Travel

Almost every night for the last month I keep having the same dream: I am biting into a smoked grape, enrobed in a soft Arizona goat’s cheese and covered with chopped pecans and pistachios, served on a long skewer. Typically, I panic at some point in my dream because the platter is getting empty and that’s enough to wake me. Usually it is 4am, I sit up and try to comfort myself by saying “well, you ate the other 6, though saying that doesn’t help me get back to sleep. I was served these sleep altering morsels at a Heitz Cellar wine dinner at the Arizona Biltmore hotel. I never would have tried them with what I know now. “Just one more” I heard myself saying to several waiters! Have these amuse-bouche changed my sleeping pattern forever? I am no longer amused...

The two very young chefs created this amuse-bouche by smoking red and green grapes, lightly. Then, they are chilled and covered with a creamy goat cheese and rolled into a 50/50 blend of finely chopped pistachios and pecans. It wasn’t the only thing I ate that night but it’s the only thing that haunted me. There was a 5-course dinner to accompany the smoked grapes along with a line up of all of the Heitz wines for each course.

When the main course of Veal Osso Bucco arrived I heard guests at all the tables that surrounded ours say “they didn’t bring the Martha’s Vineyard this year!” This revelation circulated around the dining room like pouring water on a grease fire. Talk about ‘wining’! I was fine with it, I still had the smoked grape taste in my mouth and nothing mattered.

My mother, Shannon, and I scurried down Little Clarendon Street, Oxford at around 10:15 at night.  We were starving and eager to sit down and talk.  My mom had steered us down this road because there are a number of good restaurants to choose from: French, Italian, Tapas, Indian.  I peered into each window and chose the least crowded of the bunch – the French one.  If left to me, I will always choose the emptiest because I find that the din of busy restaurants these days overwhelms any chance of having a decent conversation.  We hadn’t traveled all this way to explore new cuisine.  We had come to see my mom.

My birthmother just graduated from The Continuing Education Department at Oxford University, with a focus on regional history.  I couldn’t be more proud than to celebrate her continuing achievements, so Shannon and I flew to Oxford to watch her graduation ceremony that evening.

We pushed open the big red door of Café Rouge and walked through the bar into the dining room of the brasserie.  The room was big with dark oak floors and tables, burgundy velvet banquettes, and antiqued mirrors which hung from every wall.   We waited for a few minutes and then were shown to our table by a disinterested, lanky blonde waiter.  He carelessly danced around, making faces at another lanky blonde waiter working the other side of the room.  Menus were tossed onto our table, orders taken and we started to catch up. 

New Year's eve has got to be the most over-rated holiday of the year. I'm all about celebrating any holiday, even the ones I have never heard of but I always dread New Year's eve. Something about being forced to stay up late, wearing a sparkly, tacky hat and tooting a horn, trying to be cheerful and chatty when I am actually dog tired from the Christmas holidays. Otherwise the option is to stay home and feel depressed that everyone else is out having a good time except for me.

I discovered several years ago that the answer to all of my New Year's eve trauma was to go to work. Since I work for a major airline and the 'Senior Mamas" (our semi-affectionate term for the stews who have been flying for 35+ years) don't want to work on any holiday, I can pretty much pick up any trip I want. I debated on a 5 day trip to Prague or Stockholm but decided it was too cold. I looked at long layovers in Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Chile, and Buenos Aires but decided I wasn't in the mood to always be looking over my shoulder. Bingo, 50 hours in Honolulu popped up on my computer and I took it immediately.

I grew up on a farm in south Georgia. I had no appreciation for the fact that we grew our own crops; I never once had a meal from a can. Everything we ate came straight from the farm to the table. We even had a pond and stocked fresh trout and other fish.

Who knew that would become the hip and trendy way to eat?

I remember being a little bit embarrassed that I grew up on a farm. My Mom subscribed to magazines such as Vanity Fair and Town and County. I loved the photos, especially the 'society' photos of all the pretty women dressed in colorful frocks in high heeled shoes.

I could relate because my Mom got the Sears catalog and I dreamt of the day that I was old enough to order those high heeled Espadrilles in all sorts of colors. I remember seeing a piece in Town and Country of Jackie-O on a yacht in Monaco, wearing those shoes.