3rd Wedding Anniversary - July 12, 2005

Note from Dave: This was written by Shawnna, hence the focus on food ;-)

Today we celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary! We started our day by sleeping in (6:30am is sleeping in!). When we got up, it was a beautiful day so we decided to go kayaking before it got too hot. We headed out to Hidden Lake (a man-made lake in Tracy). Although it was already 70 degrees by the time we got on the water at 7:40am, it was nonetheless a perfect outing. We spent about 40 minutes paddling the lake, and then headed home to clean up for the remainder of the day.

From there, we ran errands. Our errands consisted of going to the mall, checking with the car dealership on an ordered part for our Trailblazer, and picking up an air filter for the house. We also decided to scout out some places to eat for lunch. There’s a new Italian restaurant in Tracy that just opened up and I grabbed their menu to take a peek. String’s Italian Restaurant looked fantastic, so we decided to try it out.

Fantastic it was! Their weekday lunch specials looked so wonderful, they were difficult to pick between, but we made our decisions to try out the Chicken Parmesan (Dave) and Tortellini Alla Panna (veal) (Shawnna).With the meal came delicious bread and a huge salad. This salad must be one of the largest pre-meal salads I have ever had put before me. It consisted of romaine and iceberg lettuce, with raisins, tomatoes, red onions, croutons and sunflower seeds. You had your choice of dressing and we had ranch and creamy cucumber. Yummmmy! Once finishing the bread and salad, you almost don’t have any room for the entrée. But, when the meal reaches your table, you have no choice but to dig in to the heavenly platter of cuisine before you. As always, we tested each others meal. Exquisite! The tortellini had the most perfect sauce, creamy (neither runny nor clumpy) with just the right amount of oregano, cream and Marsala wine. The Chicken Parmesan was perfectly breaded and cooked and was smothered in a marinara to die for.

We skipped dessert at String’s because we were so stuffed from the lunch. However, we did take a look at their dessert menu and it looks like we may have to go back for a dessert-only trip! (I must also add that the service was excellent.)

After lunch we went home so Shawnna could put in her honest afternoon of work. While Shawnna was working, Dave continued a project to download all of our CD’s onto our computer storage drive. In between e-mails, Shawnna baked and frosted a cake to try out in advance of making it for a dinner party this weekend. Of course, who would say no to be the guinea pig taste tester for a chocolate cake?

After our lunch had worn off from the afternoon of working, we headed out for our anniversary dinner to where we consider is the most upscale restaurant in Tracy; Magellan’s. Magellan’s is where we also ate our 2nd anniversary dinner, and was so delightful we decided to make this kind of our “anniversary dining place”.

Another great meal was eaten today, this time from a menu compiled by Tomas Magellan, proprietor and executive chef of Magellan’s. With a salad and Clam Chowder ahead of the meal, we started to realize that we were already comparing our dinner with the lunch we had had. Dinner was (Dave) a rigatoni with an Alfredo sauce, smoked salmon and capers, and (Shawnna) a pork chop with a peach bourbon sauce, vegetables and potatoes. Both meals were pleasing, including the most perfectly grilled pork chop I’ve ever eaten. Nevertheless, I feel that our better meal of the day was at String’s.

Again, too full from dinner to eat dessert, we headed home. After our food settled for a bit, we grabbed a very small piece of the freshly baked chocolate cake. Can you say ‘Got Milk?’! One of the best chocolate cakes I’ve ever tasted.
Fat and full, it’s time for bed. G’nite!