Dia De Los Mamas (as one Mexican restaurant's sign put it)
Mother's Day again, our first "real" Mother's Day now that Caela's here (we celebrated last year, since Caela was well on her way at that point, little knowing she'd be making an appearance scant weeks later...).
Sadly, it was newsletter Sunday, so we dragged ourselves out of bed to make the 25-mile trek to Santa Monica and photocopy and drop off the newsletter by 11 am. (OK, 11.15 am.) This turned out OK, though, since it was halfway to El Matador State Beach: motleymuse had requested a day at the beach for Mother's Day, and had done her research to find something out of the way. El Matador is another 25 miles or so up the coast on PCH, past Malibu, and it's a hell of a find: a quarter-mile or so of switchbacks separate the beach from the parking lot on the cliffs above, and the huge rock formations jutting randomly out of the sand leave places to sit as well as providing extra sonic isolation. Between the booming crashes of the waves, that place is silent, the sort of silence that makes your ears hurt from straining to hear something. Awesome.
A picnic lunch (well, a bit cheated--we got stuff at Panera since we were up too late the previous night with the newsletter to pack a picnic lunch) was consumed, many pictures were taken (soon to materialize at our picture page), and despite some rockin' sunburn action, much fun and relaxation was had. Caela topped off the afternoon by getting splendidly wet from the ribs down: Daddy didn't realize the incoming wave was quite as deep (or as cold!) as it was. We took it as a good sign to head out.
Then, dinner: I volunteered to cook motleymuse a fantastic meal[0], so we stopped off at Whole Foods on the way home, and picked up a few last-minute ingredients. The result: fresh gazpacho with anaheim chile, and buffalo steak au poivre. Not having charcoal for the grill (d'oh!), I pan-seared the buffalo, which like being served on the rare-to-medium-rare side anyway, then deglazed[1] with a bit of the evening's red wine to create the au poivre sauce. The wine, a 2004 Smoking Loon Merlot, bought at a fantastic deal from Whole Foods several weeks before, was terrific, and balanced nicely between being beefy enough to match the buffalo but light-and-fruity enough to avoid overpowering the gazpacho. A definite win on all fronts: recipes have been added to the rotation for future meal-planning[2].
After putting Caela to bed and letting our dinner settle to the tune of an hour or so of "The Producers,"[3] which (amazingly) neither of us had seen, we broke for dessert: chocolate ganache bars, again courtesy of WF, with chocolate espresso beans and chocolate sauce, with a lovely little Sauterne to top things off as we finished the movie.
[0] Or as fantastic as I'm capable of, anyway.
[1] A new favorite technique: it's amazing how many rich sauces you can create this way, and they match the food more tightly from having bits of it cooked into the sauce. Yummy!
[2] Especially the gazpacho, which caused motleymuse to wax rhapsodic about the possibilities of keeping some on-hand for ready consumption.
[3] The original movie, not the new musical, although I want to see the musical version now. As soon as it's released, Netflix queue here it comes...
All in all, an excellent day. My only concern is how to top it next year...
Sadly, it was newsletter Sunday, so we dragged ourselves out of bed to make the 25-mile trek to Santa Monica and photocopy and drop off the newsletter by 11 am. (OK, 11.15 am.) This turned out OK, though, since it was halfway to El Matador State Beach: motleymuse had requested a day at the beach for Mother's Day, and had done her research to find something out of the way. El Matador is another 25 miles or so up the coast on PCH, past Malibu, and it's a hell of a find: a quarter-mile or so of switchbacks separate the beach from the parking lot on the cliffs above, and the huge rock formations jutting randomly out of the sand leave places to sit as well as providing extra sonic isolation. Between the booming crashes of the waves, that place is silent, the sort of silence that makes your ears hurt from straining to hear something. Awesome.
A picnic lunch (well, a bit cheated--we got stuff at Panera since we were up too late the previous night with the newsletter to pack a picnic lunch) was consumed, many pictures were taken (soon to materialize at our picture page), and despite some rockin' sunburn action, much fun and relaxation was had. Caela topped off the afternoon by getting splendidly wet from the ribs down: Daddy didn't realize the incoming wave was quite as deep (or as cold!) as it was. We took it as a good sign to head out.
Then, dinner: I volunteered to cook motleymuse a fantastic meal[0], so we stopped off at Whole Foods on the way home, and picked up a few last-minute ingredients. The result: fresh gazpacho with anaheim chile, and buffalo steak au poivre. Not having charcoal for the grill (d'oh!), I pan-seared the buffalo, which like being served on the rare-to-medium-rare side anyway, then deglazed[1] with a bit of the evening's red wine to create the au poivre sauce. The wine, a 2004 Smoking Loon Merlot, bought at a fantastic deal from Whole Foods several weeks before, was terrific, and balanced nicely between being beefy enough to match the buffalo but light-and-fruity enough to avoid overpowering the gazpacho. A definite win on all fronts: recipes have been added to the rotation for future meal-planning[2].
After putting Caela to bed and letting our dinner settle to the tune of an hour or so of "The Producers,"[3] which (amazingly) neither of us had seen, we broke for dessert: chocolate ganache bars, again courtesy of WF, with chocolate espresso beans and chocolate sauce, with a lovely little Sauterne to top things off as we finished the movie.
[0] Or as fantastic as I'm capable of, anyway.
[1] A new favorite technique: it's amazing how many rich sauces you can create this way, and they match the food more tightly from having bits of it cooked into the sauce. Yummy!
[2] Especially the gazpacho, which caused motleymuse to wax rhapsodic about the possibilities of keeping some on-hand for ready consumption.
[3] The original movie, not the new musical, although I want to see the musical version now. As soon as it's released, Netflix queue here it comes...
All in all, an excellent day. My only concern is how to top it next year...