We went to Napa for a one-nighter, and it was lovely, but I don’t think we’ll do it that way again. We stayed in downtown Napa, which was not cheap. The restaurants didn’t excite us, so we ate overpriced burgers at the rooftop bar in our hotel.
One highlight was the Silver Oak winery, which is quite famous for their cabernet sauvignon. The whole experience was ridiculously expensive but thoroughly enjoyable. We now have a special bottle to go with next year’s Christmas roast beef.
The other highlight was the spice shop at Oxbow Market. I’ve been on the hunt for fennel pollen, and they had it. I wanted it specifically for this recipe. I hope you can get through the Washington Post firewall to access it. Or email me, and I’ll send you a PDF.
Anyway, this rigatoni dish with sausage and fennel caused quite the fuss when the Bidens both ordered it at a restaurant. Some people have a thing about not ordering the same food off the menu. Dale and I order whatever we want, and actually, we often order the same thing. I didn’t see what the big deal was.
But I made the dish, and it was exceptional. This was the first time I’ve used tomato passata – pureed strained tomatoes sold in a bottle. Also the first time for fennel pollen, but we love fennel, so I wasn’t scared. The clerk double-bagged it, and yet my purse smelled like fennel for days. It was fantastic.
I would buy fennel pollen air freshener.
As for other wine country trips, maybe I’d stay in Santa Rosa next time and do tastings in Sonoma. We still haven’t been to Paso Robles, so that’s on the docket. Of course, we live in great wine country, so there’s no shortage of options.
I’ve been trying to avoid politics, but sometimes it’s in me, and it got to come out. Please feel free to move along while I share a few of my left-coast perspectives.
Early yesterday I read about Disney snookering DeSantis and thought it couldn’t get any better than that.
While I do understand Disney is no saint, as I understand it, DeSantis wanted to punish them for supporting LGBTQ rights after he passed the “don’t say gay” law. The governor hand-picked a board of conservatives and fundamentalist Christians to control much of the Disney World footprint in Florida. But Disney quietly did things by the book with public meetings and notices, all toward essentially stripping the new board of its power.
DeSantis and his folks didn’t even see it coming. I’m sure some sort of battle will ensue. There’s probably no moral high ground. In the end, it seems most things boil down to profits. However … Disney spoke up in support of the LGBTQ community, so I’m calling it a win for progressive values. And a loss for DeSantis, who in many ways, is scarier than Trump.
Which brings me to my earlier question … can it get any better than this? Well, it could, but I’m delighted Trump has been indicted or as he wrote on his social media platform, INDICATED. In the grand scheme of things, do I think this is the worst of his bad deeds? No, but at least we now have some evidence no one is above the law. He may very well be found innocent, and that’s fine, but at least he’ll go to trial like everyone else accused of such crimes.
To say he has a get out of jail free card just because he was president is unAmerican. You want to be a patriot? I don’t know – maybe you could join the military or pay your taxes.
As for indications, I hope this is the first of many.
Then, on top of it all, the sun came out! We got a blockbuster year of rain and snow to put a dent in the drought, and now we’re headed for some lovely weather. To celebrate, I thought I’d buy a six-pack of Bud Light. You can have all the fancy wines in the world, but nothing says spring like Bud Light.
In other words, if it’s Bud Light, you must indict.
Paso Robles is great. Went 2 years ago and spent 3 days at wineries. Daou was great for the view, too pricey for the wine. You can’t go wrong with any of the others. Tin City is a must for the niche wine makers. Desparada is woman-owned winery doing special wines.
Pour yourself a fine wine and toast the INDICATION!!
Thanks for the great recommendations! We do need to go. All indications are there will be some toasting ahead.
I too read with glee about the Disney workaround in plain site. Goes to show who the smart people are and who are not.
I was kind of hoping that Trump would refuse to show up in NY and DeSantis would have to choose whether or not to extradite him so that I could watch DeSantis squirm. It would be a lose-lose proposition for him no matter what he chose.
Last night I made a nice salad from the thinnings of four kinds of greens I planted last Fall in one of our raised beds. They sprouted to fingernail size and stayed that way all winter under a heavy greenhouse grade plastic tarp. So even though we seem to be having a prolonged winter here in northern NM, the longer days have signaled them to grow now and they are doing fine. The herbs in the bed are also doing fine. My fennel didn’t make it last year. Will try again this year. Let’s hope for warmer days and sunshine ahead for us all.
I like the way you think. A little squirming wouldn’t be bad.
Wow, you were able to save your greens and herbs. We’ve got some nice parsley and a few other herbs in pots, and they made it through.
Love the bud light Indic. We celebrated with a nice red. We just got back from a couple of days in Santa Rosa. We stayed at Vintners Resort. Very nice. If you go be sure and check out the Barlow in Sebastopol. Restaurants and breweries.
That resort sounds like a great place to stay. I’ve added it to the list. We stopped by Sebastopol on one of our trips out that way, and we must have been in the wrong place. We saw nothing and couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. The Barlow would be fantastic.
I don’t understand why ordering the same dish is so shocking/not to be done. If you eat at home, you both eat the same meal usually, right?
People be weird…
I almost can’t believe this is really happening re: Trump’s “indication”…I’ve been waiting for this since oh…about 2016 and every day he wasn’t ‘indicated” has been a disappointment since then.
Deb
Ditto!
I will seek out the articles about Disney outfoxing DeSantis. I also read an article recently (can’t recall where – the Atlantic maybe?) that said that the guy who started the whole “Don’t say gay” legislation was…wait for it…a DeSantis appointee! So yeah, he really does seem to be rump light. Sigh. Are we really being “represented” by these morons all across the country?
As for the Biden thing, I believe it is just that there are not so many things the people who hate him can really argue with, so they go with these kinds of stories, all while screaming that the left is “woke”. Ironic.
We are on the same page here. I do think we should get rid of the electoral college — it doesn’t represent the majority.
This has been one of the great mysteries of my life. Why the heck is the electoral college still in existence? Why is there no general outcry against it?
I love a little wine and politics. I’m in another country for a couple weeks so have missed the California wines and a lot of news (of course not the Trump news, the whole world is weighing in on that, but I missed the Disney snooker.) Thanks for the post!!
Wine and politics — that would have been a better headline!
Our local news also said Trump was “indicated” in one of their headlines. Someone must have noticed because it was corrected the next time it came on. I don’t know if people are stupid or if they are the victims of autocorrect. Either way, it happens far too often. Don’t people proofread anymore?
As a career communicator, I did a lot of writing and editing, and I’m a fanatic about typos. Yet I still find some on my blog now and again. I go back and read my posts over and over just in case I missed one, and then I correct it. That said, I find typos, poorly worded sentences and incorrect punctuation all the time in the news. As you said, it’s like no one proofreads anymore.
I hadn’t read that about Disney and De Santis, so thank you for letting me know as it’s great to celebrate the wins wherever they can be found. I’m the same way about UK politicians, especially after listening to yet another one telling us that everything is not just fine, but great, regardless of what our experience is, or the facts & figures of it. Just downright exhausting.
The wine sounds fabulous, and I’ve never heard of fennel pollen, so will be going off down a rabbit hole on that for a while now… And yeah, eat what you want, who cares whether it’s the same as your companion. Life’s too short not to have exactly what you want.
Here’s to celebrating the wins! I hope you find the fennel pollen — so yummy.