Oh yeah, I went there.

I worked the 5am-5pm shift (with CRAZY call volume, btw… I thought Sundays were supposed to be slow?! wth?!) and then showered up at the station, met E at Caltrain and we headed over to my company Christmas Party, which was wonderful.

Picked these reindeer ears up at CVS between calls today. u like?

ps- i won a flip camera at the party as part of our raffle! yay flip video camera aside, I am really loving work so far!!

As Sam noted, it’s freeeEEzing here in San Francisco! You know when the arch enemies band together for warmth, things are pretty chilly in the apartment.

I don’t think our apartment is built for weather under 50*. I actually made a fire in the fireplace tonight all by myself while Earl was still at work (normally we only make a fire if we’re going to lounge around in front of it and have a romantic evening) just to warm up the joint. Even broke out the down comforter.

Supposed to be doing a hike tomorrow afternoon up Mt. Sutro with my friend Andrea (and Linus). Then my to do list has pre-making some pie crusts for Christmas, organizing the grocery shopping list for Feastivus (eight people have already RSVPd!!), writing Christmas cards, and catching up on friend’s blogs. With the chill in the air, we better dress warmly for our hike! Perhaps I will pack a thermos of hot cider. Brrr.

As I wrote on Saturday, I threw an impromptu breakfast party Sunday morning for some of my long-lost ski friends who were staying with us and my friend Amy who came in from Stanford.  Amazingly, I pulled everything off (never cooked breakfast for that many people before) and it all came out well! Even Kevin, who claimed to “hate tomatoes” held good on his promise to at least try it, and he ended up liking it! (I thought this might be the case, as I “hate tomatoes” myself, yet love this dish).  I woke up at 7am to walk Linus to the market and get more food, then got started cooking… while three large guys caught Zzzz on the floor in my living room. As they woke up one by one I recruited them to help in the kitchen and put them to work peeling pomegranates and mashing basil for pesto.

I made the baked eggs in prosciutto-wrapped tomatoes recipe which I had cooked for Earl before, however as we had bacon in the house I subbed bacon for prosciutto. This worked out okay, though I did pre-cook the bacon on the Foreman beforehand and I think it could have been a little less cooked; it turned out pretty crunchy. Also, I think I liked the flavor of the prosciutto a tad more, however bacon tasted fine.

Ready to go in the oven- these are tomatoes hollowed out, then coated on the inside with a homemade pesto and wrapped in bacon.  Bake those for 10 minutes to roast the tomatoes a bit, then fill each with an egg and bake again for 10 more minutes.  Couldn’t be simpler!
Notice the pre-cooked bacon is not wrapping around the tomatoes very well. Another reason why not to pre-cook the bacon as much and also why prosciutto might work better- more supple. I also threw on some parm cheese into the tomatoes which you can see in the pic:

Your chef, with no makeup, messy hair, her glasses and rocking her pajamas and a hangover:

We are ready to eat!! Amy brought the OJ.

After 10 more minutes in the oven, here’s how they looked. This is for 10 minutes at 350*… if it were just Earl and I dining, I would go for 8 minutes as both of us like a runnier yolk… however with a bunch of people, tastes vary and I figured a harder yolk is safer… easier to err more towards “done” than “raw” when it comes to egg cooking times.

Plated! Served with a pomegranate seed and arugula simple salad. Turns out, 2/6 of my guests hated pomegranate seeds. Should have checked beforehand, I guess! What a waste of peeling effort

Linus got in on some tableside petting action.

Earl snapped a post-breakfast group shot. I love these people!! The last time we were all together was Straightline Ski Camp last Feb. We’re trying to plan another meet up soon- be it at Straightline Camp 2010, Argentina next summer (doubt I’ll have the $ to pull that one off) or even a long bike trip up the Lost Coast.

After breakfast, everyone packed up and Nick and I got ready to make the trek to Sacramento for the race. We went to the expo and got Nick registered, then had a pasta dinner at 5pm and went to bed pretty early. I did spend time making my Fan Extraordinaire sign (I actually love making signs to cheer people on, I think it’s a holdover from my days as a highschool cheerleader) while we watched bad cable before bed.

Here is Nick getting in “the zone” on the way to the Marathon Expo:

And here is a snap of the sign I made. It reads, “GO NICK, RUN FAST.” Simple enough instructions

Race morning, Nick left at 5am to catch the pre-race shuttle and I stumbled out of bed at 7am to go cheer. I planned to see him in three spots- mile 10, mile 18 and the finish. My plan worked and I did get to see him at each of those locations. We weren’t sure it would work because he wasn’t running with a phone or anything (he’s a Serious Runner… unlike me who races with cellphone in hand and tweeting the entire time… lol).
Nick during the race! He was literally running so fast it was hard to get a good pic! You can practically see the “zoom” lines coming from behind him.

Ninja on the course!

Nick was a bit bummed about his final time- 3:32. He’d been trying for Boston, which he needed 3:10 to get into. He went into this admittedly a bit undertrained (apparently he likes biking a lot more and has been mountain biking most weekends instead of doing long runs), and also the pretty cold temps (it was 32* at the start!) threw him off. Selfishly, I am a tad happy he didn’t get boston because it means he’ll be running a lot this next year and hopefully we can meet up for another marathon evil of me, I know.
Post-race shot. Don’t we look cold?! It was pretty freezing while cheering, and I was in a bulky fleece. The orange tree behind us is misleading!!

There was even a corgi spectator! This adorable guy was named Frodo Baggins. Such a great name for a corgi.

After the race we drove back to SF, stopping at a post-race nosh of In & Out. Then I dropped Nick off at the airport and headed directly to work. A shift had opened up which apparently they needed someone badly enough to offer DOUBLETIME THE ENTIRE SHIFT. Sweetness! I worked a 20-hour shift, from Sunday at 10pm to Monday at 6pm. I’m loving these open shifts at work, makes picking up a day really simple and earning some extra $$ pretty easy.

This week is super busy for us- tonight we have Earl’s company Christmas Party, tomorrow I picked up another shift at work from 6am-6pm, Thursday I’m doing a hike with my friend Andrea, and then I work Fri, Sat and Sunday 5am-5pm. Finally, on Sunday night we have our ambulance company Christmas Party, which I am ALSO psyched about! Also in the meantime I am trying to write a TON of Christmas cards and otherwise do errands for the upcoming holiday. I’m writing a tad over 50 cards this year, and I try to write a personal message on them all. I’ve been writing them between calls on the ambulance I normally crank out about 5 a shift.

My friend Nick, who I met many years ago at Straightline Ski Camp and have since hung out with at ski camps, Ironmans, New Orleans, and NYC is in town to run the California International Marathon this weekend.  Our friend Jason, also from ski camp, came down from Reno to hang out, also bringing his brother.

Nick and I had a fun day being tourists around the Norcal Coast.  I brought him around SF in the morning to see some non-touristy neat “only in San Francisco” stuff, and then in for lunch we went to the world’s greatest sandwich shop and Gray Whale Cove Beach.  We met Jason and his brother for dinner in Pescadero at Duartes.

Nick, Jason, and Kevin are all crashing at our pad tonight.  Tomorrow our friend Amy is driving up from Stanford and I am cooking EVERYBODY BREAKFAST!  Ack!  That’s five people (including me and Earl).  No pressure, Greene.  I’ve never cooked breakfast for that many people before; hope it goes well :-/

Tomorrow late-morning, Nick and I are driving up to Sacramento for the race while Amy plays tour guide to Jason and Kevin.

Whirlwind of a weekend.

For once I am on the ball with pics (meanwhile I still haven’t gotten my Thanksgiving and Halloween ones edited, but… working on it!):
Linus at our picnic spot:

Nick wisely guards his sangwich from ravenous hound:

Really not a bad place for a picnic lunch

Down at the beach it was time to PLAY!

and run!

and dig!

keep digging!

WHOS GOT THE BALL?! I’VE GOT THE BALL!

and climb on rocks while the fog rolled in

come on, let’s go explore!

we went to the harbor at half moon bay and went out on the piers to see the crabbing boats

met up with Jason and Kevin at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company for a beer (and sat outside by a fire pit, it was awesome)! Jason has some great license plates:

Duartes for dinner was perfect. Hurrah for oyster season (I’m not sure why, but I have been CRAVING oysters lately… enough that I am contemplating attempting to cook this oyster wild rice casserole from Paula Dean. These ones hit the spot.)

Cream of artichoke soup was also scrumptious, though less photogenic:

Long lost friends reunited! I only get to see these guys about twice a year, but when I do it’s such a treat, and we tend to catch up right where we left off. Just such great guys all around. Love them!

We ordered a WHOLE olallieberry pie “to go” and brought it home to share with Earl, who was working late. I thought this was a nice touch since Earl is sweet to put up with me having random skier dudes (he’s met Nick many times, so not really random) crashing at our pad

However… while we were waiting and waiting for Earl to get home, it was SO TEMPTING to eat the pie! We were dying!! We tried to kill time by playing rummy:

Fun day Fun night! Off to Sacramento tomorrow for the race… after cooking what will hopefully be a class-act breakfast. I’m doing this prosciutto, tomato and baked egg recipe. Hope it turns out well.

ps- GOOD LUCK NICK ON SUNDAY!!!(he’s hoping to qualify for Boston… I bet he will)!

Reading the Chronicle today while sipping a coffee with Linus at my feet, I was inspired by this article about a Grandmother who cooks meals for the homeless despite having lost her apartment and also this letter to the editor by a 12 year old detailing all the ways she has given back- collecting old coats, raising $$ for foster kids and putting up decorations. In fact, here’s the letter in its entirety:

What the holidays mean

In response to the editorial “Attention, shoppers” (Dec. 1), I was glad to read the last paragraph “and don’t forget about others this season.”

This season I have helped out by collecting coats for the needy at One Warm Coat, helped stock the San Francisco Food Bank, raised money by selling nuts for my Girl Scout troop that enabled us to buy toys for kids in foster care for Christmas, and this weekend I will be decorating Ocean Avenue with ribbons on the parking meters.

Please tell all your readers that some people really need their help this season, and don’t take everything for granted. This holiday season is not only about gifts and shopping.

DOREEN PACINI, age 12, 7th grade

So, when it comes to the spirit of the holidays and helping my fellow man, I’m getting schooled by an evicted Granny and a 7th grader.  Time to fix that.  “We should really do something,” I thought.  Yes, I volunteer at in the Emergency Department once a week at the SFGH Trauma Center, however that is relatively self-serving as it directly relates to my career and possibly future med school applications.

And the very nature of my job nowadays is helping others, but come on… I get PAID for that! I want to do more.

So- what should we do? What can I do? We could take a cue from Granny, and cook a bunch of meals and bring them to the homeless. But to be honest, after getting assaulted and almost stabbed by a crazy guy in the Tenderloin last week, I am not very inclined to be out interacting with a bunch of possibly crazy junkies. Perhaps a touch of PTSD in that, but… :shudder: I am not really up for it right now.

My friend Elaine carries around Cliff bars in her purse at all times and distributes them whenever she walks by a homeless person. Maybe I could do something like that- get a couple of boxes of Cliff bars and dole them out. I’d rather do something more, and as I said, I’m not very down to be initiating interactions with random homeless people.

I could go through all my old clothes and bring them to the Salvation Army. But I do that almost once a year already, so things are pretty weeded out at this point- especially because for the while I wasn’t working we were too broke to buy any new clothes!

Hmm, hmm…

Well, a few minutes of google searching led me to this site, which lists volunteer opportunities in various cities, and has some specific holiday volunteer opportunities. As a certified health care worker, looks like I could dole out swine flu shots to the needy.  And this place looks great, however they need people on Fridays, and I work all day on Fridays. Argh, work schedule rules out a bunch of stuff because I just had to bypass about 5 other things that wanted people on weekends.

Ooh! I found something- wrapping gifts for needy kids. I love wrapping. And they need people on MTW right before Christmas. This could be good.

Oh and here’s another- bringing meals to lonely elderly on Christmas Day. That works as well.

Alright- I just called both those last two places and signed up!   The nerd begrudgingly agreed to deliver meals with me on Christmas morning as well.  (He balks, however I suspect under that indifferent interior he is a big softie).

me: oh hey how about doing this? delivering meals to lonely elderly on christmas morning?

Earl: if you want

me: dont be so enthusiastic

Hurrah!   This is gonna be great.  What about you?  Any ideas for helping others this holiday season?  Are you inspired to do something?

Just because.

2009, aka the year I saw a river otter in the wild, is winding down.  Also winding down is my current 24-hour shift.  Off for a pre-dentist and otherwise boring errands-day snooze.

Guess what’s looming in my immediate future?  A 24hour shift, starting tomorrow at 5am!

One thing I am loving about my new job is the ability to pick up lots of open shifts… and how many open shifts seem to come up!   Bring on that OT, baby!   I’ve picked up two extra December shifts so far just today.  Being the newbie, I ended up with a really crap schedule this month.  12-hour shifts on Fridays (7am-7pm), Saturdays (5am-5pm) and Sundays (5am-5pm).  Eisch!  The schedule is planned based on seniority, and guess who is the newest person there and got the most unwanted schedule?!?!  THIS GIRL!  Lol.  I don’t mind, though…  Honestly I’m just psyched to be working at all, and this gives me flexibility and time to pick up open shifts during the week.

This will be my first 24-hour shift at the new company.  Hopefully it will go better than my 1st 24-hour shift at my last ambulance company… which SUCKED.  I remember my clothes chafed off all the skin where they touched my body in my armpits groin, and under my sports bra.  I remember how bad the board and cares smelled- to this day, just thinking of that one really rank place in Oakland STILL makes me gag a little.

The smells, the chafing of the thick polyester uniforms, the heat in the back of the rigs, the MRSA, the urine and the feces… I am all used to all that now, and have developed systems to deal with those things gracefully.   Also, my patient assessments flow much better nowadays, and I am better at lifting the gurney (and am finding that we seem to have WAY LESS bariatric patients in the city of San Francisco and Peninsula than we did on the east bay).  Hope it goes well tomorrow!

Anyways, off to bed because this corgi lover has to get up at 3:30am to get her butt to work!  Looking forward to my first 24. 

So Earl and I decided to throw a Christmas Feast Party (more accurately- I decided, then Earl agreed), and the invitations are going out tomorrow!  In a stroke of spectacular brilliance, I christened the party “Feastivus,” only to find out a bunch other people also throw holiday parties also named Feastivus.  But… screw em .  FEAST WE SHALL, and FEASTIVUS IT SHALL BE CALLED!

So psyched for this!  Here are the invites I made up… to be schmanced up with some red and green glitter and Christmas-y drawings on the envelopes by yours truly.  Yes, we are going old school and actually sending physical invitations out in the snail mail for this one: evite, schmevite- simply not my style.

I must confess, it was a bit of a challenge to come up with the menu for Feastivus- mainly because my buddy Dom, who is vegan, is coming. Normally around here it’s meat, meat, and more meat, with a side of butter and sour cream.  I didn’t want to make him feel singled out with a “special” meal just for him. Hence the menu is a mish-mash of vegan and non-vegan foods.   So far (and I’m sure I’ll change this last minute as things get hectic… lol)… but here is a rough outline of what I’m thinking we’ll be serving:

• Appetizers: mulled wine, devilled eggs, hummus & pita chips, pickles, jams
• Entree: stuffed pork roulande in puff pastry, ratatouille
• Sides: creamed carrots, pecan wild rice pilaf, greens & berry salad with a pumpkin vinaigrette
• Dessert: Grand Marnier bread pudding, poached pears, spiked eggnog

In case you were curious, here is the text of our Feastivus invites… if you suspect I had a *tad* too much fun writing these, you would be correct

It’s Christmas time, and if that’s not an excuse for a slap-up meal, nothing is!

Always keen on cooking, when it comes to Christmas dinner, I’m pulling out all the stops.  To give y’all a meal to warm the cockles, I’ve scoured the city and neighboring farms for the freshest ingredients to make this festive feast.

Making our merry band of revelers earn their supper, Holiday attire (ugly Christmas sweaters, reindeer ears, Santa hats or the like) is encouraged.

We’re planning a feast to make the table groan! Here on Buena Vista West you’ll be tucking into a gluttonous roast of stuffed pork roulade in puff pastry. If that doesn’t get you reaching for the Pepto, there will be ratatouille, creamed carrots and pecan wild rice pilaf. To round off the opulent offering, we fill feature a greens and berries salad with pumpkin vinaigrette, deviled eggs, and a hearty offering of pickles, preserves, poached pears, and Grand Marnier bread pudding.

Wash it all down with some spiked eggnog and mulled wine, and it sounds like we’ve got ourselves a party.

Please bring a bottle of wine to share and perhaps an ornament to decorate our Christmas tree!

Looking forward to seeing you on the 21st!

ps- a special thank you to the Happy Medic, who pointed out a great place in SF to buy the Christmas printer paper for our invitations!

Yesterday Earl and I ambled about Alamo Square Park (and I showed him the great coffee shop) which I discovered on a jog a few weeks ago.

After some brief prodding, Earl agreed to pose for this cheesy photo op- probably one of the most photographed spots in San Francisco, in front of the gorgeous skyline and iconic Painted Ladies.

The weather was just so beautiful out and the sky SO blue! How could I pass this shot up?

Felt like a bit of a tourist snapping this. Next time we head over to this park, we should bring a blanket, a paper, wine, cheese and chocolates and just camp out for a bit.

Btw- Alamo Square park has a pretty great dog park, although I’ve NEVER been there when there hasn’t been some doofus with an unneutered pitbull letting is snap/growl and REALLY aggressively play with other dogs. I’ve seen about four all out dog fights there. So normally we don’t let Linus play in that part and take him to the other side and throw the ball for him. Bit of a bummer…

ps- weighed myself after lifting at the gym today and am at the lowest weight I’ve been since we’ve moved out to the west coast!! Loving the new job, losing weight, good things are happening all abound!

This smells soooo GOOD right now.  Unfortunately, there’s really no way to pre-sample a pie. At least, no way that I can think of.

Think anyone would notice if I sneaked juuuust a teeny piece out of the side?

Step 1: line pie plate with pie crust (note: I had a super hard time with this and was getting VERY frustrated.  In fact, I had planned to make a braided edge along the outside of the crust, like this, but it was really hard and I kept screwing it up and breaking the braid.  I got about 1/5 of the way through braiding the edge and gave up).  Sorry that my crust edge is a little wonky!

Step 2: Heat up maple syrup, corn syrup, brown sugar and a bit of salt. When that boils, let it cool and add 1/4 cup butter, some hazelnut essence and vanilla. Then beat 3 eggs with some Jim Beam and slowly whip in the maple syrup mixture. Administer shots of Jim Beam to chef as needed.

Step 3: Put 2 cups coursely chopped hopped hazelnuts in pie crust. Then pour in maple syrup mixture over hazelnuts.

Step 4: Bake in 350 oven for 1 hour- last 20 minutes cover top of pie with foil to prevent browning. TA DA!!!

Step 5: Give your dog a piece of the leftover pie crust. Make him sit it on his nose for a while first, showing off his “manners.” Take photo for internet.

Step 6: Administer another round of shots of Jim Beam to chef as needed.
Step 7: Take the pie to your aunt’s house and serve a la mode with vanilla ice cream! Remember to heat the pie up a bit before serving.
Step 8: Mangia!