9/10/2000 Sausalito: x4, Forty, 1960
An interesting way to have lunch is on a house boat in Sausalito (http://sausalito-online.com/)! Last year
Theresa and I were fortunate enough to have the winning bid for a gourmet lunch
for 8 at a charity auction, which was held at the Pezzi King Winery ( http://www.pezziking.com/
), for UCSF's Auxiliary ( http://www.theauxiliary.com/
).
As you know that this was part of my continuing
39.99th birthday celebration. Ironically this houseboat, which is numbered x4,
is docked at South Forty Pier! I kid you not; 4 is my lucky number :-)
We walked down the pier toward the houseboat.
Impressive houseboat.
A most interesting door with a grape vine motif.
The main-deck of the houseboat has the living room and a patio right on top of
the water.
The outer corner of the kitchen has an exotic collection of empty wine bottles.
I wondered if the oars are there in case we need to row this houseboat
somewhere--not :-)
We had a great view of the Sausalito waterfront from the porch of the houseboat.
After enjoying a refreshing glass of J. Lohr's ( http://www.jlohr.com/Default.html
) Chardonnay, we had a cup of most delightful chilled grapefruit gazpacho soup
with prawn. It was delicious. I wonder how I can get a hold of the recipe?
The highlight of the lunch was the entree. I believed Megan's mom was actually
the main chef and also cooked the chilled poached salmon with a dillweed/cucumber sauce.
The lunch concluded with a light and refreshing bread with vanilla ice cream
topped with fresh strawberries and raspberries. Yummy. My Dad even got an extra
large scoop of ice cream :-)
The table was decorated with potted baby yellow roses, which we later took home
as party favors. So considerate.
The lunch was prepared and served by these three ladies in black and hosted by
the gentleman on the right. It was nice chatting with Megan who just returned
from teaching English at Sacred Heart High School in Taiwan for one year.
Just out of curiosity I used Yahoo, Taiwan to look up my own elementary
school. Surprises, surprises. It's on the Internet! This is the school where all
my brothers and sister went! ( http://home.pchome.com.tw/education/gl0308/main.htm
)
We had a tour of the house boat. The top deck was a nice office with a
million-dollar view to die for. However, I
almost had an heart attack noticing that our host uses an Apple iMac.
However, I really had a heart burn when I noticed that our host graduated from
Stanford, which is the arch-rival of U. C. Berkeley :-) Fortunately, my
disappointments were tempered by the fact that our host graduated from Stanford
in 1960--the year that I was born 39.99 years ago :-) What a great coincidence!
The bottom deck of the houseboat was actually a wine cellar. It turned out that
our host is an owner of several wineries.
My parents, Theresa's parents, Kai-yee, William, Theresa, and I had a great
time, and the weather was gorgeous too.
What a
great way to celebrate my 39.99th birthday!
We even went home with a bag of sweet party favors.
I cannot wait until our next adventure--time for Theresa and I to brush up on
our conversational Chinese :-)
