t o m a t o e s & t e q u i l a

• Keoki's Paradise: Centrally located in Poipu. Try the sliders and especially the Mango Margarita - not too sweet, just perfect. Some folks don't like Keoki's and true, it can be touristy and over the top. But for a cool drink and easy meal, its great.
• Living Foods Market: Very expensive but the best selection of good cheeses and bread on the island. Good wine selection as well.
• Living Foods Market Cafe: Try the brioche french toast for breakfast, yum.
• The Grand Hyatt Poipu: We had drinks on the terrace. Good drinks, great view. The grounds are beautiful as well so just a stroll is great.

The hubby and I spent a week in Vancouver and Victoria with my in-laws over Labor Day.

I have absolutely nothing negative to say about the trip - Vancouver might be one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. It is an amazing combination of cosmopolitan meets laid-back, meets foodie heaven, all set in the emerald pacific northwest. It seemed to be a combination of nearly every other west coast city, save perhaps San Diego. All the things one loves about L.A., San Francisco, Portland and Seattle merge into one, bright, friendly, accessible city.

The food was superior on two counts. First, the restaurants. Anything - and I mean anything - you want you can have. And not just have but enjoy because the quality is supreme. In Vancouver we had Japanese, Dim Sum, and Charcuterie all in a matter of a couple of days. It seems that Vancouver-ites won't accept anything less that exceptional quality food. Second, the markets (namely Granville Island) carried foods I normally only dream of. Case and point - one stall at Granville Island carried 8 kinds of prosciutto in addition to duck fat (those who know about duck fat know that it is the most flavorful type of cooking fat on earth) and at least a dozen kinds of pate. Just down the aisle from that was salmon just off the boat and beyond that the most lovely french pastries.

Victoria was wonderful as well. Being much drier there seemed to be an abundance of local farms and wineries as well as breweries, fish stores and an array of cuisines. There we had wonderful french food, great British beers, and local produce and seafood to name a few things. Again, the diversity of products coupled with their quality is like none I have seen elsewhere in the U.S. (yes, I know B.C. is not the U.S., but it seems close enough!)

Here are my restaurant recommendations:

• Hapa Izakaya
• Salt Tasting Room
• Bon Rouge Bistro

A couple other lovely finds:

• Joie Vineyards, Noble Blend
• Victoria Gin
• Truffle Pig Chocolate

I wanted to share lots of pictures so you can see how lovely it really was. I hope, though I doubt, that these photos give you glimpse of these wonderful, and in my opinion, overlooked cities.

View of Vancouver from Granville Island
View of downtown Vancouver from our condo Main entrance to the Market at Granville Island
Granville Island
Food at Granville Island Fresh Salmon at Granville Island Gastown, Vancouver The Empress Hotel, Victoria
View from our condo in Victoria Butchart Gardens, Victoria

Last weekend the hubby and some friends and I went camping outside of Salida, CO. There were some pros and cons to the trip:

Pros:

• Gorgeous aspen groves at our campsite
• A perfectly clear alpine lake to swim in
• Salida was adorable
• Kayak competitions in town on the Arkansas river
• Beautiful views of the mountains

Cons:

• No campfires allowed! UGH!
• Some rain
• The hubby and I forgot a ton of cooking stuff, oops
• The campsite was pretty crowded
• The general dull noise of generators

The highpoint I think was definitely the town itself. The feeling reminded me a little bit of where I grew up - a mix of an old, smallish town with the revved up culture of water sports and the people they attract. I am from an area of California where lakes (some very near by and Tahoe about an hour away) and rivers abound (Bear River, American River, Yuba River, etc.)



Despite being in the middle of nowhere, Salida had what looked like great restaurants, hippy-ish coffee shops, and tons of art galleries and boutiques that were fun to browse.

If you are from Colorado, definitely make the trip to Salida. You can hike, river raft, etc - and then enjoy a nice dinner in town.

Santa Fe is cool - really cool. I think one of the coolest things about it is how old it is. It has the oldest functioning government building in the country as well as one of the oldest houses in the country. To me, this makes it fascinating. Growing up in the west, old is usually 100 years - I mean, that's an old city to a Californian. For example, I grew up in one of California's first gold mining towns, founded in 1849 - to me that is really old. I went to California's oldest university, Santa Clara University, founded in 1851 - to me this is also very old.



However, the Palace of the Governor's in Santa Fe was built in 1610! To give you a little context of how old that is, in 1610:

1. Galileo was first observing the moons around Jupiter
2. Henry Hudson was just beginning to explore what would become Hudson Bay in New England
3. Louis XIII of France was crowned king
4. The first Dutch settlers arrived to colonize Manhattan

The point is - people were inhabiting Santa Fe in a civilized manor when New England was in its infancy. Take that, East Coast!


 Aside from it's age, Santa Fe is truly amazing for both its architecture and food - both very unique and deeply tied to a long and rich history. Adobe architecture is truly unusual as well as timeless. It has this odd way of looking modern, but was created so much before "modern design" was ever even conceptualized.


Food wise, the best meal we had was at Santa Luna Restaurant - the food was incredibly traditional Mexican food. I had the mole.  Then I died and went to heaven. D - i - v - i - n - e. There are no other words. If you are ever in Santa Fe you MUST go there. It was on a side street and a bit run down but it really just added to the appeal of the food being homemade.

Santa Fe is lovely - do visit...soon.

As you may know, the hubby and I live in Colorado - north of Colorado Springs and south of Denver in a very small town called Monument. The hubby is originally from this area but I am a transplant from Northern California which I miss more than words can say.

I find that one way of dealing with a bad case of home-sickness is to get out and appreciate the beautiful and wonderful things of one's new home. In that spirit, the hubby and I headed down to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs yesterday to enjoy some unseasonably warm weather and gorgeous views.



I have been to Garden of the Gods several times, but wanted to take some pictures this time to share them with all of you. Essentially, Garden of the Gods is an incredible geological site of vibrantly red sandstone that has been pushed up and now sites completely vertical. The park is pretty large and it is difficult to capture the uniqueness of this site as well as the range of rocks in it with photographs - there is no substitute for the real thing. Nonetheless, these photos are my amateur attempt at capturing something truly beautiful and I hope you enjoy them.

This was my second trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The weather was perfect, I was with some of my best friends, and it was beautiful as always. The benefit of Puerto, as opposed to Cancun or Cabo, is that it was an actual real town before it was a tourist destination. So it has none of the sweeping boulevards and perfectly manicured streets of other resort towns in Mexico. This undoubtedly adds to its charm.

The week was really quite uneventful, A LOT of laying in a lounge chair reading. Two highlights included releasing baby turtles into the ocean and dinner at  Fajita Republic - best fajitas I have ever had and the ambiance was awesome. There were beautiful lanterns (see photos below) everywhere. And of course, deadly margaritas, my favorite drink.

In a couple weeks, they hubby and I are packing up and heading east, to Colorado. I am very excited for this new adventure. I am also very nervous. The winters, living in someplace other than California for the first time and leaving my family are just a few of the reasons that make moving far away a little scary.

And of course I will miss the food. San Francisco, along with other west coast communities, is utterly magnificent when it comes to food. We have access to the ocean, the central valley produce, northern bay area dairies, wine country and much more. The products available to San Franciscans is superb by any measure. Case and point: The Ferry Building.



I have worked accross the street from this building for 4 years and it is often considered one of the best farmer's markets in the country. Some of the permanent stands inside the building include:

• Cow Girl Creamery
• Hog Island Oyster Company
• Sharffenberger Chocolate
• Blue Bottle Coffee

Unfortunately, along with these renowned food vendors, comes high prices, big crowds, and (I hate to admit) a bit of snobbery. It is for this reason that I have mixed emotions at times about San Francisco food culture. The food itself is top notch to be sure, but San Franciscan's know it and aren't affraid to let everyone else know it. I wish this weren't the case - not everyone lives 1 hour from wine country and therefore doesn't know how to taste wine...so what?



So as I embark on my new adventure to Colorado, which may have less of a food culture than I am accostomed to, I want to remember not to stand up on my San Francisco soap box. I'd like to share my experiences with people instead, and hopefully meet some foodies who want to share with me too.



In addition to all this sentimental mumbo-jumbo about moving, there is the practical matter of what to cook when one's pantry is entirely comprised of matzo meal and graham crackers. I have been whittling away at my food reserves in preparation for the packing and as a result, my culinary escapades have been suffering more with each day. I am sure that when I get to Colorado, I will be bursting at the seams to cook. Until then, frozen tortellini it is.

This past weekend the hubby and I headed north to Anderson Valley and Hendy Woods State Park in the town of Philo. We are moving to Colorado in about a month and I am leaving my home state of California. We are trying to see (and eat) the last few things on our "must-do-in-California" list before embarking on our new adventure.

I am very excited for our move. Any change to experience something new sounds good to me. And though I have loved California and it will always be home, there are drawbacks to living here...housing prices come to mind.


So - we packed the car for a weekend of camping and headed to Philo, CA. And what's the verdict on Philo, you ask? Glorious. I cannot say enough about this little know region of California wine country.


There were so many things I enjoyed about this area. To keep this brief, I'll just mention a couple.

 Lazy Creek Vineyards - This is the second oldest winery in Anderson Valley and such a gem. First, the wine tasting is free, as it used to be in Napa before it became like Disneyland for adults and way over priced. But more than that, the tasting room is small and intimate. 


The winery has only a few employees and as such, you really get to talk to someone who knows about the wine and the region and has poured their heart and soul into it. Frankly, it makes the wine taste better. Second, the winery was quaint (as many of them are in this area) so wandering the grounds is encouraged. There are no behemoth villa's here, and Lazy Creek was a perfect example of this. The grounds were, shall we say, rough - but lovely, and real. They had a huge vegetable garden and after two hours of lingering, the hubby and I were offered a boat-load of fresh veggies to take home. "We can't eat all of these!" we were told, though we didn't really need a reason to take a bag full of home grown zucchini.


The Apple Farm - This is a foodie's dream. The original owners of The French Laundry (yes, the one in Yountville) moved up here in 1984 to start this farm and cooking school. Though I probably would have given my first born child to take one of the cooking classes, I opted instead to take the time explore Anderson Valley and since we were only there for a short weekend, choices had to be made. I do genuinely intend to go back someday and take a class there. 


In lieu of sharpening my culinary skills, I bought some of their renowned preserves. There is a self serve fruit stand outside operating totally on the honor system - you write down your selections on a clip-board and drop the appropriate amount of money in a bin. We also wandered the grounds here and again, they were rough in areas but lovely and quaint. It was a place that you could tell they grew things to use them, not to stare at them.