When I first moved to Southern California, I was pretty excited to live just a short drive away from the San Diego area's wine region, known as Temecula Valley. I would bring visiting family and friends there to go gallivanting around the area's wineries tasting wine, noshing on snacks, listening to live music, and enjoying the beautiful wine country scenery. This year, Temecula celebrated the 50th anniversary of its first commercial vineyard. These days, over 40 wineries exist in the small region. It's just a drive away for residents of San Diego, Los Angeles, and Orange County, so it's a popular spot for city dwellers to have a weekend country getaway. In fact, my husband and I visited Temecula in August for my birthday, and we've spent weekends there for our anniversary and ... [Read More]
wine country
A Visit to Livermore Valley Wine Country
October 2nd was a special day in my household - my 4th anniversary! While Adam and I haven't made our anniversary a huge deal thus far, we definitely like to celebrate the occasion and spend time together. I planned on making my spaghetti squash casserole for dinner and having a low-key, relaxing night together. I happened to be coming back from Seattle in the afternoon, and wound up hitting crazy traffic on my way back from the airport due to a horrendous accident. Running late, I wound up nixing the spaghetti squash idea and making a quicker dish - spinach & ricotta stuffed shells. I also decided to make an oreo ice cream cake for dessert, because for some oddball reason, I was craving oreo cookies (I hadn't had an oreo in probably 10 years!). Since I was short on time, I needed to ... [Read More]