Patented formula

What do you get if you combine the following:

1. Snow, lots of snow,
2. Wonderful home-cooked meals (including Biscuits & Gravy, Coq au Vin and a killer Italian menu),
3. Hours of hanging out with dear friends, drinking, chatting, playing games?

You get the 2008 edition of our annual trip to the Lake Tahoe area, 200 miles northeast of San Francisco, 6000-plus feet up in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

This year, we stayed in Truckee, directly at Donner Lake, in a beautiful cabin our friend Marg had secured for the eight of us. We had four wonderful days up there, including fun in the snow (skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing), spectacular discoveries (a visit to an abandoned train tunnel at Donner Pass), and just the right mix of serious fun and insane determination (Ed on our nightly walk along Donner Lake, proving that the waterline was much further out than we thought, by jumping from the pier into the snow below -- which did in fact turn out to be snow on solid ground, not snow on thin, mushy ice with lots of wet, cold lake underneath).

All pictures of this fabulous weekend with friends that like to eat, cook, and have a great time more than almost anything else are right here.

New bowlz, he has dem.

We bought a couple of new bowls for Popstickle the other day. Since I hated all the bowls I saw at the pet store, I had gottem him a set of simple soup bowls at Target a while back -- pretty porcelain dishes that weren't an eyesore on our back balcony, where we typically feed the little stray. But when I saw these cute bowls at Kamei last week, I couldn't help but buy them. It wasn't until I took this picture that I realized that the cat in the bowl looks just like Popstickle -- in color, and almost in shape as well.

Holiday pictures

I've finally gotten around to posting our pictures from our trip home to Germany for the holidays. There are two albums:

Home for Christmas - Pictures from our arrival in Germany, my Grandma's 82nd birthday, a night out with my parents, Christmas tree shopping, Christmas Eve, and much more.

In Berlin - Pictures from the short trip Ed, Tucker and I took to Berlin, to visit some of the amazing sights the German capital has to offer.

Sweetfest

It could have been any other day of the year, and normally Ed and I don't make a big deal about Valentine's Day, but this year I had such a wonderful time baking and cooking to celebrate the day a bit.

The Raspberry-Almond Financiers from Martha Stewart in the picture on the left were fairly easy to make, looked lovely, and were extremely delicious. And if I had read the entire recipe thoroughly, I woudn't have made them in paper baking cups, but directly in the muffin tin. Which would have saved us a lot of hassle peeling the little lovelies out of the paper to which they stuck to, badly. Well, I guess that's something to remember the next time I make them.

I made Crepes for breakfast, filled with Gruyere & ham, goat cheese & honey & pine nuts, and Nutella. For dinner I made a yummy salad, a filet mignon, and baked goat cheese with baguette. There was crepe batter left over from breakfast, so I made Crepes Suzette for dessert, using a lot of butter and Grand Marnier. We ate them watching the movie "Paris, je t'aime", and felt like God in France, on Valentine's Day.

More pictures of this Sweetfest here...

Looking for Bobcats

Yesterday was "Presidents' Day", a holiday officially named "Washington's Birthday", on which some people get a day off work, and others don't, depending on your employer. Fortunately, Ed had the day off, and so we went on a little hike on the Bobcat Trail in Marin County, just a few miles north of San Francisco. We weren't so lucky to spot a Bobcat, but it was beautiful anyway.

German according to LOST

Everyone's favorite TV show LOST baffles us frequently, A LOT, but last week's episode offered a special surprise. A scene was set in Germany, and as Sayid walked into a restaurant we caught a glimpse of the handwritten menu near the entrance. Which had apparently been written by someone who learned German in school. For a while. A long time ago. "Grilltes Huhnerfilet" instead of "Gegrilltes Hühnerfilet", "Knobloch Kartoffen" instead of "Knoblauch-Kartoffeln", and "Bratkartoffen" instead of "Bratkartoffeln". But my confidence in the LOST makers remains, and I can't wait to see how they're gonna explain this one...