Hey friends! Long time no talk - I've had a crazy last few weeks, with short, super busy work weeks and blogger event travel two weeks in a row! Lundberg Farms invited me to a wonderful blogger event in Northern California last week - much more about my trip to come later on this week! - and after I flew back from Sacremento to Los Angeles, then drove back home to San Diego, it was time for more fun: anniversary celebrations! October 2nd marked 6 blissful years of marriage to A. My how time flies when you're married to your best friend whose an awesome partner in life! :) You may remember that last year to celebrate the occasion, we went on the craziest endurance challenge of my life thus far hiking and camping around Catalina Island (You can check out a recap of that ... [Read More]
wine tasting
Wine Tasting in the Santa Ynez Valley
Happy Friday friends! Since the weekend is almost here, I thought that today I'd talk about one of my favorite weekend activities: wine tasting. Besides just loving to try new wines and compare and contrast different varietals and vintages, I enjoy visiting wineries because I like to hear firsthand the stories behind the wineries and their products. There tends to be so much passion put into winemaking, and I love hearing about it. I also am in love with the beauty that typically surrounds wine country. This love affair first started when I studied abroad in Italy in college, met a local restaurant owner who offered to take two of my friends and me on a winery tour, and spent a day in the Italian countryside sipping wine with winery owners who spit their wine out in a seemingly ... [Read More]
Date Night in Carlsbad {Weekend Recap}
Hi friends! I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend. My long weekend was a great one, and here were some of its highlights: I kicked off my weekend with a walk along the beach with my little family. I had planned on getting an at-home workout in afterwards, but wound up not feeling like it at all. Most of the time when I'm feeling this way I just push through an exercise session, but once in a blue moon I just skip it - especially when I've worked out every other day that week as was the case on Friday night. Instead of working out I baked banana bread, read blogs, made white broccoli pizza and watched a movie.....and it was fabulous. Saturday morning I met up with a few other women for a hike at Torrey Pines State Beach. It was a perfect day weather-wise, and ... [Read More]
Weekend R&R: Wine Sipping in the Rain
Hi friends! Hope you all had a glorious weekend and made it through your Monday well. The weekend here in the Bay Area was a dark, rainy one. We barely have gotten rain at all in the past year, and now it has been gloomy and rainy probably 6 out of the past 10 days. Crazy mother nature! Some notable eats of my weekend include this butternut squash enchilada casserole, recipe a la Sarah at Making Thyme for Health: A "quick run" into Whole Foods turned into me walking around for longer than expected, spending way more money than expected - but when does this not happen when I go to Whole Foods? I get a little too excited there, especially with my February gluten free diet. It's like the gluten free food mecca! My favorite find was Kind Healthy Grains Cinnamon Oat Clusters with Flax ... [Read More]
A Perfect Autumn Day
To me, October marks the beginning of the holiday season. From now through the end of the year, I feel like there's so much festivity going on -- and I love it! A big part of my afternoon yesterday was spent attending a festive October event at the nearby Uesugi Farms. I was covering their 23rd Annual Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off for the newspaper, and it was the first time I've seen pumpkins of that size in real life. Some of the pumpkins were not very attractive looking... ...while others were pretty: But all of them were definitely GIANT! I got the chance to speak with the grower of the pumpkin below, a Napa farmer who told me that he has a severely disabled daughter who watches him tend to his pumpkins on a daily basis. The sweetness of him talking about her totally made me root ... [Read More]
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]