Back from Stinson Beach 2025 and I’m pooped/in recovery but happy as a clam. Fabulous time with all my best besties - SO many belly laughs, SO much booze/bubbles, SO much food, all worth every second of it. I had an extra night there this year with a dear friend/former boss who drove up from L.A., so i cooked and prepped a lot on Thurs. (there were 16 of us the first night).
On the menu this year: Alison Roman’s overnight Focaccia with red onions (which I seriously fucked up every way I possibly could and thought I had ruined, but it turned out to be pretty danged tasty - everyone loved the flavor, even if the texture wasn’t right (although as it sat it improved throughout the afternoon!); an orzo/smoked trout/white bean/cherry tomato salad with fresh parsley/basil/dill dressed with evoo/lemon zest/sherry vinegar; Alison Roman’s vinegared golden beet salad with buttermilk and sumac onions (SWOONY GOOD); Smitten Kitchen’s crushed cherries/burrata/mint salad (DITTO); heirloom & Early Girl tomato/burrata/basil/caper salad; the always crazy popular cambozola/heavy cream dip with drizzle of evoo/fresh thyme; another dip of simply chipotle juice/peppers/sour cream/s&p (which I could not stop eating); an assortment of yummy cheeses/charcuterie/bread/chips; fancy French butter; grilled steak strips with red chimichurri (oh, the red chimichurri - AMAZING!); grilled chicken thighs marinated in “regular” chimichurri and more at the table; smashed potatoes with a smokey paprika rub; wild trout (for the pescatarians) sauteed and topped with chopped pistachios/green olives/fennel pollen/lemon juice; a friend brought gorgeous just-caught tuna and made delicious Hawaiian poke with it; another friend who drove down from Oregon brought a luscious cheesecake he made with fresh Oregon blueberries - 64-count-them-64 blueberries, for each of my 64 years.
Saturday was the annual trip to The Marshall Store in Tomales Bay, on a day that started out cool and grey and quickly turned spectacularly sunny & hot, with an abundance of raw and grilled oysters, grilled buttery sourdough, Dungeness crab and veggie sandwiches, chips, lots of bubbly and orange wine.
After a nap, 5 pm happy hour started out with a vermouth tasting and then Negronis made by our host, for which I made guacamole; followed by white and red wine, followed by who-knows-what-all but plenty of it, followed by all the leftovers, for dinner number 2: some of the leftover steak got chopped up with the leftover taters and turned into hash, ditto the leftover trout; made an improvised salad of canned smoked trout, zucchini and grilled red peppers, and newly grilled sausages from Fatted Calf and Gus’s Community Market I’d brought.
just a small sampling of my FIRST plate:
(I’m realizing now, believe it or not, i didn’t get pics of everything, and that my lens was apparently quite smudged (sorry!) - I blame the Negronis.)
And my return home Sunday morning…
At home by 11:30, reunited with the BF 
, did our Sunday crossword puzzle (but no brunch!), dozed the afternoon away, and woke up to a piece of oven-roasted chimichurri chicken (we only grilled half of what I marinated at Stinson) with broken rice and avo. A perfect and very necessary, delicious small plates dinner, ala the BF.
and tonight: Crispy tofu with soy/ginger dressing, and a salad of basil/tomatoes/shallots/pickled ginger.
C’est tout! Happy to be home, can’t wait for next year. 
