Paris: Day 1

We arrived in Paris really early this morning (over an hour before sunrise!), and we made it to our hotel after a couple transfers later, exhausted.

 

But we rallied and walked all over the city seeing the Tuileries Gardens, Left Bank of the Seine, Rue Cler, a couple churches, Museum of Invalides and Napoleon's Tomb, the Eiffel Tower, and Grand and Petit Palaises.

Then we crashed for a nap once our roomS were available. Yes, we got upgraded thanks to Will's points to a suite with a sitting room attached to our bedroom.

We woke up and explored Notre Dame, Ile de la Cité, and Ile St. Louis. Our first dinner hit the spot: coq au vin, chicken with mushroom sauce, Bordeaux wine, and creme brulee.

It was a great first day, and I know we'll feel refreshed after a full night's sleep!
Goodnight!

Views From Above

Does it surprise any of you that this was our view leaving San Francisco?

FOG Blanket

Things cleared up nicely as soon as we got a couple of miles from the city.  It's to be expected after we had an official heat wave last week.  In fact, I received a severe weather alert from my phone's weather app warning me to expect extreme temperatures, the hottest since June.  (The warning was for heat in the high 70s and low 80s.  Yes, you may laugh--I did.)

Not long after take-off, we caught glimpses of the Monterey Peninsula.  I waved hello to my childhood home, school, and wedding location!

I even see Mount Toro, Dad! Do I win an ice cream cone?

We're on our layover in Minneapolis. Next stop (nächster halt): Paris, tomorrow morning. 

Où est le vin rouge?

Au revoir!

And Away We Go

I have some exciting news today (which probably won't surprise a single one of you, since I think I can count my readers on my two hands, and you all already know this...)

We are heading out on a big adventure tomorrow--we will be exploring France and Switzerland, seeing family on my side, tracing family ties on his, and enjoying all the food and wine those countries have to offer.

via

I have wanted to go to Paris for so long--it seems like such a romantic city.  It will be so fun to get to experience it for the first time together!  I'm also very excited to trace our family history on Will's side, as his ancestors are from the Provence and Languedoc regions in southern France.  And it goes without saying that we will enjoy some hilarious family shenanigans with my cousin, aunt, and uncle in Switzerland.

Thank you, thank you plentiful airline miles!

I will be working diligently on my photography skills--both my manual settings and my photographic eye, so I hope to return home with several awesome shots like the (borrowed) one above.

Photo taken eight years ago when I visited my Swiss family

Another exciting part of this trip is that we are having house guests while we are away, just like AirBnB!  I tidied up the binder we keep with maps from all our adventures--hiking and biking trails from the Marin Headlands, Mount Tamalpais, Muir Woods, Presidio, etc.  I also promised an impressively stocked fridge of season beer.  I am anxious to hear about their adventures while they stay at our conveniently located, humble abode.  (Maybe they will even do a guest post?)

I plan to check in over the next several days (likely with 100 phone-camera photos of French pastries just to tease you), and I look forward to editing the real photos to share when we are back.

In the mean time, I'm signing off with the only French phrase I know:

Où est le vin rouge?

(PS: Wish me luck in learning a few other useful phrases.)
  

Virtual Dinner Party

A couple things that have increased in frequency in the last year since moving to San Francisco are:
- days when the weather has been within 5 degrees of 63°
- times I have made homemade pizza for dinner
- times I have seen my family in person

(I feel like I could go on and on right now about other things that have increased in frequency since the move--i.e. times I have smelled pot while walking outside, the number of ironic mustaches I see on a daily basis, times I have wondered if the hills in SF are steeper than the last time I walked up them...things like that.  But those aren't as related to this post.)

Anyway, I see my parents and sisters a lot more now, which I really appreciate.  And part of the reason I see them more often is due to our FaceTime parties.

I've posted before about my Virtual Dinner Parties, and last week I "facetimed" with my sis and mom, so that we could have a dinner party together.  On our menu?  Homemade pizza, of course.  And fall-inspired sweet potatoes, since the weather was the crisp, fall-like 60°.  (I was pretending that wasn't normal.)

The chefs on both sides of the screen got started on onion caramelization, since, to do it right, you caramelize low and slow for 45 minutes or so.  I cooked up red onions, and yellow onions sizzled away in the other kitchen.

We also sauteed cremini mushrooms and chicken sausages.


[Side note: mushrooms are another thing I didn't care for while growing up, but I love them now.]


I reluctantly admit that I got "caught" sneaking samples several times while the food was cooking, and my mom definitely called me out on it... some things never change.

That's okay to do, though, when the dinner party guests aren't actually eating this food, isn't it?


Our perfected recipe involves a very hot oven, a pizza stone that has heated up to the oven temp, a couple minutes of baking the crust before any toppings are added...

 

...using both tomato sauce and pesto, and rubbing a little bit of salted butter along the hot crust before baking the pizza for the remaining 8 minutes.

We both added some greens after the pizza finished baking.  My co-hosts added arugula, and I added chopped basil and oregano from the balcony planter.  Greens add so much flavor.  (Here's where Giada would also talk about how greens add so much color!)  (If you have ever watched her show, please click that link and enjoy!)

Meanwhile, our fall-inspired sweet potatoes, which we created based off this recipe, baked away in the oven.  

And then we sat down to eat together.  The smells on the other side of the screen somehow made my dad materialize, so that was fun!  Wonderful company.

 My co-hosts also wanted to share a photo of their wine pairing.  Well done, D and M!

Our FaceTime evening made it feel like I had real guests in the house.  I loved it!  Hopefully many more to come.  One of these days we'll graduate from homemade pizza to something more fancy for our dinner party menu...though it is SO, SO good!

Guess That Crop

California is a good state for agriculture (obviously), and often we play an unofficial game during road trips: Guess That Crop.

I am surprisingly bad at this game.  They aren't all obvious crops like good ol' strawberries and artichokes!  Besides, why don't YOU try to guess that crop at the speed Will drives?

Driving down to Half Moon Bay recently, we saw this:

Any guesses?

Cabbage, maybe?

Not exactly...

Brussels sprouts!

Did you eat these growing up?  I didn't.  I don't think my sous chef did either (at least not willingly; he has some pretty awesome stories about how he "cleared his plate" growing up, but those are stories for another day).
For me, it wasn't that I detested them...I don't ever remember having them.  But I knew that a kid's sole job was to hate brussels sprouts, and I was a good kid.

Several years ago in North Carolina, I was surprised to hear Will declare that they were good.  I figured I should give them a try, so I bought a bag of frozen brussels from Kroger (during the winter, you have to buy most your veggies frozen...)  I'll save you the $2.50.  Frozen brussels sprouts are awful, no matter how you prepare them.  And trying them for the first time when they are defrosted and mushy is the last way you should initiate yourself.

Another year or so passed until one night my sister-in-law prepared them during one of our girls' nights (watching the Bachelor, obviously).  They were fresh, which was clearly the key.  Oh, right--the other keys: bacon + butter.  I was re-initiated--this time the right way--and I haven't looked back since.  I love them now, and I have even graduated to roasting them with just a little olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Yet it wasn't until last year when I moved to California that I first saw them sold on a stalk at the grocery store like this:

I had no idea....

And now, I am a little better at Guess That Crop.  Last weekend, I beat Will.  But now he has been enlightened too.


That was way too many green pictures for one post, wasn't it?

If so, please feel free to appreciate your brussels stalk from afar--as home decor.  I think this deserves a Catalog Living caption!