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The launch party--oh, man, where to begin? It was scrumptious, luscious, thrilling, exciting, heartwarming, and exhausting. Here's how you know I was having a ball: I have no pictures. None! Not to worry, though, there were several people snapping shot after shot of the packed Blue Hill dining room, and I'll supposedly be getting those pics sometime soon. I promise I'll share the ones that make me look gorgeous and poised! The ones that show me looking giddy and goofy will be deleted instantly.
My week in NYC was fabulous; I had dinner at the Bread Bar at Tabla with my gorgeous editor and fantastic agent, where we spent three hours drinking, eating, and brainstorming titles and plot ideas. EVERY brainstorming session should be just like that. I also reconnected with old friends, tried new restaurants and food I never could've imagined, like the insane tasting menu at Wylie Dufresne's famed molecular gastronomy playroom, WD-50, and doing research.
Then, two days after the party, we flew across the country to San Francisco for a week in Napa, where we're helping a friend celebrate her birthday. It's a rough job, I know, but someone has to do it. I'm spending the afternoon incorporating all my new culinary school knowledge into my existing manuscript for the third Recipe for Love novel.
What are you up to?
It's so good to be enjoying my favorite island getaway: Manhattan! Landed at LaGuardia last night and immediately ran into the longest cab line in the history of ever. But that's okay, because I'm home!
I slipped back into my city skin fairly easily; jumpstarted the process by taking the F train to West 4th. Oy. But it was all worth it to get to my fabulous sushi dinner at a hole-in-the-wall joint on West 23rd! I had chirashi so beautiful and succulent that I couldn't pause long enough to get a picture. The salmon was buttery and delicious, the toro tuna melted on my tongue, and the sushi rice was warm and tangy. My friend and I followed it up with a hike around Chelsea looking for the perfect Ben & Jerry's ice cream to take back to his apartment, where we discussed video games, comics, love, relationships, boys, and writing.
Today, Meg and I are heading upstate to the Culinary Institute of America, where I will pester culinary students with inane questions and sample their cooking at one of the CIA restaurants. Yay! Report tomorrow.
Side note: Meg, the best friend evah, just brought me a plum ginger scone from Two Little Red Hens bakery. Oh. My. God.
For a long time, I'd hear people talking about the "PCH" and just nod, smiling, having no clue what they were referencing. And now I finally know! The Pacific Coast Highway is a stretch of road that winds down the hairpin curves of our country's western border, which it shares with, yes, the Pacific Ocean. This means the views, or at least the views to one side of the road, are spectacular along this rocky, cliffy highway.
Stinger got it into his head that we should make this drive. He had it all planned: we'd rent a Corvette convertible and make a day of it, skimming down the PCH from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, a trip that would take about four and a half hours on the regular, more direct freeway, but should take seven or eight on the scenic route. We'd go through Carmel, Monterey, Big Sur--it would be fantastic! And to be clear, parts of it were. Carmel is this sleepy little artists' colony wedged into the rocks high above the water. Big Sur is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, combining the dramatic, rough-hewn coastline of a place like Maine with the vibrant blue water of the Pacific.    I couldn't stop myself from taking these pictures. And I'm not really a scenery-only sort of travel photographer--I like to remember the people on my trips, including me, as part of the landscape. In fact, I'm mainly posting them here because I know I'll probably never look at them again and I want them to have not been taken completely in vain. Anyway, here's one with me and Stinger: We look happy, right? We were. Because this was taken before the fuel system on our car malfunctioned and we took it to a mechanic and dicked around with Hertz and finally went to the Monterey airport to exchange it. At which point we'd lost all interest in pretty scener and headed back to the freeway to zip down to Santa Barbara. For the next five hours. The entire trip took about ten hours and we ended up giving Santa Barbara a miss altogether, driving straight to our end destination, the home of some friends of ours in the gorgeous, rustic-chic Santa Ynez valley. I've rarely been so happy to arrive anywhere! More on the rest of the trip later.
We've been back for a week but if feels like a year. I miss California! The sun, the laid-back, permanent vacation vibe, and of course, the FOOD. I proved what a weak sauce food blogger I am by refusing to bring my camera into the French Laundry, but here are some other pics of our trip. This is the view from our sun deck off the hotel room in Napa Valley. I can now highly recommend the Auberge du Soleil to anyone looking for an extremely luxurious, pampering Napa getaway. At one point, I seriously considered chaining myself to a wicker poolside chaise and refusing to leave. Ever. I have a pic of Stinger in all his early-morning glory sitting at our little outdoor table surveying the gory remains of our room service breakfast, but I'm too good a wife to ever think of posting it. Of course I am. So here, instead, is a shot of the pool area where we spent a fruitful, relaxing, (and, for Stinger, lobsterfying) afternoon. You can see why Stinger stayed out too long. It was enchanting! And the pool boys would bring you lovely cocktails and chilled gazpacho and stuff. Win!
 For dinner that night, we met our friend Enrique at Go Fish!, a seafood restaurant run by the Queen of Napa Valley Cookery, Cindy Pawlcyn (whom you might recognize if you've been watching Top Chef: Masters!) The menu was fun, full of classics like Shrimp and Crab Louie (the salad I eventually settled on, which was a huge mass of fresh, crsip lettuce, sweet seafood, and the best thousand island dressing ever) and Lobster Mac & Cheese. But the best part was the sushi. Above is the extensive sushi bar, which shared space with a raw bar laden with an enormous variety of oysters, clams, mussels, etc.
 We had a Dragon Roll (eel and avocado wrapped around shrimp tempura) and a Spicy Crispy Roll (yellowtail, scallion, tobiko, and tempura flakes with a spicy mayonnaise.) It was honestly some of the best sushi I've ever had--and I went through a phase where sushi was all I wanted to eat. Seriously, on Senior Skip Day in high school, while everyone else was up at the lake getting drunk and skinny dipping, my best friend and I drove an hour to the next town for sushi.
For the rest of the trip we stayed with friends, so these first couple of nights were our little mini-vacation-within-a-vacation. It was Stinger's 30th, we planned it for a year, and we went all out. Stay tuned for the rest of the trip later this week!
If the title of this post made you think it was going to be sexy, I'm very sorry to disappoint you. Our a/c is broken. It is currently far too hot in my house for holding hands, much less anything more athletic.
Still, even with the temperature issues, it's good to be home! We had a great time in San Francisco/Napa Valley/Big Sur/Santa Ynez. Yes, the trip was as long as it sounds. I did get a bunch of writing done, though! Traveling can be good for that, I guess because it's so stimulating. I also got some good reading done--finished Blink (finally), which I'd rank below The Tipping Point and Outliers, but I did like it. And I'm nearly caught up on Eloisa James's Desperate Duchesses series! Those are compulsively readable. This Duchess of Mine is next, then I'm all ready and waiting for Villiers's story! He's the character I've adored the most through the entire series, so I'm truly looking forward to it.
In the meantime, it's back to deadlineville! I'll post pictures of the trip tomorrow, I promise. It's too hot right now to go upstairs and find my camera cord.
In the immortal words of John Cusack's character in Grosse Pointe Blank, "You can never go home again. But I guess you can shop there." My little Virginia hometown looked and felt surreally different when I visited last weekend. A little more cosmopolitan than it used to be, a little more traffic. Some things were the same, though, among them the weekly farmers market downtown. Same beautiful bounty of produce, same friendly vendors willing and eager to offer a taste of their wares, same funny little place selling Filipino food. Unable to resist, and reveling in the fact that I was clever enough to bring a cooler in the car, we bought some gorgeous brioche and three different kinds of local goat cheese, including a brie-style cheese and one studded with dried cranberries, pecans, and candied ginger.
     But, above all, there were the ham biscuits. Oh, ham biscuits! How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
 First of all, they're saltier than hell. Those who don't like salt should a) probably not be reading my blog and b) go for the chicken and waffles or something. Country ham, which I believe is called Virginia ham in places that are not Virginia, is salt cured, which gives it this lovely chewy texture and dark, almost smoky salt flavor. The best version of a ham biscuit involves a yeast-risen biscuit, not too fluffy or crumbly, slathered with mayonnaise and sandwiching thick slices of country ham and ripe, red tomato. Every bite yields a perfect combination of juicy, tart-sweet tomato, tangy mayo, buttery biscuit, and holy-GOD-salty ham.
Heaven. In my mouth. And wow, I'm suddenly dying for a glass of water.
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