Carmel-by-the-Sea, California
Not surprisingly, for those of you who have been following along (seriously, what is wrong with you?), launching ourselves on this trip to Carmel was not easy. We have issues. We have Mom issues. We have business issues. And, increasingly, we have issues getting ourselves organized for travel, and just about everything else. Adding to the stress of this is the fact that we are staying in Carmel for six weeks. SIX WEEKS! Yes, you (and I) read that right.
It all started last year in the little house we have rented since 2005. We arrived in early January, picked up the keys, and entered the house. I immediately became excited, as usual. It was the start of our month-long stay, and the stress of getting ready for it was over. We stowed all of our gear, then hied ourselves over to Rio Grill for our first celebratory martinis of the trip. All was well. Then, something funny happened. A couple of days into our stay, I started to feel discontented with the house. A few days later I remarked upon this to Billy. And guess what? He thought maybe it was time for a change as well. We asked the rental agency to email us a list of other homes for consideration. We thought that we might step down, from three bedrooms to two. We perused the list but didn't find a thing that we liked.
A couple of weeks later, while Billy was back in LA, I went online and started looking at other available rentals. I found one that looked good and drove past it on my way home from Safeway later that day. Called Billy. When he returned that weekend, we walked over to look at it. It was on the opposite (south) side of Ocean Avenue, not far from both the Carmel Mission and Mission Ranch (Clint's place, where we often go to enjoy cocktails on the patio at sunset). As we were walking by it, we noticed a man in the driveway removing his golf clubs from the trunk of his car (which had Minnesota plates on it). Approach and inquire. No, he wasn't the owner. He and his wife had just commenced a two-month vacation rental at the house. We told him that we were interested in renting the house the following year. He talked to us about the owner, and about the house and about . . . you know what? It didn't matter what we were talking about. The point was that I was going to stand there talking to this very nice man until he invited us in to see the house. I know this fact is not pretty, but there it is. And, finally, he did. Mission accomplished, but now Billy and I were both suffering from house-lust.
We talked about the house all the way back to our rental house, and I broached the subject of Christmas. My mom was stable then, but family holidays were pau (see previous post for definition of this Hawaiian word. Oh, never mind, it means done, finished, over). I not only saw us at this house, I also saw us celebrating Christmas Eve at the Mission. I have never been to a Christmas Eve midnight Mass. Could my first be in Carmel, at the lovely Mission Basilica with the awe-inspiring acoustics and choir? Billy, who, if caught at the right time, can operate out of the creed happy wife, happy life, and who, not incidentally, loves Carmel just as much as I do, immediately agreed to a six-week rental which would get us in before Christmas, if the property was available. When we phoned the owner, he told us that the time was fine, and that 800 thread-count bed linens would be on the beds by then. He requested that we send him a deposit. And, the deal was done.
Now, I should let you know that, even though I insinuated myself into being invited into this house, we were not overly nosy about it. We took a quick spin, in and out in less than five. So when we arrived here Saturday night, just a few minutes before midnight, we discovered that the house wasn't exactly what we remembered. It was better.
But, back to the getting-on-the-road part of the story. Sparing you details, let me just write that Saturday was a heinous, evil day. At one point, I dissolved into tears in front of my mother's caregiver. Throughout this really miserable day, I kept thinking . . . if we could just GO. Our rental wasn't to commence until Sunday the 18th, but we knew the house was ready for us. I had suggested to Billy that maybe we could drive up Saturday night. If we arrived that night, at 12:01, it was Sunday, right? Billy was working all day, but he thought it was possible. On Friday, I didn't think so, but by Saturday afternoon, I thought that, just maybe, we could do this.
Billy arrived home just after five o'clock, and at exactly 5:59 we drove down our driveway. We tuned our radio to KPCC; Prairie Home Companion was just starting, and we were on our way up Highway 101, the former Camino Real mission trail, towards Carmel. It was a miracle.
We stopped at In and Out in Santa Maria for animal-style burgers and fries. Then, back on the road. At eleven o'clock we turned off onto Highway 68, and a short while later came down Ocean Avenue into town. The first thing we saw was the enormous tree which is at the top of town, on the median of that street. It was decorated in red, green, and white lights, with its trunk wrapped in red lights. And all the other trees and shrubbery on that street divider all through the town's center were draped in white fairy lights. Ooohhhh look! -- we both exclaimed. Bruno's Market had Happy Holidays in lights on their roof. Many of the storefronts were trimmed with white lights. It was magical.
Although we were tired, we drove down to the beach, then wound our way back through town. We picked up the Monterey Herald, a Carmel Pine Cone, a Carmel Magazine, and a few real estate magazines (Billy) from a newspaper dispenser/stand. Then, we found the house.
We didn't get to sleep until 1:30 that morning. But when we awoke on Sunday, we were in Carmel, in this beautiful house, and we were mostly unpacked. Billy took off for a long walk, and I made it to 11:00 Mass at the Mission. It was the fourth Sunday of Advent. The altar was filled with poinsettias, and carols were sung with the choir. We had arrived.
Being in Carmel, calls to mind Dickens' A Christmas Carol. After coming from a nightmare day in LA, then waking up here, in this village next to the sea, I want to cry out -- God bless us everyone! But instead, I will wish you a happy and merry holiday, be it Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice --whatever you celebrate. And, once more, in this holiday season, I thank you for reading my blog. Merry Christmas!
December 20, 2011
December 10, 2011
Skating
Los Angeles, California
It's time for a recipe. And I will get to that, down below. However, if you're expecting haute cuisine (but why would you be, here?), you should exit, stage left, pronto. This post isn't about what we take in, at least not food-wise.
Thanksgiving has come and gone. It was good. We gratefully accepted an invitation to break bread, and turkey, with our friends, Bonnie and Marty. In reverse order of importance: their home is beautiful; the food was fab; other guests were interesting and friendly; we felt warmly welcomed. No small thing when you are changing out holiday celebrations. We spent the afternoon with my mom. Her caregivers, who we think are heaven-sent, took her to afternoon dinner in the dining room of her retirement facility. Hard to write that, but it was ok. Especially for her.
For many years we spent Thanksgiving on the road. Our family celebrated Thanksgiving at a relative's home in Long Beach. After 1998, it was our job to collect the widows -- my mom and aunt, who lived at diagonal opposite ends of the Valley where we live on a middle edge. This was cheerfully done, more or less, though it meant we were on the road for hours -- one year, exactly five. We could have driven to Carmel. But it was my family's Thanksgiving, and we have always been pitchers-in. Plus, I always looked forward to this first holiday celebration which kicked off the season. I enjoyed being with my family. And I miss them.
However, apart from the heavy commute, the unfortunate thing about this annual Thanksgiving celebration was that the relative hosting it was not open to adding anyone in to the celebration -- even those we call splinter relatives, the ones not exactly on the main branches of the family tree. And, like the Shakers, we are a barren lot -- there were no babies who grew to children who grew to adults through the years, either. No cousins' table. Once I asked if I could bring along a friend who was freshly separated from her husband. No, was the reply, to which was added, I don't have enough matching wineglasses. I offered to bring wineglasses, but it wasn't a problem that welcomed fixing. As a result, Thanksgiving turned into a tontine with the older guests disappearing from the table at the end of their lives, including, first, my father, then my favorite aunt. I had promised Billy that when my mom was gone and we were down to four, we would stop going. It was getting more depressing by the year, with the numbers diminishing and the dining room looking dim and brown, like something from Arsenic and Old Lace. Then, something unexpected happened. One of our generation died, and shortly after, my mom needed to move to a retirement village. The Long Beach relatives didn't want to host Thanksgiving that year. And that, was that.
During the years when we carpooled the ladies there, we would sometimes leave my mom in Long Beach to spend the weekend with the relatives. When we left to take my aunt home, she and I always rode in the back seat, talking all the way home. Billy would act as chauffeur. Once we dropped her off at her pretty house in Toluca Lake, we would head for home. Our route took us past St. Charles Borromeo, the Catholic church that Bob Hope and Bing Crosby attended (and helped build) while they lived in Toluca Lake. On the ride home from my aunt's, now late on Thanksgiving evening, I would take A Charlie Brown Christmas from it's jewel case and insert it into the CD player in Billy's car. The first hearing of Christmas music (except in stores since mid-October!). It was our tradition.
I like A Charlie Brown Christmas. I like the spirit of it. I like most of the Vince Guaraldi music. But the main reason why I listen to it is for the tune, Skating. I love this. I have told Billy that if I am ever in a coma, this is what he should play next to my bedside over and over again. It will bring me back to this earth. It's not just the title, though, as a former figure skater, I do like the title. But more than that, I love the evocative nature of it. It does sound like skating -- something that I loved to do beyond anything else in my childhood.
My family started listening to this music back when I was growing up. We also listened to To Wish You a Merry Christmas by Harry Belafonte. Music is, and always was, an important part of the holidays for me. My parents never watched much TV, and so there was often music on in our home. My dad had built our stereo system. Fine fun for a former radio engineer who ended up in aerospace. The receiver tubes were all exposed behind a cabinet door, and I remember once placing a stack of records on top of these tubes where they melted into something that looked like it could be found in outer space. My dad wasn't angry (even though I was taking HIS records off to put MINE on). I had often seen him do this, but hadn't understood that you couldn't do it when the tubes were hot.
I had a similar lack of understanding when I once put a Playdoh ashtray, which I had made for my grandfather's pipe, into the kitchen oven to fire, as I had seen done in school (but with, uh, real clay). The Playdoh dripped through the rack and into a smelly pool at the bottom of my mother's new oven (which came with her new kitchen). Not a similar response to my dad's, when I melted the records. My mother dissolved into hysterical tears, railed at the Gods and asked what was to become of a dangerous person like me? Parents. You really get the yin and the yang there.
But back to Skating, and Christmas music. For the first time in, well, forever, we have not put up a Christmas tree. And, for the first time in, also forever, we will be spending Christmas away from home. We will be in Carmel. Neither Billy nor I have ever spent Christmas anywhere away from Los Angeles. As in, never. We do have some Christmas decorations placed around our house right now, but even those will be packed up and taken up to Carmel. We plan on buying a small tree there, and a wreath. I'm bringing Christmas tableware-- napkins and place mats, and some of our collection of large Christmas mugs which appear the day after Thanksgiving and disappear the day after New Year's.
All our Christmas music will come with us -- CDs and iPod. It wouldn't seem like Christmas without it all, and, of course, without Skating. And, maybe too, there will be actual skating. I haven't laced on skates since I was just out of college, and that's a couple of decades without being in boots and balancing on blades. But I still carry the feeling within me. It's one of the reasons why I love salsa dance. A couple of my partners in salsa know how to spin both of us around quite fast. One of them, Marvin, does this the best. It's the one move that gives me that feeling of wind-in-my-hair flying that I loved the most about skating. That, and your first glide onto the rink from the boards. Feeling the smoothness, or not so smoothness, under your blades. Getting your skates under you, and your body accustomed to the familiar feeling of it all. Whoosh . . .
But now (lots of digressions here), back to that small tree which we plan on buying in Carmel. We won't have many decorations. I have some tiny Italian rooster pitchers, and also Emile Henry pitchers in various colors. They will go on the tree with ribbon, and maybe we will even string popcorn -- one of the very few things I am able to do with a needle and thread. And if we do string popcorn, we will pop some extra for eating. Because one of the things I like almost as much as Skating (and skating) is popcorn. Yes, I know, I'm afraid that's it for this post. I should be ashamed. But, it IS a really good popcorn recipe. I gave up on microwave popcorn at least a decade or so back. This is so much better:
Casa Healy Popcorn
1 tablespoon chili or red pepper olive oil*
1/2 cup good-quality popcorn**
salt (or flavored salt), only if desired
Heat olive oil in 2-quart saucepan over medium heat. I find lighter-weight pans work best. I've tried this in my Le Creuset with lesser success than a plain stainless steel one. And I like a glass lid so I can watch the magic.
In a minute or so, when the oil is beginning to really heat, throw in your popcorn. Place a lid, cocked to allow for steam to escape. When corn starts to pop, gently move/shake pan over the burner. Keep lid very slightly cocked, or hot kernels will find a way to fly out. When popping slows down, take pan off burner and let the popping continue until it is just about stopped (invariably a couple of late boomers will pop while you are pouring the popcorn into a serving container). I use two baskets lined with cloth napkins or paper towels, depending on mood, or the movie we've chosen to watch. They are of differing sizes. I get the largest one. It just happens that way in our house, where popcorn is concerned.
*I've used both Consorzio Roasted Pepper olive oil, and Lucini Fiery Chili Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I've also tried it with Asian chili oil which is way too hot. I learned how to mix that with regular olive oil to tame it. I've also made this with lemon olive oil or a mix of the lemon and chili.
**I like White Cat Corn which I used to purchase at Williams-Sonoma, but they no longer carry it there, at least in my area. I did without for awhile, then found it at Whole Foods on a treasure hunt. More about treasure hunts in a later post . . .
So there it is. The belated first December post complete with music, family remembrances (both good and bad as they always seem to be), skating, and popcorn. A virtual potpourri of what is swirling around me as I begin to pack for Carmel. Hope your holidays (whatever they are) are warm. Hope they are merry and bright. Hope we skate through to a New Year with much happiness, and peace. See you in Carmel and thanks for reading my blog!
It's time for a recipe. And I will get to that, down below. However, if you're expecting haute cuisine (but why would you be, here?), you should exit, stage left, pronto. This post isn't about what we take in, at least not food-wise.
Thanksgiving has come and gone. It was good. We gratefully accepted an invitation to break bread, and turkey, with our friends, Bonnie and Marty. In reverse order of importance: their home is beautiful; the food was fab; other guests were interesting and friendly; we felt warmly welcomed. No small thing when you are changing out holiday celebrations. We spent the afternoon with my mom. Her caregivers, who we think are heaven-sent, took her to afternoon dinner in the dining room of her retirement facility. Hard to write that, but it was ok. Especially for her.
For many years we spent Thanksgiving on the road. Our family celebrated Thanksgiving at a relative's home in Long Beach. After 1998, it was our job to collect the widows -- my mom and aunt, who lived at diagonal opposite ends of the Valley where we live on a middle edge. This was cheerfully done, more or less, though it meant we were on the road for hours -- one year, exactly five. We could have driven to Carmel. But it was my family's Thanksgiving, and we have always been pitchers-in. Plus, I always looked forward to this first holiday celebration which kicked off the season. I enjoyed being with my family. And I miss them.
However, apart from the heavy commute, the unfortunate thing about this annual Thanksgiving celebration was that the relative hosting it was not open to adding anyone in to the celebration -- even those we call splinter relatives, the ones not exactly on the main branches of the family tree. And, like the Shakers, we are a barren lot -- there were no babies who grew to children who grew to adults through the years, either. No cousins' table. Once I asked if I could bring along a friend who was freshly separated from her husband. No, was the reply, to which was added, I don't have enough matching wineglasses. I offered to bring wineglasses, but it wasn't a problem that welcomed fixing. As a result, Thanksgiving turned into a tontine with the older guests disappearing from the table at the end of their lives, including, first, my father, then my favorite aunt. I had promised Billy that when my mom was gone and we were down to four, we would stop going. It was getting more depressing by the year, with the numbers diminishing and the dining room looking dim and brown, like something from Arsenic and Old Lace. Then, something unexpected happened. One of our generation died, and shortly after, my mom needed to move to a retirement village. The Long Beach relatives didn't want to host Thanksgiving that year. And that, was that.
During the years when we carpooled the ladies there, we would sometimes leave my mom in Long Beach to spend the weekend with the relatives. When we left to take my aunt home, she and I always rode in the back seat, talking all the way home. Billy would act as chauffeur. Once we dropped her off at her pretty house in Toluca Lake, we would head for home. Our route took us past St. Charles Borromeo, the Catholic church that Bob Hope and Bing Crosby attended (and helped build) while they lived in Toluca Lake. On the ride home from my aunt's, now late on Thanksgiving evening, I would take A Charlie Brown Christmas from it's jewel case and insert it into the CD player in Billy's car. The first hearing of Christmas music (except in stores since mid-October!). It was our tradition.
I like A Charlie Brown Christmas. I like the spirit of it. I like most of the Vince Guaraldi music. But the main reason why I listen to it is for the tune, Skating. I love this. I have told Billy that if I am ever in a coma, this is what he should play next to my bedside over and over again. It will bring me back to this earth. It's not just the title, though, as a former figure skater, I do like the title. But more than that, I love the evocative nature of it. It does sound like skating -- something that I loved to do beyond anything else in my childhood.
My family started listening to this music back when I was growing up. We also listened to To Wish You a Merry Christmas by Harry Belafonte. Music is, and always was, an important part of the holidays for me. My parents never watched much TV, and so there was often music on in our home. My dad had built our stereo system. Fine fun for a former radio engineer who ended up in aerospace. The receiver tubes were all exposed behind a cabinet door, and I remember once placing a stack of records on top of these tubes where they melted into something that looked like it could be found in outer space. My dad wasn't angry (even though I was taking HIS records off to put MINE on). I had often seen him do this, but hadn't understood that you couldn't do it when the tubes were hot.
I had a similar lack of understanding when I once put a Playdoh ashtray, which I had made for my grandfather's pipe, into the kitchen oven to fire, as I had seen done in school (but with, uh, real clay). The Playdoh dripped through the rack and into a smelly pool at the bottom of my mother's new oven (which came with her new kitchen). Not a similar response to my dad's, when I melted the records. My mother dissolved into hysterical tears, railed at the Gods and asked what was to become of a dangerous person like me? Parents. You really get the yin and the yang there.
But back to Skating, and Christmas music. For the first time in, well, forever, we have not put up a Christmas tree. And, for the first time in, also forever, we will be spending Christmas away from home. We will be in Carmel. Neither Billy nor I have ever spent Christmas anywhere away from Los Angeles. As in, never. We do have some Christmas decorations placed around our house right now, but even those will be packed up and taken up to Carmel. We plan on buying a small tree there, and a wreath. I'm bringing Christmas tableware-- napkins and place mats, and some of our collection of large Christmas mugs which appear the day after Thanksgiving and disappear the day after New Year's.
All our Christmas music will come with us -- CDs and iPod. It wouldn't seem like Christmas without it all, and, of course, without Skating. And, maybe too, there will be actual skating. I haven't laced on skates since I was just out of college, and that's a couple of decades without being in boots and balancing on blades. But I still carry the feeling within me. It's one of the reasons why I love salsa dance. A couple of my partners in salsa know how to spin both of us around quite fast. One of them, Marvin, does this the best. It's the one move that gives me that feeling of wind-in-my-hair flying that I loved the most about skating. That, and your first glide onto the rink from the boards. Feeling the smoothness, or not so smoothness, under your blades. Getting your skates under you, and your body accustomed to the familiar feeling of it all. Whoosh . . .
But now (lots of digressions here), back to that small tree which we plan on buying in Carmel. We won't have many decorations. I have some tiny Italian rooster pitchers, and also Emile Henry pitchers in various colors. They will go on the tree with ribbon, and maybe we will even string popcorn -- one of the very few things I am able to do with a needle and thread. And if we do string popcorn, we will pop some extra for eating. Because one of the things I like almost as much as Skating (and skating) is popcorn. Yes, I know, I'm afraid that's it for this post. I should be ashamed. But, it IS a really good popcorn recipe. I gave up on microwave popcorn at least a decade or so back. This is so much better:
Casa Healy Popcorn
1 tablespoon chili or red pepper olive oil*
1/2 cup good-quality popcorn**
salt (or flavored salt), only if desired
Heat olive oil in 2-quart saucepan over medium heat. I find lighter-weight pans work best. I've tried this in my Le Creuset with lesser success than a plain stainless steel one. And I like a glass lid so I can watch the magic.
In a minute or so, when the oil is beginning to really heat, throw in your popcorn. Place a lid, cocked to allow for steam to escape. When corn starts to pop, gently move/shake pan over the burner. Keep lid very slightly cocked, or hot kernels will find a way to fly out. When popping slows down, take pan off burner and let the popping continue until it is just about stopped (invariably a couple of late boomers will pop while you are pouring the popcorn into a serving container). I use two baskets lined with cloth napkins or paper towels, depending on mood, or the movie we've chosen to watch. They are of differing sizes. I get the largest one. It just happens that way in our house, where popcorn is concerned.
*I've used both Consorzio Roasted Pepper olive oil, and Lucini Fiery Chili Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I've also tried it with Asian chili oil which is way too hot. I learned how to mix that with regular olive oil to tame it. I've also made this with lemon olive oil or a mix of the lemon and chili.
**I like White Cat Corn which I used to purchase at Williams-Sonoma, but they no longer carry it there, at least in my area. I did without for awhile, then found it at Whole Foods on a treasure hunt. More about treasure hunts in a later post . . .
So there it is. The belated first December post complete with music, family remembrances (both good and bad as they always seem to be), skating, and popcorn. A virtual potpourri of what is swirling around me as I begin to pack for Carmel. Hope your holidays (whatever they are) are warm. Hope they are merry and bright. Hope we skate through to a New Year with much happiness, and peace. See you in Carmel and thanks for reading my blog!
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About Me
- Bronte Healy
- California, United States
- Once, I came up with this brilliant idea (well, I thought so, anyway) that the key to happiness was to concentrate on three things -- to choose three interests, then focus and funnel your energy into that trio. I was an English major in college and have always written in some shape or form. So, my first choice was writing. I've always kept journals, and have also written plays, novels, poetry, and shopping lists. I do have a day job. It deals with numbers (assets and finances). Go figure. I went to college at a California University. I live in California, Los Angeles, but not downtown. No children, and sadly, between dogs at the moment (dog person, not a cat person). Enough info? I was going for just enough to not be a cypher, yet not enough to entice a stalker. And, I started my blog after being dragged, kicking and screaming, to do so. Blogs! Read about ME here, right? But I have been advised that this is a way to write regularly, and to put your writing OUT THERE. So, here goes. My name is Bronte Healy. Thanks for reading my blog.