A loaf of bread, a good tomato...

Had such a nice day yesterday I just had to mention it here.  It was a lovely morning for one thing.  Had a bit of condo business to attend to but thankfully, it was brief.  Decided to walk to a restaurant that I mentioned quite a while back - La Famiglia - a family run Italian restaurant with wood-fired oven pizza.  They also sell honest-to-goodness Italian meats and cheeses and I wanted some good parmesan.  Walked all the way up there and discovered it was hotter than I thought it was and also discovered they didn't open until 5:00 p.m. (it was 11:00 a.m.).  So no parmesan cheese, but I had already also decided that I'd also walk to Heritage Station to go to the River and Rail Bakery and The Wild Ramp so I did.

Once I got  there I checked in at the Bottle and Wedge too to see if he had any of "my" goat cheese with ground up fig in it and he did.  Then on to The Wild Ramp where I bought some tomatoes, red raspberries, a couple of very small onions (which is nice because if I get regular sized ones, I don't use them quickly enough), and something else that I'm forgetting.  Oh, and I also stopped at The Common Ground, a really neat gift-type shop with locally made things plus "finds" that the owner comes across and puts in the shop.  It's one of those "nice to poke around in" stores.

Then finally to the bakery where I figured all my walking had earned me a chocolate croissant which I haven't had in a long time.  Also bought two mini baguettes and a loaf of what she calls French bread which is an absolutely wonderful, crunchy-crusted, nicely browned, loaf that is big enough to slice for sandwiches.  The crust is sprinkled with poppy seeds and sesame seeds and I love this bread!!  In fact, I took a picture of it when I got everything home and decided to start eating.  Just wanted to make everyone jealous! :) 

Can't you just smell it?  Don't you wish you could just taste it?  Mmm, MMM, it's good!  It was late afternoon and I was hungry so had a strange but delicious light meal of this bread with a little cold, hard butter on it, one whole tomato sliced, a hard-boiled egg I had in the fridge, and some tuna I bought at the World Market where Chris lives that comes in an oval tin like herring or something and is thin little slices of tuna in olive oil.  All very delicious and, afternoon or not, I poured myself a glass of wine to go with it.  The tomato was finally a wonderful tomato - I had begun to think I might never find one again in my lifetime. 

And, of course, another nice thing about all this wandering around town was that I had nice visits here and there with various folks I've come to know so I came home feeling like I had visited with friends.  The bread and tomato was so good that later in the evening I had the remainder of my glass of wine with two more slices of bread (no butter this time), another tomato, but no egg.  And it was just as yummy.  Today, I had my standard ham and turkey lunch sandwich on the bread so I'm certainly making good use of it.

So, that's about it really.  I'll post the next pictures here cause I forgot to post them when I wrote about my visit with my kids after I took Sophia back home.  These were taken in January and Maggie's backyard where January has herbs growing that really made me green with envy.  They also have a little pond in their yard with koi or goldfish swimming around but I swear they know when you're there - I'd wait to see some and as soon as I lifted the camera to my face, they disappeared.  So a pond picture with no fish.

 An oregano "bush", sage, thyme and I think maybe rosemary on the left.

 And I've never seen sage leaves this big!

Fish or not, I think it's so neat to have this in one's backyard.  Of course, the girls do seem to get a lot of mosquito bites and this could have something to do with it.  But, pretty and peaceful, don't you think?

And now after all that food talk, I think I'll amble on down to our local frozen yogurt shop for a little treat.  It's called Tropical Moon and when I was in Virginia and Maryland, I noticed that these privately owned shops are popping up everywhere.  I visited two over there and they have a lot of the same flavors because there are just a few companies that supply the "mixes" for the owners to use in making the yogurt in their shops.  But of the three I've now visited, only mine has "Cable Car Chocolate" which is my favorite flavor.  And, yes, I'll probably weigh 300 pounds one of these days but...