation while cooking mushrooms that she's been doing it all wrong. It was kind of neat making this soon after seeing the movie, because I can now somewhat relate to that. Although the main point of Julia's that Julie was realizing (don't crowd the mushrooms) I don't think as much applied to what I've done in the past -- but I definitely did notice a difference from Julia's other point, of using a much higher heat.

Anyway, it was a pretty epic meal, and although it was a lot of work, I'd say it was totally worth it, and we'd do it again. And it gave us an excuse to serve an entire meal on the china that I've inherited. Thanks to Julia (and Julie) for inspiration, to Todd and Ryan for being willing culinary guinea pigs, and to the librarian at the Berkeley public library for helping us pick out some French cafe music to set the right atmosphere. And to Dirk for graciously helping to lick out the sauce pan.

I had thought about adding one final finishing touch by printing out the menu on little cards, but we need more toner and I decided it just wasn't worth it. So here it is electronically, complete with the requisite amount of fancy restaurant-style modifiers:

Dry farmed Early Girl tomato bruschetta on sourdough toasts
--
Frisee salad with white truffle parmesan dressing
--
Beef Bourguignon
Oven roasted Yukon Gold potatoes
--
Assorted cheeses
--
Molten chocolate cake
Fresh raspberries

The smoking!

In the last post, I remembered that there were 3 reasons Rich and I preferred France, but I had forgotten what #3 was, so I just threw in the language thing, but I just remembered.

The real list was:
1. Public toilets
2. Tap water
3. No smoking in bars and restaurants!!

While the French have the reputation of being walking chimneys, they passed a law a few years back forbidding smoking in public places indoors. So our sojourn there was mercifully free of smoke. When we got to Belgium we were assaulted by smoke everywhere we went, which sucks as a tourist because your limited clothing supply quickly becomes repulsively malodourous.

I think it wouldn't have bothered me as much years ago before I became used to smoke-free environments, but I've become weak and spoiled in my old age.

Barhopping in Brussels

We really enjoyed our day in Brussels. We were intent on trying as many new (to us) beers as possible, and cushioning them with fries, waffles and chocolate in between. And we did some of the requisite sightseeing as well.


Here our some of the highlights:

1. Some of the most detailed stained glass we've ever seen at the Notre Dame Cathedral

2. The Mannekin Pis, a must-see tiny little statue of a peeing little cherub.

3. Our favorite Brussels bar, Poechenellekelder, where we could watch a constant stream of tourists come by to photograph the Mannekin Pis.

4. Said view.

5. The Hotel de Ville, at the Grand Place at night.

6. Our table-mate at the Delerium Pub, which is famous for its selection of over 2000 beers. This picture shows that one thing is common throughout the world - teenagers go for quantity over quality.

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While we enjoyed our time in Belgium, there a three major reasons that we prefered France as tourists:

1. Few public toilets. The ones there are have limited hours and cost. A big problem in a country where you drink beer with every meal and between them too.
2. They won't give you tap water at restaurants. Not that they don't do it automatically like here - they refuse even if you ask.
3. I can't practice my French in the Dutch parts. And Dutch just sounds like fake German.

"If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn't, so it doesn't."

Another quote from the movie, for what it's worth.

We liked Bruges. It was very cute. However, we weren't happy at the place we were staying (I had to stand on a chair in the shower to get my hair wet, and a few other reasons). Also, the beer bar that is supposed to be one of the best in the world was closed when we were there. So hopefully one day we'll return and have more success.


However, on the plus side, it was nice to wander the well-preserved/reconstructed medieval streets, and ate dinner the first night at a little cafe filled with locals with a great jazz trio. We also had dinner the second night at Den Dyver, a fancy place where they choose a beer pairing for your meal, which was wonderful. The city is purported to be jammed with tourists, but it wasn't crowded at all when we were there.

Pictures:
1. The view of central market from the clock tower.
2. The clock tower.
3. A windblown me in the central market.
4&5. The view along the canals.

The Luberon - Provence part 4

On our final day, we drove east to the Luberon, a region made famous by A Year in Provence, which we'd both read earlier this year. We started by visiting Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, which is a town built over 5 rivers, the Sorgue being the primary one. The antiques market was going on when we arrived and the town was hopping Then we visited Gordes, one of the more famous medieval hilltop villages in the area. We finished our day by going by the Abbey of Senaque, which is famous for its lavender, although it wasn't yet in bloom.

Pictures:

1. Rich with his feet in the river across from where we had our best Provencal lunch - salads and white wine.
2. Lorien on a bridge over the Sorgue.

3. A field of irises on the outskirts of Gordes.

4. Gordes.

5. The Abbey of Senaque.

Day in the Alpilles - Provence part 3

We spent Saturday around St. Remy, stymied in our quest to do laundry, since the one laundromat in town was closed, and buying food for a dinner picnic at the market. We also went up to Les Baux de Provence, a hilltop village and the remains of roman and medieval fortifications high up in the Alpilles range.

Pictures:

1. The village of Baux de Provence, which mostly exists to provide tourist facilities to people visiting the ruins.
2. The ruins of the fortress.
3. Rich and some French women participating in a catapult demo. Minimal language skills were required for this volunteer position.
4. A view of the Alpilles range and the olive groves and vineyards of the Camargue below.
5. Our picnic back at our hotel.

May Day in Provence - Provence part 2

I was a little nervous that everything would be shut tight on May Day, which is international Labor Day. However, at least in Provence, it seems to be an excuse to parade about in traditional clothing and put on free shows. We started the day in St. Remy, where there was a donkey parade (indeed!). Then we headed to the Parc Ornithologique, located in the Rhone River Delta which is a vast marshland and habitat for migrating flamingos. We finished our day in Arles, where we caught an Arlesian "bullfight" in the Roman Colloseum, which was more of a choreographed dance than a fight, and involved minimal conflict and zero bloodshed.

The pictures:

1. Donkey Parade in St. Remy-de-Provence
2.&3. Flamingos at the Parc Ornithologique
4. The Colloseum in Arles
5. Van Gogh's cafe in Arles

Ah, Provence - part 1

We spent 4 full days in Provence, and it will take several posts to blog it, since we had a wonderful time, and Provence is beautiful. We were based at the Hotel de Soleil in St. Remy-de-Provence, where Van Gogh was institutionalized, and we explored around the region by car. Provence was the center of Roman civilization in ancient Gaul, and the area is littered with ancient ruins.

On the first day, we went to Avignon and the Pont de Gard. During the 14th century, the Popes made their home here, feeling that Rome was too corrupt. Avignon's skyline is dominated by the Palais des Papes. And of course, there's the immortal pont d'Avignon from the nursury rhyme.

Pictures:

1. The Pont d'Avignon with Mont Ventoux in the distance. As you can see, it no longer crosses the Rhone.

2. The song. Rich learned it for this trip and wouldn't stop singing for days. And yes, we danced on the bridge.

3. Me on one of the windy mideaval streets behind the Palais de Papes

4. The Palais des Papes

5. The Pont de Gard (the remains of a Roman Aquaduct) near sunset.

Rich and Lorien cross the Alps

Rich may have more to say about our drive through a surprise snowstorm (it was April 29, so it was only a little surprise) but here's a picture from the drive that I really like, taken near Mijoux. This is the most dramatic snowline I've ever seen.

Cheese and Yellow Wine in the Jura

We spent 2 full days in the Jura, about an hour drive north of Geneva (in decent weather conditions...I think Rich discussed our ill-fated trip through the Alps in an earlier post). The first day we hiked in the vineyards around Arbois, center of production of the tasty and slightly bizarre yellow wine. That was the day of the cheese debacle. The next day we hiked around the Herrisson waterfalls, then I went for a walk around the village we were staying in, Montigny-Sur-L'Ain, while Rich slept off the cheese. Pictures below:

1. Rich sitting in the middle of a traffic circle in Arbois

2. Arbois seen from the vineyards above the town

3. Rich by the waterfalls

4. The cows near our village. They all creepily stopped what they were doing to watch me walk by.

5. Christelle and Pascale, the proprietress and proprietor of Au Douillet Gourmet, the B&B where we stayed.