smitten kitchen

In honor of our long weekend in Napa–you know, the trip that you won for us–I have done the unthinkable and brought the laptop in hopes to share snippets throughout our trip. Should we ever leave California, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled cooking next week. But I’m not making any promises.

Day one, we splurged on the Mustang convertible and aside from the whole sunburn issue (duh), it is indeed awesome, and we don’t care if it screams tourist in every single way. I use the term ‘splurged’ loosely, as the full price of this (on special) is still half of one day of a cheapo car in NYC. California, I love you already.

Up since 4 a.m. Eastern, by 2 p.m. Pacific we were so famished, the In-n-Out Burger seemed the only sane solution. I had my first hamburger since I was 12 years old. It was so worth the wait.

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Sweet speckled sunshine, that was a good week. Never underestimate the power of blinding sun, square canvas umbrellas, swing barstools and ten thousand renditions of guantanamera to turn your mind back to tabula rasa. What did I do this week? Wish I could tell you, but every time I try to recall stretches of time, they skitter off like pieces of paper in a gusty breeze, just leaving me with small, unconnected bits, like the perfectly round, golf ball sized limes everywhere, sun so bright it demands your undivided attention, long piers that end in shade and a Havana-style eatery built from worn white wood, lounge chairs so comfortable, so well thought out you could lose a day–no a week–in one and not miss it at all. And so we did. And the only thing I cooked was grilled cheese sandwiches.

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Every time, and really, it’s never often enough, that I escape the ankle-deep slush and relentless face-paralyzing gusts of wind that New York City is so fond of thrusting at us for warmer climates, I’m always bewildered when I arrive. Wait, it is spring here? It’s usually like this? Did the weatherman just say to take out your winter coat because it’s going to be 50 today? And then, there’s always the great undressing, so much less exciting than it sounds unless you were me on Saturday, stepping outside without a sweater, tights, tall boots, scarf, hat, gloves and thick down jacket for the first time in months, light as a feather, happy as a clam, albeit with the skin cast of someone who had just crawled out from under a rock. Ah sunshine. How we’ve missed thee.

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High on my list of things I’ve always wanted to do but finances, scheduling or partner interest always got in the way was going to some small town for a rustic fall weekend, even though it risked cementing my unconditionally yuppie status. I mentioned this to my delightful husband a month ago, in a “maybe we could pull it off this year” kind of way and a day later, he had the whole thing booked. Cue: swoon.

And a leaf-peeping — in a borrowed Jetta, no less — we went! Alex and I headed up to Hadley, New York on Friday evening, to stay at an adorable 1885 mansion converted into a yellow, orange and aqua-exterior and rose-filled interior B&B in the early 80s. It’s now owned by a gay couple, formerly of the Upper West Side, one who cooks and paints awesome Hopper-like light-shaped oils and the other who keeps the place up. Needless to say, I immediately decided I wanted a B&B, if only so I could get up early and bake everyone scones and just-picked apple compotes.

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