This is my family

It was another one of those Saturdays. I seem to say that every Saturday, but they are out of control. I had church this morning and then after filling up with gas and a quick stop at Michael's, I drove to Angwin because my cousin K is graduating from college. Angwin is a sleepy little town past St. Helena with not much going on. While it's very beautiful, you couldn't pay me to go there. I prefer the city, thank you very much.

Anyway, it was a nice luncheon my aunt was putting on. Family friends let my family use their house for the party, which was incredibly kind of them. Although the house is older, it's absolutely beautiful and the kitchen was large enough for people to all be working together and helping out.

I tried to pitch in the best I could, but my aunt apparently isn't very confident of my cooking abilities, since I was assigned the boneheaded tasks of emptying chips into containers, filling the dip tray with hummus, olive tapenade, spinach artichoke dip, and pesto, and stirring the guacamole (which she re-did). I finally convinced her to let me slice up the ciabatta bread. Jim later on pointed out that there's no way she could no whether or not I cook and that she likely didn't want to put me on the spot and potentially embarrass me. It makes sense, but I was slightly miffed at the time. I don't think she quite realizes that I am an adult yet. Oh well.

She put on quite a spread. My aunt knows how to put on a party and entertain large groups of people. That is her thing for sure. Today's menu was simple and used a lot of Costco pre-made items, but it all came together in a rather stunning buffet.

Basically, it was sandwiches, salad, and fruit. There was ciabatta bread, along with artisan wheat and white bread. To that you could spread the hummus, olive tapenade, spinach artichoke dip, and/or pesto on your bread and then add your typical sandwich accoutrements (lettuce, tomato, onion, and deli platters of cheese and meats). The center jewel was an enormous salad that I'll call the kitchen sink salad. My aunt raved about the salad, saying everyone loves it, but apparently I'm the odd man out.

To be fair, it's a fantastic concept. Imitation chicken is shredded and seasoned with a taco seasoning packet. Romaine, tomato, onion, and avocado is added to that. Now, to me, if you're going to do a southwestern-style salad, you should top it off with tortilla chips, corn, black beans, cheddar cheese, and call it a day. Instead, she put garbanzos, pintos, craisins, cilantro, and Italian dressing. There was just waaay too much going on for me to be able to figure it out. The individual flavors were great, but it just didn't meld for me in the end.

Anyway, there was also a huge bowl of strawberries, a platter of watermelon, and cherries courtesy of my dad.

The sandwich was really good, thanks to the bread. I adore ciabatta bread, and freshly baked is even better. I didn't even mind the Costco hummus, which I don't typically care for (scratch doesn't take much longer and is so much tastier). And my aunt makes a killer guacamole, with jalapenos, tomatoes, and cilantro.

Sometimes I feel as though I should move down to southern California to get to know my family a little better. To be perfectly fair, I don't know if they're as bad as I currently think they are. And I feel more welcome now than I did growing up. But I also know that I am a Bay Area girl through and through. I don't think I could ever permanently live anywhere else.

So after I left, I stopped by Dean and Deluca just because. And then I met up with Jim at the Meritage Resort-Siena for dinner. The restaurant is located in the hotel, and is quite beautiful. Jim made the reservation through Open Table and we got 1000 points for it. Score!

Unfortunately, there wasn't a ton of vegetarian options. I decided to be brave and order a wood-oven pizza with pesto, figs, blue cheese, and caramelized onions on it. Jim went with the Kobe beef steak, medium rare. The breadsticks they brought us were soo good. They were nice and flaky and best of all, cheesy! The rolls were sub-par in comparison, but it's not like there was anything wrong with them. They were just ordinary, that's all.

Jim's steak was absolutely beautiful. I guess it was slightly underdone according to his tastes, but he ate it anyway. My pizza was pretty good after blotting. The blue cheese was a little much for me. But to my surprise, the figs were pretty good on the pizza. I definitely liked them and the onions and the pesto.

For dessert, we had a fruit crotada, which was basically an Italian fruit cobbler topped with pistachio ice cream. That was definitely the most authentic pistachio ice cream I've ever eaten. It had tons of pistachios in it and wasn't green. It was still tasty, but I must admit (to my chagrin) that I prefer the fake green flavored stuff. I do love fruit-based desserts with ice cream though, so I was a happy camper.

Afterwards, we went to Whole Foods and got a ton of stuff, including rib eye steaks that were on sale ($10.99/lb. from $15.99) for Father's Day. I love that store so much.