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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.