A Perfect Saturday

What a great day I had yesterday.

First, I headed off in the morning for a reunion visit and lunch with friend and fellow AQ blogger Gerrie, who was visiting from her new home in Portland. Gerrie, Pat, and I met at Janet's house, and we planned a pot-luck lunch to allow for maximum talk and laughter. I brought my "enchilada in a blender" soup (which was a big hit, I'm glad to say) and we shared our favorite Oakville Grocery sandwiches too. Pat brought a lovely lemon cake, so we were well fed while we caught up on what's been happening since Gerrie moved away. I love hearing that Gerrie's quilting and art life enabled her to make so many new friends and find immediate connections in a new city. Sorry, no pictures...we were too busy talking! We did see Gerrie's newest piece, "Fragments," which is really luminous in person.

Then, I raced home, changed clothes, and Roger and I headed to San Francisco for a very fun evening. Ever heard of Trader Vic's? It's a San Francisco institution, and the place where they invented the Mai Tai! It's an upscale, polynesian themed restaurant, fun and sorta funky but in a mostly quiet way. Having planned for a lot of traffic, we got there pretty early, so we had time to linger over drinks and crab rangoon hors d'oeuvres in the bar.






Looks delicious, doesn't it?! I had a "pogo stick," which was a concoction of gin, pineapple juice and grapefruit juice. Yummy. Our dinner was fabulous. I had Bongo Bongo Soup, which I ordered solely because of the name. I mean, who WOULDN'T want to eat something called "Bongo Bongo?!" It was a creamy spinach and oyster soup, which sounds odd but it was smooth and really delicious. And it was served in a seashell bowl... quite exciting.





See? Fun, huh? (I'm thinking I'm going to start inventing exotic sounding names for my dinners. You know, Pika Pika pasta. Zulu chicken. Just because it's more fun to eat when it has a fun name.) My entree was aromatic, crispy duck which was shredded from the duck bones by the waitress next to the table, then served with makings for mu shu duck rolls. Totally yummy and fun. Roger had the classic San Francisco dinner of Petrale Sole, which he declared to be equally delicious.

From there, we went on to the Orpheum Theatre to see James Taylor in his One Man Band Concert.



It was a terrific concert, a much more intimate show than he's done in past concert tours. He sang solo, playing his guitar accompanied by just one pianist. He showed slides and talked a lot about what spurred him to write certain songs. (You can read a great article about this tour in the Boston Globe, here.) The music was fantastic, and JT sounded better than ever. We were delighted to get a special encore from him...he gave a "practice," first time performance of the song he'll sing tonight at the Academy Awards ceremony, "Our Town," from the movie "Cars."

So, today I'm puttering with James Taylor music playing on the Ipod. We're looking forward to our annual champagne-and-nibbles dinner in front of the Oscars tonight.

Cheers!

Oops, just realized that the Academy Awards are NEXT Sunday. Ah well. Wonder if the smoked trout pate will last until then?!