Summer Herb Salad/ In praise of Lemon Basil

This is a great herb salad recipe I just discovered and am addicted to. (Click on the title of the post to go to the website and get the recipe.) The tang from the herbs contrasts nicely with the sweetness of the corn and green beans and the avacado dressing is mild and just right. I'd recommend only using a 1/2 of an avacado for the dressing, though. Otherwise, it's tastes too guacamole-y.

I keep making this with lemon basil (http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/48821/) that I've picked up at my local farmer's market. If you have never tried lemon basil, try to get your hands on some! Such a nice clean-sweet-zesty scent that causes you to compulsively and repeatedly sniff and sigh happily...this might be the original "people-nip"! I'm so smitten with this stuff that I'm going to try to collect seeds from the blossoms and grow some on my porch. (Or maybe I should do it the straightforward way and just buy a plant.) Anyway, the taste is just like the smell and description: lemon + basil. I also made a nice herb tea with it...just pour boiling water over the leaves. Another great use for lemon basil: tear up leaves with a chopped tomato (I used some yummy-flavored heirloom tomatoes from the farmer's market) and add some chopped yellow bell pepper. Splash a little red wine vinegar and some olive oil on it (ratio about 1:3 or 1:4 vinegar to oil) and grind pepper and salt over it. Colorful/aesthetically pleasing and tastes really flavorful, too!!

San Fransisco, Fourth of July

This is a late in being posted, but...

The first week of July, work sent me to the Bay Area for a 3-day training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I loved it. I got to get away and learn and eat (they feed you nonstop) and sleep in a quiet hotel. All the people that normally want my attention had to do without and leave me in peace for a while...glorious! A bonus was that the training ended the day before 4th of July (Friday) so I just extended my flight home until Sunday and hung out with the Lindsays, so I got a free family visit, paid for by the federal government!

Here are some street pictures and fireworks pictures. Below is a picture standing on Kristin and Mike's street. Unfortunately, the fireworks pictures were taken sans tripod so they're very "impressionistic."


Here are some domestic scenes at the Lindsays' then-furniture-less apartment. They had just arrived from Vermont a week before and were waiting on the moving van to deliver their worldly possessions.

In the absence of a couch, Mike had to recline on a blowup bed and Gretchen had to recline on..dad.

Here's the li'l gipper getting her hair done while watching "'Credibles," (The Incredibles) which I learned is her favorite movie and needs to be watched a couple of times a day!

The kiddo.




Took a fresh air walk to the community garden near their apartment.

Scenes from an evening walk we took to "The Crepevine" on Irvine for dinner. Kristin and Mike live in the Sunset district:


I'm a little naieve as a Southern Californian and didn't bring enough warm clothes (..I mean, it was July!) I ended up high-tailing it to the local thrift store with Kristin where we both bought some additional long sleeve shirts, jackets, and sweaters. Just to give this some perspective, I slept under about 4 nice warm quilts and we turned on the heat at night! It was so very windy and cold walking and walking to the wharf for fireworks that I was a little short on holiday gaiety. However, I must have benefitted from the body heat of the thousands of other San Franciscans at the wharf because I warmed up once we got a spot on the grass. The fireworks were great. We learned that fireworks will just tinge the sky with their color, but no pattern is visible when there's fog. We also ate a 4th of July dinner at a Brazilian restaurant in honor of Camila and in honor of the fact that we were starving and it was the first restaurant we ran across:)


NEXT DAY: Chinatown




Look close, there's Gretchen, Mike, and Kristin.

Window shopping.

The iconic trolley...you're supposed to take pictures of the trolleys if you're from out of town.









We bought some scarves on the street, ate some good Chinese food, and then went back to a jacket shop where Mike bought a jacket and Kristin talked me in to plopping down some cash ($219..that's CASH for a social worker..but it was 50% off) for a rock n roll motorcycle jacket. That's about when the little miss started to poop out, as you see pictured above. The ensuing crankiness signalled that the time was right to take a long drive down to Moss Beach so she could hopefully fall asleep in the car seat. Here's us searching for little crabs, sea urchins, and the like in the tidepools at low tide (around 7 p.m.):





Auntie Winnow made friends with and gained the trust of the seals by slowly inching towards them two baby steps at a time. See those trusting gazes? Only a third of them jumped in the water and swam away. The others felt very comfortable around me.





The happy family.




FRIDAY MORNING (moving backwards in time just to keep you on your toes and avoid moving around these darn pictures); Moss Beach at high tide:





A memo was circulated, notifying everyone to wear pink on this day.


We didn't take pictures of Mike, except for one faraway hiking picture (above) because he wouldn't comply with the rule to wear pink.

Again, it was freezing cold. But because making Gretchen laugh and squeal called for me and Kristin to carry her close to, and then run away from the surf (which got us a couple of times), we took off our shoes and rolled up our pants.

Here's the cutest picture of the bunch of mommy and little miss:

One of my favorite things about Gretchen is that she makes herself really clear by repeating everything she says about 3-4 times in her cute, squeaky voice. I.e. "Let's go down the hill now. Ok, let's go down the hill now. Go down the hill now." Maybe another time, just to make her point. Each time she intones as if she's saying it for the first time and it's a new idea. She's also really good at pronouncing my name, which most adults can't do. She liked to sit on my lap and help me eat my food. I hadn't seen her for some time so it was so fun to see how big she's gotten and how many words she's now got in her little vocabulary.

I'm glad Mike/Kristin/Gretchen and bun-in-the-oven now live so close to me and we can visit again soon! San Francisco couldn't be a more fabulous destination, too. Thank you, guys, for putting me up (they even borrowed a blowup bed and blankets for me) and showing me around town 'n beaches! Let's do it again soon!