San Luis Obispo Visitor's Guide: Installment #1

Some friends of ours recently took a trip to San Luis Obispo, where my husband grew up and where I lived for 8 years. We didn't prep them very well, evidently: they didn't know that San Luis is not actually a beach town, took a long and mistaken walk up the Monterey St. hill, ate dinner at Apple Farm AND ordered the meatloaf. So I've promised to let her know our top stops in SLO.* 

Restaurants of choice:

Firestone: you can't lose with the ABC burger, the tri-tip sandwich, or the small steak cobb salad with vinaigrette dressing. Mmmm, and the fries.

Big Sky: My fave for breakfast. Everything's great, but particularly the journeycakes with swiss cheese and the beignets. For lunch, I love the japanese eggplant sandwich. Do check out their specials board for all meals.

Buona Tavola: We used to go for a light lunch of soup and salad. I love the lattughette, but my husband prefers the caesar.  Their tapenade and bread are fantastic. If they have the rack of lamb special, get it. The gnocchi is also amazing, and we've become fond of the pasta dish with tons of different meats on it (fettucini al sugo di carni miste: slow braised chicken, duck, veal, and beef in an herbed meat sauce). My favorite dessert is the crema with caramel topping.

Farmer's Market: If you're in SLO on a Thursday evening, don't miss the Farmer's Market. Grab a meal at one of the many food stands, people watch, and listen to the great musicians that play on the side streets.

Linnaea's: Great coffee, great atmosphere. It's particularly good if you have a few minutes by yourself to relax. Their lunch options are super yummy. Try an iced coffee (complete with coffee ice cubes) or a white hot chocolate.

Gus's Grocery: THE place for sandwiches. Fantastic mojo potatoes, and great outdoor seating. It gets a little chaotic inside, so we usually send one or two folks in to place the order. Order a half sandwich. They're almost as big as the regular size, and quite a bit cheaper.

Muzio's: My favorite sandwich in the world: fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, basil on a fresh baguette, drizzled with balsamic vinegar. I haven't had one in ages because we always manage to try to go on Sundays when they're closed. There's not a lot of indoor seating, so order and take the sandwiches down to the mission (a block away) to eat overlooking the creek.

Mo's BBQ: We had our rehearsal dinner at Mo's (in its previous location). Their pulled pork sandwich topped with slaw is fantastic, and they've got some good beer on tap. The cornbread is tasty, too.

Windows on the Water (in Morro Bay): The food is pretty good, but I'd recommend going late in the evening and just getting dessert. Their homemade ice cream and sorbet are delicious (you get three small scoops, each a different flavor), and I once had an amazing blood orange semi-freddo (it tasted almost like a Push-Up pop).

For the beach town feel: hang out in Pismo. Definitely stop in at Splash Cafe for clam chowder and grilled cheese sandwiches. (The food is even better if you're sandy and salty.)

*We moved away from the area in 2003. Though we visit at least a couple times a year, I feel a bit behind on what has changed since we moved, and I'd love updates on what should be added to the list or taken off.

February Resolutions

It seems that February is becoming the 'new year' marker in our family. My husband started his current job a year ago today, we'll send out our Christmas letter this month, and I'm starting my new year's resolutions. I've had a month to really consider what 2009 can handle. So here goes:

- Composting: we've got a backyard composter started, and I even took a class from the City of Sunnyvale to find out exactly how to do it. The kids love to help put stuff in it and turn the pile. And we sure do end up with a lot of compostable kitchen scraps.

-Exercise: I had a good year last year with exercise, thanks to my sister-in-law's infomercial find. I'm hoping to get back in the habit of regular exercise, including walking with the kids.

-Eating healthfully: I have a huge sweet tooth and have always had a haphazard relationship with food and dieting. My uncle recommended The Beck Diet Solution, and I'm ready for 2009 to be the year I change my eating habits for good.

-Dissertation work: I took almost two months off for holidays and moving, but I'm getting back in the groove. I'm aiming to have a prospectus done in June, and I'm working now on ways to expand my work hours in the coming year (read: finding a preschool).

-Laughing: I told my husband last night that I don't think we laugh enough in our house. Whenever we go to my parents' house, we end up laughing for an hour the first night about all the crazy stuff our kids have done. It gives us some much needed perspective. So I'm hoping this year we can laugh more with our kids and about our kids.

-Limiting commitments: I've been realizing in the last few days that I absolutely cannot over-commit if I want to accomplish the things that are really, really important to me (as opposed to just 'really important'). I think it will take me a few weeks to figure out what commitments should go on each list. At the top of the 'really, really' list: Sleep.

Since I'm so prone to over-commitment, I'm going to stop there. Of course, there are oodles of other things I want to do: play the banjo, play the guitar, write songs, learn to speak French, keep the house uber-tidy, teach my son to read, take the car to the shop when it needs to go, knit a lot, organize photographs, hang the pictures in our new place.  But they'll get done when they get done. Maybe that's my last resolution: to really believe that.

Moving Quickly

I've been amazed in the past week at how quickly a move can be arranged. We got our 30 days notice on our rental December 1. We signed a lease December 6. On December 8, I booked packers/movers, hired cleaners (for the old place), changed utilities and mail service, and scheduled my parents to come help. We'll get our stuff packed on the 15th, camp out in our new place that night, and then move in on the 16th. We should be completely out of our old place by the 20th. (Now if the landlord will let us end our lease on the 21st, we'd be stoked.)

For this move, the logistics seem to be the easy part. Much harder is explaining to a 3 year old and a one year old what will be happening. The big selling point for my son is that this new house has grass in the back AND the front (we currently have a 3'x3' concrete 'porch' in the front), but he's still uncertain about leaving our neighborhood friends. His only other experience with moving was last December when we moved across the country; we haven't seen his Massachusetts friends since.

We're all a bit frazzled with the speed at which we're moving, and we're still recovering from Thanksgiving and it's accompanying illnesses. We're also a bit fearful of all the changes, even though many of them--like the walkability of the neighborhood--will be positive changes. But we're grateful for our new house and how quickly it has become ours. We hope it becomes our home just as quickly.

Lame Mom Move

On Sunday, after church, my three-year-old son was playing with a little spinner toy and taking turns quite nicely with a little girl (the spinner belonged to a third child). Our church meets at a high school, and the kids were running around outside the auditorium. Everything was going swimmingly, until my son got that mischievous grin and tossed the spinner right into the trash can. I managed to take the filthy can top off with one hand--the other was holding my daughter--and was pleased to find that the spinner had landed in a recently replaced and very clean trash bag, right on top of a clean bulletin. It looked germ free to me! So I took it out and handed it to my son's playmate.

A moment later, I saw the girl's dad returning the toy to its owner with instructions to clean it and taking his daughter to wash her hands.

Now I'm the mom who hands dirty trash toys to kids.

And the moral of the story? I'm debating between "not all trash cans are dirty inside," "you can't judge a trash can by its dirty lid, nor the quality of a mom by her cleanliness," and "all moms need grace."

I think my son misses Massachusetts

My son was "cooking" this morning with his play (read: cheap) flour and sugar, some finely grated string cheese, and some grated fig newton. After he was done, he dumped a bunch of flour on the counter and pressed it flat.

"Oh, look! Flour mountains!" I said.

"No, it's snow flour," he answered. And then he used a cookie cutter to make some snow angels.

Voting is Crazy-Making for Silicon Valley Mom

Tonight I finally filled in my Santa Clara County, California, absentee ballot, just in time to go walk it in to a polling station tomorrow. Not only did we get to vote for President/Vice President, US Representative, State Senator, and State Assembly Member, we also got to vote for one judge, one county board of education member, two local school board members, and four city council members (with nine in the race). And we got to vote for twelve state ballot measures, and four county ballot measures. Since my husband and I just returned to the state this year and are new to the county, we didn't simply get to research the current propositions, but we dove into all of the history of the issues we could find as well. It took at least two full evenings. Thank goodness for the internet and for a husband who's a committed voter and excellent and highly educated web researcher.

So what have I learned in this process? Everybody likes parks. Very few people like the VTA (Valley Transportation Authority). Incumbents know a whole lot more about the job than challengers do. Candidates that have good websites feel a lot more vote-worthy. And I really hate talking about politics. Especially with my mom.

Even though we hold the same core values and agree on some key issues, we vote differently on almost everything. In the 2004 election, she called to say, "Don't vote. You'll cancel me out!" Tonight when I called to ask for a recipe, she asked how I was voting on some of the propositions. I told her reluctantly, and then I couldn't remember any of my suave and convincing arguments. Somehow in the face of someone totally convinced of the rightness of her political views, mine seemed to wither. The truth is, I'm not totally certain of my political views or how to fix the problems in the world. And I don't agree with every position of every person I voted for. Our two party system sets up this lovely false dichotomy, which seems amplified by proponents on each side, but political issues seem so much more nuanced and complex to me, and I don't like to be judged by a label that doesn't totally apply.

I'll turn in my ballot tomorrow, having exercised my power to participate in government, having done my civic duty, and having modeled for my kids that voting is something you do. Then on the walk home, they'll squabble over who gets to wear my "I Voted" sticker, and I'll be glad not to have to discuss politics for a while.

Experimenting in the Kitchen

I've been experimenting in the kitchen lately, which means my son has too. We've been making whole wheat bread, various soups, pumpkin muffins (from a box), and roasted pumpkin seeds. My son usually helps dump together the ingredients and stirs. His own menu usually includes strange concoctions of whatever I'm willing to sacrifice from the cupboards and the fridge: yellow split peas, almost old green beans, grape tomatoes my mom left here, half a jar of ground cloves. He usually cooks in the sink, and the big bowl ends up sitting there until I dump it out.

I've been trying to think of ways to let him explore cooking without it driving me batty. So yesterday at the grocery store, he got to choose some ingredients that will be just his. He chose rice, black turtle beans (chosen for the name, I think), and mini marshmallows. Other than not being allowed to roast the mini marshmallows on tiny sticks, he had free rein.* He dumped and mixed, and seemed to be having a good time. And then he asked for more ingredients.

So now our sink has a rice/beans/marshmallow/warm water concoction in it (he didn't want the moldy bread I offered). And while he had a sense of ownership, it was not as much fun as really getting to explore in the kitchen, even with a bunch of "no"s along the way.

*While I was typing, I realized I didn't know if the expression was "free reign" as I first typed it, or "free rein." It does refer to horses, not kings and queens. See bottom of this page.