After spending Tuesday night with my brother, many mugs of decaf Earl Grey with milk and honey, and a movie that put us both to sleep (again!), Wednesday morning arrived. Mark supplied me with a banana, and we were off to take the ferry into the city so he could go to work and I could visit my sister Emily for the very last leg of my trip. Emily picked me up at the ferry building and then drove me back to her apartment to feed me:

While Em “worked from home,” I took her delicious rice-veggie-chicken-tomato creation to the couch …

… and did homework blogged napped for two hours. It had been an exhausting series of days. I popped a Clementine …

… and we took off for Emily’s local farmers’ market.

The goal had been veggies, but all we found was fruit … and lots of it! Samples of pomegranate, persimmon, and apple:

Samples of raspberries and strawberries:

(Ohhhhh, to live in CA and have berries still be in season!)

And samples of Indian chutneys with flatbread and pure apple cider:

To make up for the lack of veggies at the market, Em bought tons of fruit and goodies for each of us from the Esther’s German Bakery stall:

Emily got salted pretzels for Murphy and herself. I scanned the goods, and my eyes alighted on something that resonated with the image I’d had burned into my brain ever since dinner at Olga‘s house: poppy seed bread!

The man gave me a giant slab of the bread (more like cake, really), and I ate it ALL, except for the bite I shared with Emily.

We both worked some more … until I noticed that Em had left a family-sized football team-sized tub of peanut butter open on the counter. DANGER DANGER DANGER. I got right in there with one of the newly purchased farmers’ market apples:

After some afternoon snacking and working, Em and I took off for a hilly, muddy, traily run through the Presidio and made it back home just in time for her 5pm phone meeting. When Murphy got home later, we set out for the hike (because you can’t walk around SF without it being a hike!) to Pot de Pho, a newish organic Vietnamese restaurant in the neighborhood:

I approved of the ambience, from the decorative birdcages lining the walls …

… to the wok-for-a-sink (!!!) in the bathroom:

We started off with three appetizers to split for the table.

Bánh Khoai Môn Vìt which, if you’re not fluent in Vietnamese (like I am), refers to deep-fried taro dandelion with ground duck:

The words “deep-fried” and “duck” usually do the opposite of making my mouth water, but this was actually delicious and ended up being my favorite of the three apps!

Next was the Gỏi Cuốn (hoặc Gỏi Cuốn Chay), or fresh roll with shrimp and pork:

This one was tasty, too, and Emily’s favorite of the three:

Our third appetizer was the Nem Nướng Cuốn Nha Trang, aka grilled meatball roll with green apple:

That was delish, too … my second favorite 🙂

For dinner, Emily ordered chicken pho:

Murphy ordered BBQ pork with rice noodles in a bento box:

(Soooooooooo good!)

I ordered the vegan pho because I was in the market for vegetables! The soup came through with loads of them, including fancy and exciting mushroom varieties:

My pho also came with thai basil, onions, and jalapeno on the side:

I quickly mixed my extras into the bowl and went to town.

I ate every bit of flavor out of this bowl until all that was left was a pile of plain vermicelli … which I convinced Emily to take home with her for a future kitchen project 😛

To cap our evening, we split two desserts between the three of us.

Fried baby banana with tapioca sauce:

Yummmmm yum yum yum yum. I love hot bananas.

Dessert #2 was the chocolate lavender custard:

This one was a multi-layered surprise!

Also delicious, though the lavender could have been more pronounced.

After the feast, we made our way back through the city to Emily’s apartment …

… for bedtime because I had to be up for my flight (tear) the next morning.

While Em went to her crack-of-dawn spinning class, I made myself a pot of Hawaiian coconut macadamia tea:

And putzed around the kitchen to prepare some goods for the road (sky?).

Breakfast was a toasted and buttered multi-grain English muffin with market strawberries to share:

Midmorning at the ‘port, I ordered a nonfat sugar-free mocha (hellooooooo chemicals) from Peet’s and used it for dunking the honey graham Zbar Emily had donated:

Lunch came out between SF and Chicago: another toasted English muffin, this time with peanut butter and market apple, alongside a packet of “Celebremos Tu Herencia: Southwest Airlines Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month” honey roasted peanuts (and my book club book!):

There were Rockies:

And my airline-provided snack wanted to pose with them:

The lighting would not work, so the animals retired to the tray table with some tea:

(If I recall correctly, there was a chocolate chip Zbar somewhere in this food sequence as well …)

In Chicago, I found Greece:

I had been craving a Greek salad, and my significantly delayed flight (2.5 hours, grrrrrrr) provided me with sufficient time for patrolling the Midway food court until I found exactly what I needed at Pegasus:

I get SO excited about giant piles of greens topped with feta.

I was even able to order some authentic Greek water:

With that, I boarded my flight to LaGuardia, landed just before midnight, and walked outside to total winter … which did not suit my flip-flopped coatless self one bit. What happened while I was gone???

I arrived back at my apartment at 1:15 am and promptly fell into bed … the seventh bed I had inhabited in the space of one week. What’s your beds per week record?