A partial tour of Fallbrook

I always like to see where my fellow bloggers live. Maybe you do, too. If so, here's a small part of Fallbrook... the drive from downtown to my house:
Downtown has several murals and galleries. We're listed in the book "100 Best Art Towns in America"

A cute new "mural" on a consignment shop.

This one is by Brett Stokes, one of our best muralists.



The slow way to drive home (and the prettiest) is through the ancient oak forest. The trees are protected so it sometimes makes for a slightly scary drive as the road narrows to allow for the trees on the side. When a car is coming in the opposite direction you have to be very careful to stay in your lane. You can't always count on the other guy, though.

Turn left at Lake Tree Dr. which is surrounded by the Fallbrook Golf Course. The clubhouse is on the other side of the street. We often eat lunch there. Wednesday is "two for one" hamburger day and Tuesday is "Taco Tuesday"when tacos are $1.00.

Don't turn here- this is the road into our avocado grove. Right now it's covered with leaves which makes for a very slippery drive. Usually it's used by the grove management co. But they must be walking in because they're not keeping it cleared. At the end of this road is what's called a "Butler building". It's made of tin but is a complete little house with kitchen and bathroom. It could be very cute if we had the money to fix it up. Someday, maybe.

The driveway to the house:

Come on in!

Mini Masterpieces ???

I entered these three pieces in the Brandon Gallery Mini Masterpieces Show. They are minis but not masterpieces so maybe I have half a chance of getting in the show.

3 1/4" x 4 1/4"

Painted on a tiny stretched canvas- 1 7/8" x 1 7/8".

A collage- 2 1/4" x 3 1/2" (otherwise known as an artist trading card).

Book Club Meeting-July 8

Is there a problem here? I can remember the taste of the food and wine but I can't remember the name of the book. It was a novel about an African mother writing to her daughter who had gone off to college at Harvard. The author of the book actually had gone to Harvard and I think it was probably semi-autobiographical. She became a nuerosurgeon which I hope she's better at than writing. It was very well written for a neurosurgeon. I don't know who I think I am to be able to criticize anyones' writing but I guess I didn't like it too well. Others in the club liked it alot so there you are !

Nancy and Beth discuss the book.

Kathy and Helen enjoying the discussion.

Laurie's "sort of African" dish. Delicious! An interesting combination of pork and peaches.

Another great tasting and beautiful dish by Vickie.

The perfect starter.

By Helen- asparagus and tomato tart.

A tasty and beautiful dessert by Vickie.

The final week of "Great American Home Baking"

It's been almost a year since we started this project. It's finally done and we've learned so much. We had never done a cook book after more than 20 years of every kind of craft book that you could imagine. Food styling and food photography were new experiences- not to mention all the complications of cooking and recipes. Of course we had a very fine staff to help us. Four wonderful cooks, 5-6 recipe testers, 2 writers, and the best photographer in the world. I did the photo styling and Nancy did all the hard part of making sure the recipes were right. Some of them even had to be translated from foreign languages (including British English into American English) and European measurements into American measurements. I don't know why we don't all just use tried and true European measurements.

It's been a wonderful learning experience and I think we did a really good job. We started midway through the book and had to adapt our look to what came before. This was the hard part. (well one of them, anyway.) I couldn't always use the colors or props that I would have liked. But in the end it all worked out.

Nancy with Jodi (Cook extraordinaire).

Our wonderful photographer - Steve Whalen.

Our talented caption writer- Susan Borsch.

Jodi hosted a "wrap party" at the end of the project and served one of her recipes from the book . It was delicious (Chicken Piccata).
Her daughter, Rachel (one of the other cooks) made a beautiful trifle for dessert. (These are my bad photos not the photos from the book)



Here's the photo from the cook book for Jodi's Chicken Piccata Bake

Here's some other photos from the book:

Fallbrook 4th of July 2009

Another nice 4th of July celebration at the beautiful "Grand Tradition".

Nancy and her fellow volunteers check in other volunteers. We've been doing this for the last 3 years and it is kind of fun. This year I was checking in the V.I.P.s. This includes the people and companies who had bought tables on the veranda with dinner and wine. The proceeds of the event goes to Fallbrook Beautification.

The Fallbrook High Swim team raced against the Fallbrook Rotary and won. Of course, they were much younger and probably more fit but then the next race was with Major Market. I guess the guys were tired after their last race. Their fitness didn't help even though the Major Market team was about as old as the Rotarians- the young guys lost.