Mexican BBQ

Sunday afternoon Van and I attended a BBQ. The heat was stifling, it reached 91 degrees, and the intense heat of the grill didn't help!
The party was to celebrate a birthday, and there was lots of great food, beer and even a live Mariachi band!
The party got so lively, the neighbors called the cops at 6:00pm. It really was pretty surprising, since the only noise was the band and conversation. It's not like there were giant speakers with rap and base or something, it was just a family BBQ.
Van enjoying some homemade flan:
Check out the band playing behind the dance floor! :)

After 6 beers and 2 shots of tequila, Van joined me on the dance floor:
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For more photos, go to my Picasa Web Album
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Check it out....2 days in a row!!!

Run #5

Today's run was especially difficult because we did our run right after I came home from a particularly intense pilates session. Also, it is around 75 degrees outside, and I have a really hard time running in anything above 65. I know my fellow runners in Phoenix and Sacramento are rolling their eyes right now :), I am lucky to run in a place where it is usually not that hot.

I am really excited about my new triathlon training group. The kick-off party on Thursday night was mostly just an introduction of the various teams to join. They have a track team, a half-marathon training group and a sprint triathlon training group; I joined the long course triathlon group. There was also a guest speaker, the inventor of FRS sports drink who gave a really interesting talk. I really need to start up my biking and swimming training now. I am a little freaked out about starting to train for an ocean triathlon after the report of the shark attack of a triathlete in San Diego yesterday, but I know the chances of it happening here are probably very small. Wish me luck!

Run #4

Okay, so we fell off the wagon. And unfortunately I don't think we are going to make our 3 runs this week, but we are definitely going to do two. In case you are wondering, I decided we should only do 2 miles each run for two weeks because I want to work back into it slowly. Van can run much, much farther than 2 miles. I'm not sure I can. I hope to do a 3 miler this weekend, but we'll see.
At the urging of my friend Lu, I signed up for a triathlon training program. I plan to do one, and maybe two triathlons this summer. Tomorrow evening is the kick-off party for the training program, so I am looking forward to that. I don't think we actually start training as a group until June though. My first triathlon of the year will be the Seattle Danskin Triathlon. The second one that I am only considering is the Carpinteria Triathlon, which is quite a bit longer than the first one (I am thinking about doing the Olympic distance). I am hoping Lu and the training program can keep me focused and training hard so then I can feel confident enough to sign up for the second one.

Vintners' Festival

This past weekend was the Santa Barbara County Vinters' Festival. So we had some friends over for brunch with crepes and mimosas, and then headed up to wine country to take advantage of all the free food that accompanies wine tasting during the Vintners' festival.We had planned to start at Au Bon Climat and Qupe since they only open twice a year. We got there about an hour after they opened and it was so packed we could barely walk into the building. We decided to leave and come back later and hope it had cleared out a little. From there, we went to Cambria. The winery and the location was really beautiful, but we weren't very impressed with the wines. We then went back to ABC and luckily the crowd had cleared out quite a bit. Our favorite wine of the day was the 2005 Nielsen Vineyard Syrah from Qupe. Barrels at Au Bon Climat. Enjoying our food and wine and trying to stay warm (it was a very cold windy day).

Run #3

WWWT

On every other Wednesday, we get together with some friends to watch Top Chef and taste some wines. This week we had four Chardonnays, tasted in order from left to right. After tallying everyone's score, the SB Winery came in first place followed by the Kendall Jackson, Point Conception, then lastly the Pouilly-Fuisse.

















For all those of you who are unfamiliar with screw caps....you don't need to use the foil cutter.























Everyone enjoyed the wine, some more than others. We don't call it Wild Wednesday Wine Tasting for nothin'.

Run #2

As promised........

Rare Sighting

Shhh….be very quiet. We don’t want to scare her away. This may be the first time it’s been captured on film. My wife is in the kitchen.......COOKING!

Unfortunately for me, she’s not making us dinner. It’s her week to bring the dessert to the 4^th Floor Dessert Club. She’s making the chocolate cupcakes from this month’s issue of Food & Wine.

First Run of the Season

After months of winter hibernation (storing body fat), we're finally ready to start the running season. Our first scheduled race, the Santa Barbara State Street Mile, is only 7 weeks away. The SBSSM is the perfect first race. It's only 1 mile long, it's slightly downhill, and there's no pressure to perform (since we always enter the "family/dog" division).

We're making a promise to our 3 regular readers to run at least 3 times per week. So that you can keep us accountable, we'll post screenshots from our Garmin GPS watch.

Spring in Santa Barbara

The weather is definitely starting to warm up and these flowers are everywhere.
They are usually pink or yellow, but I really love these pink ones.

Hiking at the Sedgwick Reserve & dinner with friends

This weekend Van and I had the opportunity to go hiking at the Sedgwick Reserve.
It was the ten year anniversary of the land belonging to UCSB (I think) and to celebrate
they invited the public to come to a BBQ and to go on guided hikes.

A view from the road on the drive in.



They had tri-tip and chicken on the grill.

There was also what I think was a Petanque court there. Van and I played a couple of games, although I am not sure we played correctly. Even though my form might not have been as exciting as his, I won!




While on the hike, our guide pointed out an Oak tree full of holes with acorns inside. Apparently, a family of Acorn Woodpeckers lives in this tree and store their acorns in the holes they peck.


That night we had plans to go over to a friend's house (who happens to be a fabulous cook) for dinner. She prepared an amazing dinner for us, I wish my pictures did the food justice.




This was the best French Onion soup I have ever had!





For dessert we had creme brulee, freshly flamed (see the torch in the back), with berries and home made whipped creme. I have never had creme brulee this way before, but is was definitely delicious!

San Francisco Weekend

To celebrate my birthday Van and I headed north to San Francisco. We stayed at the Serrano Hotel in the Theater District. On my actual birthday, we had dinner at Masa's on Nob Hill.
A photo of us just before we left for dinner:
It was a great meal. We wanted to get the six-course, but we also really wanted the Foie Gras, which was only offered with the nine course meal. Apparently, this is quite common, because when we told the waiter that we both wanted the six-course meal with the wine-pairings he asked if we wanted to add the Foie Gras to that for an extra charge. So that's what we did.

The meal started with a "compliments of the chef" Fava Bean soup that was extremely flavorful, but after a few sips became a little too salty. Van thought it was salty right away, but I think I have a greater affection for salt than him. The soup was served with a delicious little warm cheese-puff. The second course we received was also not on the menu. It was some sort of Japanese squid with sweet rice, I think flavored with pomegranate juice, but I'm not sure. These were whole squid, which I have never eaten before, so it took some guts. They were good though.

The rest of the courses, were all very good. I loved the "composition of scallops" -

green and white asparagus, mild chorizo,
sausalito spring watercress, lemon vinaigrette

I also really liked the Paine Farms Squab. For the most part, I loved all of the wine pairings, with the exception of an overly oaked Chardonnay and the late-harvest wine that went with the foie gras. After our dessert course they sent us home with an assortment of chocolates and candies made on-site that we enjoyed the next evening.

The next morning we got up early to go to Dottie's. Our hotel was very close to this restaurant, that had been touted as the best breakfast in San Francisco. We had heard about the lines (from Yelp and from the people who worked at our hotel), so we hoped we could make it there before the lines got too long. Luckily, we got right in. I had the blueberry pancakes, and Van had some combination of stuff that came with eggs, bacon and french toast. While the food was very good and the service was excellent, I don't know if it would have been worth waiting in line an hour for. San Francisco must have some pretty bad breakfast places if people feel that this place is so amazing. I compare it to our local breakfast place, although it definitely had a lot more charm.




















Next we headed off to the Golden Gate Bridge to replace the pictures we had taken of the Golden Gate bridge on our trip to San Francisco about 6 years prior. Van was less familiar with the features of his digital camera then and "formatted" all our pictures of that trip. We parked down at Crissy Field, and then walked up to the bridge and then a 1/3 of the way across.
















We then headed to the Haight-Ashbury area. While there, we met a very helpful homeless man who told us where all the famous people had lived in that area. When we got home we found out he was wrong on 2/3, but it was fun to believe it at the time. We also stopped to have a crepe at a crepe shop in the area. It seems like the "in" thing now to open a crepe shop. There were 4 or 5 on this street. I'm so glad crepe shops are finally catching on somewhere!!















For dinner that night we went to Chapeau! bistro. It was a nice French restaurant that served a 3 course early bird special that we thought would work perfectly before the play we had tickets to in the Theater district. A picture of us before we left for dinner:


The dinner was wonderful but it ended up running much longer than we anticipated, so we just barely made it to the play in time.

The next morning we went to Alcatraz. I've been to San Francisco many times, but have never been there. I really enjoyed the free audio tour you get when you go, but mostly I just loved the views of the city.






After Alcatraz, we had lunch on Pier 39, (fish & chips & chowder of course) and headed home.