I knew there was an owl that lived in the tree, I’ve only seen him once.  I look up to check and see if he’s there every day when I come to the magical garden to eat my picnic lunch.  I looked today.  Nothing.  So I sat down and started eating, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a movement.  I looked up in the tree, and saw it!  The owl!  He was in a different area of the tree.  I looked at him, he looked at me.  I took pics of him.  For you.

My Uncle Earl taught me how to make french toast.  Uncle Earl was my Dad’s brother.  He lived with us for awhile when he was ill.  His daughter, Gail, was my favorite cousin. Warning – not low calorie, not low cholesterol, not low fat. This is perfect for breakfast or brunch. I’ve never had french toast this good – To. Die. For. This is his recipe:

2 eggs

1-2 tbsp. of milk

butter

powdered sugar

maple syrup

Break two eggs into a bowl and mix – like you are going to scramble them.  Then add approximately one to two tablespoons of milk, you can also use water, this thins the eggs so that they absorb easily into the bread.  I use a shallow flat bottomed bowl to mix the egg mixture in, then I add the bread one piece at a time, and let it soak up the egg.  This is perfect for day old or slightly dried out bread.  When the bread is soaked through, spray your skillet with Pam, turn on med low to low, and add butter to melt and coat the bottom of the pan.  Add bread and cook slowly so that it puffs up and cooks through.  The bread will almost taste like cooked custard on the inside when done.  Caution: shouldn’t be runny, if you cook it too fast it will not cook through in the inside.  Remove from pan when puffy and golden brown on both sides.

Immediately butter with approx two teaspoons of butter.  Rub butter around bread until completely melted.  Then cover top of bread generously with powdered sugar.  Make a trough down the middle of the bread and add about a teaspoon of maple syrup.  Then mix it all together to make a thick frosting.  Then EAT!  Yumm!  Best french toast EVER!

For more of my french toast pics, please see my flickr photostream at:

http://flickr.com/photos/lauralovesart/sets/72157607412011370/

On Monday night I breezed into the Mars Bar in San Francisco to attend the Very Crunchy Chi.mp Happy Hour.  The Crunchy part of the name was in reference to the TechCrunch50 conference that was going on down the street.

TechCrunch50 is a conference where 50 up and coming startups can present their business ideas to an audience of VC’s and angel investors and have the opportunity to win $50,000 in funding.  Mark Cuban was one of the featured speakers and Ashton Kutcher was one of the featured startups presenting!

Okay, back to the chi.mps.

The Mars Bar was unimpressive on the outside, but much nicer inside.  The bartenders were great and the atmosphere was friendly and low key.

The chi.mp folks were distinguishable by their chi.mp logo t-shirts and were sitting in a booth.  There was no one at the door to check me in – even though I had registered – or to welcome me.  I went to the bar and ordered a glass of wine and met David Shantz, CEO and Creative Director with Graphita Live Studio, www.graphita.com.  We chatted for a bit and were both there for the happy hour.

I went over to meet the chi.mp people and talked with Anthony Eden.  I found out that chi.mp is based in Hawaii, along with I Can Haz Cheezburger.  Anthony did have the list and gave me a chi.mp t-shirt of my very own and two drink tickets.  He pointed out Tony Haile, the CSO at chi.mp and I went and met Tony and chatted for a few minutes.  Really nice guys!

Chi.mp http://chi.mp.com is still in alpha testing mode currently.  Chi.mp is a simple way to manage your online life, on a domain of your very own.  Chi.mp gives you your own site where you can keep track of your facebook, twitter, flickr, yahoo, and hotmail all on one page.  Sounds good to me!

Later I met Ben Metcalf with Seesmic.com and also his own site, http://swordfi.sh.com.  I told Ben I would see him on Wednesday night at the Seesmic party!

I talked with Robert Balousek, a software engineer at www.digg.com.  Robert also has developed a site for new twitter users called Twintro, www.twintro.org.  Twintro makes it easy for brand new twitter users to find friends and jump in and enjoy it.

I met some really nice people and enjoyed it, but kept it an early night – I did have to get up at 6 AM the next morning for work!

You can click on any of the pics above to enlarge or see my flickr photostream, which includes more pics from the event at:

http://flickr.com/photos/lauralovesart/sets/72157607299802715/