i started my morning with irish steel cut oats – my first experience. it actually kind of reminded me of malt-o-meal without the grittiness. or soggy puffed oats. but this sounds like i didn’t like it and that’s wrong – i really liked it. need to do more research to see how it gets its texture. after a short tour of the CIA (culinary institute of america), we headed to the oxbow public market in napa and discovered historic downtown napa. now *this* is where we should’ve eaten last night. it’s a cute little town that reminds me of duluth, minn. that’s a nice idea: small-town feel and big-town foodie culture.

we sampled corn maize empanadas, oysters rockefeller and harissa oysters (and acme bakery’s pain epi for a palate cleanser…it is acme bakery, right? i swear…tastes like acme), a cheeseburger and chocolate milkshake at taylor’s automatic refresher. perhaps we should’ve ordered the nyc kim chee burger, but the cheeseburger came with a kick-ass egg bun. m thinks i should take up baking so we can be self-sufficient. all we need is a noodle maker and a sausage maker and we’re covered. we also sampled a french baguette and chocolate chip cookie from model bakery and 2 kinds of salumi (that’s right: salumi) from fatted calf.

our last stop was bouchon bakery for a bread comparison. i bought a crispy epi baguette. model bakery is better, but then again, i didn’t do an exact comparison.