A Day In Pescadero

Our diet mainly consists of animal products – meat and eggs – and vegetables. Moving to California has been such a blessing in that regard, because it’s so much easier to eat locally, organically, and in season here. Organic fruits and veggies are reasonably priced at the grocery store, and almost everything is from a farm in California. And of course, we have our super-local, organic produce in the back yard here (watermelon, butternut squash, strawberries, and tomatoes, still going strong and ignoring the fact that it’s nearly December):

 

So produce was easily taken care of (and it is also easy to find wild fish in the supermarkets), but we were having some trouble finding local, pasture-raised, humanely slaughtered meat. Whole Foods is highly trusted, but the prices stung a little too much. So this weekend, we went to the source – or at least one of the sources – TomKat Ranch and Leftcoast Grass-Fed Beef. We ordered a 25lb box of beef from them, and drove out to their farm in Pescadero to pick it up. Not only was the drive down highway 84 beautiful, through a thick green forest (we had the top down and were breathing deeply to get as much of the fresh forest air as possible), but it was a great experience visiting TomKat Ranch and chatting with the owner, Kathy, and meeting some of the happy cows who live there:

 

Kathy also recommended two other local farmers. Harley Farms, just down the street, has some of the happiest goats and best goat cheese I’ve ever seen or tasted. We tried numerous samples – my favourite was the honey lavender – and picked up a sampler box of 8 rounds of goat cheese as a host gift for the family that kindly had us over for Thanksgiving dinner last night. 

 

We also were visited by Shaelynn of Early Bird Ranch, from whom we purchased two whole chickens and some chorizo sausage. Shaelynn and her husband Kevin raise chickens and pigs. Kathy had been telling me about Early Bird Ranch, and luckily Shaelynn was able to stop by on her way to the Pescadero market! We had the chance to chat a bit, and she is such a nice, genuine person. At Early Bird Ranch, they have a mobile chicken trailer/hut that they rotate around the farm, so that the chickens have fresh pasture every day. Pretty neat!

Nick and I feel very lucky to be able to choose more sustainable animal products. And we’re looking forward to reporting back…one of the chickens is in the fridge right now, waiting to be roasted for supper tomorrow night :-9

The holiday season, and more Monterey photos

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our US-based friends and family!! We’re looking forward to celebrating tomorrow at our friends’ house. He and his family moved to San Jose from overseas last year, and have graciously offered to host us for Thanksgiving dinner. The only condition is that we had to bring dessert, so, I’m baking a pumpkin cheesecake (I don’t really like pumpkin pie) and my mom’s recipe for apple pie. Hopefully it turns out as well as hers always did!

The holiday season experience is sort of weird for us right now. We still open the french doors to the back yard every morning so we can see the lemon tree and palm trees over breakfast, I’m still biking to work wearing only a couple of light layers most days, and we still drive with the top down on the car (granted, I have my seat warmer on and I’m bundled up pretty tight – but I’m kind of a wimp). And yet, there are Christmas decorations and lights and poinsettas and warm holiday wishes everywhere.

 

We did celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving here in SJ, just the two of us, but it was very different from the celebrations we’re used to, with lots of family and friends close by. We’re looking forward to heading home for Christmas (just booked our flights today!) to see everyone, and for a (small) dose of snow (very small).

It’s been super busy for me (Pam) at work lately again, so we haven’t been up to much, but here are some new photos from our previously-posted adventures from Nick’s phone. First, a panorama of the main drive at Stanford University, on a stunning October day:

Next, a photo of the lineup at a Haunted House that someone in our neighbourhood put together on Halloween – super cool, next year we hope to participate!

First beer after we went dry (no alcohol) for the month of October:

Some more photos from Monterey Bay Aquarium. The first one is blurry but it’s a ton of fish swimming around a room:

JELLIES!!:

MOAR JELLIES!!:

Seahorses and a sea dragon that camouflaged so well with its seaweed surroundings that I barely saw it at first:

Pam looking through the binoculaur/telescope thing, watching some seals play in the Bay (in Birks like a true Californian):

We parked in this spot, saw the sign, and promptly moved. 😦

Some selected cool & not-cool stuff about the U.S.A.

COOL:

– Free shipping, free returns. Online shopping is seriously no-worry, because if those shoes don’t fit, you can just slap the UPS label provided back on the box and return them!! 

– Amazon Prime: Free 2-day shipping from Amazon.com. We have stuff like toilet paper, shampoo, conditioner etc delivered to our doorstep. I’m not ashamed. Also, free Kindle Lending Library, and Unlimited movie & TV show streaming from Amazon. $7.99 a month…it’s a huge bargain if you even buy one Kindle book per month that you could otherwise borrow from the lending library.

– Using your debit card to pay online. Canada has a bit of this in the form of Interac Online, but here, your debit card can basically pretend to be a credit card, with the “limit” as your bank balance. Super useful for ordering pizza or stuff online.

– Coupons. Often automatically applied to your online order, or you just have to click something that says “Apply coupon”. Also, if you shop at Safeway, you’re given coupons along with your receipt every time you shop there! AND you can go on their special website, which tracks the stuff you buy (associated to your Safeway card) and suggests coupons for you. Not surprisingly, ours all tend to be for wine & steak.

NOT COOL:

– No email money transfers, or online bill payment. It’s actually a bit ridiculous the hoops you have to jump through here to pay bills. Reminds me of Canada 10 years ago. For our cable bill, we had to give them our credit card (actually debit card) number. For our car loan, we had to snail mail a void cheque along with an authorization form for them to auto-debit our account. Rent has to be paid by us driving over a cheque – OR – you can set up “automatic bill payment” through your bank, where they will print a cheque and mail it on your behalf to your landlord every month. It just seems so stone age!! (we used to pay our rent via email money transfers, which are sooo convenient).

– Online banking in general seems somewhat behind Canada. It also takes several days or sometimes even over a week for debit card transactions to post to our online banking summary. 

– We’re not too happy with the cell phone plans/service here. You can go Verizon which has decent plans, but they’re CDMA so you can’t use voice & data at the same time, and you can’t bring your phone overseas and just pop in a local SIM (important to us). You can go T-Mobile, but they don’t have the iPhone, and if you bring over an unlocked iPhone, you have to use their Edge network vs 4G. Or you can go AT&T, who are basically evil. Nick tried to use his unlocked iPhone on AT&T pay-as-you-go, and they detected that it was an unlocked iPhone with no contract, and cut him off. If you want to use an iPhone on AT&T, you HAVE to have a contract. Nick has no credit here, so in order to give him a contract, they charged him a $250 deposit. Also, he has to pay more per month for less data/minutes/texts than he had in Ontario with Rogers. And we thought Rogers was evil!!

Some random photos

I’m still obsessed with tacos…I’ve never had tacos like this before and they’re my new favourite food. These were from a truck in Oakland and were the best ones we’ve experienced so far in the Bay Area.

 

Check it out…we found the Canadian beer section at BevMo…very clearly labeled.

 

Us at an Oakland A’s game on yet another beautiful sunny day.

 

New house, new car, and new adventures!

The biggest two updates from October are that we moved into our new house, complete with lemon tree, hot tub, and beautiful master bathroom:

 

There’s also a tomato plant, which is still producing lovely little tomatoes, and a strawberry plant, and tons of other plants and herbs that the owners kindly left for us (we’re renting this place). And two small palm trees!

I must say, I will never ever get tired of palm trees…they make me so happy:

 

They just remind me that this place is sunny and warm practically year-round. It’s getting into November now, and we’re still getting tons of use out of our convertible, putting the top down at almost every opportunity, and I’ve been riding my bike to work in the mornings (which is a BIT chilly, but it’s a short 15 minute ride so I barely have time to get cold).

And speaking of the new car, here she is:

 

 

If you can’t tell, Nick hasn’t been able to wipe the smile off his face for WEEKS.

Ain’t she a beaut?? I have a tradition of naming cars, and I think her name might be Sally (of course). We’ve been taking her on lots of drives. We drove up to San Francisco, where I spent the day at the office and Nick went on a hop-on-hop-off bus tour, and we drove to Sonoma and went on a cycling tour of a few wineries with some friends. I don’t have any pictures of the Sonoma tour, which is probably for the best as the tastings were plentiful, but it was one of those wonderful experiences that we’ll treasure for our whole lives. We had a blast biking around with our friends, and the weather was perfect, and the wineries were beautiful, and and and…

We also drove down to Monterey, about 90 minutes southeast of San Jose, and spent the afternoon at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

 

My favourite is always the Jellies 🙂 

And finally, it was Halloween this week! Nick and I carved pumpkins, handed out candy, and last night went to a Halloween party. Nick dressed up as a Mountie, and me as a prisoner. We had a BLAST and met all kinds of new people who we’re hoping to see again soon.

 

On the agenda for the coming month: get back into long bike rides on the weekends, check out more neighbourhood restaurants, and finish setting up our place. We’re all unpacked, but we still have pictures to frame, and a guest bedroom to furnish for all of the visitors we’re hoping to have!!

We miss everyone back home, but we certainly do not miss the weather…