Sleepless in Seattle: night three

Today we really hit the ground running. We had a full itinerary. Luckily our bodies are on east coast time so it wasn't that hard to get moving and Nancy is good about getting up when she has to. 

First stop was the Chateau Ste Michelle winery. Julie is a big fan of their wine and we didn't get to go there the last time she was in town. While checking out their website for what time they opened I saw they had a garden tour Tues and Thur at 11am for only $10. You can do the regular winery tour for free but Nancy and I have already done it and we thought this would be a great way to get in some walking. We really enjoyed the tour, instead of being with a large group of people it was just us 4 and our tour guide Ann who knew so much about the winery and the foliage all around the winery. I was only partly listening but Nancy can tell you all about the trees and bushes all of the winery if you need an informal tour. It really a beautiful and informative tour and we all enjoyed it. 

Now my original plan was to buy stuff and do a picnic lunch at the winery since their grounds are so beautiful but just never got around to the store to get some food but Ann came up with a brilliant alternative, lunch at The Barking Frog! It was two minutes away from the winery and the food is fantastic! Since we knew we were going to be eating a lot for dinner we ordered some salads and apps so that we wouldn't get too full. It really was the perfect amount for all of us. They're famous for their grand marnier prawns so of course we had to order them, as well as penn cove mussels (my family goes to penn cove to harvest our own mussels, this is a lot easier), beef tartar, a baby spinach salad and a dungeness crab and bacon prawn cobb. My fave was the cobb salad, oh my goodness it was so good! Only Nancy and I liked the tartar, it was too strong for the other gals (the beef heart tartar at Damn the Weather is much better, that will be a future blog post) and while the mussels were good, I liked the ones at Toulous Petit more. We all walked away sated and satiated and quite happy with our  lunch. 

 To really get the Seattle experience we decided to stay a couple of nights in Seattle, which ended up being a fantastic decision (it was my idea, LOL). We rented a house add on through AirBnB that was 2 blocks from Green Lake. So after lunch we headed to Seattle to get checked in. We were greeted with a bottle of wine, a bottle of perrier and a salted caramel chocolate bar. That's my kind of welcome!

By the time we got settled it was time to get ready for dinner. I know, we just finished lunch! Keep in mind there was travel time to Seattle, 4 girls getting ready in one bathroom and we were making a stop to visit Adam on our way to our event. We checked in to our place at 3:30 and were out the door by 5, that's pretty dang good.

While surfing the web trying to figure out what to do in Seattle while the girls were in town I came across a food event that was happening, Guest Chef Spectacular, a charity event with over 40 local restaurants, wineries and distilleries. Tickets were $85 but I knew my fellow foodies would be as into it as I was and I was correct.

Sorry I don't have pictures of the food, our hands were too full to take pictures. I think the event lasted until 9:30, we tapped out long before then. When you get there they hand you a plate and an empty wine glass and you just proceed to eat. Everything is bite size but it adds up quickly. I was ditching anything non-essential, like bread. Stomach room is precious. Some of the highlights would be pistachio sundaes made with nitrogen, 72 hour braised short ribs, smoked oysters, salmon tartare, loco moco, firecracker shrimp, savory crepes, Japanese cheesecake with passion fruit, crab cake with crab claw on top and more! I didn't even try the sausages which looked good but if I have a choice between seafood or sausage, I'm going seafood! 

Next time I do something like this, I would wear more comfortable shoes. I had on flip flops and even tho they were thick, they didn't offer up enough support for hours on my feet. We were all full and exhausted by the time we rolled out of there but we grabbed another pistachio ice cream on our way out, it was so freaking good!

Once we got back to the house, I was ready for bed, it was a late 9pm lol but Julie got us up and motivated so we all changed and went for a 3 mile walk around Green Lake to try and work some of that ice cream off. I would have rather ended the night with a massage but it was a wonderful walk and a great way to end the day. 

Sleepless in Seattle: night two

Since I was combining a girlfriend trip with a family trip our first stop on Wed was Kimberly's house. OK, not our first stop, first I had to go to the grocery store. Decided to make lunch for everyone. It's a super simple salad but Sharon said it was one of the best salads she's ever had. Kim says she could eat it every day! Wish I had taken a pic for you but at least I'll tell you how to make it.

As soon as I got to Kim's house I was greeted by these beautiful faces!

The main reason why Kim's house was my first stop. Trying to catch up on precious baby time! When the boys are together it's hard to get them to focus on anyone but each other but at least they would give me hugs and kisses all day. Lily can go from laughing to crying in a minute. She keeps us on our toes! Julie practically tossed her back into Kim's arms as soon as she started crying, what a wuss, LOL.

I don't know why I insist on smooshing my face next to any baby's face. It's not a flattering angle but I had to post this pic because of the look on Lily's face. 

While trying to squeeze in baby kisses,  I worked on the salad. This is a perfect summer salad using fresh corn on the cob. I buy about 4 or 5 ears of corn, cut the corn off the cob and sauté it in butter and fresh chopped garlic. Finish it off with salt and pepper. Set it aside to cool down some.

Then prepare the rest of the salad. I love adding rotisserie chicken to my salads for protein and it's easy. Julie shredded the chicken and we set it aside so that people can add as much or little chicken into the salad as they want.

The rest of the salad consists of things that I love on a salad, arugula, cucumbers, avocado, red onion, shaved parmesan cheese and salt & pepper flavored slivered almonds (they are amazing on a salad, found in the produce section, a splurge but I buy them when they're on sale).  I add the corn and toss all the veggies together and then let people add the amount of almonds and cheese so each salad is customized to personal tastes. I use Ken's light sweet vidalia onion but any dressing you like will work. Try a salad with the corn and your favorite salad fixings and you'll love it!

BTW, if you don't feel like sautéing the corn, you can microwave an ear of corn in it's husk for 2-3 minutes and cut the fat end and squeeze the corn out and voila, easy corn on the cob! Thanks Kim for that tip!

After we left Kim's we went to Lynnwood to hit Olympus Spa. Nancy and I love this place but it's a naked lady spa so hard to get others to go with us. Julie and Sharon don't have that problem, woo hoo! Poor Nancy had to work so she met up with us after work and still got some spa time in. The spa features not only hot tubs and steam rooms, it has different rooms that you go in and relax (I fell asleep in the sand room, my snore woke me up, I should have gone into the nap room). Each room with a different benefit. You can spend hours there going from room to room and hopping into various hot tubs (different temps) but since this was a special occasion we also scheduled treatments. I got a 90 minute massage. Too bad my masseuse didn't know that. After I got out I noticed the time and had to go let them know. They refunded me the rest of my massage but it doesn't make up for the lost time. This is the second time I booked a 90 minute and got a 60 (the other time was at massage envy). That time I let them give me the other 30 minutes and it was awful. From now on, I'll make sure the masseuse knows ahead of time, what I paid for. The other two had fantastic treatments and came out glowing. Luckily Nancy joined me not too long after my massage so we just wandered around the rooms, trying to find empty ones so we could gab.

After spending as long as we could at the spa we had to leave to meet up with Kathy and Jordan for dinner at our favorite all you can eat Korean restaurant, Original Sul Lung Tang which conveniently is right by the spa. Korean is one of my favorite foods and I've taught Jordan to appreciate it. We all ate until we could eat no more. It was awesome! Even though it felt like our belly's were going to explode, we headed out for some frozen yogurt. There's still a tiny bit of room in my belly that the yogurt could fit into. I think only Jordan, Kat and I had yogurt. The rest couldn't hang.

Being the wild and crazy gals that we are, we headed home to prepare for another action packed day!

Sleepless in Seattle

Original title, I know. Sometimes there's no need to re-invent the wheel.

Way back in Jan. Sharon and Julie decided that they wanted to come out to Seattle to go to a Diana Gabaldon event, we love our authors and as an extra bonus, Nancy and I lived there (well 30 minutes north of there). Well fast forward 6 months and I no longer live in WA. As I always say, never write my address in ink. Of course, I didn't want to miss out on any of the fun and I was a huge part of why they were going to Seattle (huge!) so I planned my trip home to visit my family to co-incide the with the girls visit.

Both Julie and Sharon have been out to WA in the last couple of years on separate visits but there's always things we think we should have done, after they left. This time we discussed what they wanted to do ahead of time (they're no help, they were down for anything) so I put together an itinerary, mostly an eating trip (that's what happens when you leave the itinerary up to me).

We landed Tue night and I knew we would be hungry, or at least I would be so we went to Toulouse Petit which has one of the best late night happy hours in the country! I didn't say that, their website says that. We took Dao and Michelle there when they were in town and I loved it but hadn't been back. I was worried that it would be too crowded but we were able to find a booth right away which was awesome! The hard part is for us to stop talking long enough to look at the menu. But somehow we paused in the conversation to order.

In this picture starting at the top left corner, crawfish beignets (I didn't want to order them but they ended up being fantastic) , oysters 3 ways (Sharon loved them so much she had a second order), mussels in saffron sauce (I had this before and was dreaming about them and it was as good as I remembered. I wish I had ordered more.), cajun meatloaf sliders (they were good but I wanted more seafood so I only had a bite) and sinister fried shrimp (fantastic!).

We also ordered barbecued shrimp New Orleans which is their version of shrimp and grits (good, just not as good as the sinister shrimp), manila clams with spanish chorizo (not as good as the mussels) and tuna tartare (I'm a sucker for anything raw. I loved it, didn't realize Julie didn't like fish, let alone raw fish, LOL).

They also make great mixed drinks there, Julie and I weren't drinking so Sharon and Nancy just ordered a drink, I can't remember what it was but it was delicious.

Afterwards we headed to Nancy's house where we proceeded to unwind and even tho we planned on going to bed right away (3 of us were on eastern time and Nancy can sleep whenever), Julie and I gabbed into the night and we could hear Sharon and Nancy chatting in their room. The best part about getting together isn't the eating, which I love, but the times when we're just lounging around talking and being with each other. I already know, the trip is going to to by way too fast!

I've lost all my comments...again!

Sorry when I switched URLs I lost all of my FB comments. This FB app is more trouble then it's worth so I'm back to the normal comments. Unfortunately, that means all of the previous comments are gone until I can figure out how to get them back. I can add some screenshots that will show some of the comments until then.