We're back from a beautiful long weekend in Minneapolis and I'm excited to get back into my regular routine--after two weeks in Roanoke and four days in the Midwest, I was starting to feel a little disoriented. But I definitely needed some time away to relax and, and we can never pass up an opportunity to visit Minnesota! It was so wonderful to see all of our friends and eat at all of our favorite places--plus a few new ones!

I want to thank you all so much for your support and for bearing with me as I took some time away last month--it means the world to me to know that you're out there, reading and sticking with me. I'm so excited for fall and work and to get back to regular life again!

We spent Tuesday through Friday morning in Healdsburg, which turns out to be one of the dreamiest places in California. We stayed in an amazing loft above the square and most of our time was spent working on La Crema Farm to Table at Home, a really fun series that I can't wait to start sharing with you all this month. Even though we were busy, we still managed to go out for a really nice meal every night, and of course there was coffee every morning!

Here are some of the places we went:

• Coffee at the Healdsburg Flying Goat location, conveniently across the street from our loft.
• Best burgers ever at Healdsburg Bar & Grill.
• Wine at the La Crema Tasting Room, obviously.
• More coffee at The Healdsburg Shed. So good. That place is gorgeous.
• Fantastic tapas at Bravas. If you go, get the goat cheese toast and some mushrooms (although the paella looked phenomenal as well--everything was good).

We headed back to San Francisco on Friday morning and I had lunch with my friend and colleague from Minted before spending the weekend with some friends from home. San Francisco is so wonderful anytime, but especially when you're escaping the heat of wine country and/or North Carolina in late July.

More food/drink/things we saw:

• Lunch before a tour of the Minted offices at Cotogna.
• A fantastic dinner at Aliment--the Brussels sprouts are out of control.
• A walk around Hayes Valley and some iced coffees from Blue Bottle.
• Took a ferry ride to Sausalito where we ate lunch and then had drinks on the beach at Bar Bocce.
• Back to the city for takeout from Tony's and a park picnic.

See the rest of my California travel posts: here and here.

We left San Francisco on Monday morning, stopping for lunch in Burlingame before heading up to Santa Rosa for the night. Our Airbnb was so dreamy--we had a private cottage in the middle of this lovely couple's garden backyard.

Yesterday was jam-packed with wine adventures, including an absolutely wonderful visit to the La Crema Vineyard, where we were treated to a tour and tasting with Elizabeth, La Crema's wonderful head winemaker. Courtney and I had a meeting after that and our sweet husbands waited for us before we all headed to the amazing loft where we'll be staying, cooking, and shooting until Friday morning. This trip has been such a dream!

Here's another list of places we went and things we ate:

• Lunch at Barracuda in Burlingame (but only because Isobune was closed).
• Dinner and drinks at Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa.
• Coffee at Flying Goat.
• Breakfast at Midtown Cafe.
• Lunch at In-N-Out Burger, obviously.
• Wine tastings in Healdsburg with La Crema.
• Dinner and drinks at Bear Republic Brewing Company.

Today we have our work cut out for us--with a few more meetings, lots of grocery shopping, and quite a bit of cooking and shooting. I'm so excited to share everything we've been working on with you soon!