Temecula Valley Wineries & Outdoor Bistros

Grapes on the Vine at the Winery. Almost Harvest time

The Temecula Valley has over 40 wineries located just 15 minute from our condo. You can get more info about this area at the Wine Growers Association website.  This region is starting to rival the upstate Napa Valley for its wines and as a tourist destination.  Since our visit here last October, 3 new winery destinations have been built.

Map of the wineries.  Click here for website

We visited three of them last October, but really haven't been back since until last night.  Elly went out to lunch with her girl friends a few weeks ago to Thornton Winery but I didn't go with them.  Each weekend evening, there is always live music (jazz, blues, etc) being played at some winery in the valley.  Unless there is a headliner band, admission is free.  Of course, you have to pay for the wine, wine tastings, wines and food if you choose to order.  Last night we went "winery hopping".  This is the Temecula Valley version of "bar hopping".

We had originally planned just to go to Miramonte Winery to see Bill Watson and his Blues Band.

Miramonte Vineyard Veranda website photo.  This is where the band played

The winery had an indoor tasting room and the large outdoor veranda.  Since it was over 103 degrees yesterday, they had the "water mist" spraying which cooled off the early evening under the shaded veranda.  Just as we sat down at our table, the people at the next table were leaving and gave us their "tasting tickets" which still has 3 tastings left. So our first three wine samplings were free!

At 7:00 the band starting playing, they were great, Elly liked the wine and the mist kept us cool!

Billy Watson and his band.  Water Mist is spraying keeping us cool.

 You can watch this short video I took of the band.You can see the water mist clearly here.

At 8:30, the band went on a 1/2 break, so we decided to try another winery.  First we stopped at the Europa Village Winery because they had a "Live Music" sign out.  They had "Sean & Donna" playing.  The place was nice, they had music in their outdoor veranda, but we weren't totally enthralled with the band, so we left to find Lorimar Winery because they were supposed to have another good band playing.

Well, the Lorimar wine country location is brand new and it isn't on my Google Maps on my Xoom's GPS, so we didn't find it in the darkness.  But just a little ways further we saw this concert happening at the Monte De Oro Winery with a full stage, lights etc.  It turned out that the band "Steel Magnolia" was playing.  We parked, walked in and enjoyed the remainder of the concert, about an hour more.

Steel Magnolia On Stage at Monte De Oro Winery

The band was great, we both enjoyed their mix of Country Rock music.  We left for home after the band finished.  After we got home we discovered that this was part of the Monte De Oro's summer concert series and tickets were $45 each.  Another freebie! We plan to do more winery hopping in the near future as it was cheap and we had a blast!

One thing we noticed tonight was the prevalence of outdoor dining areas in Southern California.  It seems that every restaurant and bar has an outdoor seating area.  Most of the winery seating is on verandas or on patios.  To cool it down, they all use a misting system which spays a fine mist of cool water into the air.  You don't get wet because it seems to mostly evaporate before reaching you, but it does cool down the air especially when it over 100 degrees.  Keep remembering that its a dry heat!  We are not used to outdoor dining because this could never happen in New England!

 First, the New England weather is so unstable that it would not be feasible to have an permanent outdoor dining area, especially during the winter and raining days.  It only rained a few times since May out here so the outdoor seating at the bistros and the outdoor veranda at the wineries work well.

Secondly, can you imagine watching a concert on an outdoor veranda or stage with the lights.  Think of all the moths that would be swarming around all the lights.  Not to mention the mosquitoes that would be carrying you away unless you had "bug zappers" keeping time with the music. Look at the pictures above.  There are NO bugs here.   It is really a different climate out here.  We are really starting to enjoy the differences that Southern California has with the New England climate.  But it is hot!

Oceanside Sunset Market

Every Thursday night the town of Oceanside has their Sunset Market Festival.  It just like the Village Fest in Palm Springs (you can check my earlier blog entry from October), except that its bigger.  We left the house around 2:30PM to avoid any rush hour traffic on our way.  As we were leaving the driveway it looked like the La Cresta fire was starting again as the afternoon wind was starting to pick up.  The same black smoke was rising from the hills and all the fire engines were racing up the hill and the 'copters were flying again.  Hope its not as big this time.

Oceanside Pier

We got to Oceanside a little early for the Festival so we decided to take a walk on the pier. It is the longest wooden pier on the west coast.  You can read about it here.

Elly on the Pier

Artwork in the sand

 You can see more about this guy's sand paintings here:   Mike John Fuzi III.

 Here's another YouTube video of him actually doing one of these paintings:

Oceanside Beach

 After a real enjoyable walk on the pier we headed over to find a place to get a few drinks. We found Davina's Cabo Grill & Cantina and went to the upstairs bar.

 
To our surprise they were having a 2-for-1 Happy Hour.  You order 1 drink and you get two! The people next to us got these huge margaritas with a bottle of Corona Beer stuck in it.  Its called the "Poncho Rita".  . They drank two of these. Looks like a lot of alcohol!

The "Poncho Rita"

 Then they ordered the Strawberry Banana Colada.  Looks Yummy.

Strawberry Banana Colada

We didn't see them leave, we wondered how they could walk after drinking these drinks.  After we had our beers we went to the festival to eat and listen to the music.

There were a lot of food vendors with a lot of different cuisines.  We like the Argentinean food the best, the spiedie sandwich from Annel & Drew's Kitchen was a close second. 

The crowd at the Sunset Market

After we had our fill of food, and the band took a break after their second set, we decided to head home.  We did it at the right time because people were starting to leave and the traffic was getting heavy from the crowds leaving the Festival.  We will return, this is a great event, too bad there wasn't stuff like this every week back in New England.

We will find out tomorrow about the fire.

Update on La Cresta Fire

It now looks like the fire was accidentally set by brush clearing equipment.  See this link: Murrieta Fire.

Map of where the fire was in relation to where we live

These helicopters were buzzing our house all day long, because ...

they were filing up right down the street in our community!

Took a ride up there this morning. The fire made it all the way to the main road and scorched some of the Santa Rosa Ecological Preserve.

Santa Rosa Preserve in foreground, burned hills in background.  I think this is where the fire started by someone clearing brush by the road right here.

Burned hills with the houses that survived the blaze

This is my video that shows the hills that burned.

The Santa Rosa Preserve was closed due to fire hazard today.  Here's another video shot by a homeowner in the area.

Wild Brush Fire in La Cresta!

I heard fire truck sirens this morning, but that is not unusual since the fire station is just up the road.  I also smelled smoke and heard helicopters flying overhead.  So, I went outside to see what was going on.  This is what I saw from the end of my driveway.

Looks like there's a fire up in La Cresta (taken from my driveway)

More of the smoke from my driveway

1:00PM Update:  Now it's on the TV.  Over 100 acres burned, and it out of control.
 
Check this link: KCAL 9 News on the fire

TV Report on the Fire in La Crest

More updates: Over 200 acres burned, Houses threatened!

Its a big fire!

Really close to houses

6:00PM Update:

The fire is almost out, only 1 house was destroyed.  Helicopters and airplanes were buzzing our house all day long picking up water nearby and dropping on the fire. They are still flying and still dumping water & retardant at 6:00PM. It was big news on all the news stations.  No word yet on what caused it.

Here's another new link: ABC Local News about the fire

This house escaped damage thanks to the firemen on the ground

These planes were buzzing our house all day long.

Overview of the fire

This was up in the Santa Rosa Palteau, La Cresta, Tenaja and De Luz area of Murrieta.  It was near where the road drops off the Plateau.  See my earlier blog entries about this area.  I will take a ride up there probably tomorrow to see the damage.  Thank goodness the fire was contained and we didn't have the winds that we usually get at 4:00PM to spread the fire down the hill to our community.

More Deserts! Russian Braid Tea Cake

Cinnamon Russian Braid Tea Cake

 This morning I made this Russian Braid using the same sweet bread recipe as the round tea cake. Usually I cut the recipe in half for a decent size tea ring, but this time I used the full recipe as in the cookbook.  This thing turned out huge! I took two photos, one with a banana so you can see how big it is.  I think I'll go back to using half the recipe!

Same Tea Cake with Banana for size

Cooking Snacks & Deserts

Even though our kitchen is small and there is not enough counter space like back home, we still manage to cook full meals and occasionally bake. We also make popcorn in our countertop popcorn machine, and of course, make beef jerky.  Over the past weekend, we made a few of our favorite snacks.

I bought this popcorn machine at a yard sale for $5 back in March.  The guy wanted $10 for, but I said no.  He then said "how about $5", so I ended up with a popcorn machine!  We like to eat popcorn while we watch TV, but I wasn't satisfied with the flavor.  I wanted the salty stuff like you get at the movies or a carnival.  So I went to online to find out what they use for oil and flavorings to make it taste like they do.  PopcornSupply.com had everything I needed, so I bought some oil & the magic ingredient "Flavacol."  I don't know what's in it but it tastes great, nice & salty.  Elly says the machine takes up too much room on the counter, but its still there!

My $5 Popcorn Machine

 When we go to Debbie's for dinner, we bring desert.  Last time, Elly made one of her favorite recipes that she got from a friend years ago called "Swedish Tosca Cake".  Its an yellow almond cake with sliced almonds on top. This time we did it in a spring-pan and it came out great! Everyone always loves this cake as it is not too sweet.

Swedish Tosca Cake

 Last year, I bought this artisan bread & pastry book . The Cinnamon Tea Ring recipe is one of Elly and my favorites.  I have made this about 5 times so far since I bought the book.  It it made with a basic sweet dough that can be used for this recipe or pecan sticky buns.  Both have a real nice cinnamon filling.  It tastes just like you bought it at a bakery. It is great to have in the morning with your coffee. Yum!

Cinnamon Tea Ring

And of course, it seems like I am making beef jerky about twice a week now.  Since the FoodSaver & the Dehydrator reduces to actual time to make jerky to about 8 hours, I can start the process late morning and have great tasting jerky by early evening!  I am always using London Broil because it has hardly any fat and it seems that it is always on sale at the local grocery store. Its a real snap to always have jerky on hand as a snack.

Batch of Jerky being cooked in the dehydrator

All this food is making me hungry and it's time eat eat dinner.

Comedy Clubs

During the past two weeks we have visited the two main Comedy Clubs in the area: Pechanga Casino Comedy Club & Aces Comedy Club.  We originally went because our neighbor's nephew is trying to be a stand-up comedian.

The Pechanga Club is in the Casino, tickets were only $10, but we got our Pechanga Club card which was "pre-loaded" with $10, so the show was really free!  They had 15 new amateur commedians trying to make it in the world of stand up.  I would say about 4 were really funny, the rest were OK.  At times the routines became really raunchy, sometime uncomfortably so. But we had a great time there.

This past Wednesday, the Aces Comedy club had a free open mike night, so we decided to go.  Even though it was free, we paid $10 which allow for two people to get into the Sunday Show with the headliner comics which would normally cost $20 per person, a savings of $30. Great!.  The Aces show had about 10 comedians, a little less raunchy than Pechanga, and a little more funny.  After the amateur comedians, there was a special treat: Kevin Johnson, the ventriloquist also performed.  You can see him on David Letterman below, very funny.  He did this same skit.

We had a great time, we are starting to really enjoy see these comedians.  Last night we went to the headliner show at Aces Comedy Club to see Mike Pace and  Anita Milner.  Anita Milner is a 76 years old comedienne, with a different perspective on the world today. You can see her below, very funny stand-up.

After Anita, the headliner Mike Pace performed. You can see his resume here.  He was fantastic! What a show,  His funniest stuff was his ability to do improvisations with the audience, asking questions and just joking around and making fun of the audience members.  His routine changes based on who's in the audience and the audience's response.  He performed for over an hour.  We were laughing so hard that our cheeks hurt! Here is an example of his routine.

Looking forward to going to Aces Comedy Club again.