An Urban Girl

Thanks to everyone who visited my last posting and especially thanks to the sweet friends who left a comment on how to keep our fridge organized. I will try all your suggestions... But I must tell you, I organically came a cross a new method of keeping the fridge organized this week: eating all meals out!  It was terrific, no fuss, no mess (if you don't mind a few extra pounds). And the winner of a Homemade Life is Jenny! 

H appy B irthday T o O ur L ovely G irl!      You and Me Rolling on the floor Practicing your somersaults, cartwheels, your donkey kicks and more...  You and Me Reading books in bed Your head on my shoulder Your eyes on the pages ahead How did you grow so big overnight How did you get so smart and bright Yesterday you were asleep in my arms Today you are growing off the charts I'm so proud of you...                                                                                                 You and Me                                                                                                 Francis England

A few Saturdays ago, after an early dinner, Mr. Urban suggested visiting the nearby Borders bookstore. I knew that I should have said no, but I went along anyway... I don't do well with certain things. Once, on a road trip to the beautiful Okanagan region of British Columbia, a friend suggested stopping at a roadside pub that served the most gigantic hamburgers.  The burgers were so huge that the pub would cover your entire bill if you could finish it and even hang your picture on their wall of fame.  For the fun of it one of my friends ordered one of these monstrosities.  Of course no human should ever be able to finish one of these... the site of it made me feel queasy and I couldn't shake the feeling for the rest of the day.  I was pretty much pale faced and haunted by an enormous pile of ground beef, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes, as though I had witnesses a roadside accident. So knowing myself I try to keep away from restaurants with abnormally large portions, horro

After attending a three year old friend's birthday party at the park this morning, the UrbanToddler and I got to rendezvous with Mr. Urban for a lunch date in Palo Alto. One thing that I can say for sure about Mr. Urban is that he never fails to dazzle me when he plans a date.  And today was no different.  He took us to a cafe that had just opened up in Palo Alto yesterday, Paris Baguette. The cafe is reminiscent of the great bakeries/cafes that we loved frequenting in Shanghai: great fresh baked goodies + beautiful modern design of a chic hangout. I was so touched by the idea of yet another creative Start-Up in Silicon Valley, and I mentioned to Mr. Urban how daring it is of the owners to get such a big space here in Palo Alto (where the commercial rents are anything but cheap) and spare no cost in their design, furnishings, shiny kitchen equipment, and the small army of excited employees milling about...   but just now, when I checked their website, I learned that the caf

When I was a young accountant working at a Vancouver CA (insert CPA if you are American) firm, I was introduced to various surprisingly alternative uses of duct tape by a talented, tall, blond assistant. She was so amazingly creative with duct tape that she would somehow incorporate its use into almost all tasks assigned to her (fixing dead un-backed up laptops, torn audit bags, over-full client files, etc...) This assistant's talents with duct tape were so extensive that legend has it, once she even duct tape a Partner to his office chair... no time thereafter she was promoted to Office Manager, got a gorgeous office with windows and began driving a red sports car to work, while the rest of us accountants, with no imagination whatsoever regarding the uses of duct tape continued to slave away in our cubicles late into the night... And that was a very important lesson to me as a young new accountant living in the world of GAAP rules and Tax Acts: never shy away from creativity

Mr. Urban asked me on a date.   See how happy I got when he asked... And even though dinner was at 5:30, and I was rushing around to make sure everything is in order for the UrbanToddler right up to the moment we left the house at 5:15, I still had the butterflies at the prospect of a dinner out with my sweetie. Mr. Urban took me to our favorite Japanese restaurant, Fuki Sushi , and we found out that their service is even better if you go at 5:30 pm.  They will bring you as much ginger as you like and even give you the best table in the house.   And surprisingly, there were other couples huddled romantically, sipping green tea and Asahi beer, and dining on sushi at that obscene hour... Next, we went to see Circumstance . The movie is about life in Iran.  And although some reviews categorize it simply as Gay/Lesbian genre, I think it is about love, drugs, defiance, being a victim of system without having much of an option...  The movie is sure to push every single one of

Tonight we celebrated the beginning of a new school year for the UrbanToddler, with a Back to School Feast.  Like most other things I know about parenting, I learned about the Back to School Feast from other fellow moms, in this case mommy bloggers.  It was a production I tell you.  Starting with summoning enough attention from the UrbanToddler to make a menu of her favorite foods.   Starter: Fresh Carrots with Olive Oil and Vinegar dip.  Second Course: Spinach and Cheese Ravioli.  Third:  Mini Turkey Burgers with lots of Ketchup.  Dessert: Raspberries and Banana (and Chocolate).  Next we stopped by one of our favorite stores, Paper Source for materials to make crafts: Crowns for the guest of honor and her other guests and name cards for the dinner table.  Followed by a trip to Trader Joe's for dinner ingredients.  Waiting for Mr. Urban to come home for dinner was the hardest part (a root canal is probably much easier than trying to teach a toddler to practice delayed grat

No better way to kick start our Labor Day long weekend, but with a 5 hour road trip to grab lunch! Yesterday, we decided to take a quick drive to Sonoma to eat at the Girl and the Fig. I had read about them in Sunset magazine, as having the best fig spreads in the whole of US of A.  We had driven to Sonoma a few times over the past months, and although we had stopped by the Girl to stock up on their OH SO GOOD fig spreads, every time we were lured by strong forces from the crazy beautiful patio of the Sunflower Cafe and we couldn't stay for lunch at the Girl. Sunflower Cafe is officially an Espresso and Wine Bar, which actually is an art gallery, and also actually, is a fantastic restaurant with local, organic and most creative gourmet country foods like awesome cheese appetizers (once we had fresh goat cheese wrapped in fire grilled red peppers, drizzled with olive oil, pistachios and orange zest, OK?), salads that have brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion, 

We had a lovely holiday by the ocean last week in Carmel.  We stayed at a friend's gorgeous home, where Mr. Urban had close access to WIFI and my girl and I had close access to the beach, and everyone felt very happy. We enjoy traveling to Carmel frequently, but staying there for five days really made us fall in love.  Each day, a great succession to the previous day's lineup of spending time playing and relaxing at the beach, taking coffee breaks at one or the other great cafes, walking along Ocean Ave or one of the other equally cute side streets, and dining at one of the many, many fabulous restaurants (which by the way was impossible to get a table at, even at 3:00 pm!).   I have told you before of a favorite restaurant (or better said cafeteria) called Carmel Belle .  Everything they make is a work of art and delicious too.  They say that their offering is California's best artisanal cheeses, charcuterie and wine.  I say, it is also great coffee and espresso drin

When I was little we lived in Iran.   And every summer we would pile up as many relatives as we could into our sedan and drive up to one of the many beautiful towns along the Caspian Sea. Almost always, we were followed by a convoy of cars filled with our relatives and friends. The three hour drive from Tehran would always include many stops along the way.  We would always stop at one of the tea houses on the highway, nestled under the shade of trees,  where we would stretch out on wooden beds covered with Persian rugs to have cups of tea and sometimes, fried eggs with fresh bread.  Which is interesting, because all our cars were stocked with huge colanders of washed fruits, bags of nuts, roasted watermelon seeds, and flasks of tea, for snacking along the way. And we also would usually have to make a stop for one of the cars to get new tires.  Flat tires were inevitable, and since the cars were filled to the rim with people, luggage and food there was no room to carry a spare tire