December 17, 2017 Breakfast – Flying Star. Lunch – Bagel with Cream Cheese and Lax. Hanukkah Dinner Party

December 17, 2017 Breakfast – Flying Star. Lunch – Bagel with Cream Cheese and Lax.  Hanukkah Dinner Party

I went Flying Star for a breakfast meeting with Marty.  He ate a bagel with cream cheese with jelly.  I ate a bowl of oatmeal with raisins, chopped walnuts and brown sugar.  The oatmeal was lovely but I felt it cost a bit much at $6.50.

I went home and toasted a bagel and smeared it with the new Greek cream cheese I bought at Sprouts for $2.00 and garnished it with slices of Lax, red onion, and capers.

Then I drove to Costco to buy cookies for a Hanukkah gift for Carole and Mark in the evening.  I decided to do a little Christmas Open house buying.  I bought a six pack of Conha y Toro Explorateur, a bottle of Kirkland Chateauneuf de Pape for $17.99, which is the cheapest price I have seen, and a bunch of cheeses, including a new small French cow cheese named Gese, a wedge of Manchego, and a wedge of Stilton, and a case of Modelo Negra and Especial.

I then drove to the Art Museum to see the Neuberger Collection and the permanent collection again.  I said hello to Mary and Joe and their docent friends.

Then I went home and rode to Montano and back and then dressed for dinner and picked Willy up at 5:00.

When we arrived at 5:30 Rachel was frying potatoes latkes.  Then the Druxmans arrived with a cheese ball and Rich and Barbara arrived with a basket of Mandelbrot.  As Carole said approvingly, “This the largest Hanukkah party we have had and it is the first with all Jews.”

I must say that it was a lovely evening that felt very special, perhaps because of the cultural bond we shared.  We started in the living room seated around a coffee table filled with Carole’s wonderful chicken liver and Jana’s cheese ball.

I poured wine, including a chilled Castel Garcia Vinho Verde white and my 2010 Wellington Mohrhardt Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon Sonoma County. Then I opened a 2014 Rodney Strong Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon.  I liked the Wellington for its clean fruitiness.  The Rodney Strong tasted muddy and slightly bitter, as if low quality grap juice had been mixed into it.

Then we moved to the dinner table and served ourselves Mark’s BBQ pot roast and BBQ roasted vegetables, and latkes.  When we sat down we added sour cream and Carole’s apple sauce with stewed diced apple chunks to the latkes.  Everything tasted great.

Conversations were great also.  Willy and I spent a lot of time talking to Rachel, who specializes in genealogy of her family.  We saw pictures from her trip to her ancestral village in Germany where she and her mother visited her Great grand mother’s grave in a Jewish cemetery.

After dinner after the mandelbrot and tea and coffee were served everyone told their family story about their immigration to the U.S.

We talked until 9:45 when Willy said he needed to leave and we said goodbye and thanked everyone for a lovely evening.

Bon Appetit