Holidays 2019 – Amaryllis, Truffles, and Microgreens

Less than a month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the holiday season was over in a flash. Still in the moving mode, we didn’t decorate for the holidays and didn’t even enjoy our usual month of Christmas music. No Tree. No Music (very little, that is). No Wonder we never got into the spirit of Christmas this past year. In spite of that, we did have several memorable experiences. For starters, Maria spent the equivalent of a month with us beginning in November through the first of the year. Ruben spent that same time period working shipyard on the fishing boat he and Maria work on during the year with the balance of the time spent in Mexico on a hunting trip and later at a family reunion. Maria and I spent our time working on quilting projects at the cabin. A few of the projects were started years ago (commonly known as UFOs to quilters) and all but forgotten. I quilted one of Maria’s tops she had absolutely no recollection of making. It now hangs on a wall in her bedroom to enjoy every morning (half of the year, anyway) when she wakes up. We did get sidetracked on a new project called a Leaf Topper. It’s so cute and so much fun to make that we set aside the UFOs and made a couple of dozen of the toppers. What fun!

We started a new holiday tradition this year. For years I’ve admired our friend’s Amaryllis (a large flowering bulb that is dormant throughout the year until it blooms in the fall to late winter). Cece buys the bulb each year from the local nursery or as she did this past year, Walmart, and starts it so that it flowers over the holidays. We visited her mid-November and hers was close to blooming. Our first stop after leaving Cece was to buy three Amaryllis bulbs at Walmart, one for us and each of the girls. For over a month the girls and I shared not just our daily cat stories, but also the wonderment of our Amaryllis bulbs. Once the bulb was watered and started growing, it literally grew an inch a day. Jana’s hearty plant, pictured below, was the first to flower. It grew so fast and became so top-heavy that before it’s second flower could fully open it tipped over and broke. Sad. Ours bloomed shortly before Christmas providing us with a beautiful centerpiece for much of December and Lauren’s, stunted from a mishap on our Thanksgiving trip to visit her, is just now blooming. It didn’t grow leaves but put all its energy into a single flower.

Jandy's Amaryllis

We spent Christmas Eve Eve entertaining special guests, our young friend Ted and his wife. Yes, wife! We have known Ted for about twenty years now. I first met him when he gave Jana a ride home from school when the battery died in her car. I was fixing dinner when they arrived and invited him to eat with us. I remember two things about 18 year old Ted…he was not bashful and he had a hearty appetite. Shortly after that Ted started working for us doing all sorts of odd jobs and he continued to work for us until he graduated from college and found less taxing employment. Unfortunately, that was in SoCal and our time together became limited. We still enjoy the occasional visit when Ted returns to Amador County to see family and I’ve stayed in touch with him on Instagram for several years now. I began to see the occasional picture of Flor a few years ago with more and more photos of Ted’s beautiful friend and soulmate posted this past summer. So, it was not a surprise when Ted announced last Fall their plans to marry. It was a delight to spend an evening with Ted and get to know Flor.

Ted and Flor with their dogs, Piper and Olive

The following evening, Christmas Eve, was spent in Sacramento with Lauren, who had arrived the previous weekend, Maria who was departing for Seattle and then Mexico the following morning, and Jana and Andy (Jandy), who arrived that evening and met us for dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, our long favorite restaurant in town. Not only is the food and service outstanding (our server went above and beyond and taught us how to fold napkins Ruth’s Chris style), but the building was designed with consideration to acoustics. Important to those of us who are hearing impaired. It was a perfect Christmas Eve. 

Christmas Eve at Ruth's Chris

Thanks to Lauren and me, the designated drivers, we got home safely and took our turns at placing our gifts in the stockings that were already hanging by the chimney with care. A few years ago, we decided to downplay gift giving at Christmas time by requiring the gift fit in a stocking. That was about the time our more decorative-than-useful stockings were replaced with oversized stretchy hand knit ones. It’s amazing how much they hold. As usual, any empty space in the stocking is filled with mandarins, a tradition from my childhood (tangerines and nuts).

Christmas day was probably the most relaxing I’ve had since becoming an adult, when all responsibility for the special dinner fell on my shoulders. A big thank you to Jana and Andy for a wonderful meal beginning with white truffles (known as the diamond of the kitchen) shaved and served on a delicious toasted whole grain bread they brought from the Grand Central Market and soft cooked eggs. It was my first experience with truffles and one I won’t forget. Two days before their trip North, Jandy attended Truffle Day in Los Angeles to buy the fresh wild truffles, harvested in Northwestern Italy and overnight flown to LA for the event. Interestingly, truffles grow underground near specific trees and are harvested between September and December with the help of female pigs, or more recently truffle dogs, to identify their location. About the size of a walnut, irregular shaped and warty, they are one of the most prized and expensive food in the world. It was an amazing Christmas experience. These incredible appetizers were followed with homemade fresh pasta topped with a delicious sauce made from San Marzano tomatoes. I’d heard a lot about San Marzano tomatoes having taken cooking classes at Home Chef twenty years ago as well as several online cooking classes from great chefs like Thomas Keller. I’ve never found them locally, so we’ve stuck to the next best thing, Roma’s from Davis Ranch that are tossed with balsamic vinegar and roasted until caramelized. Not bad. I understand now why Jandy’s go-to dinner when entertaining is homemade pasta with this delicious red sauce. It is impressive and delicious. It was so good we had it again on the following day. Kudos to our two young home chefs.

Andy processing the balls of pasta dough
using the KitchenAid spaghetti attachment

Lauren making a childhood favorite dessert

I met the challenge of gifts that must fit in a Christmas stocking with a genius idea. To test just how “genius” it was to be, I ordered it for myself back in October. A microgreen kit. I’ve been so anxious to write about it, but of course I couldn’t without spoiling the girls’ surprise. I often say I hate cookies…not the edible kind, but the kind on the computer that accumulate data about a person’s likes and dislikes based on search history. It really is an invasion of privacy, but every now and then it yields very good results. Both girls have a bit of my green thumb and enjoy plants. What can be better than the edible kind of plant? I must have previously searched on things like edible gardening, hydroponics, and the like, because one day in October up popped a website called Hamama, offering their indoor microgreen system using “seed quilts” (patent pending) and water. It’s a grow your own nutritious (several times more than the fully adult version of the veggie) microgreens on a window ledge. Possibly a perfect gift for the girls. To be sure, I had to test it. I ordered one, planted my seed quilt the day it arrived, and ten days later we were eating zesty mixed microgreens. It was definitely a winner. The perfect gift that keeps on giving throughout the year. It’s mid-January as I’m writing this and I can assure you both girls are growing and eating their microgreens. I ask daily...Have you had your microgreens today? And Verne and I are still growing and eating ours. A healthy and satisfying start to a new year.

Speaking of a new year, we drove Lauren home after Christmas and spent over a week with her acclimating to Oregon. It’s taken a while, but the last few days of our visit Verne was actually successful navigating the Beaverton area without relying on our Nav system. It’s been a challenge as the streets all go at odd angles and they change names regularly. In a matter of a few miles, one of the streets near Lauren’s home changed names three times. Yikes! Anyway, by the time we were ready to drive home (to Volcano), we were beginning to feel like we were already home (in Portland). That’s a good sign as we are determined to make the move in 2020.

Lunch at Andre's...the Best sandwich made with the
Best Dutch Crunch rolls with a side of the Best potato salad ever

Hiding the unsightly media cords

Big job, small hands required

Ruben and Verne wearing matching sweaters from Norway

Verne (still wearing his most favorite sweater)
sitting in Starbucks entertaining himself with his iPad
(I like how our reflections are superimposed over him...
ALWAYS WATCHING!

LIfe's Simple Pleasures

Verne enjoying Lauren's back deck on her new home in Beaverton

I started keeping a journal (nowadays called a Blog) in 2012. It was called StixChixConnected and I posted updates monthly for my handful of readers, who were also fellow quilters. Its purpose was to keep us “connected” as well as provide inspiration by sharing our current quilting projects and other creative endeavors. About two years later I started a blog for my other interest, food, and the two gradually were combined into the one blog, Moser Good Eats and Good Times. Just as I’ve had two blogs in the last eight years, I’ve also had two computers for about that same amount of time. Thanks to Jana, I now have a single computer that’s smaller and faster than the previous two combined. The past few weeks have been spent transferring documents and photos to my new laptop and learning to use OneDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage, for managing my files and thousands of photos. It’s a big project and one that has sparked a lot of memories. It’s made me realize the importance of documenting memories with not just photos, but also words. So often Verne and I together try to remember an event and uncertain about the specifics, we resort to reading my blog. Most of my posts are not about life-changing events, just our day-to-day experiences. Like the robins that made a nest in our hanging plant this past summer or about making granola with puffed cereal shot from a gun. Anyway, looking at old photos and reading old blog posts has made me realize that while most of our life experiences are not particularly significant or even interesting to others, they are as important to us as we make them.  And, taking time to place photos in an album with a few words or share photos and stories in a blog memorialize experiences and raise them to a level of importance. Bottom line…I’m thankful we’ve only experienced a few life-changing events of which I’ve written about over the past eight years and will happily go forward writing blog posts about our simple daily life experiences.

A special memory of Maria and Sally at Stix Retreat in January, 2008

Verne and I are perfectly well-matched in so many ways with one of the most important being our enjoyment of cooking and eating good food. We subscribe to several cooking magazines, own a couple hundred cookbooks, take on-line MasterClasses on cooking, and follow our favorite chefs online. We can go months (and sometimes do) without cooking the same recipe twice. We not only love cooking, but we love food sourcing. Grocery shopping is not a chore for us, it’s an adventure. For us, local is anything within a hundred-mile radius, and we have been known to drive that distance to Shop Local. Kitchen cookware and gadgets also hold an attraction. Until a month ago, I’d resisted the pull of the multi-cookers (they include a variety of functions, like pressure cooking, slow cooking, steaming, etc.) which have become popular over the last few years. Afterall, we own a complete set of All-Clad cookware, including the 6-quarter slow cooker, steamer and stockpot, rice pot, etc. The list goes on. I had convinced myself the last thing we needed was a multi-cooker. And then along came William Sonoma’s warehouse sale on Instant Pots. It was during a moment of weakness that I ordered one. All I can say in my defense is that I ordered the smallest Instant Pot (fondly referred by us as the “Mini”) to just give it a try. We’ve made perfect rice in it, including a jazzed up Mexican Rice, perfectly-done glazed carrots, creamed corn using fresh corn from Davis Ranch, the most perfect Ricotta Cheese, real Crème Fraiche (fermented, using the slow cook cycle), and most recently, Beef Stroganoff. It just keeps out-performing my highest expectations. If I’m to be honest, they weren’t that high…that’s why I hedged my bet and bought the less-expensive model. We’re in love with the Mini and talking about buying the 6- or 8-quarter model. Actually, we were perfectly happy with the 3-quart until we decided to try to make Crème Brulee and its small size couldn’t accommodate even our smallest ramakins. ☹ For now we’re going to hold off on the larger model until we decide we need it for something more than Crème Brulee, or William Sonoma or Amazon have another warehouse sale.

Besides cooking since I last blogged in August, we’ve made double trips to both LA and Portland. In other words, we’ve spent a lot of time on the road. Our first trip to LA was in early September to get Jana’s cat, Izzy. Yes, you heard me right. We drove 400 miles to have lunch with Jana and Andy and return home with Izzy while they went on vacation to England. Even though I keep all three cats separate, Julie (Izzy’s momma cat) and Olive (Izzy’s sis) sense her presence and, given the opportunity, misbehave. That is, pee on the floor to mark their space. You’d think it would be a happy family reunion…NOT! We managed to keep the bad behavior to a minimum, but it was a good day when we put Izzy in her carrier for our return trip to LA. 

Izzy's road trip

Girls in London September 2019

This time we didn’t even get lunch with Jandy, but did have the pleasure of staying in their condo in downtown LA. The following day we met up with Lara, Raelin and their families for the annual LA Phil Subscriber Appreciation Day at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. This was our second time attending the event and it was once again amazing! We started with the music instrument Petting Zoo. The kids (big and little) got to hold and play the instruments and indulge in some body painting. We attended three of the five musical presentations followed by Q&As with the musicians, and then took an audio/video guided tour of the Hall. All I can say is the response to the tour was mixed: I found it surreal in an artsy sort of way, the others found it confusing (so did I), and Rick hated it but couldn’t stop talking about it. I’m certain if we go next year we’ll all take the tour again. There’s just something about it…?  Lunch was also included in the 6-hour open house with food provided by the local LA truck scene. Overall, we had an incredible family day together with the only thing missing being Jana and Andy. Sadly, we left for home the next day without seeing them.

Logan 's attempt to play the violin (Lara, Sam, Matthew, and Raelin watching)

Kendall giving the violin a try

We spent Labor Day weekend helping Lauren pack for the big move to her new home in Beaverton. We managed to get in a few of our favorite outings, including rediscovering the greatest breakfast place in Lake O, Biscuits Café. The food is excellent and they serve homemade jam with every breakfast. Lucky for us there’s a Biscuits Café in Beaverton, so it won’t be the last time Verne and Lauren get their delicious chicken fried steak with white gravy. A month later we returned to Portland to help Lauren settle into her new place. She had done a good job unpacking and organizing all rooms except her new craft room (the third bedroom) and the garage. We focused on the latter building a couple of shelving units and installing a new overhead light. Other big jobs included installing a fan in her gas fireplace and swapping all of her Nest smoke detectors from the Lake O condo with those in her home. That ended up taking two trips and several hours before all were in place with fresh batteries and no chirping, screeching, or other obnoxious noises. 

Breakfast at our favorite restaurant

Verne and Lauren installing a fireplace fan

One final smoke detector in the Lake O condo

We celebrated with dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant in Lake O, Nicoletta’s Table. It’s definitely worth the 30-minute drive from Beaverton, so that won’t be our last time dining there. One of my take-a-ways from helping Lauren move is this – always buy second-hand boxes, paper, and other packing supplies. One of us (I think it was me) suggested looking on Craigslist for used packing supplies. For $70 Lauren purchased 50 moving boxes of mixed sizes and 20 pounds of packing paper – a fraction of the price new. I had no idea people make a business of selling previously-used moving boxes and paper. If all goes as planned, she’ll be one of those sellers and recoup a small portion of her moving expenses. And as a bonus she’ll feel good about her ecologically responsible decision to buy used moving supplies. Actually, Lauren needs no prompting to go-green as she is our tree-hugging conservationist and often our family’s conscience when it comes to living an ecologically responsible life.

Lauren's pieced and quilted  Puffin quilt in the Northwest Quilting Expo

Family Reunions

Gold Beach fishing clan (Andy, Jana, Lauren, Ini, Scott, Josh, Gloria)

This year was our third shared vacation in Gold Beach, Oregon with Scott and his family. This time we were joined by Jandy (Jana and Andy) and Lauren for the July 4th week. Scott chartered a fishing boat for two of the days, although Verne and I opted to skip fishing and entertain ourselves as a 5 a.m. departure time was not appealing and spending six hours on the ocean held even less attraction. Especially after our ocean experience in Hawaii last year when Verne swore off boating and I’ve got to stand by my man. Actually, I’m no keener on boating and motion sickness than Verne so it’s easy to stand by him and skip that part of the family vacation.

Scott started the girls fishing at an early age. When he lived in Ione he had a small aluminum boat and would take the girls fishing for trout and bass at Lake Amador. Other times they kept it even more local and would walk to our neighbors pond and fish, often fighting off a pair of snapping turtles who thought it was funny to snap fishing line. When the girls were older the threesome made several trips to La Paz, Mexico to ocean fish for dorado and the occasional marlin. According to Scott some of the best fishing on the West coast is in Gold Beach where the Rogue River joins the ocean. It certainly proved true on this trip.

Scott and the girls in La Paz, Mexico

According to Lauren:

Scott’s First Rule of Fishing: No talking – silence is golden.

I’m fairly certain I broke this rule every five minutes when I was a kid. Whenever Scott was home from his day job (fishing, incidentally) he would take his baby sisters fishing anywhere that was handy – Lake Amador, our local pond, a lake up in the Sierras, etc. Being a bit of a chatterbox, I naturally found Rule 1 impossibly challenging. This perhaps explains why some of my earliest fishing memories are of Jana and myself being told to walk the proverbially plank, to stay there and swim for a while, and then watching the back end of the boat disappear as Scott drove some distance away from our noise. Oh well! Swimming is, after all, half the point of fishing.

Since that time Jana and I have been avid fisherwomen, always willing to go on a fishing adventure and feel the exhilaration that only comes from battling nature for dinner. When Scott suggested two days of fishing in Gold Beach, Jana and I eagerly accepted. We’ve gotten a bit better at adhering to Rule 1 (particularly with a 5 am call time to the dock, which often sees us half asleep when the day begins), a lucky fact for everyone as no one with sense wants an impromptu swim in the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest.

Gold Beach fishing is absolutely amazing. We had great weather, which left us with mostly calm seas on Day 1 and only minor swells on Day 2. For the most part our group avoided sea sickness, though there were a couple upset stomachs on the second morning. The true beauty of fishing though lies in the titles you can receive. And there are a lot of them: Biggest Fish, Smallest Fish, Most Fish Caught, Weirdest Species Caught, Most Species Caught, Strangest Way to Hook a Fish, Laziest Way to Fish, Most Times Hooking the Bottom, etc. And each achievement deserves celebration (whoops, there goes Rule 1). A day of fishing is never complete without a bit of sleepiness, snacks, some cursing, a bit of grumbling, and plenty of laughter.

We caught our quotas both days and came home with many types of rockfish, lingcod, and crabs from several crab pots we put out first thing in the morning and collected on our way back to the dock at the end of the day. We actually caught more than we brought home, largely due to catching quite a few Yellow-eye Rockfish, which are protected and must be thrown back. The end of each day is spent watching the boat crew clean and filet our catch (the best way to clean a fish is to have someone else do it for you), which we will eat over the next year. With only a 1-year supply caught, I suppose that means we’ll be heading out again next summer. I can’t wait!

Jana, "Laziest Way to Fish" 

Lauren, "Biggest Fish" 

Verne and I were prompted by our tree-hugging youngest daughter to take a hike through the redwoods. The closest redwoods were about 45 minutes from Gold Beach near Brookings in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. The 1.2 mile nature trail hike satisfied Lauren and was just enough without overdoing it for two old farts like us. The trees there are considered small to medium, although as we walked up the hill there were a few very large trees. One that was hollowed at the base was perfect for a family picture, but sadly nobody to take it. Lauren parked us inside the tree, took far too long to set up her camera on a timer, ran down a short hill laughing and jumped into the photo just in the nick of time.

Tree Hugger  

Family Selfie

Our last evening was appropriately spent watching fireworks in the little town of Gold Beach. Scott asked around and was told the best spot to watch was by the dock where he had chartered the fishing boat each day. I think the entire town of about 2,000 residents turned out for the event. There were a number of small but impressive private displays along the river bank leading up to the hour-long main event, which was sponsored by the town of Gold Beach. All of the fireworks were exploded over the river providing a magical setting of colorful bursts of light overhead glowing and reflecting in the water with a background of oohs and ahhs from the spectators. It was magical!

We enjoyed a second family reunion last month in Carson City, Nevada. Why Nevada when the Moser kids were born and raised in the Washington/Idaho area? Andre Moser (son of the oldest Moser brother, Bob) confirmed my suspicions with a smile and a wink that as one of the three organizers of the event he chose the location for its convenience to his home in Dayton. Actually, with family traveling from all of the Western states, Northern Nevada was an excellent choice. The reunion was predominantly attended by three generations of Mosers, with the top tier being the children of Ray and Clara Moser (Bob, Bill, Verne, Keith and sister Susie) and son of Ray and Clara, Terry. I have always found it interesting that Verne’s dad divorced his mother, Clara, to marry another woman named Clara. Verne has often referred to Clara-1 and Clara-2 and Terry Moser refers to himself as “brother with a different mother”. Cute! Over the years I’ve met most of the second generation kids with my closest relationship being with Susan Moser, Bill’s first daughter and the oldest of the second generation. We were especially close during the ten years I hosted quilting retreats as she’s a quilter. It was during that time that she met her significant other, Victor, and she adopted her daughter, Sophie, who is now 12 years old. Special memories!

Bob, Bill, Verne, Keith, Terry (brother with a different mother), and Susie

Moser daughters 

Jandy

After that weekend I realized a reunion is not as much for the top tier (fast approaching 80 years old with the same old stories), but for the next generation and for making and keeping connections with family. Jana made a surprising connection with Bob Moser, spending over an hour being fascinated by his stories of growing up during the depression and the hardships Clara endured raising four little boys (each 15 months apart in age) with a mostly absentee husband. They parted with promises to stay in touch and Jana agreeing to help with a genealogy project. Lauren connected with cousins and is now part of the planning committee for the next Moser Family Reunion in 2022. I connected with Terry’s youngest daughter, who I hadn’t seen in over 20 years. She has a son starting college this month and an 18-month old daughter. We shared our thoughts on motherhood in your teens versus your 40s. Something we’ve both experienced and have similar thoughts. We’re now Facebook friends and I’m enjoying her frequent posts of her college son and toddler daughter. I’ll be thinking about her son, Hunter, when we pass through Ashland on our way to see Lauren in Portland this month. Whether it’s family through blood or family through friendship, staying connected is a good thing!

A few more pics...

Verne in 1st grade, 1948

Keith, Bill, Susie, Bob, and Verne, 1948

Clara, Verne, Bob, Bill, Ray holding Keith, around 1943