Expanded Silicon Valley

Right after the New Year, I found myself once again transported to Silicon Valley, Las Vegas style, aka CES [Consumer Electronics Show]. As usual, it was a whirlwind without a lot of time to enjoy the sites and sounds of Vegas. I did make one late night venture out to the new Aria at City Center. What a gorgeous hotel filled with some great architectural details. I tried to find some photos on their website, but they didn't even have any that would do it justice. It's definitely next on my place to stay.

I wish I could rave about the meals I had, but I was disappointed in two Las Vegas mainstays. That said, I had a fantastic eclair at Lenoitre inside the Paris hotel.

Upon my return, I went straight from San Francisco to the Saint Sabina Center in San Rafael, right near Dominican College. What a beautiful place. I believe that individuals can go there as well as groups for reflective time.


This particular weekend a retreat was being led by Carolyn Foster who is a popular coach and can often be found teaching at Stanford's Continuing Studies program. Her next session on Perfectionism and Procrastination is sold out. For more info on Carolyn, you can visit her website at www.creativechoices.net. I can't say enough about Carolyn as a coach. She has a tremendous amount of tools in her box to help folks attain their goals.

Coming home, we had a belated birthday happy hour for a friend of mine at Cin Cin's in Los Gatos. Their happy hour continues to remain a fantastic bargain--one of the best $5 Manhattans around and the packed to capacity crowd seems to agree.

New Year's Festivities

Hosting Christmas Eve last week wasn't enough to satisfy my party throwing needs. We opted to host a New Year's Eve gathering at our house. Though, I find that hosting you don't take advantage of the fact that you are not driving...you keep losing your glass in between door bell rings and refilling the nuts.

What was wonderful about this New Year's Eve? It was great to have many of our "hockey family" at the party. The Ice Monkeys have been playing together for almost 7 years. My husband and I are part of the original team that truly looked like monkeys on skates for the first couple of seasons. This season hasn't been one of our best, but it doesn't matter. It's one of those finest group of people I know, and it's absolute joy to share the ice with them week after week. We don't play to win at all costs. It's about enjoying the game--and the beers after it.

Speaking of games, the Winter Classic is now a tradition in our house. Thank you NHL for bringing hockey into the limelight. I am hoping that one day it will be played in San Jose. However, it might be a decade or two before it happens. I can promise that we will see one in person this coming decade. It doesn't matter how many layers this native Californian will need. Ideally, it would be played in Minnesota where my in-laws are. One of the best parts of today's game was afterwards when the 2010 USA hockey team was announced. Tim Thomas must have had one of the best days of his career--playing at Fenway and being nominated on the same day. Truly an incredible moment for him. I am certainly hoping that 2010 will be about incredible moments--they may not be Olympic in proportion, but I want them to be ones that I treasure, like be surrounded by friends at the stroke of midnight.

Speaking of midnight, my big food project yesterday was taking Martha Stewart's Cupcake clock to a new level. My decorating techniques aren't up to her standards yet, but thank goodness I have an engineer in the house who actually made it a working clock. We didn't eat the cupcakes until the clock struck 12. I made her brown sugar pound cake cupcakes for the base and cheated with Betty Crocker's Buttercream frosting.

All in all I am very happy about the start of 2010, I have a good feeling about this year.

On to a different topic

The time has finally come to start blogging about everyday life and keeping track of many wonderful things that I happen upon. Sometimes it will be food related, other times travel related. Throw in a bit of beauty and sports.

Let's start with my Christmas Eve dinner. I have lots of things to rave about.

Esther's German Bakery
I bought rolls, apple strudel and sauerkraut from here. The pretzel rolls are addictive--and truly hard to find anywhere else in the south bay. The sunflower roll, which you can see on their site, makes a beautiful presentation. The sauerkraut is true Bavarian style. Visit either one of their stores and get the bratwurst on the roll with sauerkraut.


German Sauerbraten recipe from Taste of Home. Just substitute red wine for the water and yum. The gravy was even easy to make.

Food and Wine's Braised Red Cabbage with Caraway and Apple I never thought people would be raving about cabbage. Everybody loved this dish. I did cut the caraway in half as mom thought it would be too strong as the whole thing.

I cheated on the potatoes and went to Omaha Steak for Potato Au Gratin Balls. So easy to heat up and not a single one was left....

And, I can't forget the wurst from Dittmer's in Mountain View. That place was packed, even on the Monday. I had 17 people in front of me. I will definitely be going back for great cuts of meat and homemade sausage.

We also tried a new Irish Whiskey... Fecking Irish Whiskey. Tasty...to me it has a bit of chocolate finish. Also, thanks to the K&L guys for a great party wine, Grune from Austria. Perfect with the meal.