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 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!

I completely understand the urge to say “Hey, let’s go get an ice cream cone,” or “I’ll meet you for a latte,” but it never really occurred to me to suddenly think, “Hey, I could sure go for a cupcake,” …. until now! With cupcakeries popping up all over America, I think I might soon, find myself driving the kids home, and saying, “Hey everybody, who wants a cupcake?!”

I also think I just love to say the word, “cupcakery” … and I’m really not even sure if it’s a real word. Nevertheless, we recently had the opportunity to visit two such cupcakeries and you can learn a little bit about them here, just in case you find yourself hankering for a cupcake when you least expect it in Austin or Berkeley!

Love At First Bite Berkeley, California
Sweet scents drew us into this lovely little shop tucked away in the heart of the “Gourmet Ghetto.” Since the summer weather in Berkeley was freezing by Texas standards, just the idea of a warm cupcake sounded comforting. We particularly liked that they offered little miniature versions so that when we lusted for a great big cupcake, we could reel ourselves in and save some calories for the next stop in this neighborhood of foodie heaven.

Hey Cupcake! Austin, Texas
Sweet scents drew us over to this bright shiny airstream in the heart of the South Congress District of Austin (SOCO). Since we mistakenly chose the middle of a 104-degree day to stop by, we were delighted with the pink parasols provided for hungry customers while waiting in line. Miniature cupcakes were not offered here, because, well, we were in Texas, where everything is big, even the cupcakes!

We were lucky enough to have several Austinites in the Bay Area this weekend, and there’s nothing better than travel to help open the eyes to the color of everyday life (especially in California). While giving a tour of Kala Art Institute, the swatch palettes on the walls and overpowering scent of linseed oil inspired us in a similar way as the Saturday Farmer’s Market’s abundance of produce: promising the possibility of artistic successes.

Here are some “swatches” – tiny segments from the weekend that reveal a little bit about our adventures:

Hidden here, you shall find some amazing hydrangeas as big as soccer balls, chocolate, blackberry picking, the Pacific Ocean, some prints, some packaged roasted turkey legs, a carousel, and a conversation. (I will leave a few things to talk about later…)

Below, inside the Kala workshop:

The lithography swatch chart, the rubber blades of the screen squeegees, some “drag-down’s”, and me (sorting woodcuts).

It’s always a blessing to be able to spend time with the family – and it was a good weekend, full of good food and full days…

Well, I’m back in California now after a lovely time in Texas. If anything wasn’t lovely, however, it was the weather…for which it seems that my years up north (and Cali counts, by the way, since I am wearing a polar fleece as I write this) have made me unprepared. With daytime temperatures topping 108° and the nighttime not doing much to reverse that, I am amazed that my mom’s garden has any green in it at all! Yet, it seems to be thriving. Perhaps she just made very wise choices when we went to The Great Outdoors – a labyrinthine nursery and garden shop on South Congress in Austin. The spot comes highly recommended by those of us at Cathy Heck Studio, although maybe it would be most lovely in September or October…

(Clockwise from top left: a stowaway studio mouse peeking out of a stack of glazed pots, Cathy selecting a succulent, some caladiums – happy to be in the shade)

These California plants don’t know just how good they have it…

Due to the fact that the birds were enjoying more of our tomatoes than we were, we decided to try roses instead. Most of the rose bushes came from the wonderful Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, Texas. (worth the drive!) Here is my first one for this year! And, it smells as pretty as it looks! (Above: one of our garden fairies, Rose, wanted to welcome our first Souvenir de la Malmaison to Cathy Heck Studio!)

Well, we had a great day yesterday. We climbed to the top of Yosemite Falls, the highest waterfall in North America! They say you have to be wary of bears if you are camping in Yosemite – stashing your food in a box that hangs high in a tree so that bears can’t eat it. For this reason, you can understand my concern when I saw this large brown bear sunning himself on a rock only a few feet from my husband on the edge of the falls…

Thankfully – when I took a closer look with the binoculars, I saw that it was the harmless and cuddly Little Forest species of brown bear, so I didn’t worry anymore…

These zinnias were just pouring over the sidewalk near Ellen’s apartment in Berkeley. Wow, do things ever grow in California. I used this picture as color inspiration for some fun projects we are working on just for girls.

What is it about weathered patinas that we find so beautiful? This is a metal gate from a house down our street that is shaded by a pink tulip tree in Spring and an ornament from the Native Sons building on Mason Street in San Francisco. Perhaps it’s that nature and time seem to be more focused on the details than even the most intricate Sullivanesque motif…