Category: Food and Drink

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Food and Drink Travel

A Special Healdsburg Weekend Away at Honor Mansion

We headed off to Healdsburg early Friday morning – for a 3 day weekend away.

IMG_2474.jpgStaying at the Honor Mansion – a truly outstanding B&B within walking distance of the downtown square in Healdsburg – we caught up with good friends now living in Healdsburg for Friday lunch, wine tasting and dinner.

Our Friday lunch wine tasting at Williamson Wines just off the square was truly amazing. Williamson specializes in food and wine pairings – and does a superb job of bringing together just the right food with just the right wine together in your mouth. I’ve never experienced anything like what we had at Williamson!

Healdsburg is still small enough to enjoy on foot while within easy reach of some of the best wineries in California out in Dry Creek Valley. On Saturday, after the morning Farmers Market, the Healdsburg Art Festival was underway. We enjoyed visiting with the artists before heading back to the Honor Mansion for some swimming pool coolness and downtime before dinner with friends. A record 103 degree temperature made the pool an extra special treat!

Early this morning, I wandered out before sunrise to capture the Halloween display at a home just up Grove Street from the Mansion. Happy Halloween – indeed!

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Blogs/Weblogs Food and Drink Living

Over Ten Years of Blogging

I was recently reading one of Anil Dash’s blog posts and noticed he was about to celebrate ten years of blogging.

That caused me to go back to the Internet Archive and see if I could find any history of when I first started blogging. It looks like I put up a basic home page sometime in late 1998 and then started a basic blog in June of 1999 – just over 10 years ago. It looks like we started our Scott’s Kitchen blog in November 2005 – just about four years ago.

Hard to believe it’s been that long. Time sure flies when you’re having fun!

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Food and Drink Menlo Park

A Lovely Sunday Evening at Madera

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Last night, we had dinner along with our friends and Linda Gulker at the Madera restaurant at the Rosewood Sand Hill hotel. It was an unusually warm day Sunday – with a bright blue sky off to the west, cooling down a bit as the sun went down. The photo above – taken after dinner – shows the hotel lobby from the main entrance – looking northwest.

Just a stone’s throw from our home (we drove of course – very hot day!), this new hotel and restaurant – a big construction project over the last year plus – turned out beautifully.

Dinner was great – we got there a bit early and enjoyed a drink in the bar which has a seamless open wall to the deck outside. The photo below (taken flat on the smooth finish of the bar – with my iPhone) shows the view to the west of the Santa Cruz mountains.

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Food and Drink iPhone 3G Photography Photography - Canon 5D Mark II San Francisco/California

A Late February Friday

I took a day off today for some R&R with my new Canon 5D Mark II camera. I headed up to San Francisco, spent some time in Golden Gate Park (Stow Lake), crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, and headed up to the Marin Headlands. Here are some of today’s shots on Flickr.

I can’t recommend the Marin Headlands highly enough – the scenery from the headlands is truly stunning. If you go, head directly for Hawk Hill – you’ll be on top of the world, looking down on the Golden Gate and San Francisco when looking east and on the Point Bonita Lighthouse when looking southwest. Heading back from Hawk Hill, I had hoped to find the Nike missile site open – but it turned out I was an hour too early and I needed to keep moving.

Heading home just before lunch, I came through the tunnel and out to Fort Baker. Friends had told us that the new Carvallo Point Lodge at Fort Baker was a great spot – so I headed there. Amazingly, a free parking spot was open right in front of the building with the Murray Circle restaurant – so, I took it as a sign that this was where I should have lunch!

Murray Circle (also the name of the street that loops around in front of the lodge) has a half dozen tables outside on the porch – and the weather was just ideal for sitting outside today. Here’s the view from my outside table today – snapped from my iPhone 3G:

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I had the Petrale Sole – a very tasteful slice of sole served on a bed of broccolini. I brought my Kindle 2 along and had a delightful meal while reading in one of the most beautiful settings I’ve seen in the Bay Area. Almost too decadent!

But, what a wonderful way to end a delightful Friday morning away from the office!

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Food and Drink

Scharffen Berger Chocolates Berkeley Plant Closure

Scharffen Berger Chocolate Factory - Berkeley, California - Photo by Scott LoftesnessSome sad news today about two local specialty food businesses – acquired by a big corporate parent a couple of years ago – and now the local facilities are being shuttered.

In an article titled “Scharffen Berger, Schmidt plants to be closed“, Victoria Colliver wrote today for the San Francisco Chronicle that Hershey plans to shutter the Sharffen Berger plant on Fourth St. in Berkeley and the Joseph Schmidt factory in San Francisco.

Hershey already makes the majority of its Scharffen Berger products in its newly upgraded plant in Robinson, Ill., said spokesman Kirk Saville from the chocolate giant’s headquarters in Hershey, Pa. He said the plant closures will affect a total of about 150 employees from both facilities.

The big corporate wheel goes round and round. Sigh. End of another era.

[The photo above is from (and brings back memories of) a delightful family outing we had in April 2005 touring the plant, smelling that amazing cocoa/chocolate aroma, and tasting free samples! Oh, and the Café Cacao lunch we had at the end was pretty great too!]

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Food and Drink Web/Tech

Using Rooms on FriendFeed – Scott’s Kitchen Recipes

As an experiment, I’ve created a public room on FriendFeed for links to recipes, comments, etc. FriendFeed is pretty amazing – and addictive! Read all about it on Scott’s Kitchen!

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Food and Drink

When You’re in Rockridge…It’s Market Hall and Oliveto!

Chris Gulker and I did our morning constitutional walk with Lily today.

It had been a bad exercise week for us walking-wise. I was teaching one of our Payments Boot Camps on Tuesday and had to miss that day and then Thursday turned out to be all wet and drippy. Today the weather was whipping around from southerly rain to northwesterly clearing (and much cooler breezes) – quite a quick change. It felt good to log the 1.5 miles again – my body (and Lily’s too I’m sure) very much enjoyed the exercise after almost a week of cooling our heels.

Along the way, Chris and I got to talking about a couple of my favorite places in Oakland – right across from the Rockridge BART station on College Avenue. Turns out that both of us have family and friends in that area and get over to Oakland frequently as a result.

Continue reading “When You’re in Rockridge…It’s Market Hall and Oliveto!”
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Art and Artists Food and Drink Photography Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Stanford

Cantor Arts Center at Stanford – A Sunday Favorite

One of our favorite places on the Stanford campus is the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts – otherwise known as the Cantor Arts Center.

Lady Madonna

Today, on an amazingly warm and delightful Sunday, I took the quick two mile trip over to Cantor to try out my new Canon EOS 5D Mark II on some inside the museum photography – Cantor is one of those museums that empowers photographers – inside the non-exhibition galleries and for non-commercial use only. Here’s the quick result – today’s “raw” (unadjusted) set on Flickr.

For today’s shooting, I left the 5D Mark II in full automatic ISO selection – turned out that for indoor shooting inside the Arts Center this was a real delight compared to the 40D’s limited automatic ISO adjustment. I ran the 5D Mark II mostly in Picture mode – letting the camera automatically select shutter speed and aperture.

Continue reading “Cantor Arts Center at Stanford – A Sunday Favorite”
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Food and Drink Travel

Enjoying Lola in Cleveland Very Much!

I’m in Cleveland on business for a couple of days.

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Tonight, we headed over to Lola for a just delightful dinner – based upon a recommendation from Linda Gulker. Couldn’t have been easier – our hotel was about a block away from the restaurant on E. 4th St.

I was on a pork binge tonight apparently – indulging in both the Berkshire Bacon appetizer followed by the Smoked Berkshire Pork Chop – its cheesy polenta and BBQ onions perfectly complementing the smoked pork.

After such a robust meal, I passed on any dessert. Lola’s was jumping tonight as we left – very well nourished!

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Food and Drink Living

Drifting into Fall

A lovely fall weekend in northern California, a couple of leisurely walks yesterday and today out in the sunshine with the dog (Windy Hill – from above and, even better, from below!), a very satisfying first try with a great new recipe, along with a fresh shipment from one of our very favorite wineries.

This trio of weeks from mid-October thru early November are just about my most favorite time of year. This season, what with a busy work schedule and lots of other stuff going on, it’s been hard to kick back and enjoy. But, we caught up on almost all of that this weekend!