A Foodie's Wedding in San Francisco

People say that they remember exactly what they were doing and where they were during seminal events. JFK assassination. When Obama was elected. My event: When one of my best friends, Cat, got engaged to Brian. I was studying immunology with my study group in their Somerville house. I'm also pretty sure I unleashed a scream so loud that they came running to see what was wrong.

Fast forward to October 23, 2010. Dan and I had (1) attended our friend's LA wedding (see previous post) the weekend prior, (2) Dan had just completed his 8-hr written exam monstrosity, and (3) celebrated my mom's birthday. I flew up to San Francisco after all this to hang out with Cat, help out, and generally be an annoying nuisance as the matron of honor. See the compromising position that Brian and Cat are in?

Here's what this entailed: Multiple trips to Home Depots / Michael's / San Francisco's Flower Market / SF Public Library, a very painful Brazilian wax where I only understood every other word that the Vietnamese lady was saying, lunch w/ one of Cat's ex-coworkers, cooking fish and about a ton of bok choy for a stay-at-home dinner, getting our nails done, and multiple jokes about Kristie T's role as "deputy marriage commissioner". Along the way, we also managed to have a delicious Italian dinner out, try a sandwich called the "Menage-a-Trois" (not a joke), and scope out the food truck scene at Fort Mason. Below is a pic of Cat w/ her ex-coworker's new baby.

Daniel came up Thursday morning to hammer together lots of wood planks for the frame underneath a graduated display of a bajillion desserts. The week passed in a BLUR, and it was Saturday before we knew it. I used airbnb to find a fantastic studio steps from the Ferry Building for ~$100 / night. So for Sat breakfast, we met up with our friend Winnie to eat our way around Embarcadero and the Ferry Bldg Farmer's Market. By conservative estimates, we had a rotisserie sandwich w/ 8-hr caramelized onions, fresh mussels, enchiladas, pluots (plums + apricots = the most DELICIOUS fruit I have ever tasted and now I lust after them), strawberries, cheese, huge chili polish sausage, macaroons, among other things.

Kristie T and I ran off to the St. Regis to hang out with Cat and Mommy Ng around noon. Cat attempted to write her vows, while Kristie and I were creating a baller dance playlist for later that evening. Mommy Ng was especially entertaining because she had to nap in positions that required her right leg to be perpendicular to the rest of her body, straight up in the air. Here's a pic of Cat after she put on her makeup. I told her to cake it on.

While Kristie, Cat, and I were dilly-dallying inside the sweetest hotel room I've seen in a long time, our respective partners were running around the venue (The Box in SoMa) putting up autumn-colored paper lanterns. It apparently took a lot longer than expected (5 hrs), and Manish (Kristie's beau) and Dan bonded.
Their efforts paid off, however, since the space looked stunning.

Here's Kristie in the foreground and a blurry Manish running around in the background. Probably still putting up lights. He was going a little lantern-crazy.

It all came together for a gorgeous, very SF-like event. The food was delicious (carnitas, comfort Mexican food, etc), there were 12 types of alcoholic beverages including a free-flowing '93 Dom Perignon. Brief aside, Dan was determined to try all 12 types. He did manage all 12, had 1 more, then decided that 13 was a bad number so should have more. Towards the end of the evening, there was a lot of touchy-feely things going where Daniel was rub up against me, then flash his wedding ring with a "I'm married, okay?" Better that he loves rubbing against me than other people.

Cat looked gorgeous. The ceremony was short and sweet. Kristie T talked about how it was "all about the little things". Cat and Brian both read their own vows. Cat's was off the cuff and full of levity. Brian's was pre-written, touching, and hilarious. The tea ceremony was a nice homage to Cat's Chinese heritage. [Note: the bridesmaid dresses were from Target and our shoes were from Payless. I love value sourcing.]

The next day, SF was in a complete downpour so we ended up completely soaked after our Yank Sing upscale dim sum lunch w/ Winnie. We blazed through Ghiradelli Square and the phenomenal Exploratorium, went the wrong way on the subway and ended up eating all the pluots and strawberries, and got delayed by 3 hrs because of the torrential rain. Daniel found an abandoned, new plastic poncho on the ground and I wore it even those it was a kid's size because I was getting COMPLETELY soaked. It only went down to my hips as opposed to my knees.

Dan and I feel truly blessed to have had such an awesome vacation attending and assisting Cat' and Brian's wedding. We ate lots of delicious foods, hung out with best buds, hugged each other a lot, and generally thought we were the luckiest 2 people alive today.

A Walk in the Clouds: Wedding Numero Uno

It was mid-summer when Dan and I realized that we had 2 weddings in 2 consecutive weekends in California. "Why not take the whole week off?" A wonderful, albeit rainy and cool week was puncutated by these 2 weddings, and my Mom's birthday thrown in for good measure. Celebrations!

We flew back to LA on the 3rd weekend of October to attend Patty & Chris' wedding. Patty was a good friend of Dan's from high school onward, and this wedding was a DIY extravaganza. I would not be surprised if they DIY'ed the tables because Patty was crafts extraordinaire. The wedding itself was on the cloudiest, foggiest day in LA I had seen in a while. Dan and my brother-in-law, David, and I started refering to this wedding as a "A Walk in the Clouds".

(Tangent: That movie, YES, that movie with Keanu Reeves, is one of the all-time favorite cinematic masterpieces in South Korea. True Fact. When Dan and I were in Korea, we ran into no less than a dozen restaurants named "A Walk in the Clouds." They LOVE that movie. They are puzzled if you do not wax rhapsodically about it.)

Patty had sewn together purple flags with various celebratory words, and placed them on chairs for us to wave throughout. A DIY masterpiece. See David and I with aforementioned artwork. We also started riffing a la Lil' Jon with "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" I'm sure Patty totally intended for us to start rapping extemporaneously.

Because of the rain/clouds, the ceremony was relocated from the grounds of the La Canada Flintridge Country club to an indoor banquet room. Nevertheless, it was just as moving.

The reception was held in an adjacent ballroom. Each table was named after a specific type of candy (e.g. "gummy cola", "kit kat", "cashew candy"), and the centerpieces were large glass jars filled to the brim with the table's candy. In lieu of a traditional wedding cake, Chris actually created the cupcake "tree" with his mad metalworking skillz. Completely impressive.

Dan toned down his exuberance a bit, since his 7-hr written boards were the next day. Nevertheless, with the Arcadia gang back in one place, he couldn't help but enjoy himself with espresso martinis, gummi colas, and lottery tickets (courtsey of the winner of the garter and bouquet tosses). I actually won $3 in the California lottery.

And, of course, Patty was always obssessed with photobooths at other people's weddings, so it was no surprise that she had her own. The best part was the random props you could use to spice up your pictures. The photobooth spit out 2 copies, 1 for the bride + groom, 1 for the guests. A clever take-home memento to remind us of Patty & Chris' wedding. Congrats to the beautiful, happy couple!

The Really, Totally Awesome, Rad, W-O-W Yosemite Wedding

I was totally stoked when my bachelor friend de jour announced he was getting married late last year. The consummate good guy who never got the girl, he finally found a beautiful Vietnamese woman who was the Asian female version of himself. Ann is about 90 lbs soaking wet, and could easily pass for a co-ed. Then Sean told me they were planning to get married in Yosemite. Yosemite, for me, falls somewhere in that vague ambiguous area between the West Coast and middle America.  Lucky for me, it's in Northern Cali. Even better, I would get to reminisce with a few of my best MIT girlfriends and be openly geeky in the most beautiful natural setting I've seen in America.

Because the ceremony & reception were on Sun night, I spent the majority of the weekend as the most gosh-darn cool third-wheel to my best friend, Kristie T, and her Obama-look-alike boyfriend, Manish. Also, flying into SF and driving to Yosemite is a serious endeavor. I calculated that, door-to-door, it took me about the same transit time from my Chicago home to the Wawona Yosemite Hotel as it did to fly from LAX to Sydney, Australia. Kristie T and I agreed that the Wawona was a shoo-in for the Poconos resort depicted in "Dirty Dancing", aka "The Best Movie of All Time."

Since we had all trekked considerable distances for Sean's wedding, we decided that the appropriate activity for Saturday would be a hike. I mean, how would you feel if you went to a place as beautiful as Yosemite and never walked amongst MOTHER NATURE. She would hate you. We decided that a leisurely 1.5 mile walk would do the trick. As the navigatress, I failed to follow the easy course and led us on a 4.5 mile to a lake that didn't exist. Way to pull a fast one on us, Mother Nature. On the positive side, we felt immeasurably accomplished and very hungry.

As photographer extraordinaire with a camera the size of a 1-mos baby, Kristie T diligently documented our trials and travails as we braved the wilderness. The wedding was simple, the scenery stunning, the company priceless. I enjoyed hanging out with the sorority sisters I never get to see (Teresa, Cat K), agreeing to be silly AND amazing at the same time, and seeing how happy Sean and Ann were to be together. Mazel tov!

Labor Day Getaway to Traverse City

And........we're back!

Speaking of which, we have done so much between our last post and today that to cover it all would be overwhelming. First off, we road-tripped it to Traverse City, Michigan for a rainy Labor Day weekend. If you're anything like me, when I think of "Michigan", I think "Detroit". This conjures up unattractive images of boarded up ghost neighborhoods, urban blight, factories, and other depressing ideas. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, on the whole, Michigan is beautiful.

Traverse City is a 6 hr drive according to Google Maps, which I always take as a challenge to "beat" this number. With the impending storm, we saw lots of beautiful clouds on the road like these:

 

Lots of our colleagues had grown up/summered in various lakeside Chicago towns, and gave us enthusiastic recommendations for various eateries. Us being the couple who focuses on the local food more than any other attraction, got to work very quickly at an adorable French eatery.  (Dan is eating chicken pot pie. I went with the flatbread pizza.)

We drove up Friday during the day, and were pretty wiped out by the long drive. Our bed and breakfast was literally the only one in Traverse City proper that had any availability left for the holiday weekend. It was also the oldest B&B, with 2 amiable and adorable senior citizens who ran their cozy inn. It definitely smelled like "old people" and we swear we never saw the husband proprietor change clothes, but it had character!

The next morning, the downpour had really kicked into gear, so we made a strategic decision to spend our day indoors. In wineries. And sampling rooms. Along the way, we "re-discovered" that Michigan is all about the cherries. Note the cherry apron that Dan is modeling. Great Christmas present idea! Cha-ching!

 

We ended up traveling all along Old Mission Peninsula, hitting up almost all the wineries on that small piece of land. Starting early in great spirits, we learned all about the kinds of wines that the land/weather lends itself to (white wines like rieslings, Gewurztraminers, roses). And every permutation of cherry wine you can think of. Note the picture was taken at 10am in the morning. And already we're happy.

After about the 5th wine tasting, we got very happy. We might have misbehaved on a vineyard / winery tour by climbing on top of the grape crusher and trying to squeeze into a fermentation tank. I'm not saying we did. I'm not saying we didn't either. Below, a picture from one of the tamer moments.

The weather cleared up and Dan got the great idea to sneak into one of the great sand dunes of Lake Michigan and climb it to watch the sunset. Great idea, bad execution. First of all, the wind gets pretty merciless on the shore. Second, it is a serious hill with some bad ass angles. The payoff only comes at the top after you've huffed and puffed and shot evil looks of DIE! DIE! to your oblivious partner who is scampering up the sand hill. It also got cold very quickly. As Numero #1 wuss, I didn't wait until the sunset, but we did take in the beautiful scenery.

The next day, we went hiking along the (easy) Empire Bluff Trail. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and reminds me of the northwest coast of Kauai. Still very windy, but the view is completely worth it.

After that, we made our way home (surgeons don't get Mondays off). Other highlights of the Labor Day Weekend included eating at Stella, an amazing restaurant in Traverse City, touring their former asylum turned commercial / retail shops, coming back to Chicago and heading straight to the Vampire Weekend concert with matching red Converse shoes, trying Al's #1 Beef for the first time, trying to not scare young children at the Shedd Aquarium with our verbal predictions of whether any particular fish was "delicious", and eating Korean BBQ at Cho Sun Oak and ice cream floats at Margie's Candies with Suj, Shamita, and Amee. Dee-licious.

August Comings and Goings

Where did August go? I did intend to post weekly, but with all the event and travel every weekend, updating this blog has slipped. Never fear, I intend to get right back into the thick of things.

For the month of August, we checked out the excellent Girl and the Goat, the new West Loop restaurant by Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard with our good friend Lolita, hung out with old and new friends at the always superb Bristol Lounge in Wicker Park, found a secret, shady, elevated, well-ventilated spot in Lincoln Park to watch the Blue Angels scream past at the annual Air and Water Show, trekked to a hippie farm in the middle of corn field Illinois to eat a delicious 5-course Berkshire pork dinner underneath the stars accompanied by a half-dozen local micro-brews, got rained on during the outdoor performance of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road ensemble at Ravinia, and flew to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for a relaxing weekend trip.

In addition, we biked to Lollapalooza to hear Lady Gaga and MGMT play, twice ooh-ed and aah-ed at the Saturday Navy Pier fireworks where we could smell the acrid odor of firepowder we were so close, ate fresh Caprese salad with truffle oil about a thousand times, successfully created tonkatsu pork dishes with the bajillion lbs of pork product we purchased from Peoria Meat in Fulton Market, got a haircut, took full advantage of the bountiful farmers markets, hugged each other a bunch, and generally thought we were the luckiest people on the planet.