Mmmmmmarshmallows!

I finally made marshmallows from scratch.  Cole decided to make homemade graham crackers to go along with them.  Add a few pieces of good dark chocolate, and you've got some delicious s'mores.  Perfect for our chilly, foggy evenings.

For the marshamallows, I found a great recipe on Smitten Kitchen, and had I truly heeded her warnings, the process would have been a lot less messy for me.  [Consider how sticky melted marshmallows are when toasted over a campfire.]  That said, they aren't very difficult to make as long as you pay close attention to all of the directions and measure very precisely.

I wasn't going to chronicle this because I didn't want to get distracted and mess something up.  But Cole got the camera and went to town, so here you go.

I'd been wanting to try my hand at flavored marshmallows after having the lavender ones from Miette, so I added two teaspoons of mint extract to the marshmallow batter.  Mmmm, mint chocolate s'mores!

After chilling in the fridge for several hours, I turned the large marshmallow out onto a cutting board and sliced it into small squares.  Another dusting of confectioner's sugar, and the mint marshmallows are done.  They are super fat and fluffy and soft...a lot different than store-bought ones.

Each s'more has a square of Tcho dark chocolate (from our own Pier 50 here in SF) nestled inside.  They were divine, but extremely rich.  And I never want to eat another store-bought graham cracker ever again.  One caveat:  the marshmallows came out VERY minty.  Maybe even right on the edge of TOO minty.  Next time, I think I'd reduce the mint extract from 2 teaspoons to 1.  

Our friends and coworkers are getting little packages of s'mores makings, because it's just wrong to have that many marshmallows and grahams sitting around in a household of 2.

[After typing "marshmallow" several times, I started wondering where the heck that word (and the candy itself) came from.  Apparently the marshmallow first came into use as a medicinal substance, as extracts from the marsh mallow plant soothed sore throats.  The candy dates back to ancient Egypt, where those clever Egyptians mixed the sticky, saplike substance with nuts and honey.  The French are credited with developing the modern marshmallow.  One of the most famous of the marshmallow family is the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man of Ghostbusters fame.  That movie is in our Netflix queue right now.  I'm way overdue for a viewing!]

Felt Dahlia Headband

This weekend I finally got to a craft that I'd been planning for awhile: a felt dahlia headband.  I saw these graphic flower headbands and pins when we went to Renegade Craft Fair, but when I saw their prices I quickly decided to try to make my own.  I used the great tutorial here (which is actually for a dahlia brooch, but I modified it for the headband).  

The dahlia wasn't that difficult, just time consuming--especially the gluing of each individual petal.  I started out using Fabri-Tac as recommended, but I switched to hot glue when assembling the flower because the Fabri-Tac just wasn't strong enough to hold the petals in place.  Other than that, the tutorial is perfect.

I'm pretty happy with the results! 

We're Big in France

On the day that Judge Walker overturned Prop. 8, Cole and I took part in the rally in the Castro and the march to City Hall on that foggy evening.  After standing at City Hall for awhile, we sat down on a ledge right in front of the building to listen to the speakers.  At one point a photographer caught us kissing and started taking pictures of us, which made us laugh.  He was from the French-American press and asked how we felt about the ruling.

Anyway, I'd kind of forgotten about it until Cole found the photo this morning.

That photo reminds me of how great it felt to be celebrating after the ruling.  I just hope that in a few months we get further reason to celebrate from the Ninth Circuit, and then a final reason to celebrate from the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the meantime, I will keep kissing my wife, in front of City Hall and elsewhere.

Mount Diablo

Yesterday morning we headed to the East Bay to Mount Diablo for a picnic and a hike.  It was so warm and beautiful all across the Bay Area yesterday.  Mount Diablo isn't too far from Walnut Creek, but you pretty much feel like you're in the middle of nowhere.  We took a scenic winding road up to the entrance to Mount Diablo State Park and then found a perfect picnic area at Rock City--named for all of the huge boulders scattered here and there.

The boulders are worn smooth by visitors and also bear decades and decades' worth of names.

We kind of hiked on a selection of trails before we found the Summit Trail, which took us pretty close to the top of the mountain.  It was a steep uphill climb under shady trees and it took us past this cool rock:

At one point, when we were pretty close to the top, we startled a huge deer on the trail.  Other wildlife sightings included a squirrel and a blue jay.  And tons of big spider webs .

It was a really nice afternoon, and very quiet on the trails, but I was extremely happy to cross the Bay Bridge and see San Francisco spread out before me.  Am I turning into a city girl or what?

Moon Rising Over the Bay

I just took a break from jam making on this Monday evening and noticed the moon rising over the tops of the houses, the freeways, and the bay.  This is looking out one of our dining room windows, on an evening that followed one of the nicest days we've had all year.  It dawned bright and sunny and clear, with no trace of fog in the sky.  It got up to about 85 degrees, with the slightest balmy breeze blowing in from the ocean.  All over the city, jackets were discarded in favor of sundresses and shorts and sandals and flip flops.  This I know because Cole and I celebrated the weather with a drink at The Grove on Fillmore, where we sat outside in the sun.

I love a good full moon like this one.  It's now high in the sky, over all of the twinkling lights of the neighborhoods to the southeast.  And I am going back to making jam and listening to Phoenix and enjoying having all of our windows open tonight.

I might even wear a dress to work tomorrow.  CRAZY!

[If this post mystifies you, it's probably because you don't live in a place where June-August are the coldest, greyest months of the year.  Trust me, a sunny, warm day right now is cause for major celebration.]

[This type of post is exactly why I'd like a decent camera.  My little Kodak point-and-shoot doesn't even come close to capturing what it really looked like outside the window.  The sky was about a million different colors, each fading into the next, and the moon is so bright you can see that it really does look like cheese.]

From Seed

As much as I love plants, I haven't dabbled much in growing them from seeds.  But a few months ago we were at a neighborhood fair and a kindergarten class was selling seedlings to raise money...so I got a few.  Two marigolds and one zinnia.  The zinnia still hasn't popped, but the marigolds are going crazy.  I hope I can coax that zinnia out soon...maybe the sunny, warm days that we've been promised in September & October will do the trick.

Everything Will Be Okay

I saw this last weekend on Divisidero and had to believe that the city was sending me a message...

Stocking Up

We eat so much more fresh produce now than we did when we lived in Arizona.  I think we're finally getting the knack of just how much we need to buy each Saturday morning at the farmers market to last the week.  

This is how our fridge typically looks on a Friday night:

Pretty sad, all around.  I mean, what can you make with some ginger ale, almond butter, mint and a grapefruit?

This is how the fridge looks on Saturday morning, post-market:

Lately the market has had two of my FAVORITE things:  heirloom tomatoes and peaches.  We've been buying loads of them.  This week we bought five pounds of peaches in order to do a second batch of the ridiculously tasty ginger peach jam we made last weekend.  That'll take three pounds; the remaining two are basically for me.  I recently declared the peach my favorite fruit and I like to eat at least one a day, preferably mixed in with my morning oatmeal.  It's easily one of the most delicious and satisfying dishes EVER.

Today's Bouquet

It was a grey, foggy, cool day at the farmers market this morning,* so I couldn't resist bringing some color home.  These dahlias are stunning!  Dahlias and zinnias have got to be my favorite flowers...I love their symmetry.

Eventually the fog lifted, giving way to a beautiful, sunny day, and we headed up the hill to check out the annual Hillside Garage Sale.  Tons of Bernal residents take part in it, and a percentage of the proceeds go towards the neighborhood center.  It was a pretty successful outing for us; we came home with a rather random but pleasing selection of goods:

--a kitchen scale circa 1972 (a guess) (we've been craving the ability to weigh ingredients, especially for baking)

--some pretty fabric with a graphic print

--2 paperback books

--a really nice orange-y glazed ceramic pot that's just asking to hold an airplane plant.

Also, three 25 cent cookies being sold by extremely cute Bernal Heights kids were consumed along the route.  Yum!

*But still totally busy...plenty busy enough for a tiny Asian woman to steamroll past me with her cart near the free range eggs and run down my left foot in the process.

New Additions

A couple of weeks ago we took Cole's mom to the amazing and wonderful Renegade Craft Fair at Fort Mason.  It's a huge building, right on the water, chock full of crafters and their wares.

We were pretty excited when we turned a corner and saw Ryan Berkeley manning his stand with his mother alongside him.  We excitedly started rifling through the animal portraits, trying to decide which ones to add to our (very slowly) burgeoning collection.  It was an excruciatingly difficult decision.  The gorilla was in the running.  And the shark.  And the pygmy marmoset.  And the goat lazily eating part of his tie.

In the end, these are the guys who made it:

I love how the donkey looks so earnest while wearing what appears to be a 70s-era silvery-white tux [he was Cole's pick; she thinks he looks like Frank Sinatra].  I chose the "wait, what, you're taking my picture now?!" sea otter, looking so jaunty in his bowler hat and vest.

We now have four Ryan Berkeley prints.  That means we have, oh, several dozen more to go.

Deliciously Defunct

I just stumbled upon these photos of the soon-to-be-demolished Transbay Terminal.  I've never been in the building, although I was once outside of it last year when I accidentally forgot to get off the bus at my stop because I was too engrossed in my book.  These photos make it clear that I need to go check out the TT in person before it bites the dust this month.

For a good article on the history of the TT, check this out.