Weekend's Festivities!

Hello, friends!

I have survived the weekend, so here I am to tell you a bit about it...

Friday, the parents arrived! I gave my final honors symposium talk, which they and other friends attended [thanks to those who made it out!!!] - a year's worth of research in 7.5 minutes... eek. It's cool to be able to condense my work into such a short amount of time, but it's also remarkable that processes that take such effort and an immense amount of time is talked about in a sentence. Such is research, I suppose.

For dinner, we headed to Flea St. Cafe, a restaurant which is a part of CoolEatz run by Jesse Cool, a woman whose establishments are known for local, sustainable, and organic fare. We started the meal by sharing 1) a carrot ginger soup, which was super delicious and velvety, just slightly spicy (I refrain from using the word creamy, since it wasn't a cream based soup). 2) And a warm baby spinach salad. This was also needed since the evening was starting to get kind of blustery and cold. Nice and savory, sauteed mushrooms were in the mix. I had a salmon dish for dinner, which was cooked medium rare (interesting, and actually much appreciated-- the center was still raw!) on a bed of gingered yams (YUM), accompanied by three different lemon sauces: a lemon aioli, lemon marmalade, and soy sauce with peppered yuzu (a Japanese citrus). My favorite was the peppered yuzu, given how the fish had been cooked (reminded me of seared salmon from Ike's...).

Had my second to last orchestra concert in the church, pretty epic.

Saturday, went to University Cafe in the morning, then met the bro at Mayfield Bakery, where I had bites of salad and onion rings. Mmm. I got a cute new shirtdress, and I want the weather to warm up significantly so that I can wear it-- faded navy blue with a cinched waist and a sash, 3 tiers on the bottom of the skirt, buttons all the way up.

Dinner was at Kaygetsu, one of my favorite restaurants ever. Kaiseki menu, as always, was absolutely incredible, including a piece of washu beef sushi, which was so incredibly tender you couldn't tell you were eating beef; chicken with a miso topping; clear savory broth... Yum. For the table, we also shared ume shiso chazuke, which has to be one of my favorite comfort foods ever-- sour plum paste and minty shredded green in a savory broth with rice in it. Yummmm. We also had a duck/orange salad, halibut and snapper kama (meat from the collar), miso black cod, and I know I'm forgetting other things. Ah, I can't write about it all, but take my word for it that it was all phenomenal. I missed the last dessert course of the kaiseki (SAD) for my call time at orchestra, but I heard it was yummy.

Last concert was fun, played well, got a rose for being a senior :)

Post-concert, went to Coupa to have the family tradition of hot chocolate after the show.

Went to bed. Slept. Delicious.

Sunday, we headed up to SF for the morning, and had brunch at Foreign Cinema. We shared an assortment of deliciousness, including yellowtail tartare, beef carpaccio, fried eggs with prosciutto and balsamic dressed garlic-potato hash, and poached eggs with duck breast. Yum. My favorite was definitely the garlic-potato hash, the balsamic was so flavorful with it; made a traditional seeming breakfast/brunch dish a lot more savory and delicious, always something I appreciate.

Helped the bro move some stuff out of his apartment, came back to campus, did the same for me (my room is tons cleaner now...), and now the parents are gone...

Dinner was ribs. MMMM. I looove barbeque sauce. This is one of the few meals I'm totally willing to get my fingers dirty for.

So funny how a weekend can be such a whirlwind of activity and disappear in a second. Hard to believe when we're actually in it, but once it's gone, I ask what happened to it?

Now I'm preparing for one of my final projects ever in my undergraduate career, a final presentation of my research to my lab. Things are really coming to a close.

Graduation in 3 weeks...