Sunday, January 18th - Patio weather

Breakfast - freshly baked Pain au Chocolate from Trader Joe's (real butter!), corn muffins, and grapefruit.

My other sister V has an obsessive love affair with the bay area grocery called Trader Joe's. She doesn't cook at all. I mean at all. She eats everything prepared or ingredients. Trader Joe's is right up the alley. Premade curry paste which she didn't know she was not supposed to eat straight out of the jar, frozen naan, 2 portion pasta packages, prewashed precleaned potatoes. It's funny. In Uni she went through long phases. For a week she'd eat nothing but minestrone soup from a can. For a month she'd eat nothing but fish sticks. For a semester she'd not be separated from her Provigo container of raisins. When the phases were over, she'd call me over and ask if I wanted some fish sticks or minestrone soup. At least with Trader Joe's I know she's eating vegetables. O, who tries to cook by following recipes, thinks lettuce is a vegetable.

So she brought her latest Trader Joe's discovery to try for breakfast. I have to say, I wish we had these in Vancouver. They are frozen Pain au Chocolate. You leave them on tinfoil in the oven, turned off, over night. They rise as they defrost. All you have to do is bake them for about 15-20 minutes and you have beautiful buttery flakey chocolatey croissant. Amazing!


Lunch - Patio at the Ferry Terminal at Taylor's - Garlic Fries and Calamari. We took the Muni downtown. Well we walked around the Mission or rather the yuppy area just north of the Mission called Noe Valley. Very cute. Went into the famous Cheese shop there for a lookyloo but you're not allowed to bring cheese back with you from the States so I couldn't buy any.
The ferry terminal is a posh little set up in an old ferry terminal building with restaurants like the Slanted Door and other food stuffs and shops. Outside on the city side is a little diner called Taylor's. They have great I do meant great calamari and crazy good garlic fries. The photos tell it all. You must try it out when you're there. We had a bout of unexpected sun in January so it was wonderful on the patio.

Dinner - (sad snack in transit) chugged a glass of Pino Gris before running out. Slice of poppy seed bread and two corn muffins, glass of port when I got home