Author Archives: Administrator

Missing our own washer and dryer

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Reminiscent of the dorm days where you had to do your laundry in the dorm laundry room if you didn’t have time or the ability to go home and do your laundry at your parents’ house..

I was so excited with we bought our first washer and dryer for our home… I’m really missing them now as we don’t have laundry hook-ups in our apartment but rather machines in the lower garage. $1.50 to wash, and each 25 cents is 8 minutes for the dryer… and when it doesn’t get dry and you run out of quarters, we are forced to hang out clothes to dry on our canopy bed. Reminds me of Singapore all over again with having to hang laundry, we didn’t even have a dryer there. I hope we can find a more well equipped place in the future…

Yummy fruits

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So as I mentioned, on Saturday I went to the Asian market and picked up some fruits.

The white peaches were huge (see it compared with a tennis ball), crunchy, and sweet.

And this is the prickly pear. It can easily stain clothes and skin. The seeds are numerous (like pomegranate) and very hard, they hurt your teeth if you bite into them. But they are sweet and juicy. I’m not sure how to compare the flavor, some sites compare it to kiwi but I’m not sure I agree.

I also have persimmons and grapes we picked from the Sunday harvest…

October Harvest

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So we did something quite unique today, we harvested grapes for wine!

Ron’s former boss started growing grapes a few years ago and have also been making their own wine. Their family invited us to join in the last harvest of the year and for a BBQ after all the hard work.

We started harvesting around 8am and were finished a bit after noon. The grapes were beautiful, plump and sweet.

It was really hard work though, they had rows and rows of vines and there were about 10 to 12 people helping out filling these buckets with 35 pounds of grapes in each bin.

After filling the bins, the strong young men carried the bins up the steps to the top of the hill to deposit it near the waiting truck. The truck would take the grapes away for crushing.

After all the hardwork, we enjoyed a delicious BBQ with some of their wines from 2006 and 2007.

We had a really fun time harvesting and can’t wait to do it again next year!

On the way back to San Francisco, we caught sight of the Blue Angels as we were waiting in the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza.

This dive bombing jet was scary…

It disappeared from view and we didn’t see it coming back up.

I was so exhausted, I slept for 4 hours… my right hand is aching too after the repetitive cutting of the grapes… I think my legs will be sore too because of going up and down those hills…