The last few days have been quite a spectacle. Tonight as I visit the Quail Cellars to check the temperature during a sudden summer heatwave, I'm struck by the near overbearing smell of sausage; close to 150 pounds of it, all hanging by various racks and shelving, from the cellar ceiling! A product of the most recent Sausagefest, it arrived via James, Alister, and Jesse, as our cellar seems to be that with the most stable temperatures (even more stable given the mass of wine and whisky down there!) Hanging around for a few months, it should grace our tables for a long time to come as appetizers, cassoulet ingredients, and just plain snacks; the previous batch turned out so well, might as well try again, but with more meat ...!
If ever there were a time we thought worthy of begging forgiveness for lack of journaling, now would certainly be it. We hope that these stories and happenings offer more to amuse and remind those involved, rather than keep informed; for as many of you are already aware, you have been involved yourselves in the amazing stories that have happened to Quail Cottage in the many previous months! Hopefully as things calm a bit more into routine, rather than frenzied projects one after another, we can continue to keep this journal alive more frequently as a letter to those absent today and a storied reminder for ourselves tomorrow.
It all began naught but the weekend after our previous account paused. Following many lovely years at Quail Cottage Junior, and many lovely years staring at each other and the lives we wove around us, all it took was a weekend in Monterey, a bottle of wine at a vineyard, and a secret that John had been guiding for months: a decorated ring of platinum, with polished silhouettes of mirrored quail stamped on each side, their head feathers proudly presenting a sparkling blue diamond! We were to finally be engaged! After so many years and travels and parties and experiences together, Quail Cottage Senior was more likely the harder decision; our friends knew we'd get married before we admitted it to ourselves!
(All right, to be fair, John took a lot longer to admit it to himself than Autumn did, but that's the nature of the beast, and the nature of waiting months to have a ring custom designed and molded, and a suitable diamond found...)
And so began the Long Summer Days of Unpacking, and the Winter of Engagements. Long summer days melted easily into long summer weekends, since a lovely holiday present of sailing lessons from the parents let us escape easily up to shore on the weekends. Boxes were left packed as we learned the ways of the wind in the Berkeley Flats, famous for their steady yet hefty winds. Further travels by Autumn out to Ireland and both of us out to Maine for Thanksgiving left the fall even further behind; would we ever find more permanent furniture for the cottage, and fewer boxes in the bedroom? Instead we found several weekends in Tahoe, several more weekends of afternoon parties with friends, and even more engaged in visits with wedding venues to fulfill the intentions of the original Engagement. Thankfully after several visits we found a location to seal the deal; a small vineyard with a courtyard out in the hills of Livermore, evoking enough California to make us feel at home, and delightful in not being overly grand! They promised good food, warm weather, and a lovely place to gather a hundred of our closest friends together for a casual and lovely celebration.
The rest of Winter and the earliest bits of Spring continued as a bit more of a blur (more true now, I suppose, looking back at my calendar a year later), but included lots of planning and decisions for the wedding, when there weren't ski weekends, bicycle time trials, choir concerts, and morning runs training for the half marathon that we signed ourselves up for two weeks before the ceremony date ("we'll have time to get in shape for the wedding, right?") Flower consultations happened, suit shopping for the "boys" (John succeeded in snagging one of Autumn's girls for a groomsman), and Cottage preparations for the post-ceremony brunch feast. John's cousin was visiting the area at just the right time to help; we had planned and schemed for a while, but finally executed on a backyard wood-fired brick roasting pit, a magnificently engineered red clay structure, cemented into the ground with notched sloping sides to hold various levels of rotisserie rods! It was quite an event to put together (including breaking the suspension on John's poor Honda to get all the bricks and mortar from the store), but in just a long afternoon, Michael, Jesse, and James all pitched in to help us craft something that a year later has seen such beautiful, glorious, and amazingly delicious dinners like the Six Rotisserie Chickens, the Coconut Braised Lamb Stew, the Cauldron Lamb With Omani Spices, and many, many random meats sizzling over the bare fire.
Spring finally occurred, with gusto. Despite our attentions elsewhere, the garden bloomed with the full might of the California sun; lettuces sprang up in the redwood planter we installed off the patio in the backyard, and the wisteria bloomed with the amazing attitude that wisteria blooms with. We culled a few overgrown trees and bushes from the backyard, planted and grafted a few others, and then suddenly the wedding date was upon us; our parents and friends descended upon the cottage, and our plans were swept into action without any stopping! Rehearsals, rehearsal dinners, bay cruises, the ceremony ...
... but the wedding itself is a specific story for a specific couple in a location different than Quail Cottage. What is the appeal to limiting a historic account to a place or idea, rather than focus on the people inhabiting it? Maybe it makes us feel more timeless, feel more a part of something larger and longer, part of a gathering place for friends and ideas in a period much grander than just a couple's lifespan. Maybe we hope that Quail Cottage, its gardens and dinners and friends and lovers will continue beyond the cacophony of years of daily life, embracing an ideology of community and tolerance around food, friends, and fascinating projects.
But so what happened then at Quail Cottage? I'll tell you what happened: nearly eighty of our best friends and family joined us the day after the wedding for the biggest, grandest, and most delicious feast the Cottage has ever seen! John threw six marinated chickens on the brand new brick rotisserie, with great spice rub help from Mom and Kathy; Autumn baked a large number of loaves of sourdough, the pride and joy of Quail Yeastery! Jesse brought a dozen pounds of citrus refried carnitas for tacos; Ben boiled up a ten gallon pot with lobster, clams, bay leaves and other spices! We harvested our gardens for salad, and several other friends brought further dishes, and please don't let us insult you by forgetting what they were a year later! But as the wedding dinner itself was hosted by the Winery, we wanted this Brunch to be hosted by us and our friends; and so it was, and was a beautiful event, and people feasted on steaming roasted chicken, overfilled tacos, fresh boiled seafood, delicious bread and salads and sides and spreads in all the nooks and crannies that the Cottage could hold. And even in the midday heat of almost-summer, friends found the best corners and trees and rooms to hide in to make eighty people feel not that crowded. Dare us to host another event that large!
Since then the Cottage has seen many more marvelous projects, more rambunctious creatures, and even more rambunctious dinners, yet those stories will have to wait until later. We've passed the Year Of Absent Historical Accounts, and have dived right into the Spring of Citrus and Eggs. You can hopefully infer many of the happenings through our photos, but just wait until you hear the stories ...! I bid you to bed as I finish a small nip of whisky so quickly secreted from the Cellar of Sausage Smells. Sleep well, sleep soundly, and don't let the chickens wake you up too early in the morning. Cheers!