Goodbye Summer

Fall is here already, and I realize that I have not updated the blog nearly often enough over the summer.  Even though in San Francisco, our real summer is the Fall, when temperatures occasionally break 70, I am sad to see summer go.  Despite the fog and the wind and bundling up in winter coats at the playground, I love how the days are long and how the most delicious fruits and vegetables are in season.  Almost every Saturday this summer we have made it over to the farmer's market at the Ferry Building, which is quite possibly my favorite place on Earth.  I could live there and just roll around in the endless aisles of beautiful produce, not to mention the rows of gourmet food trucks.  I'm sure this type of thing exists in other parts of the world as well, but I feel like I had never really tasted food until I started eating at farmer's markets in San Francisco.  Over the years, I have developed a pretty costly farmer's market habit, and I'm sorry to say that Ruby has started hers at a much younger age.

Every week when we arrive at the market, Ruby dons what is basically a full-body poncho so that we may avoid scrubbing out the stains from her clothes after she gorges herself on fistful after fistful of free samples.  As we make our way through the sea of vendors, Ruby eats oranges, peaches, nectarines, pluots, strawberries, grapes, apples, pears, ju-ju-be's, sugar snap peas, heirloom tomatoes, figs, and anything else anyone puts in front of her face.  A couple of weeks ago, we even found fresh baby corn that was so tender that it could be eaten raw along with the inner husks.  After we make our purchases and Ruby covers herself in a layer of sticky purple sweetness, we pick up lunch from one of the food vendors and eat on the pier, looking out into the bay.  Before we leave, Ruby likes to stop in front of one of the many street performers and dance along with the music.  It takes a lot of prodding before we finally leave and head home with our bountiful loot.  Pathetically, the food usually only lasts us about half the week, and I have to find a mid-week farmer's market to replenish.

This summer seemed particularly cold to me, as there were very few heat waves or fluke sunny days to punctuate the summer fog.  The only bits of real summer that we got was when we left the city, like when we took our trip to the Pacific Northwest, or the times when we traveled to the North or South Bay for a pool day.



Only in the last week or so were we given the first taste of our Indian Summer, and we have been taking full advantage by swimming in the pool at our new apartment and taking Ruby's first trip to Ocean Beach (where we had a good half hour of partial sunshine before the fog creeped back in).

















Fortunately for us, Ruby does not experience any feeling of loss for the lack of warm weather.  As a true San Francisco native, she prefers the fog and wind.  On those rare warm and sunny days, I endure a lot complaining about how it's "too hot" and "too sunny."

There is still so much to write about little Ruby, who is not just two, but two and a quarter years old now and becoming less of a toddler and more of a "big girl" each day.  But to commemorate the changing of the season, I will leave you with this video of Ruby tasting mooncake for the first time on the eve of the Autumn Moon Festival.  More to come ...