Today was a red letter day! It started with an early morning session with the guitar book, followed by a session with the instrument. I did pretty well with Greensleeves, my newest song. Jingle Bells is coming along, too. There was a moment when I realized that I was the proverbial "Mr. White Keys" from the song of that same title by the Cherry Popping Daddies. All of the notes I know on the guitar are the same notes as are on the white keys of the piano. That song stuck with me for most of the day.
We missed all of the farmers markets since Thanksgiving. Today was the last day of the PSU farmers market and we took full advantage of it. Besides the squash, carrots, giant yam, eggs, kale and cipollini onions, we also got truffle oil, truffle caramel, a baguette, peppermint/spearmint tea, two kinds of pate (or a pate and a moose), challa, corn tortillas, lamb, chicken thighs, prunes, and a small box of chocolates, not to mention the breakfast burrito, the pork confit crepe, three mini cookies, the slice of almond brioche, the cup of coffee, the cup of mint tea and the cup of hot apple cider that we ate on site. It was a terrific farmers market, especially considering that it is late December.
After the market, we came home, put the food away, and took the dogs out for a 3 mile walk. We moved pretty quickly because our friends Ben and Kate were on their way down from Seattle and we (along with Marty) were going to meet them and my brother at the Dim Sum restaurant for Brian's birthday lunch. We got home just in time to get ready to go, so we piled into Marty's car and went to lunch.
Dim Sum is one of the foods that we missed in the 6+ years we were out of the Northwest. It is a Chinese small plate lunch where servers bring loads of dumpling type foods to the table in carts and the diners select what they wish to eat. I think we selected almost everything that came our way. We had sticky rice, 4 kinds of shrimp/fish dumplings, Chinese broccoli, stuffed eggplant, calamari, hum bao, shumai, a sweet sesame ball and a savory sesame ball, taro dumplings, and probably a couple of other things I forgot to mention. Even if we only had half of each type of food option, it would have been a bunch of food. I'm pretty sure everyone had at least one of each thing. And, wow, it was GOOD!!!
After lunch, we split up and Ben, Kate, Brian and I all went down town. We found some 3 hour street parking and walked through Chinatown towards the waterfront. Based on a news report we saw a few weeks ago, I expected to be approached by loads of folks trying to sell me drugs. Instead, a couple of homeless guys wished me a happy holiday, but that was it. Maybe next time. We went on down to the Saturday market, where they were having the Festival of the Last Minute, with longer hours for the merchants hoping to sell more stuff for Xmas. I'm not sure if it was successful, but it was certainly busy.
From there, we walked back up to the Pearl district to Cupcake Jones, the world's best cupcake shop. We each got a small cupcake to eat right there, then got a big cupcake to take home to share later. That may not have been the best of ideas. (See, that there is called foreshadowing!) After our cupcakes, we stopped for a drink at the bar across the street, then walked back to our car to go home. By this time it was 6:30.
Inexplicably, we were hungry when we got home. To fix that, we pulled out the two types of pate, some crackers, some cookies, some cheese, humus, prunes and the baguette. Yeah, a healthy, well balanced meal was had by all. Then we pulled out the cupcakes. Kate carefully cut each one into 4 parts, so we could each try all of the flavors. After eating 2 parts (or half a cupcake) we were all feeling just a little gross. Perhaps it is time to go back to my original 8 week challenge. I ate MUCH better then.
While we were eating, we played a new board game that Ben and Kate gave Brian for his birthday. It was called Funglish and is really fun. Essentially, using only adjectives (selected from a list), you have to describe a word and others have to guess that word. Example: the clue giver might show the words black, white, and striped, and the guessers might correctly guess Zebra. It is much harder than it sounds and is all sorts of fun. Kate kicked our butts, with Brian and I coming in a far second and Ben a close third. We will definitely play that game again.
After the game, we hung out in the living room for a bit, playing Mad Libs. Yes, Garmon family , the word "underwear" was mentioned at least once in every round... except for the first one, which didn't have a noun blank. Crazy! By the time each of us had been the scribe, three of us had completely crashed, and we went to bed. I realized that this day had to be documented as an amazing and super fun day, so I stayed up all the way to 10:42 pm (!!!!!) to write this blog.
Be happy and healthy!
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