On A Very Rare Occasion...

Some of you may know, and some may not, that my boyfriend is an incredible catch. One of the huge reasons I say that (one of many, really) is that he loves to cook, and I don't. So, at the end of most days, when he comes home from work, he still has no problem whipping up something delicious. He says it's relaxing for him, and he enjoys it, so it all works out great. On a rare occasion, though, I do take over the kitchen (or at least help out a little).

We've gone through most of the meals that we both just "know," so we've started going through some of his recipe books. Let me make a recommendation to you: it's Rocco's Real Life Recipes, Fast Flavor for Everyday, and it's phenomenal. Most of the recipes are very easy, can be done in about 15-30 minutes, and are delicious. The book also includes a lot of great tips for beginning cooks, like how to set up your kitchen, what things you should keep stored, advice on how to cook and prepare some standard foods, even tips on entertaining and wine! The recipes we've tried so far have been fantastic; both are very meat/cheese heavy, which is something both Ant and I enjoy.

A couple weeks ago, Ant got me in the kitchen to help make the most recent adventure from this book. It was Beef and Crispy Potatoes with Bleu Cheese, and the crispy potato pancakes were my charge. They took a little longer than we expected to fry, but I had fun pretending to make latkes for Hanukkah or something (which is something I've never done, as I'm not actually Jewish). Probably the most fun part of this task of the meal was the instruction to "squeeze [the grated potatoes] like a snowball to remove excess liquid" before frying. Who knew cooking could turn into a snowball fight? Ok, so there was no food/snowball fight, but we laughed about it for a while.


The rest of the dinner was pretty easy. Just sauté some strips of beef with onions after frying the potatoes, and mix a bunch of sour cream and bleu cheese together for the sauce! And it was DELICIOUS! Have I said that before? That these recipes are great? Well, they are. We actually had leftovers for several days, and we were both a little depressed when they were gone. Actually, a couple times I think we fought about who would get to eat the leftovers for lunch.

With the dinner we decided to try one of our new wines from the Temecula tour: the Sangiovese from Bella Vista. It's a pretty light, sweet red that's low on tannin, and we both really enjoyed the wine on its own. It went well with the dinner, but wasn't a stunning pair. Like I said before, we're still working on our wine and food pairing skills. But, it certainly wasn't bad, and we had fun with it.

Just this last week, I was in the kitchen cooking again and we made my Dad's "famous" kielbasa with potatoes and apples in a maple syrup sauce. That's pretty much all there is to the dish, but it is SUPER tasty. We tried it with one of the wines left over from our Fingerlakes (NY) wine tour. It's a riesling, but a little less sweet, and with some sour apple notes, so I thought it would go well with this particular dish. I think we would have been better off with a sweeter riesling, or maybe a blush wine, though. Oh well, live and learn!

Ok, I really have to stop writing now, because all this talk of tasty food is starting to make me REALLY hungry. I'm off to find something for my grumbling belly now...

Temecula Wine Country

Some of you may know that I have (fairly) recently fallen in love with wine. It started about four years ago when I took a wine-tasting class at RIT, but that's really another story. The point of this story, is wine tours.

Somewhere along the way to building my passion for wine, and very likely contributing to it, is the fact that Anthony has very much been on-board with exploring this rich new world. We've had a lot of fun trying new wines, testing our skills at wine and food pairing (yeah, that could use a lot of work still), and just overall enjoying wine as it's meant to be.

One of our major goals before leaving New York was to take a tour of the Fingerlakes Wine Region. A lot of that was just to get that particular regional experience, but another large part was to compare the New York wines and wineries with those of California. And our first California tour took place a couple weekends ago through Temecula Valley.

The trip began with a beautiful drive along scenic Ortega Highway. Ant hadn't actually told me what we were doing - only that he had a surprise for me and it was a couple hours away. We hadn't made any plan for the trip, and we didn't have cell signal to research the wineries from Anthony's phone, so we just headed down the road and started stopping in where we saw the signs. Over the day, we only visited 4 wineries, and one had just closed their tasting room, but it was a great day. The wineries we visited were Thornton, the Inn at Churon, Bella Vista, and Hart.

The first stop, Thornton, was actually the one site that was technically closed. They were setting up for a large concert and so were no longer doing tastings, but we did get to look around their sales room briefly. They had lots of gorgeous glasses, photo books, and decorative wall-hanging wine racks. One little bottle of wine, though, caught our attention in particular: a late harvest Zinfandel. For any of you who aren't particularly familiar with wines, Zinfandels are generally a fairly heavy, full-bodied, very tannic red wine, and late harvest wines are very sweet and generally considered dessert wines. My only experience with late harvest wines has been Rieslings, so of course a late harvest Zin caught both Ant's and my attention. So, we decided to not leave empty handed and take home a bottle of it. Turns out it was on special, two for one, so we brought home two!

Our second stop was the Inn at Churon. It was very quiet, and we wandered a bit trying to find the entrance since there were no people coming in and out. Once we found the shop/tasting room, though, it was gorgeous. The woman who served us was very friendly and helpful in choosing wines to try. Overall we had a great time chatting with her and another couple there, and of course trying their wines.

The third stop ended up being our favorite vineyard of the day: Bella Vista. We had a hard time picking the wines we wanted to try, and didn't try a single one we wouldn't love to bring home. They actually have a pretty cool wine club we're seriously considering joining. Every 2 months, they send you 2 bottles of wine to try at a discount price. So you get to try a wide variety of their picks, and all their new wines. They also send recipes and recommended food pairings with the wines, and the membership gets you a free tasting any time you stop by, as well as discounts on any/all wine. They do ship your bi-monthly tasters to you, but if you'd rather come pick up your wine, you can do that and do a little tasting that day, too.

The tasting room itself was pretty cool, too. When you first walk in, it seems like a very small shop. They have all their wines out and stocked with descriptions for you to look through, along with a few winey-type souvenir things. But the really cool feature is their tasting room behind the shop.

We have discovered that tastings are fairly different here in CA than they were on the Fingerlakes. For one thing, they generally cost $10 here, compared to $1 or free in NY. They were generally more intimate in NY, as well, with apparently less traffic. Another difference is that the CA wineries give six samples, compared to four in NY, and your tasting fee includes the price of your glass, which you get to keep.

In NY, we would have expected to take a sampling right there in the tasting room at the front counter. However, at Bella Vista, you have to pay for the tastings out front in the shop, and they give you six "coins" to take to the tasting room in the back. I say "in the back" because it's behind the main shop, but really the tasting room is 3-4 times larger than the shop in front. That seemed a little odd when we first arrived, seeing as we were perhaps two of five tasters there, and the tasting we'd just come from was very slow and empty. We discovered later, however, that this was apparently a very popular location and the large setup was entirely necessary. Per usual, there were papers listings the wines with short descriptions at each spot around the bar, and when you've selected your wines, you place your coins over the top of their descriptions. I found this rather strange and unusual, as well, seeing as we'd always been to the smaller tastings where you have one pourer "assigned" to help you select the wines. Well, this question, too, was answered as the crowds came in and the two pourers were responsible for helping 20-30 tasters. It was really easy for them to just make rounds, see who was empty, take their coin, and pour the next glass.

Overall, both Ant and I really enjoyed this vineyard, and all of their wines. We only brought home three bottles, but I am hoping we'll get to join their wine club very soon.

The last stop on our tour was Hart Winery (it's the one pictured at the top of this post). Anthony had heard great reviews about them, so we had to stop in. It actually wasn't really our type of vineyard, as most of the wines are very dry and we still lean more toward the sweets. They did have a lot of cool wine-related crafty souvenirs, though, like bottle cork magnet clips and hummingbird feeders made out of wine bottles. It was fun to stop in, and I'd had enough to drink I didn't care much what the wines were like. Ant had just had small samples of my wines so he would stay sober enough to drive, and I got the round 1-oz per pour at three vineyards.

Overall, it was a very fun day. We came back with another three glasses and 10 wines to add to our collections, and we've been enjoying them thoroughly. I'm sure we'll be returning soon to check out a few more of the vineyards farther along the road.

Labor Day Part II - Vegas

So, the last post left off with a busy busy Saturday in Colorado Springs, going to the balloon festival and Air Force Football game. I also forgot to mention that that particular day was also 1. my parents' 28th wedding anniversary; 2. my brother's 24th birthday; and 3. the first full day of his engagement. That's right, my big brother is now engaged to be married!

Sunday, however, it was time to depart for a 2-day drive back to California. It's about a 17-hour drive from Colorado Springs to our new California home, so we decided to go ahead and split it up since we had the extra day off. Sunday was really just a typical roadtrip, with new landscapes to explore and an extra state to add to both Ant's and my travel lists. I think he was excited to be seeing something along the way I hadn't seen before. We stopped most of the way through Utah for the night, which only left about 5 hours of driving for Monday. Which meant... time for VEGAS!!

So, with a reasonable morning getting up and a couple hours' drive, we arrived in Las Vegas for the afternoon. We got lunch at the MGM Grand and had fun with their interactive menus in front of the cafe, then headed outside to walk a bit of the Strip. It was pretty awesome, but HOT outside.

Eventually we found our way to the Bellagio and decided to stop in for a little afternoon gaming. The fountain out front wasn't doing anything spectacular as we walked in (though later they had it going for some wedding photos off an interior balcony), but the interior of the hotel was phenomenal. I don't know if it's a permanent thing (though I would expect at least part is), but they had a lot of Chihuly glasswork, both in the entrance and again in an incredible garden. Although we were incredibly thirsty, we had to wander through, and on the other side stumbled on this MASSIVE chocolate fountain. I think it was in the Guinness World Records, and pipes white, milk, and dark chocolate through the system. Pretty incredible. The little shop had amazing wedding cakes and some delicious-looking little pastries, but we passed them up to return to the gaming tables and to grab a drink.

For the first time either of us had gambled in a casino, I'd say we did pretty well. We just stuck to Black Jack as we had fairly limited time, but we had a blast. Once Ant had worked up to a $50 profit he brought me in to play. I think in the end we made about $130 between us (maybe more?), so it was a very productive day of entertainment.

Around 6pm, we figured it was time to head out and finish the 4 hours of driving to get back home. The last nifty little surprise we found (and what I'll leave you readers with) was discovered walking back through the MGM to the car. As I'm sure you know, their major icon is a golden lion. Well, it turns out that they have 2 lionesses that they keep right there in the hotel with big glass walls to watch them climbing around. It looked like maybe feeding or training time, as there were two people in the exhibit with the girls, but the coolest bit was this little tunnel you could go into to actually go under the exhibit. The lions were actually laying on top of the tunnel, and the picture here is directly below them. Not the best photo, but certainly cool if you know what it's of.