The second day of the Foodbuzz Festival started out bright and early. Up before 4 am, I waited until about 6:30 when the sun was coming up to go running. The weather in San Francisco was super, warm enough to run in shorts and a light windbreaker.I headed down Market Street and down to the waterfront where I ran for about 40 minutes before meeting the hubs to have an iced tea in the Ferry Building. After that I headed back to the room, showered, changed, and went to my first session of the day. I had chosen the Farm to Table session with Chef Paul Arenstam of the Americano restaurant at the Hotel Vitale and Brian Kenney from the Hearst Ranch. Though I don’t eat beef, it was still very interesting to hear all about grass fed beef and about Chef Arenstam’s relationships with the producers of the food he uses. Its amazing how close he gets to the source of the food, I find that makes it taste even better! I was able to meet and chat with Chef Arenstam, a Massachusetts native, later in the day at the Tasting Pavilion, and he is so super nice! I have never met such a well known chef before! After the session, I went to the Ferry Building to get some coffee and met Lindsay from Life with Lindsay while doing so. We chatted and ended up wandering around the indoor and outdoor markets before we met up with Andrea and Mardi again. 
I couldn’t get my big head out of the way. 
I had oysters for breakfast. 
And then there was cheese. We attended the session put on by Cowgirl Creamery in the Ferry Building. It was so interesting and delicious, and now I am ready to start making my own cheese. I just need to find a good, fresh, unpasteurized milk supply. I wish we could have our own cow. . . 
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Suzanne from Cowgirl Creamery did a really amazing job explaining the cheesemaking process for different cheeses, telling us about the cows and creamery they use for their milk supply. We also got to try four cheeses. My favorite was the Inverness which was buttery, gooey, and reminded me of La Tur, which I love. The session went by quickly, and soon it was time for us to go to the Metreon for the Foodbuzz Tasting Pavilion. Completely amazing and slightly overwhelming! It was a beautiful, sun flooded room lined with food, wine, and beer vendors. First, I went for water. I was so thirsty after all of that amazing cheese tasting! 
I tried some yummy Rogue Imperial Stout. 
I tried a savory tart with pomegranate seeds and blue cheese. And stopped by the Kerrygold table to sample some cheese with Irish whiskey. I didn’t eat the butter because it is a staple in our house. 
I got chatting to Martin, the representative from Kerrygold, and it turns out he went to the same college in Galway that Eric and I went to. I loved the Kerrygold cheese with whiskey. We have quite a bit of Dubliner cheese at ho
me at the moment, but I am tempted to buy a few more varieties. I tried a delicious watermelon wheat beer from 21st Amendment which had an insanely refreshing and light melon flavor. Watermelon beer = brilliant! 
I got an amazing sweet and spicy cocktail and a shot of tomato soup from Mezzetta olives. Deliciousness. Spicy cocktails are my new favorite thing! Then it was time to watch Mardi work her magic in the Bertolli kitchen. She is one of my favorite bloggers, and I was so happy when she won to be on the menu at the festival. 
Her deconstructed pesto pizzas were amazing. I don’t usually use jarred sauces, but this Bertolli sauce was so yummy. I can definitely see myself making this dish very soon. My final event of the afternoon was a Merlot seminar by Alder Yarrow from vinography.com. It was in an absolutely beautiful room. 
I really like Merlot, and the presentation and tasting was entertaining, interesting, and yummy. I only tried three of the wines. It was getting late, and I needed to shower and change before dinner so I snuck out a bit early. Exhausted, I headed to Bread and Cocoa, the most adorable cafe next to our hotel.
They both weren’t for me. While I was eating all day, hubs was biking all over San Francisco, and he was a bit woozy and in need of sugar and caffeine, as I was. Tasting (and not sleeping) is tiring! He is planning his own parallel posts someday soon. 🙂 I’ll leave off here for now, but I will be back with the incredibly amazing Outstanding in the Field dinner which included lots of food, wine, awesomely nice bloggers, and an overall good time. I can’t thank Foodbuzz ( and the sponsors) enough for their warm welcome, awesome planning, and total and complete generosity throughout this event!
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This past Sunday was full of fun and food. We started off the day with a 2.5 mile run on the beach in the strong, beautiful autumn sun, and followed that with multigrain pancakes topped with mascarpone cheese and maple syrup. Our afternoon activity was one of my favorite new ways to spend a Sunday afternoon, tasting wine at the Bin Ends fine wine flea market. We ended up ordering a few bottles, and I will be writing about those once they arrive in. We tasted a good deal of wine, maybe a dozen or so reds and four or five whites. I was tasting for three; I told our friends, who are getting married in the Berkshires next summer, that we would be on the lookout for good deals for their reception. After all of that wine tasting, we were a bit hungry, so we headed into Quincy center to Alba, a spacious Italian trattoria with an extensive wine list and really great appetizers! 
I started with a glass of bubbly. Sometimes the tiny sips of wine at tastings just makes me want a good glass. 
We ended up sharing oysters with mignonette and cocktail sauce, antipasto with roasted veggies, mozzarella cheese, gorgonzola cheese, and Italian meats drizzled in olive oil, and the fried calamari which came topped with jalapenos and pepper strips and an aioli for dipping. 
I don’t often eat fried calamari, but this was SO good, lightly breaded and crispy with the perfect accompaniment of the spicy peppers and creamy aioli. I love a good mayonnaise-based sauce. I just can’t help it! The oysters were plump and briny and the mignonette was something I would definitely like to learn to make myself. I could seriously live on oysters and champagne alone 🙂 The antipasto was also delish, everything fresh and flavorful, especially the crumbly stinky blue cheese. Alba is a little out of the way if you live in Boston but still conveniently located on the Red Line via the Quincy Center T stop. I will definitely be returning; there are nights we just don’t feel like going into the city but would like a really nice meal in beautiful atmosphere. Believe it or not, hubs and I dropped our friends off and went immediately out to eat AGAIN! More on that later. Today was long, dark, and cold, but at the end I received my wine club shipment from Gundlach Bundschu, a surprising and wonderful mix of three 2007 Pinot Noirs and a 2003 Tempranillo. Thanks GunBun!
Happy Saturday evening! We are having a beautiful New England Saturday. We spent much of the day down on the banks of the Charles watching the Head of the Charles rowing event. I will have lots of photos tomorrow of the event plus a list of my great Trader Joe’s finds and what I plan on doing with them this week. I also have a very very exciting Halloween giveaway coming up that I will announce within the next few days. So hang in there. . . 🙂 We are thisclose to booking tickets to Ireland for 10 days in January, and that got me thinking about what we would do there. In our past few visits, I have always set aside a day for myself, and this ritual has become a twice yearly treat that I yearn for. I start the day by sleeping a little late and taking the family dog for a walk down by the beach.
Obviously not a photo of a morning walk! But look at that sunset on Galway Bay! After we walk, I eat a delicious hazelnut yogurt from Dunnes’ stores. Irish yogurt is far superior to anything that I can find here in the US. I realized that part of the reason I love this yogurt so much is that it has 10 grams of fat as opposed to the 0 grams that most of the yogurt I eat contains. It’s all good, I am on vacation. Following breakfast, hubs drops me off at the Spirit One Spa at the Radisson on Lough Atalia Road. The Spirit One Spa is undoubtedly one of my favorite places on earth. It is serene, beautiful, smells great, has extremely friendly employees, and is a world away from the bustling town outside, and a dozen worlds away from Boston and work. I usually book a half day at the spa which includes a massage, a facial or milk bath, afternoon tea, and several hours in the thermal suite, which is really why I go here. Here is what the Spirit One website has to say about the thermal suite:
A unique collection of cold, cool, warm and hot thermal experiences to detoxify, relax, enhance, slim, moisturise and invigorate your entire well-being, offering you the very essence of the true spa. Heated Relaxation Loungers Heated to a comfortable 36°c and designed in the ergonomic shape known to offer your body the most relaxed position it can take. The Laconium Offers a dry, gentle heat in a more relaxed environment with scented citrus oils and gentle light therapy. The Aroma Grotto A steam, moisturising cabin which is ideal for conditioning the hair and skin, enhancing and promoting true relaxation using light, heat, colour and essential oil therapy . Experience Showers Three showers, offering between them essential oils and water in the form of invigorating tropical rain and a light cool mist to refresh your mind and body between cabins. The Rock Sauna This is the hottest and driest of our thermal experiences at 85°c to 90°c, ideal for swift detoxification and invigoration. Sabia Med Explore the wonders of the sabia med or “beach” as it is better known to our guests, taking you through a meditative dawn to dusk light cycle whilst lying on a warm tropical beach. The Hammam Based on the traditional Turkish steam bath our hammam offers an intense steam heat experience with light and essential oil therapy.
Are you sold yet? Spending 2-3 hours going from sauna to steam room to a simulated beach, complete with hot sand, to a cool fog shower, to the relaxation room for a cup of herbal tea and a banana, then to a massage followed by a decadent afternoon tea is enough to melt anyone! My favorite part of the thermal suite is the Rock Sauna. I love really hot saunas, and this one brings it on. I leave here feeling completely refreshed and renewed. Once my spa experience is over, it is around 2:00 in the afternoon, and I am still a bit peckish. I take a nice long walk through Galway, pick up a big bottle of sparkling mineral water, and head to Sheridan’s Cheesemonger and Wine Shop. Located directly across from the apartment that I lived in (though it wasn’t there then!) Sheridan’s is one of my favorite wine bars in Galway, the other is Biquets. Go to both if you can. Sheridan’s Wine Bar is a small space upstairs from the cheese shop. It has a wooden bar looking out at the St. Nicholas church and the square where the Saturday market is held, and there are books and food magazines everywhere. 
The wine bar has a great selection, and I always try a Spanish red, a nice ripe rioja or tempranillo with the cheese board. They have the best wholemeal biscuits that they serve on the cheese board, along with whatever cheeses you select and maybe some grapes and nuts. I love to sit at the window sipping wine, eating cheese, reading magazines and occasionally looking out at my old apartment and reminiscing about what an incredible time I had living there. Hubs meets me a little later, and we usually then catch up with friends, but I absolutely treasure the time that I have to myself on this day. I feel like it sends me back to Boston a rejuvenated, better person, ready to be a better worker, runner, wife, and volunteer. What do you do for you? Do you ever get the opportunity to take a day to yourself to do things that you love? If you could plan a day for yourself, what would it entail? Wishing you all a restful Saturday night that will hopefully be like a mini “you” day! 🙂
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