Half Moon Bay Experience

It was an eventful weekend with Saturday morning spent teaching a class on Jams and Jellies to a new group of MFP trainees. All of the searching and researching the subject (specifically pectin) and the dozen or so batches of strawberry jams and jellies made over the last several months came together in a presentation that was to last 1 ½  hours. I was worried about being able to spend more than ten minutes talking about the subject and instead I felt rushed and had to cut my presentation short. Oh well, I guess it’s all part of learning.

A little about the venue…the class was held in Half Moon Bay at the UC Cooperative Extension office located on the Elkus Ranch. The drive from Volcano to the coast reminded me of why I love California. In a matter of just four hours you can go from the peaks of the Sierra Nevada’s to the breathtaking coastline. The Ranch was donated by the Elkus family in the 70’s and today is used primarily as an environmental educational center for Bay-area children. It’s located in the coastal foothills at the southern end of town separated from the ocean by Highway 1. 

Typically, my participation in the MFP program will be local. I was originally asked to teach this class not because of my far-reaching reputation as a jammer (I have less than two years experience…not what I’d call “seasoned”), but due to the fact I was teamed up with a couple of women from Half Moon Bay who were attending the Amador/Calaveras MFP training class last spring. Their plan was to start the same program in the Bay area. I liked my teammates, Kathi and Chris, and offered to help with their program. Teaching the class was not a consideration when I offered to help. I was thinking more along the lines of working as kitchen help.  Anyway, that was last July.

We arrived Friday afternoon and had dinner at Mezza Luna, an Italian restaurant a short walk from Kathi’s home, where we were staying in her guest apartment. We are rarely spontaneous in our dining decisions and this was no exception. During our class time together, both of my new friends told me about the food at Mezza Luna after I described to them my attempt to make gnocchi.  Upon hearing the restaurant’s name, Vera, who was the fourth in our team, excitedly told me she’d eaten at Mezza Luna several times and loved the gnocchi. Interestingly enough, after we got home from the trip on Saturday afternoon, I talked to a friend who’d lived in Half Moon Bay for years and she too was very familiar with Mezza Luna and its gnocchi. It also turned out that she lived just up the street from Kathi and walked or biked to the marina almost daily passing the very house where we’d stayed. We were not disappointed with the restaurant. The gnocchi served in a Gorgonzola cream sauce was outstanding and the lasagna was also very good, second only to Biba’s in Sacramento.

We finished our evening catching up with Kathi and Chris and helping make galettes (we call them rustic tarts) for the feast they were preparing for the MFP graduation ceremony the following day. With a backyard full of her daughter’s FFA projects, including chickens, sheep, three turkeys (two after Thursday), a duck and a garage with a rabbit, we didn’t lack for conversation. It’s been over a decade since we’ve had a field full of critters, but our 4H experiences are still clear in our minds as well as the crazy stories of a psychopathic bull, being rammed by a ram, and on and on. That reminds me, I didn’t tell them about the skunk in the henhouse that I killed with wasp spray and rocks or the calf in the snow or the prolapsed ewe I had to shoot…something for next time.

On our return trip on Saturday, we stopped to visit with our niece, Susan, in San Lorenzo. I’ve been anxious to see her house renovations, which were just completed in October. The work was extensive, removing walls, redoing all electrical and insulation in the house, new kitchen cabinets and countertops, and the results were amazing. Her home could be featured in Sunset’s issue that focuses on living in small spaces. As is true of all working mothers, Saturdays are busy, and we had a three-hour drive ahead of us, so we kept our visit short. Here’s a favorite picture of Susan and Sophie as well as a couple I took during our visit. Not being prepared for a glam shot, I had to promise Susan I wouldn’t photograph her in her more natural state. That was okay with me, because I must have taken a couple of dozen photos of her little cutie.

We stopped in Jackson to pick up a few things at the market and ran into friends we hadn’t seen in over a year, Rita and Kai. After selling their home in Volcano they lived in our cabin (more recently, my quilting studio) for almost two years. By mid-December they’ll be moved to Santa Cruz and it is unlikely we’ll see them again. That old saying, “Distance makes the heart grow fonder” is certainly true. It was so good to see them both. We stood out in the cold in front of the store for over an hour before we said our goodbyes.

It was dark by the time we finally got home and settled back into our routine of going down to the barn and locking up the chickens, feeding the four cats (we’re still cat-sitting Jana’s two babies), having a cup of tea and bit of dessert, watching an episode or two of Grimm or one of our other favorites, and, for the first time in a while, looking forward to a good nights sleep. I’m not joking when I say that this whole MFP teaching project has kept me awake nights.

Next day…Damn! It was another restless night! What is going on with me? This time I was making a mental list of everything I’d done wrong at the class and also refining my thoughts on pectin and jam-making in general. This has got to stop! I’ve never thought of myself as obsessive, but my recent behavior is disturbing. I am going to write another blog post on the evolution of my jam-biases or something like that. It will be a brain-dump of my random thoughts on the subject and hopefully once that’s done I’ll get past this insomnia problem. If you’ve had a “gut full” (that’s Verne’s expression, not mine) of pectin and jam and jelly talk, then I suggest you skip the next post. Otherwise, read on…