So close to Seattle!

Our new community is so cool; we are so close to Seattle.  In less than 30 minutes we can be in Seattle. That is such an improvement over where we lived in the Bay Area.  So, for breakfast this morning, we decided to go to the Hi Spot Café in Madrona.
Hi Spot is a really great place that my friend Roger took us to when we were house hunting.  There is a sign in list and the wait was almost an hour, but the breakfast was great.  The cinnamon rolls are huge – our kids couldn’t finish them.
Afterwards, we drove back to the Eastside and looked for Trader Joes.  That is another really cool place.  What was especially cool is that we found a Basil plant – for some reason fresh herbs are hard to find in grocery stores around here. We’ve planted 8 pots of herbs, so once they get started; we’ll have our own in-house.  I picked up some frozen quiches to take to work to have in the freezer for lunch and some wasabi cashews.  
I went for a run after we got home and then started dinner.  I made a pesto (not with the TJ’s basil, but some from our neighbor’s co-op farm) with shrimp and farfalle.  I found a recipe for pesto in one of our cookbooks, In Nonna’s Kitchen, that said that the best way, the authentic way, to make it was in a mortar and pestle.  So, I whipped out  my mortar and threw the garlic and toasted walnuts in.  Smashing them wasn’t so difficult, but once I was supposed to add the basil leaves, I started to run out of space and patience for mashing with a pestle.  I gave up on being authentic and busted out the food processor and was done in nary minutes.
Dinner was a great success and I followed it up with Root Beer Floats.  The kids really enjoyed them and now my tummy is pleasantly filled.  As I write this, I’ve got Miles Davis on my stereo and my wife is sitting across from me, doing something on Craigslist.  A full tummy, happy kids, great tunes, a beautiful wife; ahh, life is good.