Life is more than the Cubicle

I finished The Help this weekend in 1 day and if that's testament to my opinion about the book, then I really don't need to write much here :P

The BF and I went to Napa over the weekend to celebrate his new job and to relax and get out of town. We drove up on friday night after work and had dinner in downtown Napa at a tapas place named Zuzu. The next day, we spent the morning at Oxbow public market checking out the farmers market, had some mexican breakfast fare and coffee and then headed out wine tasting along the Silverado Trail. We hit up Mumm, Miner Family, Robert Sinskey, Chimney Rock and maybe another? After we got back into town, we had some oysters inside of Oxbow at Hog Island Oyster, bought some cheese and charcuterie from The Fatted Calf. Saturday night, we had dinner at Bounty Hunter in downtown Napa and then Sunday, we had a picnic with the cheese and charcuterie goodies that we picked up at Oxbow along with a bottle of merlot. It was so much fun that I forgot to take pictures :)







Slow Cooker Dish 2: These are turkey, apple and cheddar meatballs from the same book that I made tonight. These were pretty good. I grated the green apple and smoked cheddar with my food processor to cut out on the arm work. The apple and cheddar are mixed with ground turkey, an egg, dried cranberries and some spices and formed into meatballs. Stack the meatballs into the cooker and cook on high for 4-6 hours.

I cooked mine for about 4 hours and it turned out a bit drier than I would have liked, so this probably would have done well with just 3 hours of cooking. I served this along with a pasta with an olive oil, pea, shallot, garlic and lemon sauce and we had two english muffins from a Napa bakery that were SO good. I also made homemade blackberry jam with some fruit that I couldn't finish from the weekend. The jam was made by boiling the blackberries (mashed a bit with a potato masher) and maple syrup for a sweet and slightly smoky flavor. We paired all of this with a chardonnay from Carmel Valley Vineyards.

It's really sad that Borders is closing and going out of business, but it also means that I have epic book hauls like the one I got two days ago.

Honestly, I was in the store for maybe an hour and had to pare my haul down from 6 books to 4 only because my arm capacity was exceeded. The haul included:

I want to apologize for my rambling post on Mirror Mirror. Looking back, I definitely gave away way too much about the storyline and sorry to all those who haven't read it and who want to read it. The book just made no sense to me and I had to force myself to finish but that's really no excuse.

Anyway, I finished this little gem recently and I love love it!