A look back at April

April was a pretty busy month in the Hartman house - a little weekend trip here, a little weekend trip there. Here's a look back at the highlights:

April 2nd was National Autism Day so, after a reminder from my sister Jessica, I remembered to wear blue and my autism necklace (a puzzle piece) that Jessica got Wilson and I last Christmas.

I forget, does the rhyme start 'April showers' or 'April blizzards'? On April 7th we saw a cold front move in that brought snow to the upper end of Paradise and northward. This is a picture from my Uncle Bill's front yard in Stirling City.

The second weekend of April I went off to the wine country with some girlfriends for a long weekend of wine tasting.

And of course I couldn't go back home empty handed:

The following weekend I did another wine tasting, this time in Chico, with another group of girlfriends.

The last weekend in April we did a quick trip to West Sac and visited IKEA where we fell in love with a new entertainment center that was just begging for a new home.

While Chris was at home assembling that beast, I was up the hill enjoying the Gold Nugget Parade with some friends.

And finally, this last week I did another cooking class at Leon Bistro. Chris skipped this one, but I had two co-workers who went with me. This time is was Indian cuisine which turned out to be my favorite, much to my surprise.

And to close out the month, I spent the last two days of April in East Sac taking another planning class as part of the Planning and Land Use certificate program through UC Davis Extension.

I came home with a huge homework assignment due in 3 weeks when I go back for another two days and have to present a 75 acre development project that I designed and wrote zoning codes for. Good thing this stuff is my day job or I'd be as overwhelmed as some of the others in the class!

Mediterranean & Greek culinary delights

Last Tuesday night Chris, my co-worker Dina, and I did another cooking class at Leon Bistro. This time it was Mediterranean and Greek fare - some of my favorite. There were 18 people in this class with Chris being the only guy. Pretty good odds. First off Chef Ann made a yogurt and cucumber smoothie as a digestive drink between courses. It was very refreshing.

The first course served was Bagna Cauda which is a garlic dip much like hummus. It was served alongside pita bread with caramelized onion.

Next up, fried cheese! This was a thick haloumi Greek cheese known as a grilling cheese. This was served with a small piece of pita bread topped with Feta cheese.

The third course was a slightly spicy marmitako (fish and potato) soup, but the version served to us had beef tenderloin in it instead. This was the boy's favorite dish.

My favorite was our next course, halibut brandade (fish cakes) with sides of harissa (red pepper paste) and tzatziki (cucumber yogurt sauce) to dip it in. Soooo good.

The fifth course was stuffed grapeleaves (dolmas) with falafels and tzatziki. I love dolmas, but these were slightly sweet made with raisins and nutmeg and I was not a fan. One bite was enough for me. And the falafels, deep fried balls of ground garbanzo beans, were nothing I need to have again. Meh.

Our first entree was fricase de pollo which was chicken served in a tomato sauce with capers, olives, raisins, potatoes, and root vegetables. On the side was a serving of tabouli salad (parsley and cracked wheat). The chicken was delicious while I only ate a bite of the tabouli since the cracked wheat would not sit well with me.

Our second entree was moussaka, a Greek shepherd's pie. It's made up of layers of sliced eggplant, minced lamb and a bechamel cheese sauce. I was really looking forward to this dish because it sounded like everything I would like in a casserole, but it was a little too rich for me. Though I did make sure to eat the crispy cheese top before giving up.

Our eighth, and last, course was our dessert - baklava cigars. Seriously, I don't care how you serve the baklava, it's going straight in my mouth. Love, love, love.

 Yeah, I ate that and the pound of honey it was served with right up. Already looking forward to our next class. Maybe Dim Sum and Asian Noodles....??

Calling all ciders

While I"m not a beer drinker (I don't like the taste and it makes me wildly sick), I do love me some cider! And with so many flavored ciders on the market it's never hard to find something to tasty to drink. So for our next taste testing it wasn't hard to decide on a style - hard apple cider. To make it all equal we made sure to stick with unflavored ciders - just plain apple.

The lineup:

Tieton Cider Works - Blossom Nectar Cider: A great sweet cider with a slight floral bouquet. Our 3rd favorite.

Angry Orchard - Crisp Apple: This was the most sparkling cider of the group reminding me of the ginger beers. At first I thought it was tart, but after tasting them all and going back and forth between my favorites I changed my mind and thought of it more as semi-sweet. My favorite of the group and, of interest, is made by Samuel Adams.

Henry Hotspur's Hard Pressed Cider: Chris found this one at Trader Joe's and upon the initial sip both of us wanted to spit it out. Teeerrrrible. It had a bad aroma and didn't taste like anything. Seriously, don't buy this. I dumped the whole bottle and most of the sample glass.

Woodchuck Hard Cider - Granny Smith: Very dry and tart. If Henry Hotsh*t's hadn't been in the tasting, this would have been my least favorite. I just don't like dry ciders, I like 'em sweet. So, if you need something dry and tart like your personality, this is the cider for you.

Crispin Natural Apple Cider - Honey Crisp: Had a nice honey aroma, was semi-sweet, but also a little bitter. I like it better than the Woodchuck, but didn't really need to drink anymore than my sample. Chris liked it as a mixer cider with the others. I rated this 4th out of the 6.

Ciderboys First Press Apple Cider: This was a new cider to us, never heard of them before, but that was our loss because this stuff was good! It had a sweet aroma and really was the sweetest. Very tasty, but when I did a back and forth between it and Angry Orchard I just liked Angry Orchard a little better. A very close second.

And yes, at the end of that the two of us had the "burden" of polishing off five bottles of cider! If only everything in life was that hard...

Battle of the Ginger Beers

We're spending our Super Bowl Sunday watching some foosball and doing some ginger beer taste testing. For the most part American ginger beer is a non-alcoholic fermented ginger beverage while the imported ginger beers are typically alcoholic. So far we've only bought, and loved, some non-alcoholic brands such as Reed's and Maine Root. This time we've added some imports into the mix.

The line up:

Maine Root Spicy Ginger Brew
Our favorite of the five beers, veeeery spicy (will clean your sinuses) with excellent ginger flavor. A non-alcoholic highly carbonated delight. Seriously, you must find and buy this stuff immediately!

Bruce Cost Unfiltered Ginger Ale with Pomegranate
Chris thought this said ginger 'beer' not 'ale' when he picked it out - so our bad, but still a good drink. Very cloudy because of its unfiltered sediment though you couldn't actually taste that it had pomegranate added. Our third favorite pick overall.

Bundaberg Ginger Beer
A non-alcoholic Australian ginger beer, this was our second favorite. A sweet drink with strong ginger flavor, just not as spicy as Maine Root. I think this makes the best mixer beer, for drinks like Moscow Mules, since it's not too spicy. In fact I'm using the leftovers in my Hawaiian Mule, pineapple vodka and ginger beer, as I type.

Crabbie's Spiced Orange Alcoholic Ginger Beer
A British import, you can tell in the first sip that it's alcoholic. Great orange smell and flavor, but not as sweet as the first three. Our fourth overall choice.

Hollows & Fentimans
Another British import, this was a big disappointment. If we were doing a blind taste test I'm not even sure you would know you were drinking a ginger beer. Unappealing smell and lackluster flavor. Not worth the effort to seek out.

Day 7 & 8 - Passau, Germany

Our last days of the trip were spent back in Germany. Waking up and eating breakfast we were treated to this view out of the window.

Again, we had another morning tour about town that including taking in some stunning views of the rivers, St. Stephan's Cathedral and the local city hall.

After a lunch that included ice cream covered waffles and eiskaffee (coffee over ice cream) we made the horrible decision to hike up the hill to the Bishop's fortress, Veste Oberhaus. About 5 minutes into our misguided adventure I just wanted to be left for dead, but we persevered onward until we reached the fortress. Seriously, next time just pony up for the funicular!

Timing is everything with these trips as Passau was completely flooded out in the summer of 2013. Thankfully everything was repaired and opened back up in time for our visit. It was a beautiful city with delicious ice cream waffles - what more could you want? 

On our last day we had to bus about two hours to Munich to catch our flight home. Once seated on the plane it was announced that it was our pilot's last flight after 43 years of service. His family was on board and there was much clapping and cheering. And, as a custom, fire engines sprayed water over our plane as we taxi'd down the runway.

That was about the only good part of our trip home since from there on out it was a nightmare. We flew from Munich to Atlanta where we had a couple of hour layover, but our flight crew never showed for the next leg to San Fran so we were late getting into California and missed our connecting flight to Chico. Delta couldn't give two sh*ts about it and said it was only their job to get us to San Francisco, but not on time. By then we'd been up for over 24 hours and it was emotional meltdown time. Chris called Best Western, with whom he's a platinum member from all of his traveling, and by some miracle was able to get us a room for the night that included a shuttle from the airport. The next day we had a flight home to Chico scheduled at 10:00 am, but it kept getting delayed over and over until we weren't flying out to close to 3:00 pm. I was so livid by then and completely over this trip. Lesson from this experience? San Francisco International Airport is the root of all evil and should be avoided at all costs. But besides that, Austria was a beautiful place to visit, though I'd still choose to go back to Germany between the two. 

Day 6 - Salzburg, Austria

Where the heck did almost two months go??? Well, before I completely forget the details I'd better finish posting the pictures from our vacation!

Day 6 of our trip was spent in Salzburg Austria which was by far my favorite stop of the trip. Salzburg is everything I wanted in an old European city - beautiful buildings, quaint little pedestrian streets, and the feeling of literally being back in time. I loved, loved, LOVED Salzburg. We weren't docked in Salzburg so we had to bus in, passing the town of Mondsee where the wedding scene from The Sound of Music was filmed. You could see the chapel from the road as we drove by a beautiful lake on our way to Salzburg.

Once in Salzburg we had a morning walking tour that took us by some popular landmarks like the gardens where the Von Trapps sang Do Re Mi in the movie (they were having a wedding there as we walked by), the cemetery from the movie (the set was recreated in Hollywood because they couldn't get permission to actually film in the cemetery), and Mozarts birthplace and family apartment.

After our tour we spent the afternoon walking and shopping on our own which including taking the funicular up the hill to see Hohensalzburg Castle, dating back to 1077, which offered amazing views of the city.

Hands down, if I could go back to anywhere in Austria it'd be Salzburg!

Day 5 PM - Melk, Austria

After an afternoon of cruising up the beautiful Danube we arrived in the town of Melk where we had tickets for a guided tour of Stift Melk, the massive Benedictine abbey.

After the tour of the abbey we wandered into downtown Melk for a little shopping and coffee and tasty cakes.

Melk wasn't a very big town so after a quick walk through the downtown we literally walked over the river and through the woods to get back to the ship. We stayed docked in Melk until the evening before setting sail for Linz where we would dock to be bussed into Salzburg the following day.