December 30, 2020

Happy Birthday!

By roads-rus

Ruth’s birthday is December 28. For the past several years I have taken her on exotic trips to compensate and celebrate. That is usually my yearly gift. But not to end awful 2020. She has been in Montevideo and Istanbul on her birth day in 2 of the past 10 years. This year we were at home, and the dessert I made for her was a Bavarian Cream. It was delicious but not the big surprise that greeted her close to her birthday on the trip to end 2014. We drove down the Oregon coast to California where I had an encounter with a deer near Santa Rosa. The deer lost and our newish car sustained a lot of damage. We were on our way home when we greeted 2015 in the Napa Valley.

Trust me on this. You do not want to be in the Napa Valley on the first day of any year. Nothing is opened. We finally found some action at a deluxe Dean and Delucca food emporium that has since permanently closed. We learned there that you can only look at exotic and expensive food treats for so long.

By mid-afternoon we were hungry, but most of the restaurants we had seen were closed like the wineries and other businesses. Even Dean & Delucca had closed early. Ruth finally thought of one place that was opened–Mustards. It was, in fact, the only good restaurant opened. Ruth called and made a mid to late afternoon reservation. At least we could be dining well to greet 2015.

We were on time but the service was slow. The lunch crowd had either lingered or left by the time we were seated. The food was great, but Ruth’s order was delayed and not correct. Mustard’s was a classy operation, so to apologize they brought her a special dessert treat. It was the pie pictured above and a genuine cause for celebration at the end of a week that had not gone especially well for us. We shared the dessert and it was sensational unlike the cornmeal infused cake she can have for dessert tonight. Tonight’s dinner is heavy on potato, and I doubt if our January 1 meal to welcome the new year of 2021 will be much better. We are nowhere near Mustards, and I’m not sure that it’s even opened. Nothing is opened near us, so we will be dining at home, probably on leftovers.

Oh, well, Happy New Year 2021!

Hank

About roads-rus

Since the beginning, I've had to avoid writing about the downside of travel in order to sell more than 100 articles. Just because something negative happened doesn't mean your trip was ruined. But tell that to publishers who are into 5-star cruise and tropical beach fantasies. I want to tell what happened on my way to the beach, and it may not have been all that pleasant. My number one rule of the road is...today's disaster is tomorrow's great story. My travel experiences have appeared in about twenty magazines and newspapers. I've been in all 50 states more than once and more than 50 countries. Ruth and I love to travel internationally--Japan, Canada, China, Argentina, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, etc. Within the next 2 years we will have visited all of the European countries. But our favorite destination is Australia. Ruth and I have been there 9 times. I've written a book about Australia's Outback, ALONE NEAR ALICE, which is available through both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. My first fictional work, MOVING FORWARD, GETTING NOWHERE, has recently been posted on Amazon. It's a contemporary, hopefully funny re-telling of The Odyssey. View all posts by roads-rus
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2020 at 9:35 pm and posted in sweet treats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

2 responses to “Happy Birthday!”

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