Tag Archives: Mom

Pomegranate Harvest

Pomegranate Harvest

We had the pleasure of having my precious Mom here for just over three weeks. She wanted to contribute, so was given the job of checking the pomegranate trees for ripe fruit, then picking and seeding them (and a couple of other jobs as well, but not as fun as this one).

Our Pomegranate Queen!

We had a beautiful rain and, unlike most days when there are one or perhaps two ready, we had over a dozen bursting and ready to harvest the day following when the sun came out. We managed to give a few of them away, but Mom faithfully seeded the ones we were left with and put them in containers in the fridge for our consumption.

Pomegranate Harvest

Pomegranates are absolutely DELICIOUS when picked off the tree, as any fresh fruit is, and we kept Mom very busy with this task. I promised to make her a very famous Mexican dish called Chiles en Nogada, but we just ran out of time. I committed to practicing and making them for her next year and I made my first batch last night, inspired by a recipe from the Atlantic magazine by Rick Bayless.

Traditional Chiles en Nogada originates from Puebla, is tied to the independence of Mexico, and celebrates the three colors of the Mexican flag: green from the Poblano chile, white from the walnut cream sauce, and red from the pomegranate seeds. This dish is usually served at room temperature, but I reheated the chiles, stuffed with picadillo (a mixture of ground lamb, fruits and spices), then topped them with the cold walnut cream sauce and garnished with the pomegranate seeds. I served the Chiles en Nogada with steamed romanesco, beautiful and fresh from the organic market up the street.

Chiles en Nogada and Steamed Romanesco

This is definitely a time-consuming dish to prepare, but I look forward to making it for Mom next year when she visits. It’s the least I can do for all the pomegranates that she picked and painstakingly seeded for all of us to enjoy!

Ahhh….The Amazing Fragrance of Lilacs

Lilacs on my birthday  have been a tradition as long as I can remember and no birthday seems complete without them.  Yesterday was no exception.

My precious Mom was concerned that the lilacs would be finished by the time I get back to Canada towards the end of this month.  Bless her resourcefulness, as she took her iPad out to my favourite dark purple lilac tree and took some pictures to ensure I would enjoy their beauty on my day.

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Ron managed to find a fresh lilac bouquet at the Bridgehampton Farmers’ Market on Friday: their exquisite fragrance fills my heart with memories.

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One of my favourite memories is of a card I received on my 50th birthday from my dear friend, Bettina. She had traveled to Italy with me to celebrate this milestone and she made the time there incredibly special. Outside our villa in San Gimignano was an archway of the most beautifully scented jasmine, of which Bettina picked a bouquet and had waiting for me when I awoke on my birthday. No lilacs that year, but the jasmine was an elegant substitute.

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Everything Bettina did was very special and appreciated, but the card she found and gifted me could not have been more perfect. She purchased the card years before and remembered to pull it out of her stash before we left Calgary. It was one of the most thoughtful things anyone has ever done for me and I’ll never forget its significance. Here are the words from that special card:

On the porch,

Many years from now…

~

You will sit on the swing

I will sit on the chair,

And the fragrance of lilacs

Will hang in the air

~

I will tell you a story

I’ve told you before,

We will laugh (like the last time)

And tell a few more

~

Then perhaps we will say it,

And perhaps we will not,

But both of our old hearts

Will be thinking this thought

~

That it’s good to be known,

And it’s good to be there,

Where the fragrance of lilacs

Hangs in the air

~

Ahhh…the amazing fragrance of lilacs.

On The Road To Land’s End – Again!

Every year, Ron and I head up to the BNP Paribas Open Tennis Tournament in Indian Wells, California (www.bnpparibasopen.com).  As always, we watched some fabulous tennis and had an opportunity to catch up with many special and long-time friends (Bonnie and Don, Pete and Tony, Judy, Peter, Bob and Roxy, Bob and Winnie and so many more).

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We drive to and from the tournament every year, which is approximately 1300 miles each way.  We’re on the road home as I write this and I’m remembering how much fun we had with my Mom on this same trip to Cabo last November.

My Mom has always loved every aspect of travel and makes every experience a great adventure.  It’s such a delight to be on the road with someone who takes everything in and enjoys every aspect.  She has a child-like sense of wonder and curiosity – it’s a true gift at any age and especially for someone now in her 80’s.

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We planned our trip down in November, just as we’ve done on this trip, to get to Mulegé to spend Saturday night at the Hotel Serinidad, a fly-in hotel that has been a Baja classic for decades (www.hotelserenidad.com).  Every Saturday night features the Serinidad’s famous pig roast, which lures people with small planes to fly in from the States or other parts of Mexico and for people like us who are driving, to plan our overnight stop for this weekly event.

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The staff at the Serinidad know how to do a pig roast well, and it has become a real highlight on our many trips up and down the Peninsula.  Mom LOVED it, and she enjoyed every aspect of this legendary and iconic hotel.  There are some great memories and stories at this hotel, with pictures on the walls from famous guests of years gone by like John “Duke” Wayne, June Allyson and Dick Powell.  We’ll stay overnight and get an early start to ensure that we arrive home in Cabo tomorrow night.

We wish Mom was with us again on this trip and we’ll be thinking of her tonight.  Hopefully she’ll be with us again for this amazing trip next November!

Cataviña and Cabañas Linda (NOT!)

Back in November, our little convoy of two vehicles (Ron in the lead and Mom and I following behind) left Ensenada in the cool of morning.  The air conditioning was working in the Lincoln now, so Mom and I knew we would be comfortable as the day progressed and the heat of the desert intensified.

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Driving the Baja can be extremely treacherous as shoulders don’t exist and the road is extremely narrow.  Highway 1 is the only highway that connects the US to the southern tip of the Baja, so there is a lot of tractor/trailer traffic combined with passenger vehicles.  Defensive driving is absolutely required as you take the winding roads and twist and climb through the mountains.  We travel using walkie talkies, and there have been many situations when Ron has told me it is clear to pass when any sane person wouldn’t even consider it!  Mom was a great sport and never showed any nervousness or concern – bless her for her faith and confidence in both of us.  The many white crosses and memorials along the way are vivid reminders of the inherent danger this highway presents its travellers.

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The beauty of this desert landscape is awe-inspiring.  The variety of cacti and scenery will surprise anyone visiting this apparent “last frontier” for the first time and I am amazed and thrilled every time we have the opportunity to see it.  There are so few people to have actually driven the Baja, and my precious Mom is now among them.  It is an incredible experience and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to share it with her.

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One of the contests that Ron and  I play when we drive the Baja is “Who Can Spot The First Boojum”.  This is what  CaboBob.com says about the boojum (otherwise known as cirio):

“The boojum looks like nothing else.  It is often described as a giant carrot growing upside-down, with its root sticking up to fifty feet in the air.  It has a trunk and leaves, but o branches until it’s at least a hundred years old, when the trunk divides into two of more whip-like tops.  A fifty year-old specimen might be a foot thick at its base, and less than five feet tall.  It’s one of the slowest growing plants in the world, at a rate of a foot every ten years, which means a mature fifty-footer may be more than 500 years old. 

This photograph by Eliot Porter, entitled Cirio Near Las Tres Virgenes Volcano, Baja California (1966) is from the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

After plentiful rainfall, the boojum “candle” sprouts a flame of yellow blossoms at its tip, and its trunk is covered with small green leaves.  When water is absent, it sheds all its leaves to preserve moisture within the trunk.  The boojum is abundant in this two hundred mile strip of desert, but the only other place it grows is a small patch at the same latitude across the Sea of Cortez, in the State of Sonora.”

Ron sees people and families when he looks at boojums and I see dancers.  They are rare and special and no two specimens look alike.  Mom enjoyed them immensely as well as the elephant trees, the cardón (the largest cactus in the world that can grow to over sixty feet tall – often mistaken for its northern cousin, the saguaro), and the hundreds (literally hundreds!) of other cactus varieties found throughout the Baja.

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Mom and Alberto beneath a massive cardón.

We’d had a long day driving and it was starting to threaten sunset.  We’d planned on getting to Cataviña by nightfall as the last thing you want to do is drive the Baja at night.  We caught a glimpse in the twilight of the Boulder Field of Cataviña, sorry that we’d missed them in the last light of afternoon but excited to know that we would instead see it in the early morning light the next day.

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There is a charming hotel, the Desert Inn, just off the highway that we’d planned on checking into.  It is an identical twin to a hotel in San Ignacio to the south and both form part of a group of six hotels from Ensenada to Loreto that were formerly called La Pinta.  We should have called ahead – the Desert Inn was fully booked as the Baja 1000 was well underway.  Lots of racers, chase and support teams and had taken up all of the rooms.   We quickly got back into our cars and raced back up the road to secure a room in the only other motel in this little town called Cabañas Linda (not the kind of place that you want as a namesake, believe me!).

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The word “linda” in Spanish means beautiful and, believe me, this motel was FAR from that description!  Other than driving on to Guerrero Negro, we really had no other choice unless we wanted to sleep in our cars.  Since that wasn’t an option, we secured the last two rooms available.

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The rooms were princess pink – from floor to ceiling – PINK!  We were laughing with some racers that were staying in a room next to our two rooms – a double bed and bunk beds that were top to bottom princess pink.  Hilarious!  Doors that wouldn’t lock, furniture that was picked up, we’re sure, at roadside flea markets, bedding that you definitely wanted to keep your clothes on to lay upon, and bathrooms fixtures that you stood well away from!

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Mom was a great sport about it all – in fact, far better than her daughter.  It was her first truly authentic Mexican experience outside of the tourist destinations that my parents traveled to over the years.  She said it reminded her of a story that my Dad told of staying somewhere once where he listened to the sound of beetles falling from the ceiling all night.  Sometimes you’re tired enough that you can sleep anywhere – literally!

At eleven o’clock, the motel turned out the generator that ran the lights and power and I worried that Mom would have trouble finding the bathroom when she got up in the night.  I thought knocking on her door to tell her what happened would scare her even more, so trusted that she would be careful and find her way safely.  Lesson learned: always have a small flashlight in your travel bag!

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The motel knew what they were doing as no one would stay there past day break and they had ample time to turn the rooms over.  They had a café on site that only served instant coffee, so everyone staying at the motel headed south to the Desert Inn for our cup of java instead.   We drove a short distance north again to take in the Boulder Field in the morning light.  Boulders as big as large buildings and cacti growing out of nothing but rock – absolutely amazing!

Cataviña Boulder Field

Cataviña Boulder Field