Dreamchasers Part Two

So…we loaded up the truck and we moved to ?

We had exactly seven days from the time we returned home from house sitting in Napa Valley until the time we had to have a moving truck fully loaded and 2pm closing slot at the attorney’s office.

It was a whirlwind and we had little time to figure out what we would pack for long term storage and what we would take along on our flight. (What we didn’t know at the time was that we would not find a house that would be available until October and our flight took off on September 5th.)

So we are now living in a Residence Inn. Temporarily. It’s interesting that we are really okay with this. We are really peaceful and enjoying the fact that for this short time our chores are limited to running errands and limited cooking on our two burner stove. Our sons think they are Zach and Cody (if you have children that ever watch the Disney channel you know who these characters are!) and pretty much run the place.

We have been functioning on one car even though Kyle is working 1 ½ hours away from the hotel. Thankfully we have shopping nearby and a family with kids our kids age nearby and willing to pick us up for playdates at the park.

On the other hand, one of the great things about following our dream to live in California is that I have access to abundant produce at inexpensive prices. I went to a produce stand called Larry’s on Tuesday and left with a wheelbarrow (yes a wheelbarrow!) full of produce for $16. My two boys plow through fruit so I stocked up on melons, nectarines, grapes and Asian pears. I also picked up artichokes (3/$1), fennel (also 3/$1 and a great find for me. I used to splurge on this in Texas for $2.99 apiece because I love it so much.), shallots, swiss chard, (69 cents a bunch, unheard of!!!) butternut squash, (75 cents for a huge one) red and yellow peppers, onions and garlic. I was having cooking withdrawals and with all this produce I can now get a fix or two!

We are in the process of looking for a place to call home (and have our truck full of our things delivered) and what our working lives are going to look like. Kyle is working at coffee house right now and although it isn’t in any way paying the bills (with a 1 ½ hours drive it is barely paying for the gas) it is fulfilling to him because it is a job he has always wanted to do. We want to continue working together possibly doing wine dinners and preparing meals for busy families. Kyle wants to learn about winemaking and this time of year is perfect. In fact he is going to work a harvest for the oldest winery in St. Helena in the next week or so. Again, probably no pay, but a couple of bottles of great wine and an incredible experience.

I know that one of these days we will look back at this time and either laugh or think “how did we do that?” It is part of this crazy journey of following our dreams. It doesn’t always look like what you think it will. It is never easy and right now it is not paying our bills, but we are happy and believe that when you do what you love you will prosper. Stick with us on this journey and see what happens. Or…start your own journey and share with us along the way what yours looks like.

Dreamchasers

It's been quite awhile since I last posted. Life has taken a drastic turn since then. We knew we loved food and wine. We knew we loved our time in California. We knew we wanted to truly live our life and follow our dreams. The only thing we didn't know was how quickly it would happen.

We just returned from a three week trip back in "paradise" (see "For the Love of Wine") this time with our boys. Our point was to more closely observe the town we love and "semi-live" there to see if it fit our family. While there our home sold ultra-quickly and we found out we had to be out of our house before the end of August.

Now we are beginning to see our dreams come true of living where the quality of life is measured by walks in the woods, trout fishing, going to the town bakery and lots of family time. We love having access to unlimited fresh fruits and vegetables and we have all fallen for Trader Joe's. The cool evenings and mornings caused my kids to actually want to stay outside for hours at a time.

It has been a challenge at times realizing that our tidy, safe world has so quickly changed and we still don't have all the logistics nailed down, but we know that it is worth it to do what we love. It is still better than the misery of the days of looking at life and seeing our dream so far "out there".

I'm looking forward to a new palette of produce to work with in creating menus and recipes for our TablaVie menu members and we are all looking forward to the wine "crush" for the next two months. We also look forward to many meals around the Table of Life (TablaVie) with our established friends and our new friends in California.

In the last two months we have learned that to truly follow your dreams you must be willing to accept the journey. Sometimes it is scary, sometimes it is fun, but no matter what...it is a rush!

Got a dream...join us and chase yours!

For the Love of Wine

The question was posed..."We have a 1983 Bordeaux that needs a great meal with it. Would you come to California and cook for us and 10 friends?"

Hmmm...amazing well-aged French wine, cooking with the freshest ingredients available in the wine country, spending time with friends we haven't seen in awhile...that was a tough one.

So...a little over a week ago, we said good-bye to our boys, hopped on a plane and spent almost a week in paradise.

(No I'm not a drama queen, I'm a city dwelling Texan where we don't have fruit trees loaded with fruit hanging around in back yards, we don't have quiet outdoor spaces and we don't have breezes that keep evening temps hovering in the low 60's and where we do have mosquitoes the size of small birds, sub-tropical humidity and suffocating heat even at midnight. So for me, Northern CA truly is paradise.)

After a couple of days of relaxing with friends and collecting ingredients (roadside stands for as many things as we could find) Kyle and I started the prep for this meal to highlight the special guest--a 1983 Chateau Pichon Lalande--among other "friends" for the other courses. Here was the final menu:

Redwood Farms Goat Cheese, Marinated Roasted Red Peppers, Citrus Herb Marinated Olives, Candied Tomatoes, and Grilled Flatbread
Mumm Napa Brut Reserve

Grilled Corn, Radicchio, and Giant Prawn Salad
Flight of California Chardonnays
(Rombauer, Robert Young and Cuvaison)

Alderwood Hot-Smoked Copper River Salmon with Mixed Sauteed Greens with Garlic and Toasted Pine Nuts
Flight of French Pinot Noirs

Pan seared filet, carmelized shallots, and crispy mushrooms
1983 Chateau Pichon Lalande

Hazelnut brown butter tart, creme anglaise and grilled apricots
20 year aged Tawny Port

As we began prepping and tasting we knew the food was good, but what we hadn't accounted for was the symbiosis that happens when paired with extraordinary wine. During the evening I realized that every pairing was better than I imagined when planning the menu.

Pairing highlights to remember:

• Grilled corn with toasty, buttery Chardonnays!
• Sauteed bitter greens with earthy French Pinots
• Classic of course, aged Bordeaux with beef. Trendy it isn't, but always unbelievable!
• but the OhMyGosh of the evening...Aged Tawny Port with the Hazelnut Brown Butter Cake...the brown butter and toasty (almost burnt) hazelnuts really played off the butterscotch overtones of the port. (Sidenote: The next day at Prager Winery in Napa I tasted a White Port which tastes like a hazelnut butter cookie all by itself but with this cake, it would be off the charts!)

When we got that phone call from our friend we knew it was a serendipity for us. What we didn't fully know was how refreshing it would be to be around the candlelit table with 12 other people (you see we were invited to join the dinner, too, not just cook and serve!) and talk about the beauty of life, friends, great food and wine and following your dreams! Going well after midnight and starting at 6:30, we left there with 10 new friends and the desire to continue to run after our dreams and truly enjoy life. This is what life at the table is all about!

Print out one of our menus, invite several friends, have them bring appetizers, dessert and a salad and spend an entire evening at the table together. Dream together, laugh together, inspire each other, enjoy life around the table!!!

Garden Gratefulness

Anytime you start a new business, there are the times you think "what have I done" and the times you know "this is what it's all about".

This morning was one of those knowing times. Eliot said "come on, Mommy, let's go check out the garden". He knows the keys to my heart. "Mommy, you're beautiful", "Mommy let's cook something", and then the garden one. Before I go on, let me digress to explain what garden means to pseudo metropolitan dwellers.

My garden is a 1 x 6 foot raised bed that has 6 varieties of herbs, 4 of tomatoes, 2 of bell peppers, 1 cucumber (the pickling variety, my sons like the tiny ones), and 1 sugar baby watermelon. I worked very hard to get a good sampling of what might grow in hopes that one of these days I can have a larger, more productive garden. That's really a dream considering clay is the primary natural material. The other major problem that I came up against was the fact that my mother and my grandmother both say they can't grow anything. I succombed to thebelief that this was probably true for me until this year when I decided I could change this belief. I am a catalyst for change in this world. It's what I was placed on this earth to do, so in a very minute way, I set out to change this generational myth. Now we have this experimental garden that is blooming nicely.

Ironically, it was really Eliot who began the change. He took a handful of mixed seeds and through them into what we have dubbed his and Harrison's garden, a clay-packed old whiskey barrel. We have now had several meals starring Haricot Verts--those very tender and sweet little French green beans--and a few Sugar Snap peas. We would have had more, except Harrison has had many between meal snacks straight from the vines. So, the nonchalance and confidence of my little boy helped me see that it's not that big of a deal. Just plant and water and watch it grow. Relax and enjoy what comes up. Bond with those in the garden with you. Like the dinner table, it's a connecting place.

Anyway, to finish the story of Eliot in the garden we looked at my garden for a minute and discovered two possible watermelons and many blooms on the tomatoes, but the sweetest thing was discovering another "crop" of the beans in their garden and picking them together. He patted me sweetly on the back and said "Mommy, I'm glad we did this together. Picking stuff from the garden is one of my favorite things to do with you."

It made me grateful. Grateful that I didn't let negative thoughts keep me from planting a garden. Grateful that I didn't let busyness keep me from going outside with my son. Grateful that we took the plunge as family to follow our dreams and go the opposite way of the majority of the world. Today was one of those knowing days...

"Fresh Bread" BLOG Begins Today!

TablaVie in essence means Table of Life. A two-fold meaning, we want TablaVie to represent a place on the internet where you can “sit down” and be inspired to truly live versus survive life. But of course, we also want families to sit down to their own Tables of Life by not only enjoying time around the dinner table, but enjoying healthy life-giving meals on the dinner table.

It’s no longer enough to pick up fast food and gather at the dinner table and talk about the day. Everyday new research and statistics are coming out about the epidemic of childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes.

We started TablaVie to give busy people the tools (such as full menus each week and organized grocery list) to prepare healthy meals without the aid of unhealthy processed foods. We also want to share with you everyday experiences with the hope of inspiring you to find out how you can truly enjoy your life instead of just making it through each day.

We made the plunge into a different lifestyle last year when my amazing husband Kyle quit his job to become a stay at home dad and we could pursue our dreams of working together and traveling together as a family. The financial challenges of starting a new business (this website) are nothing compared to the awesome experience of spending everyday together.

One of my sweetest experiences of the last week was last Thursday. We went to our local strawberry farm and picked 15, yes 15 pounds of strawberries! Besides the joy of being out in the clear sunny weather on an urban farm, my four year old son Eliot said in a series of statements--"These are so beautiful, Mommy!" "This is so fun!" “I found the biggest strawberry ever”, "Mommy, when we get home I am going to make you a recipe with these."--It made all the hard work of starting up a new business worth it!

We started this website with the desire to have a different lifestyle as a family. We didn't want the daily grind, we wanted to truly live and have the flexibility of running our business whether we were in an internet cafe in Europe or in our backyard at home.

This BLOG "Fresh Bread" has been brewing in my heart for awhile. I have been walking around seeing and doing things and thinking "I wish I could share these experiences with our TablaVie audience." Our desire with both our website TablaVie.com and "Fresh Bread" is to help others realize how they, too can learn to live instead of survive life by watching our everyday experiences.

Thanks for visiting us. Return to www.tablavie.com.