The “OMG I’m leaving in a week” adventures continue.
For lunch on Friday, I drove up to San Francisco for lunch to catch up with two of my high school friends.
I had an Asian chicken salad.
A Giant GF cookie (It was staring at me the whole meal, so how could I not?)
And some great conversation with fantastic people.
That evening, I had just enough time for Crossfit before picking up a college friend from the train station. She recently moved to Boston, but was here for work and stayed with me for the weekend.
For dinner, we had homemade lasagna with zucchini noodles, salad, and bread with dipping sauce.
Because the occasion warranted it, I broke out some of the home brew chocolate milk stout (yes, I still owe you all a post on the process!)
One of my other friends brought a MASSIVE amount of peaches to us, so while sipping our beer, we made a delicious peach crisp using our favorite blueberry crisp recipe.
We ended the night with peach crisp and a movie.
Saturday, we had a big day of dog-friendly adventure planned. First, we drove to the city and visited my FAVORITE coffeeshop/donutery, Dynamo Donuts. They have an outdoor patio, so Chloe was able to sit with us.
Of course, I’m a sucker for marketing and had to get her a doggy donut.
I got a GF lemon buttermilk donut.
With a cappuccino of course.
My friend requested some outdoorsy activities, and we were originally going to hike around Mt Tam, but traffic wasn’t looking good in the area, and it was unclear how to get to the dog friendly areas, so we decided to head over to Crissy Field instead.
We did the fairly steep climb up to the bridge, and of course Chloe had a blast.
I didn’t really think about how touristy this area was. Chloe is a pretty noticeable dog, and it was interesting to see people, especially kids, exclaim about her in a multitude of languages!
Bridge views:
After our walk/hike, we drove across the city to All Good Pizza for a “Paws for a Cause” event benefiting an organization that helps adopt out animals. There were tons of dogs there, and Chloe was moderately well behaved to start.
The pizza place was basically a permanent food truck with a beer garden-esque outdoor area. I tried a few bites of my friend’s pizza and it was super good! I got a kale salad with turkey.
We didn’t stay too long because as the event got busier, there were more and more dogs and Chloe got a bit overstimulated and barky. My friend suggested we go somewhere with a beer flight, and through some googling, we found Southern Pacific Brewing Company.
This was the perfect place because they had a big flight with all of their house beers, and dog-friendly outdoor seating. I really, really enjoyed the Hefeweizen. It had a really interesting depth of flavor. My second favorite was the farmhouse ale.
Chloe was good until some barmy dogs came, but she was manageable with the presence of her new favorite treats.
Then, it was time to head home. We cleaned up and relaxed for a bit before heading out for Thai food with a college friend we hadn’t seen in over a year who just moved back to the area!
^Garlic chicken with brown rice.
We had so much to catch up on that we couldn’t stop at dinner, and headed to a pub next door for beers.
Eventually it was time to part ways. A couple of people from Crossfit were out, so on the way home we stopped by and hung out with them for a while. Seeing so many people these last couple of weeks is making leaving so hard!
Sunday morning, I sadly had to take my friend to the airport. On the way back, I stopped at the gym for a spin class and got my movement in early for the day.
Lunch was leftover lasagna and some of the amazing fruit we currently have in our fridge.
After lunch, I made my dad’s Father’s Day gift: our family recipe for trifle.
This recipe is actually pretty simple. Line the dish with lady fingers or pound cake, spread with jam, top with 3 tablespoons of cherry and let it sit 5 minutes, then top with custard. The custard is just pudding from a mix with an extra 1/2c of milk added. Then topped with whipped cream and a cherry!
I made my only baby GF version with a leftover blueberry lemon muffin from the freezer as the cake, raspberry jam, a minuscule amount of sherry, and the custard.
We basically spent all afternoon watching baseball.
For dinner, I went out to a pan-Asian place with a high school friend who I have no seen in a while. We both ordered soup to start; sweet corn and chicken for me!
Then we split a paneer based Asian dish that was really different, but good!
We walked around downtown a little bit afterwards, and I got some ice cream from Baskin Robbins. I haven’t been there in forever, and ordered my childhood favorite, Gold Medal Ribbon.
It was such a fun weekend full of amazing people. I cannot wait for more adventures this week!