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On Your Drive to Kirkwood: Tasty Maid Bakery -Pioneer, CA

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

If you drive HWY 88 to get to Kirkwood in the winter for some skiing, stop by Tasty Maid Bakery in Pioneer, CA and pick up a warm homemade cinnamon roll for the road!   They don’t have the best coffee in the world, but their pastries are great and really old fashion, homemade style.

She also has: donuts, danish, muffins, pies, ham&cheese; Kolaches, and a famous Texas Rum Cake.  Their pies are beautiful and are about $8.

Open 7 days a week from 5am-12noon.

Tasty Maid Bakery

24140 State Highway 88
Pioneer, CA 95666

(209) 295-4100

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Get Schooled: Burrell School Vineyard & Winery, Santa Cruz Mountains

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Easy & Enjoyable Saturday Afternoon at the Burrell School Winery

• Great Deck & View: You can buy a bottle of wine and sip it on the deck at Burrell School Winery with friends.  The view is beautiful and looks out over the vineyard towards the Monterey Bay.  Open Thursday through Sunday, 11am to 5pm.

• Short Weekend Drive: 25 minute south of San Jose, 15 minutes south of Los Gatos

• $5 Tastings or Buy a Bottle to share on the deck

• Free Tastings for You & Three Friends when you are a Wine Club Member: If you are a member you pay $70 for three bottles four times a year.  With this you receive free tastings including three guests and often can enjoy pick-up parties in the garden when you stop by for your wines.  We do this often when friends are visiting from out of town or even on Friday afternoons.

Summit Road Wine Tour Idea after the jump…

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Out of Town: Morro Bay, Central Coast

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

We went camping at San Simeon on the Central Coast over the weekend and after five straight camp cooked meals we decided to give the cast iron a break.  I googled/yelped the best tacos in Morro Bay and found the Taco Temple.  The aspect of Yelp that I dislike the most are the EXTREMES in reviews.  You guessed it, the Taco Temple reviews perfectly exhibited this love & hate by many. The hate-reviews seemed to be mainly about a let-down from the hype and the fact that it wasn’t authentic Mexican cuisine but rather fusion which the haters may not be open to or may not have experienced this style of cuisine in the past.

I have to say we were psyched to have found this California meets Mexico fusion restaurant because it was a little different variety than our usual CA taco truck and taqueria burritos and tacos.  We put our name in and were seated pretty quickly knowing that the wait was a good sign. The tacos were huge and were served with fresh, crispy-clean multi-colored veggies piled atop perfectly seasoned and cooked steak, carnitas, or fish.   Their portions were larger and one taco was perfect for me for lunch and I was glad that I didn’t order two.  A friend ordered the blackened Mahi Mahi burrito and said it was very good and even saved the other half for dinner.  Three different kinds of salsas are served on the side: fire sauce, chopped jalapeno salsa and a medium salsa. Click to continue »

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Taqueria de Amigos: Off Hwy 1 in Pescadero

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

Once in a while when a couple of us here at BIOTF get some free time on a nice day during the week we like to head out to one of California’s many beautiful beaches.  Last week John and I headed up Hwy 1 to San Gregario beach just north of Pescadero.  A while back we had stopped at Duarte’s Tavern to check out the artichoke soup, which was decent but pricey, so on the way out we stopped at the gas station across the street to fill ‘er up with some tacos.  Pretty much what you would expect a gas station/taqueria to be.  If I recall correctly the tacos ran about $2 a piece and came with a decent amount of meat for small tacos.  The people behind the counter were friendly and the service was good.  The meat is always pretty tasty, but the salsa in the salsa bar is seriously lacking.  The Pico de Gallo seemed a little old as the vegetables in it were almost completely white from the juices having run out of them.  The chipotle salsa was just ok; nothing special.  All of the bottles of hot sauce also happened to be empty, which was kind of disappointing but not a deal breaker for me.

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St. George Distillery in Alameda: Home of Hangar One Vodka

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

The Distillery came to our attention because of its reputation for Absinthe.  These guys dragged me to the tour as I was saying, “How boring!” picturing it to be like a schmaltzy Anheuser-Busch tour.  When we pulled up to the decommissioned military hangar in Alameda (Oakland, CA), I still wasn’t convinced that this non-descript industrial-looking exterior housed anything of interest.  However, the view from the parking lot across the bay towards SF was magnificent.

When we got inside the building we were greeted by the outgoing Andie, the “Vodka Vixen,” who also happened to be our tour guide.  After some quick banter with Andie, I realized that I was totally wrong about this place.  It was funky and industrial with a great bar for tasting in the next room.  If you have been to the quirky Bonny Doon winery in Santa Cruz then I would say this place is the Bonny Doon of liquor.  Andie offered us the $10 tasting (12 liquors), or the $15 tasting (12 liquors + absinthe & a glass with a skull and bones sticker).  We had two $15 tastings for the three of us and had a 1/2 hour to finish it all before the tour started.

Anne, our personal bartender, gave us recommendations on drinks to make with the liquors, but honestly, they are so flavorful that you don’t really even need to mix them with anything.  Andie is a great actress and makes the tour really fun, as well as educational (if you don’t know much about the distilling process).  It flew by pretty quickly considering it was about an hour long; only a couple of folks ducked out in the middle to start their tastings.

We noticed that after the tour some people had brought picnics and ate outside the hangar at two picnic tables that look out at the view.(GoogleMap)

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