I almost forgot!

Last night while we were driving to the In-N-Out, we passed a concert on the pier - on the way there, the band was performing "Englishman in New York," and on the way back it was "Roxanne." We thought it was odd there would be a Sting impersonator doing such a large concert, then we looked it up and found out it was actually Sting. So, now we can say that we've seen (or at least heard) Sting live! Twice!

Berkeley!

Our friend Sam's choir performed in Berkeley today, and since neither Ben nor I had ever been there before, we decided to make a day of it. We got a list of recommendations from Sam, and spent the day wandering around the city. We saw a Thai Buddhist temple, marveled at the largest produce section in Northern California, attempted to see the Peace Wall through the throngs of a festival happening in the park, and ate delicious hot dogs and frozen yogurt. The only thing we thought to take a picture of, though, was Ben with the Berkeley clock tower, since it was the subject of a famous paper on computer modeling.

Look how tiny Ben is!

We also ran into some friends from MIT, and ended up going back to their house with them to hang out for a few hours - a very unexpected but happy coincidence. By then it was time for Sam's concert, which was absolutely lovely despite me and Ben's complete musical ignorance. After that it was back to the city for another esteemed California institution:

Those are good burgers, Walter.

Lastly, we swung by the bridge to see the Bay Lights display. The picture doesn't really do justice to how groovy and magical it was.

After such a full weekend, I think we are both craving a day off tomorrow to recover from our days off. Maybe no one will notice if I take a little nap under my desk...

Guest Star!

My friend Sam came to visit! This is regular great because Sam is awesome, and double great because he promised to cook me dinner. He is a master chef and I can't read his blog before meals because it makes me too hungry and sad that I don't know how to cook, so he kindly narrated his whole cooking process so I could learn. I learned many things from him, including:

• What blanching means, and how to do it.
• What brown butter is, and how to make it.
• How to not be scared of chicken bones and use them to make delicious stock.
• That the list he keeps of mean things I've said isn't just in the back of his head, but is actually written down for posterity.

I had always thought that Sam's drool-inducing food pictures were a result of some fancy food camera he had, or at least some fancy food photographing technique. But it turns out you just need a regular camera and regular photographing techniques, because his food really is that beautiful:

Have you ever seen such good looking brussels sprouts?

What a perfect chicken!

Sam is an expert chicken carver.

Can you believe I got to eat this for dinner? At home? On a Tuesday?

I think the limiting factor in these pictures is that I don't have fancy enough plates to properly showcase Sam's work.

After we ate, he put the bones and a bunch of random food scraps in a pot and cooked it overnight to make stock.

Even Sam's food scraps look great!

Now I have frozen stock to eat in Sam's absence, and my whole house smells like magic. Thanks, Sam!