Saturday night was our big night out for dinner with librarian friends. I chose the restaurant – Bice – and mostly it was a good choice. I didn’t like my salad all that much – it was a chopped salad, a pile of dressed, chopped vegetables, with a few cherry tomato halves and shaves of cheese on top. There was something in there that was a little bitter, even to my taste buds that Mark insists are typical middle age female taste buds, that like bitter tastes, like Kale & Brussels sprouts and stinky cheese. Bice was also really loud, and our table for five was large, so carrying on conversations was a little hard. Fortunately our group was all library conference presenter types, so we could all project. I had a pasta – orrichetti, the little ears, with broccoli & spicy sausage. The dish had cheese and crumbs baked on top. All good, maybe a little oily. We split a panna cotta, also good, almondy, but they could have left the sliced almonds off the top for me, and the balsamic strawberries were a bit too tangy.
It became clear that Mark was going to have to leave the conference early to go help with his 90-year-old dad, who’d had an accident while on a cruise, and was being med-evac-ed to Florida. So, on Sunday, after conference stuff all day: breakfast meeting (mini-croissant, decent coffee); lunch meeting as well for me (roasted vegetable sandwich, that didn’t taste liked fake smoke flavor had been painted on the veggies, happily), and a reception with some cheese & nuts & crackers at 5:00, we went to Ghiradelli Chocolate and split an ice cream sundae for dinner.
Monday I had a breakfast meeting at 8:00 a.m. – there were scrambled eggs and hash browns and bacon and sausage. The potatoes and bacon seemed kind of greasy to me, but there were bottles of organic juices and bagels, too (that I skipped). Then I borrowed the wifi at the convention center and worked until almost 2:00. As I was walking back to the hotel to dump my bags and head out for real touristing, I was thinking about returning to Ghiradelli for chocolate, despite the breakfast. I passed a gelato cafe, and indulged in a double indulgence – nutella toast with strong coffee, and re-reading one of the vampire books on my iPhone. I think I should serve this at School Woods – probably without the vampires.
