A California Weekend and Copper River Salmon

Last weekend, we went to visit Wade in Berkeley. We got there on Friday afternoon and had dinner at Wade’s (Ali was still on safari in Africa.) Our friends Jason and Kaitlin came over for dinner and we also got to meet Kaitlin’s sister, Molly. We had a great time visiting with everyone and we did our best to help Wade deal with his surplus of beer and wine. We didn’t take any pictures, but dinner was delicious and we really had fun.

On Saturday, we headed up to Napa for the day. We met our friend Denise and her kids for a picnic and visited our former co-workers at Dean and Deluca. It was great to get to chat with everyone. Next, we went to our favorite winery, Elizabeth Spencer. We’re wine club members, so we got to do a complimentary library cabernet sauvignon tasting with cheese pairings. The wine was terrific and we were in their new tasting cottage. Here’s a photo of Abby and Wade at our table with all the wine.



After the tasting, we went to dinner at our favorite restaurant there, Ad Hoc. Dinner was great as always. The entrée was grilled lamb loin and dessert was tiramisu. Boy, we miss that place.

On Sunday, we went to the Berkeley campus for coffee and a pastry. Here's Abby and Wade by a statue--they'd just had some pretty strong coffee.



In the afternoon, we went to the Sho Chiku Bai Sake Factory. It was really interesting. They had a movie about sake making and a museum of traditional vessels and tools. Then we went to the tasting room and got to try a whole range of different sakes. I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of sake! Between the three of us, we tried twelve different sakes. Here’s a photo of us enjoying some sake and one of the display of bottles.



We had to head back to Missoula on Sunday afternoon, but we sure had a fantastic weekend staying with Wade and visiting so many of our friends who live there.

Happy Eating

Last week, our neighborhood Safeway had Copper River Salmon so we splurged on a side and grilled two servings for dinner last night. It was an absolutely beautiful piece of fish and was completely delicious grilled with just a little salt and pepper. Abby made a garlic beurre blanc sauce to serve over it. We also sauteed some carrots and pea shoots from the farmer's market and boiled some pearl couscous in homemade chicken stock. And we opened a bottle of Elizabeth Spencer sauvignon blanc, the white wine from our wedding. We decided that there was no one in Missoula eating as well as we did last night. Here's a photo.



For dessert, we made a bread pudding with some brioche from Abby’s work. It had walnuts and brown sugar in it and we finished it by topping it with sugar and putting it under the broiler till the sugar caramelized like on a crème brulee. It was pretty darned good with some sliced farmer’s market strawberries on top.

We hope everyone is well.

Love,
Abby and David