weekend

Prepare yourself for a ridiculously long entry with lots of food pictures.  My weekend included the following: Olympics, fire, farmers market, risotto, beignets, Batman, and cheese.
Olympics opening ceremony: love.  I will admit a couple elements did not translate amazingly well to the television, but over all I really enjoyed it. I refuse to tell you what we ate Friday night, it was shamefully unhealthy yet satisfying.
Saturday morning we woke up and headed to the farmers market. I will always love Saturday mornings at the farmers market.

Evan and boyfriend went to go see Batman, no I didn't go.  Super intense movies I really need to watch in the comfort of my own home.  Sometimes I need to pause it, so what?  Well, they both loved it and were both very happy to come home to me cooking a mushroom risotto.  We bought some strange mushrooms at the farmers market that morning and mixed in some crimini mushrooms, so we had some high hopes for this risotto.  And it was a bit disappointing.  There are so few ingredients in risotto, that each one has to be full of flavor.  I did not have great chicken stock (it's really best to make your own), the mushrooms we bought were okay, and lastly I did not have the truffle oil, which I have come to find essential in a good mushroom risotto.  Don't get me wrong it was good, but I think it had the potential to be GREAT.  Here is a link to the recipe if you want to give it a shot.

So we finished dinner and started to catch ourselves up on the olympics when the fire alarm started to go off.  Initially I thought it was an oopsie daisy, and asked boyfriend to check the hall to see if anyone was going anywhere.  He said no we need to put on real pants, (not pjs) get the cats in their crates, and then look to see if the fire alarm is for real.  So I walk into my closet to get the crates and WOAH I can smell smoke in my closet.  It's for real something is on fire below us.  We sped up the process quiet a bit after I smelled that.  Cats, keys, and phones in hand we marched outside at 1030 pm.  Five fire trucks show up and one of them proceeded to block the garage.  I was super annoyed with this because I wanted my car! The cats kind of know my car and it's pretty chilly outside, so I kept sending Alberto over to the garage to see if they had moved the truck yet.  Only to find out 40 minutes later a car was on fire in the garage.  Eventually we were allowed to go back inside the building, and we go to bed. Next morning we come to find the car on fire was actually sitting RIGHT NEXT TO MINE! My car is fine, some black soot on the tires, but no serious damage.  Lucky me.  On a side note, our garage now smells absolutely horrible. 

The car was fine to drive, so we went along with our Sunday plans, Brenda's in San Francisco for brunch.  A little place in the tenderloin with at least an hour wait no matter what time you show up Saturday or Sunday morning.  The trick is to come and write your name on the chalkboard, go do something else for an hour or so, then come back to hear your name within 15 minutes of waiting. Everything at Brenda's was fantastic and so worth the hour wait. Here we had the beignet flight (one of each of the following: plain, crawfish, chocolate, and apple), the hangtown fry, gumbo, mimosas, and the special, which was crispy pork belly, cheddar grits, a poached egg, and a biscuit with a side of gravy.  The hangtown fry involved oysters, so I did no touch that one. But the potato hash that came with was delicious.  Can someone please explain to me why I grew up in Texas, yet I find the best biscuit and gravy in San Francisco?? That biscuit and gravy could be my last meal, it was so good.  Pork belly and grits were my second favorite, but the biscuit and gravy was completely out of this world.  I also think I could eat one of their plain beignets and apple beignets every morning of my life.  

 

 

Then we attempted to walk off the absurd amount of calories we just consumed in Hayes Valley. We did eventually have some tea, and got some cheeses for dinner at a fancy cheese shop. And after a long day bopping around and eating we finally headed home.

We did eventually get hungry for dinner around 8, and threw this little fruit and cheese spread together.  

Overall, my weekend was fabulous, and I thanked boyfriend for bringing me to California.  For a short weekend I forgot all about Texas being home.  

Here are a couple other pictures we took throughout the day.