A weekend of wine

This past Thursday Nick came home from work and excitedly told me that we had plans for Friday night to go to a party. Equally excited at the prospect of many conversations with real live human beings I asked him whose party it was. He paused before telling me that we were going to "Barbara's" birthday party. We don't know any Barbara's, but I did remember seeing a flyer taped to our apartment door downstairs inviting all the neighbors to come celebrate Barbara's birthday at 1711 Jones, right across the street from us. Ugh. Over the next 24 hours we debated who this Barbara was, and how sad it was that she didn't have any friends and needed to invite her neighbors over to celebrate her birthday (the irony), but we decided to go anyway, because even if she was our parent's age, that would still beat my first 92 year old friend by a good 30 years.

So with a bottle of wine and some homemade black bean dip with spiced pita chips, we headed across the street at 7:30 on Friday. It was the most incredible scene - dozens of people of all ages wearing name tags showing the cross streets on which they lived all milling about. A table full of dozens of bottles of wine and wine glasses, and a zydeco/bluegrass band playing in the background. We got our name tags and a glass of wine each and it was maybe 5 seconds before people were coming over to introduce themselves and find out who we were. We spent most of the night talking to another young couple named Sarah and Christopher who have lived in the area for the past 7 months. Eventually we met Barbara, who was celebrating her 60th birthday. Apparently every month she hosts these "wine with the neighbors" parties in her garden and people come back for them even after they leave the neighborhood. The hour we promised ourselves we'd put in at the party quickly turned into three before we walked home. Such a nice surprising evening.

The next morning, Saturday, we got up and ran down to the Farmer's Market to pick up some fruit and veggies for the week. Our friends Carla and Brian are in town from DC and coming over for dinner tonight (Monday), so I wanted to show them the variety of great produce we can get here. I'm making a salad with arugula, figs, prosciutto, and goat cheese. Then dinner is chicken marinated in lime and chile with a corn, avocado, tomato, garlic salsa and then finally carmelized peaches with vanilla ice cream. I love summer.

After that it was off to Sonoma for the day where we had a little road trip planned through 4 or 5 wineries and then to have dinner in town. I only know California wine country through movies and books. They do not do it justice.

Here are a few pictures to give you an idea: