industrious or debaucherous: notes on the weekend

Liz and I are homebodies. We like time at home together doing not much of anything: cooking, reading (well, that would be Liz who reads—I have a contentious relationship with the New Yorker), keeping house, watching our Netflix. Some people (=my sister) even like to tease me about being a boring old woman who only likes to cook and clean and spend time with the cat.

While that may be true, when I started thinking about which old-lady thing to blog about from this past weekend, I realized that our weekend events actually make us look like rock stars. Well, if not rock stars, and least semi-interesting drunks.

Here's the rundown:

Friday

• Met sister and friends at the Trappist in downtown Oakland for beers after work. Not being fans of Belgian beers, Liz and I hadn't been there since right after they opened about 2 years ago. They've since expanded and have more seating, a few good non-Belgians on tap, and food, including a very generous charcuterie plate. 
• Met young Brad and Shannon at Burgermeister for impromptu dinner. There's not much to say about the restaurant, but I'm enjoying getting to know B & S since they also are antisocial boozers.

Saturday

• Woke up and put together a batch of sourdough English muffins. More about my sourdough project later, but suffice it to say I was glad to find that I didn't just have beginner's luck last year. It seems my yeast has recovered…

• In the evening, we BARTed to San Francisco to meet my old pal Holly for an art opening at her friend's gallery. After, we walked over to Blue Bottle where we were treated  to an espresso con panna and a cappuccino—Holly's their hotshot siphon barista!
• Energized by the coffee, we walked up to North Beach to The Comstock Saloon. I went to this bar a few times when it was the SF Brewing Company and had mediocre beer and a pervasive stink. Some saint has returned the beautiful bar (of which I only have crap photos) to it's former Barbary Coast glory, sans stink. Highlights: the Southside (gin, lemon, mint, sugar, seltzer), pickled egg and bacon on rye toasts, super-friendly service, the barkeep's whimsy, and tactile wallpaper. 
• We walked around the corner with Cara (who had caught up with us post-rehearsal) to 15 Romolo, another dark and lovely bar tucked into a little alley. Bar snacks were tasty and super-reasonable ($5-$7), but again, the cocktails were the real draw. I had my favorite of the evening, the Spaghetti Western, which was like a boozy, sweeter version of a Michelada (I chose the repo):

Sunday

Sunday's glamour was more low-key since Liz had to work, and I stayed home to prepare for our first small dinner party in our new place. Company was: Cara, her new beau Chris, Marcy (my friend since we were 11!), Kathy, Kathy's awesome service dog, Odetta (more on her later, too), and Maureen, another service dog in training. Look at these two:

Maureen (L), Odetta (R)

So, it was a serious full house, including Greenie, who cared not that there were 2 Labs in his space and impressed everyone with his ability to climb the spiral staircase with 3 legs. 

The menu:

• Garlic bread
• Spaghetti and Meatballs (notes/recipe coming soon)
• Green Salad with Balsamic-dijon vinaigrette
• 3 good wines (Rock Wall Mixto, M2 Duality, Irish Monkey Sangiovese: see Twitter feed on right)

Marcy brought fabulous vanilla corn muffins with strawberries, peaches and whipped cream. Chris contributed oatmeal cookies with some sort of crack drizzled over them: we ate them ALL. 

I was really happy to finally have everyone over. Not to brag, but our new place is really big and cavernous with its high ceilings, so it felt good to have the space feel more full with good food and conversational chaos.