This Thursday, I’m going to be heading down to Mountain View to shred pork with Sara for the Art and Wine Festival being held this weekend. Good times! Also, mmmm.

For Labor Day, we all trekked up to San Francisco for a barbeque being held by Eddie and Bud. Eddie knows his ribs. Those were tasty. Parboiled in beer for an hour, then grilled and basted with a homemeade barbeque sauce. I brought rather half-assed sesame noodles. I didn’t make the sauce myself, I used a bottle. Jon made the sauce once; it was very good. However, the stuff in the bottle was pretty tasty. Certainly made it easier on me.

Butter at Trader Joe’s has gone down in price! $2.59 a pound, salted or unsalted. I know, I’ve said in the past that I don’t want to pay over two dollars for a pound of butter. Now that I know that Ryan has had to spend up to five dollars for unsalted butter, I’ve changed my position a bit. I think my price-I-will-pay has gone up to three dollars.

The Masala Lamb is adapted from a recipe that I received from one of the readers of this blog. Thank you, Paula!

The Lemon Ricotta Cake is a very… subtle cake. Yes, that’s not a bad adjective. Unassuming. Seriously, it’s kind of meh, but it’s better than the Orange Tea Cake. (Although, really, I need to give that one another chance, since I made it wrong.) It is, however, a lovely carrier of the Raspberry Coulis. The lemon and raspberry flavors are very nice together. The recipe itself suggested dusting the top with confectioner’s sugar, but I prefer the coulis.

I think I overbeat the egg whites, though. The cake turned out a little flat. There’s that horrible line, “I’m going to beat you into an inch of your life. Then, I’m going to take that inch.” Yeah, I took that inch. (I think that line’s from an episode of Angel.) Getting egg whites to stiff peaks is very stressful. I should have taken them out at medium peaks, then beat them by hand the rest of the way. That would have been smart.

I’m in training this week to recapture the nerdliness I had five years ago. Lydia and I are going to San Francisco on Sunday for one day of the Japantown Anime Faire. I have to say, it’s hard to regress in geekdom. But it’ll be fun, I’m sure. We’ll catch a few newer series and eat some good food. I haven’t bought any anime since Fruits Basket, which sounds like a dumb concept but is so adorable. I’m curious as to what’s popular these days.