I'll be home for Christmas

After two days of driving (logging a total of 13 hours in the car) I've safely returned to California! It's funny, I've done the Arizona-California drive about five times now and it seems to be less and less of a bother each time. God, I hope I'm not becoming one of those people who enjoys long car rides...

What I did enjoy, however, was the opportunity to bond with my sleepy little dog and break up the trip at my old stomping ground -- Santa Barbara. A few good friends still live near the beach so I stopped in for some time at the harbor, dinner, a late-night dip in the sap, brunch and serious time catching up with old friends! It was also Woody's first beach trip!

While I busy myself today with laundry, lounging and finishing up my remaining Christmas purchases, I leave you to enjoy various pictures I took from my short stay in Santa Barbara. College seemed like ages ago -- I would give anything to be able to live there again. Future PhD prospect, perhaps?! :)

P.S. I took all of these photos from my iPhone on DECEMBER 20!!! The weather was gorgeous, much nicer than Arizona's current temperatures, and it made me long to be back in California. At least I have until January 1 in my former home state! That should tide me over until my next holiday break.

 

Garlic Fries, a little taste of SF

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve been to the City many, many times in my life. Even last year when I lived a several hours east of SF at my old job, J.D. and I still made a few trips out to San Francisco.

We played tourists for the Valentine’s Day weekend, doing all the things I’d never done before because I felt too “local” for them. You know, like going to Alcatraz.

 

 

We went to a wine and chocolate tasting boutique, on another occasion paired wine and cupcakes at American Cupcake (!!!) and ate seafood until we turned into seals or something.

But I’m pretty sure all of that pales in comparison to the Gordon Biersch garlic fries we always get on the pier and at Giants or A’s games! (Did I really just say that?!)

If you’ve never had garlic fries… you’re missing out! They are so wonderfully crispy and garlicy and amazing. Even if it comes at the expense of fresh breath. Learn how they came to the United States and started at Gordon Biersch, here.

Well if you haven’t yet tried them, you now have zero excuses, because I finally made them at home myself! And we didn’t even get all intense with cutting our own potatoes, we used freezer fries and baked them, then made garlic magic.

San Franciscan Garlic Fries

• 1/2 package frozen French fries
• 5 t minced garlic
• 2 t chopped parsley
• 2 T olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Bake the French fries (I’m sure this could be amazing with sweet potato fries too), according to package directions and while they are still warm, toss in a bowl with all remaining ingredients. Do not let the fries cool after cooking, otherwise the ingredients won’t stick. We decided to kick it up a notch and add in 1 T garlic salt and pepper for taste.

While these weren’t as breath-killingly garlic as the fries I’m used to, the taste still brought me back to snacking on the piers or hanging out in the bleachers at Bay Area baseball games! It’s a little bite of home, from deep in the desert where temperatures are currently 109 degrees and rising.

So what did we pair those glories fries with?! Home made Italian meatball subs… but that’s a story for another time.

I’m on a Boat Part 2 & Week 26

I think I’m beginning to create an annual tradition of going boating the July 4th weekend! Check out my post last year if you have a hankering to see the SNL video – you’re welcome in advance for getting that song stuck in your head again. It’s been stuck in mine for the past two days!

On Friday I flew back to California for the weekend and caught up with a bunch of old friends. I feel like a whirlwind tour every time I go home. It always passes so quickly.

The weekend was jam-packed with a ton of fun activities and ended on a high note. A couple of my friends from my last job rented a boat for the entire day on Sunday and invited me to tag along. We took it back and forth on the Delta, went swimming, dove off the side and brought sandwiches, snacks, drinks and cookies and enjoyed the sun. I also dabbled in some knee boarding, something I’ve never done before!

My friends brought their dog and he loved it. He kept jumping in the water, swimming and just chilled out on the boat. I had an absolute blast… until my friend split her lip knee boarding. That was a scary moment, but after a quick trip to the ER, everything seems to be in order. I’m so glad she’s ok!

 

Now I’m going to go back in time. The day prior (Saturday), I lounged by the pool with my parents. I tried to convince my dad to wake up at 5 a.m. and make mimosas with me, because it was the first day of the Tour de France! One small problem, however, is that I didn’t wake up until close to 10 a.m. Oops.

At least the champagne cocktails still went down.

Ever since living in France, I’m basically addicted to champagne cocktails, or kir as they are called over the pond. Addicted isn’t quite the right word because I’ve never made them myself, I’ve only ever had them at restaurants or bars.

A kir is basically champagne and some sort of flavored liqueur. I’ve had kir royale (champagne and crème de cassis, or black currant syrup), kir framboise (raspberry), kir lavande (lavender) and kir rose to name a few.

When my dad moved back to California after working in France, he brought home a bottle of cassis coulis. It’s still in the fridge and inspired my first ever kir-making session!

 

I made three different versions of my kirs: kir royale with Korbel champagne, kir royale and brut rosé sparking wine and I had the Korbel with lavender syrup.

Kir Ingredients & Directions:

• 1-2 T flavored syrup/liqueur
• brut/dry sparkling wine

This couldn’t be any easier! Simply pour your favorite flavor syrup/liqueur into the bottom of a champagne flute, tilt at an angle and fill with champagne or sparkling wine. Simple, elegant and delicious!

I really enjoyed it! It was a pretty fun cocktail to lounge around with all morning/afternoon. I may have also tried the brut rosé with lavender syrup. I really love brut rosé, definitely try it if you haven’t before.

Later that night, my friend and I went out to a birthday party in San Jose. We may or may not have been out until 3:30 a.m. the night before going boating at 8 a.m. Yeah, I did all of that on less than three hours of sleep…. Kind of a champ. I impressed myself since I figured I’d be passing out mid-day.

So now I’ll take you back to Friday. I got my family tickets and field passes to see my two baseball teams play each other! My team of employment traveled to Oakland for the weekend to play my favorite team since childhood. Also, my favorite player of all time started for the A’s (Rich Harden, drool). I remember seeing his Major League home debut just before I moved away to Santa Barbara for college in 2003…

 

While I’ve been going to A’s games my whole life, I’ve never actually made it on to the field before! I’ve seen batting practice a bunch of times, but this was a first! And I see D-backs batting practice (on and off the field) often, so that was fun to finally see my team on the road.

Oh and two of my friends from HS work for the A’s, so it was great to catch up for a bit before the stadium got too crazy!

While the D-backs lost, I’m secretly glad I got to see an A’s win! It felt weird though, I wasn’t sure who to cheer for. The A’s have traded so many players, I barely recognize anyone on the team (except for my bf Rich Harden of course). And I’m with the D-backs every day, so I know all those guys. I kind of wish Arizona won because we actually had tickets to sit in the visiting team section – right behind the dugout!

My favorite Diamondback player even threw us a game ball in between innings! We were the only D-backs apparel-sporting fans in the section really. So that was cool.

After the game the whole family went to my dad’s favorite bar. I even tried a cocktail made with crème de violette. It was tasty, and basically planted the seed of champagne cocktails for the following afternoon.

Check out Adesso’s menu though, that place is amazing! We’ve pretty much gone there after any A’s game I’ve been to this year.

It’s a really trendy bistro type of atmosphere in the nicer part of Oakland ;) It’s always super packed too. My sister and her boyfriend are friends with the bartender, so they generally ask him to make a fun cocktail for us. I wanted to try the crème de violette and it came with a brandy-soaked cherry and a little bit of brandy. My sister had a strawberry balsamic whiskey concoction. My parents ordered wine and once the clock hit 10:30, we all dove right into the happy hour offerings. They served up free food for patrons. It consisted of home made foccia, limoncello rice pudding, calamari salad, Mediterranean olives, mini sandwiches and house-cured salami.

It’s never quite the same there because the menu changes so often. But everyone always agrees on going there. It’s a fantastic choice post-baseball games. I’ve never been let down with anything I’ve ordered from them and it also is the place where I discovered my love for brut rosé.

So in summary, my new things for the half-way point of 2011, week 26 were:

• boating the Delta
• knee boarding
• making kir at home
• getting field passes for BP at an A’s game
• trying crème de violette

I’d say my New Year’s resolution to try something new every week in 2011 is going quite strong! I miss California and all my new adventures already :)

Hope everyone had a fabulous Fourth of July… I flew over at least eight different Phoenix-area fireworks shows and a lightning storm. That was kind of scary, but thankfully I’m still in one piece!

"Nothing comes close to the Golden Coast"

I would quote Katy Perry.

I know I'm crazy slow/behind on this, but I've been majorly busy this past week. School's ending so my tutoring hours are up and the Dbacks are in the middle of a pretty big homestand, which means lots of hours on my part.

And it's hard to believe that April is GONE already! It feels like it was just my birthday yesterday... or three weeks ago. As quickly as that came and went, my sister and her boyfriend paid a visit to Arizona and we hung out for a long weekend. Doing a lot of this:

and also some of this on the side:

I'll spare you the gory details, but know that I am on a bit of a booze detox as we speak ;) Oh, the baseball is still raging though, seeing as how that's my job and all!

It just so worked out that my sister planned her flight home the same day I was considering going home for Easter! We took the same flight home and I had a few days to hang out with old friends and family. You know I spent my first night in the Bay Area attending an Oakland A's baseball game.

Then on Wednesday, I kept in contact with Courtney (Pancakes and Postcards) and we finally met up! It made sense seeing as how she just moved to San Francisco and I've called its suburbs home for the past 25 years.

We met up at La Mar Cebicheria, an interesting Peruvian restaurant on Pier 1.5. Due to a lack of planning on our part -- seriously though, how is anything in a big city closed after 6 p.m. on a weekday?! -- we had to settle for seating at the bar area. What's funny is how much we have in common, from where our families grew up to living abroad, to hating to take pictures of our food and only doing so with an iPhone. It was awesome and reminded me of how much I still miss California.

In case you're wondering, I had the ensalada tiradito, which consisted of the following: thinly sliced Tombo Tuna with mixed greens, green papaya, cilantro, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, fried wontons and onions with a sesame passionfruit vinaigrette. Although my liver wasn't adventurous enough to try a the house Pisco sour, Courtney was. I opted for a milder, chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc instead.

On Thursday, my travels took me to the South Bay where I had lunch at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino and then met up with a friend in San Jose. I'll start with Apple: that place is amazing and efficient I'd imagine. The lunch buffet was fresh and varied, but more importantly, delicious. I guess it pays to keep your employees happy and healthy over a long period of time, doesn't it?! ;)

Salad bar and fresh-squeezed fruit and veggie juice, so good!

Oh and now I am the proud new owner of a pretty phone case à la Kate Spade.

Apple is pretty close to where one of my friends lives so we met up and hung out for a few hours in San Jose until my dad could pick me up and take me home after work. We headed straight to Santana Row for -- you guessed it -- cocktails (and lunch for Brian). After a quick stop at a Mexican restaurant, it was off to this cute little wine bar where I found myself ordering champagne cocktails. A great idea if you ask me!!

Then in the tradition of our friendship, we took silly pictures in stores. No this was not alcohol-induced; we'd done this many times during work lunches when I still lived in Stockton. Now you know a little more about how odd I am :)

Killing our last hour of time to end the day, we snuck around on the Winchester Mystery House grounds and took a "free" tour. Brian had never been before, and I think I went back when I was in Girl Scouts. It's pretty freakin' weird/creepy. I mean, the residence of any woman who's possessed enough to believe that continually adding on to her mansion so the haunted ghosts don't kill her but dies anyways sounds like a great museum/tourist attraction, right?! (Read here if I just sparked your curiosity). Plus, it's got a door to nowhere and I think that's neat:

But they really have done a beautiful job of restoring the mansion since the late 1800s.

There, now you're all caught up to my infamous first wine tasting trip to Sonoma :) Easter was spent up in the Sacramento area with family, stuffing our faces and looking for money-stuffed plastic eggs! Until the early evening, when I had to fly back to Arizona.

It was a much-needed break to go home and visit with friends and family! I can't wait until my next trip home... Hopefully there'll be some of that familiar California sun next time. Although, the 80-90 degree weather here in Arizona sure makes up for my week of rain and fog :)