Friday night was a late dinner at The Hyde Street Seafood House & Raw Bar, Stephanie had scallops with a ginger cream sauce, I had an superbly simple salmon en papillote. We came home and literally fell asleep in each other’s arms, clothes on, earplugs out. I woke up at 1am to brush my teeth and take my clothes off, which roused Stephanie enough to do the latter.

I slept nearly 12 hours that night, emerged from bed but didn’t really make it very far. That’s ok, as I had taxes to do. Somehow that took most of the day. We also bought plane tickets to my brother’s wedding in June and some national park exploring to follow. In fact we only left the apartment to buy some things to make a quiche with the gruyere, kale, and chard that we inevitably had laying around. It was good. That night we watched The Beat that My Heart Skipped, a strange French movie I’d added to the Netflix queue.

At around 11 this morning we met up with Tony Bull at Dottie’s and stood in probably one of the longest lines I’ve ever endured there. Between Stephanie on the phone with her sister in France and Tony and me shooting the breeze, time passed quickly, and we all benefited from a satisfying and filling brunch. Afterwards Stephanie and I hit up Trader Joe’s for some long overdue grocery shopping. We didn’t need much, but we definitely wanted to pick up some of their organic cream-top whole milk for our next (our third), farmhouse cheddar—which I am tending to now as Stephanie naps.

Stephanie already documented “the making of” our first urban farmhouse cheddar (as she did most of the work) but I wanted to put up a few pics from the waxing.

It’s like I’m on a mission to cook things that you can’t easily find recipes for. I mean who cures their own olives? But sure enough, there they were, calling out to me at the farmers market last weekend: “Justin, cure us, cure us!”

Update: the olives have been cured!

At the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market this weekend, I noticed some stone ground whole wheat flour for sale in large ziploc bags at the Eatwell Farm stand. When the guy there noticed my curiosity, he asked if I wanted a free sample? “Umm…” I said, thinking I was going to have to choke down a thimble full of flour. “Sure, why not.” Then he produced a small ziploc baggie containing about a two cups of flour. “For free?” “Yeah, for free. There’s a pancake recipe on the back.” “Cool.” The front of the bag said “Freshly milled on 3/6/9”, the day before.

I’m not sure about pancakes, but I think there’s some homemade pizza dough in my future.