Most of today was spent travelling to Napa followed by an incredible dinner with close friends and family. The day started early with Will picking us up and dropping us off to the airport. The flight to Oakland was pretty routine and uneventful (I was sitting next to a heavyset lady whose breath smelled like smoke, but Will would call this a #firstworldproblem)!
Binita’s agenda was to go to a couple of warehouse places to pick up some wine for the evening and the weekend. First stop was at Wine.com followed by a place whose name escapes me. We then picked up Sanjana and had some AMAZING pizza at The Cheese Board in Berkeley before heading to Napa where a 7 bedroom villa awaited us. Also arriving were Julie and Len from Nashville, TN, Marty and Brian from Marquette, MI, Martha from Portland, OR, The Whoopie Babes, Don, Debbie, Nancy and Mitch from AZ. With Sanjana staying with us for (at least) one evening, it was a total of 14 of us.
As we all arrived, hugs and smiles and laughter followed. Food and wine started flowing with the arrival of the caterers from The Girl and the Fig (a Sonoma landmark). Also joining us for dinner was Sandra Bernstein (the owner/chef of The Girl and the Fig).
Here is a sampling of the food we had:
- Appetizers (rolled salmon with some sort of cheese on small pieces of bread, some other sort of cheese with truffle oil and pesto, a tiny little bun made of some sort of cheese with tiny slices of bacon, lettuce and tomato in it)
- The main course (short ribs and seared scallops with some sort of incredible amzingness – since I hardly cook, I couldn’t give you all the details, but when I tasted it all I was left speechless)
- Dessert (an unbelievably amazing fig bread pudding)
Dinner was followed by Don spinning (iPoding actually) some tunes from bands like Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, Dido, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Madonna, etc. etc.) and everyone dancing in a drunken stupor. It couldn’t have been a better evening.
Oh ya, this is an Ironman blog. Well…there was no workout today!!