California – Riveted

A Few Days in the Bay Area

Laura Domela — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 02:19:49 +0000

We left Anacortes on Friday morning (after returning from The Willows Inn on Lummi, and after stopping to look at a couple more boats) and drove back to Portland. We didn't get in until about 10:30pm on Friday night, and as Kevin brought in the last of our stuff from the truck, said "Please tell me you already brought my laptop bag into the house."

[crickets]

Well shit. Guess where Kevin's laptop was? Waiting patiently in the pilothouse of Airship, back in Anacortes, four and a half hours away. We had a flight to San Francisco on Sunday morning, a birthday party for a good friend in SF on Sunday night, and then starting Monday mid-day in San Jose: meetings meetings meetings for two days. The presentation we'd been working on was on Kevin's laptop and we couldn't make do without it. So, guess what we did on Saturday? About nine hours of driving to go get that laptop (and give Airship another little pat on the bow). It was super windy and pouring rain for most of the drive, to boot! (See, it's not all rainbows and unicorns around here.)

We made it fine to SF and had a great view from our room at Hotel Nikko (above). The birthday party for our friend Tad was a wonderful evening with an incredible group of people. I've known Tad Savinar since I graduated from art school when, based on a recommendation from one of my professors, I became Tad's studio assistant for a few years. Tad is many things…among them, a visual artist. Now days we are friends, and I help him realize his work using some of my skills…photography, Photoshop, some printing. He's inspiring to work with, but more importantly he is one of the most wonderful people I've ever known. Everyone at the party last night had something amazing to say about their friendship with Tad, and it was a beautiful thing to experience. The party was in the Salesian room of Original Joe's in North Beach. What a great venue! Upholstered walls and cool old signage…dinner was delicious, and the service was impeccable, but really it was all about the people.

There were a few people at the party with late November/December birthdays, and Tad made sure to recognize each one of them by giving out beautiful flower leis. This was Kevin's:

We gave Tad (and his wife, Kate) a portrait session in the studio. I said they could choose the style of their choice, but that I had some suggestions, and that dressing up was a must. (This will be a fun one!!)

(Side note: Tad and Kate are the couple who got married in Florence, Italy in May of 2014, and were the reason we went to Italy in the first place last year.)

This morning we drove into San Jose for a couple of meetings and presentations, and then I Yelp'd us a cool place to grab some dinner afterwards. On a previous trip I found a little place called Kenny's Cafe that had a delicious bibimbap (among many other things), but Kenny's closes at 3pm. We had a little bit of a jones for bibimbap, and I found a new place not too far from where we were called Mixed Roll & Bop, a new Korean Asian fusion spot with (from the reviews) the BEST bibimbap, as well as good spicy chicken wings, and sushi. We tried the stone pot bibimbap with spicy pork, some spicy chicken wings, and a spicy tuna roll (yeah, spicy seemed to be the theme, I know). It was all great, but the bibimbap!!! It was THE BEST! (Preparing it in the stone pot gives the rice some crunchy goodness on the bottom.)

This is their funky little sign out front:

Highly recommended. It's very small, and the environment is definitely on the "fast food" side, but the food was delicious and we'll definitely go back!

Tomorrow is another day of meetings and then we'll fly back to Portland tomorrow night.

A Few Things for Airship

Laura Domela — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 21:33:00 +0000

I've been wanting a butter bell for the boat, and found this cool one made by Red Wing Stoneware in Minnesota:

Red Wing Stoneware Co. butter bell ($35) from Duluth Pack. Butter goes in the part on the right, water goes in the part on the left, and when put together the water creates an airtight seal on the butter so it stays fresh and soft (and I don't have to keep it in the fridge on the boat, which is nice, since the fridge is small).

I picked up some of these cloth napkins for the boat (from Clear Sky Home on Etsy) … planning to use less paper products while cruising (especially cruising in more remote areas, since it's tougher to get rid of trash as often).

They don't match our plates at all, but who cares? How cute are these?

(I got these yellow ones too, which really don't match our plates. I'm thinking they might clash enough to totally work together.)

Kevin and I each got ourselves a pair of Xtratufs (also called Alaskan sneakers, Alaskan slippers, Sitka slippers, etc.). These will come in super handy in the wet Southeast AK weather and when getting in and out of the dinghy and exploring (also when fishing and oystering here at home in the Pacific Northwest). They're completely waterproof and highly recommended by Alaskans everywhere:

And last but not least, we ordered a new tandem kayak for Airship. We looked at several, and our original plan after seeing them at the Seattle Boat show was to go with the Airis Tandem by Walker Bay, but after a bunch of research, we ended up going with the Sea Eagle 385 Fast Track. It packs down remarkably small for a tandem kayak (good for carrying on the boat), is very quick to set up (also important), and has great reviews. We'll let you know after we've used it a bit.

Our "Get Ready/To Do List for Alaska" is pretty standard at this point (we've done a ton already, including boat maintenance and some extra safety provisioning). From now until when we leave in May, it's all about stuff like procuring a couple more spare parts we want to have with us, getting extra Nespresso pods and Sodastream fizzers, oil and filters for a couple oil changes, miscellaneous extra tools, a Costco run, updating the Garmin charts to the latest greatest, getting some fishing gear and maybe another crab trap, more Merino wool socks, etc.

It was exciting planning our Alaska meet up with Tiffani and Deke with them while we were visiting in North Carolina this past week. Their plan is to meet us in Juneau mid/late June and then travel with us down to Petersburg, with proposed stops at Taku Harbor, Tracy Arm and Sawyer Glacier, Petersburg, LeConte Glacier, Thomas Bay, Pybus Bay, several spots on Baranof Island (including the warm springs), and then heading around to Sitka where we plan to spend the 4th of July. They'll fly home from Sitka, and we'll continue on south.

We leave in just over a month–it's so close (and yet so far…650+ nautical miles from Anacortes to Ketchikan, and then most people do another 1000+ nm in SE Alaska. Sam and Mark said most people go at least 2300 nm on a trip like this, and that it’s easy to go 3500 nm). We're SO excited!

Cooking with Jake

Laura Domela — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 22:36:25 +0000

Last week we flew down to San Jose for work, and then continued on down to San Diego to spend a few days visiting our good friends Jake and Patti. I've known Jake and Patti since I was 20 years old (so, you know, not that long), and Kevin's known them since he's known me. They were the two witnesses at our wedding (in our living room in Portland, in 1997, along with Kevin's daughters) and it was so nice to get to hang with them for a few days.

We flew into Carlsbad, CA. The flight through the Los Angeles airspace was strangely smooth with little traffic ("Where IS everyone?"). ATC routed us right down the coast from Seal Beach to Carlsbad…gorgeous!

Jake and I both really like to cook (remember, camping with the sous vide?), and we spent two of our four days in San Diego cooking up two different multi-course dinners (we've done this before). We planned two nights' worth of menus and went to work!

Dinner No. 1

Appetizer: figs stuffed with blue cheese, wrapped in prosciutto

First course: salmon, sorrel, and mustard, wrapped in filo dough and topped with sorrel cream sauce (delicious, I'm totally making this again):

Main course: filet of beef tenderloin, foie, with parmesan truffled zucchini noodles:

Dessert was a custard bread pudding cut into a little circle, edges wrapped in prosciutto and filled with melon "caviar" (oh yeah, we did a little molecular gastronomy too). Here's how this dessert looks in the cookbook (we modified it, of course, so ours looked a little different):

Dinner No. 2:

The next night, we decided to invite some friends over (since we'd gotten a practice run in) so we had more people to cook for. Another long-time friend of mine lives in San Diego with her husband Mike, and they were our second night guinea pigs dinner guests.

We served several amuse-bouches out on the patio with a prosecco. The first bite was a strawberry stuffed with whipped cream, smoked salmon, and horseradish (flavor bomb!). Next, a Carlsbad oyster with a classic champagne/vinegar/shallot/pepper mignonette, and some of the leftover melon caviar from the night before.

I was skeptical about the Carlsbad oysters (that's all they had at the market), but they were delicate and great. The next amuse was a mozzarella ball sphere (more molecular gastronomy), a dehydrated tomato, with a basil leaf and a drop of good balsamic vinegar.

You make these by mixing up some fresh mozzarella, some of the water from the fresh mozzarella container, along with some chemical that I don't remember, into a liquid that's the consistency of drinking yogurt. Then you prepare a cold water bath mixed with another chemical I don't remember, and slowly drop small amounts of the mozzarella mixture into this bath.

After about 4 minutes you very gently turn the blobs over without ruining them (this is difficult, but I got really good at it), and after another 4 minutes, you remove them with a slotted spoon and put them into a plain cold water bath. You end up with these really cool spheres of mozzarella that are tight on the outside, and like soft cheese on the inside. The flavor of the dehydrated tomato is so intense, and this is a beautiful little course:

We moved inside to the dining table and served one last small course: a cup of gazpacho soup with a spicy corn relish. I didn't mange to take a photo, but it was pretty. We had fun figuring out all the plating options for the different courses, and it was very handy that Jake has a chef friend across the street with all sorts of fabulous little dishes we were able to borrow.

The next course was probably my favorite. We made a clam linquine, where some of the noodles were regular linguine, and some were made out of clam juice and soy sauce (and those were black). You mix the clam juice and soy sauce, heat in a pan with a bit of some other MG chemical I don't remember the name of, and with a syringe, suck the liquid into a piece of rubber tubing. Then, you immerse the tube(s) into a bowl of ice water for a few minutes, and then use the syringe to blow the "noodle" out the end of the tube. It was crazy cool, but we soon realized that to do this more efficiently we'd need a lot of tubes, and larger diameter ones. (This is the realization that caused us to add standard pasta to this dish, but it turned out great having the contrast of light and dark noodles.)

The sauce was a clam, cream, garlic, wine sauce, and we steamed some fresh Manila clams in white wine and garlic to go along side:

The main course was duck confit with a red wine reduction, roasted rosemary fingerling potatoes, and a cold green bean, tomato, and cotija cheese salad. I didn't get a photo, because that's what happens when you multitask. You forget to do things. It was pretty, and tasty though. Trust me.

For dessert, Kevin made his delicious maple bacon bourbon ice cream, served with a salted carmel and dark chocolate cookie, and we paired it with a great Port that our friends Tee and Mike brought over. We all had such a fun evening…good food and lots of laughs (LOTS of laughs!) (No photo of the ice cream either, sorry.)

On Sunday we said goodbye and headed back up the coast toward home. We decided to continue on up to Anacortes for the night, so on Sunday we flew pretty much the entire West Coast of the United States (about 6 hours, one fuel stop in Red Bluff). Pretty sweet!

View from dinner in Anacortes:

Kenny’s Cafe by the San Jose Airport

Laura Domela — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 17:22:32 +0000

We flew down to San Jose for some work stuff this morning and thanks to a killer tailwind we got here with plenty of time to spare. We thought we'd grab a quick lunch before our meeting, so I pulled up Yelp on my iPhone and searched nearby restaurants. We decided on Kenny's Cafe. It was close to the airport, the ratings were good (4.5 out of 5 stars average), and there were 65 reviews (soon to be 66).

Kenny's is about a mile from Atlantic Aviation and easy to miss. A "mom and pop joint/hole in the wall" description was accurate. We were a little on the early side of the lunch window and there were only two other customers seated when we walked in. We were greeted by the very enthusiatic and friendly Kenny, who welcomed us warmly as first time guests. The walls and ceiling are covered with photos of Kenny's very valued customers, and he is proud of the number of regulars he's collected in the two years he's been open.

We asked what was the best, and he came around in front of the counter to show us three photos of happy customers with their food (or in one case, their empty bowls). All three of us opted for the bibimbap, which Kenny said was one of their specialties.

SO DELICIOUS.

The bowl was filled with tons of fresh veggies around a small ball of rice in the middle, spicy pork (there are several other options…salmon, chicken, etc.), then topped with a fried egg dipped in spicy sauce. It was fantastic.

This is not the kind of place I'd ever choose to go to by looking at the menu first. For instance: bibimbap, BBQ burgers, Philly cheesesteaks, Hawaiian rice bowls, breakfast burritos…it's ALL OVER THE PLACE, right??

By the time we were finished with our lunch, the place was completely full with a solid line of customers still ordering, and a growing pile of take-out order boxes behind the counter waiting to be picked up. The guy next to us said Kenny's BBQ burger is the best he's ever had and his whole family comes here for it. Someone else on Yelp swears by Kenny's jalapeno breakfast burritos. Seems like there's something for everyone, but it's actually all good!

Kenny came over when we were half way through our bibimbap bowls and asked if we liked the food (OMG yes!), and then he took a photo of us (with his smartphone). We will definitely be back to see Kenny (and our photo, on the ceiling).

Oh yeah, and here's an iPhone photo from the plane of our tiny shadow down on the clouds:

One Last Ride – Coyote Creek Trail

Laura Domela — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 21:26:58 +0000

Kevin finished up at the conference and came back to the Airstream this afternoon in time for us to take a nice 17 mile bike ride.

We rode to the store and got some supplies to make burgers (grass-fed beef, chorizo, lettuce for buns, tomato, gorgonzola, and some yams to make truffled yam fries). We mix a little chorizo in with the extra lean beef (and some of our spice rub) and it makes a really killer burger. Well, the one other time we did it, it made a really killer burger. I cooked them inside that time, and tonight we're doing them on the Traeger, so I think this time they'll be even better.

Tomorrow morning we'll head north. We're going to aim for Emigrant Lake up by Ashland tomorrow. It's Friday, so it'll likely be a gamble whether we get a spot or not. Fingers crossed!

14 Miles on Coyote Creek Trail

Laura Domela — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 20:53:00 +0000

I rode this morning into Morgan Hill via the Coyote Creek Trail (14.14 miles). We're having the gang over to the Airstream tonight again (taco night!) and I decided we needed some chips and salsa. (Meaning: an excuse to go back to the store on my bike!)

It hasn't rained once today, and it's just beautiful out.

But apparently, there no American Saddlebreds allowed on the bike path:

Trailers on the Plains (the RV park from a distance):

Moody Sky

Laura Domela — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 10:49:54 +0000

I stayed back at the Airstream and worked while Kevin conferenced it up yesterday and I needed a break from the dinette office, so I went for a short ride on the Coyote Creek Trail (6.5 miles). It was a stormy sky and a windy ride.

Sunset at Coyote Valley

Laura Domela — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 14:37:08 +0000

It rained so hard yesterday evening! We had our team (well, the part of our team that's in San Jose this week for work) over to the Airstream last night for dinner. After a while it stopped raining and the sky cleared (but just down toward the horizon) and the sunset was gorgeous. I made the zucchini noodle thing with creamy avocado sauce and chicken breast that I've now made three times in two weeks. It's still really good and I'll try to take photos next time so I can post the recipe for you!

Coyote Creek Trail

Laura Domela — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 16:24:23 +0000

Turns out there's a great bike path just around the corner from the RV Park here: The Coyote Creek Trail. I just rode over to Target and back to get a few things (13.5 miles) and it was lovely. I saw probably a dozen hawks, turkey vultures, geese, many other waterfowl, and three giant wild turkeys.

I figured I should take advantage of the non-rain and get a little ride in (good thing, too, because it started raining 5 minutes after I got back to the Airstream).

There's an airport (runway and all) for RC planes along the path:

It was pretty windy and the sky had gotten considerably darker by the time I was on my way back to the Airstream.

Here's a map of my ride:

Happy Monday!

Our Office View for the Week

Laura Domela — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 17:54:57 +0000

See? It's not all wine and bike rides around here.

It's been worse though: Breakfast in the Candlestick Compound

And OMG in looking for that blog post about the Candlestick Compound, I found this, and sat here laughing for a good 5 minutes: The Screaming Fifth Wheel Next Door

I used to be meaner (and funnier). I need to step it up.