She's Going The Distance: sailing

Explicit language can be heard in the following video, but, it is from SNL after all.

And I'll get to that a little later. But since you all loved "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" as much as I do, I felt like indulging in yet another video for y'all. In celebration of July 4th!!!!

After laying out for a bit yesterday, I whipped up a Salade Niçoise for lunch and we drove an hour west to my parents' house. Upon our arrival (Woodstock couldn't wait, he leapt out of the car to meet his sister Lily, my parents' dog) we started prepping contributions to a dinner party! My parents' friends invited the four of us over for dinner and then a free fireworks show.

...Except there were technical difficulties with the grill, so we just ended up dining, drinking and chatting until well past 10 p.m. A great start to the three-day weekend!

The evening's festivities kicked off with some French and Spanish rosé wines -- my favorite chilly summertime drink! I'm so French.

And then in true South of France summer fashion, followed by an appetizer of steamed moûles (mussels) and bread to dip in the garlic wine sauce!!!

From the front porch, we sipped our wines, ate bruschetta and moûles until the sun set.

Once dark, out came an array of food for the main course! It was some of the messiest BBQ chicken I've ever had. So messy and dark, you'll have to use your imagination ;) Alongside it we sampled a cold orzo veggie salad, corn on the cob and succulent, drippy watermelon. Watermelon is probably my favorite summer treat!

Except maybe for S'MORES!!! Nothing says camping or summer quite like it. Lucky for me, my mom had a recipe ready for me to prepare the minute I walked into the door. Dessert was a heaping tray of s'mores bars which, unfortunately, were not enough after everyone indulged in seconds. I could honestly eat the entire tray of these bad boys:

And I nearly did ;) I'd FOR SURE make these again!! And now you can too, because I found the recipe online.

Soon after there was sleeping to be had. By everyone else. Coughing and hacking awaited me yet another night. I still arose early, however, because July 4th sailing in the San Francisco Bay was in store for this morning!!!

For breakfast my mom made us mango smoothies (after noticing I'd been having a lot of mango dishes in my blog over the last week, she's so cute!) and we polished off the strawberry-cherry muffins she'd made a few days earlier.

So on to the sail: it was SUCH a beautiful day in the Bay!!! The fog stayed on the opposite side of the hills during the duration of our sail and there was just enough winds to push us around the Bay. In my parents' neck of the woods it probably hit 100º but over by the water it hovered around 70º! Can't get much better than that!

I only got slightly ill -- miraculous when you learn that I get disgustingly sick every time I'm in a car for over 15 minutes -- towards the very end of our three-hour ride. In the middle I snacked on some potato chips to get what little salt I needed to keep feeling fresh. I also sampled a small lunch platter that everyone else had when we docked.

Potato-egg salad alongside a tuna-bean salad. Delish!

We made out some of SF's horizon through a light marine layer of fog and also sailed back and forth over Angel Island, the Ellis Island of the West Coast back in California's early history.

When we returned, I helped let down the sails to help us glide into the dock and camp for lunch. It included more salad, watermelon and a special beverage treat from France (my papa's favorite):

Again, a fantastic holiday morning! We came home, crashed on the couches and watched some of the beginning stages of the Tour de France! I have no idea what's in store for this evening, but we're contemplating going to watch Knight and Day.

Here are a few pictures from the morning's sail! Enjoy :)