Sad

My beautiful, loving grandmother is not doing well.  We don't expect that she will pull through this time.  We (me, husband and little Emma) are flying out to the east coast this Friday.  My mother is so sad.  Hopefully, seeing her little granddaughter will help a bit, like a little cuddly care package arriving.

Smile, You're on Camera!

Ok, smiling time is over. Now, it is time for "serious face."

The Every Way Wrap

I am making the Every Way Wrap as a gift for my mother.  She actually picked this pattern so it isn't ruining the surprise to post a picture of the progress.

Due to my lack of experience in reading cable charts, the 15-row repeat cable pattern and the severe errata published in the original pattern, this project had a tumultuous start.  I ripped it apart five (!) times before I actually got into the groove and figured out the chart and the pattern.

The design is by a Korean knitwear designer, and it is really cool. It is a reversible cable, so it won't have a right or wrong side, as most cable knits do. It is also designed to be worn in a multitude of ways, either as a scarf, a wrap, or even, with clever placement of buttons, as a vest.

I can't wait until it is finished so I can give this to my mother.  I hope to have it finished by Christmas time, but with a baby, and with my return to the corporate peon world looming on the near horizon, that might not be possible.

Flipping Over

Yesterday, we caught Emma on video flipping herself over.
 
She actually flipped herself over for the first time a couple of days ago, but we missed it.  That day, we placed her on her playmat tummy side down, and turned away for a few seconds, only to turn back around and see her tummy side up, placidly smiling at us.

She is growing up so quickly.  I have such mixed emotions about it.  On one hand, I want her to stay a little baby forever, so small and cute.  On the other hand, I can't wait to see all the fun interactive things she will do with us in the future.  It's exciting and sad all at the same time.

About the video camera - Lance bought the Flip video camera (warning: clicking on this link will take you to the Flip video website which will play music and stuff) a couple of weeks ago.  It is small, really easy to use (meaning even I can use it), and you can edit the videos using free editing programs.  We don't really know what we are doing on the editing programs, but Lance was able to add music to the video in this post, and to take out our ridiculous proud parent exclaimations using free Windows Movie Maker.

We Finally Got In!

Here's an unexpected benefit of having a small child - you can get a table at practically any restaurant because you have to eat early. And thus, we were finally able to get a table at Burma Superstar at 5:30 PM (half an hour later and the small restaurant was packed). We have tried probably three other times to go to this restaurant, but gave up because we were told the wait would be 1 hour or more. It is a local San Francisco favorite, serving up unusual foods like fermented tea leaf salad, samusa soup and other delectable Burmese selections. This restaurant has been featured on the show Check, Please! Bay Area and on the Food Network, which turned it into an even more popular spot. It is also nice that Burma Superstar has a fair selection of vegetarian foods, or foods that they can adjust to make vegetarian, including their famous tea leaf salad.

We started with the samusa soup. It has a deep, spicy, rich curry broth with vegetables and chunks of potato samusas.

Someone once told me that this soup is supposed to induce labor, and that many pregnant women who were desperate for the baby to come out have ordered this soup. One of the three previous times we tried to get into this restaurant was during the last week of my pregnancy. Perhaps if we had gotten in and eaten this soup, little Emma would have arrived on time, or even early.

We also tried the fermented tea leaf salad. It has a lot of ingredients - split yellow beans, sunflower seeds, peanuts, tomatoes, lettuce, jalepenos, etc. - but the real star of the salad is the fermented tea leaves. Our waiter brought out the salad, explained each ingredient, then mixed the salad at the table. The salad was salty, spicy, crunchy, sweet and delicious.

Beet Greens

Well, here I am singing the praises of fresh lovely beets, and then I went and threw away the beet greens last time we had them.  This time, we ate the delicious beet greens.  They taste a lot like Swiss chard and can be prepared in much the same way.  Some people discard the tougher stalk portion on the beet greens, but we like eating these.  They just have to be thrown in the pan a little earlier and cooked a bit longer.  The stalks are a lovely shade of purple red.

We sauteed the greens in olive oil with some onion, garlic, salt and pepper, and then a dash of balsamic vinegar at the end.  These were a great addition to our meal of polenta with marinara sauce and sauteed broccolini. 

We got the polenta at Trader Joe's.  It comes in a little log that you can slice up and then pan fry in a little olive oil.  Of course, you can just make your own polenta easily with corn meal, too.

Husband and I were talking the other day about how our new diet is leading us to experiment in new ways with food.  We certainly are eating a much wider variety of vegetables than we did before, and finding healthy substitutes for many old standbys.  It is also making us look harder at nutrition labels and thinking more about where our food comes from.and the choices we make in what we eat.

We Live in a Great City!

On Sunday, we took Emma to Ocean Beach. It was a gorgeous day, and all sorts of people were out walking the trails and the beach.  While we were strolling around, we thought about how, sometimes, it is easy to forget that we live in one of the greatest cities in the world.  Do bad things happen here?  Sure, just as they do in any urban area, and when they do occur it is tragic and unfortunate. Is it ridiculously expensive to live here?  Yeah, but we benefit from so much here.  Tourists travel the world to visit San Francisco, and marvel at how you can find diversity, culture, haute and cheap cuisine and panoramic scenery all within one city's limits.

Here's a sampling of that beautiful scenery:

Emma took this all in from the comfort of her stroller.  She fell asleep most of the time, chilling out in her little sunhat.