Yeah, what grows, will grow this year.t I’m not all too happy with my garden at the moment so I don’t think I’ll be putting as much into it as I normally do. Plus, Penelope Envelope keeps eating all my lemon cucumber seedlings. This just won’t be my year for gardening.

To take its place, Ralph and I have been searching for art (our anniversary tradition). Of course the stuff I really want is way out of our price range or hard to find. We have been finding possible treasures, but we’re still deciding on what we like and want to get.

My niece wants to come visit for a week. I think I’d like her to, but I’m nervous about trying to keep a 16-year-old entertained. I’m especially worried about how bored she might be while we’re at work. I know of things I’d like to do when I get home or on weekends (take her to the Chocolate Bar, an all-ages concert, museum, maybe Tahoe, etc.) but I have no clue what things I can do/suggest while she’s home by herself. I dunno, I guess our floors need refinishing…

For some reason, I think I may be in trouble gardening-wise this year. In an effort to make our front patio sitting area more level, we moved some of the dirt into my raised veggie beds (because I have a really bad habit of taking from it to pot stuff). Since it was kind of an impromptu thing, I didn’t clear out all of the rocks that I should have and now I’m worried I just introduced weeds into my beds.

Two of my artichoke plants are doing well, as well as the horseradish. All of the bulbs I’ve planted seem to be doing well as long as we don’t get more strong winds that blow the petals off of the flowers. Totally ruined my plan of having one planter of just black and white tulips.

Composting isn’t going as smoothly as it did last year. Too much nitrogen no matter how much carbon material I add. My laziness in the fall has caused what I think are 20 zucchini seedlings to grow. Instead of putting all of the spent zucchini into the compost, I just turned some over into the soil…thinking it would compost straight into the dirt. If I’m lucky, there will also be some crook neck and patty pans in there, because 20 zucchini plants is way too many. I could just pull them all up and plant the seedlings I’ve started, but I kind of like that these grew on their own and that I have back-ups in case we get another frost before the end of May.

Had to put fencing around the veggie beds because Penelope Envelope decided she likes nibbling on cabbage. I don’t like the way it looks (fencing around my veggie beds) but it should prevent her from boxing with any of my eggplants like she did last year. Besides, we got the green plastic net fencing so I’m hoping that the sugar snap peas will use that for support

–How cute. My niece just called me to ask how to cook chicken adobo. She’s so darling. I love her. Wish I could see her more–

instead of the tomato cages I normally use.

My next big garden project will be what to do about my cheapy greenhouse. I joke around that it’s not spring yet until it falls over in a windstorm, causing damage to any seedlings I’ve started or at least causing them to fall out of their labeled containers. That’s the worst part, having unknown seeds to plant because I like to arrange the plants in my beds according to what grows well together.

I’ll keep you posted. :\

My last few birthday dinners have been at 4th Street Bistro because they have foie gras as an appetizer and I looooove foie gras. Ralph got me some to try cooking with and when I go to 4th Street, I can find something I want to try, but it’s usually just the one thing on the menu that caught my eye. However, our beloved Sezmu usually has numerous things I want to try, and sometimes a selection of goodies is just what you want for your birthday, so that’s where we went.

I was prepared to pick á la carte, because I had been perusing the menu throughout the day. However, after hearing the Chef’s Choice, both Ralph and I had to order it.

My first cocktail was the Alley Cat Love Potion and Ralph got the Pomegranate Manhattan. The Alley Cat consisted of a variety of citrus juices, ginger beer and champagne. Delicious and refreshing without being too tart. Ralph thought his drink had too many flavors that he liked, but wasn’t sure if he liked *that* many all at once. I thought it tasted very spa-esque. Not only like what you would drink at a spa, but it also smelled like a lot of the essential oils you’d pick from for your massage.

The taster was cauliflower vichyssoise with a dollop of lobster oil. This was light, not too fishy and would be ideal for a hot summer day as a full serving. For a cold February night, a taste was just right.

The first dish of the Chef’s choice was sushi-grade raw hamachi (my favorite sushi fish) wrapped around avocado and sprinkled with hearts of palm and, I think, young sage leaves. I could have eaten a full meal of just this. The hamachi melted in your mouth like butter and the nutty tastes of ripe avocado and crunchy hearts of palm balanced the texture without over-powering the fish.

Our second dish was a dairyless razor clam chowder with prosciutto hash. To give the soup the texture of chowder, a bean purée was used. Ralph said a bigger bowl of this with some bread would have been a complete meal in and of itself. The presentation of the prosciutto and some of the clam in the shell was nice and actually useful (I had to use the shell to push the last of the bite-sized pieces onto my spoon).

By now I’m starting my second cocktail, the J D’anjou. It consisted of pear liquor, vodka, pear purée and pinot gris sweetness (or something), garnished with a thin slice of pear. Ralph ordered the tried-and-true Thai Heat. No chili garnish this time, but it was definitely hotter and just as tasty.

Main course was tempura snowpeas, “forbidden” black rice and snow grouper with some sort of savory sauce on the side. This dish was very good, but larger servings of the previous dishes would have been just fine. That’s not to say that I was unhappy or disappointed with this in any way, it just…would have been nicer to have more of the other stuff :)

For dessert, I went with the Medjool Date cake, with brandy foam and cardamom ice cream and a glass of sauternes. This was absolutely delicious and the ONLY reason I hesitated in diving in right away is that the presentation was very phallic. Yes, I’m immature, I don’t deny this, but I’m not exaggerating. There was a long line of brandy foam (ribbed with date slice…penis thorns) and the smallish cylinder date cake was at one end…nestled by two little scoops of cardamom ice cream balls. The jokes are just too easy, which is why I made sure to rate it before describing it. Ralph, of course, had his cheese plate with a mediera. Seemed a little light on the serving sizes compared to previous times, but Ralph was still very happy with it.

I think I just need to not go to Sezmu again. I am so stuffed, it’s almost painful. But the food is so good! Tonight it was just the two of us. We got to sit next to the window, which was nice. I was sitting right on top of the heater, which was really nice considering how easily I get cold.

My first drink was the Harvestini. I’m not too big on the martini scene, but I’m a big sucker for “Fall” flavors. This drink consisted of pumpkin, apple and cinnamon flavors. Unfortunately the nightly drink specials aren’t on the web site (even though the menu changes very regularly, if not every day). Ralph had the Thai Chili-tini which is unusual but delicious. I couldn’t drink a full one on my own though. There are flavors you find in many Thai dishes, including lemon grass, I think, as well as a little chili that gives a decent bite to it. Ralph had two and really enjoyed them.

Warm bread was served, as well as a courtesy sample of a spring roll taste in lime-basil sauce. This tasted probably better than a full spring roll you’d get at a vietnamese restaurant. I was sad that it was just a bite.

Ralph ordered the Chef’s Choice 4-course meal. His first course was a pear and crab neapolitan with a vinaigrette-like sauce, served cold. This was refreshing and light. The second course was monkfish cheek (a.k.a. “poor man’s lobster” according to the server, Lissa. I’d choose this over lobster any day.) with a light sauce (I think it was a pink pepper jus) and truffles. Third and main course was bison short rib with Hawaiian blue prawns. He was looking forward to his dessert, the cheese plate that he had before; three types of cheese, honeycomb and lavosh. He also ordered the recommended madeira port to go with it.

I decided to pick my courses, starting with the wild mushroom soup with a “beggar’s purse” consisting of carmelized onions, spinach and mushrooms. The soup was creamy and earthy. I put the beggar’s purse into the soup and the combination of textures worked very well together (forgive me as I try not to sound like a judge from Iron Chef. A loamy forest did NOT frolic in my mouth when I tasted this).

Second course was fuyu persimmons salad, red oak leaf and lambchopper cheese with tangerine vinaigrette. While very delicious, I think the description makes it sound more decadent than it was. The lambchopper cheese was interesting though. Reminded me of a swiss-mozzarella. Not too pungent of a Swiss, but not nearly as mild as a mozzarella. Around this time, I finished my Harvestini, so I decided to try the Green Fairy Mojo which is an absinthe drink with a lot of lime. You get the whole shebang, burning sugar cube and all. However, I couldn’t stomach more than a few sips as the over-whelming black licorice taste threatened to make me queazy. Ralph tried a second sip and said, “Oooh, it smells like a Good & Plenty.” :(

So with my third course, I had the server’s favorite drink, the Shiso-tini. This was a citrus-y drink; tangerine and grapefruit flavors were most prominant. My main dish was Atkins Ranch lamb shank, saffron couscous pearls, eggplant and pomegranate. The lamb was unbelievably delicious and I didn’t really need the knife they gave me as the meat was so tender. The eggplant was interesting because the center was scooped out, puréed and then put back in. Almost like baba ganoush, but mild and delicate with seasoning. I’m convinced now that the only couscous I ever need to buy will be the pearls. It’s just a nicer texture.

My dessert was the chocolate brioche bread pudding, accompanied by bananas with Banana Foster’s caramel sauce on it, a wedge of chocolate-covered toffee and a scoop of creamy ice cream. Yes, this all came as just one dessert. The bread pudding was a perfect texture for me. There weren’t large chunks of soaked bread, it was a truly creamy texture with a deep cocoa flavor. More cocoa-y than sweet, which lets you eat more than just a few bites before it becomes too rich or sweet.

I really should have stopped eating sooner than I did, but the offerings are too tempting and the atmosphere is just so pleasant. If I could just control my gorging when I go there…

She’s little, awkward, has a bobble head and the worst coffee breath you can imagine. Damn she’s cute.

I was going through some of the artwork and such that friends have given me to try and make the walls in our house seem less nekkid. In so doing, I had to sift through a lot of my stuff. Artwork, poems, short stories, photographs. How so much of my life can fit on a bookshelf, I have no clue. All I know is that the feelings they bring back are incredible. It’s so good to have things that can evoke feelings I’ve almost forgotten, or that can make me laugh and wonder why I did half the things I did or allowed other things to happen. Reading bits of stories or poems, I wonder what I was searching for and did I ever find it?

So it seems my stomach problems are due to gall stones. My doc said they were too big to try and dissolve and recommends having my gall bladder removed. Obviously I wasn’t too thrilled at the news so she gave me the number of a specialist to see if I may have other options. Having never as so much broken a bone before, I’m really disturbed at the idea of surgery. Hopefully there will be other options.

So my niece’s latest career goal is to become a graphic designer. Not, mind you, because of me or my influence. She really enjoyed her yearbook layout class and has decided that magazine layout is where she wants to head. After telling me this, I said, “you know that’s what I do, right?” Since then, I’m back on her cool list. I tend to fall in and out of that as she gets older. I am excited to see some of the stuff she starts playing around with. I’ve never known her to be particularly interested in the arts in any form at all, so I’d like to see what comes out of her.

Maybe the next time I see her, she’ll be in the angst-ridden, “artsy” stages of her teen life and I will get to sit back and enjoy the torture it puts my sister through. My sister and I went through very different stlyes of this phase. My sister was already out of the house when I went through mine so I don’t think she’ll know what to expect. Also, I am assuming my niece will more likely go through a similar phase as me since she takes after me in so many ways (mentally and physically) that when my sister yells at her for something, she usually yells out my name.

Tomorrow is the ultra-sound. I can’t have anything to eat or drink (other than water) from midnight tonight until after the exam tomorrow. So I’m thinking ice cream for dinner. :D

So I have a doctor’s appointment today to start the tests on my possible hiatal hernia. The doc at the Urgent Care thinks I have one, so I’ll probably have to drink the yummy barium milkshake and get x-rayed. Another reason why working for yourself is a big stress. When you’re out of commission, the whole business is out of commission, which just leads to more stress. So I’m scheduling client meetings before the doctor’s appointment to help ease the stress. Lovely.