April 20, 2012 Neighborhood Cocktail Party.

April 20, 2012 Neighborhood Cocktail Party.

I woke up early this morning and made chocolate chip cookies with craisins and raisins and dark and semi-sweet chocolate chips and about ½ cup of barley flakes and about 1 tsp. of last year’s dried lavender from our garden. 

Then at 7:00 I grabbed a chilled bottle of Corrales Winery Reisling 2010 and drove to the Crecca’s house around the corner.  Alex and Sara Crecca hosted the neighborhood in their lovely, expanded and remodeled home.  There must have been about forty old and new neighbors casually chatting in the Creccas’ large open two story high space comprising their kitchen/family room that opens to outdoor patios on both ends by large French doors.  Very dramatic.  It seems like everyone in the neighborhood has been remodeling recently.  

Lots of interesting small talk.  For example, Eleanore Macnish stopped me cold in my tracks wearing an absolutely dazzling necklace of glass beads she had made with Murano glass, so we had to talk about staying in Murano and visiting glass blowing factories and how much more pleasant and small town like Murano is than crowded, touristy Venice.  Jim and Diane Souder had just returned from Turkey, so I enjoyed talking to Jim about their travels and they congratulated me on having another child graduate college.  Willy will graduate from U. of British Columbia on May 24 and we will travel there starting May 18 with my brother Billy and his wife, Elaine, but more immediate impressions about that later.  Dale Alverson had just returned from a telemedicine conference in the Ukraine.  When he said that the Ukraine was a world leader in telemedicine, he did not have to say it but I thought that that was an obvious solution for a region that has a 50 to 100 mile exclusion zone around the contaminated Chernobyl reactors.

I have noticed in the last year that the quality of food and wine has improved dramatically at neighborhood cocktail parties.  As Rex Throckmorton said, “It seems like only a year or two ago that there were only chips and dips.”  The best dish, hands down, was a beet and greens salad with a light slightly vinegary dressing (perhaps rice wine vinegar). A close second was Jennifer Bean’s healthy shrimp in a creamy garlic sauce made with sour cream. 

The wines were great, I had several Malbecs I had never tried before but the surprise wines were the pinot noirs.  I drank Cambria, Coppola, Beringer and several others.

After lots of good wine and food, I drove Mecon McCrossen home around 10:15 p.m. and had a chance to hear about her wonderful recent trip to the Atlantic coast of Mexico and the great food she ate in the Vera Cruz area.

I love my neighborhood and neighbors. 

Suzette has to attend a health fair tomorrow morning in Tucumcari, so she is out of town tonight.          Salud