Our Rainy Day Experiment!

It's been one wet day after another here in Northern California. On one hand I'm thankful my lawn looks all lush and green (albeit very weedy) but on the other hand, boo hoo-we've been homeward bound for way too long.

To shake things up a bit, my hubby decided to make a new dish for us-paella. Since we've never gone the way-a of paella we didn't have any saffron so we had to do a little spice hunting. We first tried hitting up the Indian shops but their packaged saffron was too big for our needs and thus way too expensive-the cheapest was $40.00 (All we needed was a 1/4 teaspoon!) The bigger box was crazy pricy at $89.00! We just wanted to score ourselves a nickelbag of saffron!

We ended up at Andronico's-which is a "nicer" supermarket (more specialty items, more gourmet stuff-more money for toilet paper, etc.). We scored a cute glass jar of saffron for $10.00. Much more my speed-and that jar is a keeper! Plus we got Niman Ranch chirozo (sp?) sausages-nitrate free to boot(I'm all about no preservatives and addictives). We also got a pound of delicious jumbo shrimp.

Hubs purchased live mussels and clams from a North Berkely fishmonger and in no time we had those suckers steamed to perfection.

Overall yummy dish-but a little too spicy for the kids. We will do this dish again-maybe for a romantic dinner alone or use a less spicy sausage. Paella was a hurray-a...at least for me and the hubs...