Well that was a nice little break.  Break from what I’m not exactly sure, but it was nice all the same.  Oddly, after a two-week hiatus, I really don’t much material to work with.  We’ve been crazy busy, and not with anything worth relating.  I suppose we did have a nice little outing yesterday.  We drove out to Sutter Creek and enjoyed a nice afternoon of wine tasting.  It was a fine day for walking around, if just a bit on the chilly side, and we had a great time.  Sort of reminds us of Parkville.

Other than that trip, we’ve mostly been shut up in the house avoiding the recent cold snap.  Weeks on end stuck in the mid-fifties, brrr.  Looks like that’s finally going to break towards the end of this week, and I’m more than ready.  The cold weather is hard on my old bones, you know.  We did sneak out to a few dinners over the last few weekends, with predictably dire consequences.  Every town/city should have something they’re know for, and I have yet to discover what El Dorado Hills has.  Not food, I can firmly attest to that.  Maybe I should contact the local chamber of commerce and let them know they’re suffering from an identity crisis, I’m sure they’d appreciate my input.  Anyway, our first outing, to the usually reliable Sellands, ended in bitter disappointment.  Sigh.  Maybe we’re setting our expectations too high. The whole reason we went there the other evening was their weekly special, advertised as “chicken pot pie.”  As I mentioned, we’ve been in a bone-chilling freeze lately, and a little comfort food sounded like it would hit the spot.  I can’t really accurately relate our let down, so I’ll just go with a picture:

chicken pot soup

I don’t know what that is, but I can confidently say it is not chicken pot pie.  Chicken soup with a biscuit floated on top?  The good news is, we could easily pass this one off as “you get what you pay for.”  Their specials are easily the best deal in town, that’s the main reason we go there.  The meal didn’t exactly live up to our hopes though.  Our second outing took us to the recently opened Milestone.  We’ve been trying really hard to like this place, as it’s close by and the menu is generally tasty-sounding.  Unfortunately, this was our 4th trip and I think it might be time to throw in the towel on it.  It can’t even get away with the “inexpensive” qualifier like Sellands.  For dinner, Donette ordered a big salad and I had the seared ahi tuna.  We shared those, at least they give you plenty of food.  The tuna was sadly overdone though, big bummer.  Maybe it was “seared” the first few minutes on the grill, but that last ten minutes didn’t do it any favors.  Sort of the same as everywhere else here, they like to cook the life out of everything.  It really doesn’t matter how you order anything, you’re getting it tragically overdone.  It was “OK” though, I guess.  The real nail in the coffin, we actually didn’t even try, we just saw it on the menu.  One of the specials proudly touted the “slow cooked Kansas-style ribs.”  Uh what?  What in the name of Emeril Lagasse are “Kansas-style ribs?”  I have to admit I really wanted to order them, but I just couldn’t imagine it ending well for anyone involved.  We sort of knew our waitress from another local spot, and she’s a nice enough girl;  No need to put her through any undue trauma.  Really, though.  Can I get a side of Rhode Island style beans with that?  Maybe an Irish style pizza for an appetizer?  How about a Delaware style donut for dessert, while we’re just making up random geographic food pairings.  Oh well, what can ‘ya do.  I keep thinking life on this veritable culinary desert will lead to weight loss.  Such does not seem to be the case to date, but at least it gives me something else to complain about.

Yes, even in the new year I am persisting with the late updates.  Timely blogging wasn’t one of my resolutions, what can I say.  The issue is, I didn’t want to turn on my PC yesterday and waste electricity, due to the ongoing drought conditions out here.  You are correct, that makes no sense at all, I’m just reaching.

We kicked off the weekend Friday night with a big ol’ night of nothing.  It was sort of a rough week, I think we were both out of gas.  Donette sat on the couch and enjoyed whatever the TV had to offer, and I chose to fire up the heater on the patio and have a cigar.  Yes, my first cigar in…  A long time.  I bought one a few weeks ago on a whim, despite the fact I have probably 30 sitting in my humidor, and decided it was time to give it a try.  Quite enjoyable really, or maybe it was just nice to be sitting outside in January.  It passed the time at any rate.

Saturday we hosted a semi-impromptu football watch party.  It’s not just every year you get to see the Chiefs in a playoff game, so we decided to make the most of it.  Donette made a pot of chili, some cheese dip, salads, wings, etc, and we had a few friends over to watch the games.  There was a two-year-old in the mix too, who kept us just about as entertained as the games.  (Despite the favorable outcome, I didn’t really find the Chiefs game all that interesting…)  One of her favorite pastimes is “running,” as in, race from one side of the house to the other.  The requirement to play this game comes up rather frequently, and you are all but obligated to play when directed.  A sample conversation would be:

Harper:  “Phil, let’s run.”
Phil: “No, not right now, I’m watching the football game.”
Harper:  “Phil, let’s run.”
Phil:  “Go give Doni a try, she likes to run.”
Harper:  “Phil, let’s run.”

You get the idea.  You can draw it out as long as you like, but at the end of the day you might as well just get up and run.  This scenario has played out many times, with many different victims, and to date I’ve never seen it end any differently.  Hey, I probably need the exercise anyway.  After enjoying the Chiefs victory, and many laps across the house, we still had a lot of food and a moderate amount of energy left so we tuned in to the second game.  Despite no interest whatsoever in the outcome (except wanting the Chiefs to get Denver in the next game,) we ended up watching that whole game also.  Hey, nothing better to do with a Saturday.

Sunday we got up and headed to the big city of Folsom to meet some friends at Land Ocean for a tasty brunch.  It was a fine brunch, I’d go back.  As usual, I had to find a few quibbles with the California food though.  I ordered the chilaquiles, based on the fact that, well, I like them.  What I got on my plate was a tasty dish indeed.  It was, however, by no possible stretch of the imagination, chilaquiles.  It didn’t even have chips in it!  (OK, there were a few strips sprinkled on top, sort of a garnish.  The very BASE of chilaquiles is chips.)  You can’t, or at least you shouldn’t, just throw together a few random things and name it after a semi-traditional dish.  It should at the very least vaguely RESEMBLE said dish.  This was a plate of black beans and potatoes with a fried egg on top.  What in the name of all that is holy.  I guess I can’t complain too much because I quite enjoyed it, but at the same time the disappointment was very real.  I have a tough go at the restaurants out here, I’ll tell you what.  After that, my heart heavy with another grave food injustice, we headed across the street to the movie theater and caught the noon showing of The Hateful Eight.  It was every bit the over-the-top graphic bloodbath we expected, and so we thoroughly enjoyed it.  When we got out of the theater it was a rather nice afternoon out, so we joined some friends at their house down the street for a little backyard party.  Just kind of sat around and watched his smoker and enjoyed the weather:  Fitting Sunday entertainment.  For the big Sunday finale, I went home and fixed myself a big skillet full of chilaquiles, and ate the whole thing.  OK not really.  But I wanted to.  And maybe next weekend I shall.

Happy new year to all!  We had a fine time of it out here.  Since it coincided with our 25th wedding anniversary this year, we made the 1.5 hour drive down to San Francisco to celebrate.  A little on the wacky side for us, but it was a great time.  We met up with some friends when we got there, who coincidentally were also celebrating their anniversary.  Popular day to get married, I guess;  Likely because it’s easy to remember.  We sort of kicked around all day, pretty much killing time until our (gasp) 9:30 dinner reservations at Wayfare Tavern.  We called them every 30 minutes or so to make sure they didn’t have anything earlier, never worked out.  I deemed it worth the wait though, it was fantastic.  As an added bonus, it gave me something to keep me occupied until midnight, so we actually got to ring in the new year for once.  Matter of fact, we stepped right out the front door of the restaurant and had an excellent view of the fireworks show over the bay.

The next day we got up somewhat early, and headed back up the hill.  Traffic was blissfully light, and we made some seriously good time getting home.  Once there, we effectively shut down for the rest of the weekend, exhausted.  We did go over to some friends house for pizza and to watch the debacle of a football game that was Oregon.  We had a fun time and no serious allegiance to the Ducks, so it didn’t ruin our day.  Then Sunday we went to see Star Wars finally, which I thought was great.  We’re not exactly huge Star Wars fans, but I liked the movie at any rate.  That led right up to the Chiefs game, then we had friends over for a tri tip “experiment” at dinner time.  I got a fancy new thermometer for Christmas, and that was it’s maiden voyage.  I used it in an attempt to California-ize my tri tip, which is to say cook the life out of the poor thing.  Unfortunately I couldn’t bring myself to do it, it was still pretty rare-ish.  I gave it a good try though, next time I’ll take it up another five degrees or so.  Sigh.  Just don’t seem natural.

‘Bout got them holidays licked for another year!  I think I can, I think I can…  Ah, we’ve had a rather good time of it actually.  Very busy though, as evidenced by my lack of attention to my updates.  In case you couldn’t guess what we’ve been doing with our time, we celebrated Christmas.  Sort of the same as the majority of the rest of the world, duh.

It all kind of ran together, but I’ll skim the highlights.  For it our pre-Christmas Friday, we went over to a friend’s house and made tamales.  Festive!  I guess they do it every year, but we missed out last year for whatever reason.  Apparently I should have watched some youtube videos prior to going, my tamale skills were roundly ridiculed.  Hey, they don’t have to be pretty, people.  It’s some meat in a pile of dough, it all tastes the same.  Sheesh.  After that, at Doni’s design, we went out Christmas caroling.  Hmmm.  I was skeptical of the plan at best, sounded like a good way to get shot.  In fact, I had already devised my perfect way out, by declaring that I would only go if his 16 year old son would go.  What are the odds of THAT?  Backfire, he went, and even pretended to enjoy it.  It was a fun time after all, and we didn’t get shot.  Most people seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.  And, some didn’t.  You can’t please everybody all the time, as they say.

Christmas Eve we stayed home for a quiet evening.  Still stinging from my merciless taunting at the tamale festival, I resolved to hone my skills.  So, I dug some leftover brisket out of the freezer and went to rolling again.  (After watching countless youtube clips, of course.)  I can say with conviction that this batch turned out significantly better.  I’m not really sure what we’re going to do with 3 dozen brisket tamales, but that’s an issue for another day.

For Christmas day we got up early-ish and had a nice little celebration.  We opened our presents from our families, and worked in some good facetime chats too.  We had festive video chats with both our families, and later in the afternoon we heard from Johan also, our friend in Sweden.  After that we headed back over to the scene of the previous tamale crime, and enjoyed another big Christmas.  They’re nice enough to let us weasel in on their family Christmas;  We even participated in the gift exchange.  ** Edit:  Wait a minute…  The facetime calls were the day after Christmas I believe.  Geez, it’s all a big blur.  I’m not retyping the paragraph, close enough.

For a post-holiday wind down, we headed out wine tasting with some friends in nearby Sutter Creek.  (That’s what triggered my razor-sharp memory…  We went wine tasting right after wrapping up the video chats.)  We hadn’t been to this area before, so it was a nice little exploration trip.  It was quite the quaint downtown.  Actually, I was surprised to learn it was even older than our old Brookside haunts, by quite a bit actually.  Good times, and I believe a bit easier of a drive than Amador;  We’ll have to get back there soon.

Two weeks without an update, tsk.  I’ve been out of town, which is very stressful on me, most likely unnecessarily so.  We did a quick fly-by of KC, then off to Chicago for Doni’s office Christmas party.  Eh we had fun, it was just tough to try and squeeze everything in.  I took a lot of pictures, but going back through them it looks like they were all of food.  I guess I was a little excited to get some good cuisine.  I’ll post them anyway, because I’m not inclined to detail seven whole days of travel.