Just Pictures: Four Years = Three Fantastic Meals (Part 1)

It's that time of the year again... our wedding anniversary.  Seriously, where does the time go??

This year we indulged ourselves with 2 fantastic dinners and a relaxing lunch picnic by the pond.

The first dinner was on our actual anniversary, on a Thursday.  Our friend EH actually kind of picked the restaurant for us - she gave me a gift certificate to James Randall in downtown Los Gatos for my birthday earlier this year!  So we went and indulged...

We were early enough for happy hour that day (hey, pregnant lady's got to eat, and usually early!) so the hubby ordered a delicious sounding cocktail from the menu.

The drink actually had a cool name to it, and I really should start writing these things down, but I forgot.  This contained grapefruit juice and vodka, and probably some cool other things but seriously, we both forgot!  And yes, it was delicious.

I had a homemade lemonade (not pictured) that totally hit the spot.  Hmm, I can drink many glasses of that...

We also ordered 2 appetizers to start that were $5 for happy hour.

French fries with lemon zest, black pepper, arbequina olive oil, and homemade ketchup.  Simple things are simply the best!

One of the special appetizers of the day, pork belly on a bed of arugula salad with figs and blackberries.  Disappointingly, I was expecting fatty and juicy pork belly in sauce, but this was deep fried and therefore, I think, made it dry and hard to eat.  Boo.

The hubby's entree: seared kobe new york steak, onion and bacon ragout, tarragon pistou, topped with foie gras butter (optional topping for some extra $$, but totally worth it!), with a side of au gratin (not pictured).  I'm not a big foie gras fan, but that butter with the steak was yum-mmmy!  The potato au gratin was also really good - I should have found out the cheese that was used.

My entree: Fried chicken, bacon collard greens, buttered mash potatoes, buttermilk biscuit, with honey and chive butter.  All of the items in this entree were superb - my favorites were the biscuit and chive butter.  The biscuit was amazingly flaky and soft, and I don't know what they did with the butter but the chives were perfectly blended in and it was just so darn good!  Maybe the baby is a butter lover?  Now that's my boy!

We skipped dessert at the restaurant and walked about a block to get gelato at Dolce Spazio.  Although we walked around downtown a bit to work off our meal prior to dessert (a great "walk", I scored some cute things at J. Crew!), we only had enough room for an uno size (small).

Half amaretto almond (amaretto gelato//toasted almonds), half oreogasmint (mint gelato//oreo pieces), with a triangle wafer.  YUM!

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Since we are taking every chance to enjoy our time left as two, with just about 12 weeks to go, we took the next day off from work and ventured up north to continue our "anniversary tradition" (examples here and here).  Part 2, a lunch picnic and fabulous dinner, will be posted next!