A classic California weekend, Part 1

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The Superbowl may have been a San Francisco shitshow, but the weather played very very nice this weekend. I’m going to do a two-part recap of our adventures, because we really killed it on the weekend-in-Sonoma front.

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First up: a lovely dinner party with friends in Sebastopol on Friday night – I made a gooey chocolate cake that I promise to post about soon – then a stay overnight at the Inn at Occidental (thanks to a Travelzoo voucher). This place is charming as hell: the innkeepers are lovely, tasty breakfast is included, and there’s free wine every evening. Our room was a bit kitschy (the Folk Art room, not my style) but comfortable, and the bath tubs are huge – and come with rubber duckies! Our balcony looked out over Occidental, a tiny town tucked into the redwoods like a little upscale-hippie jewel. (more…)

A dinner party and a sunburn

On Friday we hosted a small dinner to welcome Caitlin to San Francisco. She starts a fancy new job today. Yay, Caitlin!

The only pictures I took are blurry, a testament to the strength of the cocktails. (I made a big jar o’cocktail with St. George’s gin, soda water, simple syrup, rosemary and cucumber. After dinner I added Campari and called it a digestif.) See?

I wanted to share the menu despite my lack of gorgeous food and tablescape photos because most of the dishes were delightful. I’ve gotten pretty good at prepping my ingredients over the few days before a party so that the day-of isn’t insane, but I’m still working out some kinks on actually prepping my house for guests. I bought a few strings of pretty lights that I had plans to hang, but handing early arrivals a hammer, some nails and minimal instruction is a recipe for broken glass, it turns out.

The company couldn’t have been better – it’s nice to remember where the phrase “busting a gut” comes from every once in a while – and I think we sent Caitlin off to work with some good juju behind her.

Hors d’oeuvres:

Appetizer:

Dinner:

Dessert:

  • lemon olive oil cake (inspired by this one) with fresh whipped cream

The weekend also included a readthrough of a friend’s screenplay in the park, a housewarming bbq, and an A’s game. I am all kinds of sunburnt, but it was worth it.

Fiddlehead!

I have been shamefully neglectful in posting about our March 11 dinner/reading event at Brick & Mortar, mostly because there’s so much to say. I finally got a post up on the Fiddlehead Supper Club site, and so there’s no longer any excuse. I’m crossposting from Fiddlehead, with some added color since this is my personal blog.

I should also give a quick overview of what Fiddlehead is; you can read more on the Fiddlehead site here and here. I’m aiming to start a dinner party event series that combines a sitdown meal with art, be it literature, performance art, film, music etc. If it works – and I hope it does – we’ll be doing this every few months. Maybe even more, if others step up to help. Feedback welcome!

FIDDLEHEAD LAUNCHES!

Two Mondays ago was Fiddlehead’s inaugural event: a Middle Eastern-inspired dinner and sci-fi reading at Brick & Mortar in San Francisco for the new ebook company FreemadeSF. It was exciting, exhausting, and a success by our measures. We maxed out on guests, delivered on tasty food and drink, and got to ease people into an event of interesting, fun writing. The bartender at the venue, witness to it all, said he thought it was wonderful. Always trust the bartender.
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An ace team came early to help with setup. We had to get the food ready and transform a rock club into a space worthy of a sitdown dinner. Up went tables, down went tablecloths, candles, flowers and place settings. We didn’t want to go overboard on the sci fi theme, but we worked it into the table runners, menus and cool glowing flower arrangements. When attendees started arriving, we set out the hors d’ouevres: grilled halloumi toasts with butternut squash puree with honey from my parents’ bees, and cheddar gougeres made with our own homebrewed porter. Both went quickly, but the gougeres absolutely flew – I’ll be doubling the number I make next time.
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A touch I’m glad we incorporated – thanks to Brick & Mortar’s bartender Terry – were two signature cocktails to complement the meal, the brainchild of our friends at Spiritworks Distillery. The Buck (named after the first story read out loud that evening) was made with rye, vermouth, lemon juice, grenadine and orange bitters. Served on ice, I saw it getting sipped down all over the room. The Barbarella was also popular – gin, grapefruit juice, Campari, honey and mint. It was smooth and strong, and my personal favorite.
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After an hour or so of cocktail hour, we brought out dinner. Sides included shaved asparagus and fennel salad with carrot and sliced almonds, sweet potato fritters with harissa cream, and burnt eggplant with garlic and lemon on cabbage leaves. The main event was a chickpea phyllo pie. We did beef, vegetarian and vegan versions, as well as a gluten-free option. Based on the fact that many people went up for seconds, I’m judging the meal a hit.
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The piece de resistance was a tray of chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel icing, on top of which perched edible logos for FreemadeSF.
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With a room of full and happy guests, our emcee Kat took us through the rest of the evening: four readings, all set to live music. One writer even played the sitar!
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A huge thanks goes out to those who helped with the evening, and to those who attended as well. We can’t wait for the next one!

Epic brunch

This past weekend we hosted a brunch party in honor of a visiting friend. Per usual the company was fantastic, and Beth and I really went overboard on the food this go round.

Laying out the table – note the gorgeous lemon braid
With the boozy french toast  )photo courtesy of Vanessa)

The menu included:

  • my mom’s sausage breakfast casserole
  • asparagus and mushroom frittata
  • boozy french toast
  • cinnamon puffs
  • turkey sausage & bacon
  • smoked salmon on toast with creme fraiche and capers
  • watermelon feta salad
  • a braided lemon bread
  • cheddar leek muffins
  • bourbon banana bread
  • strawberries with sweet creme fraiche
  • fancy coffee
  • cold mint tea
  • a jug ‘o mimosas with blackberries
The glorious spread

I made cascarones as a surprise. When prepping all the egg dishes I carefully broke the top of each eggshell and drained the egg, then rinsed and dried the shell. On Friday night I filled each shell with fruity pebbles and then glued tissue paper over the hole. Except for one – that one was filled with gold glitter. On Saturday a few friends hid the eggs around the garden and then everyone else searched for them. The game is to collect the eggs then smash them over people’s heads. It doesn’t hurt, and it’s ridiculously satisfying. I haven’t giggled like that in a long time. The one who gets hit with the golden cascaron got a trophy (bought at a friend’s yardsale, it read “Good For You”) and a bottle of whiskey.

Kristen got Beth with the golden cascaron
And it made her hair all kinds of glittery
Beth accepting her trophy 
The party turned into a long lazy afternoon

Hungry?

Tuesday night was Big Dan’s last wine tasting chef’s dinner at Kincaid’s, so I met up with his lady and his family to partake of his going out with a bang. The meal was so stinking good that I’m going to break it down here so it can be recorded for posterity.

  • Amuse bouche: a lovely light crab rangoon, paired with champagne.
  • Dish one: A seared scallop with fava puree and savory vanilla lemon sauce. Paired with a sauvignon blanc. My favorite.
  • Dish two: Smoked duck breast with pickled cherries. Paired with a chardonnay. My second favorite dish.
  • Dish three: Here the wine started kicking in and it got hazy. I remember lamp chops in a blueberry sauce with haricot verts, paired with a tasty California red.
  • Dish four: Handmade boar sausage with a side of beans and pickled onion. Paired with an Italian red.
  • Dessert: Roasted peaches with whipped cream. Have you had freshly whipped cream lately? It’s divine. Paired with a dessert wine so delicious that I bought a bottle and am dreaming of when I’ll open it. The only photo I took is this one of Dan’s sister, looking as excited as I felt about this wine.

I didn’t take notes at the time and I got pretty sloshy, but what I remember should be enough to convey that is was an epic performance. Then Dan took us to a dive bar and then the night ended with shots of Jameson while sitting in our living room, as every good night should.

The juice life

Mike is home, I’m settled back in from my travels, and life is good. I’m having to put on the space heaters when I get home at night, and drink lots of tea, but that’s fine by me. I’m not saying that I love it when it gets dark at 5 p.m., but there is something nice about it when you live in a place without clearly defined seasons. It doesn’t ever smell like Fall in San Francisco. It does get nippy in the mornings, but that’s not really any different than a foggy summer morning. So the early dark is the clearest sign we’ve got that time is moving along.

The other sign that time is moving: I bought a juicer, because I have apparently embraced my late-20s yuppiehood with a vengeance. It is a beautiful piece of machinery, capable of pulverizing fruits and vegetables with a single snarl. It is immensely satisfying to use. So far I have been chucking in grapefruit, apple, kiwi, lemon, carrot, celery, kale, and fennel. It’s delicious, and makes for a beautiful orangey juice.

Part of the reason the juicer felt necessary was that I was in a pretty gross state when I got back from Texas. A week and a half of eating and drinking too much and sleeping too little had piled up, and I wasn’t happy to be heading back to Real Life while Mike stayed in Austin. So retail therapy + the promise of a healthier life resulted in a trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond with a coupon in hand.

I am not supposed to go to Bed, Bath & Beyond alone because I buy too many things. Way too many things! But those things are always so useful. Like a towel for your hair that you can lash into place on top of your head, or a pot lid organizer for the pantry, or, say, a JUICER. I also bought a box of jordan almonds that I ate in one sitting, but we can talk about my jordan almond problem another time.

Aside from dedicating my credit card bill to B, B & B, I cooked my butt off on the nights that I was home alone and Mike was in North Carolina (embarrassing Bank of America at their headquarters). I made a curry split pea soup, a warm salad of eggplant with arugula, basil and feta, and roasted the heck out of pumpkin seeds with brown sugar and cayenne.

I also took the week off from alcohol (that’s a bottle of sparkling water you see there) to detox from our Texas celebrations. And to prep for a party with an open bar, which I’ll post about later…

Tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes

I took all of last week off from work because my father was in town. We went camping in Yosemite (more on that later) and then to our friends’ farm. As always, they were super generous with both their time and their produce. I took home a few boxes of fruit and veggies, a dozen eggs from their chickens, a loaf of homemade bread, and more. Bonanza.

The tomatoes, they overfloweth. So last night I made sauce from scratch, using some of the bigger and more beat up tomatoes. I used Smitten Kitchen’s recipe as a guide.

You may be able to see that there is a serious amount of basil in the sauce (garlic too, but that is maybe not so visible). That is because Katie and Larry also gave us 5+ bunches of their basil, including some cool varieties like lemon, lime, and cinnamon basil. They smell and taste exactly like they sound – which is lemony/limey/cinnamony basil goodness. The plain basil went into the sauce, and the lemon and lime basil went into a pesto, which I made with pecans, since that was the only nut I had on hand. Copious amounts of their garlic went in as well. No pics of the pesto, but it looks exactly like all other pestos, even if it tastes a bit different.
There were some tomatoes that were too beautiful to put into the sauce, so I made a tomato tart roughly based on David Leibovitz’s. I used another head of basil to line the crust (a Trader Joe’s crust, because anything involving butter scares me) and to scatter throughout the layers. I also threw in some crushed walnuts, both because I had them leftover from our camping trip (victims of getting packed into the bear canister) and because they are amazing in combination with tomatoes and cheese. Throw them on pizza next time you make it at home – you will not be sorry. Here’s the sucker before the final layer went on.
I topped the tart witha bit of grated cheddar, some cherry tomatoes, and big dollops of Katie’s goat cheese. Her goats are producing more than she can handle, so she’s been making cheese out the wazoo. This cheese was chevre-like, and super tasty. Per David Leibovitz, I attempted to drizzle honey on top, but mine is local and a bit goopy and it plopped more than it drizzled.
While the tart baked and the sauce bubbled, I had my actual dinner – because of course at this point it was after 9 p.m. and I was hungry. I toasted Katie’s dad’s onion-dill bread, spread the chevre on it, and topped it with basil and prosciutto (left over from a restaurant meal – I don’t generally buy meat for use at home). With a glass of red wine, it was perfect.
Not that I didn’t have a bit of the tart when it came out of the oven.
It was super tasty, and I have it all to myself since Mike is a) not that into tomatoes and b) trying to pinpoint an allergy by abstaining from dairy this month. So if you are in the neighborhood, please come by and have some tomato tart with me.