food porn description but no bandwidth for picture uploading

Argh....still no pictures because apparently the hotel internet is sooo lame that pictures are not allowed. You are going to have to wait yet another day for the food porn.

Today we went and took a tour of a big castle-made to attract customers to the winery of course. It was called Castello Di Amorosa We chose it hoping that it would offer some entertainment or interest for Grace beyond any other winery. They were good to her. She was interested in the cats roaming around the place, the well constructed rooms and tour guides comments. At the wine tasting portion of the tour they provided Grace with coloring pages, grape juice and breadsticks.


We found several tasty wines to buy and then drove off to shop around in St Helena. We had an early light lunch (preparing for our big dinner feast for dinner). We then drove back to our hotel to rest and catch up on our emails.

Dinner was at Bouchon. This is a fancy restaurant in Yountville. Thomas Keller is the owner. David has his cook books and was very excited to eat here. He made reservations as soon as we knew we were going to stop off at at Napa. The food was delicous and my band was being benevolent. I managed to eat a whole lot of food and drink..Before the meal: Pinot Gris, a piece of insanely good french bread
first course: David ordered cod Beignets with fried sage. Grace had bacon and radish greens quiche. I tasted theirs. Both were very good. I have never had radish tops before but they were lightly cooked and tasted better than both cooked spinach and radishes :).

The main course for me was 1/2 a lobster. This is the perfect bandster food! The work involved in cracking open the shell provides a nice way to drag out the meal while other people shovel their food in. I ended up with about 1/2 cup of lobster that was delicious with lemon and cocktail sauce. Grace had gnocchi and vegetables that were very good (thee were pickled turnips in the vegetables that Grace disliked but I thought were great).

Because they took great breaks between courses and my band was treating me so well I had room for dessert!! I had a sublime pots de creme (coconut with passion fruit sauce). It came with a delicious shortbread cookie. David had profiteroles with ice cream and chocolate sauce. Grace had a lime tart. Mine was by far the best choice but theirs were quite delicious too!

We wisely took a walk after dinner and this huge meal went down beautifully.

Tomorrow we are off to return home. The house sale has fit a few bumps in the road during the last couple of days. I will go into more detail about it all tomorrow.

xxxooo