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Ok. I'm not really mad. Just slightly annoyed. I went into Williams Sonoma recently to buy a refill for the soap in the bathroom. I have some history with the soap, and apparently I am not alone. We bought the soap, lotion  and holder about two years ago. We have it in the bathroom that Elli and I share upstairs. It took a while to go through the soap. When it was just about gone I went to Williams Sonoma to buy a refill container or replacement.   Much to my surprise, they changed the packaging from a round cylinder to an oval cylinder. This is no good! It won't fit in the holder. Bummer. Lucky for me I could just transfer the soap into the old container. Not a big deal. But slightly annoying none the less. So this past weekend I went to buy another refill. Of course I remembered my experience the last time I bought the soap. So I was a little curious about what I would find.  Aha!  The package was back to a round cylinder.  I grabbed a new round one (not the refill containe...

RN74 is not what you might think. It's one of chef Michael Mina 's restaurants in San Francisco. Who is Michael Mina you ask? Well, he's been awarded some top chef honors and has quite a restaurant collection as part of his restaurant company. I haven't eaten at any of his restaurants. But I'm intrigued now that I've been to the bar at RN74.  Wilfred and I hung out here for an hour or so last week. We like to play a little game at the bar. We have the bartender pour us a few wines from the wine list. Then we try to guess what they are. It's always fun.  I'm not very good at the game. I can rarely identify the varietal, forget about identifying which one it is on the menu! We had a great bartender today. His name was Jose. He picked some really hard wines. We didn't do very well guessing. But most of the fun is trying wines you might not have selected. Of course as we're sitting there Wilfred is taking pictures of the restaurant, our stuff, the wi...

See no evil. Speak no evil. Hear no evil. Makes for a very sweet girl. There all kinds of definitions for this old proverb . Many people simply take the proverb as meaning not to be snoopy, nosy or gossipy. Others use it to describe someone who doesn't want to be involved in a situation. It's easy to be a bad monkey with all the internet has to offer. I hope my little one learns to be a good monkey.

My friend Wilfred told me I had to check out this website called Enobytes Wine Blog .  He was leading me to it for one thing, then I saw this wine cellar and went crazy. According to the website, if you store a few dozen bottles for a month, or year, or more - than you need one of these in your home! Yippee! Can't wait to tell Don. We do like to store wine at home. And I have to say, it's not very impressive pulling wine out of the hall closet.  The wine is all shelved, but since our house is tiny, the only space for long-term storage is the hall closet.  It has a tendency to get covered in snow boots, luggage, bags, golf balls, etc. Which is all part of keeping the wine at just the right temperature. I'm sure of it. (I had to pull the vaccuum out so you could actually see the wine.) A secret staircase leading to a spiral wine cellar would be awesome! I seriously love stuff like this. How cool would it be to have a glass trap door that winds down to your wine cellar. This i...

On Sunday we hosted my brother-in-law Mike and his friend Budd at the Mulkey Inn. They were in town to run in the SF Marathon. So we had a pasta dinner to get them carb loaded for the race. (Bet you thought I was carbo loading for a race, right? Ha. Ha. Ha!) Since tomatoes are so plentiful I looked for a summery recipe that called for fresh tomatoes. I found one in my Food & Wine Magazine Cookbook, Quick from Scratch Pasta . I made another recipe from this cookbook this week that was totally delish, Tortellini with Garlic Sage Butter Sauce.  But more about that on another day. The recipe I chose was Fusilli with Summer Tomato Sauce . The picture in the cookbook looked so fresh and yummy I knew it would be perfect.  The sauce is uncooked. You basically blend everything in the food processor and pour it on the hot pasta. It kind of reminded me of gazpacho. The taste was so fresh and full of tomato and basil flavor. Perfect for a summer pasta dinner.  The key to this recipe is fresh i...

The other day I wrote about visiting Testarossa Winery in Los Gatos. Today they are a featured wine in the SF Chronicle for Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir. Rob and his wife were both in the high-tech world before getting the wine bug. They now put their technical passion to work combing old-world wine making techniques with state of the art technology. Pretty cool. 2007 Testarossa Garys' Vineyard Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir The Chronicle describes the wine as: ripe, concentrated oakier style. Fairly sleek, with tart cherry acidity that lingers on the finish. None of the picks are cheap. But if you're going to choose one I would pick the Testarossa. 'Cuz Rob is such a nice guy.

Technology constantly amazes me. 

I went to Los Gatos yesterday morning to meet with Rob Jensen, owner of Testarossa Winery . We will be doing a photo shoot with Rob in a few weeks.  So this was a pre-shoot meeting to try and nail down the type of shot and where we would shoot it at his winery. He's a really nice guy. I got a great tour and lots of good ideas to pass on to the creative folks here at the agency. Los Gatos is the cutest town. Reminds me of Mayberry. All the houses were colorful and cute and the street just seemed so friendly and nice. I know that sounds kind of lame. But it was! After our meeting I just had to stop and find a place for lunch. It was noon afterall. And that is my lunchtime. The first place I spotted was The Purple Onion Cafe .  It looked casual, quick and relatively inexpensive.  I ordered the Toasted Tomato and Cheese sandwich. It was made with a yellow heirloom tomato, manchego cheese and basil mayo. So simple. And yet so delicious. It came with a side salad made with the freshest g...

I love days like yesterday. I got a lot done at work. I received the FedEx package I was waiting for. Yeah! I had everything on hand to make dinner - pesto pasta and a fresh tomato salad.  It's nice when everything falls into place.  You can't beat fresh pesto for a quick, super-flavorful dinner. I made it fun for Elli and served it with shell pasta- which are perfect with pesto.  They grab the sauce beautifully.  For a salad I sliced some mozzarella, piled on diced heirloom tomato's and fresh basil, then drizzeled it with a splash of balsamic and olive oil and a little salt and pepper. Mmm, mmm, mmm. Both dishes were so flavorful and yummy. I - LOVE - SUMMER!!! I never used to make fresh pesto. I don't know why. It's so easy to make. It helps to have a food processor. But it really couldn't get any easier. Throw basil, pinenuts, parmesan and a little salt and pepper in the food processer. Chop it up. Gradually pour in the olive oil. Done.  Pesto In food process...

I'm happy to report that I received my FedEx from the Legacy Resort.  And all is well. I got my wallet and jewelry back. Phew.

On Saturday afternoon I discovered that I left my wallet and jewelry pouch in the safe in the hotel room in Phoenix. Bum-mer. It would have been nice if I remembered before we left Arizona.  But no.  I discover it in the car on the way home to Mill Valley. I immediately call the hotel and ask if they can check the safe for me. The woman at the front desk says that the new occupants couldn't get in the safe when they checked in the room, so they called security to open it for them. And that there was nothing there.  Hmmm. I'm not buying it. I know I left my stuff in the safe.   I call back and ask to be connected with room 3103.  The operator asks for the guest name. Busted. So I tell her the story and she says that no one has checked in the room.  WHAT?!  Ok, now I'm not happy. I ask to speak to a manager. The manager tells me they checked the safe and nothing was there.  She's sorry. I argue with her about it. And ask if she would please just check. She won't. I am...

So today I was reading the newspaper. Shocking, I know. I went right to the good stuff. Parade Magazine.  And what do you know, Bobby Flay has an article called "Winner Chicken Dinner" .  (I'm sure this was a SNL skit or something.) Anyhow the recipe was for grilled Tangerine Honey Chicken and Herb Potato Salad. It had my name all over it. So I bailed on the rest of the paper and headed to Safeway. The article said the recipe was easy and inexpensive to make. It didn't say speedy. I don't know about you but a potato salad recipe with roasted garlic takes a while. And boiling 3 cups of tangerine juice to 1/2 cup takes a while too.  Plus I had tot go to several stores to find it. So if you make this give yourself a little time. I made the marinade and the dressing in the morning so dinner prep was actually fast and easy. We invited a friend and her daughter over for dinner. Everyone loved the food - even the kids. They really liked the potato salad. Go figur...

YEE HAW!! We went to the Rustler's Rooste to celebrate my mom's birthday. The place reminds me so much of the old Trail Dust restaurant in Dallas. They have a country western band, a slide down to the dance floor and all the food is served family style. We had a blast! The kids must have gone down the slide a hundred times. My sister and I went down the slide and flashed everyone. The slide was fast and dumped you right in front of the main dining room. Kathy got rug burn on her bum! In annoying Kris fashion, I dragged every person I could to the dance floor. I couldn't exactly remember how to do the two-step, but I did my best teaching everyone what I remembered. It was like I was back at TCU and dancing in the Fort Worth Stockyards again. As I'm trying to remember the two-step I realized TCU was a long time ago!! Anyhow, we had an awesome time. The view from the restaurant was really nice. The food was pretty darn good and where else can you get cotton candy and a...

I'm on vaca with the entire Poling clan in Phoenix. We're here celebrating my mom's birthday. Won't say which one, cuz she would kill me. She has the whole family here - all kids and grand kids, at the Legacy Resort in Phoenix. There are 17 of us - we're having a blast. Yesterday all the grown-up girls treated mom, and ourselves of course, to a day at the spa. We picked the Aji Spa at the Sheraton Wildhorse Pass Resort . It's just a few miles down the road from where we're staying. It's gorgeous and peaceful. And wouldn't you know it - all treatments are half price on Tuesday! Woo hoo! I'm not sure the Spa was quite ready for the Poling group. We're not exactly the quietest bunch. We had a great afternoon. We started with a lovely lunch in their cafe - which is where the laughter started. The chairs at the tables were made for people 6' tall so when my sister-in-law sat down her chin came up to the tables edge! The food was awesome....

We had pasta last night. Again. I had to make dinner quick so I used a jar of pasta and ready-made turkey meatballs. It tasted fine. They make some pretty decent jarred pasta sauce these days. But it reminded me that I haven't made my friend Rawan's sauce in a while. So here is a re-post of her pasta sauce recipe. You really should try it. It's quite delish. The addition of cinnamon in the sauce gives it a delicious, unique flavor that you will crave and want to make again. The good news is, most of the ingredients are things you probably have on hand. So it's a good recipe for those days when you don't know what to make. Rawan's Special Pasta Sauce 4 T extra virgin Olive oil 1 large onion, chopped fine 1 lb ground beef 3/4 can of tomato paste 1 1/2 t. dry basil 1 1/2 t. dry oregano 2 bay leaves 1/2 t. cinnamon Sprinkle of sugar Salt and pepper Box of your favorite pasta Roux 2 T unsalted butter 1 T flour I...