Friday Brunch in LPA

This morning two friends visited for brunch and also to see my house which they had been looking forward to seeing since I moved in, (for shame, 3 yrs ago!). We have worked together over the past 15 years but are currently working in three separate libraries over two different shifts so have found it hard to meet up. Our last meet up was in February and I blogged about it here.

Ciaran suggested I make Fat n'Fluffy French Toast with bacon served with maple syrup and cream.  I thought this was the perfect brunch food so googled a recipe. This was the French Toast Recipe I found and used after modifying it slightly.  It was the first time I had used flour in French Toast but it worked!

I used a fresh loaf of bread from Supervalu that I cut in to thick slices - so good!!

It was a lovely morning I really enjoyed the girls company.

One of my friends had her two and a half year old son with her. When he got home he told his older brother "I was in a house with a swimming pool & a dog".  
How adorable! I love this!!
We only have a hot tub but to a two year old it must look huge!

Low Carb Cauliflower Meals

Check this baby out!

I got a new Food Processor (the Kenwood FP582 takes up 30% less space in a kitchen press than a regular processor due to its streamlined design) which makes chopping up cauliflower a breeze. 

I flew through these cauliflowers and had 3 batches of cauliflower rice in no time at all.  When you have the right tools it is easy!

This is all the waste from the cauliflower - there is more waste than actual cauliflower!! This will all go in to my brown waste bin which takes all my compostable material.

I made up three different things.   
* Pizza for tonight (with cauliflower base)
* Pizza I froze for Thursday night (thanks to a blog reader for suggesting I make two bases at the same time - Great tip Lisa!) 
*Kung Pao Chicken with Coconut Cauliflower Rice for tomorrow night.

Here is the pizza we ate tonight. The base was a bit more solid than the other time I made it so it felt more like real pizza.

Here's the pizza that went in to the freezer. I will cook from frozen on Thursday evening.

 I plated up the Kung Pao Chicken for tomorrow evening. It might have been a better idea to make the coconut cauli-rice tonight but then cook the chicken fresh tomorrow. I'll do that next time.

The Kung Pao Chicken with Cauli Rice is a banting recipe from The Real Food Revolution Cookbook.

All in all a fairly productive hour and a half or so of cooking - however the house does smell of cauliflower which is not so good :-(

Highlights of my California Trip

Here's the highlights of my recent California Trip (in no particular order)

Whale Watching in Monterey
Seeing nature in the wild makes me feel so alive!! This experience was amazing.

Football Game in Oakland
I had no idea what was going on most of the time but I still enjoyed it immensely

398 Brasserie
So good we ate here 3 mornings in a row.  And they make great Bloody Mary's too!

Santa Cruz Beach
And drinks on our balcony looking at the beach

Cable Car Tour with Bar in San Francisco
Ridiculous amount of fun aboard and we stopped off for a great Irish Coffee in Buena Vista Cafe

Olympic Club 
Ciaran thought it was the nicest club he ever played in - and there was some pretty good squash played there too in the O'Stillman Cup

Betty's Burgers in Santa Cruz
Had the "Bareback burger" with Betty's special lube - otherwise known as a Burger with burger sauce but no bun!

Petroglyph in Santa Cruz
We each painted a mug and then picked them up a few days later when they had been fired.  

Pacific Grove Movie Theatre
Old school fun!

Getting a pedicure on the night before we flew home

Eating in China Town in San Francisco
I've always wanted to do this.  The food was fine but the atmosphere was amazing!

Roof top eating in Cheese Cake Factory (Union Square) 
And take away cheese cake slice!

Bus Tour in SF that took us over the Golden Gate Bridge

Fierce cold and windy - it brought tears to our eyes....but so worth it!

Frank Lloyd Wright Building

Waking up to this view!!
In Santa Cruz (Casablanca on the Beach)

And watching the lads play football as the sun went down

What a trip and great memories for life!

Game Day - Raiders versus Bengals

When all the squash was over, the team broke up with many going back to Ireland, some staying on in San Francisco and some travelling to other parts of the States.

We stayed in San Francisco for a few days before flying home.

A friend of Ciaran's was very keen to go to a Football Game on the Sunday after not being able to go to a college game on Saturday due to the squash.  

I have no interest in Football but I love the atmosphere of the game and the stadium so made a decision to go with them if they were able to get tickets.

The plan was to get tickets as the stadium but lucky for us a USA squash player was able to hook us up with a ticket seller and we got them through him (we played over the odds but at least we didn't have to deal with scalpers at the stadium).

We got the BART out to Oakland.

 New rules had just come on to force where you couldn't have a bag bigger than basically a DVD. So I had to check in my bag. I saw these mounted guards when I made my way to bag check in (where I had to pay 10 dollars for the privilege) 

The football field had the baseball diamond laid out on it.

It was a chilled out fun afternoon.

The lads chatted to this Raiders fan during one of the breaks

 A huge screen was at each end of the field.

The fans were great - all decked out in black to support their team.

Ciaran & Conor visited the Raiders Store after the game.

Here's the remains of the tail gating!

While the lads were in the shop I went and got my bag back. While doing this I saw the cheer leaders leave the stadium, which was pretty cool.

All in all a fun afternoon, and something we can't do at home in Ireland. I had no idea what was going on the majority of the time but I really enjoyed myself!

When we got back to San Francisco we ate in a restaurant in China Town which was another cool experience. A fantastic end to a brilliant day.

Swan Centre - Dead Mall coming back to life!

On Thursday morning, I visited Starbucks in the Swan Centre before dropping Bones to Mutt Ugly to get groomed at 10am.

I was surprised to see how changed the Swan Centre was in the two weeks that I was in the States. The whole place is going through a refurbishment with white tiling throughout along with all of the shops getting smart white consistent store fronts fitted.

What most surprised me was this new shop that is being fitted. It's a Popcorn shop. Ciaran and I always remark how, when we are in USA, that we don't know how whole shops dedicated to one product survive. Examples of this that we have seen is a popcorn shop in Chicago, Peppers in Key West that just sells Hot Sauce and also Towels of Key West that just sells towels. Along with numerous Sock shops that obviously only sell socks. Feel free to tell me about any more in the comments section!

Anyway what is opening new in the Swan Centre is a Popcorn Shop!! Here is a photos of the place being fitted out. It looks nice and is in a great location where SWALK used to be.

Another new shop is this Belarmine Dry Cleaner which is in the spot where Planet Candy used to be. I saw on the window that they were ironing shirts for €1 (which is what I used to pay Northside) so after dropping Bones, I went home and picked up 20 shirts and left them in to be ironed. I chatted with the owner and he told me that they were charging €1.60 across the road for shirt ironing. I agreed with him that his prices were cheap and said he will get a lot of business.

And then as I walked down towards Dunnes, I saw another new place being fitted out. It's a Jewellers in a spot where I think there had been a Jewellers there about a year ago.

Other things to note are that there is a fairly new Butcher next door to Dunnes food and that Dunnes is also getting an overhaul with new flooring being put in. All in all the whole place is looking much improved and I hope all of the new businesses will do well. I particularly hope that the Popcorn shop does well as I reckon they are taking the biggest risk.

Frank Lloyd Wright - 140 Maiden Lane, San Francisco

Ten years ago, on our last trip to San Francisco, we visited this Frank Lloyd Wright building on Maiden Lane. It was built in 1948 and when you enter you instantly are reminded of the Guggenheim Museum in New York which it was the prototype for.  Originally it was a Gift Shop but when we visited it back in 2005 it was Xanadu Art Gallery.  However, on this visit we found it shut up and we were unable to enter. I see from the Wikipedia page that it has been sold to a high end designer boutique (which was exactly the use that I told Ciaran it would be perfect for while we stood outside and viewed the building).  I'm glad to hear it has been sold and hopefully we will get to view it again in the future!

The above brick detail on the left of the building is phenomenal to look at from the street

Curved glass!

The light features along the building are instantly recognizable as being designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

I imagine that the tree outside the building was specified by FLW?!

What an incredible building.  It is beyond timeless - I think it is actually getting better with age and looks more modern than a lot of buildings built this decade.

What I read on holidays.....

"Smart Women" by Judy Blume

I bought this book in Pacific Grove in the Friends of the Library book sale for $2.  I had read a few of Judy Blume's adult reads before and enjoyed them.  This one is very "1980's" but enjoyable all the same.

"Surf Mama" was the perfect beach read.  All about English artist, Wilma Johnson, and her quest to learn to surf at the age of 40, after moving from Ireland to France, it made me want to get a wetsuit and board and learn too!!

"The short and tragic life of Robert Peace" by Jeff Hobbs
 Oh wow! This book was amazing. I bought it in the airport in San Francisco and had it read when I arrived in Philadelphia 5 hours later. What a tale of a life that promised so much - it makes you think that sometimes our life is mapped out for us no matter what extra chances we are given.

I generally switch over to Radio 1 to avoid Ivan Yates on Newstalk. However, I did enjoy his biography - he sure has lived a life and a half.

B.J. Novak's "One more thing" is pretty much fictional musings on modern life.  Amusing in parts, I bought this book in Pacific Grove but left it behind in Santa Cruz as I had finished it and didn't want to carry it home.......what does this say about the book?!

This was Ciaran's "light reading" for our holiday.  I flicked through it and read a few of the more interesting chapters.  I studied Sociology in University so I found some of it to be fascinating from a sociological perspective.