Spring Break in California: San Francisco

There’s this little restaurant called Plow, where you wait in a huge line outside in the rain for 1-2 hours to be seated at one of the five tables to order some expensive eggs.

But you are SO glad you did.

Though it’s true we waited in the rain and the cold for an hour, the meal was great. I ordered the eggs benedict with mushrooms and spinach that came with a side of rosemary smashed potato hash amazingness.

Per usual, I split mine with my mom and I had half of her vanilla battered french toast with kumquat marmalade and caramelized bananas.

Our wonderful California native friends, Kathy and Rod ordered the egg sandwich and blood sausage.

We may look cold here, but moments later the sky opened up and we were breaking a sweat, scaling the hills of SF. <3 this place…

Spring Break in California: Napa Valley

One of the many benefits to working in a school is the fact that I still get Spring Break as a 23 year old. Serendipitously, my mom had the same spring break at the college where she teaches so we planned a rendezvous in San Francisco for the week. Night one we stayed in Napa - the ideal foodie vacation destination, and ate at Celadon.

I was blown away with the cocktails alone. I had an upscale salty dog: grapefruit infused vodka, grapefruit juice and some other mystery ingredient. Mom had an elderflower cocktail mixed with fresh kiwi.

We split the macadamia crusted goat cheese with port-soaked figs and pear slices. It was as good as it sounds.

I caved. I had to. I gave up eating farm animals for lent, and have stuck to it thus far. But when Sergio read off the special: a homemade pappardelle with slow roasted, pulled pork shoulder with tomatoes and mushrooms cooked in the meat’s own juices… I was done for. It was oh, so worth it.

How can you say no to cinnamon raisin bread pudding with grand marnier crème anglaise? You shouldn’t, and we didn’t.

The mini-breakdown I had the next morning when I tried to button my pants was even worth it. To help our waistline, we walked to breakfast at Alexis Baking Company for oatmeal.

From there, a day of wine tasting ensued…

First stop was Peju Province Winery, based solely on the strange, skinny trees lining the entrance.

 

The tasting room was more church than vineyard with a huge stained glass window. Odd. But not quite as odd as the ABSURD wine tasting attendant who was not a day younger than 70- he rapped, cussed, made inappropriate racial jokes and generally made the entire group of us wine tasters feel severe second-hand embarrassment. The wine was great, but that was way over-shadowed by the extreme discomfort of the tasting process.

A little further up highway 29, we stopped in St. Helena for lunch. My Google search suggested we go to Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen.

To start, more incredible crusty brown bread.

We split the papaya, avocado, hazelnut salad with spicy cilantro dressing and the stuffed poblano peppers with avocado salsa. We’re still talking about that salad.

Finally, we stopped in at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. In another life I will come back as a CIA student. The building is as cool on the inside as it is on the outside.

We stopped in their bookstore which happened to be doing a wine and chocolate tasting. We carpe diem’ed on that and had a glass of their Cabernet with two amazing chocolates. One, a dark chocolate filled with a flowery caramel, the second was a white chocolate filled with bananas foster filling. I kid you not, it was like biting into a caramelized banana. The flavors were on point… not that I expected anything less from this place. 

After all of this, plus another vineyard on the way back, I had reached my quota of wine, so we head to Lafayette, CA for the next leg of our trip.

Loaded Sweet Potato

I realize I may have previously documented a stuffed sweet potato, but it must be revisited. Who doesn’t love sweet potatoes? You know whenever you’re at a restaurant and “sweet potato fries” are on the menu, someone’s ordering them. This is a healthier, cheaper (cough, better) way to get your sweet potato fix.

It’s basically an entire meal stuffed into a wrinkly brown skinned root, that happens to be packed full of nutrients. Did I mention they’re like $0? And the variations are endless. Take this as an example:

Loaded Sweet Potato

1 sweet potato
1/4 granny smith apple, diced
goat cheese, crumbled
craisins
roasted almonds, chopped
dash cinnamon

Optional: additional goat cheese and red pepper jelly to spread onto sweet potato skin

Prick sweet potato with skin and microwave 5-6 minutes, or until soft. Slice open and mash down. Top with remaining ingredients. Add butter if you’d like – but you really don’t need it!

Vegetable Quinoa with Tomato Sauce

What would I do without Trader Joe’s? I thought I was doomed when I realized I had not gone grocery shopping in over a week, and that I might have to battle the mayhem that is Sunday-Night-at-the-Grocery-Store. Until I opened my freezer and TJ’s frozen vegetables came to the rescue! I threw every frozen vegetable under the sun into a pan with garlic and olive oil, added a can of diced tomatoes and poured it over quinoa.

I’m pretty sure this would work with any and all other frozen/fresh vegetables out there. When each bag is about $2 and they last indefinitely, there’s no excuse not to eat your vegetables.

Vegetable Quinoa with Tomato Sauce

1/2 cup quinoa
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
red onion
broccoli florettes
artichoke hearts
chopped spinach
peas
corn
leaks
1 can diced tomatoes
dried oregano
dried basil
red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese

In a medium saucepan, bring 1/2 cup quinoa plus 1 1/2 cups water to a boil then cover and simmer for 15 minutes. In a large skillet heat olive oil and add in red onion and garlic. After a minute, add in frozen vegetables and sauté until almost warmed through. Pour in tomatoes and season. Let tomato mixture simmer for 3-5 minutes until all the vegetables are cooked and sauce is hot. Pour mixture over quinoa and top with Parmesan. (Serves 2)

Sweet Potato & Gorgonzola Brown Rice Risotto

Either it’s spring or mother nature is playing a cruel game with DC’s emotions. These consecutive days of 83 and sunny are giving me senioritis… without the silver lining of summer vacation. So what do normal people make when it’s beautiful and summery outside? Definitely not risotto.

Call me crazy, but I’d do it again.

Sweet Potato & Gorgonzola Brown Rice Risotto

1 large sweet potato, cooked through and cubed
2 cups chicken/vegetable broth
2 cups water
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 shallots, minced
1/3 cup white wine
3/4 cup brown rice
1 ounce gorgonzola cheese
salt and pepper
cayenne pepper

Microwave the sweet potato 6-7 minutes, until soft. Add water and broth to a pot and bring to a simmer. In a large skillet, heat olive oil and add shallot. After a minute add white wine and reduce by half. Add rice followed by 1/2 cup of broth mixture. Continue adding 1/2 cup of broth to rice mixture until is absorbed by the rice, about 25-30 minutes, stirring often. When tender, stir in sweet potato and gorgonzola until melted. Season with salt, pepper and cayenne to taste. Top with crumbled gorgonzola. Serves 3 with heaping salads on the side.

Roasted Beet Salad with Sautéed Beet Greens

Sometimes I go into dinner with a plan. Tonight was not one of those nights. At the end of a run I wandered into Whole Foods looking for a vegetable for inspiration and found the beets. They had large, intriguing looking leaves that, after a quick in-store Google search, I found out are edible and can be cooked like kale. Fun fact: beets are full of antioxidants that are good for your

Roasted Beet Salad

2 large beets, chopped into 1” pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil
drizzle balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper
cherry tomatoes, halved
zucchini, chopped
sweet peas, chopped
feta
spinach
lemon juice + olive oil

Preheat oven to 400. Toss beets in olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Spread out on tin foil and bake for 45 minutes, or until soft. Add beets to large bowl with remaining vegetables and toss with lemon juice and olive oil.

Sautéed Beet Greens

Bunch beet greens, rinsed and roughly chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chopped red onion
red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
1-2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

Heat olive oil in a large pan and add onion. After a minute, add garlic and then add in greens. Sauté until cooked through, then add remaining ingredients.

Crabs, Quinoa and Boxed Brownies

I had the luxury of getting to go play in Annapolis this weekend and pick crabs for the first time. Apparently “picking crabs” does not mean looking into a tank, picking your favorite, and getting it made into a crab cake. You actually attack the steamed crabs with a mallet and shiv, put in a heck of a lot of effort, and smell like crab for the next 24 hours for an incredibly delicious, albeit precious, amount of crab meat. It's pretty awesome. I managed to fill up off of 3 extra large crabs... with the help of liquid butter, hush puppies, fries, sweet potato fries and oysters. If you're in the area, Cantler's is worth checking out.

Because it's Monday, a couple of us got together at my house for wine, Bach and brownies. I planned ahead and made a healthy dinner to even the score a little. I had a southwestern quinoa salad and stuffed sweet potato.

Southwestern Quinoa Salad

black quinoa, cooked
corn
mushrooms
black beans
cherry tomatoes, halved
spinach/spring mix
feta cheese
avocado
cucumber
salsa
Greek yogurt
salt and pepper

Stuffed Sweet Potato

1 sweet potato
1 ounce goat cheese
craisins
green apple, diced
sprinkle olive oil
salt and pepper

In my opinion, there is one baked good that is not worth your time to make from scratch. That is brownies. They are almost always better when made from a box. But not any box - the Ghirardelli Double Chocolate brownies. Make sure you have a lot of friends around when you decide to make these because leftover brownies don't exist. 

I have this weird need to eat dessert with a spoon, so I put my molten lava scoop of brownie (waiting until they cool to cut is not necessary) in a ramekin with Greek yogurt and a little peanut butter. And the addiction is resuscitated…