A Special Treat

I spent the weekend in San Diego with Lisa. It was so much fun and such a special treat. Several weeks ago she mentioned that she was going to visit Dad and Nancy. Since I knew my in-laws were going to be here and would be able to help with the kids, I decided to invite myself along. I'm so glad I did. We did all of our favorite things: dinner at the "grassy knoll" (see photos), Del Mar racetrack and our favorite Mexican restaurant afterward, the open air market and other fun shops in La Jolla, we saw "Hairspray" (we all gave it 4 stars), dinner with Celeste and Steve, a individualized pilates session with Nancy, the beach....

No trip to San Diego would be the same without amazing food. Dad worked his magic on the BBQ, including pizza on the grill (it was unbelievable.) We had great Chinese takeout at our favorite spot on the water, I had the BEST chile relleno and chile verde in Del Mar, warm popovers in the morning, and per my request, Nancy gave Lisa and I a lesson in the art of a successful pie. I was so inspired by her apple pie and homemade vanilla ice cream that I wrote down her recipes and came home inspired to make them. I've been home less than 24 hours and I'm almost ready: I bought 5 lbs of apples today but I still need to get a pastry blender. This is monumental for me: although I'm pretty good baker, I have a very bad history with pies. I gave up on making pastry years ago after my strawberry pie turned out to be strawberry soup. Another time I caught my oven on fire while baking a key lime pie. I'll never forget that one because I had the neighbor kids over at the time. The house was filled with smoke, my smoke alarms were going off and I had flames jumping out of the oven. Baking soda saved us all that day!

I was also able to read my book club assignment while in San Diego (Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf). I'm so glad that I took it with me because it was a bit of a hard read and required a lot of concentration. Virginia Woolf's stream of consciousness writing style (some sentences take up nearly a page) requires an unusual attention span. I'm afraid I wouldn't have gotten as much out of it if I had tried to read it here. I'm looking forward to discussing the book with my friends.

The weekend was great. It was so nice to get away after being home all summer (most of it while feeling horrible), the weather was gorgeous (when is it not in San Diego?), Dan and the kids were having a ball with the in-laws, and I was able to do some things that I haven't done in a long time. It was a very rare and special treat!