Cacti, cookies, coast and condors

I went down the coast again with the ladies, this time it was with my mom and the aunties.  Yesterday was one of my aunties' birthday and so naturally we needed to celebrate.  The plan was to drive down the coast in the morning, to Big Sur, have a treat from the Big Sur Bakery, go for a hike and then have lunch at Nepenthe.

Well, we got a later start that expected - which is to be expected.  On the drive down, we stopped at Save-Mart, one auntie had forgotten her sunglasses and as she says "fashion first."  She ran in and bought cheap-o sunglasses as my mom, other auntie and I plotted how we would liberate the tri-tip being BBQed on a grill outside the store, unattended.  Seriously?

We parked at Nepenthe, we were going to eat there after all.  But first we had to stop at the Phoenix Shop.  It's a shop below the restaurant that sells great books, stationary, jewelry, clothing, cosmetics and all sorts of home accessories.  Sampling hand cream, leafing through books and perusing the clothes sale rack really works up an appetite so up the stairs we hiked to eat lunch.  So much for hiking...

We waited to be seated, admiring flowers and making quite the scene.  The weather was gorgeous and it was nice to see so many people out enjoying the sun and the scenery.

We were seated on the back patio, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  The view was breathtaking.  I have a picture below but it doesn't even begin to do justice to the beauty that we had the pleasure of admiring.  We had a slow meal sharing each plate, family style.  A woman walked by with a baby on her hip, wearing just a onesie and had a fountain of hair coming out of the top of her head.  I stopped my story mid-sentence and began my well-versed baby flirtation.  Within minutes the baby was on my lap and she had all my attention, I was in heaven.

After our 3-hour meal, we decided we were tired and we should probably head to the bakery for birthday goodies before going back home.  The Big Sur Bakery is nestled in The Big Sur Spirit Garden. How beautiful!  We walked through the cacti and sweet peas, among other flora.  There was a man watering the garden and the smell of wet plants on a hot day is unmistakable - it gets etched in your scent memory pretty vividly.  It reminded me of watering plants in the summer with my uncle on his land, north of Damascus.  He taught me how to syphon water out of the well despite being on an uneven surface.  What nostalgia!  For a moment your psyche transports you to that time and place.  You are who you were when you were there.  The smell is the same in these two place, where you are in actuality and the place in which you have olfactory memories.  I guess your soul, if you believe in souls, is the same, but your body has changed; what we remember in our mind fails to point out the differences, the pain, whatever.  You are simply existing in two places at once - in your memory and in the present.  It's truly phenomenal.

We were disappointed, as the bakery was in transition from lunch to dinner and there were no pastries left, it was 3:00 in the afternoon, after all.  As we piled back in the car, my aunt pulled out a little bag of coconut, apricot cookies and a bar of dark chocolate.  She is always prepared...take note.

While attempting to nap in the backseat on the drive home, I was startled by our abruptly pulling off onto the shoulder.  I naturally jumped out of the car as my aunties did - they were armed with a camera and binoculars.  After a great deal of binocular focusing and oohing and aahing we decided that we were in the presence of 2 California Condors and 2 vultures.  Cool!  We took turns passing around the binoculars.  One auntie is a naturally trained biologist.  And I mean naturally in the literal sense of the word, like in nature.  She explained the difference between a condor and a vulture and as she did, a third condor flew in and joined the other birds in circling their dinner - and putting a show on for us.  She explained that condors have up to a 9 foot wingspan and that they have white on top of their wings and below, whereas vultures are smaller and don't have the white on top of the wings.  We marveled at their magnificence in the mid-afternoon sun until they were through and flew off.  It was really the perfect ending to our day.

cool picture from the deck of Nepenthe as we waited to be seated, not too patiently

view from our table...oak tree + Pacific Ocean + fog

deck at Nepenthe, sweet checkerboard that these kids were playing some form of hopscotch on :)

Grapes!

Cacti

Wasabi Pea Soup

This cold is stubborn. I took the day off of work on account of my cold but then spent the day running errands. It wasn't exactly what I had had in mind but it was nice to break the routine, so to speak.

In the evening time, I decided to make some soup. I had recently bought wasabi powder from an Asian market and decided to test it out in a soup, spicy soups are always great for colds (recall, Carrot Ginger soup?). I did a little search on the internet and a lot of improvisation...

Wasabi Pea Soup

• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 an onion
• 1 cup of peas, fresh or frozen
• 1 cup of chicken or vegetable broth (or just water!)
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 2 tsp. wasabi paste
• spicy mustard to taste
• wasabi peas for garnish, optional

Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Add onions and sauté until they are a little wilted. Add peas and sauté for a few more minutes.  Add broth or water and raise the heat until the liquid comes to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 7 minutes, just long enough for the peas to cook all the way through.  Remove from heat and let sit for a few minutes before transferring to a blender or food processor to blend.  (Be careful not to put hot liquid in an airtight container as the vapor pressure will cause it to explode, leave an opening for vapor to escape or periodically open the lid)

Pulse several times in the blender and add wasabi and buttermilk, blending thoroughly.  If you find that the soup is not spicy enough, feel free to add hot mustard like Colman's.

Garnish with wasabi peas.  Soup can be served hot or cold.  This recipe serves 2 as an appetizer soup.

Fresh made wasabi paste (well as fresh as powder + water can be)

Voilá!

Moonrise Kingdom

I just got back from seeing Moonrise Kingdom at the Osio Cinemas and it was awesome. Just charming and innocent. It made me feel like a kid again which is a delightful feeling. 

It takes place on an island off the coast of New England in 1966 and is about two kids who are "troubled" or misunderstood and plot to run away together.  Sam (Jared Gilman) is a "khaki scout" and orphan who has been going from one unsuccessful foster home to the next and Suzy (Kara Hayward) is the daughter of these two work obsessed lawyers who are having a tough time with their blossoming, outrageous nerd of a daughter.  The interaction between the kids is genuine, so honest.  Dramatic, as kids are, you can really remember the days when you were just so passionate about something that it just consumed your everything.  (Some of us are still that way but it is considered a juvenile trait.)  It was also nice to see Bill Murray, who played Suzy's father and Bruce Willis, the island cop, in these awkward, sepia-tone roles.  

A really cool thing about the movie is that it opened with clips from the 1946 movie Instruments of the Orchestra which features The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, a musical composition by the British composer, Benjamin Britten.  In my research after seeing Moonrise Kingdom, I actually learned that Benjamin Britten wrote quite a bit of music for children and young performers.  Very fitting for the movie. I appreciated the musical selection for the film, it fit very well.  

The filming was done very appropriately for the plot.  The way the camera moved was like a child's attention span and focus, I found that to really accentuate the young theme and atmosphere of the movie. The way the camera person moves through the house or follows the characters is how a child would, focusing on random, interesting things and skimming over the boring adult stuff. 

And the guy narrating (Bob Balaban) is awesome with his glasses, red coat and monotone voice. 

The little kitten in the basket was also the cutest thing.

Overall, I recommend you see this movie, it's fun.  

Boat ride on the Gulf of Aqaba

We decided to take a little boat cruise on the Gulf of Aqaba.  We took a "cab" to a bigger boat that was two-storied, the lower deck was glass, so you could see the sea underneath and the top was open.  It was beautiful.  The weather was perfect, in my opinion, the sun shining, and we were out on the water, the colors of blue changing as you look out to the horizon. 

Leaving the hotel, on a water "taxi" to the boat

We passed several docks and kids playing in the water, they saw us pass by and jumped up and down waving and squealing at us.  I was so surprised to see the water speckled with light purple jelly fish!

purple jelly fish in the red sea

We sat on the top deck listening to music and chatting with the other passengers.  After some time, we were called down to the lower deck to see the coral reefs through the glass bottom of the boat. 

Captain of the boat plus the Jordanian flag

View of the coral reef from the glass bottom boat

Coral

There were tons of fish of many different colors, feeding off the coral.  It was beautiful! It was quite amazing how the schools of fish move together as if they're one big beast, something startles them and it appears as if the beast flinches! We saw a sunken ship, the coral was growing on the ship.  Really amazing how life can exist in even the most unexpected of environments. 

The boat was parked and we were told that if we wanted to swim, we could.  I love the water and couldn't wait to get in.  I stripped down to my bathing suit and got to the edge of the boat but freaked out.  There were jelly fish everywhere!  I went and asked one of the members of the crew if the jelly fish stung, can't they be poisonous? He reassured me that these jelly fish are perfectly safe to swim with and even touch.  Ok.  I dove in the water and it was refreshingly cool.  Salty.  I guess that was to be expected, it was a sea but I'm always surprised by salinity.  I was Dodging jelly fish, even though I had been told that they were benign, I couldn’t help but steer clear from these creatures.  I got out of the water and it stung.  There were 2 hoses with shower heads attached to them coming out the back of the boat. I rinsed off, hopped on deck to grab a snorkeling mask and got back in the water.  

There was a different type of jelly fish in the water! It was clear, oblong and had a some fluorescent color that appeared to move from around in a circular fashion, from cell to cell down in its center, like Christmas lights.  I wasn’t going to touch it either.  I swam out towards the coral reef, the water changed from warm to cool depending on the depth of the water underneath me, what a sensation! I spotted a huge school of  tiny fish, the group parted for me to swim through.  Zebra striped fish fed on the coral, orange and red fish, bright yellow fish and green fish.  I went back to the boat, I wanted dad to come snorkel, he’d never been.  He wasn’t too keen on the idea so I started to swim back out to the coral reef when I heard a big splash behind me, one of the crew members had put on a mask and flippers and had come out snorkeling.  He motioned for me to follow him, and showed me how to swim with my body as flat as possible so as to not rub up against the coral when the water covered the coral by just about a foot or so.  He showed me all sorts of cool fish and coral, then he did a flip in the water and dove down to the bottom of the sea, releasing all the air from his mask.  How cool!  When he came up for air, he explained how to do it, and we dove down to the bottom to look at the corals and baby eels that were sticking out of the sand.  I swallowed a bunch of sea water and swam to the surface.  I motioned to him that I wanted flippers, he went back to the boat and got me flippers, I put them on and was able to swim with more force.  There was an opening in the coral, all of a sudden the water got really deep and at the bottom of this gap was this yellow coral that resembled a rose.  It was beautiful, we dove down to check it out.  

Every once in a while I would hear small splashing sounds, I would look up and there would be small fish jumping out of the water, to avoid being eaten by a bigger fish.  At one point, we swam by a jelly fish and I squealed underwater.  He looked at me and grabbed the jelly fish with his hand, I quickly swam away shaking my head.  Eventually I got the courage to touch the little critter.  It felt slimy and stiff, like uncooked chicken breast.  I hope I didn’t hurt it by touching it.  He would cup it in the palm of his hand and push it around in the water.  Eventually it was time to go back, everybody else was done snorkeling and it was time to eat lunch.  The crew had prepared a lunch for us while we were out snorkeling and swimming.  They had made fish (hamour, also known as grouper) in curry sauce, meat kebobs, chicken kebobs, rice, a Greek salad, cole slaw, hummus and babba ghanoush (like hummus but made with roasted eggplant instead of garbanzo beans).  The food was delicious and tasted even better after a couple hours of swimming in the sea.  We sat on the deck, in the sun eating and chatting…life is great.

lunch