Spring Break Part one

The month of March finally came which means three things...March Madness, spring break, and more importantly my birthday. However, to this blog's purpose the second is the only one that truly matters. For this year's spring break my family headed out to Cali for a trip to Napa Valley and San Francisco. Now if you know anything about my family, you know that we had everything planned out to a T. I mean my dad emailed each of us excel sheets (and then printed them out for us) of each of the events we had per day...I kid you not. With that said, there is a lot to cover so lets get to it. 

First stop: NAPA NAPA NAPA

Well...not really, we took a pit stop at Cal Berkley for lunch. We walked around a bit and took a walk through the farmer's market. 

The Berkley view 

Farmer's Market

Some cookies I couldn't just walk by...I was staring so long that the guy handed me a piece. They didn't disappoint 

 We headed out to Jupiter for some food. I started off with an amber ale and ended with a touch of a sunburn...but I wasn't about to shy away from any sun that I could get.

Garlic chicken wings were a starter. Let me go ahead and say that garlic was a major theme of this whole entire trip. The wings were really good...but they were nothing in comparison to my pie. 

I went with the Gaia Pizza that was roasted chicken, shrooms, spinach, mozzarella, ricotta (oh so creamy), and once again garlic. And yes those are massive cloves of garlic, I lent a few to the fam but needless to say I am glad that I was riding solo after eating this meal. 

Back in the car to get to our hotel in Napa and get ready for the night at Jessup Cellars.

View of our mini movie "theatre"

The agenda and menu 

The night was filled with wine and gourmet popcorn, but also this cheese, meat, and cracker platter. They had some goat cheese (in the middle) and salami that was to die for and I couldn't get enough of. Like I have said before, goat cheese is one of my vices. It is just so creamy and salty and ugh oh so good. 

Now day two...

 

Started off with a hike, where we found a swing. Needless to say I was pretty excited about it. But there was no time because we had our first two wineries of the trip!

Dutch Henry's vineyard, which was a very simple visit-a good start to the trip. 

Frank's Family. This was definitely the most insightful winery we visited, I couldn't even start to regurgitate all of the information we received. 

After all the boozin' it was time to get some dinner so we headed out to Zuzu's for some tapas. 

Confit Salad

My hidden gem favorite: beef tartar with a raw egg and aioli underneath with some thin crisps. 

chicken croquettes 

tortilla (this tasted like a twice bake potato...so needless to say I was in heaven)

iron skirt steak

steamed asparagus

Day three: one of my favorite days of the trip 

Hike number two. We found another swing and a cool tree ledge with handprints...this was higher than it looks I promise. 

First winery stop was Groth, it had a gorgeous view we got an interested tour with terminology such as: hard prune and bud break. 

Then it was time to head to Paloma, we had no idea what to expect from this winery since it was in a woman's house. It didn't start off so great with a treacherous drive up the steepest and curviest road I have ever been on. We were then greeted by this little old woman named Barbara, who we nicknamed Babs. Although the wine wasn't my favorite, it was such a unique experience listening to her story and learning about the history of her vineyard. 

Then it was time to celebrate my birthday (you had to have known I was gonna slide that in there somewhere). We went to Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen, which was one of my favorite meals we had on this trip...ahh amazing. 

For starters...this bread though. So crunchy on the outside and doughy and warm on the inside. The butter just melted right on it and then you top it off with a little salt...

Mussels are a new fav:
Coconut curry mussels with kaffir lime,
ginger and cilantro. 

And then you get some of that
bread and dip it in the sauce...

Corned beef and cabbage- which I had no clue what to expect but it was surprisingly delicious 

Then it was obviously time for my main course and I went with Ahi tuna...which is my second love right now right behind a good piece of salmon 

This may have been one of the best ahi tuna dishes I've had and that goes to the show stopper: buckwheat noodles and the miso glaze. I honestly don't know how to describe this flavor other than a great combination of sweet and savory and one of my favorite meals...everr. 

Day four: another favorite (two back to back great days was hard to compare)

Now don't worry if you know us Bedells, then you know we went for another hike. 

First winery stop was Hess, which was completely different than the rest. It was an art gallery combined with a winery, and you got to choose the wines you wanted to taste. I gotta say this was probably my least favorite of the trip, but they had some stiff competition. 

Saintsbury may have been my favorite winery we hit. They had an unfair advantage though because we couldn't even get out of the car before a pup jumped in, and if you know me then you know pups are the key to my heart (...and food obvi). This winery had us sitting outside in the sun and we had the best host, Galen. We also had the opportunity to meet one of the owners, Dave who quizzed us on sports and was a complete hoot...yes I just said hoot. We got voted Dave's favorite family, we were pretty excited. Another note, we learned that Saint Arnold Brewing Company receives the Chardonnay barrels from Saintsbury to brew their Bishops Barrel No. 2 

Then it was dinner time. We ended the night by heading to Oxbow public market, which is pretty much a high scale food court where everything and anything sounded and looked amazing. The family decided to take a little breather for a hour or so and we went our separate ways. Sister and I share the strong passion for pizza, so we couldn't help but take a seat at the pizza place Ca' Momi. 

Now I am a sucker for all pizza, but this place was unreal. Sister and I got two different pizzas: 

Top: Bufala-house:made porchetta, sauteeed organic spinach and mozzarella di bufala 
Bottom: Stella Alpnia: organic arugula, mascarpone, and parmigiano reggiano 

Let me tell you, I could have probably polished off both of these pizzas on my own if I didn't have a care in the world...or if I hadn't already eaten my weight in food the past three days. The Bufala was just so porky (best description we could come up with) but the flavor was divine and the Stella Alpnia was simplistic but the mascarpone was so gooey, and I can't even start on the crust. It was perfectly fired and doughey... mouth is watering. But don't you worry I saved room for a little ice cream place (ate it too fast for a picture) and one of the flavors I got tasted exactlyyy like the lemon girl scout cookies. I was in love. 

That polishes off Napa portion of this trip, San Fran will be coming up shortly!  

A little bit of Indy

I had one of the best opportunities to head out to Indianapolis this past weekend to cover the Women's Big Ten Tourney for Daily Iowan TV. On Wednesday, myself and four other Daily Iowan peeps piled everything into a mini van headed out to Indy. I was a little nervous at first because I was going with one of my best girls Taylor and then three people I didn't know, but we had the best group ever and had a blast. Needless to say it was an amazing experience that was filled with lack of sleep, hilarious moments, a little stress, and a lott of good food. I made it known from the beginning that I am such a food snob and that we were not going to any major boring chains, luckily enough the whole car was in agreement. 

 I'm also gonna post the link to the post game features we did after every day! Enjoy 

day one: started and it was a long one. We woke up early and headed downtown to get some footage from the Indy scene. 

The Crew at Monumental Circle 

Gorgeous View

My credentials…and the first time I realized I hate the way my name looks without that extra "a". 

Tay and I at halftime on press row. 

After much excitement and a Hawkeye win we were exhausted and starved…and in need of an alcoholic beverage so we went with a brewery called RAM a few blocks away. I think my favorite thing about this place was its slogan: Your stomach wants food. Your tastebuds want beer. And they couldn't be more on point. 

Started off with the BIG RED IPA, very refreshing and hoppy. 

This was my burger…oh my delicious. It was a blanketed by beer cheese, bacon and an onion ring all placed between a pretzel bun and sweet potato fries. With the food I decided to go for brew numero two and got Taylor's first choice, Disorder Porter. Oh my this was filled with notes of caramel, chocolate and coffee. 

clips:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXxVw35DrN0

day two:  came around and it was a pleasant surprise that we were staying another night because the women won again! During the whole game Taylor and I were saying how much we crave pizza (another reason why I love that girl, we always have the same guilty cravings). We head back to the media room and the boys ask us if we wanna get pizza…needless to say we were pretty stoked. We did some research and went to a famous pizza joint outside of town called Thr3e Wisemen. 

The brew list and the three beers (Matt and I got the same) that the 21 year olds went with. I got the top beer which had blueberry hints..yum yum and yum. 

The view of our table.

The pizza Taylor and I got. Thin crust, pep, tomato and spinach. Very simple and so delicious. The only thing we were disappointed about was that the medium was for 2-3 people, but we both agreed that we could have easily finished it on our own…however that's probably for the best. 

clips: post game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2RRQ5OEdsw

Big Ten Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxyzKBdxlFo

day three: came around and the girls won again!! We were staying for the championship game and were so excited about it. Each school was assigned a bar and we got Colts Grille, so after the women's we decided to head over there to watch the men's game…and for me to watch the DUKE/UNC game. 

My ahí tuna, I was not expecting this but damn this was good. The tuna had a spicy creole seasoning but then a sweet sauce smothering the veggies, rice and tuna. 

Since it was the last night of getting a good dinner we decided to go big before we go home and ordered the carrot cake. I would explain…but there are no words. (if you really need an explanation, lemme just say icing icing icing)

clips: post game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyku0oByRds

Hawkeye Huddle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf3knE6EfJk

day four:  For the last night we got a new hotel room close to downtown…check out this view. 

clips: post game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njKMSiQ_ywU

Spirit Squad 101 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gniqgykxBsk

I had such an amazing four days with a great group and even more so an unreal experience.