B.C.ing You, Part 2

The next morning we rose early and headed to the border, about a thirty minute drive. We took the "quick way" which is more direct and less scenic, but we got to cross at the "pretty" border crossing.

The Blaine Peace Arch.

The wait to cross - if you've ever been to Tijiuana on a Friday night, this isn't really a wait at all. This is like what I get stuck in at the check point between San Diego and Orange County.

Almost there!!!!!

Welcome to Canada! This was Thatboy's first time in Canada, and Thatmom and my first time in British Columbia. We're old pros on the eastern front.

We got to our hotel, bright, shiny, and eager to start the trip. And the hotel was bright, shiny and eager too!

The Westin Grand, located on Robson Street is an ideal location. Just blocks away from Robson, Yaletown, and Granville Island. The hotel itself is named for its shape - a grand piano. Do you see it?

The gorgeous building in the foreground is the Vancouver Public Library. It's gorgeous AND amazing.

And the views are simply phenomenal. We started falling in love with the city immediately.

There's the library again! And in the background you can see the stadium.


But the front room had my favorite view of all:

We were up for a walk, so we decided to walk over to Granville Island. We headed down Granville Street which is currently under heavy construction.

And then we headed across the Granville Street Bridge, which affords a great photo opportunity of the city.

What's the draw of Granville Island? See that sign down there?

No? Maybe you should look a little closer:

But Thatmom didn't raise no fool. Everyone knows you don't go shopping on an empty stomach. So first we headed for lunch.

The Sandbar came highly recommended, not just for the food, but also for the fabulous views if you're lucky enough to be seated outside. We came at just the right time and managed to grab one of the last remaining outside tables.

The weather couldn't have been more perfect that weekend. Sunny and warm, Thatboy and I were in t-shirts and Thatmom got down to just two layers! Because of the construction of the restaurant we had a roof over us and Thatmom kept exclaiming "I can't believe we're outside!"

We started off with fresh bread and beers - both made locally on the island!

Thatmom had requested soup for lunch, and we aim to please. She got clam chowder after clarifying that the clams were local. The soup was different than your usual New England clam chowder in that it had corn and carrots in it, which gave it a very fresh taste. And it was still so creamy!

I went with perfect shrimp dumplings. I don't think I've ever seen dumplings made with such large shrimp. Each dumpling held one gigantic, sweet, pink, shrimp.

Thatboy went with the daily special - a chorizo and chicken quesadilla with a chipotle chili sauce. He was nervous when it came out in the whole wheat tortilla, but he thought it was the best meal at the table.


After lunch we were prepared to venture into the public market.

You can find just about anything at the market.

We left with bread, cheese, fruit, and chocolate for breakfast the next morning. By this time, the beer buzz had worn off and it was time to refill.

We've got a lot of wineries in California, and San Diego has its fair share of breweries, but we do not have a Sake maker. So of course we had to stop in for a taste.

We got a little walk through of the sake making procedure, and got to taste the different types made on site, along with a description of how and why they're different. I never would have thought I'd be able to distinguish between sakes, but each one has a very unique flavor. We ended up bringing back a bottle of the Junmai Nama to enjoy with our fruit, bread and cheese.

We thought we were going to make it back without any more food purchases, until we smelled the aromas coming from this place.

The scent turned out to be fresh croissants, straight from the oven. Thatboy couldn't resist. So flakey and buttery, and hot hot hot! I found something else that caught my eye.

We left with macarons and hot croissants. The pistachio were the hands down favorites - even though they tasted like almond.

Since we walked over, we decided to take the ferry back.

Want to know whether we made it to the other side or not? And what happened next? Is anyone else ready for a nap? Stay tuned for more of our B.C. Adventures!

B.C.ing You, part 1

Thatfamily loves to travel. Combining all the trips made by Thatfamily members in 2008, we visited: England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Mexico, New York, South Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, Illinois, Washington and throughout the state of California. In February, each member of Thatfamily cancelled between one and two upcoming trips. Last month, Thatmom sorrowfully bemoaned her lack of future trips with Thatdad, and the places she would never see. He was her constant travel companion, dragging her to far flung places she would never have visited without him. Each trip was an adventure - partly because of the location, and partly because of Thatdad's travel planning style which inevitably had them staying far more "locally" than Thatmom would have liked.

Thatboy and I proposed a solution to Thatmom, she'd have to travel with the other members of the family - at least to the places she wanted to go. She backed out of future travel plans to Southeast Asia, although I think we may be able to get her to venture to Bali with us. A couple of days later, Thatmom mentioned that she'd always wanted to go to Vancouver, and with that, I was off planning a trip - a gift from us for Mother's Day.

There's nothing I enjoy more than planning a trip. I am SO in the wrong profession. What I really should be doing is vacation planning - not like a travel agent, but like a wedding planner, for trips. This trip was personalized for Thatmom and Thatboy. Thatboy would spend every minute of the trip outside - biking, hiking, kayaking. Thatmom is not an outdoorsy person at all and she would spend every minute of the trip checking out the markets and the shopping. One thing we all have in common is a love for good food. So I planned a trip with shopping, outdoor adventures suitable for everyone, and of course, fantastic restaurants.

We flew into Bellingham, Washington, which UDubb informed us had little to offer, but was close to the border. We decided to fly in and spend the night since Thatboy had a long day in the office, I had a long day in court, and none of us wanted to navigate in the dark.

Our ridiculously cheap mode of transportation, which isn't nearly as gorgeous as the sunset behind it. As a side note - never go to Washington with a Twilight fan. Thatboy kept asking how far we were from Forks and if we could take a side trip. Then he kept pointing out the areas where he thought the Cullens probably hunted. When I informed him that the newest movie just finished shooting in Vancouver I swear he started drooling.

As UDubb had correctly assessed, Bellingham has very little to offer, including the area of hotels. So we stayed in the NICEST property in all of Bellingham. That's right folks the only 3 star hotel in the area.

For less than 12 hours though, we aren't really that picky.

You may be curious to know what this luxury property is:

After we checked in and tucked Thatmom into her room Thatboy and I headed to the best part of the hotel - the martini bar.

With the promise of drinks and live entertainment, we had to check it out. Unfortunately the DJ did not live up to the hype, although it was fun to people watch a couple of the dancers.

The drinks, however, more than made up for it. Since it was a martini bar, I immediately turned to the specialty martini section. Thatboy thought he would get more for his money getting an "all alcohol all the time" martini with no mix ins. His "Marked Man" with whiskey and vermouth is on the right.

He was sorely disappointed when mine showed up in a GINORMOUS shaker. 4 drinks in one. My Illusion Martini had pear vodka, peach vodka, triple sec, and white cranberry juice. And see those green things at the bottom? Those are Haribo frogs. Thatboy was almost as green as they were when he saw them. They're some of his favorite candies. Don't worry, I shared.



After our drinks, we headed back to the room for a little sleep before our big drive into Vancouver. Stay tuned for a recap on Day 1 in the big city.

Dinner in Stepford

Some of you may be too young to remember that before Nicole Kidman, there was another depiction of Stepford County. One with a lot less comedy and lot more "creepy" factor. That's where we had dinner last night.

Sisterwife is one of my favorite dinner companions because she's always up for trying out a new places with me. We debated back and forth about trying to find a place between our two homes, but when she mentioned where she works, I asked if she'd be willing to try someplace new. She readily agreed.

Poor Sisterwife. I didn't realize it, but basically the directions I should have given her were "get off the freeway and head towards the middle of nowhere. Once you reach nowhere, keep driving. You'll stop seeing stores and start wondering if maybe you've gone to far, because there's nothing around you. Eventually you'll start seeing houses and right when you're POSITIVE you're in Idaho, make a left."

You make the left right into a little residential community. Made up entirely of McMansions.

An area so exclusive, that their community park is gated.

An area so exclusive that there is no one around. Surrounded by silence, if it wasn't so manicured there would be tumbleweeds rolling down the path.

Tucked into this community is Cavaillon, a French restaurant that seems to fit in perfectly with this community. Both luxiurious and desolate. Heavy fabrics in rich, jewel toned golds and reds drape the windows and wrought iron style accents on the tables help to convey the feeling of decedance. Although for a good portion of our dinner Sisterwife and I were the only people in the restaurant, so the staff was definitely attentive, with great recommendations.

We were quickly brought out warm rolls and butter - perfectly crusty on the outside and warm and doughy on the inside - like all good French bread should be.

Sisterwife and I ended up ordering the same thing. She was reluctant to at first and kept pressuring me to get the duck, or debating about the scallops and risotto, but in the end I convinced her that no one was going to judge us for getting something we both wanted. Hear that readers? NO JUDGING. We both enjoyed the short ribs, braised for five hours and served over creamy potatoes with carrots and cipollini onions. The meat was so tender it literally fell apart on our forks and melted in our mouths. The potatoes weren't quite mashed, instead they were cooked to the point where they too melted like butter on the tongue.

We decided to forgo dessert, but spent so much time catching up that the kitchen/staff soon sent out a little treat for us. It was some type of lemon granita. I swore it had basil in it, Sisterwife insisted it was honey. We dubbed it "French Hawaiian Ice."

We spent the dinner filling each other in on recent events in our lives. The last time we were supposed to get together, we were going to be celebrating Sisterwife's new home, but unfortunately that weekend we ended up making funeral arrangements instead of celebrating. So Sisterwife filled me in on everything about her new house and neighbors and I of course greeted her with a fantastic housewarming gift. I know it was fantastic because it included some of my world famous guacamole. Sisterwife's family is dealing with its own drama right now, and even though she admitted she felt guilty venting to me, I can't imagine a better person to understand the anxieties she and her husband are going through. At the same time, she is a wonderful listener to my own anxieties and frustration. She offered me some wonderful insight that I thought about on the way home.

And once I got home, I had a little something waiting for me:

I had picked up some cupcakes from Heaven Sent Desserts on my way home from work to share with Thatboy. The poor guy has had to fend for himself the past two nights and our fridge is pretty much on the empty side. PLUS we missed out on our Tuesday lunch because he had to go to lunch with the boss. Our normal cupcake routine is to split 2 cupcakes so we each end up with one whole cupcake, but these were so small and cute I couldn't help but get three. Chocolate, red velvet, and carrot cake. As I cut them open I was in for a real surprise - each cupcake was filled! I can't tell you what kind of filling was in the chocolate cupcake - it was white...does that help? It was our least favorite. Both the carrot cake and the red velvet had a cream cheese frosting filling. The carrot cake was by far the best. It was good to try, but these are not our favorite San Diego cupcakes.

French Fries, for dinner?

I think it all started when we were in college, but it might have started shortly after - the "girls trip" to Vegas. In total, I think the weekend would cost around $75 a person, and that included gas, hotel, food... It was so cheap because we would have 6 girls to a room, drank every meal, and of course, never paid for our own drinks.

I guess Prez and I decided to relive old times last night with a bit of a liquid dinner.
It started innocently enough, an email requesting whether Prez wanted to celebrate her birthday early with dinner or drinks? It was all downhill from there.

Prez chose drinks, as she sent me a list of some of her favorite happy hours. Eventually we narrowed it down to Tower 23.

The restaurant JRDN is a popular place for celebrations as the only other time I had been was also for a birthday, but this was a different scene. At night, the place is wall to wall people, where you have to "know somebody" to get a drink and don't even think about sitting down. When we showed up yesterday, the place was fairly deserted. We had our pick of seats and service was speedy. Prez chose a seat outside, with a view of the water. It doesn't look so sunny here, premature June Gloom, but the weather has been ridiculously warm lately.

Obviously, the first order of business was the drinks. On Mondays, Happy Hour includes discounts on their "mixed pleasures."

I started with the cucumber mint melon cooler. It was cool, it was refreshing, it is the perfect poolside sipping drink. I'm going to HAVE to figure out how to make it before our next girls trip to Palm Springs.

Prez had spent the entire day before drinking champagne based cocktails. Midafternoon, when she was suitably drunk, "they handed me a soda, and then went back to drinking." She wanted something a little lighter and less champagne-y. So she had a strawberry mojito. Interesting enough, I thought mine tasted more mojito-y. She thought mine smelled better than it looked, so I guess we both were happy.

Round 2 involved hibiscus tequila cosmos. After the light fruity cooler, this was a little heavy for me...or maybe just a little thick. Or maybe I was already a little thick by this point in time. Or maybe I just liked the glasses better from round 1.

One of the reasons I love Prez, is because we often think alike. When perusing the menu for something to snack on, I mentioned I had been smelling french fries the entire drive over. Prez looked up at me with an evil glint in her eye. "Have you ever had the fries here? They are SO good! I even love the parmesan, and I don't eat cheese." It's true, she doesn't eat cheese, or anything white, which includes most dairy products. And so we ordered their truffle shaved fries. She was right, the fries were fantastic. Covered in shaved white truffle, garlic, and parmesan cheese, the ketchup was almost superfluous. The original crazy plan was to have the fries and sushi, which was one of the reasons Prez had picked the restaurant in the first place. However, apparently, the sushi chef has one day off...and that day off is Monday. So, no sushi for us. Instead we had french fries for dinner, which meant a lot of our conversations consisted of dropped jaws and giggles.

We took turns telling each other dramatic stories about our friends - the best kind of gossip. Then Prez realized that the last girls trip we had taken was my bachelorette party. We started planning the next one and so far have the month and people who will be involved. Now we just have to pick a place. One of the best parts about being one of my friends is the free hotel perks. Thatparents (and now Thatmom) are the proud owners of a number of timeshares. More than they can use in a year. So between the timeshare points, and timeshare weeks, as well as the bonus weeks, Thatfamily very rarely has to pay for hotel rooms. And of course, my friends benefit. Prez has already been the recipient of trips to Palm Springs and Mexico. Now we're debating about if we want to do a girls weekend some place local, or a little more exotic. I'll keep you updated!

On a more heroic note, or perhaps "why you should always go running with your cell phone," while Thatdog and I headed out for our run this morning, I noticed a bird had gotten stuck in the stairwell. It's not a common occurrence, but it does happen occasionally and because they "only fly up" (is that a myth?) they can't get out of the stairwell on their own. So I called Thatboy and asked him if he could come rescue the bird. And even though it was shortly after 6 in the morning, my big strong man got himself out of bed and came to save the little bird. Maybe he's not the bird's hero, but he's certainly mine!

What dreams may come

Thatdad's latest book was just released. As usual, the publishers sent us a box. My favorite part of my dad's publications was always searching for myself somewhere in the book, since he loved to include stories of Thatbrother and I. This one is a latest edition of an earlier work, so I already know exactly where (what I lovingly refer to as) "my chapter" lies. Instead, I turned to the acknowledgements, which don't remain exact throughout the editions.

It was like reading a message from him, from wherever he is now. Obviously it was written long before he died, but reading about how the support of his family helped him survive his heart attack and quadruple bypass all those years ago seemed almost prophetic and dissolved me into a mess of tears. I cried on Thatboy's shoulder - "it's not true, because he didn't...he didn't survive." But Thatboy reminded me that he did survive his first heart attack, and he did survive the bypass. And now it's the same family support that will allow each of us remaining to survive. Because really, that's what his message was to us - that we will survive.

Given all that, it is no surprise that lately I've been dreaming of Thatdad. The setting is always fairly mundane, a soccer game, a vacation, an open house - and his presence there is unremarkable. Except for the fact, even in the dream I'm semi-conscious that there's something not quite right. There is usually some discussion about recooperation, or running into someone who "hasn't heard the news" as though death were just another form of illness, or as though he was recovering from some surgery. I wake up feeling sad and reflective.

This weekend was mostly filled with non-stop errands. One of those weekends where we hit the ground running around 7 and don't get home till about 12 hours later. We did take a break so Thatboy could see Star Trek since he was such a good sport about not going to see it opening weekend. I'm not as familiar with the orignal, having grown up a "Next Generation" kid, but I thought the movie was phenomenal. Very fun, and unlike the current movie trend, not too long. I loved how J.J. Abrams got a little time travel in there too. I was definitely expecting a couple of the survivors of Oceanic 815 to show up on the bridge. I think the man's a bit obsessed. If anyone's going to build a time machine, I'd put my money on him.

We also hit up the farmer's market that's a block or two from Thatmom's house. It's one of my favorites because of the size and the variety of stuff you can get there - everything from sausages to oil paintings. We stocked up on an obscene about of berries, kettle corn, produce for dinner, as well as a gift for Thatnephew who has a birthday next month.

It's been two weeks since we've had it last, so Thatmom requested her favorite chicken dish for dinner. We picked up some fresh corn from the market which I coated in some cilantro lime butter I whipped up and then grilled. And of course, I made enough for leftovers - someone has to keep Thatmom eating during the week and it certainly isn't going to be That"I eat beans straight out of the can for dinner"brother.

A few of my obsessions

You know how it is when you discover something that's new to you and it kind of becomes your life? I get like that with ingredients. It drives Thatboy crazy. Currently I am obsessed with three new ingredients I've come in contact with recently.

1) Salt Pork. I'm now using it in practically every soup recipe I can. I LOVE IT. And so does Thatboy. He thinks it's a little stronger than bacon flavor. I like how the fat melts to cook my veggies. I like the salty quality of it and how easy it is to use - comes in a nice pre-sliced package at the store and it keeps for just about ever. It kinda makes me feel pilgrim-y, back when they would salt their meats because they didn't have fridges. It adds the best flavor to my soups.

2) Kale. Kale isn't really new to me, but lately I can't get enough of it. It's another great soup addition, but also a great green veggie. I like to saute it with garlic. Thatboy isn't as impressed but, he's not as in to bitter vegetables as I am. He doesn't mind it in soups, although if you asked him, he'd probably tell you it was spinach.

3) Parsnips. Back in the days of "scavenge in an empty fridge" following Thatdad's death I found a bunch of these in Thatmom's fridge. She was going to use them in a minestrone soup, but instead we made a tomato barley and threw them in. I think they're the secret love child of carrots and apples. And I decided they would become a new staple in Thathouse. So earlier this week I souped them up.

Potato Parsnip Soup

• 5 slices of Salt Pork (about 3 oz) diced.
• 2 parsnips, peeled and diced
• 2 russet potatoes, peeled and diced
• 2 cups milk
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 Tbsp flour

1. Cook salt pork in a heavy bottomed pot until the fat has melted and the pork is browned. Pour out all but 1 Tbsp of the fat.
2. Add the parsnips and potatoes and cook for 5 minutes.
3. Add 1 1/2 cups of water, cover and cook on low 20 minutes, or until potatoes are tender.
4. Slowly add the milk and continue cooking over low heat.
5. While the soup is heating, melt 1 Tbsp butter in small pan and stir in flour. Mix 2-3 minutes until thoroughly combined. Add about 1/4 cup of the soup liquid to this butter/flour mixture slowly. Slowly, while stirring gently, add this mixture to the soup pot.
6. Let simmer 5 minutes more to let the soup thicken a bit.