yurt so good

so the PLC hit Big Sur this weekend. we are lucky peoples to live so close to such pristine beauty. no condor or whale sightings, but we managed to eat lunch at nepenthe, hit up the yurts, do some late night japanese spa tubbing at Esalen, meet some Romans and also some guys from the FBI, sip boont in adirondack chairs at the river inn, greet some llamas, find and lose the gnome, play dirty scrabble, gaze at the milky way over lucia lodge, crash a wedding, eat some delicious tuna steaks, make choc brownie waffles, find the never-really-open big sur bakery, and also do some serious r&r poolside, while looking out at the endless horizon and sharing lots of good wine and chatchat (ie no hiking or biking)....

uncle chuck's 2008

every summer for a few years now, my good friends come up from the city to visit me at my uncle's house in tahoe, aka (with loads of affection), "Uncle Chuck's" and this year, we managed to outdo ourselves. highlights included tubing down the Truckee River in ultra-classy floatys (crocodile ottomans, goggled lobstahs, gay-friendly cruisers, tailbone crushing tubes, and ducktaped styles were all in effect), reliving senor swanky's, bacon taste-tests, happy hours / sunset bar hopping at the Hyatt's Lone Eagle Grill (best bartender ever btw, and we all recommend the Long Eagle House Margarita), Thunderbird boat sightings, gourmet eats at byte, Olympics and "Mad Men" watching, Mofo's, hiking down to skunk harbor cove beaches, tubbing at the house, and of course, Uno. oh wait, no Uno. anyways, we managed to have a pretty swanky 5-star weekend that I can't really even explain so here are some highlights:

the meteor show

so i woke up at 3:30 in the morning, grabbed a sleeping bag, and laid out in the driveway to see the perseid meteor shower that crossed the western US last night. pretty spectacular- i saw about 50 shooters in about an hour. think fireballs + lightning bug-looking smears across the sky (it actually made me think of catching lightning bugs as a kid and then placing them in a jar and rolling the jar down a hilly driveway. woops, not very nice, but very fun when you are 10 and already outside playing 'capture the flag' or 'ghost in the graveyard'). here's a pict of nothing- ha. my dig cam isn't *that* good.

tahoe adventure camp.

rock climbing above donner lake (i did half of a 5.10a, wahoo!), some tubing down the truckee river, and drinks over the fire pit at the Lone Eagle...tahoe summer at its finest:

you live in san francisco

when the local camera shop has the following installation (not quite Andy Warhol or Simon Doonan):

everybody's workin' for the weekend

the past week / weekend = amazing. i saw some cool outdoor art, was out in the sunshine at chrissy field, caught up with my good girlfriends, had the best.date.ever., looked at road bikes to buy, and went to an interesting commonwealth club panel with Alice Waters, Eric Schlosser ("Fast Food Nation" author), a pediatic doc, the head of the Slow Foods nation (shout out to torino), and also a public health policy researcher. it really got me thinking about local farmers, health related to income, a return to homestyle/ethnic cooking, how the 50s ruined cooking (hello, microwave), and a lot of foods i (luckily) just don't eat ie anything from 'Jack in the Box.' it also reminded me of those weird Presidential Physical Fitness Tests we had to 'pass' growing up in elementary school. does anyone remember these? there were curl-ups / partial curl-ups, shuttle run, endurance run/walk, pull-ups or right angle push-ups, and V-sit or sit and reach. the sit and reach?!? shuttle run? how are any of those indicative of your level of fitness or diet? anyways, among the sold-out crowd of sf foodie-maniacs, there were a lot of interesting discussions about school programs, budgets under Arnie, chez panisse goodness, and of course we got to witness alice waters being lofty and random (she's very aloof in a french kind of way). the panel kicked off a variety of programs about how and why we eat...more to come on that later.

since the weekend was full of such good food and company - dinner parties here at 1027 and at alice's, frascati (mmmmm, so great), lighthouse cafe, all good stuff -i am posting a pict of ms. alice cutting her fabulous leg of lamb (stuffed with sage, pancetta, and some garlic). just superb! my mom would be proud.