Tourist In My Own Town: Winchester Mystery House

Our dear friend Emily reported recently that she and some friends had begun making an effort to visit new places and see new things close to home, an initiative known as TIMOT, or Tourist In My Own Town.  Stacey and I, as relatively new transplants to this area, have made plenty of pilgrimages to San Francisco and points north, but have spent very little time sampling tourist destinations in San Jose itself.  One of the most famous is the Winchester Mystery House, which is less than four miles from our home.  We drive past it often when we go shopping, but neither of us had ever visited it until today.  With a clean apartment, a clear schedule, and a two-for-one coupon, we decided to go check it out.

Though I do not think I would have gladly paid full price for admission, the house is admittedly sort of fascinating.  The story is bizarre: Sarah Winchester, wealthy widow and Winchester Rifle heiress, began building the house in 1884 and did not stop until she died thirty-eight years later.  This means that the house is enormous, but also that rooms were constantly renovated (over 600 times, according to our tour guide).  It's a convoluted warren of staircases (the most famous of which leads straight into a ceiling), hallways, strange nooks and closets, and doors -- some of which open into walls, or into open air (see first picture above).  Supposedly Sarah Winchester consulted a psychic in Boston who told her that the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles would seek vengeance, and her strange building plans were intended to keep them at bay, confuse them, or appease them, depending on what you read.  It's basically a 160-room testimony to mental illness.

It's also rumored to be haunted, but we neither saw nor felt anything.  Our tour guide told us a story about his cell phone dialing the number 13 (Sarah Winchester's favorite number, repeated superstitiously throughout the house in ceiling panels, drain holes, coat hooks, and windows) by itself, but it sounded pretty bogus to me.

New England Adventures

As many of you know, we spent the last nine days in New England, visiting friends and family.  Despite the often oppressive humidity, to which we are no longer accustomed, and a pretty intense schedule, we had a wonderful time.

First stop: a visit with our friends Rebecca and Dan and their baby boys, Chase (first picture below) and Austin (second picture), who are adorable.

On Saturday, June 28th, my dear friends Lisa and Daniel were married in a beautiful ceremony in a beautiful Italian garden at the Codman Estate in Lincoln, Massachusetts.  Excellent food (including a fantastic cake from Flour Bakery in Boston) and a chance to see some of my favorite people.  Here's Lisa and Daniel, below -- the zoom on my camera isn't very good, so they are a bit small...

While we were waiting to go into the reception, four goats from a farm down the road decided to pay us a visit.  This was amusing until they tried to storm the tent.  Somehow, we managed to keep them out, but I did have the opportunity to get a few pictures.

On Sunday we threw my father a surprise 60th birthday brunch at The Blue Room, one of our favorite Boston-area restaurants (of course, we are a bit biased -- Stacey used to be the sous chef there).  The food was fantastic as usual, and as usual we ate way too much.  We also got the chance to see some old friends there, including our friend and wedding photographer Wayne, who was our server, and whose photographs are currently on display in the restaurant.  And my father was definitely surprised.

On Sunday evening, the three lovely Pearl Street Princesses (Emily, Leah and Julie) took us to dinner at TW Food in Cambridge.  We are still trying to decide which of the eight courses (and two amuse bouches) we liked the best -- right now, I think the buttery garlic scape soup with parmigiano reggiano is our front-runner.  I really, really wanted seconds.

Monday brought lunch with the ladies of the Boston library at Nixon Peabody and dinner with Brendan, Melodie and Wayne.

On Tuesday, we drove up to Maine to spend the rest of the week at my father's new summer house in Denmark.  Stacey and I made a slight detour to Ogunquit for massages at the Cliff House Spa and lunch at MC Perkins Cove.  We have wanted to eat at MCPC ever since it opened a few years ago, because the owners are known for running Arrows Restaurant, the local-food mecca of Maine (Bostonians, take note -- they have also recently opened a restaurant called Summer Winter, in the Burlington Marriott).  The food is great, and the view, below, is just as good, if not better.

My father's house in Denmark is every bit as relaxing as we had hoped, and we spent days doing nothing more than cooking, chatting, sleeping and drinking (with the exception of one very taxing game of miniature golf).  The weather was amazing -- mostly sunny, warm, and breezy.  It was pretty rough.  Here's the view of Hancock Pond from the lawn.

And here is the all-important hammock.

My father and Bernice used the proceeds from a yard sale last year to buy a little sailboat (aptly named Yard Sail) and this was the week to put it in the water.  Below, Susy and our friend Rick tie it to the dock after Susy gave it a test-row.  The mast and sail are obviously not yet in place.

Yard Sail at twilight.

The next day, it was time for its maiden voyage.  Bernice and our friends Rule and Elayne hoisted the sail...

...prepared for take-off...

...and sailed away!

Dad and Lucy (and I) watched from the dock.

Where there's smoke, there's fire.

In the fall, native and veteran Californians warned me that, although Bay Area winters may not be as cold as I'm used to, and although I would never see snow or ice in San Jose, I should prepare for frequent and unpleasant winter rains.  We had a few intense rain storms -- you may remember that we spent one of those in Sonoma -- but overall, it didn't seem that rainy.  Turns out it was a dry and mild winter, and now Northern California is paying the price.  East Bay communities, facing a dwindling water supply, started water rationing over a month ago.  And everything is so dry that fire has become a serious threat in many parts of the state.  According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, there are currently fires burning in Amador, Butte, Santa Cruz, Tehama, and Monterey Counties.  Fires in Sonoma, Tuolumne, Sacramento, Madera, El Dorado, and Kern Counties have been contained within the last week.

Last night, as my train headed south from San Francisco, I noticed that what had been a sunny day was turning dark earlier than normal.  It appeared that we were driving toward a very dense, very large storm cloud.  This may not seem strange to those of you in other parts of the country.  In fact, it looked a lot like one of those summer thunderstorms that can blacken the sky in a matter of minutes, particularly common in upstate New York.  However, it does not rain in California after March or so.  Certainly not in June.  Not ever.  I had read online about some new fires in Santa Cruz county, south of San Jose, but I didn't think they could produce that amount of smoke.  The effect was creepy -- the picture above, taken from our patio at about 8:00 PM last night, gives you an idea, but it doesn't really do it justice.

According to the San Jose Mercury-News, the cloud was smoke from the fire in the Ventana Wilderness of the Los Padres National Forest in Monterey County, about 90 miles south of here.  This is the largest fire burning now, covering 23,575 acres -- approximately the size of Worcester, Massachusetts.

I don't think we'll ever be in any danger here, near downtown San Jose -- there's hardly enough vegetation to sustain that kind of fire.  But it's sobering to step outside and smell the fire, or see a sky of smoke.

Hot dogs, meet haute cuisine

For Stacey's birthday back in March, I gave her tickets to the Red Sox-A's game on Friday.  My cousins Rick and Steve and their wives Jessica and Kendra joined us for a night at the Oakland Coliseum, which I had been led to believe would be an easy Red Sox win.  Not so -- but we had fun anyway.

Yesterday was my birthday, so we spent the morning relaxing at a nearby spa.  For dinner, we had made reservations to eat at Manresa, one of the most talked-about restaurants in the Bay Area.  It has earned two Michelin stars and four Mobil stars, and has been included on Gourmet Magazine's list of the Top 50 Restaurants in America, Gayot's Top 40, and Restaurant Magazine's best 50 restaurants in the world for two years running.  It is also about twenty minutes from our house, in ritzy Los Gatos.  Of course, we had to try it.

The meal was one of the best we've had in years -- impeccable service, surprising flavors, and perfectly seasoned, perfectly cooked dishes.  To start, we were treated to a succession of three amuse bouches: an olive-sized spring pea and garden lettuce croquette, crispy on the outside with a hot, liquid center; a Pemaquid oyster in a briny sea-water gelee; and a Manresa staple, an egg yolk poached with sea salt and chives, dressed with a sherry vinegar cream and a bit of maple syrup, and served in its own shell.  The egg was my favorite part of the meal, and easily one of the most delicious things I've eaten in years.  Salty, sweet, acidic and creamy -- I scraped the last little bits out of my shell and wished for more.

We ordered the four-course menu, which for Stacey consisted of crispy mussels perfumed with nasturtium flowers and served with vegetables and curry spices; Monterey Bay abalone with leeks, oysters, wine and walnuts; poached and roasted farm poularde with pea porridge, cepes and ramps; and spring carrot pudding cakes with fromage blanc fritters, pistachio praline, carrot sorbet and pansy flower consomme.  I had fennel bulb soup with duck confit, cranberry bread croquant and mustard cream; Atlantic hake with braised fava beans and sorrel, served in oxtail consomme; roast lamb with cauliflower cream, salted Meyer lemon, purslane and garden roots; and rhubarb granita with reine de pres (an herb, known in English as meadowsweet) ice cream, bunuelos, sweet and sour strawberries and tapioca.  I tried everything Stacey ordered and it was all delicious.  The carrot dessert was perhaps more notable for creativity than deliciousness.  It showcased how sweet carrots are, how many ways you might serve them, but ultimately wasn't what I'd want for dessert.  I did love the contrasts in my own dessert: the icy, slightly bitter granita, the sweet-sour strawberries, the rich-creamy tapioca, herbal-creamy ice cream, and light, sweet, fried bunuelos.  I also particularly loved my creamy fennel soup and the hake and oxtail consomme -- I am a sucker for oxtails.  After dinner, we were offered coffee or an exceptionally beautiful array of Chinese teas, hand-sewn into intricate shapes that unfurl just so in hot water.  The sunset oolong I chose entered my glass teapot as a dry, dusty-green ball with a pink sunburst on it, and slowly transformed into what looked like a water lily floating on the surface of a very delicate tea.  We were given handmade chocolate-armagnac truffles, and on our way out we were met by a maitre d' holding a large glass jar full of wrapped candies.  They turned out to be rich, soft, buttery housemade caramels, flecked with vanilla beans and slightly crunchy with sea salt crystals.  They put every other sea salt caramel I've ever had to shame.

The rest of the weekend promises to be low-key.  I am perfectly happy to do a little laundry, write a few emails, watch the last Ugly Betty, and be grateful for an extra day off work.  We hope you are all enjoying your Memorial Day weekends as much as we are.

Congratulations Jeff and Loa!

My cousin Jeff married Loa this past Saturday at a beautiful winery up in the hills of Los Gatos.  We're very happy for them.  (The photo above was taken by my sister Becky.  My photos of the ceremony didn't come out very well).

Becky, Kendra and Susy during the cocktail hour

Bernice, Dad and Aunt Sue

There was a digital photo booth at the reception, and we all enjoyed taking silly pictures.  Actually, ours weren't so silly -- we thought they were pretty cute.

Peonies, opened.

East Bay Weekend

On Friday I finished the last of my spring semester school work, which means I am free from school until August 25th.  Stacey and I celebrated with a weekend trip to the Berkeley area, our primary goal being dinner at Chez Panisse.

We started with a slight detour to a couple of favorite wineries in the southern part of Sonoma County.  We had wine to pick up from our Gloria Ferrer wine club, so we had a few glasses of bubbly and then, needing whites for summer, bought some Viognier and Pinot Gris at Cline Cellars.

Next stop: Berkeley.  Arriving early at our hotel and finding it un-air-conditioned (one of many unpleasant surprises), we walked a couple of blocks to explore Telegraph Avenue, which was admittedly kind of icky.  Maybe I am too old to appreciate several blocks full of tie-dyed t-shirts, incense, hemp necklaces, used merchandise, and many hole-in-the-wall restaurants (one hole-in-the-wall is fine though! We stopped at tiny Top Dog for hot dogs.  Good, but no match for Puka Dog).  Next we hit the Berkeley Art Museum, which was across from our hotel.  It was also not air-conditioned (what is the deal with Berkeley?) and the art was, well, not very good.  We ended up watching TV in our stuffy hotel room until it was time for dinner.

 I've wanted to eat at Chez Panisse for a long time, but Berkeley is about an hour's drive for us and reservations need to be made a month in advance.  My first weekend of freedom seemed like a proper occasion.  I was a bit nervous that I would be disappointed; the Chez Panisse name carries such weight that it seemed likely that our dinner wouldn't live up to our high expectations.  In the end, everything was delicious: the bread, the butter, my little gem lettuce with green goddess dressing and roasted beets and Stacey's brandade toasts with frisee.  For an entree, I had spaghetti with Hog Island clams and marjoram (simple but delicious, which is the Chez Panisse MO).  But what really blew us away was Stacey's halibut.  We have both had plenty of halibut in our time, but I have never had anything this tender and pure-tasting.  It was served with snap peas, mushrooms and chervil butter.  Yum.

This morning we went to the cafe at Oliveto in Oakland for breakfast.  Oliveto was founded by a Chez Panisse alum, and has the same seasonal/local food focus, so it was on my list of Bay Area restaurants to visit.  Since we are not in the East Bay very often, I was glad to see the downstairs cafe is open all day, including for breakfast.  After polishing off (with a great deal of my help) an excellent wood-fired breakfast pizza with pancetta and topped with two eggs, Stacey declared it the best breakfast she has had in a long time.  I enjoyed a bowl of rib-sticking polenta served with milk and poached fruit.

On to Berkeley's Scharffen Berger Chocolate Factory.  Scharffen Berger is one of the few first-tier chocolate makers in the United States (meaning they oversee every step of the chocolate-making process, from bean to bar).  We enjoyed our free tour, from the chocolate samples to the hair nets to the intoxicating chocolate smell that hits you when you walk into the factory.  All of the chocolate is made in a small, hundred-year-old building with antique European machines.  We picked up some bars to go.

Last stop: Fourth Street in Berkeley, mostly because I wanted to go to Sketch Ice Cream, which I read about recently in a New York Times article.  In order to make room in our tummies, we did a little shopping.  We bought fresh asparagus-chive ravioli to cook for dinner, browsed home boutiques, and Stacey bought me the most beautiful deep red peonies.  I love peonies, but I have never seen them in this color.

  

We ended our trip at Sketch, with cups of cardamom and rhubarb ice cream, swirled.  Success.