Sharing the Disney Magic with Family & Friends-DL Diamond Anniversary-DCA F&W Fest Kiosks & The End!

[dhorner233]

Are you allowed to post a link to your e-bay store on here? I got the first 3 Disneyland Decades prints while I was there and am trying to find the other 3.

I love Disneyland corn dogs. Corn dogs and churros are a couple of my "must dos/eat"

 

[mvf-m11c]

As always, Fran brought home a lot of goodies.

The Corn dogs at Stage Door Cafe are nice. I also like Corn Dog Castle at DCA which have the hotlink corn dogs. I have a hunch that you will be at DL next Monday during Star Wars Season of the Force opening day which I have now push back my schedule to accommodate that day.

 

[afwdwfan]

A couple weeks later, Fran wanted to do some shopping. I don’t know what we were thinking because it was Labor Day and it was HOT! But we were hankering for a corn dog, so we headed down Main Street to the little Red Wagon.

Seriously. This, I just can't get over.

Hey, I want a corn dog.

That sounds good, let's go to Disneyland!

And this is us on our way out of the park with our loot.

I think you need to get a trailer for your scooter.

 

[skier_pete]

We got stuck in some traffic due to an accident on the Freeway.

This quote followed behind your pictures has my imagination seeing you and Fran stuck in traffic on your scooters loaded with boxes.

 

[afwdwfan]

This quote followed behind your pictures has my imagination seeing you and Fran stuck in traffic on your scooters loaded with boxes.

That image might have popped into my head as well.

 

[dolphingirl47]

The line for the stage door café was out the door!

That is what it looked like when I went there in September.

My adult chocolate shake.

This looks divine.

Corinna

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

How nice to have a shopping day. You are really helping me get better here! What on earth is that lucious corn dog item? We don't have those in the UK. It looks so good! I look forward to be able to eat an item like that once more. Is it like a hot dog wrapped in corn bread? All I can eat is white things at the moment! Mash, chicken, fish, white bread and corn flakes. I wonder if I colour it white am I allowed? Lol.

That adult chocolate shake isn't that cute! Nice photos. Does it come in white! Theme park connection bags cool.

 

[Steppesister]

OH BOY! Corn dogs! Casey's is a MUST-DO for us. Those little corn dog nuggets of Heavenly status. Come to Mama, Little ones!

 

[EJ4Disney]

As always, I am late to this party. But I just had to comment on your darling dress. Just beautiful, and Fran's shirt was great. You 2 look so cute.
I want one of those adult chocolate shakes right now.

 

[dolphingirl47]

Is it like a hot dog wrapped in corn bread?

This is precisely what it is. It is a hotdog dipped in a cornbread mixture and deep fried. This is truly the food of the gods.

Corinna

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

This is precisely what it is. It is a hotdog dipped in a cornbread mixture and deep fried. This is truly the food of the gods.

Corinna

That is one dog I would like to take for a walk. To my mouth!

 

[jedijill]

This is precisely what it is. It is a hotdog dipped in a cornbread mixture and deep fried. This is truly the food of the gods.

Corinna

Agree 10000% Plus food on a stick just tastes better!

Jill in CO

 

[franandaj]

Ooh! Loot and food. What a great update.

That looks like a great adult chocolate drink. I might be tempted to try that one.

Other than the heat, it was a fun day! Next time you come, let's do it!

Are you allowed to post a link to your e-bay store on here? I got the first 3 Disneyland Decades prints while I was there and am trying to find the other 3.

Right now we don't have anything but DVDs that she is reselling up there, but I know we don't have those. I'll let you know when we list some good stuff. I also owe you some links to our concert band performances.

I love Disneyland corn dogs. Corn dogs and churros are a couple of my "must dos/eat"

I'm not sure I've had their churros, but I love the corn dogs.

As always, Fran brought home a lot of goodies.

The Corn dogs at Stage Door Cafe are nice. I also like Corn Dog Castle at DCA which have the hotlink corn dogs. I have a hunch that you will be at DL next Monday during Star Wars Season of the Force opening day which I have now push back my schedule to accommodate that day.

You were right, but we didn't clean up on the merchandise that night, but we sure did the day before! I like the Corn Dog Castle too, I like their Cheese dog!

Seriously. This, I just can't get over.

Hey, I want a corn dog.

That sounds good, let's go to Disneyland!

Pretty much. We have been known to do the same thing with a Monte Cristo as well.

I think you need to get a trailer for your scooter.

Don't put it past us!

This quote followed behind your pictures has my imagination seeing you and Fran stuck in traffic on your scooters loaded with boxes.

I think we would be cited for not going the minimum speed limit!

That image might have popped into my head as well.

That is what it looked like when I went there in September.

I never noticed it much before, usually we eat at other places in the park.

This looks divine.

It was and perfect on a hot day.

How nice to have a shopping day. You are really helping me get better here! What on earth is that lucious corn dog item?

I see that Corinna has explained it to you.

We don't have those in the UK. It looks so good! I look forward to be able to eat an item like that once more. Is it like a hot dog wrapped in corn bread? All I can eat is white things at the moment! Mash, chicken, fish, white bread and corn flakes. I wonder if I colour it white am I allowed? Lol.

There is such as thing as white cornmeal, I don't know if you can get it in the UK, and if you could get some German Weiss Wurst, that would qualify it. All you have to do is get Jo to cook it for you!

That adult chocolate shake isn't that cute! Nice photos. Does it come in white! Theme park connection bags cool.

That's a good question, you could make it with vanilla ice cream but I think the booze in there is a no no for you as well.

OH BOY! Corn dogs! Casey's is a MUST-DO for us. Those little corn dog nuggets of Heavenly status. Come to Mama, Little ones!

I'm already craving another one, but tomorrow we're going out there for the Big Thunder BBQ, you know they are shutting it down for good in January.

As always, I am late to this party. But I just had to comment on your darling dress. Just beautiful, and Fran's shirt was great. You 2 look so cute.
I want one of those adult chocolate shakes right now.

Well I'm glad that you made it over here! Too bad you can't "stop by" while you're in Arizona!

This is precisely what it is. It is a hotdog dipped in a cornbread mixture and deep fried. This is truly the food of the gods.

Corinna

Perfect description! I chuckled when I read this!

That is one dog I would like to take for a walk. To my mouth!

Agree 10000% Plus food on a stick just tastes better!

Jill in CO

Absolutely and fried food on a stick can't be beat!

 

[franandaj]

I'm going to apologize to anyone who I have not yet visited or commented on your thread. It's been a crazy week and a half since I got home from my parent's house. But it's all first world problems, so I really can't complain. After I get caught up on posting on everyone's thread, I'll give an update on the cruise thread of what's been going on, and have another update there. I need to get that one wrapped up as I leave on another trip in 18 days! Plus the first world time problems I've been having means I have a TON more stuff to post over here! One more update that is pre cruise and then I can share what's been going on for the last week!

Our next little trip to Disney was not supposed to happen. It was Wednesday, two days after Labor Day and we were supposed to be driving to my parent’s house that day. I’m not sure what came over Fran, but she decided that we were going to a Wine Dinner that night. Normally it would have been fine to alter our plans, but my mother had purchased tickets for a special prescreening of the Walt Disney Documentary that they aired last September on PBS. It was being held on Thursday at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco and it started at 5:30PM.

From our house to my parents, it is a 365 mile drive and The City is another 45 minutes to an hour from their house. The only way this was going to work was if we started driving after the dinner, stopped for the night somewhere north of Los Angeles (so we didn’t have drive through LA in rush hour traffic) and then get an early start Thursday morning so we would arrive in time to leave for the city at 4:00PM. Yikes! But evidently she wanted to go to this event bad enough to do something that crazy, and so it was done.

The dinner was with the Royal Tokaji Winery which is a Hungarian Wine Producing region.



It has a very interesting history. From Wikipedia

Tokaji wine became the subject of the world's first appellation control, established several decades before Port wine, and over 120 years before the classification of Bordeaux. In 1920, following the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a small part of the Tokaj wine region (approx. 1.75 km²) became part of Czechoslovakia due to the Treaty of Trianon, while the rest remained part of Hungary. After World War II, when Hungary became a Soviet-influenced state, Tokaji production continued with as many as 6,000 small producers, but the bottling and distribution were monopolized by the state-owned organization. Since the collapse of the communist regimes in 1990, a number of independent wineries have been established in the Tokaj wine region. A state-owned producer continues to exist and handles approximately 20% of the overall production.

It was a very popular wine in the 18th Century and was enjoyed at the Court of Versailles, and also by many of history’s great composers, as well as Emperors and Monarchs throughout Europe. Tokaji wine has received accolades from numerous great writers and composers including Beethoven, Liszt, Schubert, Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich von Schiller, Bram Stoker, Johann Strauss II, and Voltaire. The composer Joseph Haydn's favorite wine was Tokaji.

But back to our evening.

We were served a cocktail made with the wine.



And an amuse bouche, and oops my bad. A couple weeks ago we ate at the same restaurant and I said that the Amuse Bouche was a Citrus crusted Hamachi with cream cheese, when that’s actually what we had tonight!



This is the wine that was used in the cocktail. We also had a glass of the wine.



This gentleman gave us a history of the region (similar to what I found on Wikipedia) before we had our dinner.









These were some of the wines that we would be enjoying over the course of the evening.







They were offering purchases of the wines that evening. Needless to say we did not buy any bottles. I will say, especially if you are not a fan of wines, these are VERY accessible wines. They are all sweet and late harvest style, hence the costly nature of the wines. But if someone else is buying, I would say that you shouldn’t pass up the opportunity try these wines of royalty!



The first course was not listed on the menu. It included caviar over a bed of creamy mashed potatoes. I’m not a big caviar person, but the potatoes! They were to die for! We were given a mother of pearl spoon to eat the caviar because evidently if you eat it with metal it might impart an undesirable flavor. I know, I know some of you are thinking, “they’re fish eggs? How could they have a desirable flavor?” But I’m just going with what they told us.



Here is the entire dish that it was served with. I’m not sure why it was in such a big bowl filled with salt for such a tiny serving in the middle.



Here’s the wine we paired it with.



And a close up of the caviar.



There was this little potato cake on the side of the plate, it was really good.



But see how creamy the mashed potatoes underneath it were?



This was the wine we had with the first course listed on the menu.



It was a Last of Summer Garden Melon and Goat Feta Cheese salad with Virginia Ham and Arugula. I have to say the flavors here were really tasty and went very well with the wine.



Our next course was a Roasted Maple Leaf Farms Duck Breast, stuffed Grape Leaf and Brown Butter Pan Sauce. This was exquisite!



I don’t have a picture of the wine paired with it, but I showed you all the wines that we would be drinking earlier. And by the way, if you think we might have been getting drunk at all tonight. With the prices of these bottles? They were pouring barely an ounce per glass, maybe 1 ½ but wine pairings are normally a standard 2 ½ ounce pour, but not these, not even close.

Our Main Course was a Filet Mignon Paprikash with Suzie’s Farms Pepper and Golden Raising Freekah. They told us when this dish was served that they were trying to prepare “twists” on standard Hungarian dishes and this was their modern take on a “pepper steak”. It was also very good!



Our last dish was dessert. It was an interesting dessert as it combined aspects of sweet and savory. Since all the wines were very sweet for the entire evening, it was quite a challenge to pair meals with them. I figured out about halfway through dinner why Fran wanted to come to this dinner so much. She is a HUGE fan of sweet wines.

Our dessert wine deserves a little explanation. Now throughout the night our host was telling stories, either that or the chef was explaining the next dish, but none of those really bear repeating and I don’t really remember anyways. But this story is rather interesting and I can’t even find it anywhere on the Internet, so who knows if it’s true! This wine is incredibly high in residual sugars. So much so that it can be stored over 200 years and not spoil. To put this in perspective, I’m going to use German wines as it’s the best one I know and I have some folks of German descent reading along. A Trockenbeerenauslese has a 150-154 measure of residual sugar. This is about the sweetest of German wines. The Hungarian Eszencia has a measure of over 450. And because of this is can only be drank in small quantities hence the serving vessel.



The story behind this wine, is slightly fuzzy to me as it was over two months ago, but I’ll give it my best shot. The wine was created in the 1600's completely by accident. The region was a wine growing region, however during the harvest season somewhere in the mid 1600s the region was under attack. There was no time to complete the harvest so they just left the berries in their 37 gallon barrels and headed off for war. When they came back they were sure that the harvest had been ruined. Instead they found a delectable sticky juice that had formed at the bottom of the barrel. According to Royal Tokaji’s website, “This juice that accumulates at the bottom of a vat by the gentle pressure of the grapes’ own weight is sticky and pours like rich honey. Because sugar levels can be as high as 85 percent, the juice ferments extremely slowly; it took the 2003 Essencia seven years in Royal Tokaji’s cellars to reach only 2.23 percent alcohol.” This was the vintage that we were served.

Our dessert was Crispy Robiolina with Stewed Peaches and Honey Comb. I have to assume that the Robiolina was the rolled cheese on the plate here. This was so good, the combination of cheese, peaches and honey comb all together was the perfect balance for this ultra sweet wine!



And that was it. We didn’t stay to purchase any wines, and really had to get going as we had a good 60 or more miles to drive once we got back home. Besides due to events of the day I still hadn’t even loaded the car up for the drive north!

 

[franandaj]

But on our way our, I was captivated. The last time I was in the park it was all 60th Anniversary. Now only two days later it had been transformed into a Halloween Wonderland!

The castle was beautiful.



And these little pumpkins adorned the hub.















It’s such a magical feeling leaving the park when it’s almost empty. I don’t think it was closed, but hardly anyone was there.









The 60th Anniversary merchandise was still there.



And then we left the park and were on our way home.

 

[dvc at last !]

I love your reports. You explain things well and also include beautiful pics. Thanks for the wine history, too.
Excellent update !

 

[Steppesister]

Beautifully presented wine dinner! I don't LOVE late harvest wines so much- a bit too sweet for me, but it looks like it was all paired well and delicious. I"m one of those weirdos who actually like caviar in MODERATION! And believe it or not, I inherited some mother-of-pearl spoons, but never knew what they were for! WHO KNEW!?

Lovely update!

 

[dhorner233]

Yes please send me some links to your concerts!! I played a mini concert this evening at an assisted living place in town. Just the string ensemble. (I play viola with them.) This Sat and Sun is our little community theater's concert. I'll be playing with the string ensemble and then French horn with the brass ensemble and clarinet in the band. Clarinet, just like Fran! Some where I saw a picture of the two of you on stage like before a concert. All dressed up. Your band must be so good! I can't wait to hear you!

What a cool dinner/wine tasting. Very interesting. Who knew you could mess up the taste of fish eggs!

And yes, please let me know if you start listing stuff on e-bay.

 

[PrincessInOz]

What a great dinner and wine tasting! I totally get why Fran wanted to go.

Awesome pictures of a near empty park on the way out. Love the Halloween touches.

 

[Flossbolna]

loved the report from your dinner!! The food looks amazing and I have had Tokaj before. My father was in Hungary once on some kind of official function and was given a set of small bottles of different varieties of those wines. I think there was one that was 15 years fermented or so. They were amazing, more like a grape liqueur than a wine.