Paint Pallet of Life

I think I have fallen in love with not only a newly discover (for me at least) neighborhood of the great city of San Francisco, but also with a new friend to make my little adventures with! You see this past Thursday I made an excursion into the famed Mission with my dear friend Kathrine and had an absolute blast! One of the best parts of the entire day was finding out how much we both enjoy aimlessly wandering through side streets, curious looking stores and unusual eateries! So often when I make the trip to the city it’s with a specific purpose and time frame, and I as much as I would love to I, never really get to just explore. Not so this day! We hopped on BART with a loose idea of what we might want to check out thanks to a Lonely Plant iPhone app, a little late night Internet research and a book titled “Off the Beaten Path San Francisco”. Then we just let our inquisitive natures do the rest.

Baking Up A Little Lovin!

I hope someone appreciates this post because I had to get up pretty early this morning in order to fit baking in to my very busy day! But considering I missed week two of my self imposed weekly baking challenge I felt a little obligated to bust out a some deliciousness. So here you go!

As I mentioned previously, I try to always bake something different for our weekly meeting. I've worked my way through some of the basics like chocolate chip, oatmeal and peanut butter. Now I'm venturing in to the unordinary and looking for some inspiration. Lucky for me my little house sitting adventure over the weekend decided to offer just such inspiration in the way of lemon tree!

A King Like No Other

When I first read the email late last summer I was so disheartened. No more Sunday night Bible study? How could this be? We were only half way through the 1 Corinthians study! Didn't they understand that this was the highlight of my week!

But sometimes that's just how life goes. Those who had been leading it were going through some personal transitions and very busy periods and just weren't going to be able to continue. At first I wasn't sure whether to look for a different group or not. Maybe it was just time to do some studying on my own. That's when the second email came. One of my fellow 1 Cor friends wanted to know if I was interested in joining her and another friend at their Monday night BSF group. I agreed right away!

A Country Kind of Weekend

One of the nice things about being single with no current obligations is the ability to help a friend out when they are in a pinch. Which is exactly what I've spent this wonderful sunny weekend doing. House/pet sitting for a family from church who's planned sitter had to cancel at the last minute. And this isn't just any old house sitting job. The home I'm watching over happens to be on an old dairy farm, which is also the future home of our new church campus. It's quite an interesting place and has quite the interesting story. And although it's been terrible neglected and poorly cared for in the last couple of years it still has an incredibly rich in history and is full of potential. I'm not even going to try to explain how our church came to posses the land because that's quite a story in itself and because I have no doubt I would get more facts wrong than right. But I will share some of the ubber cool (at least I think they are) pictures I snapped using my Tilt Shift App on my iPhone and what I did to fill my time.

Grocery Outlet Gourmet

So this weeks GO challenge served to accomplish two things. One would be this post, which is my second GO Gourmet post. Two weeks in a row! I'm so proud of my self! And the second would be to check off yet another soup from the long list of homemade, from scratch, soups I ambitiously scribbled down on that first cool weekend last fall. I've spent most of the fall and winter working my way through this list. Some are old favorites, others are just interesting recipes I found in a magazine, cookbook or on some blog or website. So far I've made Chicken Tortilla, Split Pea, Creamy Tomato, Wild Rice and Mushroom, Baked Potato, Rustic Vegetable, Chicken and Dumplings, and Blacked Eyed Pea. All of those and I'm just past half way through!

So when I came across the beautiful little arboreal bunches of broccoli while browsing the produce bins at GO this week, I new what was on the dinner menu!

Cream of Broccoli and Cheese soup!