This, That, and a Pussycat

Anson and I started this blog on a whim 3 years ago so that we could share our gardening and life happenings with our friends and family who live far away from us. It ended up taking on a life of it's own and I began to really enjoy the food photography and writing. I imagined making a living photographing food and got serious about the blog reflecting these aspirations. In the process, I lost some of the joy of writing and photographing; it became more of a chore than a creative outlet and life journal. 

So, over the last several months I've really tried to return to the aspect of blogging that inspired me in the beginning--sharing our life with you through photography and stories. There's no particular theme or rigorous schedule, just what I'd like to share when it comes up. I guess that's why you've seen posts that range from Kraft Mac & Cheese to lost cats to wine country vacations. I'll continue to write about and photograph what inspires me and what I think is interesting to people that know us. 

That being said, here's a round-up of some random cool things that we've been occupied with lately. Thanks for reading and commenting and keeping up with us!

Our friends, Kim and Barry from Rustic Garden Bistro, have their own little farm going on at their house with their true rustic garden, amazing French country kitchen, two dogs and 14 chickens. Now these are no ordinary chickens, you have to check out their blog to see what they look like. They have one called a Silky that is just about the cutest thing I've even seen in my life. Yes, that's a chicken, not a Muppet.

We were at their house for the Superbowl and Kim sent us home with a half dozen of these gorgeous eggs. I wouldn't let Anson cook them until I photographed them; can you see why?

A couple weeks ago, I stopped in to the Humane Society to drop off some food. I figured I might as well "just look" at the cats as long as I was there. There's no harm in looking, right? So, long story short, we are the proud new owners of a 13-year-old cuddle cat named Sailor. He is the chillest cat you've ever seen. When we brought him home (without a peep in the car), he jumped up on our couch, gave himself a bath, and promptly went to sleep as if he has always lived with us. Scarpetta was pretty worked up at first, defending her territory with lots of hissing, but she's coming around. Now, if we can just figure out how to get him to stop howling at 4 am...

A couple weeks ago we were invited to an event called "Sips South of the Border" at Vinoteque on Melrose. The event, to promote the Food & Wine Festival in Ixtapa, was hosted by Chef Guillermo Gonzalez Beristain who spoke about Mexican wine and shared his unexpected Mariatinto wine with us. I admit, I was a bit skeptical about the wine, but my eyes opened wide at the first sip. It was complex with a nice amount of berry fruit and just enough tannin to give it some body. Very nice.

Wine expert, Mark Oldman, walked us through the tastings in a charming and entertaining style. We got a copy of his book, "Oldman's Brave New World of Wine," which, if it was anything like the other wine books I have, I expected to put me to sleep on nights when I need to go to bed early. I was pleasantly surprised at how usable and engaging the book is, focusing on lesser known wines, such as Txakoli ("Zingy like a downed power line.") and Cahors ("Medieval on your tongue.") with accessible descriptions and very funny commentary. 

We were given a little bag of sea salt from Baja too. I supposed it makes sense that Mexico would have plenty of sea salt, but like the wine, I never think of Mexico when I think of these culinary flourishes. I'm thinking it's time that we start looking at Mexico a little closer. After all, did we ever think we'd be drinking wine from Argentina and South Africa?  

Anson ran the Surf City Half Marathon on Super Bowl Sunday as well. This was my Eadweard Muybridge moment--I got a shot of him with both feet off the ground. It was a perfect day for a race and he did a great job, as always. Check out those flashy shoes!

We got a new fridge too. Is this really blog-worthy? Probably not for most people. But I've been dreaming of a new fridge for years, as Anson knew well. (Hey, the hopes and dreams of food lovers are sometimes different than the dreams of other people.) So, out with our 17-year-old fridge and in with our sexy new LG.

What's so special about this fridge? It has water and ice in the door. Crushed ice. In the door. On demand. I feel like a Vanderbilt.

The first thing I did was make a smoothie with it. I used some Big Train vanilla latte mix and added an avocado. Not the prettiest smoothie, but definitely delicious. I'm going to try chocolate with spinach and banana next time. I think it will work.

Spaghetti Pancake: It's Better Than it Sounds

Spaghetti Pancake is one of a handful of comfort foods that I've been eating since my childhood. From what I can tell, it probably comes from an Italian dish called Spaghetti Fritatta. I'll have to remember to ask my mom where she got the original recipe, probably from an old church cookbook or another local source. Until the last decade or so, "pancake" would have been a much easier concept than fritatta for Midwestern housewives to grasp, so that would be my guess as to the name variation. 

Regardless, the name does not really do this simple, delicious, filling dish any favors. Without exception, if you tell someone the name of this dish they will respond by wrinkling their nose and saying, "Ewww." I always quickly tell them, "It's better than it sounds, trust me." Think of those noodles with Parmesan you loved as a child, add a little garlic and some egg to hold it together, then fry it up in butter until it has a crust. It's really more than the sum of it's parts. 

The best part is how easy it is to make, requiring only four ingredients (plus salt and pepper) that you probably always have on hand: dried pasta, eggs, grated parmesan cheese, and garlic. It's one of those dinners you make on Monday night after a long busy weekend when you haven't had time to shop. I've been known to throw in spinach, onions and zucchini, or you can make a simple side salad to go with it. Or you can just have a big plate of it on it's own like I usually do. Some things are just too good to mess around with too much.
Here's the thing, the recipe calls for roasted minced garlic, not fresh garlic. I always have a bottle of it in my spice rack for this recipe. In fact, before I started learning how to cook in college I didn't know that garlic came any other way. Get a small jar of it from Trader Joe's, it will last forever.

For more egg-centric recipe ideas, please check out my fellow Huntington Beach blogger, Priscilla at She's Cookin'.

Spaghetti Pancake

8 oz dried pasta

2 whole eggs

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon roasted minced garlic

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

2 tablespoons butter, divided

Cook the pasta a drain well, letting cool a bit.

Meanwhile, mix the eggs, Parmesan, garlic, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. It should be the consistency of a loose paste. When the pasta is slightly cool, add it to the egg mixture and toss well. 

Heat a frying pan over medium low heat with one tablespoon of butter. When it's sizzling, add the pasta mix. Let it cook for about 5-7 minutes until a nice brown crust has formed. Dot the top of the spaghetti with the remaining butter. (If you are good at flipping things in pans, you can do the whole thing. Or you can cut it into four sections and flip each one individually, like I do.) Cook the second side for about 3-4 minutes to get another nice brown crust. And you're done. 

This should make a dinner for two people, or side dish portions for four.

Tuna for Buttercup

I woke up one night last February and, not finding Buttercup in her usual spot at my feet, I got up to look for her in the living room. I always liked knowing where she was when she wasn't nearby. I stood there for a second in the room, lit up by the porch light. I shook my head, sighed, and went back to bed.

A year ago today we lost Buttercup, the best cat ever. I got her and her brother, Westley, in the summer of 1997 when they were tiny kittens, taken from their hissing, feral mother at the Humane Society. We brought them home and for three days they would neither come near us, nor let us go near them. On the third day I sat down on the couch with a tuna sandwich in front of me and I felt a sensation. The sensation of two desperate eyes staring at me. More precisely, two desperate eyes staring at my tuna sandwich over my shoulder. I offered Buttercup a little bit of the tuna, and in a single moment both our lives changed. She was my girl forever.

Unless there was a beam of sun anywhere inside the house, she was always right near me. A month after she died, we moved to an apartment that tracks the sun all day and I look at the long beams of afternoon sun and smile, imagining how she would be stretched out in front of them if she had lived in this new house with us.

She waited patiently by my shoulder every morning for me to wake up. I would only know she was there because I could hear her subtle purr as she anticipated me waking up to scratch her ears.

Another one of her charms was her Ragdoll genetics, and the way that she went limp when picked up. I often scooped her and settled her on my right shoulder (only the right shoulder, never the left), where she would happily sit for as long as I would hold her, and watch the world from my height. She also had the longest toe hair I've ever seen on a cat.
         

Among her many nicknames, "Tuna Head" was one of the most appropriate. Other nicknames used frequently when addressing her:

• Butterbutt
• Flufferbutt
• Fluffernut
• Butternut
• Butterpants
• Flufferpants
• Fancycat
• Fuzzernut

"Tuna Head" was acted out in a much more dramatic way than any of these other names. She became a bit of a miniature grizzly bear whenever there was human food being prepared, but she would literally scream if she smelled tuna. 

She was diagnosed with kidney disease* in 2008, the same disease that claimed her brother in 2001, and was given six months to live. She ended up living for over three years, becoming healthy and strong again by eating the right food and supplements.

Eventually her kidneys failed, and she spent three days in the ICU, then three days at home with us until we decided it was time to let her go. Even though she's no longer with me, I had her for fourteen years and she was loved extravagantly for every minute of those fourteen years.

I started making Elise's recipe for Pasta with Tuna and Capers in White Wine Sauce about a year ago and it has become a new comfort food for me. Each time I open a can of tuna I expect Buttercup to appear behind me, standing on her back legs, yowling, and waiting for her own little bowl. So this bowl is for her.

*Please carefully consider giving your cats booster vaccinations each year. The vet who attended to Buttercup in the ICU explained to me that a cat owner should never need to give vaccines after the initial ones. Because the vaccines are grown on kidney tissue, cats can develop antibodies against their own kidneys, which explains why kidney disease is so prominent with cats. The vaccines last a lifetime, but the pharmaceutical companies only test them for a year so that's all they will recommend them for. The vet said that she herself would only give her new kittens their first vaccines and never give them again.

Northern California Coast and Big Sur: Time Trippin'

Anson's birthday usually lands on Thanksgiving weekend, so we decided to tack on a small vacation to the end of our week in Napa and Sonoma. We dropped my parents off at SFO on Saturday morning and started heading south on Pacific Coast Highway. Anson grew up in the Bay area and spent time exploring this stretch of PCH with his mom and brother as a child. It would be a bit of a trip down memory lane for him and I was excited to see it all for the first time.

Wouldn't you know that not long after we stopped in Pacifica to eat our leftover Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches that we'd come to Half Moon Bay, where we had to stop and have a beer at Half Moon Bay Brewery? How convenient since we were tired of drinking wine. We wanted to get out and walk out to Mavericks, the famous big wave surf break nearby, but we settled for a pint of Mavericks Amber Ale instead.
Anson said that when they used to go to this sleepy fishing town when he was a kid there was no brewery, no wine bars, and no Ritz Carlton, just an annual pumpkin festival, and beginner surfing at the jetty. He wondered at the enormous wave breaking on the horizon at Pillar Point and whether it was a real wave or a fog bank.

Our next stop was Bean Hollow, a seminal place for Anson and his brother, who picked up their surfing bug there as kids. This was the first of so many amazing California coast vistas we saw over the next two days.

As we got closer to Santa Cruz we saw an icon for a winery on the GPS, and discovered that we were passing by Bonny Doon Vineyards. We wheeled the car around and drove up into the wooded hillside, around and around and around. We could not find it! We did find a winery in it's place called Beauregard. I swear, this place must survive solely on the reputation of the relocated Bonny Doon (now in Santa Cruz proper), it's that far off the beaten path. But that's okay because they are making nice wines. We picked up some bottles of their Lost Weekend, a really reasonable Super Tuscan, a style we both love (see past posts on Benessere Vineyards). For $18 a bottle, I'm pretty sure there's another case in our future.

They have a picnic area right outside, surrounded by redwoods, and overlooking the vineyards 50 yards away. What an amazing environment--ocean, redwoods, vineyards all within the same eco system.

After a nice birthday dinner at the friendly La Posta and a drink at the equally friendly Seabright Brewery, we stayed the night in Santa Cruz and got up early the next morning to continue our journey south through Big Sur.

So, I've read the Sunset magazine articles and I've seen the car commercials, but I was not really prepared for the beauty of Big Sur. I've spared you, and just included a fraction of the photos I took during the long, scenic overlook-filled drive. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. Here's a great map of this jaw-dropping stretch of the coast if you are interested.

The north end of Big Sur, just outside of Carmel.

Historic Rocky Creek Bridge, built in 1932, one of many bridges spanning the canyons that puncture the coast.

(Just a note, make sure you have a full tank of gas, because you will not find a gas station until you are almost at the south end of Big Sur and it costs $5.49 per gallon. You will be happy to pay that much though, after white knuckling the last 10 miles, hoping you don't run out.)

We finally got to San Simeon and pulled over to gawk at the elephant seals with all the other day-trippers.

We turned of at Cambria and took Highway 46 east towards Paso Robles. I settled back and put my camera away, expecting an expanse of boring farmland in front of me, only to take my camera back out within a mile. Look at this! Yes, that's the ocean in the distance and cows in the foreground. This is a real photograph.

This rolling, coastal country gave way to more electric fall vineyards like we saw up north. Despite our longing, we didn't stop. We turned down the 101 and headed back to reality. We will save Paso Robles for another trip. It's next on our list.

Thanksgiving in Napa and Sonoma

Is it too late for a post about Thanksgiving? Yes, probably. But that won't keep me from doing it anyway. I think you should see a little bit of one of the most picturesque areas of the country, Napa and Sonoma during one of the most picturesque times of the year---fall. You know, for as much time as we've spent in various wine countries, we've never been there in the fall. I guess we went to Temecula in October for my birthday, but that's hardly fall in Southern California.

In the past, we've spent Thanksgiving in Colorado with Anson's family. This year, we got up at the crack of dawn and drove to San Francisco where we picked up my parents at the airport, and then headed up to Napa.

We rented a Victorian-era house in the middle of downtown Napa, and it ended up serving as a great home base as we traveled around Napa and Sonoma for the week. From it, we could walk to the grocery store, Oenotri (our favorite meal from last summer), and a new favorite restaurant, Norman Rose Tavern, as well as the Oxbow Public Market and everything in between. We went to Norman Rose for dinner on our first night, and Anson had a buffalo burger with chocolate BBQ sauce. Yep, this is Napa, and even the burgers are gourmet.

What really captivated me on this visit to wine country was the glorious colors we saw at every turn. I found myself gasping and pointing around almost every corner and was able to flex my landscape photography skills a little throughout the trip.

Our first stop was Pedroncelli Winery in Sonoma, a favorite of my parents from years back. We ran into John Pedroncelli in the parking lot and my parents chatted him up for a bit. That's the fun part of visiting wineries--meeting the people behind the bottles.

From there we went to Raymond Burr Vineyards (yes, that Raymond Burr) which had a very humble tasting room in a trailer on the property. The cool thing was it was decorated with shelves holding all of his acting awards. The very welcoming tasting room attendant invited us to take down any awards that we wanted to photograph ourselves with. Now that's hospitality!

We moved on to Ferrari Carano, which, hands down, has the most beautiful grounds of any winery in Sonoma. I had a hard time really conveying the beauty with these photos, as it was rainy and overcast, but you can imagine what a blue sky would do for this scene. They had some really amazing wines too, not just the Chardonnay that everyone knows.

We were really looking forward to visiting Chateau Montelena in Napa. Anson and I watch the movie Bottle Shock all the time, yet until this year we hadn't made it to the winery. If you are not familiar with the history, Chateau Montelena won the Judgement of Paris in 1976 for it's Chardonnay, and, along with Stag's Leap and other California wineries, brought California wines serious attention and respect on a world wide scale.

Their grounds are equally amazing, but with an totally different Old World feel. The tasting room, however, was completely welcoming and the employees were extremely friendly and knowledgeable. We stayed for a long time, tasting and learning about all the wines.  

We had to stop for more landscape photo ops at Sterling Vineyards.

We didn't visit the tasting room at Sterling, which required a $25 tram ride and included a souvenir glass, but we did get some great photos from the parking lot.

The B.F.A in me loved Clos Pegase Winery. They have a museum-quality collection of art that is available for guests to browse through. It really stands out among wineries for it's art collection alone. We got a shot of Anson, my dad and I contemplating some art.

The collection begins with the post-modern winery itself and skips across time from recent sculpture by Robert Morris to Henry Moore's abstractions and ancient Greek-influenced busts.

The sun finally peeked out at the end of day two, and it was no coincidence it happened as soon as we got to Benessere Winery. You've read about Benessere on this blog before. Anson and I have been fans of this place for several years and always make it a stop when we get to Napa.

Not only are the grounds as picturesque as any winery in your dreams should be, but the wines are fabulous, modeled after Italian styles. We always like that the tasting room is small and the employees take time to talk to you about the wine. We got to meet the assistant winemaker on this visit, who let us sample from a very new barrel of 2011 Cabernet Sauvignon. It was so interesting to see what the young, green wine tastes like, and compare that to the finished product we were drinking.

The sky turned properly dramatic as we left the winery.

We had to get a shot of my parents at the gate. That's where we found them, passed out on the rock wall.

A beautiful succulent at Chateau St. Jean and gourds greeting us at Kendall-Jackson, just before the rain picked up again. 

My parents' favorite experience of the whole trip was visiting Domaine Carneros, not once, but twice. It was worth going twice too. It's not the typical belly-up-to-the-bar tasting room experience. You take a seat inside the château or on the wrap-around patio and one of the very professional and hospitable staff greets you with a caddy of wine and tells you everything there is to know about their wines. It's wonderful. If you could only go to one place in all of Napa, this should be it. It's really a first class place.  

You can also order a cheese plate to enjoy while you take in the 180° views. If you don't want a flight of wine, they'll be happy to pour you a full glass of your favorite.

Domaine Carneros is known mostly for their sparkling wines (they are owned by Taittinger), but Anson and I were more impressed by their non-sparkling pinot noirs.

Just one of the many vistas to take in from the patio at Domaine Carneros.

Sigh...look at these trees across from the Oxbow Market. As always, we can't wait to go back.