just like heaven

i have returned safely from san francisco. i have returned with a full tummy and delicious memories of some of the best eats i've ever eaten. it was like foodie mecca and with only one strike-out i had a pretty good run.

i nerded out and took photos of most of the meals i ate. i couldn't help myself. i wanted to share them with you but more importantly i don't want to ever forget some of these gems. i was in the city for 4 nights and 5 1/2 days and then i spent two nights in the napa valley. food, wine, food, wine, food, wine. seriously, does it get better than that? i don't think so.

ok. let's get started. here's my culinary recap.

wednesday morning. my first breakfast in san francisco.



i had this super satisfying bowl of yogurt, granola and fresh fruit at the acre cafe in the presidio. it was delicious and super cute!

after this breakfast i walked and walked and walked all over the city. i checked out the presidio and walked along the ocean at crissy field. then i stopped by the exploratorium which was super sweet! after nerding out with interactive science experiments i decided i would go check out the haight ashbury neighborhood. as a teenager i loved the whole idea of haight ashbury and i loved janis joplin and the grateful dead and all that hippie stuff. i still think i may have been born in the wrong era but that is another story.

on my way to haight ashbury i noticed that my stomach was starting to rumble. thankfully i stumbled across herbivore while making my way up (way up!) and down (way down!) divisadero street.



yum, yum, yum and totally vegan. curry and coconut milk soup with noodles and cilantro and an avocado and homemade pickle sandwich on fresh baked foccacio bread. man oh man. delish!

i walked and walked and walked some more and then made my way back to my hotel to "freshen up" and meet up with my friends for dinner. we hopped the BART and made our way over to berkeley.

before leaving for san francisco i had dreams of eating at chez panisse but i hate to "live by a reservation" so i didn't make one. i figured we could get to berkeley and see what happened. miraculously, there was a table in the upstairs cafe of chez panisse. holy shit!! we could not believe our luck.



i tried to take a photograph of my meal but it was really dark in there so it really didn't turn out too well. it was way too cool of a place to use my flash (i hate to draw attention to myself and a flash is NOT discreet) so all you get is a photo of the menu. i had the braised lamb shoulder with garlic rosemary mashed potatoes. oh man. sooooooooooooooo good. the sauce was so wonderful. i savored every single bite. i also had some dessert - peach and nectarine cobbler with mulberry ice cream. holy cow. this place lived up to the hype and served up some serious good eats!!

thursday night was our strike out. my friend had read in her travel guide that sam's grill was one of the oldest and best seafood joints in the city. sounds good right? so we decided to check it out.



well, the oysters were good but you can't really fuck those up unless you serve up bad ones. these were good BUT they served them with worchestershire (ick! i had to ask for some hot sauce) and they barely loosened 'em up from the shell so i had to do that before i could slurp. as for the main course, my sole, did not deserve a photo. this place was a total bummer. if you go to san francisco - please avoid sam's grill.

after this debacle my friends decided to check out the modern art museum and i decided to check out north beach and try to catch some of obama's acceptance speech. i finally found a place with a seat and a tv but sadly i forget its name. after the speech i wandered around and came across vesuvio. great bar. i had several beers and chatted with the bartender and a few patrons before the owners of the bar got there. they sat right by me and i chatted with the one woman all about the slow food movement and other topics involving local, fresh organic eats. good times.

friday the conference didn't start until 2:00 so i had all day to myself. (oh, did i not mention i was sent to the city by the bay for work? ha!). first things first - breakfast.



after a hard night of drinkin' a bloody mary and two tylenol's were the perfect pick-me-up. even funnier - i had my bloody mary breakfast at a little bar called grumpy's. ha! that was exactly how i felt!

after breakfast i headed over to the ferry building. the ferry building was originally built as the hub for people arriving/leaving the city by ferry. now the building has been renovated to include offices and the entire downstairs is an awesome marketplace with specialty shops and restaurants and on weekends they have a farmer's market.

a great place to meet my friends for lunch.



we went to a lil' place called mijitas and i had the braised pork tacos. we also split some chips (homemade - SO good) and guac and i enjoyed a very refreshing margarita.

after lunch we walked around a bit and took in the sights and sounds of the market. i spotted this cool tomato stand and it made me wish i had the fixin's for a blt (or a bot for that matter!).



for dessert we spotted a little gelato stand. that is one of the best things about the big city - you can always find gelato.



i had two scoops - dulce de leche and coffee. YUM!!!

north beach is san francisco's little italy. the smells were so good thursday night (but i wasn't hungry. thanks for nothin' sam's!) that i decided to go back to north beach for dinner on friday night. all i could think of was gnocchi and i knew i could find some in north beach.

yep, here it is.



i ate this delicious bowl of homemade gnocchi with red sauce at trattoria pinocchio. it was soooooooo good. it melted in my mouth. the fresh bread and two glasses of pinot noir were also fantastic. yum, yum, yum.

saturday it was back to work but for our lunch break we opted for cafe de la presse - a super cute little french restaurant. i wanted to go super authentic so i opted for the croque madam and a side of frites.





man oh man. so, so, so good. delicious. amazing. yum!!

after lunch my friends and i hopped in our rental car and headed out to the napa valley for the weekend. now here, i lived by the reservation. if you know anything about good eats and the napa valley then you know about the french laundry. and if you know about the french laundry then you know it is IMPOSSIBLE to get a dinner reservation let alone have the money to pay for such a meal.

with that in mind we opted for thomas keller's other yountville restaurant, bouchon. i was able to score a reservation (about two weeks in advance!) and i was super, super excited about this place.

it DID NOT disappoint. in fact, it was the best fucking meal i have EVER eaten in my entire life. hands down. hands fucking down.



we started out with some mussels. delicious. (sorry for the dark photos but you know how i feel about using the flash on my camera - especially in such a classy joint.)



for the main course i had the veal. now, this was my first experience with veal. for a long time i've thought, "that is mean. it's baby cow." thank god i've gotten over that. this was the best thing i have ever tasted in my entire life.

and it wasn't just veal. it was "braised veal breast with sweetbread sausage, warm bean salad, arugula and sauce gremolata." it was crispy on the outside and the inside was soft and melty. so, so, so good. incredible. totally, 100% lived up to the hype. hell, it exceeded the hype.

i had sweet drunken dreams saturday night and sunday i arose early looking forward to an entire day of wine drinking. we knew a good base was imperative so we decided to have breakfast at sweetie pie's. it was this totally adorable little bakery and cafe in downtown napa.



i went with the scrambled egg and bean breakfast burrito with some fresh fruit. very yummy and super satisfying - an excellent base for my belly which was about to be hammered with wine, wine and more wine.

after breakfast we stopped by a little grocery and picked up the essentials: bottled water, almonds, a chocolate bar, some olives, a fresh baguette and some creamy brie.

we were able to hit six (yes SIX!) wineries for tastings. we started the day at trefethen (fantastic!) and eventually made our way to clos du val (eh), cosentino, (very fun. generous pours and the girl was from coloumbus! i ended up buying two bottles: the pinot grigio [for my gma's christmas eve party] and the zin [for myself.]).

then we hit up nichelini's for more wine and our picnic.



nichelini's winery was my favorite place. it is the oldest family run winery in the valley and it is off the beaten path (about a 20 minute drive from the main road - hwy 29). it was beautiful. very friendly. FREE tastings! i had written down this place cuz one of my books said it was a great picnic spot. and it was. it was marvelous.

there was a bocce ball court and there were fountains and beautiful old italian music was playing in the background. we sat outside at a picnic table with the local cat enjoying the tunes, shmearing soft creamy brie on pieces of crusty baguette that we ripped apart with our hands and sipping cabernet. it was heaven. seriously. if heaven exists this might be it.

from nichelini's we hit mumm (eh. i was there last time. they have sparkling wine and it is beautiful.) and then racing against the clock (every winery closes at 5:00 or 5:30) we were able to get to merryvale. merryvale was ok because they stay open until 6:30 but otherwise it wasn't too memorable. by then my palate was shot anyways.

by now we were feeling the effects but it is only like 6:00 (our dinner reservations weren't until 8:00) so we had to press on. i had read about the calistoga inn so we headed north for a beer. my co-travelers opted for waters here so i plunged in head first and after a day of drinking glass after glass of wine i ordered their wheat beer. it was pretty damn tasty!

we tried to see the geyser - the old faithful of california - but it was $8 and wouldn't go off for another 40 minutes. we piled back in the car - me passing out in the back seat with my feet sticking out the back window. when i woke up we were back in downtown napa and headed to uva.

uva was recommended to us by the very nice ohio girl at cosentino after my friend mentioned she was hungry for italian. there is no photo. please cut me some slack. i could barely order. i think i had some angel hair......

that night i slept not so soundly as i was struck with a killer case of heartburn. ugh. red wine and beer and spicy angel hair pasta with roasted garlic and red sauce put a hurtin' on me. it was worth it though. every burn. every burp. totally worth it.

monday we woke up early and hit sweetie pie's again for our departure breakfast. no picture from here either. i was too tired. i had a big steaming bowl of stick-to-your-ribs oatmeal with brown sugar and currants. yum. a nice start to a day spent sitting in an airport, crammed into the middle seat on a plane full of screaming kids and bad cheeseburgers.

san francisco is at the top of my list. i fucking love the city by the bay. the people, the food, the weather. it is beautiful and fun and i love it. i just fucking love it.

"i wasn't born there. perhaps i'll die there. there's no place left to go, san francisco."

learn from mistakes? i usually don't.

soon i shall be embarking on a fantastic trip - gastronomic bonanza if you will - to the city by the bay. with such a trip on the horizon i've been trying to save my pennies. san francisco is not cheap and since i plan on eating and drinking my way to oblivion i'm gonna need some cash.

hence my thrown together dinner the other night. after a rough day in the basement and an equally rough night of laundry and cookie dough (more on that later) i scanned my fridge and cupboards.

(1) frozen chicken breast
(2) potatoes and sweet corn from the barton pickin' patch
(3) fresh herbs

these items had potential.

first i snipped some fresh thyme and some chives. i coarsely chopped thyme and garlic together and rubbed it all over my chicken breast.



then i seared the breast (skin side down) in a lil' olive oil in my dutch oven. (i love my dutch oven. stove top to oven to table. marvelous!)



then i flipped it and seared the other side. i probably should have let the skin side go for a little longer but i was impatient and hungry.



something i always seem to forget - garlic burns easily. very easily. at first the aroma of the searing chicken was fabulous but then all of the sudden i caught a whiff of burnt garlic. shit!! how many times do i have to learn this lesson? hopefully i won't forget again since i am actually taking the time to document my mishaps here.

so i lifted the chicken out of the dutch oven and scraped out some of the burnt garlic chunks. (rats!!) then i dropped the chicken back in and put in into the oven to finish off.

while the chicken breast was in the oven i boiled three small red potatoes. i left the skins on and i left them whole. i also put on water for the sweet corn. when the potatoes were tender i took them out and gently pressed them down flat - inspiration supplied by the pioneer woman's crash hot potatoes

i checked on the chicken and it needed just a few more minutes so i plopped my smushed, buttered & salted potatoes right in alongside it for a few more minutes of roasting.



while those were finishing up i boiled my sweet corn - just a few minutes - and i chopped up some chives for my potatoes.

here's dinner.



i paired this meal with a mojito because they are so, so, so delicious. despite the burning of the garlic early on this turned out to be a pretty darn good dinner. plopping the potatoes down in the chicken juices to finish off was a good idea.

so i mentioned cookie dough earlier. i don't want to toot my own horn or anything but i am kinda known for my oatmeal cranberry cookies. i take them to events and to family gatherings and i always pass them out as gifts around the holidays. people like 'em. i like 'em. the woman i work with likes 'em enough that she gave me $10 to make her some. she said she had a craving. ha!

i doubled it so i had a ton of dough and i let it chill in the fridge while i made (and ate) my dinner. with so much dough i had a long night ahead of me.

this is just the beginning.



and this was just about halfway through.



i ended up stopping shortly after this due to sheer exhaustion. using another pioneer woman tip i rolled up the remaining dough into a log and wrapped it in wax paper. i put that inside a freezer bag and i figure i'll surprise my co-worker one day with a couple more cookies.

i'll be taking a break here for that big gastronomic bonanza i was talking about. i'll return with photographs, detailed notes and i'm sure a couple of good stories.

THIS is what i am fucking talking about

after a shitty golf game mike and i stopped by his parent's house to raid their garden. we got potatoes, tomatoes, sweet corn, acorn squash and blackberries. woohoo! when we got home it was too late to eat so i got to take a ton of stuff home with me in the morning. what to do with a giant bag (like 3 cups or so) of fresh picked blackberries?

pie!!

and, it just so happens my good friend kp makes the best pie crust this side of the mississipi. here was the deal - i would trade kp a pork chop dinner for a pie crust. thankfully she agreed.

i also had three peaches i picked up from szalay's.

i made the filling.



kp made the crust.




it's the best pie crust i've ever tasted. i'm serious. better than my gma's, my mom's , pretty much anyone i've ever met. she has a gift. a gift for flaky, delicious pie crusts.



she even churched up the top a little.



for dinner i decided on smashed pots (still had a lil' buttermilk. it lasts forever), roasted acorn squash and pork chops. i cut the squash in half and cut a lil' piece off the end so it would stand up. i put them cut side down in a loaf pan with a lil' water at 375 degrees. these were in there for a while. i'm not sure how long. just cook it until you can stick a fork in it easily.

once they are tender drain the water from the pan and flip the squash so the cut side is up. i put a few teaspoons of butter and brown sugar in the center of each squash and mashed it up a little bit. then back in the oven to finish off.

here's the squash and the pie cooking at the same time.



while that was going i cut up and boiled two potatoes. after about 10 minutes i put a skillet on medium high heat and once it was nice and hot i put a lil' olive oil in the pan. oh - before that i took my two pork shops and sprinkled some lawry's seasoning salt and stuck a piece of rosemary onto one side.

i seared one side and then the other just for a couple of minutes. then i put the whole pan into the oven and cooked them until they reached about 150 degrees.

here are the chops.



i covered them with foil in the pan and let them rest for about 5-7 minutes. during that time i smashed the potatoes with some butter, buttermilk, salt and pepper. i still had a little dill left so i chopped it up and stirred that in too.

and here's dinner.



fantastico! i paired this meal with an in-heat wheat cuz i had one hangin' out in my fridge from the weekend and the molson canadians that kp brought over were in her cooler all the way out on the porch.

and here's dessert a hour or so later.



here are my friends kp, mk and aNw. they like pie.



i decided we should have mojitos with our pie. then i realized i was lacking some essentials. i had the rum and the fresh mint but my ice cube trays were filled with barely frozen cubes, i did not have club soda (i did have tonic water) and i didn't have fresh lime slices (i did have a bottle of lemon juice). i improvised and concocted the strongest, strangest mojitos in town.

they went nicely with the pie.



but really, what doesn't go well with a homemade peach blackberry pie?

BLT hold the L add some O

i don't get paid until friday and i have $10 in my wallet. this does not equate to "fine dining" this equates to "use all the leftover crap in my fridge and pantry." i scrounged around and found the following items:
(1) 4 strips of bacon left over from my mess o' greens
(2) 3 slices of rye bread
(3) a bag of small peeled onions from mike's garden
(4) a tomato from my grandma's garden
(5) 3 potatoes from mike's parent's garden
(6) 1/2 a package of cream cheese
(7) some buttermilk
(8) a few sprigs of dill
(9) questionable bag of a few leaves of romaine lettuce
(10) a nice lil' pickling cuke right out of my garden


whoa! what a bounty! dinner should be no problemo. i decided on garlic smashed potatoes and a blt. to get started i cut up my potatoes and peeled three cloves of garlic for roasting.



i enjoyed a leinenkugel's berry weiss while preparing my dinner because a friend left three of them in my fridge this weekend. it is sweet - very sweet - and i can't really drink more than one at a single sitting. not bad though and the fact that it was free made it that much better.

next i put my garlic cloves in a lil' foil packet with some olive oil to roast.



it is much better to do a whole bulb of garlic (unpeeled) but i was only making potatoes for one so that seemed unnecessary. plus, i only had a few cloves.

here it is roasting away.



if you do a whole bulb you can peel the cloves off and squeeze one end and the warm, gooey garlic oozes right out. ooze it onto some good crackers. YUM!

while the garlic was roasting i started to boil my potatoes and fry my bacon. while that was stuff was boiling and frying away i washed and chopped my veggies. it turns out the questionable bag of leftover romaine was more than questionable. it had seen better days. much, much better days. when your lettuce is slimy it is time to say good bye. poop!
how would i make a blt without the lettuce?

how about a bot - bacon, onion and tomato. sounds good to me!

here are my supplies for the smashed potatoes.



leftover city. i used the buttermilk to make delicious homemade biscuits for my saturday brunch contribution of biscuits and gravy. i used the cream cheese (well, half of this package and two other packages) to make those wonderful bacon wrapped jalepeno thingies as my 'dish to pass' for the annual patio party. (HUGE success again! people freakin' love those things!) and i picked up the dill the other day just for kicks.

i drained the potatoes once they were fork tender and tossed 'em back in the pan. i added the roasted garlic, about 2 tablespoons or so of cream cheese, a lil' buttermilk and some salt and pepper. then i smashed.



next i toasted 2 of my 3 slices of rye bread and shmeared 'em with some mayo. hellman's only please. miracle whip makes me want to puke. plus it isn't even mayo. it's freakin' salad dressing. it was a light shmearing. i don't like too much mayo and when i order blt's out (which i do a lot cuz it is my favorite sammich) i always ask for the mayo on the side.

then i constructed my bot. here it is missing its top half.



and here is the finished product.



i topped the smashed potatoes with some of the chopped up dill and as a side i enjoyed the rest of the tomato and some slivers of cuke. i paired this meal with a 312 - one of my favorite wheat beers (especially after i visited the brewery in chicago last year!)

mess o' goodness

my boyfriend has a green thumb. electric, neon green. his garden always kicks ass and the bags of goodies he sends home with me totally rock. this summer he tried his hands at growing collard greens (one of my all-time favorite foods on the planet) and no surprise - they've been a total success.

look at these babies!



i cut the thick stems off and then stacked the leaf halves on top of each other and roughly chopped them into big squares.

i set those aside and started frying up a couple of strips of bacon in a big pot. i browned the bacon and then took it out of the pot and crumbled it up. i chopped up half of an onion, threw it into the bacon grease and cooked it until soft and brown. then i put the bacon back in the pan and tossed in the greens. i wilted these for about 5-7 minutes.



then i poured in a can of chicken broth.


(no product placement here!)

i put a lid on the pot and simmered the greens over medium heat for about 45 minutes or so. these are pretty bitter if you don't really cook 'em down and they are so awesome at the end that they are totally worth the time.

once the greens were done i topped them off with my boyfriend's dad's homemade hot vinegar (he also has an electric green thumb and a lot of time on his hands.)



to compliment the greens i just boiled up some perogies. usually i'll boil them and then fry 'em for a minute or two in a pan with some butter and caramelized onions. this night i was too hungry and after spending an hour on greens i just wanted to eat.

IHOP's got nothin' on me!

my friend xenia from the blogger realm said she has been craving IHOP cuz apparently, "they don't have fluffy american pancakes" in her neck of the woods. this of course was after my rant about why going out to breakfast sucks. i stand by that rant and decided that sunday i would test myself by cookin' up some pancakes.

since i did not travel to black out island saturday night i was able to get up and get to the grocery store at a reasonable hour. also, it was pay week so i splurged and picked up some sausage links. i got the maple flavored ones. yum. yum. yum.

my favorite pancake recipe is an old standby and can be found in the joy of cooking. here's what it looks like inside my edition.



wow. that photo sucks. you should probably own a joy of cooking anyways. go pick one up. get it from the library if you must just so that you can write down this recipe and the one for banana bread. YUM!

speaking of bananas -
i always seem to have rotten ones lying around.



i decided to make use of this one and i mashed it into the pancake batter. this is really, really good.
i've done it before and i'll do it again!

while i was whippin' up this batter i started cookin' up a few of those sausage links in a lil' skillet and i got my griddle nice and hot. (i LOVE my griddle/grill. it rules. get one of these too.)

once it was nice and hot i used a 1/4 c. measuring cup to pour the batter out onto the griddle. when they get bubbles that start bursting they are ready to flip.
these ones are just about ready to flip.



they should look like this:



i loaded these babies up with real butter (again - fuck margarine!) and a lot of maple syrup! i poured maple syrup all over the maple sausage links too. outta sight!!

(historical side note - when i was a youngster i didn't like syrup cuz i hated to have sticky hands. wtf?! what a neurotic little nut case i was. man, i missed out on a lot when i was a kid!)

the other day i mentioned that although the egg-in-a-hole (aka picture frame eggs according to the viper) was delicious it would likely not replace my usual hungover weekend breakfast of dippy eggs and fried potatoes and it has not. last saturday i whipped up my favorite breakfast simply because it is my favorite.

here is what it looks like:



dippy eggs are rather self explanatory. you crack two eggs in a hot pan and when they are lookin' about done you flip 'em and let 'em cook for just a few more seconds and you're good to go. the potatoes though - i'll go ahead and break those down so you can give 'em a whirl.

i use red potatoes. i like to cut them up in little cubes. however, before i do that i slice up about 1/2 an onion and toss it into a hot pan with both butter and olive oil. once they start to brown i toss in the potatoes and sprinkle the whole mess VERY liberally with lawry's season salt and cook 'em until they are nice and crispy. so good. so very, very good.

now please, please, please do me a favor and cook your own breakfast from here on out! you can do it and i guarantee it will be better than any over priced crapola you'll get out there!

fine mexican dining

you are about to learn the secret to authentic mexican cuisine. the best of the best. muy delicioso. and all for just $1.99!


ok. so i lied. there is nothing authentic or delicioso about a $1.99 food club taco kit. however, when times are tough and you feel like entertaining tacos aren't half bad. i ain't too proud and thankfully neither were my dinner guests!

i had about a pound of ground beef in my freezer from the last cousin's dinner, a few leaves of romaine lettuce from my lunchtime salads, a single tomato, (on it's way out but shhh! don't tell), about a quarter of a brick of cheddar cheese and half a container of sour cream. i also picked a few green onions from my garden.

since i just recently used my last can of black beans i opted for some rice as a good filler. i made it using chicken broth instead of water (thanks mrs. weitz for the tip). i cooked the ground beef in a skillet and after it was drained i added the magical food club "taco seasoning." i washed and chopped all my veggies, grated some cheese and cooked the shells in the oven for about 7 minutes.

my friend megos brought over some chips and salsa and we all opted for the taco salad over the regular stuffed tacos. i've been doing this forever and i find it a much better way to eat 'em. i crush up 2-3 shells and then add all my fixin's. delish!

here's proof! hardly anything left!



after we all pigged out we watched a marvelous movie: the testament of dr. mabuse. scary! awesome! check it out!