Table for four

Mima and papa are very appreciative of good food and always take us to wonderful restaurants when we visit, so we made reservations to take them to the incredible Herbfarm last night. (The last time Meh and I had been there was more than two years ago, for our last real date before Zachary was born.) This time the menu theme was 'Basil Banquet', with all different kinds of basil featured in every one of the nine courses (including a cinnamon basil ice cream for dessert). It was fun to be back for a second time; as before, the owner took us on a tour of the herb gardens beforehand, explaining and passing around herbs for us to taste, smell, and/or look at. And when we were seated, the sous chef and sommelier round-robined through the nine courses and the wines that would be paired with them. Somehow they manage to always be elegant without being ostentatious: the sous chef described a dessert, and then added that the flavor it most reminded him of was lime Skittles.

The food was exquisite (equally impressive was how they flawlessly dealt with each of our dietary restrictions), and it was a wonderful evening with a classical guitarist strumming in the corner. At around the halfway point we simply had to get up and walk around a bit, and went back out to visit the restaurant's two "recyclers", truffle-hunting pigs-in-training Basil and Borage (significantly bigger after two years!), armed with a little pail of food to feed them.

A brief story about mima and papa's experiences with Zachary so far: on the day they arrived, Meh and they took him to a toy store (in part because it had a picture of Thomas in the window). A little girl in the store accidentally dropped a ball she'd been playing with, Zachary picked it up and brought it back to her - such gallantry already! They even had their first time alone with him today, when both Meh and I were working -- he slept through most of the morning, then they took him to one of his favorite (as in lots of overhead fans) restaurants for lunch before picking up Meh after work. It was just a few hours, but I came home to find everyone pretty exhausted; the little man certainly takes a lot out of you!

Tomorrow is Zachary's second birthday - suffice it to say that Meh has some pretty amazing treats planned for the occasion. It's unbelievable that he's already going to be two; time really is advancing in fast motion!