Sun, Nov 30 - Napa Valley

11.30am - breakfast at Bouchon Bakery : a delicious grilled veggie sandwich (jardinier or whatever they called it), Ritesh's double espresso macchiato, and my green tea, which turned out to be black tea, ah well.11.34am - I know, I know, I should have moved in closer. But honestly, I'm a lot less taken with the quality of Bouchon Bakery's pastries than I am with that of their adorable little courtyard. On the right is a pain au chocolat, which was entirely unremarkable, next to a pistachio citrus brioche w/ some dried cherries, which was a little on the dry side but at least gets points for the originality of its ingredients. That's all we got, the rest of the pastries didn't even look appealing - just the standard monster sized versions of croissants etc. Considering the respect Bouchon seem to have in general for French cuisine, and how well they pull off the savory stuff, it's a little odd that this doesn't translate to their pastries.

Hiking in Bothe Natural Park south of Calistoga, all the way up to Coyote Peak. Beautiful, just what we needed after all the stress. I grew up around a lot of forest and have many fond memories of childhood summers spent playing in the woods with my best friend and our dogs. Nowadays, still, I get ridiculously happy whenever I'm surrounded by trees - it almost makes me giddy with joy. So giddy, in fact, that I am known to start running with excitement as soon as there are some woods in sight, like my dog used to do when she was let off the leash. Part of this is cultural (Germans LOVE their forests), but then again, I don't see many Germans jumping up and down with joy at the sight of their forests when I'm over there, so it must have something to do with being deprived of my natural habitat living in LA, and then being overwhelmed with emotion upon returning to it...

Fairy Tale Forest

3.19pm - at Taylor's Automatic Refresher, a St. Helena institution. In front, my reasonably wholesome seared Ahi burger w/ ginger-wasabi coleslaw (fantastic! I'd eat another one right now if I could) and spicy sweet potato fries, in the back Ritesh's killer Western burger w/ blue cheese, bacon and an onion ring (on the burger) as well as his chili-cheese fries. He has since asked me to intervene if he is ever ordering this kind of stuff again...

4.05pm - a very disappointing $6.25 coconut-lemongrass cupcake from Dean&Deluca, as we're about to hit the road to drive back to LA. In case you're wondering, there was not the slightest hint of lemongrass flavor to this thing, and it was so heavy and buttery I couldn't eat it. I mean, whatever happened to cupcakes being light and airy? I don't like to toss food, but this one was just nasty. What a rip off.

8.42pm - somewhere on the I-5, stuck in traffic and fog on the way back home

8.53pm - an apple galette, also from Dean&Deluca. Better than the cupcake, but really nothing to write home about

10.38pm - tuna sandwich from Dean&Deluca, shared with Ritesh - this one was great, and much enjoyed. It seems like we pretty much liked every savory thing we had this weekend, and none of the sweet stuff. Maybe it's us... don't they say one loses one's taste for sweet flavors as one gets older? I never thought I'd say this, but if I were to never eat another piece of cake again, I don't really think I'd care very much...

Oh, and by the way, we didn't get home until after 1am. Took us more than 9 hours from Yountville to LA, instead of the 7 we expected.

Sat Nov 29 - Slanted Door, Bouchon

10.14am - we were staying at this smallish movie themed hotel , but did we get to sleep in the Maltese Falcon room? No , we got Sister Act right across from it instead... come on, people... Sister Act???11.22am - a virgin Mary, for brunch at The Slanted Door, with Ritesh

11.25am - The Slanted Door is a Vietnamese restaurant (as well as a San Francisco institution and an OBVIOUS inspiration for RockSugar - down to the black sesame rice crackers), so we had to try their pho - this is the original, with beef, and it was amazing. I've had my share of good pho in Vietnam, but I think this is the best I've ever tasted...

11.32am - the hamachi collar - easily the best fish I've had all year, hands down. Ritesh agrees, and he's much harder to please than I am.

11.50am - lemongrass tofu with shitake mushrooms and red onion. this is the same tofu that they served at Greens, prepared differently obviously, but it's from the Hodo Soy Beanery right here in San Francisco

11.55am - fabulous eggplant

11.55am - the best kale EVER, with caramelized shallots and garlic. How on earth do they get Kale to taste this great? I can caramelize all the shallots and garlic I want, and it wouldn't turn out this way.

12.17pm - Ritesh's double espresso, of which I had a good few sips

12.19pm - red banana ice cream on black sesame meringue, very intriguing taste, definitely different from regular banana

2pm - a quick stopover in Berkeley on the way to the Napa Valley - I'd wanted to go to the Cheeseboard Collective in Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto to try their famous scones, but being a collective, they were closed the entire Thanksgiving weekend. Good for them! So we just got a (very good) little hazelnut-chocolate macaron from a pastry shop down the street

3.40pm - and here we are in Yountville, in the Napa Valley, home to Thomas Keller's French Laundry, Ad Hoc, Bouchon and Bouchon Bakery. Bouchon and Bouchon Bakery are right next to each other, separated by a lovely little courtyard, and our hotel was right across the street from both (this, as you may suspect, was no accident), so we unloaded the car and immediately headed to the Bouchon Bakery for a snack: green tea and a pistachio macaron which, unfortunately, was way too big and not that great, dry and chewy and just a tad old. Bit of a letdown, and made us lower our expectations for dinner. I mean, with macarons as lousy as this, what's all the fuss about?

6.44pm - Desperate times... I was starving, and it was another 2 hours until our reservation at Bouchon. Our hotel room is a cute, converted rail car, hence the oddly longish shape...

8.01pm - we got so hungry, we went out for appetizers at Bistro Jeanty down the street. Each of these glasses of wine (mine was a Pinot, Ritesh's a Zinfandel, both from the Napa Valley) cost the equivalent of about two entire bottles of the kind we normally buy. Every time I feel guilty for spending so much money on raw and vegan health food, I remind myself that any raw foodie thingie I might be splurging on is cheaper than most decent alcohol ( I could get almost three vegan rose-cardamom cupcakes for the price of one of these glasses of wine), so that puts things in perspective. Especially since I don't really drink all that much...

8.03pm - escargots, shared with Ritesh

8.44pm - and here we are, finally, at Bouchon! We had a reservation for Ad Hoc for the same night, but as they offer a fixed menu only and we weren't so excited about the day's entree, we decided to cancel that one and stick with Bouchon. This is some fresh baked bread w/ a white bean-basil dip. The paper sleeve around the napkin is actually the menu...

9.12pm - our appetizer, one of the specials of the day: oxtail ragout on roasted polenta, with some prunes on top. Very, very nice. The polenta was perfect, creamy on the inside, slightly crunchy on the outside, just beautiful. And the oxtail was so soft it just melted in your mouth. I don't think I've had any oxtail dish since I was a kid in Germany, so this brought back lots of good memories, but was of course light years away in terms of quality.

9.20pm - a simple salad to cleanse the palate - just the quality of this bibb lettuce is astounding. And the dressing, I think, is the one that I made once from the Bouchon cookbook, a lemon vinaigrette salted with blended cornichons and capers. Perfect.

Just the view to my left - pretty red velvet banquette...

9.41pm - another special of the day: the $15 black truffle fries - LOVED them!

9.41pm - and this was a revelation, there's no other way to put it. This is our entree, the salmon pot au feu: salmon poached so that it is barely done, with a horseradish crust on top, and then served on a bed of oxtail ragout (our theme for the night, apparently) w/ pearl onions. The combination of fish and beef was something we hadn't experienced before, and it blew us away. The intense flavor of the oxtail is just fantastic with the salmon, and the horseradish added another subtle element to it (although Ritesh wasn't too taken with the horseradish).
This was a fabulous dinner, and my only regret is that we couldn't eat any more than we did. As it is, we couldn't even finish the truffle fries. It would have been great for each of us to have had an appetizer and an entree, instead of sharing one of each as we always do. Or to at least try some dessert! But we were so full, there was just no way. We'll just have to go back some day...

I'm realizing just now that I didn't take any pictures of the wine! Ritesh had a Bordeaux, and I had the Cabernet blend from Napa, which is kind of like Bouchon's table wine. Both very nice and actually slightly cheaper than at Bistro Jeanty. This entire meal, actually, was only double of what we paid for an order of escargots and two glasses of wine at Bistro Jeanty, so way to go, Bouchon!

Sat, 0ct 25

11.49am - cereal, almond milk, strawberries, peach, walnuts, at home3.28pm - whole wheat pita w/ tarama, spinach-artichoke hummus and cucumbers, at home.

6.47pm - fresh baguette, at Le Petit Cafe, with Ritesh, while waiting for Lissy - who was already sitting in the back and waiting for us!

7.44pm - Bouillabaisse and garlic bread, at Le Petit Cafe, with Ritesh and Lissy, after we found her...

Sat, Sept 27

9.30am - baguette w/ butter, jam, chocolate spread and fresh raspberries, at home2.04pm - my first attempt at a recipe from the Bouchon cookbook: this is the smoked trout salad, with fingerling potatoes boiled w/ garlic, thyme, bay leaf and black pepper, and a lemon vinaigrette made with the yolk of a boiled egg, two kinds of mustard and salted w/ minced cornichons and capers. The original recipe used endives rather than romaine lettuce which was all we had at home, but still - nothing I'd ever have come up with on my own. At home, with Ritesh.

2.26pm - still plugging away at that cherry-lychee-vodka sorbet, at home, with Ritesh.

8.05pm - Nadya, David and Mingus were planning to come over for dinner, but had to cancel as Nady got a sinus infection. So we postponed plans for a buffalo meatloaf and made stuffed peppers and garlic bread instead:

9.07pm - This is a Turkish recipe, which has the peppers stuffed w/ rice made w/ raisins, pine nuts and cinnamon. Bit heavy on the carbs as those peppers were huge, and needed some good spicy sauce, but overall very tasty.

Fri, Sept 26 - another bomb threat, plus first Presidential debate

9.50m - a sample cookie from Starbucks that Cecy brought for me from her coffee run (thanks, Cecy!). We had an oh so important meeting with Finance this morning that we were scrambling to prepare for - they decided an hour before the meeting that all of a sudden it had become necessary to have all our information in binders (instead of on the environmentally friendly shared drive, where we put it), so there was much fussing and swearing over tabs and copying and title pages until we got everything done, five minutes before the meeting - at which point Finance decided to postpone the whole thing. Ah well.
It ended up being a good thing though because at what would have been halfway through the meeting, there was yet another bomb threat and we had to evacuate. Who knows, we might have gotten left behind in the conference room, and missed out on that 3-h-evacuation lunch break...12.34pm - I'd already had a ramen lunch planned w/Nadya (below is the Mabo ramen at Asahi, plus some tsukemono - pickled cucumber), otherwise I would have joined the other MGMers either at Pink Taco for margaritas, or at the movies...

1.46pm - we were supposed to call the emergency hotline at 2pm to see if it was safe to return to work, so I I had some time to kill and went home for some cherry-lychee-vodka sorbet for dessert

4.35pm - the hotline wasn't updated until 2.40pm, so I didn't get back to work until 3.10. And honestly, nobody got much work done for the rest of the day, what with the bomb threat adrenaline, the resentment of actually having to come back to work afterwards, the anticipation of the first presidential debate tonight and, oh, the sky falling down economy-wise. I'd had only half of my soup for lunch (took the rest home for Ritesh), so I got hungry again and went for a little stroll over to Breadbar to pick up some baguette for tonight, and look what I found there: a fabulous, excellent rhubarb tart! To think that I could have missed it!

7.25pm - Korean pancakes, at Greg and Phinney's, watching the debate, w/ Ritesh

7.25pm - some white wine from the neighborhood

7.27pm - grapes, brie, and a buckwheat baguette from Breadbar

7.28pm - some bruschetta w/ olive tapenade

7.45pm - the next bottle - Ritesh got French wine to match...

8.09pm - ...the pates I'd brought from France (pork-hazelnut on the left, duck w/ green pepper on the right). The wine was good but pate I can live without. Reminds me a bit too much of the liver sausage I had to eat as a kid in Germany. Brrr....

9.00pm - ha!

10.14pm - mint ice cream sandwiches for dessert, while agonizing over Obama's perceived weaknesses (lecturing! too much complexity! going off on dissertations! and why oh why did he have to keep telling McCain that he was right?). But the polls look better than we expected, so phew.