Good weather is here! We went out to Woodside and rode our bikes today during Bicycle Sunday. We stopped at the Water Temple during our ride and had a picnic, which was a nice break. Filoli is apparently open on Sunday now, which means that if you want to ride the whole Bicycle Sunday route, you're sharing the road with cars for 1/3 of it. I didn't enjoy that--I'm still a bike wuss. It's too bad, because the ride is kind of short if you turn around at Filoli. Overall it was still a good morning. I hadn't been on my bike in over a year. Shame!

Patrick made us some good banana waffles for breakfast this morning, and for dinner I made chili burgers (topped with fontina, baby spinach and tomatoes) on homemade whole wheat hamburger buns with oven fries on the side. The burger and fry recipes were both from Moosewood Low-Fat Favorites.

The burgers were pretty good. They certainly didn't taste like meat, but I enjoyed them. I liked how the buns turned out, though they were a little smaller than I'd intended. The fries tasted good right out of the oven, but they lost their crispness pretty quickly. But still yummy!

We planted our summer garden today. It was kind of sad because our winter garden was still doing pretty well, but I'm looking forward to watching this new garden grow. And I salvaged a few poppy plants and strawberry plants from the previous garden so we're not totally starting from scratch. A few pictures of the new garden are up (click the picture for more), though it pretty much looks like a bunch of dirt at this point. If everything works out, our new garden will have: poppies, parsley, sage, thyme, basil (up to 7 kinds, according to the seed packet), zucchini, tomatoes (three kinds, with only Black Krim returning from last year's group), edamame, strawberries, green onions and beets. Hopefully we can avoid the cabbage worms this year, though there will probably be some other unexpected pest to contend with instead.

I'm heading down to San Diego in a few hours for a two day class on Regulatory Affairs. I've been told I might enjoy working in that field, but I don't really know what it involves, so hopefully the course will enlighten me. I probably won't do any fun touristy stuff while I'm in San Diego, which is too bad, but we've been there before and explored. This trip is more practical. I'm looking forward to it, but I also can't wait to come back home! I like it here.

Good dinner tonight. Normally on Thursdays I don't put much effort into dinner, since Patrick is at welding class--I just want to eat something quick and be lazy. But tonight I made a good (and healthy) dinner for myself (with leftovers for tomorrow night).

I started with a salad of romaine, carrots, kidney beans and Orange Tarragon Dressing. I followed it with Mushroom and Spinach Stuffed Zucchini (both recipes from Moosewood Low-fat Favorites; I'm on a Moosewood kick these days). I was impressed by both the dressing (fat free!) and zucchini boats. Yum!

If we end up planting zucchini in our garden, this'll be a great recipe to have on hand. And even if we don't plant zucchini, this is a keeper!

Yesterday, I got my hair cut at Juut. Nothing remarkable. I've found a length I like, and I'm sticking with it for now. None of the hair pictures we took turned out great, but here are two if you'd like to see them (popups): Picture 1, Picture 2.

I also made a trip to Anthropologie to use my gift card from Christmas (I don't know why it took me so long!). I spent more than the gift card was for, but I got some good stuff:

• A cute button-up shirt
  
• A Marimekko top which could totally be maternity clothing because of the empire waist, but I've always admired maternity tops because they're so flowy and cute! I'm cool with dressing like a pregnant lady even though I'm not pregnant. I think it'll be a good summer top (with another shirt underneath it, since it's low-cut). I love Marimekko.
  
• A nice navy blue V-neck shirt on sale (sale!)
  
• A happy pink-striped teacup from which to drink my tea
  
• A cute footed soap dish. Normally we don't use bar soap, but I've got all this nice soap from gift sets I've received, and now I have a place to put it. The soap in there right now is some yummy-smelling Savon de Luxe soap (the scent is a combination of milk, honey and almonds)

We went up to San Francisco last night for Nat's birthday party and had a grand time! We got to bed pretty late and slept in this morning. We went out for Easter Brunch and miraculously were able to get a table right away at Bistro Vida (we must've gotten there before church let out). That was the only Eastery thing we did today; with no kids around, we didn't get to do any Easter egg hunting.

Though it was a little drizzly, Patrick finished up our new planter box (our first box has performed so nicely, and I wanted another so we could expand our gardening space). This new box is very much like our first one, but I asked for a little seat in the middle of it, so it can double as a bench. Patrick designed and built it all on his own. I love it! He's awesome :) Here's me sitting on it with our first box behind me (the poppies have been blooming for the past few months, the greens are getting bigger, the strawberries are ready to turn red anytime now, and the chamomile is getting huge!).

And here's Patrick sitting on the box/bench in its new home, next to the first box. More pictures of the box minus people are available here: Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3.

I'm not sure when I'll have time to plant stuff in the new box, but I'm looking forward to it!

For dinner, we started with steamed artichokes from the farmer's market (I was impressed that any farmers showed up when it was all rainy this morning--and Easter Sunday to boot). Those are fennel seeds from the cooking liquid hiding among the bracts. Our main course was Middle Eastern Chickpeas with Spinach on top of orzo, once again from Moosewood Low-fat Favorites (the original recipe from the book also adds a chopped red bell pepper along with the spices and uses fresh mint instead of dried). Patrick and I both liked it--I'm a big fan of chickpeas. I couldn't really tell there were bell peppers in it, which was good since I'm still learning to like those.

I also made more Apple Walnut Bran Muffins. Those things are perfect for taking to work for a mid-afternoon snack.

Tonight we had Fish Tagine with Chermoulla (from Moosewood Low-Fat Favorites) and Trader Joe's Brown Rice Medley (on my mom's recommendation). Not very attractively plated; my apologies!

I really liked the brown rice, but Patrick wasn't a fan. The fish was pretty good--very tangy; perhaps too tangy. Patrick liked it, and it was healthy, so we'll probably make it again.

I had a good weekend. On Saturday, I watched the second season of Angel with Tree and Erin, and we had a pizza from Zachary's for lunch. Yum! On Sunday, I cleaned our apartment and watched some Buffy, on loan from Tree. The apartment cleaning wasn't particularly well-timed, as Patrick came home from camping and bike-riding and brought some dirt back with him. Oh well!