If you could pick any city in the world to spend a weekend exploring, where would you go?
I’d probably go to San Francisco 4th of July weekend. You know why? Because EVERYTHING IS FREE. I mean sure, Venice and Rio have their charms, but how can you argue with free?
Free jazz festival. Half price bay cruise. Free opera at the Giant’s stadium. Super cheap hotel on Union Square. Free parking on sundays. Free Asian art museum. Free local play in the park. We even got a free morning jog. Alright alright so jogging is always free. I’m getting carried away.
Actually you know what though, that jog was NOT free. It cost me some amount of self-respect to have Eric see me all red-faced and going so slow up a hill in Chinatown that I might have actually been falling backwards and you wouldn’t have noticed.
The early-rising Chinese shop owners were kind enough not to cat-call. (Seriously, are you going backwards lady? I can’t tell) At least not in my language anyway. Ignorance is bliss.
Well try out San Fran sometime. If Paris is the City of Lights then SF is the City of Awesome Free Stuff. It was so nice to get away. I’m not talking “from it all.” I mostly mean “from my kids.” Do you know what it’s like to have an entire conversation without interjections of “I want milk,” “Where’s my wand,” “I have to poooooop!”? I had almost forgotten. (Try to pretend I meticulously pulled all the corn-hair out of this shot.) Eric came home from work one time last summer absolutely raving about a watermelon steak salad he had at a restaurant. He described it to me and I tried to recreate it. A year later we have our winner. This Watermelon and Lime-Steak Salad with Roasted Corn Vinaigrette is kind of ridiculously awesome. There is just something about fresh corn. You can exchange many of the elements of this salad, but don’t lose the corn or the watermelon. Or wait the vinaigrette!! If you ask me, cilantro and corn were a match made in heaven. I could eat this stuff with a spoon. See here I goooooo
