Welcome! You’re reading part 3 of my round-up from our vacation to Northern California. Need to catch up? Read Part 1 and Part 2.
From the land of waterfalls and wildflowers, D and I drove north, past Carmel and straight by the Bay Area, and sojourned into the land of grapevines, wine country. No sooner had we passed San Francisco, the topography started to change. Fewer buildings, more sprawl, and — importantly — no fog. I tell you, the clouds hug that little city nice and tight. When you’re in SF, you pretty much forget there is a sun. Then you go 15 minutes outside the city and, oh, right, there it is. Wine country was sunny, beautiful, and full of the good stuff.
This is the part where you’d hear two different stories if D had a blog. For me, wine country was, you know, about wine. For D, not as much. She’s a beer drinker, and a serious one at that. Wine is less her thing, and I got a real kick out of watching her eyes glaze over as winemakers talked of caramel and spice, cherry and blueberry, barnyard funk, and long finishes.
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Welcome! You’re reading Part 2 of my round-up from our recent trip to the Bay Area, Wine Country, and Big Sur. Need to catch up? Here’s Part 1.
It’s just as well that I have a vacation to talk about….there’s not much cooking in my kitchen these days. Work has gotten crazy again, and let’s just say there’s a lot more Chop’t takeout in my life than I’d like to admit. I’ll do my best to share what few treats I do whip up, though, and I’ll be back up to speed in no time.
Where were we? Ah, yes. We were on the west coast, where the views, the coffee, and the weather could all be described as cool.
What, lukewarm coffee doesn’t do it for you? I hear ya. I was put off at first, for sure: when it’s 50 degrees outside and you don’t have a scarf, you pretty much need a cup of hot joe to warm those hands. But that not-quite-hot brew is purposeful: the folks at Blue Bottle (i.e. my new best friends) told me that if you brew the water too hot, the beans burn, the milk scalds, and the flavor is lost. Duly noted. ($tarbucks, ya hear?)
It doesn’t hurt that Blue Bottle uses Clover organic milk in their coffee. In fact, that’s one of the great things about SF: every little cafe uses organic milk. That’s just the way it is. And, as you can see in that first picture — this is the real highlight — Blue Bottle individually brews every cup of coffee. It simply can’t get fresher than that. While we were staying across from the Ferry Building, D and I made Blue Bottle a morning ritual. We sat on high stools at the bar around the corner from the Blue Bottle stand, read a few papers, sipped coffee, and ate homemade caramelized Belgian waffles that were, quite simply, the best waffles I’ve ever had. Complaints? None.
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Alas, we are back from vacation. Yes, it was far too short. Yes, I can still taste those last precious drops of bracingly strong Blue Bottle Coffee. (If you follow me on twitter, you know the full extent of my obsession: I’ve been seeking an alternative anywhere, anywhere in DC, and today I almost resorted to joining the Blue Bottle monthly coffee club. Talk about excessive.) The coffee shops and restaurants in San Francisco leave absolutely nothing to be desired, and the farmers’ markets, ohh, the farmers’ markets…their reputation far precedes this post. The only thing missing was a kitchen to cook all that great produce. Much as it would have been nice to saute some asparagus (asparagus! in August!) or steam a couple of artichokes, it was almost as nice to know I had something exciting to come home to.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves; surely, you’re here for the pictures. I have lots of those — an embarrassing number, some would say. But there was so much to photograph! So many steep hilly streets, so much drool-worthy food, so many beautiful grape vines and olive trees and sheep (who knew?), so much good coffee (am I belaboring the point?), it was hard to know where to start. I can tell you this, though: we did a lot of research before this trip (and by “we,” clearly I mean I) about what to do in NorCal (and by “what to do” clearly I mean what to eat) and the research paid off. Here’s just a smattering of some favorite moments.
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Hello, friends! I’m back from California, my tote fully stocked with edible goodies and pictures galore. I’ll be spending some time this weekend sorting through the 1,171 pictures I took for highlights beautiful or mouthwatering enough to share with you all. My fuel for the picture-perusing is a generous helping of this crisp, and while the post on NorCal technically should come first, this can’t wait.
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