Planning SE Asia 2026

Our last big international trip was Europe in 2018, which was spectacular and really made us want to do much more travel with our kids. Unfortunately, the next few years didn’t line up the way we hoped—from a global pandemic changing travel possibilities to Joel’s topsy-turvy start-up phase. But we always intended for this to be a trip we’d take as a family, and now that the kids are a pre-teen and a teen, it feels like the window is suddenly getting short.

We booked our direct flights from SFO to SIN before the war began, which was pure dumb luck. I’ve also managed to book a lovely serviced apartment beside the Singapore Botanic Gardens. We’re planning to spend a week showing the kids everything we loved—and now miss—in Singapore, then head to Bali for 7–10 days, and finish with about five days in Thailand.

More on this very soon! We're hoping to reconnect with friends who are still in the area. 

Amtrak in a Sleeper Car from Oakland to Seattle

Travel by train is old-world, slow-living stuff and evokes all the Golden Age of Travel vibes that I'm always drawn to. I haven't the travel budget to take my family on the Orient Express but Joel researched this simple Amtrak trip as part of our route home for Christmas. Booking early was key, there are not very many sleeper cars but with very little fuss we were locked in. The boys were beyond excited for this trip. Here's how it went. 

Our train was delayed an hour so we really should have just watched the app and left later from our house. With trains, unlike planes, you can do that. They don't care, you don't check-in. The Oakland Station is not very big, has pretty spartan amenities and is low on any type of staff. Unlike European stations, the trains don't come into a grand covered platform. You take your first-class ticket and wander down the side of a building stepping over heaps of garbage on your way to your car. There is a porter at each carriage helping passengers aboard. Ours took us to our room where she'd set up the beds because it was past 10pm by the time we were in there. It was time for bed. 

The sleeper room was tiny, like being in an airplane bathroom. You can reach everything from your bed! Everything could use a coat of paint and a refresh but it was passable. Like a motel 6 levels of elegance. I wasn't expecting the Venice Simpleton but finding a syringe and garbage under a seat was definitely below expectation. 

The kids were REALLY excited about the first few hours but 24 was too long. These trains are not set up for children, once they have explored the train cars and read a book... that's it. Amtrak does absolutely nothing for kids, no welcome packs like the national parks or staff who engage them in any way. You're spending most of your time telling them to shhhhhh because everyone else is older and asleep. 

Was it a bucket list thing? Sure. Am I a fan of Amtrak? Not really. I might consider a shorter trip if it really makes sense but honestly I'd prefer the adventure van bunk experience with more outdoor stops and ability to choose routes with look-outs to see views. Trains of course, take the flat route, so you mostly see fields and the backs of industrial areas. 

The boys have positive memories despite the hours they complained after that 12 hour mark so I'm glad we tried this and now this bucket list item is crossed off. Time to plan the next adventure. 

Crater Lake National Park Van trip

 

C had been studying the National Parks in school the previous Spring and was absolutely ecstatic when a classmate's family invited us on a van adventure to see Crater Lake. Our precocious littles led the mission North from Marin to Oregon on a very intense whirlwind weekend trip.  It went very well and we were really blown away by the terrain. 

This trip we rented the RAM and were not as happy with that drive experience as we had been with the Mercedes Sprinter but the sleeping arrangement was pretty well oriented for us. Having a shorter van was a lot easier for parking lots. This one was 18 or 19' which felt more manageable than 22 and we were able to load in our driveway at home. 

Our Introduction to Adventure Vans

 

A couple of years ago, my design firm worked for a client who was building luxury Sprinter Van conversions. During the creative process, I learned a lot of new things about our target market and what they liked to do in vans. I also learned about the pain points of ownership and maintenance and discovered the secrets of what really matters to van aficionados.

Fast forward to our family trying to come up with a plan to support Joel while he ran the Western States 100-mile endurance run. We'd previously used Air BnBs and hotels to stay close to races but it was always cumbersome to be tied to just one location and have no way to wile away the hours in comfort. I decided to create an Outdoorsy account and rent a Sprinter Van myself. I had a few of my own priorities. 

1. 4 captain's seats so children would be bucked in real seatbelts tethered to the main frame and not too close to each other (RVs often have kinda fake seatbelts that are just attached to particle board and are not crash tested)
2. Beds for all four of us
3. Stove, sink, and refrigeration 

I was not interested in having a toilet/blackwater system because that is a whole other level of fussing around with chemicals and dumping and everywhere we were going had restrooms.

I was also not terribly concerned with A/C though I should have been... 

I rented a 22' Sprinter that had the basic layout that worked with our plan. It was nicely laid out and super easy to drive. We quickly learned that going over 18' has some disadvantages. Parking becomes limited to box store parking lots with angled spaces where you can pull through and take over two spaces.

On the plus side, 22' allows for more space to sleep and move around even when you are battened down to drive. It fit just fine in state campground parking places and we were super cozy up in Tahoe when the temperatures dropped at night.

As for supporting Joel, the set-up was really ideal. We actually parked in a legal parking place along a side road about 1 block from the start line. The start line had bathrooms, restaurants and amenities, so we were set. Joel was able to maximize rest time and just head right to the start line without driving at all. 

He left at 4am, the kids and I went back to sleep for a couple of hours and then I slipped out and picked up some yummy brunch food and made espresso. I took the kids to a play space and watched Joel's position in the race and then set off to meet him and his pacers at a feed zone. I was able to whip up a charcuterie board and host at the van while his team waited for him. 

Then the kids and I checked into an RV park. Very easy, though a lot less inviting than a forest campsite. At 4am again we moved our van to the finish line and enjoyed having a place to stretch out and all take a nap before hitting the road. 

It did get to 100f that morning so we really should have been mindful about finding a van with full climate control in the back. It's not a feature many rental vans have because it's costly to put in.  

Joel's race was a success, completing the 100 miles in 23 hours and 41 minutes and earning himself a coveted belt buckle and bragging rights. And I conquered my own fears of driving a large vehicle and being solo with the boys on an adventure. 

Misty Central Coast Recharge

After Thanksgiving's big hurrah, Nancy, Jessica, and I packed up our cars and drove down the coast for a Sunday-Wednesday escape. It was absolutely what I needed and I'd do this again in a heartbeat. 

We booked a small apartment at The Briarwood in Carmel. This is where I stayed with my Grannie and Mum in January 2010. Lots of special memories for me here. What people don't often realize about Carmel is, that despite it being full of high-end shops and fine dining, it's also full of much older Inns with rates that are a bit lost in time. They aren't flashy but not dives at all. It's usually much cheaper to stay in Carmel than in Monterey and quieter and more secure for night strolling and parking.

The other fantastic thing we booked was day passes at Refuge. This is an outdoor spa settled in the hills above Carmel. It's utterly beautiful there and really reasonably priced for lounging and rejuvenating. 

We had some wonderful brunches at Carmel Belle and a dinner at the legendary Dametra. We also had a lovely evening of tapas and a lot of champagne at Promesa. The rest of the time we hit up the quaint local delis and made charcuterie/cheese boards. 

It was very chilly and thick with fog but we did get out for beach strolling and we did a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Cannery Row. 

Hosting Again

To me, one of life's greatest pleasures in that moment of a house brimming with energy, laughter, clinking glasses. That moment when a party starts to run on its own energy and you get to enjoy it fully. Everything up to that point is a bit of a mad dash, little details, cooking and baking and decorating. Anticipating needs and crossing things off lists. There's a deep creative pleasure for me in creating tables for gathering. I think about it and collect pieces all year. My co-conspirator in these plans has always been Renee, who my kids call Gigi. She's an antique collector and creator of really creative and spectacular events in her home. She's always pushing the envelope with quirky fun ideas mixed with history and then above all... comfort. Nothing should be too austere. 

My other co-conspirator in great hosting escapade is often Nancy. My BFF of 34 years from Eastern Ontario homeschooling days. This year she flew down to visit just in time to help me pull off this event.

My client, Heirlooms Events, loaned us linens, tables, chairs, crystal (and those moss colored hobnail tumblers that were amazing) and Renee, who was in the middle of downsizing her home, sent up a collection of hotel silver to hold flowers. I scored a whole bucket of dahlias at Trader Joe's the day before. They turned out just the way I'd hoped. Those dewy peachy petals juxtaposing the tarnished silver. 

It was a lovely afternoon and night, with lots of hugs and catching up. I wish Renee had been able to come up and join us too. Jessica made it up from LA though and the following morning, after SO much cleaning, Nancy, Jess and I hatched a plan to decompress and do the opposite of hosting...

Summer Cottage on a lake

It's the key ingredient of a Canadian kid's Summer if you live in the Eastern provinces with lots of lakes. Having grown up in cottage country it was odd when we moved to BC at age 10 and there were relatively few warm, clear lakes to dive into in the Summer. There were also few days that got warm enough to want to swim! A BC Summer is more like spring weather, wet, breezy with occasional warmer days but it rarely gets sticky hot. When we lived in Vancouver all my Ontario Summer clothes lived in a bag. And after moving to hotter climates we have learned not to bring things like flip flops and sun dresses with us in July because they just live in the suitcase. We were utterly astonished this Summer to be arriving for our first ever heat wave during a BC Summer. 

When we got to the cottage with Joel's family we were treated to weather that was right out of an Eastern Ontario childhood. Jumping in the warm lake multiple times a day to stay cool. Sitting by a fan with a cool drink after. Warm evenings playing long competitive games of Risk and pulling out the secret stashes of treats we hid when the kits were up. 

We also had really lovely weather to have a lot of outdoor time in Sooke with my family and music festival time with my brother and his family. Joel and I got away for one night to the Empress Hotel where we wined and dined and got a luxurious sleep in. 

Roaring 20s and COVID

Do we, or don't we?  the parent party committee mused over Zoom. The gloomy chart from the Country showed the COVID levels in the wastewater were in a bullish upward trend. Parents were expecting us to put on the first year-end party in two school years. But imagining people filling the indoor venue didn't sit right. What if we have a super spreader event and land our little charter school in the local papers? There's a journalist there that just won't be able to resist tearing us a new one. 

We drew up a new plan to have everything outdoors for our roaring 20s fete. The setting was stunning, with twinkling lights under the canopy of redwood trees. Black and gold decor hung from everywhere, dancers demonstrated the Charleston, the bar was stocked with supplies to make my signature cocktail list: French 75, Sidecar, Old Fashioned. We pulled it off! And it was beautiful.

This shindig coincided with my parent's visit down from Canada. They'd arrived a week before, in time for us to have a fun weekend with the final season baseball games and family dinners. Then I got sick with a sinus infection and after isolating for a few days and testing negative each day, I opted for antibiotics and immediately got better. Phew, I thought! I dodged COVID again. I was better in time to enjoy the event I'd helped plan and we got that glittering evening in. 

We had a lovely weekend after that, brunch at our Barefoot Cafe in Fairfax and a hike in Deer Park with the kids and a late evening scrabble game for the adults. 

Monday morning I woke with heavy, wet-feeling lungs, a bit of asthma. I wandered upstairs to grab a cup of coffee and a Zyrtec. Once back downstairs again I thought, well maybe I should do a rapid test. The tiniest of tiny test lines faded into view and I just froze in shock. That began a the frantic process of isolating me downstairs again. I diligently reported my test to the County, they responded by texting me  my quarantine schedule. Then I did the iphone exposure notification for the state of California which pings all close contacts from the past few days. That was a little less simple as I had to get a number sent to me by the state health department to put into that app but it worked. I reached out to the parent party organizing committee members from the party and heard one other person had tested positive the same time but with so much going around, we likely weren't even linked. 

And so that was day one. I quickly developed a fever, cough, headache and nausea and joint pains that were more severe than I've had in the last 20 years. I was not expecting a breakthrough infection for me to be this dramatic. I couldn't keep anything down, not even liquids. I had a call with a nurse to monitor my O2 and a follow up the following day from a Dr of Internal medicine and was put onto prescription anti nauseant so I could take in fluids again. 

I had three days of being phenomenally ill and thinking I might get rolled out of this place on a gurney afterall, and then on day four it turned and started to recede. Just as the Dr said it would. By now Joel had joined me in my quarantine lair, only he won the lottery and got the cold version. He had a feverish night and lingering cough but really never got very sick. Our story is pretty typical of Omicron. People are getting either this harsh flu or a cold and then it goes away. We felt we were being pretty careful still when we caught it. We were not dining indoors, we were masking with KN95 masks for shops and school, and being very conservative with any socializing. I think I may have picked it up having a drink outside on a patio at a local cocktail bar. My Dr. confirmed that yes, many people are reporting the same suspicions about outdoor spread. "It's just that contagious now" she said. 

My parents have been isolating with the boys upstairs. Joel and I, with our own house entrance are well set up to isolate in the lower part of the house. Joel even taped up the air return vent (he laughed that it reminded him of Station Eleven). My parents have been delivering meals to us (we've been ordering in a lot) and leaving all kinds of needed items outside our door. The boys are enjoying some grandparent time and lots of hikes. They haven't tested positive or been sick at all. After a week of isolating from us they went back to school today and are taking in their last three days of school before Summer holidays begin.

And so that's our COVID story. Glad to have caught a later variant which, after lots of jabs, seems self limiting. But I still wouldn't wish what I had on anyone. We are still both waiting to test out of quarantine. My tests are coming back positive at day 8 and Joel's at day 5. My parents have to drive up to Canada tomorrow so we're hoping we change the tide in the next 24 hours. We couldn't have cared for the kids  without them and are incredibly grateful for family.  

Cautiously Optimistic

It's May 1st, the birds are singing and it's not terribly hot out so I've been gardening while Joel is fishing with the boys. A perfect lazy Sunday. Loads of coffee, cat conversations, and just a sense that I'm perfectly happy with a day at home. In January we branched out from just school to having the boys in various after school things. Skateboarding, Capoeira, Baseball, Carpentry,  and they still do piano too. Children's programs dropped outdoor masking after the Winter surge and then in March, at various dates, some districts made masks optional everywhere. That was a huge change for everyone. Having been burned by that happening right before Delta most of our circle have been pretty conservative unmasking when out shopping or in a classroom. But also opening up our risk profiles a little more as this time goes on. 

We took our first family holiday to our old stomping grounds in LA since fall 2019. It was a fantastic week.

We had a home exchange place to stay in just in Santa Monica walking distance from where we used to live. We saw some old friends and ate excellent Mexican street food. Took did a spa day with a friend and Joel took the boys to see the space shuttle and we honestly caught up on a huge amount of sleep. We were cautious about crowded places and masked a lot indoors for shops but generally with all the outdoor time it felt like a perfectly relaxing family trip to do and happy to have been doing it at a time where things are on an upswing and the mood is really joyous. 

After spring break in LA we all had to COVID test again to have the kids return to school and were very pleased when our school had only two cases after that wave of testing. 

Easter came next. Again we did something we haven't done in years, we hosted the egg hunt in our garden and enjoyed a sun filled happy day basking in the rays and sipping mimosas. 

The Break In The Drought

Rain rain rain! We've had two or three of these atmospheric rivers come through so far. We usually get these in late December or January but we were certainly not complaining when the fire season came to an abrupt end with over 300mm of rain in a mere 24 hours. There was some short-lived flooding more due to the extraordinary high tides that were also happening at that time and it all resolved pretty fast. Then we had weeks of glorious warm sunny weather, shorts were worn and then another storm. This is what "winter" is mostly like for us. We get the rain stuff done in dramatic dumps and then get back to absorbing the vitamin D. The last two winters were very dry hence the phenomenal drought we were in but here's hoping this is a wet one to fill the lakes again and give us some buffer for the year ahead. 

Joel's parents drove down here as soon as the border opened to leisure travel to vaccinated guests. Our first family visitors in two years! There was much feasting and reading of stories with these bigger boys. They got their first fishing rods from grandpa and did a few fishing trips to Lake Lagunitas. 

2021 is wrapping up! Here's what would have gone into a Christmas letter had I any time to write one and get it in the mail this year. 

The boys have been in their new school now for 4 months. A is 8 1/2 and in third grade now. He is enrolled in a wilderness education program and an enriched math program and now that he's outside the Waldorf curriculum is catching up on lost time on everything. C just turned 6 and is reading everything he can get his hands on, and is eager to start skateboarding lessons in January. Both are in piano but they both are more interested in how the piano works and the music theory than actually playing music (who are these humans?) 

They both spend every moment while they are at home sketching machines, wiring circuits, programming robots to do things, or building lego. A is dead set on attending MIT to study robotics. C is so far angling for mechanical engineering. They have big plans. Needless to say, it was time to move them from the  into this inquiry-led program this year. I'm not hearing moaning anymore about everything being too slow or boring. I think we'll be well placed here for a few years yet. 

My work drastically changed this fall as I rebranded my solo self-named operation to TreeHouse and began to be known as a design group. We got really busy in October and are tapering off nicely heading into the holidays. Lots of branding work as well as some projects for me with returning clients and local government. I was featured in a book about women in leadership, which was deeply flattering and quite unexpected. 

Joel's company, VIM, has begun to reap what they sowed so doggedly over the past three years. The sacrifices,  and sleepless nights are turning into deals and partnerships with household name brands. Not many start-ups rose out of the pandemic hiring and growing. But here we are. 

We are heading back to Canada by car in a few days. Our first time back since Christmas 2019. We're keeping it small and safe, a week with Joel's parents and then a week with mine. A Home Exchange family is heading here to keep watch over cat and home. 

Whatever 2022 brings, lets hope it brings healing, good health, and lots of aha moments.

What We Did This Summer

 The Summer began with this burst of optimism as vaccination rates soared into the 90%s here. A few close friends we've only seen for socially distanced cocktails in the yard all year came in for a hug. I went away for a night with a close friend and stayed in a hotel and dined in style in Sonoma (though still avoiding indoors and crowds). We drank champagne and toasted our new year ahead. 

Look how happy!

After a massage and a walk through the gardens at Cornerstone I was feeling pretty great. The following week our pod family gave us a night away for father's day. Joel and I stayed in the legendary Olema House Inn and again enjoyed a patio dinner and once the restaurant cleared out late that night, we came in to enjoy a nightcap with the place to ourselves. Tiny steps toward normal. 

And somehow, we managed to take the leap of faith and send the boys to school last week. 

The Lost Birthdays

 

A couple of days before the beginning of lockdown in 2020 we were supposed to be hosting a 7th Birthday for A at the Lego play space near us. One by one all our guests had rescinded their RSVPs. We cancelled the party much to his disappointment but he is an incurable optimist and he rallied that day and enjoyed his gifts and cake and watched a movie with his friends online. As the year went on, every other kid had a COVID era birthday without the party or trip to the movies. Yesterday we had our very first gathering outside the pod with two families who we haven't seen in ages, we decided to celebrate all the kids birthdays. We sang, they had goodie bags and we hope they enjoyed a little piece of optimism of all that is to come this year. 

The Road To Normal

Things are rapidly changing in California now that counties like ours have inched past 80% vaccination in the 16+ age group. People (mostly boomers who are finished their second doses) are out on the streets, or sitting at outdoor cafes looking like they are with someone from outside their household and it's safe for them to do that - wow! Our numbers are down into very low digits for daily new cases. The CDC just announced that fully vaccinated adults don't need to mask outdoors anymore, unless they are in a crowd. It's so different to see that same group of seniors who were our most dedicated maskers now smiling and unmasked. In a couple of weeks we'll be far enough past our second shots to join the outdoor group getting rid of the 'ol masks tan lines (OK I don't tan but apparently mask tan lines were a thing). 

We went on a road trip to visit Joshua Tree National Park a few weeks ago and were invited to visit dear friends in Palm Springs on the way. In their pod, most are fully vaccinated and one person just partially vaccinated. Meanwhile we were partially vaccinated and kids are not vaccinated. It was tricky to navigate but we read a bunch of articles with epidemiologists laying out safe scenarios and we followed these new protocols. Despite the careful planning, it felt like a natural homecoming and a bit surreal. Just seeing our friend's faces and having a family catch-up. What a dream. 

Our next challenge for our pod all getting vaccinated is, how do we open up and with whom and how fast? We've had a lot of discussions so far. I think our priority is to each choose 2 families with fully vaccinated adults we would like to reconnect with and just stay at that level of open-ness for awhile. Keep kids masking and stay outdoors but it's a huge step toward being social again. There are things our group is definitely not going to do yet like eating inside a restaurant or going to an indoor gym. Apparently Dr Fauci is saying he also is not doing those things so we're not that unusual I think. 

The After Times

It's hard to describe the feeling of living here post inauguration. We got to the end of the week on Friday and no one had a drink in their hand, because just juggling work and kids and the usual stress of the Pandemic hadn't worn us down quite the same way as it did during the T**** era. I don't expect the harm to be erased, or the fights to be over, but knowing that functional adults are back in charge is incredibly good news. Just that look of glee on Fauci's face when he addressed the press spoke more to the people than any words could say. Help is here. It will get better. 

New Year Wishes

I can't really make a resolution. 2020 is still lying on the floor laughing at my list from last year. On the 31st we wrote on wish paper, lit it and watched it rise off the table and fall in floating grey ash clouds. 

What I hope happens this year is that we get enough vaccinations out there that our front line workers are safe and the deaths in care homes from COVID end. I feel somewhat confident that by summertime we could see case rates fall to levels low enough to risk a road trip back to Canada. I feel fairly confident that the kids will return to some kind of school in person in the fall of 2021. 

I don't think we'll really truly take a family holiday till Summer 2022. Our dreams of returning to France or doing a trip to Northern England, Scotland and Ireland might be possible then. 

We wonder what world travel might be like then. Will EVERYONE be suddenly taking the trip of a lifetime just because now they can? Will the usual haunts be so crowded that it's all like the Louvre in August or will people step out cautiously... maybe the financial ruin of the pandemic will still hinder most from leisure. 

I do feel wildly optimistic about one thing, 2021 has got to be better than 2020. To that I raise a toast, may we meet in person someday not too far off, and HUG. Seriously, think about it. Hugging. 

Friendships and the Pod Evolution

It's been a hard year for relationships with people. Some friendships are the same as ever because we always had long pauses. We chat online and check in like it's no big deal. Other friendships have almost faded out without the frequent in-person meetings. 

The pod thing is like playing "who would you want to be marooned on a desert island with?" only you really do it. There was no way to include all our close friends here and I felt that the decision of who to quarantine with with came from being in lockstep with another family in our circle. When people ask how we decided I have to really think about it. 

And so, when the lockdown began we rode out the first couple of months in isolation and then, the moment the local county said that we could, we podded up. It took a few weeks to hit our stride but eventually, we began to live communally. Taking turns cooking and hosting dinner in the evenings, and eventually, putting all the kids to bed together almost every night which oddly enough makes bedtime easier. We spend the evenings with cocktails and games or sometimes just sitting on our phones in that comfortable silence between good friends. 

The key to happiness in a communal living pod like ours doesn't lie only in friendship but also in how  people cope with the pandemic stress. I'd say most people would probably find our habits pretty hard to roll with. Because we have two members with high levels of health risk, we are at the highest level of lock down measures all the time. We all have 0 direct contact outside the pod. Everyone works from home, kids homeschool and we only go inside a business if we have exhausted every other means of getting that item. It's something that might happen once a month and undertaken with the solemnity of performing surgery. We don't grocery shop in person, we don't eat on cafe patios, use public restrooms or take public transit or taxis. 

We're also all news junkies and among us we cover a mix of British, Canadian, French, Singaporean and American news. We read a lot of scientific papers, journals and have been focused on the impressive research going on. It's helped keep the focus away from the scary headlines and on the progress instead. I find being focused on the goal of ending this pandemic to be very centering. Some people find the news keeps them up at night and makes them upset. To each their own. I think part of me would be happier if I could somehow be a scientist right now, pulling long shifts trying to save lives. I've always been good in a crisis, not so good at riding out monotony.

In the autumn we added a third family. This was is another classmate of the older two kids and her parents who are part of our mutual parent friends as well. They were also keeping their daughter home when school resumed and maintaining a similar level of lockdown at home so it was a good fit for us all. 

We know we are fortunate to have found a pod life that feels right for this adventure we are on. Where this will go or where it will end, we don't know. But I hope when we look back we'll see the growth that happened. 

The Election That Xanax Won

Usually elections are like a sports match here. Lots of parties, food, drinking, banter. The outcome matters but it won't end a friendship or a marriage. But the past five years have been different. We've seen the viterol of Fox news crazed white baby boomers tear families apart. Nearly every friend has some crazy uncle or parent who has adopted a level brazen racism that just doesn't seem real. The trend of anti-intellectualism was examined during the Bush years and much laughed about on late night TV, but I don't think anyone thought the cult of being uneducated could grow like this in a country with such value placed on innovation and growth. 

So here we are. Day two of ballot counting. Somehow...too close to call yet. Children are in cages. White supremacists are parading around with impunity, basic women's rights are at risk of being stripped back to the 1950s. It shouldn't be a tough decision. 

 

Dinner in the dark and turning 40

I was unsure of how to celebrate Joel's 40th or my own this past month and as mine drew closer, I felt a little pressure to figure that out. It's supposed to be a big day, it's supposed to be momentous. Finally we landed on the idea of Joel cooking one of his epic feasts out of two of our Ottolenghi cookbooks and I searched for the most ridiculous show-stopper of a Birthday cake I could find. We invited our pod and Joel spent the week preparing and receiving mysterious packages. Then we were given notice of extreme fire weather over the weekend and told the power would be cut for 24 hours starting during our planned dinner. We changed nothing but checked the batteries in the LED candles and lanterns and made sure the 2000 watt power inverter was set up beside the car and there were extension cords spread around the house to the fridge and freezer so we could be on back-up power in about 10 minutes when needed. When the day arrived the dinner was absolutely perfect, I'm going to share some pictures. The power went out as we finished the final courses and we cheered and made espresso by the flickering light of a lantern hanging in the cozy kitchen. 

Grilled Grapes with Mozzarella

Beet, orange and feta salad

Curried lentil, tomato, coconut soup

Palette cleanser: home made vodka lemon sorbet with champagne

Tri tip

Roast cauliflower

Baked home made gnocci

Asparagus with almonds, capers and dill

Roast eggplant with sesame, and sauteed shallots

We began with one of my favorite chardonnays sent by my parents

At the meat course this big peppery Cab Sauv came out

Dessert was a St Honore, butter puff pastry crust with Italian pastry cream filling; layered with sponge cake brushed with rum; decorated with chocolate and fresh whipped cream and pastry cream-filled caramelized cream puffs.

We also had a tray of assorted italian cookies by the same pastry shop