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!

French Friday: livre edition

 

If you love wine (Dad, I’m talking to you), history and/or you love to read, you absolutely need to find this book:

 

A friend recommended The Widow Clicquot to me, knowing that I enjoy wine just as much as she does and also that I love anything French. Enthusiastic about the recommendation, I’ve literally gone to every bookstore within a 15-mile radius of my house in search of this biography. How is it that no one carried this book?!

On a whim, I went to the local library this week looking for a free DVD to watch sometime. Remembering this book, I searched the library database and there was one copy on hand! This book is as good as mine for the next 2-to-6 weeks.

The front flap touts this book as: “The story of the visionary young widow who built a champagne empire, showed the world how to live with style, and emerged a legend.”

The iconic yellow label of Veuve Clicquot (The Widow Clicquot, in French)

So far I’m about 50 pages in and am fascinated. Apparently I don’t know very much about making champagne. While this book is semi starting to go into the details of champagne-making (only one region in the world has the luxury using its namesake for its bubbly, the Champagne, which central cities such as Troyes, Reims and Épernay) the most fascinating aspect to me is the history of the late 1700s-early 1800s. If you know anything about world history, that falls right smack in the middle of the bloody French Revolution and the rise of Napoléon.

 

I did several history reports on such period of time in high school. I even took a few 18th and 19th century surveys in my French classes at UC Santa Barbara. I could literally read everything there is on that period. Good thing I’m going to be majoring in French, n’est-ce pas?

My one regret is that I, myself, have never visited the Champagne region before. How did I live in France twice and not let this happen?!?! My dad and I went to Châteauneuf-du-Pape and tasted the famous wines of Provence once, and on a second occasion, a friend and I went to several wineries and castles of the Loire Valley to do a little sightseeing and wine tasting. No sparkling wines however… next time!

   

That’s about as far in as I am now. So while I have a huge craving for a glass of champagne, I’m going to continue reading… As I said before, I highly recommend you find this book and join me!

Santé, mes amis!

(Cheers, my friends!)

Week 18: Black Velvet

Every week in 2011, for 52-straight weeks, I hope to try something new and blog about it here. This is the 18th week in the series, when I made and tasted my first Black Velvet cocktail. Here you can find a list of all my weekly adventures in 2011.

If you recall, I recently bought my first pack of stout and made chocolate stout cupcakes two weeks ago. Earlier last week, I inched closer towards finishing that six pack (slow and steady, guys) in a new cocktail: The Black Velvet.

As someone who's a fan of Black & Tans (see here for a recipe and photo), I stumbled across a recipe for the Black Velvet several weeks ago. I bookmarked it as something to add to my weekly new things and kept it in the back of my head. Ever since buying the stout, I knew this would have to be next on the list.

Black Velvets are fairly simple, really. All it involves is champagne (or sparkling wine) and stout, Guiness is recommended. Well, we had Veuve Clicquot and milk stout.

The only "directions" I read said pour each equally in a pretty glass and enjoy the beautiful color. My mistake, I used both hands to pour equal proportions of the alcohols and it never crossed my mind to tilt the glass. Before I knew it, the ratio was 30 percent cocktail and 70 percent foam. Oops. Letting it settle, I slowly tilted the flute and poured in the drinks one at a time. Finally I was left with a flute of what resembled a very fizzy barley wine.

The verdict: I think our champagne may have gone bad. It had been in the fridge for a while. If not, I think something rubbed me the wrong way with this beverage. It was sweet, sour, bitter and heavy all at the same time. Interesting sensations and flavors for cocktails, but maybe not all at the same time. I did like the color and the foam. I think I might have to try this again with the recommended Guiness and maybe a different kind of bubbly.

Then again, maybe it was the Thai dinner paired with the cocktail that made something taste funny. If I do this again, it's going to be solely as an apéritif. Lesson learned :) But glad I finally drummed up the courage to take the plunge into the Black Velvet!