Crabby Birthday Girl

Friday's birthday party was, as I said, held early, so Jeri could be here to celebrate with all of us.  But actually my mother's real birthday is the 7th (the day this entry is dated, though it is being written the night of the 6th).   I wanted to take her to lunch on her birthday, but she was already booked for that date (some friends from Hospice always get together on each of their birthdays), so I booked her for the day before her birthday.

I made a reservation at the same place where I usually take her, The Spinnaker in Sausalito.

I love this restaurant for many reasons.  It is situated in the tourist town of Sausalito and it juts out into San Francisco Bay so that there is a breathtaking view of the city.  It was nice to sit there and look at the new bridge that is being built...the tall tower will be the new bridge, still being built; the lower towers are the current bridge.

But, of course, the main reason for going to the Spinnaker is for the...crab!

We each ordered a crab louie, as we always do (after we had a vodka tonic first).  This may be the best place to get a crab louie because the crab is fresh, there is tons of it, and it's not "body meat," but huge chunks of claws, the best part of the crab.

My mother took half of her salad home for dinner.  I took half of mine too, but the bottom half (i.e., I ate all the crab and brought the lettuce home for Walt!)

The nice thing about the day was that she was really good mentally.   We chatted a lot about Clinton's amazing speech last night and about the upcoming election.  It was like the mother of old, which I don't get a lot of these days.

After our salad had been taken back to the kitchen to be boxed up for us to take home, we looked over the dessert menu and both decided to have a dessert.

I was torn between cheesecake and cream puffs (sadly, they didn't have creme brulee on the menu this time, which I usually order).  We both decided to try the cream puffs and were definitely not prepared for what we were served.

I don't know if you can get a feeling for the size of this thing, but there are two cream puffs which are bigger than any I have ever seen.  The chocolate is fudgy.  The almonds are toasted.  And in addition to that blob of ice cream that you see, on the OTHER side of the plate is an equal-sized glob of whipped cream.  

The waitress brought my mother's with a candle in it.

It was delicious, but there was no way I could have finished it and I brought one cream puff home for Walt.  My mother finished hers!

I lost count of how many times she told me what a perfect day it had been and thanked me.  Yeah, I know she forgot she'd already said it, but it made me feel good for the expense and for taking her.  We both love The Spinnaker a lot and who knows how many more of these lunches we have left.