Foods!

We went to a lovely birthday party on Saturday, for one of River’s school friends. We like the parents a lot (they came to River’s birthday last year), they have a beautiful house, they did a treasure hunt for the kids, and they fed us deep dish pizza and good ice cream. Normally children’s birthday parties are fun for the kids and not that scintillating for adults, but this one was a really good time.

And Sunday, we went to the Eat Real festival! It was raining intermittently, and cool, which made me happy, because that meant: it would be less crowded. But it wasn’t raining much, and it was gentle rain when it did, so it was mostly quite nice to wander around and eat the world. We tried many things: pulled pork, cupcakes, meatloaf-bacon sandwich, falafel sandwich, fish taco, and my eternal always favorite, Fat Face Popsicles, where I got my yearly fix of a Thai Iced Tea and Sweet Potato popsicle. (And shared an awesome Lime and Avocado popsicle with my wife and kid.) Not to be all internet-cliche, but: nom. (We weren’t that gluttonous — we shared things, portions are small, etc. The point is to sample many things, and oh, we did.)

Our friend Gail (sister of our friend Karen!) had her Liba Falafel food truck there, and we chatted a bit with her — and she gave River a little tour of the truck’s kitchen! He loves helping us cook at home (and is basically a tiny aspiring chef who’s always making pretend pies and cookies from bubbles, play doh, and mud), so he was excited, and thought it was really cool.

Plus, he got to dance around to live music, and that’s always good.

Then I came home and worked on Grim Tides a bit (I haven’t quite hit 30,000 words yet, but I should by tomorrow night), and wrote a scene where Marla has lunch at the amazing Mama’s Fish House in Maui. Gah now I want to go back there so badly. At least I can feed imaginary characters their lobster guacamole and stuffed mahi mahi.