Our peach tree gave birth to TWO perfect peaches this year!  We were stunned.  I know it probably seems very insignificant, but it’s a milestone for us!  About ten years ago, we planted a peach pit after one of the girls wondered if a real peach tree would grow from a peach bought at a grocery store. Miraculously, it sprouted!  However, our little tree doesn’t have enough sun, it lives on a rocky hill, and frankly, we thought it would have surely perished long ago. Then all of a sudden, a few days ago, one of the girls said, “Hey everybody, look!  Our tree has two peaches!”  I was certain that upon inspection, we would discover holes made by birds or bugs, but no!  Both peaches are perfect.  We considered putting them on a pedestal, but, alas, they would rot, so tonight is peach night and we plan to cut each peach evenly and savor each and every bite!  Bon appetit!

When our 16-year old started marching out of the house with this, we just had to take a picture because it was so pretty: a plastic box full of ammunition for a water balloon fight on a hot summer day. (Still summer here!) When it’s 103 degrees outside, this can also be called air-conditioning!

When we went to Fisherman’s Wharf to be tourists with about 5,000 other people with the same idea … we found a great carousel.  And our two sixteen-year-olds couldn’t wait to have a brush with childhood, followed by some cotton candy of course! (below: another carousel freshly painted in the studio a few years ago for a baby book collection)

If you go to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, you just have to go see the sea lions on Pier 39 because that is what you do.
Is it crowded?  Yes.  Is it smelly?  Yes.  Is it mesmerizing?  Yes, yes.

We have been to see our sea lion friends three different times.  And, each time we go, we think we can’t possibly last more than a few minutes and end up staying an hour.  We find ourselves in a sea-lion-watching stupor.  We start recognizing human-like personalities and we even start naming them … for example, on this trip, we couldn’t take our eyes off one huge guy … let‘s call him Brutus … who thought he owned the main pier.  One very persistent smaller sea lion kept trying and trying to jump up into Brutus’ domain, but he finally had to give up and swim away, and I could almost hear him muttering, “Brutus, you are not the boss of me!”

I did learn that I might have been a tiny bit misleading in one of my illustrations.  It turns out that one of the differences between seals and sea lions is that sea lions have little external ear flaps … and seals are ear-flapless (although they can hear!) … so when I created this illustration for an alphabet board book of a seal sailing on a sailboat, I should have left off his little ear flaps.  I hope I have not mislead any little toddlers who have aspirations of becoming marine biologists!  And my apologies to any seals who had the chance to read my book!

It was such a treat to find this hand-quilted Noah’s Ark Two-of-a-Kind baby blanket on Etsy today at Nana McQuilts.  At the studio, we become so attached to Cathy’s actual illustrations – the two-dimensional art on paper – that it’s always a treat to find these same characters as toys, on ceramics, or in this case, in 100% cotton. While a ceramic seal will always look more slippery than his watercolored counterpart, there is nothing cozier than a cotton panda. That’s what I like most about this quilt: it’s so warm and cozy looking.  I feel like it should be spread out on the grass in summer and before a fireplace in winter…preferably with books strewn over it.

The pieces for making this quilt yourself can be found here, and at any of the Jo-Ann stores.

If you want to feel happy, just head to the Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building.  You will be surrounded by beautiful fresh produce and heavenly scents.  It’s not a frenetic-I-need-to-procure-now kind of market, but rather a take-your-time-to-touch-smell-and-taste kind of market. Lots of tasting!

Let’s just start with tomatoes, because Ellen and I LOVE tomatoes.  When I took French in high school (not sure why I did that in West Texas, but nevertheless I did) I wrote a little story about a character named Thomas Tomate.  I think he would have loved to have known all of these interesting tomates amies (tomato friends).

Above:  Colors in the market … colors for a kitchen collection?  Hmmmm.

Below:  More colors in the market … colors for a baby girl collection?  Hmmmm.

We ended our fun morning at the Market with THE BEST sandwich that I have ever eaten: a porchetta sandwich at the Roli Roti stand.  We wondered why the line was forming at 10 a.m. for lunch.  And then we knew!

The first indication that this was to be a great sandwich was when I watched the master carver use my sandwich bread to sop up the fatty pork juices from the carving of the previous sandwich. This was an excellent start! Then, after he put the tender white pork on the bread, he chopped up the crispy outer fat of the pork and placed it on top, then he slathered the rich caramelized onion reduction across the top and added some light airy greens and a sprinkle of sea salt.  And, all the while, our friendly chef smiled and chatted and seemed to get to know every person ordering.  Maybe it was because we had been standing in line for an hour, or maybe it was because we were on vacation and footloose and fancy-free … but that porchetta sandwich was an amazing work of culinary art!  It was pure heaven.

(I wish I could show you a pretty picture of the final masterpiece, but we accidentally ate it before we could take a picture of it.  Next time.)

Ellen took me to Chez Panisse for dinner and I was in heaven!  The reason a visit to this restaurant is so particularly momentous for us is that I bought the book, Fanny at Chez Panisse, when it first came out and we used to read it with the girls all the time.  The story is told by Alice Waters from the perspective of her 7-year-old daughter, Fanny, who grows up surrounded by life in a busy restaurant.  She describes the path food takes from farm to market to kitchen to table, and the book even includes lots of great recipes. Another reason we often chose this book is that while Fanny was growing up surrounded by the spoons and whisks of her busy family business, our girls were growing up surrounded by the paints and brushes of Cathy Heck Studio, so Fanny’s life seemed as crazy as ours.

It’s been a few years since we enjoyed the story together, but the food tasted as delicious as we had imagined curled up behind the pages of the book.  This was our great dinner:

We at the studio are so pleased to announce that Cathy Heck Nursery Art has been featured for Sponsor Saturday on the mommy blog TheMomCrowd!  You’ll be able to read an interview with Cathy and submit your name for the prize being given away, so head on over if you’re itching for some art!

We had some time to spare before our lovely dinner at Chez Panisse (more on that later), so we poked around an area of Berkeley called the Gourmet Ghetto. Here are just a few of our favorite stops:
The Holistic Hound is a doggy boutique worthy of the fanciest of canines, so we felt it necessary to procure Neville’s first collar here. Our prerequisite was that it had to match the carolina-blue tag that Margaret had picked out for him. Happily, we found a fashionable argyle collar, which seemed to be the perfect coordinate. The minute we arrived home from California, we dressed him in his new collar. Since he has been living in his birthday suit for four months, he was not very pleased and found the new accessory extremely bothersome. But, once he realized how handsome he was, he posed for us wearing his new bling!

Twig & Fig Ellen and I are lovers of letterpress, so just peeking through this window was like looking into a candy shop. We had to go in and appreciate all things printed, admiring the deep indentations that the letterpress images make into the soft-press papers. Before we left, we happily bought this fun fat book called The Printmaking Bible. The pages are filled with every tool, technique and tip for printmaking today … well, maybe not potato prints, but still.

Love At First Bite was a delightful shop full of tasty baked goods and some nifty gifts for chefs young and old. We loved these cute aprons for little epicureans. (You can read more about Love At First Bite in our Cupcakery Study.)

Then it was time for dinner, so we will have to visit this delicious neighborhood next trip for Gourmet Ghetto, Part 2. And, next time, we’ll try to do a better job sampling the many foodie finds for you since there are approximately 40 restaurants and purveyors of fine foods in this 3-4 block neighborhood! Tough job but we’re happy to oblige.

I LOVE to pick fruit and berries. I grew up in West Texas , which, although beautiful in a desert sort of way, did not offer many chances to pick large amounts of fruits and vegetables. So, in my grown-up years, I look for picking opportunities whenever possible. When Ellen discovered a hill of blackberry bushes right behind her neighborhood near Berkeley, we couldn’t wait to set to work. This year, we only had a few minutes to gather, so we limited ourselves to enough for one pie. Then we didn’t really have tiime to make the pie, so we just ate them buried in whipped cream. They were the best blackberries we ever ate … but I’m sure we’ll say that again next year!