Pie!

When you see a sign on the side of the road that says Fresh Pie Ahead, you've gotta stop, right?

Turns out the PieRanch has pies and much more. It's a local nonprofit that teaches school children about food and farming education.

Go to pieranch.org

Cookie at the Roadhouse

Almost too pretty to eat.

Breakfast!

Just out of Santa Cruz we stumble onto the Davenport Roadhouse. It's been here since 1906, but we just found it! It's exactly the kind of roadside place one dreams of finding. And the food is all organic from the local farms.

I ordered Zucchini and Potato Latkes! I'm in heaven. And it is delicious!

I also got a fabulous heart shape shortbread cookie. And the coffee is wonderful, too.

We may have to linger for lunch...

Castroville

Miles and miles of artichokes and strawberries.

The artichokes are 10 for $1.

At our market at home they're often 4.99 each!

The Birthday Boy

Heading out of Big Sur...for parts unknown to us.

Driving North

Leaving Big Sur and its extra-ordinary scapes--seascapes and mountainscapes.

Day 2

At 7:18 am we pack up from room 61 at the Big Sur Lodge, and head north on Highway 1. We had reservations for another night, and had fully looked forward to hiking--really it's more like strolling--in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, seeing the mind-boggling McWay Waterfall with its 80-foot drop into the ocean, and taking our favorite Andrew Molera Trail out to the bluffs overlooking the Pacific.

But when we woke up this morning, we were both sort of surprised that we agreed, Been there, done that.

For those reading this blog in anticipation of your upcoming road trip--Charles, Judith, Noelle, to name just a few--these places in Big Sur are some of my favorite places on the planet. So much so that in the almost-8 years Ed and I have known each other this was our 5th trip to Big Sur! However, for us we wanted to get to the parts of the road trip that will be a new experience.

A note about where we stayed. The first time we came to Big Sur the only place we could get a room was at the Big Sur Lodge, which is smack in the middle of Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. We were disappointed we couldn't get into the swanky Post Ranch, and that Ventana, the other nice place in the area, was closed for renovation.

But over the years we've fallen in love with the Big Sur Lodge. It's a little like Motel 6, but they have spruced the rooms up. A bit. But it's totally outdoorsy, and that's what we have come to Big Sur for.

Ed's First Birthday Dinner🎈We encounter our first "candle policy."

We have returned to the Big Sur Bakery and Cafe. We've had many memorable, special meals here in the past. It's a crazy-looking place that you could drive right past thinking it was just the Shell gas pumps out front.

The mixed greens salad tasted so fresh it's as though the greens were just plucked from the garden out back.

Unfortunately, it was downhill from there. If you closed your eyes, you could not tell what my "grilled salmon + red pepper beurre blanc" was. It didn't taste like fish. And Ed was sawing away at the gristle on his "Niman ranch New York steak."

But then we ordered a special birthday desert. When I placed our reservation I had said it was my husband's birthday. Tonight our waiter said, "We have a candle policy.". I'm thinking--wildfires and no candles?

The waiter says, "No birthday candles."

Big Sur is too hipster for birthday candles?

2nd Pit Stop--Lunch

Drivers have switched, and now I'm driving.

We've stayed on 101, and zoomed past Buellton and Industrial Eats. This was a big restaurant recommendation from our pal, Nanette, who knows really good food. However, after Montecito we weren't ready for another stop. Yet.

If we'd taken the inland route 154, we would've also zoomed past Los Olivos and my very favorite Los Olivos Cafe--wonderful delicious food, great wines. Worth a stop, but we were eager to get to Big Sur. This is probably our longest day of driving--324 miles from home to Big Sur.

At 206 miles at Cambria we have lunch at the French Corner Bakery. It's okay. Nothing to write home about, as Mom would've said.

At 250 miles we're driving alongside the rugged sea with choppy white caps, and for miles and miles the California poppies and ice plants are in full gorgeous neon bloom along the shoulder of the road.

First Pit Stop

At 63 miles--Montecito. Jeannine's for coffee and strawberry scone for me, and chocolate chip scone for Ed. I had suggested a quick stop at Pierre La Fond just for coffee. Ed suggested Jeannine's. He said, Let's get a pastry. As long as we're gonna do it, let's do it right." The tone for the road trip is set!

Road Trip Diary - Day 1

Day 1 - 47 miles just north of Camarillo, near Seacliff, the hills alongside highway 1 are alive with mustard plants. It's a gorgeous, happy sight after our spring rains. No worries. I'm not blogging and driving. The birthday boy from Kentucky is driving.

Fleeting Beauty

When my Mom, who was called Babe, lived in a senior community in Houston, and I was in Southern California, every spring I sent her tulips. Armloads of yellow tulips. Because they are so cheerful, like bursts of sunshine.

One morning I’m placing my phone order again with the person in the flower department at Central Market, a grocery close to where Babe lived. “We love the tulips so much,” I sighed, “but it’s such a shame they don’t last very long.”

Clearly exasperated with the customer on the phone (me), the clerk said, “My husband and I love weimaraners. They don’t live very long, either But we love them while they’re with us. Just enjoy the beauty of the tulips while you have them.”

In a recent story in the New York Times, Susan Orlean, the novelist, cradling a bouquet of tightly packed yellow French tulips, said, “For me, cut flowers convey an urgent need for beauty that will be gone in a day or two. It’s not permanent. It’s about experiencing something intensely for a really short period of time."

Babe and I and the yellow tulips would agree. This is my second spring without Babe, and I would give anything if I could send her yet one more bunch of intensely beautiful, if short-lived, yellow tulips.

First Day of Spring!

Spring is here… Ta-dah!

swing! at little bear ranch

When Ed and I started rebuilding Little Bear Ranch, our place in Bozeman, Montana, I knew I wanted the place to be fun and playful.  It’s a retreat–big enough to share and enjoy with family and friends.  And Bozeman is a place where we love to hike, usually to a waterfall.  And Ed enjoys taking friends fishing, often on the Yellowstone.  It’s a place to picnic in summer, and hike with the wolves in winter.

Swinging from living room into dining room

So.  What’s more fun than having a swing inside?   In the living room.  It’s easy, simple, carefree, and pretty much captures the spirit of  life at Little Bear Ranch.

Why the name Little Bear Ranch?  Because the black bear in our kitchen wasn’t little and the place really isn’t a ranch.  So it’s a joke name that Ed came up with on the spur of the moment, and it fits.  Though a Bozeman friend assured us that any property in Montana that has bear, deer, elk, and moose qualifies as a ranch.

babe’s memorial banner

These colorful Bhutanese prayer flags, which give out goodwill and accumulate blessings,  had been flying in our Malibu backyard.

They were replaced this morning with a white traditional banner that the Bhutanese fly to honor their dead.

Good friends, Linda and John,  were recently in Bhutan and located a memorial banner, which I received last week.

In Bhutan these memorial banners are flown in vertical clusters.  My friends were told that it was okay if I flew Babe’s banner horizontally.

Mom enjoying our new backyard just two years ago.

gladys “babe” giese 1916-2014

My colorful, fun-loving, party-going, always dressed-to-the-hilt, Scotch-and-soda-drinking, 97 year-old Mom, known as Babe, died last Friday, May 9.

I arrived in Houston just in time to spend the last evening with Mom, my brother, Jim, and his wife, Lynn.  Mom died the next morning in her own bed, in her own bedroom with Lovie–isn’t that the most perfect name for a caregiver–and me nearby.  After she died, I peeked under the covers, and sure enough Babe’s nails had been freshly manicured in her favorite Pin-Up Pink polish.

The week before she’d attended a Seafood Gumbo Feast down in Beach City.  When I’d asked her if she was really up to the 100-mile round-trip journey, because by then she was wheelchair-bound, she said she didn’t want to miss out.  Good for her!

For the first time in ten years I’ll be able to travel without the thought looming in the wings: How do I get home fast if I need to?  That will be a huge relief.  But I’ll miss taking photos on our travels, and sending them home to Mom.  And then calling Mom from wherever we are in the world, and with the photos in front of her, Mom saying, “I feel like I’m on the trip with you.”  Right.

In the first week without Mom, what I’m mostly feeling is absence–the absence of presence.  Mom’s presence.  I look at the clock, and think it’s time to check in with Mom and her caregivers.  And then I catch myself, and my chest tightens like a vise.

eating fried in the south

We know that eating fried is not supposed to be very good for us.  However, Mark Bittman, Food Editor, NY Times, tells us that fried food isn’t so bad; it all depends on the oil in which the food is fried.  That’s nice.  But when we’re eating out, how do we know which oil the kitchen is using, and sometimes, maybe, we just don’t care.

This Easter week Ed and I flew to Washington, D.C., and after checking into the Four Seasons, our first big treat was to go tothe bar at their Steak and Bourbon Restaurant, and order french fries–three flavors, three sauces–the pyramid of extra-thick onion rings, and the truffled popcorn!  A white wine for me, a martini for Ed, completed the decadence.   This post-airplane flight ritual of ours is a guilty pleasure we don’t feel guilty about.

The Four Seasons, D.C.

Three Flavors of Fries–Three Dipping Sauces

Fried Onions Pyramid

Spartanburg, South Carolina

Next we visited Ed’s sister in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Myrta and Dave took us to Beacon’s, a down home fried food emporium since 1946.  It’s the kind of dive where you stand in line with your plastic tray, and the counter man yells your order to the fry cook.   Right.  The frycook.  To try and taste everything fried I ordered their sweet potato fries, fried chicken wings, fried onion rings, and with his burger Ed had french fries.

There were items we missed that we look forward to sampling on our next visit–fried gizzards, fried hush puppies, and the fried liver mush.

Beacon's

Fried Onion Rings, Chicken Wings, and Sweet Potato Fries

Happy but with a greasy feeling in my mouth, I couldn’t help but notice that the Beacon Drive-in take-out menu has an ad for Forest Hills, a local funeral home.

The American Grocery, Greenville, S.C.

In Greenville at the famous American Grocery, which has a national reputation of being an upscale gourmet restaurant, I kept with the same Southern theme, and ordered–fried.

A Cone of Fried Chicken Skins

For starters we had honey fried chicken skin (a paper cone filled with them), fried deviled egg (!), fried kale (kale fritters with yoghurt, and yoghurt is healthy, right?), fried veal sweetbreads, and fried soft shell crab.

Fried Kale

Who ever heard of a fried hard-boiled egg?  It was ridiculously delicious.

Fried Deviled Egg

Ed, Jo, Myrta and Dave–The Happy Foursome on the Fried Adventure

After pigging out for days, at the end of our adventure I reluctantly stepped on the scale in our hotel room in Chicago.  I had not gained any fried weight.  How was that possible?

Now we’re back home in healthy Malibu where Fried is seriously frowned upon.  Did our City Council pass a healthy green ordinance and outlaw Fried within our City boundaries?

living life in radical amazement

David Brooks wrote a column about religion (NYT Jan 28, 2014), and hequoted Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who said, “Our goal should be to live in radical amazement…get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted.  Everything is phenomenal…To be spiritual is to be amazed.

The rabbi was talking about religion, but right now I feel the same radical amazement about Montana in winter.  How can one not be amazed–have your breath taken away–by the beauty of a stand of winter willows?