June gloom

Most people think that California is a land of sun and beaches year round, but while San Francisco is sunny a fair amount of the time, it's only rarely beachy.  And once it starts to get really warm inland, around June, the city, and especially the part of the city closer to the ocean (like where we live) becomes quite foggy.  Today was particularly intolerable.  It was windy and misty and we had to get away.

So we drove down the peninsula to ride our bikes in and around Palo Alto.  It was a little windy, but gorgeous and sunny!  I had never ridden in that area, so it was great - plenty of trees, breathtaking hills and for some reason a bunch of horse stables that were providing tours and horse drawn carriage rides:

Miniature horses!!!

When we got home, we wanted to keep in a summer-y frame of mind so we drank some sparkling rose and watched the HBO Liberace movie Behind the Candelabra.  It was pretty well done, but Rob Lowe's face is probably going to give me nightmares:

For dinner I made this grain salad from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/health/skillet-brown-rice-barley-or-triticale-salad-recipes-for-health.html

I used farro as the grain, lowered the amount of olive oil in the dressing to 1/4 cup, and used only about half of the dressing.  Otherwise I followed the recipe pretty closely.  It turned out really well.

Farro Salad with Mushrooms and Endive

Here's hoping the gloom clears a little before my parents come to visit next week!