UnChristmas Saturday

UnChristmas is our own little holiday celebrated sometime that is NOT Christmas, after the socializing and shopping stress of the more usual holiday has died away, and whenever we can organize our lives enough to be in the same place together for a weekend.

I love the UnChristmas parties we have!

They're very small and very fun. We four long-time friends (Tai, Pol, Kim, and Spider Girl)get together and celebrate the marvellousness of having really good friends. Instead of shopping for trinkets for one another, we've made it a tradition to have a lavish feast and blow all our cash on that instead.

Oh, we've had some good meals together, my friends and I!

This year though, partly because of our friend Kim's imminently-with-child state, and possibly due to our own mellowing selves, we elected to stay in and have our talented friend Tai create a feast for us (with her friends acting as sous-chefs) rather than going out to an expensive restaurant/night on the town.

So early last Saturday morning, with the sun shining warmly upon us, Pol and I rode an eerily-deserted ferry over to the Mainland. It was such a glorious day we were pinching ourselves--it had rained the previous twenty-seven days and today would have been the soggy record-breaker. Gee, um, too bad about missing the new record. :)

The traffic gods smiled so kindly upon us that soon after serenading under Tai's balcony we were bizzing out to Kim's new place in the suburban boondocks.

We saw what will soon be Baby's New Lair, bedecked most charmingly (or alarmingly) with fanged Ugly toys. They are fantastic. Wish I'd had stuffies like that as a child. Why, imagine how I would have turned out!

On to Granville Island, one of the most fabulous food markets on the West Coast!




Here you see Tai picking out tonight's wine and Pol giddy with delight over her finds in the Italian deli section...






And me, trying on hats. I can't pass hats without trying them on. It's a happy addiction. All you people out there who think you can't wear hats, or feel you shouldn't wear hats, come out to the little hat shops at Granville Island! I'm sure there's a hat here for you.







And here are my best friends in the world with some of the best coffee in the world (bought from a small stand)currently clutched in their hands. I know it was that good because I had one too. :)





So, as unpretentiously as I can describe our gourmet UnChristmas feast:

* pan-roasted asparagus drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled in hand-harvested sea-salt and shaved pecorino-romano cheese,
* roasted garlic on toasted rounds
* penne rigate with tomatoes and spinach and basil and cannellini beans
*baby spinach salad with goat cheese, poached pears and candied pecans in a light ginger soy-sauce dressing
*Tuscan salad with grilled eggplant and peppers
*feta cheese with sun-dried tomatoes and calamata olives
* boconcini cheese in olive oil
*wine, saki, mineral water...we were well-hydrated

"It sounds so snobby and it was so delicious", said Tai. I agree whole-heartedly. We are still dreaming about that meal.

We spaced out the meal's courses with hours of marvellous conversation so that we were still eating at eleven o'clock at night.

Yeah, there's something enormously appealing about cooking with friends. PLUS...our feet didn't hurt because we didn't have to wear our high-heeled shoes out! Bliss!