Cacciatore
The working mama’s savior – the slow cooker. Friday night our dear friends Katie & Matt came over for a “holiday” dinner. Since dinner was planned for apres work and I wasn’t able to take the day off to prepare, I turned to my All-Clad slow cooker.
Earlier in the week, I bought a FABULOUS cookbook at one of my favorite cooking shops. What makes is fabulous is that it is divided into three sections: 15-minutes hands on time, 30-minute hands on time, made for extras.
So for our dinner, I decided upon Chicken Cacciatore (Hunter’s Chicken, in Italian, I think). Thursday night I prepped the veggies. Friday am, I browned the chicken, made the sauce, threw everything into the crock and that was it! (I was a bit worried that the slow cooker was going to short, and burn the house down, but it didn’t.) I got home, threw in the ‘shrooms, cooked some pappardelle and we were good to go.
It was a lovely evening, but no naked baby dance for entertainment, perhaps next time.
Lumpia
Saturday evening, my family got together for an early birthday/holiday celebration.
As always, there was way too much food. Roast Beef, Spiral Cut Ham and Lumpia. My grandma made a pretty mean lumpia and now my uncle is following in her footsteps. I only had two, but could have easily eaten 5 or 10!
We also had a mini-birthday celebration for my cousin’s daughter Kady, who turns 2 in a couple days. She had a delicious neopolitan cake from Goldilocks. Yum!
We did have a white elephant gift exchange, but IMHO the gifts were, eh. Next year, we’ll have to require the gifts to be items people actually want.
Bouchon
As if Friday and Saturday weren’t enough, we headed down to Palo Alto for dinner Sunday night. (And S got to test his early xmas gift. Btw, I no way paid the price listed. Are you kidding? I could have gotten myself a nice gift at Burberry or elsewhere. But I digress.) Our friend G, made a wonderful dinner! So wonderful, Mads even enjoyed it! Mixed green salad with duck breast, pecans, followed by trout with green beans, roasted pearl onions & shallots and croutons, pommes anna, and ended with creme brulee and chocolate bouchons (I’ve talked about these before).
Mads really dug into the duck breast, trout and pommes anna (wasn’t too fond of the pearl onion, though) and especially LOVED the creme brulee and chocolate bouchon!
So, as I tackle another week of work, looking forward to the holidays and getting xmas shopping done!
…as in Calistoga. Traffic wasn’t AS BAD as I thought it was going to be and we got to our little weekend getaway in a decent amount of time. Driving through the Napa Valley, I reminisced on my trip last year with the girls. How fun! Especially, how beautiful! Driving up hwy 29 made me appreciate the beauty of the area. If only we could afford to buy a little something up there…
We had a nice, relaxing BBQ lunch at the house before the wedding. JP and Rachael looked so happy – yay! for them. (They’re in Hawaii right now, the lucky ducks.) One of the many highlights of the wedding was when JP’s 3 (I think)-year-old nephew, Jack, came up to the microphone and sang “Proud Mary”- complete with the backup band. It was THE. CUTEST. THING. EVER!
Sunday, we made our way down to St.Helena and Calistoga for lunch and window shopping. We relaxed the rest of the afternoon and had a leisurely dinner. Today, Monday, we packed up, stopped for b-fast in St. Helena then headed home. Not before the requisite stop at the Bouchon bakery, of course.
S and I started our Pregnancy Value Package classes last Saturday with Newborn Care and Parenting. How to sum it up, um, yah, a lot of information. We went over bathing techniques, holding and passing a newborn, changing diapers, swaddling and so on. I’m starting to wonder how I can con my nurse to come home with me.
After that class, my uncle helped us transport peanut’s furniture home. We only had an hour or two before we had to head out to Bill’s birthday party – poker tournament, but S was determined to assemble the crib that day. It didn’t take us long once Amanda showed up – proving to be more help than I was.
We also put the wall border up, but for the life of me, I can’t remember when we did that. Sunday? (I promise to post photos of the nursery once we get those pics out to the grandparents.)
Sunday we attended an Infant & Child CPR class – again, a lot of information, but we’re glad we took it. It wasn’t a certification class, but at least we know the basics.
After class we had a light lunch at a French cafe nearby, expecting to go home afterwards, I had to let S in on his belated birthday surprise…a one-hour, 4-hand massage at a spa nearby. We had time to kill, so we napped in the car before his appointment. I wandered around Fillmore street during his appointment, making stops at L’Occtaine, the new Marc Jacobs store, George (an upscale pet store), Bay Bread (where I picked up des croissants, un petit quarte quartes au citron et un baguette), and ended at Royal Grounds coffee with an Italian soda and my book.
Oh, yeah, that’s probably when we put up the wall border.
Girls’ Getaway
Sunday night, my friends Gina and Wendy flew up from SoCal for a Napa Valley getaway. Monday morning, we slowly, but surely made our way up to Napa. We stopped at the premium outlets in Napa – S was the lucky recipient of some nifty items from Calvin Klein and Barney’s. Walking through the Barney’s Outlet was pure torture! Sweaters, jeans, shoes, oh my! Will definitely have to make another trip post-peanut. We stopped for a very late lunch in Yountville at Bistro Jeanty – I had a 3 cheese omelet with pommes frites and watercress and a lemon sorbet to wash the butter (that my meal was drenched in; the pommes frites were quite tasty though) down. We motored directly up to Calistoga to Dr. Wilkinson’s resort – which I swear is stuck in the ‘50s: nice, charming, but no Ritz Carlton / Four Seasons accommodations here. After settling in, I crashed and took a nap. Gina and Wendy went to explore the “resort’s” 3 swimming pools: one indoor pool at 102 degrees F, two outdoors pools at 80 and 90 degrees F, respectively. We then walked up and down the main drag – most shops were closed since it was after 6p. We found a neat bookstore and then dined at a local and popular Italian eatery. We walked back to our hotel and called it a night. What a wild and crazy bunch we are! 😉
Tuesday am was coffee and breakfast at the local coffeehouse then off to the spa! Since my “condition” limits a lot of the services, I ended up with a lovely 1 hour pre-natal massage. Just lovely. Wendy, the only one in the group without child, went for the whole tamale: mud bath, whirlpool, massage. After she was finished with her appointment, we drove into St. Helena for lunch and shopping. I swear if S and I were made of money…they had the nicest home furnishings, glassware and linen shops there! Giada is always talking about festive glasses for drinks and desserts and the stores were brimming with them! Le sigh…if only. Oh! I did buy myself a post-partum gift – a lovely bottle of Cakebread Merlot that is to be opened once this baby carrying business is over. Something to look forward to, definitely!
This and sushi will be one of the many indulgences I am looking forward to!
We then hopped back into the car and made a quick trip to the V. Sattui winery – Wendy got to do some wine tasting and I got to drool over their cheese case. Afterwards, we hopped across the highway to Dean and Deluca for some (more) food browsing and shopping. Gina treated us to a small key lime (or was it lemon?) tart with chocolate cookie crust. We got back to Dr. W’s around early in the evening and again, I took another nap (no wonder I felt so relaxed going back to work!) and then we headed out to dinner. (Eating, sleeping, shopping – what better vacation is there?)
Wednesday, after b-fast and check out, we stopped at Clos Pegase for a tour of their “sculpture” garden, then made another stop in Yountville to visit the Bouchon bakery and to do a “drive by” of the The French Laundry. Though we didn’t eat at Bouchon, the bakery was fine enough for me. I brought home Parisian macaroons and chocolate bouchons – the specialty sweet (they look like little chocolate corks).
We made one last, quick stop at Copia in Napa. The one hour we had didn’t do the place justice. The gardens were beautiful and the food of course, was great! I’ll have to go back when I can allow more time there.
Then it was off to the Oaktown airport. People kept telling us to allow 2 hours to get to the airport – and I’m glad we listened! I missed the traffic both ways and got home in about 30 minutes. S had taken Lucie to work so I had a few hours to myself to unpack and clean up a bit.
It’s amazing what a couple days off can do. Going back to work wasn’t all that bad and those things that seemed like life threatening emergencies, weren’t anymore.
Oh before I forget – Ladd is the coolest! 🙂 Ha ha!