“The City” trip

Last week during our holiday week off, the wife and I took a quick trip to “The City.” It’s funny because I only learned, in the last year or so, that if you live in this area, “The City” refers to San Francisco. I know the same is said about Manhattan if you live in the outskirts or outer Burroughs of NYC. We like to take quick trips to the City since it is so close.

There’s a hotel that we like in Berkeley because it is dog friendly. They have recently made some changes (paid parking instead of free self parking) that made the stay not as great – mostly because their machine that lets you in and out wasn’t working properly with the room key. Nevertheless it is a great location for us.

We had never been to Stinson beach, which is north of the City near the Muir Woods on the upper peninsula above San Francisco. We had previously been to Muir Woods and had a wonderful hike through the majestic trees. D didn’t realize to get to Stinson beach you had to take the windy, twisty mountainous roads with sheer cliff drop offs. Nevertheless, we made it after a bit of a drive. I think the dog got a little nauseous with the drive (normally she’s a trooper in the car). We grabbed some food at the Parkside Cafe snackbar. The snackbar is window-service small things like hot dogs, sandwiches, etc. I had a hot dog and a cup of their clam chowder. The chowder actually was decent though there was a little bit of grit, which hopefully means they actually make it from real ingredients. The beach that was right behind the cafe did not allow dogs so we drove into the neighborhood just north of this area, parked, and hiked to a beach that allows dogs (and even off-leash dogs). At first I was a bit hesitant to let Sophie (the dog) off-leash because she’s not always the nicest with other dogs – she likes to bark at them and sometimes growl. Eventually we made it to an area void of dogs so let her off leash. Luckily she mostly just stays near us and doesn’t wander more than ~10 feet from us. We spent some time just enjoying the ocean and waves and then headed to the hotel before D and I went into the city for dinner.

We figured by going during the middle of the week (between Christmas and New Years), it may be easier to get a reservation and not be so busy in SF. We booked a reservation at Tosca Cafe, which is just near the SF Chinatown.

After ordering drinks at the bar we were seated in their private room (their main area was full along with the bar area). It felt more intimate. The walls were covered with a mixture of older movie posters as well as pictures of celebrities and such that had eaten at Tosca. My first cocktail was their House “Cappuccino” 1919 (Marie Duffau Bas Armagnac, Buffalo Trace Bourbon, Dandelion Chocolate Ganache, Organic Milk). It was delicious. We started off with the cheese plate, which was a combination of hard and soft cheeses. I had the crispy pig tail. This was a crunchy/sticky mixture of the tail skin and gelatinous subcutaneous fat with the small amount of lean meat on the bone. For my main, I had the octopus. I really enjoyed it as they prepared the meat well. Many times octopus can be a bit chewy and rubbery. This was not. It had a nice snap and then the inner part was tender. The Spanish octopus was paired with Black Garbanzo Beans, Tomato, Farro, Parsley Mayonnaise. Overall a nice dish.

My second cocktail was the Dolomite Bounty (Bourbon, Cocchi Rosa, Yellow Chartreuse, Lemon, Honey, Bitters). This was refreshing (different than the richness of the House Cappuccino).

We tried their Tiramisu for dessert. Honestly, it was too soft overall – lacked variation in texture that I’d expect from a good Tiramisu.

After dinner we walked across the street to City Lights Bookstore, which D knew about and I guess is famous. Right next to the bookstore is Jack Kerouac Alley, which had some quotes in the large pavers on the ground. Since we were in the Chinatown area, it was neat that some of them had both Chinese and English.

D was still hungry so we stopped at Hunan Homes (D’s favorite chinese place in SF) and picked up some food to bring back to our hotel.

The next morning we stopped in Berkeley and had breakfast at Cafe M. Then we took Sophie to Cesar Chavez Park right next to our hotel. On a clear day you get a beautiful view of the City and the Golden Gate bridge in the distance. After this we headed home. A nice quick visit.

-StewsCat

Thanksgiving 2016

Typically for Thanksgiving we keep things pretty low-key. The last few years I’ve typically made Thanksgiving dinner for just a few folks (myself, my wife, and her two sisters). I’ve done traditional – turkey, cranberry, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, etc – to a play on Thanksgiving (turkey chili, scratch turkey enchiladas, sweet potato ravioli).

However, this year my family was celebrating my grandma’s “88-89″th birthday the day after Thanksgiving. Most people are in the southern CA region so that was where her surprise birthday dinner was to be held. We made the last-minute decision to drive down to socal on Thanksgiving morning. We figured this gave us the best shot at avoiding most of the traffic.

The largest Thanksgiving 5K race called Run To Feed The Hungry is held every year and the starting line is just outside our neighborhood. Luckily they open up an avenue of exit for us that live here because otherwise we’d be stuck in our neighborhood/house until well after 11 am. Luckily the drive down was swift – virtually no traffic.

We stopped at Harris Ranch for lunch and both had the rib eye dip sandwich. It was quite delicious. They also had a bakery onsite and because we were attending Thanksgiving Dinner at my sister’s empty-handed, I elected to pick up some cookies (chocolate chip, snickerdoodles, and oatmeal raisin) to bring to dinner.

We made it down by 4:30 pm (left our house around 9:30 am) and dinner didn’t start until 5:30 pm so we timed it just right.

Thanksgiving dinner was delicious. The food was a combination of traditional Thanksgiving fare as well as some Chinese food. It was potluck style so the burden of cooking a ton of food was spread out. I usually like to contribute and actually cook something but it was actually kinda nice this year not to have to worry about cooking/baking anything.

Someone had made Taiwanese Red-Braised Pork Belly. This was one of my grandpa’s favorite dishes. He loved eating the fat of the 3 layer pork. When I was young I didn’t like eating the “fat” part of this dish but as I have grown up and learned that “fat = flavor,” I ate the fat along with the lean meat and it was yummy.

After dinner my nieces and nephews decided to have a dance party. My sister had obtained this cool disco light at the store and turned their upstairs loft room into a dance place. Man kids have so much freaking energy.

On Friday before grandma’s dinner, our friends decided to have a Friendsgiving. While we wouldn’t be able to hang out with them all night, they elected to start the get together a little earlier so that we could attend and see everyone. It has been a few years since we all hung out. These are high school friends of ours that I (we)’ve known for at least 20 years. It was good to see them and their kiddos.

Grandma’s surprise birthday dinner went great. Things are a lot different nowadays with all the little kids running around. I still remember when I was the little kid at these huge family gatherings.

We drove back on Saturday morning, trying to avoid the crazy traffic that accompanies the Sunday after Thanksgiving. The forecast also was for rain starting Saturday afternoon. Before setting out on the open road, however, we stopped at my MIL’s new digs. The new place was nice and it was good to see them. On the way back north we took the 99 instead of the 5. We stopped at a place called Moo Creamery in Bakersfield. It was pretty good stuff and tucked away in an industrial area of the city. Unfortunately we ran into both traffic and weather on the drive up. There were a few times where we ended up in stop and go traffic for 30-45 minutes. Then the rain started and was intermittent but heavy during the last hour of the drive. Fortunately it went smoothly.

I’m loving the new car and the gas mileage it obtains on the highways. I averaged 39 MPG on the drive down and 41 MPG on the drive back up north. Not too shabby especially since I wasn’t being light on the gas pedal either.

-StewsCat

Napa/Yountville lunch

This past Veterans Day, the wife and I were both off work so I suggested we head over to the Napa Valley for some lunch. It seemed like we had been getting over to Napa a bunch of times in the last year but haven’t been in a while. I figured it was time to have a nice meal at one of the many awesome dining establishments. Initially I was going to make reservations for Bouchon, a Thomas Keller restaurant, but it seemed a bit heavy for lunch. I had heard good things about Mustards Grill in Yountville. This is one of Cindy Pawlcyn’s places and she has another restaurant in St. Helena (also in the Napa Valley) and then one more in Monterey.

Their only reservations for Veterans Day for lunch were for either 11:45 am or 2 pm. So we elected for the 11:45 am one. I anticipated that there would be some traffic on the 80 since Friday typically has some traffic and allotted about an hour and forty-five minutes to get there. We left a few minutes late and in fact hit some traffic, though some of it was related to actual minor fender benders. I could see that we’d be late for our reservation and luckily the restaurant was happy to push our reservation back to noon. Upon arrival we were seated quickly in the corner of the quant restaurant. This is located directly off the main highway that leads from Napa to Yountville all the way up to Calistoga. Outside the restaurant they have some small gardens that provide some of the produce they use in their cooking.

I enjoyed that the entire front facade of the restaurant was comprised of windows, allowing for a lot of natural light, especially with our corner table. The waiter promptly came over and went over the specials and took our drink order. I tried a cocktail that was comprised of vodka with apple cider and something else and was quite refreshing.

The wife elected to have the daily soup (Coconut curry butternut squash soup with chili oil) to start and I went with their house made potato chips and dipping sauce. I enjoyed the chips as they were sliced thinly and fried to a nice crunch. For our mains we both went with specials they had for that day. My wife had the Mahi Mahi Tostada with cabbage, beans and cheese and I went with their lamb burger and fries. The lamb was freshly ground that morning. I ordered it medium rare and my only complaint is that it came out medium to medium-well. Otherwise the taste of the burger was delicious and not too gamey. We finished off the meal with the chocolate hazelnut tarte and espresso ice cream (not pictured), which even the table next to us was like “that looks SOOO good,” and it was.

img_20161111_122943 — *Mahi mahi tostada*

img_20161111_122946 — *Lamb burger & fries*

After stuffing ourselves silly, we realized we needed to get some activity in to burn off some of the many calories we just had. So we went over to downtown Yountville (Mustards Grill is a few miles north of the downtown area) and walked around for awhile. There was this cool little statue of a fireman and I thought the back of the statue had cooler details than the front.

They have an Artwalk – with various art installations along the sidewalks (apparently they are also available for acquisition if you have that kind of dough).

We also walked over to the French Laundry, which is on my bucket list.

img_20161111_135340 — *The French Laundry*

A bunch of my relatives have already been but I have yet to partake…one day. Across from the restaurant is their garden where they grow a lot of the produce they use. They even have a small chicken coop.

After we walked through the small quaint neighborhood back to where I parked the car we made our way back to Sacramento. It was the afternoon on a Friday by this time and the drive back was slow going. Upon arrival back in town, we stopped at Sears to pick up my new glasses (they had a BOGO deal the day we happened to go look at glasses). Now I’ve got 3 pairs – one of which will be my running glasses I’m sure. Overall was a fun holiday day.

-StewsCat

Portland Vacation – Day 3 and 4

Saturday (Day 3) started with brunch at Imperial located inside the Hotel Lucia. They’re known for their fried chicken so I ordered it again. This time it came with a biscuit on the side.

So after we were fed and well-caffeinated, we walked over to the Portland Saturday Market. We had visited the Market in 2012 but it was fun to walk through again. When we arrived, there were some street performers doing a combination of acrobatics but showing off their flexibility (and double jointed-ness). We then walked through looking at the various stalls and the trinkets and the like. We then jumped onto the public transit (train) and headed over to the Portland Art Museum. The museum had some interesting exhibits going on, in particular they had Native American fashion and how it intertwined with today’s modern fashion. We walked through the entire museum and spent a good few hours there.

IMAG3044

Since we were further south in the downtown area, Deborah wanted to see the Portlandia Statue so I set about trying to find it.

IMAG3046

We stopped in at Potbelly Sandwich Shop for lunch. This was nostalgic for me because I used to go to Potbelly a bunch when I visited/lived in Chicago. I was introduced to it when I was in undergrad and would eat it regularly when I visited while living in Michigan. The wife appreciated the tasty sandwich. After lunch we hung out at the hotel for a little bit then headed out for a drink before dinner.

On the Esquire show Best Bars in America that we watch, the guys go to get Spanish Coffee. We figured it’d be a nice little drink before dinner. So off to Huber’s Cafe, which is the originator of this drink that consists of Kahlua, Bacardi 151, Bols Triple Sec & Coffee topped w/ fresh whipped cream & nutmeg, flamed tableside. The waiters make this drink in front of you and it is fairly impressive. Because it was warmer out, my wife had it on the rocks and I tried the original. I must say that it is a tasty beverage and heavy on the alcohol. It was a good starter as we walked to dinner after having the drink.

Spanish Coffee

Huber’s Cafe

Dinner was at Little Bird Bistro, which is also one of Gabriel Rucker’s restaurants. During our previous visit in 2012, we had dined at Le Pigeon on E Burnside. That meal was delectable so I had no doubt we were in for a good dinner. I started the meal with the Roasted Bone Marrow and followed it with the Fried chicken “Coq au Vin”. The Roasted Bone Marrow came with 3 bones (sliced horizontally to allow easy access to the marrow) along with some pastrami, pickles, and toast slices. It was very buttery as expected. The “Coq au Vin” also had a nice crisp to the outside and tender juicy meat.

After dinner we had some more drinks and then turned in so we could catch our flight the following morning. Sunday morning we had breakfast in our hotel’s other restaurant: Urban Farmer. We then took the train to the airport and hopped on the flight home.

The weather in Portland held up beautifully while we were there. It was sunny and a little warm and only hinted at some rain when we were getting on the train back to the airport (light sprinkles).

Overall the trip was extremely fun and as you can see there was a lot of eating/drinking involved. Portland is definitely a fun recommended city to visit. We look forward to going back up to visit after our friend moves up there.

-StewsCat

Portland Vacation -Day 2

Day 2 started a bit slow. Since we were out late, we slept in. I woke up first and decided that I should get in some miles before starting the day. It was July 1st and I like to run on the first of each month to set the tone for the month in running. Rather than attempting an outdoor run (also because I didn’t bring my running belt nor my GPS watch), I elected to do a treadmill run. I haven’t run on a treadmill in many years.

The hotel had a very nice fitness room (available 24/7 with your hotel key card). There was a combination of treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bike, weight machines and free weights. I hopped on a LifeFitness Treadmill, which was pretty cool because each one had a screen that showed your progress but also doubled as a TV. The hotel provided free headphones that you could plug in so you had sound. At first I started my run with no headphones and just watching TV without sound. After about 1 mile I hopped off and got me some headphones. I forget how hard it is to run on a treadmill sometime. I started with a 5 minute warmup at a speed between 4-5 mi/hr. I then upped my speed to 6 mi/hr and ventured into the 6.5 mi/hr range to try to average out to 10 min/mile pace (6 mi/hr for the entire run). My run effort level was higher because I had been drinking and eating a ton the day before. I ended up putting in a little over 4 miles at an overall just under 10:15 min/mile pace.

After I was all cleaned up, we headed on out in search of brunch. One place that I wanted to try was Tasty n Sons. We bought another TriMet day pass and hopped on a bus. We took it 20 minutes north of city center (east of the river) into the Boise neighborhood. By the time we arrived (around 11 am), the place was packed and the line of people waiting for a table spilled out the door. We put our names down and had some coffee while we waited. An opening at the small bar (it sat 7 total) allowed us to get a table a little earlier than normal (we still waited about 50 minutes). We split one of their Chocolate Potato Doughnuts, which was fairly light. I had the Fried Egg and Cheddar Biscuit with Fried Chicken. A big reason we went to this restaurant was that my wife wanted to try Shakshuka (baked eggs n tomato stew with merguez sausage), which came with some grilled bread slices. Shakshuka is a dish of North African origin and now is popular in many Middle Eastern countries. It was rather tasty and I’d definitely have it again given a chance. I had a bourbon cocktail since I already had my coffee and hey I was on vacation! We chatted briefly with the bartender and got some ideas on places to check out.

After lunch we walked around the Boise neighborhood some but jumped back onto the bus to visit the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Old Town Chinatown. I’ve noticed that in almost every city in the US, the Chinatown region is also where a lot of the homeless people live and Portland is no exception. The Chinese Garden was an interesting experience. We learned that there is a sister Chinese Garden in China. There was some other interesting stuff that I learned but have since forgot, I’ll just leave you with some pictures of the place.

From the garden we walked up back towards the Pearl District for a snack. Back in 2012 when we visited, we made the obligatory stop at Voodoo Donuts. My friend Tim, who has lived in Portland for a few years now, said that we needed to check out Blue Star Donuts because it was much better than Voodoo. I will say that Blue Star has some more innovative and intriguing combinations of flavors. We tried two different flavors: 1) Blueberry Bourbon & Basil Donut and 2) I can’t remember

We finished just in time to walk back to our hotel, The Nines, for happy hour at the rooftop restaurant Departure, helmed by Top Chef Alum Gregory Gourdet. One of my good friends from San Diego was a college roommate with Gregory and she said he used to cook her awesome food. Happy Hour is on a few rooftop balconies that overlook the city.

IMAG3034 — *View from rooftop happy hour*

We ordered some cocktails as well as some snack foods (Departure Wings and Vegetarian Maki Roll of the Day). The Departure Wings were fabulous and even though my wife doesn’t normally eat wings, she loved these. They were basically like popsicle sticks of tender chicken in a crisp outer shell.

Vegetarian Maki Roll

Departure Wings

After taking a break in our hotel room we headed off to find some dinner. Another place that we both wanted to try served chicken rice. So off we went to Nong’s Khao Man Gai off of E Burnside just across Burnside Bridge via Bus. I guess Khao Man Gai roughly translates to chicken and rice. The dish is deceptively simple yet yields some good flavors. It was a nice little meal to cap off our Friday.

Guess I did have enough to separate out Day 2 from Day 3 and 4.

-StewsCat

StewsCat

Running, baking, cooking, drinking

Category: StewsCatEats

“The City” trip

Thanksgiving 2016

Napa/Yountville lunch

Portland Vacation – Day 3 and 4

Portland Vacation -Day 2