West Marin restaurant: Saltwater

My good friend Tom invited me out to Inverness yesterday to stay over at one of the cottages on Tomales Bay and to have a celebratory "Getting Fired" dinner.  I said yes.  The cottage was lovely, quiet and peaceful and a great place to hang out.

Saltwater is a new restaurant in Inverness.  Previously an overpriced pizza joint, it is now focused on, what else, fish. The menu is small: several oysters, raw and cooked, several first courses (soups, salads, smoked fish, and more) and the main courses are mostly fish, although there is a roasted quail and a smoked pork belly.  It was a delicious meal.

We shared the two different cooked oyster preparations, one with spinach and breadcrumbs (Oysters Casino) and the other with caramelized shallots and brown butter. Both were perfectly cooked and we ate them all in about thirty seconds. Tom had the quail with roasted figs, I had the fresh salmon on top of a succotash of vegetables and topped with a radish salad.  Excellent.  We shared a bottle of Thomas Berridge Pinot Noir from Anderson Valley that was perfect with both our meals. We didn't have pizzas but they looked outstanding.

The force behind the new restaurant is Luc Chamberlin, a local guy with a lot of industry experience.  He has put his heart and soul and a lot of money into transforming the space into a cleanly streamlined place to get good food. The decor is simple and sophisticated, white finish on the shelves, uncluttered.   You can order anything to go, and he will even sell a bottle of wine to take away for $10 off the menu price.

Sit at the counter if you can.  It's quieter and easier to talk to your mate, shoulder to shoulder.  It's sometimes easier to snag a seat at the bar than at a table. The place gets very busy, so go early or late.  But go!  It would be nice to see this place succeed, it's what Inverness and the Point Reyes Station area needs, something new.

Getting fired and a good dinner

Let's take the second subject first.  Last night I had  in the fridge a couple of boneless chicken breasts, which I rarely eat.  I prefer them on the bone. Whatever.  I had a russet potato and some butter lettuce.  In the spirit of hunters and gatherers everywhere, I nipped a bit of fresh basil and parsley from the community patch and some mint from the garden where I live.  I tossed the butter lettuce with the herbs, tossed them in a little olive oil and put them on a plate.

I salted and peppered the chicken breasts, sauteed them in some olive oil and deglazed the pan with a couple of fingers of marginal white wine. The potato I had cut into wedges, soaked in cold water, patted dry and roasted as fat french fries in a hot oven. I made a garlic aioli.

Finally, when the chicken was done, I sliced it, bathed it in the pan sauce and then put all of it on top of the lettuce, wilting it a bit and served the potatoes on the side.  I am telling you, the lettuce with the fresh herbs and the hot chicken and sauce and those fat fries with the aioli..... it was a lip-smacking dinner.  And simple and cheap.  Can't beat that.

OK, now the getting fired part: about six weeks ago two women from the Wilson Empire (the Wilsons' own the inn and seven wineries in the Healdsburg area) decided that the Calderwood Inn needed help.  It didn't but they knew best. They started randomly coming over, moving furniture, buying things like new placemats and napkins and iPod docking stations, working on the garden seating, getting new plants and on and on.  I should have seen the writing on the wall but I thought my wonderful unsolicited reviews about my talents as an innkeeper would see me through their job-grabbing desires.  (Check them out here:  http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g32482-d73573-Reviews-Calderwood_Inn-Healdsburg_Sonoma_County_California.html )  I was wrong.  Yesterday, after making breakfast, one of these women came to the inn and fired me.  On the spot. Pissed off, I got in the car and drove for a bit (always calming to me) and then called the CFO, whom I have had dealings with in the past, and asked to come in to get an explanation of why I was fired.  Bottom line, there was/is no reason.  Someone else wanted my job and they had seniority and so they got what they wanted.

Oh well.  It is what it is, as they say.  Today I slept in a bit, walked Cooper, took a shower and went to Safeway to get coffee, since I normally have coffee at the inn. I spent about 20 minutes in Safeway, wandering from one side to the other, feeling untethered.  Then I metaphorically slapped myself and said, silently "cut it out, you have a home, go make coffee" and I did.  The rest of the day was spent productively:  looked at job ads, read a bit, went to the laundromat and did a load of clothes just to check it out (bleah), walked Cooper for another 30 minutes, got a pedicure, got my free tire rotation and balancing after 10,000 miles, went to Whole Foods and bought tasty treats for dinner.  I was going to eat out but this is better, get to watch some of "Hell on Wheels" via the Roku, get to drink and not drive, get to eat dinner in my pajamas.

Ah, life does deal its trump hand, doesn't it?  Play the cards you are dealt and hope there's a good card on the turn or the river. Jacks or better open, but there could be a full house somewhere. Or at least two pairs.

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Mornings, a movie and a meal

This is a scattered blog post, just a warning.

Cooper and I walk in the morning, usually around 6:30-6:45. Lately the mornings have been much colder and much darker. It's nice, though, it feels like fall is coming. Leaves on the trees are starting to change or starting to fall off the trees. It's difficult to get out of bed because it's so warm in bed and so chilly out of bed but the unpleasantness of getting up is offset by the pleasantness of the morning walk. It's quiet, usually, not much traffic, and the morning walk has always been rather meditative for me. Don't know why I am even writing about it, but there you have it.

Movie: I stream movies from Netflix to my TV via a little Roku box. Let's me watch all sorts of instant down-loads, old TV shows, movies no one ever heard of, foreign films, documentaries that I always planned on renting but never did. Last night I watched a movie that was about five years old with Tom Selleck.  Tom Selleck was once very cute, in his "Magnum P.I." days. He had cute dimples. Now, 25 years later, he isn't cute. His face is obviously more mature, more lined, much more interesting. It seems he made a series of TV movies about a character called Jesse Stone. I knew nothing about these movies but watched one called "Sea Change" and lo! and behold!  It was good!  A little slow, a bit dark (which I always like) and somewhat honest, a rare thing in movies.  Jesse Stone is a tired and sad cop trying to do a decent job. Sometimes he succeeds. Sometimes not. But worth watching.

Meals: right now I have just one word for you regarding food: tomatoes. Fresh, off the vine tomatoes. Sliced thick, on good bread with mayonnaise, eaten over the sink. "My word," as Martha use to say. So, so good. My friend Margaret has lots of tomatoes and shares them and I have been eating them every day. The season seems long when your kitchen counters are covered with tomatoes but it is actually rather short-lived. If you can get your hands on good ones, do yourself a favor and Eat. Them. Now.

So, so delicious. 

That's all for this day.  Have a good weekend.

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Bleah

I was going to title this post "Barf" but that sounded rather distasteful.  But barf it is.  At the inn where I work this weekend was a group of people staying in Healdsburg for a wedding. They all knew each other. They all had a good time.  They all came back to the inn after the wedding on Saturday and continued the after-wedding party.  When I arrived on Sunday morning there were more than a dozen empty bottles of wine. 

There was also a pile of vomit in one of the rooms, which I didn't know about until the wife of the offender sheepishly came into the kitchen to report it and ask for cleaning up towels, etc.  She got rid of most of it but the smell and the stain on the rug remained.  Red wine barf, the worst.  We cleaned it as best we could and hoped it wouldn't stay too stinky.

The guests who checked into that room on Sunday night ended up sleeping in a different room because of the smell. I had someone come over and steam-clean that rug but the smell still lingers.  Even today, two days later, it lingers, faintly but there, like a paper cut that keeps getting a little lemon squeezed on it.  You can forget about it until that lemon hits the hurt.  You can forget about the smell until you walk over the offending area of carpet.

That wasn't all the joy on the wedding weekend.  Two people left early and left with the keys to their rooms. The bride didn't stay on Saturday night, obviously, and she had one of the keys in her purse but no one wanted to call her because "Well, it's their wedding morning, can't we just wait until noon?"  For one of those rooms I have no spare keys, a dilemma for the peeps staying in that room right now.  Additionally, one of the guys ran into a tree on the property and dented his rental car. Another guest couldn't get his toilet to flush. 

Ah, well, at least the bride's mother left me a tip!  No one ever tips the innkeeper (well, hardly ever) so that was nice. 

Still, the lingering smell of vomit...... major BLEAH.  Hopefully the guests in that room tonight can't smell or at least don't mind the smell of the air freshener I put under the bed.  We'll see.....


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Mavis Staples

My youngest brother, Jeff, is the bass player for Mavis Staples.  If you don't know who Mavis is, google her.  She has been on a tour of more than 50 cities in the last couple of months, opening for Bonnie Raitt. She, along with my brother on bass, Rick on lead guitar, a cool guy on drums and a couple of back-up singers, was at the Greek Theater in Berkeley last night.

Because the traffic gods were against me, I missed the first couple of songs but saw enough to know that Mavis, at 73, is still rocking the world of rhythm and blues. She is a firecracker on stage, and as cute as a button-nosed teddy bear. She performs new songs, old faves and gets the crowd rocking. 

My brother loves being on tour with Mavis and the band. They have been all over the world, stay in great hotels, eat good food, and get paid to do all of it!  And get paid to make music, which everyone in the band loves to do.   I got to go backstage and meet Mavis, hang out a bit, and it was a great evening.  I'm telling you, the next time she is in the bay area, go see her.  You will leave smiling!

Two short videos.  In the first, the tall guy in back of her with the blue-top guitar is my brother Jeff. This video doesn't show her energy the best but she has a close-up with my brother for a few seconds which I love.  In the second (which has bad sound syncing) he is there too, in a red tie.  But honestly, no matter how good a bass player Jeff is, Mavis is the star.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l64Bte5ygvM&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xBMgSM4ypY

 

 

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Writing: James Lee Burke

It's unusual to come across really good writing in genre fiction, at least in my experience.  Yes, I have heard tell of stellar science fiction writers but I don't read SciFi so can't speak to them.  And there are some really good story tellers and creators of characters in detective fiction (like Lee Child and Robert Crais) but that's different from a Wallace Stegner-class writer, one who writes viscerally and visually.  James Lee Burke is one such writer.

He has a string of novels featuring the character Dave Robicheaux, a detective for a Louisiana Parish near New Orleans.  Dave is likable but not a happy man unless he is at home with his small family.  He stretches the letter of the law to fit the size of the page in front of him and at the same time is kind and has an almost painful standard of  integrity.  In his novels, there is always crime, a murder, unsavory characters. But what sets these novels apart is the description of place and what that place does to people.

I just finished "The Tin Roof Blowdown" written two years after Hurricane Katrina.  Burke's descriptions of the hurricane and its aftermath are gut wrenching in their stark brutality.  Burke does a good job at making you understand the terror and the helplessness in face of it all. "The tide seems to shrink from the land as though a giant drainhole has formed in the center of the Gulf. To the south, a long black hump begins to gather itself on the earth's rim, swelling out of the water like an enormous whale, extending itself all across the horizon.  You cannot believe what you are watching. The black hump is now rising toward the coastline, gaining momentum and size, increasing in velocity so rapidly that its own crest is absorbed by the wave before it can crash to the surface in front of it.  It's called a tidal surge."

This book is full of philosophy. "...you probably already know that human beings are infinitely complex and not subject to easy categorizations. I'm always amazed at how the greatest complexity as well as personal courage is usually found in our most nondescript members.  People who look as interesting as a mud wall have the personal histories of classical Greeks.  I sometimes think that every person's experience, if translated into flame, would be enough to melt the flesh from his bones. I guess the word I'm looking for is "empathy."

And beauty: "I could smell the bourbon as it rolled back over his tongue. I envisioned its amber color inside the yellow staves of the curing barrel, the bead it made inside the bottle's neck when it was air-locked under the cork, the splash it made when it was released again and poured over ice and mint leaves inside a glass.  Unconsciously I swallowed and touched at my brow as though a vein were tightening in my head."

I could go on and on. If you haven't read James Lee Burke, give him a try.  You don't have to be a fan of detective fiction, just consider his books to be really good summer reading.  I promise that there will be paragraphs that will make you look away from the page, make you see clearly what he has described, make you read it again and make you shake your head in amazement at his talent. 

 

Plus, he sort of looks like Tommy Lee Jones.  That is never a bad thing.

 

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Whole Foods Chicken

OK,  yes, I can cook a really good roast chicken. With the right stove, I am a champion chicken roaster.   However, in the kitchen I currently have it is a crap shoot.  The oven is so small that the chicken needs to be on the top rack which means I can't actually roast a whole chicken because a whole chicken hits the top of the oven.  That is not good.  I can split the bird in half and cook it but it ain't the same.  It simply doesn't get that dark golden brown skin and it doesn't get crispy.  So, sadly, the really good roast chickens of my past are currently not in my future.

However, as most of you already know, Whole Foods Markets make really, really good roast chickens. (And yes, I know Costco does chickens for less money but I don't belong and don't try to tell me they don't use the pull-by chickens in their ovens.  You know they do.)  Whole Foods do them on the rotisserie and there is nothing bad to say about these birds.  I started thinking about this chicken early today.  I wanted roasted chicken. I didn't want to do the work.  And for those of you who have seen where I live, you know I am not kidding when I say there is one 18 inch space that encompasses the entire counter space of this kitchen.  To come home from work at 6:30 and try to do prep, cut, slice, all of it in this tiny space is quite frustrating.  I swear a lot.  And that is the same space that must be empty in order for me to do the clean-up, to do the dishes, everything.

Needless to say, the lure of the already roasted chicken is huge.  I was at Whole Foods at 6:45, and the chickens were still on the spit.  Still spinning. Still dripping their lovely grease on the chickens below.  In less than 10 minutes I had my chicken in a plastic heat-proof carrier, good to go.  I came home, wrapped it in a kitchen towel to keep warm, made myself a mint-julep-whiskey-sour cocktail, basked in the knowledge that a juicy chicken was waiting for me and at the appropriate moment I cut into that baby and it was as yummy as any chicken on a Saturday night should be. 

Yes, it's true I don't date, but don't tell me my Saturday nights aren't hot.  Anticipating that moist (!) and succulent chicken was worth the wait.  It was a great dinner, tons left for days to come and I totally will respect myself in the morning.  Hell, my kitchen is already cleaned up for the night and no need to think about morning respect!  Time for another glass of wine! 

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Community garden



A half block from where I live is a vacant lot, prime real estate, now the home of a community garden.  It is totally unfenced, open to anyone who might want to wander in and look around.  There are about a dozen plots, each one cared for by someone who paid about $15 for the use of the land.  Right now, in the height of summer, all plots are full of growth, lush and plentiful with harvest.  Some people have gone the traditional route:  tomatoes, basil, zucchini, green beans.  One is nothing but herbs and edible flowers.  Beautiful orange pumpkins are surprising, as are 12 foot tall sunflowers and teepees of vining beans.  It is obvious that some people have a knack for growing things, or have at least prepared the soil and come by to water on a regular basis. Other plots are a bit more haphazard, well- intentioned in the beginning but now looking a little forgotten and disheveled. But it is a delight to walk past every day and watch the progress of the plants.  Tomatoes are turning red now, beans and snap peas are plentiful as are many varieties of summer squash. Of course, there are some neglected zucchini that are the size of a cat and some swiss chard on the verge of bolting, lots of lettuce leaves already going to seed. 

 

As I was walking by yesterday, early in the morning, a woman was bending over, watering one plot that I have admired, a great stand of basil, beautiful kale and chard, dark green parsley.  We exchanged "good mornings" and I said something nice about her plot and she stood up straight and said "Thanks, and please, help yourself to anything here. There is just too much for me at this point."  I responded with surprise and gratitude and she assured me that, yes, it would be fine to take a lot of basil, or some beans, or cut some chard.  What kindness! What sharing!  Made me smile all morning.  I will go back later today and get a few fresh herbs and maybe some chard. 

 

In the middle of the field is a small, rickety table and the gardeners leave things on the table that they obviously don't want:  a small misshaped eggplant, one of those cat-size zucchini, herbs, greens.  I snatched up the eggplant; its odd shape certainly didn't affect its taste.  I hope the person who ate the can of corn for dinner last week comes by and maybe gets some cherry tomatoes or a handful of green beans, which are delicious raw.  I don't think anyone would mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 



 

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