smitten kitchen

If there is one thing that Alex has shown me the light of over the course of our relationship–but fortunately, there are many, including ribs, pickles, bourbon and skiing–it’s the consummate beauty of a vacation that entails absolutely nothing. No water skiing, no scuba diving, no afternoon of shopping, no conga lines: just hours upon hours on the beach, tearing through one book at a time. Can you imagine how awful this must be after months of doing things and being ‘on’ and producing things of value for other people in exchange for earning a living? I’ll tell you, it’s a big adjustment.

Day one is always a little bewildering; we find ourselves saying “Wow, a whole week?” “Seven DAYS of this?” and “What will we do with ourselves?” a lot. Day two we start settling into the beach life–barefoot, sunscreened, our winter coats looking ridiculous hanging in the room’s closet–and make some dents in our books. By day three, however, we’re pretty used to it all: the bluest–aqua, really–ocean we have ever seen, silky white sand, absurd 3 p.m. cocktails called the Tropicolada and the uncanny ability to take a long post-cocktail nap despite having slept 10 hours the night before, and this is where everything descents into a haze. Without a singular event or laughable attempt at productivity that will serve as a demarcation between the days, we tend to blink twice and its day seven. We wonder how our families are doing. We ponder what plans we have made for the weekend we return.

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Whoops! I hadn’t meant to abandon you like that, we just didn’t have internet connectivity on our last two days of the trip. It was like 1999 or something. I got the shakes. So, where did we leave off?

After Day One at the wineries and Days Two and Three at the grill, we spent our last day on a barely too brief to mention swing into San Francisco where we wandered the Ferry Market Building and lunched at the Slanted Door with friends before heading up to Berkeley. We had dinner with a gorgeous group of food bloggers that evening at Oliveto in Oakland, and on recommendation from the lovely Shuna, breakfast at Mama’s Royal the next morning. In between these gullet-gutting excursions, we found some time on Monday to wander about the Berkeley campus where we wallowed in nostalgia for our unscheduled college days and once wrinkle-free foreheads (fine, that was just me) before jetting back to the land of late dinners, humidity and the daily grind.

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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.

Oh people. Come, hither. Sit down, have some wine. Try to summon in your mind the awe-inspiring amount of information one can absorb in twelve hours of applied grilling class, all that direct versus indirect heat, smokers and infrared and Japanese ceramic egg grills, lump charcoal and applewood chips, muscle and protein, brine and sear, marinade and sauce and rub and ignition and meat, my god, so much meat even the pictures give me a meatover.

I’m about 29 heirloom tomatoes and 300 sugar snap peas from returning to my former, non-cavewoman self, and it’s going to be a day or so before I can get to all of the tasty stuff we learned. Until then, don’t let me forget to tell you about our beyond fabulous grilling partner, this meal, that one and the awesomeness to come before we leave on Tuesday, our bags bursting with bottles of Sinskey and jars of homemade gifts. We are hopelessly spoiled. We wish you were here.

[Psst: If you’re coming from an RSS reader, you’ll have to click through to see the slideshow.]

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.

From there we stopped at a couple wineries, Robert Sinskey and Clos du Val, the first of which was awesome. Although we had high hopes to hit a few more before dinnertime, our eensy sips of wine got the better of us and we had to come back to the hotel to take a disco nap, and yes I realize that putting the word ‘disco’ before ‘nap’ makes us sounds even more geriatric than the need for a nap alone. Damn you, time change.

Fortunately, a little rest was just enough to allow us to rally enough energy to finally meet the inimitable Helen Jane, her husband James and some of their friends with cute kids at Taylor’s Refresher for dinner. If you’re counting, that makes two burgers in one day, two more than I have had in more than 20 years, and what with 12 hours of grilling time ahead, I’m think I might be a caveman by the end of the weekend, and it will be all Napa’s fault.

But you see that above? Napa, you’re forgiven already.

Just before I left for the airport Monday morning, I stopped short and ran back inside, not because I forgot my power cord or business cards or anything normal like that, but to make myself a turkey sandwich. My flight left late, of course, and by the time I had time to unwrap my semi-smooshed last bit of home-cooked anything, I was so hungry, I was ready to ask the 18-month-old next to me to share one of his drooled-upon teething biscuits. Proust may have had his madeleine and my husband may have his pickled green tomatoes, but I had that turkey sandwich and in the one bite I allowed myself before the drink cart finally brought me something to wash it down with, I had found a happiness I didn’t know could exist at the front end of a much-dreaded three day business trip in a nine-acre glass-enclosed country-music-worshiping pod.

It was the best thing I ate for days. What followed were stale, overly-sweet muffins falsely advertised as bran, potato chips I’d found myself eating because they were “free!” with my choking-dry turkey sandwich purchase, a banana days before my idea of what it’s prime should be, a tomato slice that was actually chewy, a fat-free yogurt so loaded with fake flavorings and artificial sugar that it took me half a bottle of water to get the taste of a single spoonful out of my mouth, and trauma induced by a room service menu boasting a “fried cheese collage,” although frankly not half as gross as the “mixed vegetable pasta” that arrived at my room an hour later. Pushing translucent, brown-edged lettuce around on a plastic tray in the Nashville airport Wednesday night, I up and dumped the whole thing in the garbage, deciding that life is too short to eat food that horrifies you in every way. Of course I had the luxury of doing that because I’d be home later, though the last laugh was still on me as my flight was delayed and I got in at about 1:30 a.m. so tired that my husband waiting up for me with that “I’m awake! I didn’t nod off!” harried look on his face almost brought me to tears. Also, because he is cute.

Thursday was understandably canceled due to lack of interest, and aside from yet another perfect-in-every-way turkey sandwich, I did nothing close to cooking until 8 p.m. when I realized that between a baby shower this weekend and a party tonight, something home-baked would be just what the doctor ordered. But exhaustion and a still-fried brain quickly told me that this was no time to try something new, not when all people ever ask for anyway is those Oreos I made last year.

Oh, they’re good. Awesome, even. But they absolutely fall within the category of “you’ve been warned.” If you make these once, prepare to make them a dozen more times, because I’ve yet to meet many people who don’t have a soft spot for iconic sweets. (The icebox cake also falls firmly within this category, as did the graham crackers I once made from the same book.) Any fatigue you may feel from being forced to repeat a recipe when you only want to try new things can be consoled, however, by the fact that these cookies are unbelievably easy to make, and have an infinitely forgiving batter. It’s really impossible to mess these up, and the part that you’re probably certain will be an unholy p.i.t.a.–filling and assembling the cookies–with a piping bag takes less than five minutes.

And when finished? I may not have ever been an Oreo fanatic in my life, not like my husband, at least, but one swoosh of it through an ice-cold glass of milk and my blurred head and imagined glass bubble lifted off. And that was milk, people–imagine their effect coupled with a good glass of wine.

Hey, Look! Someone made a celiac version of the Oreos! Thank you, Jill for the helpful adaptation.

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