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 24: Painting Class

I used to love to draw when I was younger. My sister and I took a series of drawing classes from our local community center when we were in middle or elementary school – I can’t exactly remember. I’ve only painted on a canvas a few times in my life, but have never actually attended a painting class.

Which is why I leapt out of my seat when I got my daily Groupon e-mail a few weeks ago. $40 for two people to attend the Bottles & Paint class at an art gallery in Mesa. Painting and wine… sounds like a great time to me! Now he’s charging $50 per person for the class, so that was a pretty good purchase.

The gallery closes down for the evening and the owner offers painting classes after hours, from 7-9 p.m. every weekend. Downtown Mesa is really cute and I would definitely like to come back during normal business hours.

When the class started, everyone grabbed their seats, cups of wine in hand, unsure of what was going to happen. We each had a print out of a trio of tulips for us to use as inspiration or guidelines when painting our own images. He had a small stock of photos to choose from to copy for those of us who weren’t interested in the tulips, but I wasn’t really feeling anything else.

First he gave us the option of drawing our own flowers or he would do it for us. I seized the opportunity and drew my own and also J.D.’s. I think I should also point out that it was around this time the group of women in front of us really started getting rowdy. We assume they had been pre-partying prior to the class. They were a group of four on a girls’ night out, about our parents’ ages. And the rest of the night started to get hysterical. Our old hippie instructor was loving it.

Once the drawings were on the canvas, we set to work on painting in the background. I started doing blotches of red paint and then mixed in another layer of orange on top. When the background was complete, we were told to get to work on the leaves and then finally the petals. The goal was to get the base colors down first, then accent later.

It was a blast! About an hour into the class he told us to get up and explore the gallery, because the eyes need to focus on something else before finishing the painting.

It was a really cute little gallery and we now have coupons for purchasing any of his pieces, or coming back for another class in the future.

I’m sold! I had a blast and I definitely want to paint some more. I loved everything about this experience and now we have two decent sized canvases to hang on the wall.

We all took individual and group shots for the gallery’s Facebook page… Our artist didn’t quite know how to use a cell phone… this was the fourth photo attempt he tried on my iPhone haha. Oh well, it was a blast! I’d recommend checking to see if anything like this is offered near you.

Week 16: Wine Tasting in Sonoma

Every week in 2011, for 52-straight weeks, I hope to try something new and blog about it here. This is the 16th post in the series, when I went wine tasting in Sonoma, California, with my family. Here you can find a list of all my weekly adventures thus far.

While I lived in California for nearly 25 years, I don't think I've ever been wine tasting in Sonoma. I've sampled wines in Lodi, Santa Barbara, Livermore and of course, Napa. But never the neighboring city of Sonoma! Not to mention all the wines I've sipped in Europe ;)

So during my second-to-last day here in California, my family and I did just that!

We kind of stopped at the bottom of the Sonoma County wineries trail and made our way up to the plaza in downtown Sonoma. First up, Cline Cellars and Jacuzzi Family Vineyards. Two wineries across the street and owned by the same people.

Earlier in the morning, I voiced my opinion to hit up some places with sparkling wine, so we drove a few feet up the road to Gloria Ferrer Winery. Once there, all five of us split five different flutes of sparkling wine, peppered salami and a demi-baguette. Since seating was so limited (or should I say since everyone and their mom decided to go wine tasting today!), we made friends with a couple from Colorado who invited us to sit at their empty table.

It was at this point when I couldn't help but make comparisions to my wine tasting trip to Provence with my dad back in April of 2008 -- when we both lived in France. We visited Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Orange and Avignon, eating our way around the pays. That was one of my favorite birthday presents :) I'll share this year's goodies with you all in an upcoming post.

Back to the Sonoma trip. After sampling sparkling wine -- whose bottles contained 40,000 bubbles! -- we drove across the street and stopped at Cornerstone, an collection of wine tasting, restaurants, boutiques, art collections and gardens. Oh yeah, and a sweet giant chair I wanted to take pictures on immediately.

This was the result of an inside joke between my sister, her boyfriend and myself. Can we say, new Facebook picture?! Way too much fun.

After playing around on the Cornerstone grounds, we left for the plaza to grab some lunch, and of course, more vino. We ate lunch at the Plaza Bistro, my mom and I split moules-frites (mussels and fries) and salmon poached crepes with saffron creme and poached asparagus.

After lunch, the exploring began. And I you should be proud to learn I FINALLY caved and bought pastry bags/tips. Be prepeared for some baking to take place once I'm back in Arizona! ;)

Lastly, I snapped some pictures of the mission in Sonoma (that took me back to elementary school when I had to build a replica of Mission San Luis Obispo in fourth grade), City Hall and some cute little ducks :)

It was so worth it to make the hour drive up to wine country with my family! In my opinion, Sonoma wineries are much more fun than their Napa counterparts. And hardly any of the wineries in Sonoma charge for tasting. Way more my style.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some packing to do. Easter with the family tomorrow and then they ship me back off to the land of 90-degree temperatures. Happy Easter :)

Week 2: Visit an old friend from college! (Part 1)

Welcome to my second new thing of 2011! I promise I'll stop saying what number I'm on when I get further into this project :) So on to our second week of the new year. I went to school in Southern California (UC Santa Barbara). Most of my fellow alumni moved either into the LA region or out of state. I've visited a few of my Los Angeles friends on trips that coincided with work trips. If you didn't know, working in sports, I've basically had to work on the road and travel every two weeks since I graduated from college. It left me with plenty of opportunities to see old friends!

However, one of my old roommates, Michelle, moved to D.C. after college. We've been in frequent contact and I've said I wanted to go out there several times! In 2011, it finally happened. I visited my first friend from college on a non work-related trip! So here's a quick recap at my first time back in Washington D.C. in over 14 years (this will come in installments of three, I have waaaay too many pictures!):

Thursday, Jan. 6: After having to wake up at 4 a.m. in Arizona in order to make it to the Phoenix airport before my flight, Thursday wasn't too eventful. I hope you don't blame me for a lack of excitement that day, seeing as how I was way tired and passed out not long after dinner.

Friday, Jan. 7: Michelle worked in the morning and I went with her roommate on a chilllllllly 3.1 mile run past the zoo, etc. After warming up and showering, we grabbed some lunch and kicked off the sightseeing trip! First up, the Smithsonian National History Museum. I saw a lot of amazing things, beginning with the closest to my heart, Julia Child's kitchen!!!!

I also got my cheeseball moment in on the top floor, by Colbert's portrait :) I mean, neutral, ambiguously-aggressive face:

On that floor we also saw American Pop Culture pieces, like Dorothy's ruby red slippers and a Muppets exhibit!! It brought me back to my youth and made me smile :)

Along the way were some other really interesting exhibits on the nation's First Women, including pictures commemorating the Kennedy inauguration, first ladies' dresses and of course, Michelle Obama's stunning dress encased in glass. I wish I were that fabulous ;)

Afterward, we made our way back and got to check out some famous monuments in the sunset and twilight hours:

Since I'm not too ashamed to admit I'm such a giant nerd, we quickly ended our romp around the museum in order to make it to the night's events: wine tasting put on by the French Alliance and dinner for Michelle's roommate's sister's birthday weekend (did you follow?).

The wine tasting, while French, was fairly marginal. Since it was free, I assume they picked cheap wines. Hey, I'm not one to complain about anything free or French ;)

Former roommates at the wine tasting room!

For Sarah's birthday weekend dinner, we basically ran across the street and washed up wine tasting with margarita pitchers... classy ;) I don't want to sound like a brat, but being a California/Arizona girl, I'm mighty spoiled when it comes to Mexican food and margaritas. But these hit the spot and led to a wonderful time.

Half of our dining party of eight :)

Blurry... like my night. Ok, you caught me. I only had one. And I didn't even drink at the bar after!

In all, I had a wonderful trip (for a moment I forgot I was unemployed... ok maybe during the wine tasting and margarita madness, ha)! Michelle has a lot of really awesome friends and I opened up quickly, never once having a shy or awkward moment (another "new first" for Monique, ha!). I got to sample a lot of local D.C. culture (as in the bars and dining establishments enjoyed by other 20-somethings) and for real got my nerd on in all the museums. I loveeee American history/culture. I can't wait to share more with you tomorrow. I also can't believe I'm back in Arizona already... where it is close to 70° ;)

More to come tomorrow! Good night kids.

Things to be thankful for

Now that I'm back in California I've had a lot to be thankful for over the past week! For starters, my parents were in Arizona for the entire week and I was busy busy busy running around and exploring with them :)

We went to the top floor of a resort in Scottsdale and had awesome valley views...

...and then sampled wines, meats and cheeses.

We hiked mountains in Phoenix...

...with Woodstock.

I made my first Thanksgiving dinner spread for four...

...that included pumpkin crème brûlée for dessert!

On Black Friday we went horseback riding...

...where we saw a crapton of cacti (and a coyote that I failed to visibly capture).

Ate at two restaurants featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives...

...one of which was a German beer haus for lunch after riding horsies.

(I couldn't finish mine)

And then drove through SNOW in the mountains back to California!! It was the first snow I've seen in probably years :) It even stuck to my hand!

Now I'm back home and enjoying cool weather, family and more laziness! I hope you all had a great holiday! I am now completely fixated on Christmas -- my favorite holiday of the entire year!