Last year in March, the Berkeley Humane Society suffered a pretty devastating fire. A large percentage of the main building burned to the ground overnight, and sadly- many pets perished. They’ve been working to rebuild and never missed a day of caring for lots of unwanted and needy pets. But there’s still a lot of work to do.

This walk also marks a really significant victory for my pooch, Linus. Last fall he had a spinal cord and neurological emergency. We either had to operate or put him down. He had surgery- 7 months, lotsa rehab, acupuncture, physical therapy and hydro-therapy later Linus can be a (kinda) normal dog again! He’s still pretty wobbly on his rear legs- he doesn’t have the best control of his rear feet- no feeling in his toes and lacks awareness of where his feet are exactly in space. But he gets around okay. And if he can’t make the whole mile, I’ll gladly carry him (or put him in a wagon). After all, he aint heavy, he’s my corgi.

I set a rather humble fundraising goal of $50. Maybe you could find it in your heart to kick in $5 or so for the Humane Society? That would be stupendous! Linus and I- and many, many homeless and needy pets- would be deeply appreciative. Donations of any amount are tax deductible. Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society is a registered 501(c)3 organization. The tax id # is: 94-1347069

Thank you for the consideration!
Love,
Courtney and Linus the corgi

Here’s the link to the website where you can donate to support our walk.

Yesterday at about 11:30am (my day off… thank GOD I was home/around), due to the rapid deterioration of what had previously been our dog’s slight limp, I rushed him to our Orthopedic surgeon vet. It came out of nowhere… it was almost like he was getting worse by the minute. By the time we were at that vet he was completely dragging his back right foot (not the leg he’d had ACL surgery on).

The orthopedic surgeon, who had repaired dogger’s ACL just five weeks ago, quickly assessed and determined this was neurological, spinal related issue and referred us to his colleague, the Neurologist Surgeon Vet at the Specialist/emergency pet hospital clear across town. He called his direct line and got us right in. We headed over. I did my very best to use every rapid but gentle code 3 low g-force driving maneuver I had in my arsenal because poor puppeh quivered and shook in pain with every single bump and turn.

After a very detailed assessment the surprisingly (!!) young and handsome Neurologist informed me that the dog needed to have surgery that night, asap, and he could hopefully repair him to full function. He gave us a 90% odds of a full recovery. “Recovery” in this case meaning the dog would be able to walk and urinate on his own. The alternative to the surgery is that the dog would be paralyzed, not able to walk, urinate or defecate on his own, and would most likely have to be put down.

By this time Linus couldn’t even walk with EITHER back leg, he would just drag them behind him… sadly all askew at odd angles and folded over onto each other all mangled up looking

It was getting late (3:30pm). The neurologist had scrubbed out from supervising ANOTHER surgery to see us. He would have to go finish that one 1st then call in his Emergency Night Surgery Team to work on our pooch- they would start at about 8pm through midnight or whenever they were done.

“I’m going to give you a few minutes to decide what you want to do.”

Fucking hell.

The projected cost was 6k. Have I mentioned that you have to pay the entire cost up front?

He’s 7 years old. We’ve only had him 2 years. He’s a HUGE part of our lives… a beloved member of our family. But 6k isn’t mere pocket change to us. It was really tough decision.

Particularly when your significant other is at his office, ducking out from a meeting to have this conversation over the phone, can’t look each other in the eye or give each other a hug, and you both feel totally blindsided because this decision just came out of absolutely no where.

Remember this cheesy but kinda nice 90′s song…?

Specifically, the part where it says,

“The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind: the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.”

…. seems pretty darn accurate right now.

We decided to do the surgery.

In a nutshell, our rationale was basically, “he’s been a good dog.” Linus has been nothing short of incredibly loyal to us. We would be loyal to him.

Could you say no to this face?

Sticker shock?

itemized breakdown:

Back on the homefront, kitten (sportin her OWN post-op cone of shame) swooped in to enjoy her newfound status as Sole Possessor of All Beds in The House:

Today we sat on tenterhooks for call from the surgeon about how it went, and if he’s walking yet. I was participating in (trapped in!) this all-day mandatory training session with these tough macho Paramedics and firefighter-type dudes. Didn’t know many of them that well. Was the only girl at the meeting. Every time my mind would drift off protocols and wander to Buddy, wondering how he was doing and if he was gonna pull through… my damn eyes would start tearing up. Not exactly the best environment to bring on the waterworks!!! Tried to play it off like allergies and my sniffles like a cold. Don’t know if I fooled ‘em. Freaking sucked.

Got off work, met up with nerdlove and beelined to the good meat market where we stocked up on thick cut, high quality bacon. Cooked it up and off we went to visiting hours at what is basically the doggy ICU.

He’s not walking yet, but he’s alive and his ears perked up when he saw us.

Rear legs still sadly draggin. They psuedo-carried him out to us in sort of a rear end hoist, with him walking on his front legs only.

ze coup de grâce:

If he doesn’t walk within 2-3 days, we’ll know the surgery was a failure. Can hardly bear to write that out, it’s deeply troubling just to contemplate.

I guess… if he doesn’t make it and after all this we still have to put him down… (not like in that case we would get reimbursed for the procedure!) I won’t regret it. Ultimately I guess it’s good to err on the side of your heart when making a decision like this, and not your wallet.

3 days. 3 days to walk on his own.

Please send vibes for Linus!

Walk, Linus, Walk…

PLEASE FUCKING WALK, dammit.

good dog.

We whiled away the afternoon and into the evening sipping coffee and reading at a cafe (one of E’s very favorite activities) and then caught a late dinner at The Mountain House, which was romantic and wonderful. We had a candlelit corner table overlooking the redwoods- it was so gorgeous!

Unfortunately, Earl was in Seattle this weekend skiing with his best friend from college, so he missed meeting Gretchen. She did, however get to meet Linus and Lucy, and left E a nice note on our wall calendar:

On an aside, I was dismayed to learn Magnolia has a new chef who changed the scotch eggs from quail eggs to duck eggs! This is NO BUENO. No where *near* as good. Not even in the same galaxy of awesomeness. Those quail eggs scotch eggs were out of this world. The meatloaf sammy, however, is still top rate.

It took a whole day of shopping, (I am NOT exaggerating here, it took 5 hours straight of shopping at four stores, Earl was about ready to kill me by the end of the day!), an entire day of prep work and cleaning and then another whole day of cooking to pull it off.  And pull it off we did!  Despite last minute fears of not having enough food, having too many people show up (do you know how nerve wracking it is to hem and haw over whittling down a guest list, finally settle on who you are inviting, and send out belabored invitations only to have 2/3 of your guests ask “I can bring a date, right?”), not having enough places for people to sit or enough silverware and more essentially NOT HAVING ENOUGH BOOZE, things went off without a hitch.

The success of Feastivus supports my theory that as long as company is true, the home is warm and welcoming and there is plenty of food and booze to go around the party will survive any major kerfluffle.  I figured worst case scenario we could dole out a bunch of tequila shots and order a couple of pizza pies. 

Blessedly, it did not come to that!  I spent approximately 12 hours net in the kitchen and by the skin of my teeth pulled off a fabulously complicated and intimidating gourmet meal which I siphoned the recipes from a secret professional chef who shall not be named.  What follows below is the photo and text documentary of how things went!  I hope you enjoy the write up as much as Earl and I enjoyed throwing the party.

Just to recap, here was the planned Feastivus menu, in all it’s arduous glory:

• 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

Going into the night before the party, the only thing I had changed on the menu was to sub in a vegan olallaberry pie for the poached pears.  Upon doing menu prep (the dreaded “do I have enough pots and pans to get all this food ready at the same time” calculation) I realized that poached pears were far too labor intensive for a dinner party and I would much rather spend my evening schmoozing and socializing with my guests than reducing and re-reducing a poached wine sauce.  So, you could say I cheated and took a shortcut because Earl and I picked up the vegan pie pre-prepared from Rainbow Grocery, the hippy grocery store.  We’d actually served the same exact pie the last time our vegan friend Dom came over to dinner, and it was STUPENDOUS- even better than a bunch of non-vegan pies I’ve had, so we knew it would be a failproof hit.

Enough chatting, let’s get to the cooking.  I actually had MAJOR problems getting started with cooking this meal.  I don’t know what it was!  I was puttering around on Monday morning, delaying the inevitable, to the point where Earl, who was at work by this time, found me on gchat and asked “what are you doing online?!?!? Shouldn’t you be cooking by now????”  My friend Tracy- the inflabbable type you can always lean on in a crisis- fielded my frantic “help I am throwing a dinner for 14 people and I can’t seem to get started!  What is wrong with me?” phone call with skill.  She pointed out the astute observation that I miss the hectic pace and pressure of the trading floor i-banking environment and therefore seek out and create these high pressure scenarios with cooking and parties so that I may sink or swim under harsh deadlines.  She has a point.  She ORDERED me on the phone to get started.  “While we are talking, you better be chopping,” she barked.  “Are you chopping?  I don’t hear chopping!”  Tracy got me out of my rut while we chatted and caught up and soon I was peeling carrots, dicing onions, grinding up oranges and on my way.  In a sense, you could say she is the Woman Who Saved Feastivus.  I owe her a thank you letter!

First thing I made was the “stuffing” to go in the pork roulade.  It is an orange cranberry reduction with herbs and spices.  The base of it is five oranges ground up, then sautéed with two bags of fresh cranberries while you add a bunch of herbs.  Because my trusty Magic Bullet blender is currently BROKEN and we have been too cheap/lazy/busy/forgetful/unorganized to order a new part for it, I had to slice, dice, cut, chop and otherwise peel and pulverize into faux-ground up mush FIVE ORANGES BY FREAKING HAND!!  This took a while- long enough for Tracy to tell me all the ins and outs of her new life in Utah while I developed a massive neck cramp from holding the phone between my shoulder and ear while I chopped.  The results of my labor:  Mush of Five Oranges (and I also threw in zest of one orange peel for taste), ready to go!

Add this to saute with two bags of fresh cranberries:

You add cinnamon and ground chili powder while stirring continuously for about 15 minutes over medium heat.  Secret Chef instructed that the cranberries should “pop naturally” as they cook, and that you want to end up with a mixture where most of the cranberries have popped and the result is “semi-solid.”   It eventually looked like this while the house started to smell sooooooooooo good:

Here is the final result, almost a gelatin, in a bowl, set aside ready to be stuffed into a pork loin roast:

Next prep work:  Toast a gazillion pecans!  You are going to need them for your greens and berries salad and also your rice pilaf.  By the way- pecans are freaking expensive!!  Despite buying all these nuts in (supposedly cheaper) bulk, they really killed our budget.  I knew the roast would set us back, but who would have expected pecans to be the next most expensive thing on the menu!  And they’re really just a freaking garnish!!

I seem to have trouble with “toasting” nuts.  I always end up burning some of them and then others in the pan not reaching sufficient level of toastiness.  I’ve tried both my toaster oven and real oven to unimpressive results.  Now when I toast nuts (and this even happened with my green apple green chili pie from yesterday!  I still can’t get this right), I expect, unfortunately to ruin about 1/4^th of them.  Add some more room to your budget to accommodate burned, inedible nuts!

Next, I got started on other things I could prepare early and then just warm up at time of eating.  Unlike the roast, I knew a rice pilaf and creamed carrots would both heat well after having been prepared in advance.

Now, holy cow, this rice pilaf.  It was SO GOOD, but I think I discoved the secret as to why restaurant food tastes so amazing.  At this point, following Secret Chef’s recipe, my jaw was agape at learning you basically BOIL THE VERMICILLI IN A HALF POUND OF BUTTER.  You know how you normally bowl pasta in WATER?  Sometimes salted water?  Or water with a bit of olive oil in it?  Ohhhhh noooooo.  Here, for the richest rice pilaf recipe in the world, you are going to BOIL YOUR RICE AND PASTA IN BUTTER.  At this point I realized poor Dom was not going to have any of the rice pilaf as it was decidedly NOT vegan!  Here is the vermicelli, broken up into 11/2 inch- 2” pieces, boiling in butter for about 10 minutes while stirring constantly, until it reaches a nice “toasty” color:

Yeah, that’s not water it’s boiling in, prep for cardiac compromise because it’s ALL BUTTER!

At this point I think I got a little into the cooking “zone” and lapsed on the picture taking.  I think it’s because I had about 4 different edible Irons in the Fire and was more concerned with not ruining any more food than photo-documenting for this blog.  I’ll just tell you what I did.

After the pasta is “toasty” looking, add rice and-surprise- more butter and boil them both in the butter for another 5 minutes while stirring constantly.  Then add three cans of Cambells undiluted chicken broth, stir for another minute, reduce heat to a simmer and cover for 30 minutes.  Open the lid only once and add 2 cups chopped and toasted pecans, fluff with fork, recover and let sit until serving time.  Good god this recipe is a heart attack in a pot.  It’s supposedly Secret Chefs’ mother’s recipe from Armenaia and it’s the first time it’s been translated into English.  Maybe something critical- like ½ pound of butter really meant two tablespoons was lost in conversion.  Regardless, it was a lucky, if unhealthy mistake because holy cow the rice pilaf tasted like a DREAM.  I was hesitant to tell my raving guests exactly how it was prepared lest they accuse of me trying to give them MIs at the party just to show off my EMT skills.

The other thing I prepared without really photo-documenting was the creamed carrots.  For them, you peel and boil three pounds of carrots until they are tender but not mushy.  This took about 15 minutes.  Secret Chef did not specify the boiling time in his instructions, leading me to frantically consult google “how long boil carrots” several times in a frenzy as I worried about overcooking them.  That’s the problem with vague Chefs.  They can be brilliant and their obscure instructions yield delicious bounties, but cause an intrepid beginner cook like myself many anxieties and headaches!!

Carrots boiled, add butter (only ¼ lb of butter in this one- what waistline watching restraint!) , cream cheese, heavy cream, and cinnamon and blend.  Or, if you are a fool like me with a broken blender, utilize some elbow grease and your Capririnia masher to get the job done.

Butter melted, cream and cream cheese blended, add four full very thin-sliced green onions to the mix.  This came out AMAZING and I really think the tartness of the green onions contrasting to the smooth creaminess of the carrots is what made the dish.  Here it is, in all its pre-prepped glory done gloriously in advance so that I could concentrate on the rest of my labors.  See those thin sliced green onions in there?  Don’t forget to add them, they are the secret ingredient that MAKES this dish.

Next!  On to the Grand Marnier bread pudding.  Chop up one loaf of French bread into 1” cubes.  Because the booth at the Farmer’s Market only had a teeny tiny French loaf (what gives??), I also threw two cubed brioches into the pudding as well to round it out.  The farmer’s market baker assured me that brioche makes a great bread pudding as well.  I figured- heck- add enough heavy cream and Grand Marnier and nobody could tell the difference anyways.

Sliced up bread:

Meanwhile you whip SIX eggs with two cups whole milk, two cups heavy cream, cinnamon and 1 cup of Grand Mariner.  You pour this mixture over the bread, then spoon and mix in 2 cups of golden raisens.  Bake the whole thing in a 375* oven “until the top is toasty brown.”  … :-/  Took me about an hour.

You are going to mix up some orange marmalade with another cup of Grand Marier, pour this over the top of the bread pudding and rebake for another 15 minutes right before serving.  This recipe was perfect for a big dinner party because it let me do the bulk of the prep in advance and then just add booze and marmalade on the top and heat right before serving.  Easy, peazy.  Screw you, poached pears!!

Onto le pork!  Ever heard of a “Z-cut?”  Me neither.  Fortunately, my butcher had.  He prepped two loins into z-cuts (to accommodate the stuffing) and even threw in a bunch of butcher’s twine for me free of charge.  This is what a z-cut looks like:

Get your cranberry l’ronge stuffing and stuff up that pig!  Use bakers twine to tie it all up, then wrap in foil. 

Into the oven these piggies go, at 375* for one hour.   Note- make sure to wrap REALLY well cuz otherwise cranberry orange mush and pork juis will drip everywhere.

Next I worked on chopping and prepping these veggies (red peppers, green peppers, basil, garlic, eggplant, tomatoes, yellow squash, green onions, yellow onion and parsley) for the ratatouille.  If you’ve ever seen the movie Ratatouille, you may be like Earl and I and expect this dish to be super complex and hard to cook.  Perhaps I had a doozy of a recipe (this one was an online find from Emeril, not Secret Chef- Secret Chef doesn’t “do” Vegan), however this dish couldn’t be more simple!!  You basically slice and dice a gazillion veggies, throw em all in a saute pan, add some spices and cook em up!  The ONLY hard thing about it is getting the order down that you throw the veggies into the mix.  Ones that take longer to cook (onions, eggplants, peppers) get added before ones which cook faster.  Guess they got it right in the movie- so easy, even a rat could do it!

Waiting to be chopped, sliced, and diced:

While you’re running around trying to clean the house and organize your nerdlove’s piles and piles of math annotations on various scraps of paper that float around your home and also HAZMAT clean up his dirty-bomb of Trident Spearmint gum wrappers, your pork roasts are done (with phase 1)!  Here’s a peak under the foil of what they look like after their 1 hour bake:

Do I have to even tell you that the HOUSE SMELLED SOOOOO GOOD??????

Next what you’re gonna do is the coolest step of this entire meal.  One of my guests hit the nail on the head.  You are basically making “fancy pigs in a blanket.”  These stuffed pork roulades get wrapped in puff pastry and re-baked.  I used Pillsbury crescent rolls.  Secret Chef calls for Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry, however Luckys only had Pillsbury crescent rolls, and 4 hours in to our epic shopping trip I was mitigating a long day and grumpy overshopped boyfriend, so that would have to do!

They did.  Here are piggies wrapped up in their crescent rolls.  I even schmanced it up using cooking cutters (actually, must give credit where it is due, E got home from work by this time and was helping out, HE decorated these piggies all by himself!) to have some little puff pastry hearts and stars on the tops.  Beat two egg whites together and brush liberally over your wrapped piggies and puff decorations to “glue” everything.  You could go as crazy as you want with the decorations.  Seeing as time was short and guests would be coming soon, we went with the cookie cutters we had on hand.

See those egg whites glisten!

By this point I had worked so hard and was so irrationally emotionally invested in these stupid pork roasts that you would have thought I had given birth to them myself!

They go in a 400* oven for 20-30 minutes, uncovered.  I waited for the guest to arrive before I even started this last step.  Who wants to eat straight away when they show up at a party?  I figured it would be more fun to give people (and myself, heh) time to leisurely chat, get to know each other (we had a mixed crowd of my skiing friends and Earl’s coworkers) and sip cocktails before the main eating event.

Speaking of booze, on to the mulled wine!  I must admit, this was my favorite part of cooking this crazy meal.  For your next winter or fall themed dinner party, I implore you to make some mulled wine.    Did you read me?  I said,  I IMPLORE YOU TO MAKE THIS MULLED WINE.  It was faaaaaaaaaaabulous.  And it looks so good!  Doesn’t it look soooo good????  Smelled superb, too:

The recipe for this mulled wine called for a lot of foreign sounding foofaraw of which I had never heard.  Cardomon pods?? WTF are cardomon pods??  To the hippy grocery store, we go!  Same deal with liquorish root.  I thought liquorish was this black candy that my mom loves (in cute Scottie Dog shapes!), not anything that came with a root.  Here is the recipe in full for you.  You basically simmer a bunch of red wine (for our drinking purposes and per people’s suggestions on TGR I tripled the amount of wine in this and halved the amount of cider.  I advise you to do the same).  Simmer some wine with a bunch of oddball spices- sliced oranges, fennel seeds, cardomon pods, black peppercorns, cinnamon sticks and a whole vanilla bean to yield this wonderful looking mixture.

Guests started to show up!

The roast was done!  Like my apron?

Sliced up the roast and ready to eat.  We didn’t even tuck into that second one.  Ratatouille is also looking nice.

The spread!

My plate.  Did I mention we served everything on paper plates?  A bit backwoods… but didn’t change the deliciousness of the food.

Some of our guests digging in.

Last stage of the bread pudding- with the extra Grand Mariner and orange marmalade mixture poured over the top and re-baked.

It didn’t last long (nothing did!)

This tired pooch is worn out from socializing.

Here’s to good food, great friends and a holiday filled with warmth and love.   We survived 2009!! Cheers until next year!

Reindeer corgi

(Too much fun tonight with props!)

For Halloween, we threw a bit of an impromptu dinner party for our friends Matt and Amy, then we walked down over to Belvedere Street and hit up a bunch of spots on the party circuit.
Matt Preparing the drinks. We served Stone Fences, which are a mixture of whiskey and apple cider.

Dinner was great- we made pumpkin fritters from this recipe. Amy actually ended up cooking most of the fritters while I rushed around and got in my costume (Earl and I were running late coming from the gym).
Amy fries up some fritters

The (still steaming) fritters! They’re basically a thicker pumpkin pancake. Served with cinnamon sugar (optional maple syrup, for those with a fierce sweet tooth).

pumpkin fritters

Even though Amy did most of the cooking, I somehow managed to pose taking credit for them in this photo. Doesn’t it look like *I* cooked them in this photo?

Amy and Matt getting ready to hit the down. Look at those abs on that woman! That is what being a semi-pro level triathlete will get you, apparently Amy is rocking my old latex cop uniform (a holdover from undergrad sorority days) which I coerced her into wearing.

The handsome knight of my heart and his unicorn steed. The “unicorn” didn’t last very long on the streets as he was a little overstimulated with everyone running around trick or treating. This was basically a pre-party walk! He got walked home and hung out while we hit the town.

knight and unicorn

Bustiers and pizza. Pepperoni, naturally.

Matt, Andrea and Mattius (Andrea was a tree, if you can’t tell)

Bearded lady! The theme of the first party we were at was Old-Timey Carnival. These people pulled out ALL the stops!

Here is the woman who gets shot out of the cannon.

En route to our second party, I was assaulted by a very naughty (and perverted) cookie monster! If you can’t tell, I was a dragon, same as last year.

CJ vs cookie monster

By our third party of the evening, Amy and Matt had gone home and I had converted into a devilish dragon. The full-face dragon mask, while a lovely work of art, made it hard to consume beverages. Here we are with our ski friend Spencer, who is a music journalist and gets to interview all kinds of stars.

We were certainly tuckered out after this evening. Let’s slide right into Thanksgiving, shall we?

For Thanksgiving, we went out to my wonderful Aunt Mimi’s house in Pleasanton, CA. My friend Amy, who is from CT though going to Stamford for their PA program right now, came with us as she wasn’t going home to see her family.

I lobbied Amy to meet me at my Aunt’s house early, at 9:30am, so we could do this awesome 30 mile ride through Palomares Canyon loop.

Ride starts out on Foothill Drive- look at the peaceful serenity of this beautiful road! Who says there are no fall colors in California?

Amy’s self-portrait on the hill. She doesn’t even look like she’s breathing hard! This girl is a machine.

Amy spent a *LOT* of time waiting for me to get my out-of-shape butt up this hill. Eons. She was bored enough not only to mess around with taking self portraits, but also to take this amusing video:

On the way up Palomares Canyon, Amy (who is holding the camera) spots this sign. What does it MEAN? Looks like a drunk guy crossing the street, right?

Clamper x-ing??? wtf?

At the summit! This is a long, slow climb. Amy actually got a flat tire here from parking in the gravel.

summit Palomares Canyon Rd

Back from our ride and showered up, we are greeted by quite a spread.

thanksgiving spread

Hey! Down here! Lemme have some! I’ll take some! Don’t want that stuffing? Just a little crumb?

Post meal scritches lead to corgi grins.

corgi grin

Bellies full, Earl and I pile onto the couch to zonk out for a bit.

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.

Bacon-wrapped Tomato Baked Eggs

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

GO NICK, RUN FAST

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.

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:

Hey whatcha got there? Is that a sandwich?

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)!

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!