Noticing vi - new restaurant

The Monterey Peninsula, being a top tourist destination, has umpteen top-notch restaurants. Not every ethnicity is represented, by a long shot (Ethiopian comes to mind, and Indonesian, and Brazilian—though there used to be one of the latter; while dim sum only recently appeared, but not on the Peninsula: in Salinas). We do have Swiss.

Until not that long ago, too, we had but one brewpub in the area, English Ales in nearby Marina—though in the last decade a couple more moved in, mostly in downtown Monterey. But just yesterday I was reading in a local food guide that several more have newly installed themselves. The area has finally discovered beer! Yay!

Tonight we decided to try one of the newest brewpubs, Yeast of Eden in Carmel. David sampled three of the on-site-brewed beers, Crisp (4.6%), a dry lager; Saboteur Saison (6.0%), dry hopped with New Zealand Motueka hops; and Laughing at Clouds (7.0%), an unfiltered IPA. I had Chardonnay. We dined on three small plates: raw oysters, "authentic" empanadas, and spicy Sichuan cauliflower.

It was a pleasant place with clean lines, light wood and a fireplace-in-the-wall, high tables and a long bar, large-format black-and-white photographs of local landscapes on the walls.

I was joking today with a friend that in my last couple of blogs, occasionally all I had was, "We ate pizza tonight." Today isn't quite that bad, since this was a new restaurant. With a beer theme.

I did actually take some photos this afternoon of a gorgeous cactus blooming in the next block over—but when I couldn't figure out anything more than that it is probably some species (among 33) of Cereus . . . I was stuck. It's not enough to post only a picture, with nothing substantive about it.

So: dinner it is.

(I will refrain from sharing the anecdote of David, at dinner, pumping his arms in the air as he celebrated the idea that 3 times 3 equals 5! "I could tell you how it works," he said, "but I'd have to kill you." Was it the beer? Or does he really get off on weird math?)

Some days will just be like this—i.e., a moment in my life. It's okay. I make the rules.