Whew we’ve been busy.  I haven’t forgotten about updating my website, I’ve just totally ignored it.  We’ve had two weeks of company, vacation, and fun.  Our friends Chris & Kelly came in on the 15th, and we headed down to the Napa & Sonoma area.  Donette and Kelly participated in the Napa to Sonoma 1/2 marathon, while Chris and I  did…  Other stuff.  We went to some great wineries while we were there of course, and enjoyed some fantastic meals.  That goes for Donette and I at least;  Coming from the food desert we’ve moved to, pretty much anything tastes fantastic.  After that we headed back up the hill to our house and kicked around a few days, then Chris had to go back home.  We traded him in for our friend Mary at the airport, and a “girls vacation” ensued from there.  I tried to avoid those outings for the most part, but I joined in a few trips.  Good times, if a bit warm!  I have to keep reminding myself that it’s even worse in KC, and whereas the heat index in KC is usually 15 degrees above the air temp, here it is generally about 5 degrees lower.  Doesn’t matter that much…  Even if the heat index IS a mere 98, that’s too hot for me.

I can’t remember every detail of the past two weeks, as usual.  I really need to start taking notes.  And as a matter of fact, I think I did take notes over this trip, I just can’t remember what I did with them.  Sigh.  Got a lot of pics though.  There are a ton more too, maybe I’ll throw another set up later in the week.

Ah, a fine holiday weekend.  Left me a bit battered but I’ll recover.  Said recovery tends to take a little longer than usual since I passed the 1/2-century mark, but I believe there are more factors at work there than just my advanced age.  My memory is sketchy these days too, but I’ll recount the weekend activities to the best of my ability.  Lately I’ve been given to mixing up the days during which an event occurred, much to Donette’s dismay.  Three-day weekends are particularly taxing on me.  I figure I’m doing good enough just to cover things, the time and/or day on which they occurred is secondary.

Friday, (or was that Saturday?) we kicked things off “up the hill” with our friends Michael & Alaina.  I’m not entirely clear who scheduled the events of the evening, but I don’t get too caught up in the planning phase.  I was, as they say, “along for the ride.”  The weather had cooled considerably, making for a pleasant happy hour of sorts at Chateau Davell winery.  They have a nice patio with a great view, if you can ignore the fact that you’re looking out over a highway.  We enjoyed a bottle of wine and a nice meat & cheese tray, then moved on to downtown Placerville to check the progress at Outbreak Brewing.  They’re not officially open yet, but they sell tasters one or two nights a week.  We dropped by a while back and liked the place.  It didn’t appear to me they’d made much progress on the building but they said it was coming along;  I’ll take their word for it.  After tasting a few of their new brews, we headed out for dinner at nearby Smith Flat House.  This was, we decided, our official “best dinner yet in CA.”  I’ve probably used that label a few times before, but I can assure you they’re few and far between.  This place also boasted the rare quality of an actual “atmosphere!”  It was a really cool historic building, it was a nice change to not enjoy dinner in a strip mall.

Saturday morning, Michael & Alaina joined us again for a brunch at our house.  We’ve been on something of a brunch run lately, trying the menu at several local places.  To date, we’ve been left with the general impression of “mediocre & overpriced” at all of them.  (The possible exception is The Purple Place, and it is perilously close to the latter of those two qualities…  But at least the food is good.)  So, I decided to work up a brunch menu of my own.  Honestly I was basing this entire idea on an urge to make eggs benedict using my new sous vide cooker.  I’ll admit a bit of disappointment at finding out nobody liked eggs benedict, and especially with soft-poached eggs.  The most popular menu requests were biscuits and gravy and canned corned beef hash.  Hmmm, didn’t see that one coming.  Well, I can do those I suppose.  I don’t think I’ve had canned hash since I was a kid, and I must say it was a sodium-laden delight.  (I don’t know in what alternate universe the contents of that can qualify as “corned beef hash,” but whatever it really is was pretty tasty.  I thought it best not to read the label.)

Sunday the highlight of the day was a pool party over at a friend’s house in Folsom.  We went to the same event last year and had a great time, it was definitely on our “not to be missed” list.  Matter of fact I was planning to come early and help with the pre-party bbq’ing this year, but that part didn’t work out.  It was a great party once again, if you could overlook the constant barrage of country music.  Hey, not everybody likes non-stop Dave Matthews Band I guess.  Matter of fact I don’t think anybody does, but that’s what you’re getting if you come to my house.  (Say, maybe that’s why nobody comes to my house…  I’ll take that into consideration.)  Anyway, we enjoyed the day, including the great bbq.

For the holiday, we headed up to our friends Michael & Alaina’s once again.  They are likely tiring of our company but our other friend was out of town so options were extremely limited.  They’ve got a nice neighborhood pool, and for whatever reason it is simply not used.  This was the second time we’ve been to it, and the second time we’ve had the whole pool to ourselves.  We set up a volleyball net, fired up a grill, and had a great day of it.  Both Donette & I managed to lose track of time and are now sporting some heinous sunburns, but other than that slip-up it was fine day.

Right on queue with the arrival of summer, it got very hot very quickly.  Dry heat though it may be, 105 is just plain hot.  I’m afraid the pleasant evenings watching the Royals games on the back patio may have come to a screeching halt.  It’s still tolerable to have morning coffee out there, but that’s about it.  As a matter of fact, the heat precluded any kind of Friday evening festivities.  We just sat in the dark and sweated.  Yeah, we’ve got one of those new-fangled air conditioner thingy-ma-jigs, but I hear it costs money to turn it on.

Saturday got off to a good start with a little bit of exercise.  We goofed off a little too long and it got hot out, but Donette went ahead and went on her weekend walk and I took off on a nice bike ride.  I decided to ride some hills, which certainly isn’t too difficult to accommodate around here. I headed a few miles out and climbed one of my least favorite slopes in the area, a long grueling hill about three miles long.  It’s a pretty popular route with the cyclists around here for some reason, I have no idea why.  Granted, once you reach the top you’re rewarded with a nice downhill stretch, but it’s a literal pain getting there.  I spend most of it repeating all the worthless hill-climbing tips you read in the magazines;  Breathe through your nose, enjoy the scenery, don’t clench the handlebars, stand up occasionally, and try not splash your shoes when you puke.  Oh well, I need the exercise, no debating that.  By the end of that ride it was nice and toasty outside, so we went back to hiding in the house for the afternoon.  For our evening entertainment we headed up the hill to Placerville for a nice little outdoor festival.  It was still pretty warm out, but the street was nicely shaded and we had a fine time.

Sunday we were supposed to be hosting brunch at our house, but a rather unpleasant spate of work cancelled those plans.  Matter of fact it cancelled a good part of the day.  I do take my Sunday Funday festivities pretty seriously though, so later in the day we headed to a friend’s house for some swimming.  That made for a fine way to spend the evening, we even mixed in a little pool badminton tourney to add a little exercise aspect to the fun.  After that we fired up the grill and enjoyed a nice dinner of chicken and tri tip, two of my favorites.  Made up for the rough beginning to the day quite nicely.

Well that was a “challenging” week, as my weeks go.  Which, honestly, are not really all that challenging.  All the same, it caught up with me and I didn’t do a whole lot for the weekend.  I was spent.

We did get things started off strong though, attending a fun dinner at Hart 2 Hart Vineyard on Friday night.  We went last year to the same event and had a great time, so we figured we’d give it a go again.  Had a fine time again, I label it an annual event for us.  I’d say they got lucky with the weather, that didn’t hurt things.  It’s been intermittently blazing hot and freezing cold out here;  Friday night split the difference quite nicely.  Listened to some good music, had a tasty tri-tip dinner, and yes a few glasses of their “product.”

Saturday we hunkered down for the day.  If we did anything at all, it must not have been too interesting because I can’t remember what it was.  Of course, I can’t seem to remember anything that happened over an hour ago so maybe I did the funnest thing ever and just can’t recall.  Who knows.  It was another rather pleasant day outside, so I watched the Royals game in the back yard, and then wrapped things up with The Green Inferno.  Truly a cinematic masterpiece, I suggest rounding up the kids and taking the family out to see it for some wholesome entertainment.  Or maybe sticking with Finding Dora would be a better idea.

Sunday we got out and about a little bit.  The weather was creeping up the temp scale again, so I took off medium-early on a nice road bike ride.  I’d taken my bicycle in to the shop Saturday for a re-check on a mysterious noise it was making, and wanted to get a good test ride in.  I think they got it this time, I got in 20 miles in blissful silence.  (Except for my ragged breathing and popping knees.  At least the bike was running well.)  After that solid start, we headed out for a quick bite to eat.  I must say, I seriously underestimated the size of the Father’s Day crowds.  The people out here must take the day seriously.  Or, just as likely, there aren’t that many choices so everybody goes to the same place.  I had a Hop House burger in mind myself.  Apparently so did a few hundred other people.  I wasn’t up for the crowd there, so we walked next door to Bistro 33.  It’s always a solid bet, if a bit on the spendier side.  We had a great lunch though.  Matter of fact, we’ve had a good meal twice in a row, which may be our standing record for eateries around here.  After that we did some light grocery shopping, then headed to the neighborhood pool with some friends to get out of the heat for a bit.  After a nice cool-down, we headed back to the house to fix some dinner and watch some basketball game that was on.  Another buddy called looking for advice on where to watch the game, so he came over too;  The more the merrier.  (I really had little to no interest in the game, but the locals seemed excited about it.  It was a pretty good game, I’ll give it that.)  We field-tested a new recipe on everybody, shishito peppers and shrimp.  Didn’t come out too bad at all, I can see us fixing it again in the future.  Of little to no interest, this dish marked my first use of Liquid Smoke in all my fifty years.  Still strikes me as an odd product, but it called for it so I figured what the heck.

I’m a little short on pics this week…  One from the dinner Friday night and a short video of Teagan playing in her pool.  Guess I should have take a picture of the shrimp on the grill, they were rather festive.

https://youtu.be/-1mHxuwlxVg

Most of that weekend was eaten up by a flooring project in the house.  Even if we didn’t actually do the work, it still interrupted the flow of our weekend to some degree.  Most home-improvement projects will do that, which is why we never embark on any.  When we bought the house we just had them put the builder-grade grade carpeting in downstairs, on the thought that it would last a while and by then we would either have moved on or decided what we really wanted.  (The flooring upgrades from the builder were crazy-expensive.)  As it turned out the cheap-o carpet was complete crap, it didn’t even last two years.  So, we decided to have tile put in to match the existing kitchen floor.  Along the way we ran into a few logistical issues, like matching the pattern of the tile to the entry-way tile, and ended up deciding to put the wood-look stuff in the dining room.  The project kicked off Friday night.  As part of our somewhat cut-rate installation fee, it was on us to move all the furniture out and have it ready for them to start early Saturday.  No problem, I figured I’d just bribe a few friends to come over and help me carry things around.  At the very last moment, I remembered “wait a minute, I don’t have any friends,” which put us in a rather dire situation.  It was rather a contentious evening involving lots of mechanical engineering and arguments, but between the two of us we actually managed to move the entire first floor into the garage.  Step one accomplished.

Saturday morning three guys showed up at 7:30 ready to hit the tile.  They had the carpet ripped out and the floor prepped by 8:00, leaving me with the inevitable feeling of “Geez, I coulda done that myself.”  Whatever.  That doesn’t mean I wanted to do it.  They put the tile in at a rather impressive rate.  Unlike the carpet tear-out, I had no illusions that I could have done that part.  It would’ve take me weeks, and the end result would have been much less aesthetically pleasing.  While all that mess was going on, Donette took off on a long walk.  She went on a seven mile hike, and Teagan and I met her at the end of it.  (In the car, of course.)  We went out to lunch, kicked around the town aimlessly for a while, and when we got back to the house around 4:00 they were pretty much wrapping things up.  Although it was all down, we still couldn’t walk on it, so we were effectively relegated to the back yard for the evening.  As it happens, I spend most evenings out there anyway, so not a big inconvenience on that part.

Sunday morning got off to a quite early start.  Teagan was also banished from the first floor, and we’d had her shut up in our bedroom all night.  About 4:30 in the morning she decided she’d been cooped up long enough and it was time to go out for a while.  As it happened, I was planning to cook a brisket for my Sunday entertainment, and the sun starts coming up shortly after 5:00 anyway, so I decided to just go ahead and get the smoker rolling.  Unlike the vast majority of my decisions, this one worked out nicely.  I spent a pleasant morning on the patio tending the cooker and drinking coffee.  The tile team showed up at 7:30 again and started on the grout, and we headed down to nearby Milestone for brunch.  Although conveniently located, I really do not care for that place.  The good news is, I didn’t have any sort of even mediocre expectations going in.  On the contrary, I’d say I almost look forward to seeing what egregious culinary faux pas they will subject me to each time I go there.  I ended up ordering the biscuits and gravy.  Although I fully expected bitter disappointment, my curiosity got the better of me and I just had to find out 1) what $10 biscuits and gravy tasted like, and 2) how they would manage to screw up a national staple. As it turned out, they weren’t bad at all, easily the least bad thing I’ve ever eaten there.  (Worth ten bucks?  Not on their best day, but I’ll leave that aspect out of it.)  If I just had to make a comment about them, which of course I did, I would question the addition of onions to the gravy.  Matter of fact, I would strongly question it.  Anybody ever had onions in their country gravy?  I can’t recall the occasion if I have.  After that, our friends Michael & Alaina joined us back at the house to monitor the cooker.  Poor Michael, I think he is just too young and energetic to appreciate the sport of smoking.  He seemed a bit thrown off that the entire day consists of sitting on the patio, with an hourly trip across the yard to throw a few lumps of charcoal on the cooker.  Doni finally took the kids to the pool, and I finished up the cook with Teagan.  It came out quite well considering I don’t get much practice out here.  When everybody got back from the pool they ended up moving all the furniture back in place while I finished putting together dinner, I think out of sheer boredom.  Bonus, project completed!