Natties

October 30, 2007

I got home last night after spending 6 days either en route or in Sarasota, FL for the Ultimate Players Association (UPA) 2007 Club Nationals that took place from October 25-28.

Check out this video from UltiVillage of Will catching a sweet score for Brass Monkey on Day 2 of Natties:

Nationals, as always, was a blur of games, team dinners, coordination, sunsets on the white sand beach, and team bonding. We played well during pool play (5-1 record) and played a hard-fought quarterfinals (17-16 over Tandem) and had a tough semi-finals loss (15-11) to Shazam Returns!. It was disappointing, but I was amazed that our team came back from a 7-point deficit to mount a comeback in the second-half of the game, just a little too late. So, it would be that we would take 3rd again at nationals, the same fate as 3 of our 4 previous seasons. One out of four isn't too bad, I guesss.

(courtesy of Bil Elsinger)

On Saturday night, our team decided not to go out for a big team dinner but stay in and order food, which turned out to be a fantastic idea, as we were able to have a great time together being our loud, ridiculous selves.



One of our captains, Hannah, had a great idea to create monkey cards, where each person created their own monkey face and the rest of the team wrote one word/phrase on each card that represented what that person represented to them (yes, she's a teacher). Here are a series of photos with some teammates and their cards:











On the Sunday, we slept in, had breakfast, and decided to embark on some outdoor activities other than watching finals. Will, Nate, Matty, Drea and I found a disc golf course close to Sarasota airport in North Water Tower Park. According to one website, here is the course description: "This is a relatively short but extremely challenging course cut through 20 acres of oaks, pines, and palms with a few holes featuring long, grassy tee shots. It is in excellent condition, featuring 18 mach III pole holes with cement tee pads. It is maintained by the local club, the Sarasota Sky Pilots, who take great pride in its evolution. We had a great time trying to navigate the narrow fairways and avoiding trees, and it was the perfect choice of activity for the afternoon.

I flew back to SF on Monday and it was great to get home. This experience was a little sad for me, as I'm considering not playing club next year and only playing a couple fun tournaments (eg. Potlatch) next year so that I can focus on doing other things with my time and money. Brass Monkey has been a wonderful family to me over the past four years (five if you count the season with Hi-Fidelity, the pre-cursor to BM) and I've been amazed at all the experiences that I've had with these folks. Long live the monkey!

Bar Crudo

October 23, 2007

Last night, I went for dinner with Brisdell to a new-ish place in Union Square called Bar Crudo. Bar Crudo is a "modern raw bar" which is in this tiny space next to the Tunnel Top on Bush street at Stockton. It has gotten rave reviews and was named to the Chronicle's Top 100 list this year.

Thankfully, Brisdell likes oysters as much as I do, so we tried all four varieties:
La Luna (Carlsbad), Effinghams (British Columbia), Stingray (Rappahanock River)and Olde Salt (Chesapeake Bay). My favorites were the Lunas...so full of flavor in a little oyster.

We moved onto the Crudo Sampler for two:
- Dayboat Scallops with chickpea puree, arugula oil, icicle radish
- Tombo Tuna with lobster oil, pineapple vanilla vinaigrette, chervil, Himalayan pepper
- Arctic Char with creamy horseradish, wasabi tobiko, dill
- Rhode Island Fluke with golden beet, horseradish crème fraiche, caviar, chives

My favorite was the arctic char, the wasabi tobiko was amazing!
Lobster Salad with baby artichokes, fingerling potatoes, burrata cheese, Banyuls caper vinaigrette, and wild arugula. Good lord, this was one of the best things I've had in a long time. It's no surprise that I love lobster, but I love beets too. And the combination with the burrata cheese was so light and wonderful. Go try this.

Steamed Manila Clams & Sweet Maine Shrimp (Troubadour Blonde Ale, fava leaves, pea shoots, beech mushrooms, green garlic, white beans). Also very nice, the broth was very flavorful and the beans were really good.

We sat and dined for over 4 hours and had a really nice meal. The server was patient and very helpful, she recommended a pretty fantastic wine that went well with everything. I was psyched that they weren't rushing us to turn the table over. If you like raw food and are looking for a good date place, I would highly recommend Bar Crudo.

Princess Leia & Darth Vader

October 21, 2007

We held our last frisbee practice this season (maybe ever for me?) on Sunday in Palo Alto, as we're all heading to Florida next week (it's nationals, baby!). It was a gorgeous day and we had a good practice, so I'm psyched to get down there and start beating down those other teams!

After practice, I went to Santa Clara to see the kiddies and to have dinner at my sister's house. My parents are coming to visit the kids during the exact time that I'll be in Florida, go figure. At least I'll see them at the end of November, when I'm planning a quick 5-day trip home to Vulcan/Calgary.


As I will miss seeing the kids for Hallowe'en, Angie and I put on the babies' costumes so that I could see how they look. They're dressing up as Darth Vader and Princess Leia. Too cute.











And by popular demand (okay, my mom and dad really like video clips), here's 4 minutes of more video clips:

More Swede Goodbyes

October 21, 2007

I had a pretty phenomenal Saturday in sunny SF yesterday. I slept in a little, had a coffee, and then met Key for brunch at Tangerine, voted Best Brunch 2007 by Citysearch. After munching on a tasty smoked salmon benedict, we headed to an open house for my artist friends, Beth Weintraub and Liz Saintsing. Beth and Liz had planned the open house in conjunction with ArtSpan's Open Studios that run through the month of October.

It was awesome to catch up with Beth, Tony (Beth's husband) and Liz again. Liz also assists Beth in her printmaking, but has been doing really well with her own line of vintage bags and accessories that she creates as functional art. Also, Liz is currently being featured with her own artisan line of chocolates from Recchuiti (Beth's artisan series was featured in 2005).

Also, the art pieces were discounted by quite a lot, so I bought two pieces of Beth's art...sweet!

From the open house, we went back to the Valencia corridor and wandered in and out of stores. We headed over to Tartine Bakery for their infamous Lemon Cream Tart, and then stopped in at Bi-Rite Creamery so that I could try their Concord Grape Granita. Awesome! Key had the salted caramel, which was amazing, I would highly recommend that flavor.

What a great day of indulgence!

I went home to hang out for a while, and was wonderfully surprised when Wendy called me en route from Tomales Bay and announced that she was bringing me a dozen oysters from the Tomales Bay Oyster Co....she is a really good friend.

So I did a quick google search and whipped up my first white wine oyster mignonette, which was pretty good. When she arrived with the oysters, I was ready with the shucker in hand. Those oysters never had a chance.

Later in the evening, I stopped in at a birthday party for Brisdell's hubby, Bing at their place on Dolores (great view!), and then headed to Anna's going away party at Wish in SOMA (boo!).

Happy Trails, Anna! We'll miss you!

Spork

October 20, 2007

Friday night rolled around and Abe decided that we needed to go for dinner and have some drinks in celebration of him re-appearing on the face of earth after dealing with house stuff for many, many moons.



So, Abe, Austin, Robert and I went down to the 22nd & Valencia neighborhood (in the pouring rain, took me forever to get a cab!) and met at Spork, the new-ish restaurant that took over the old Kentucky Fried Chicken on Valencia.

We started with a couple shared appetizers:
Roasted figs with goat cheese (organic black mission figs, whipped goat cream, lamb's lettuce, pine nuts, aged sherry). This was a nice and light starter, I'm a big fan of figs and apparently they go really well with goat cheese...
Griddled local calamari (wild caught monterey bay calamari, asian slaw, sesame soy vinaigrette). I was really impressed with the calamari. I guess I always assume that calamari is going to be breaded and fried, but not the case with this dish. The calamari was tender, not chewy and the soy vinagrette was lovely.

Robert had the In-side-out burger (a fork and knife burger with all natural grass fed patties, caramelized onions, tillamook cheddar, smashed fries).
Both Abe and I had the Lazy Ravioli (fresh egg pasta, butternut squash puree, fresh ricotta, sage and brown butter, walnuts, parmigiano reggiano). Yes, it's true, I had a main entree without meat in it. And it was good. The "lazy" part of it is that they pieces are not typical individual raviolis, it almost looked like a pasta crepe with everything tucked inside but not sealed. The butternut squash and ricotta was tasty, but the kicker was the sage and brown sugar butter...you can't go wrong with that combination. The pasta was a bit al dente, which was a bit distracting, but otherwise, a solid dish.
Austin had the Mussels and Pork with a Spork (mediterranean mussels, roast pork, belgian beer, green beans, smoked chili aioli). He seemed to enjoy the meal, and he had a spork to eat with, so that must've been fun.
Ooh, beignets!

After dinner, we ambled over to Latin America Club (bad mistake) and had a few cocktails, which is more like the equivalent of a lot of cocktails the way they pour the drinks there. Wendy joined in on the shenanigans. I headed home to a wonderful sleep before I could get into too much trouble.