day three

Yesterday we noticed a place next door called the Sunflower Café that looked like a good breakfast place, and they were playing good music (Collective Soul), so we decided to try breakfast there. The good music continued (Live, RHCP, Vertical Horizon, etc.), seemingly playing off of Ryan’s iPod. Ryan selected a lox omelette with capers, sour cream, tomato, and red onion. Emily chose a turkey and pesto omelette that had a few red onion pieces inside as well. The eggs were light and fluffy, and overall tasty. After breakfast, we walked out back into the garden. There were large birds bathing in the fountain and various flowers.
At 11 we headed to our first cooking class at Ramekins, Thai foods. We were given a rundown on what defines Thai cooking (lemongrass, white ginger, kaffir lime, and chilies), and then we did a brief overview of each of the recipes. Emily had expected to be able to eat all but the pork satay and the prawn soup, but was surprised to find that many Thai dishes have a shrimp element to them. She decided to eat all of the dishes that didn’t have pieces of shrimp in them. We were assigned to help cook the Red Curry Chicken with Pineapple.

Another woman almost ruined our experience with this because she was extremely critical (i.e. Emily’s pineapple chunks were a little large and the red curry was too spicy), while making large mistakes herself (i.e. adding all of the coconut cream at the beginning, which meant the curry lost all of its spice and continually stirring the dish once the pineapple had been added). We attributed it to being young looking, and hoped she felt bad for her behavior when overhearing us tell others that we were on our honeymoon. Because the curry had been cut by the coconut cream and the pineapple, Ryan ended up adding the rest of an 8 ounce can of red curry paste. Unfortunately, because this curry was put in later it, added some spice (not enough) but no flavor (it was not able to become fragrant as it would if given time to simmer like in the beginning of the recipe). All of the dishes were delicious (although the red curry wasn’t what it should be like). Emily’s favorite was (not surprisingly) the chicken satay and the pad thai. Ryan really enjoyed the spicy beef salad. The chef, Chat Mingkwan, has written 6 books. We decided to purchase his vegetarian cookbook, Buddha's Table, hoping to determine a good way to combine the recipes we received with the book so that we could remove the shrimp elements.
Afterwards, Ryan took a nap and Emily got a chance to do some reading. We went to dinner at The Red Grape, the locals’ favorite pizza place. Overall, it was not as good as Dewey’s. We ordered a four cheese white pizza with artichokes and mushrooms (and garlic). Emily felt that one of the cheeses was particularly salty and gave pockets of the pizza bad taste (probably the pecorino romano). The mushrooms were exceptionally good though.
We went back to the room and watched the end of the spelling bee (instead of getting ice cream) and fell asleep.

Wine for 28 May 2009:
Pellegrini, Zinfandel, Russian River Valley, 2005, $26 — Gets better as it breathes; was too strong at first. Went well with pizza, but Ryan has no desire to ever drink it again. One better: Di Arie. One worse: Ravenswood.