Whale of a Good Time

No whales will be pictured on this post, but we did have a beautiful day to get out and explore today. I'll say more about that in a minute. First, I have to say that whale watching always reminds us of meteor showers. They are always more hype than happening. We didn't really expect to see any whales, and so we weren't disappointed.

But let's just back up to our dinner last night. Food, glorious food. This was our fourth visit to EVOO, and it is always so much fun. If you click on that link back there, it will take you to the main web page for the restaurant. We were first to arrive, and they invited us into the kitchen for pictures. That's Chef Bob Negroni photobombing our picture.

I was thankful for this opportunity to wear my favorite ugly Christmas sweater.

If you click here on the Cookbook, you'll find tons of recipes, including recipes for all the foods we had last night. I need to remember this for some of the more difficult CSA veggies. Here's last night's menu:

Each course is paired with an appropriate wine. The ravioli was served with a nice white.

They focus on fresh local ingredients, and explained that the tomato sauce for the ravioli was made with their "winter tomatoes," meaning they came from a can. Good-tasting fresh tomatoes are not available at this time of the year. They used a canned tomato, but it comes from Italy, where tomatoes are canned when they are ripe and in season, and never forced in greenhouses. I don't know about that, but I can tell you this sauce was bursting with fresh tomato flavor. Those are satsuma orange sections and fresh pomegranate seeds over an arugula salad.

For this visit, we were seated back farther in the restaurant and had to rely on mirrors to see what was happening. In the image below, Bob is demonstrating how he makes fresh ravioli. You can see a sheet of pasta laid out in front of him if you look in the mirror in the upper left-hand corner.

And I've only tackled fresh ravioli once. Fresh pasta isn't something I've tried to make, and my one try with fresh ravioli was made with wonton wrappers. Bob explained that one can pick up sheets of fresh lasagna in the grocery store (I've actually seen them there!), roll them out thinly, and then cut them to make fresh ravioli. Now I'm gung-ho to give this a try, but it will most likely have to wait until later next spring. In this next image, he was stuffing the ravioli.

From there, we switched to red wine for the rest of the evening.

Here, his wife Lenore (also a chef), was plating up the duck legs.

Here's what was served up. I haven't eaten much duck, but this was delicious. The skin was so nice and crisp. On the left side is a sort of quinoa fritter with some other yummy stuff. The slaw there was delicious. I can't even remember everything that was included. (Here's the link to the recipe.) There's also a serving of cranberries from Oregon.

Next up were New York steaks. In the mirror, you can see Bob searing them in cast iron skillets.

In my image below, the meat looks more red than it actually was. I'm not a fan of rare beef, and this was cooked to pink perfection. On the right is some fried escarole. It's another one we get in our CSA shares, and I've always treated it more like lettuce. Fried like this, it tastes more like cabbage. It's another one I'm anxious to try again, now that I understand better how to prepare it.

Next up, he made a praline right in front of us. He explained this ordinarily would take hours to set up, but he speeds up the process by setting his pan over ice. When it was ready to be broken apart for serving, he held it up for us to see.

While we were waiting for the praline, we went around the room and briefly introduced ourselves. I mentioned we were there celebrating the first day of the rest of our lives because Mike had retired the day before. Often, there are birthdays or anniversaries in the room, but ours was the only celebration last night. This is Mike's face when they lit a candle and sang "Happy celebration to you..." to the tune of "Happy Birthday."

I couldn't quite get his face and the candle in the same shot.

And here's the dessert course. So yummy. I don't know about you, but dessert is always my favorite.

That was a pumpkin pots de creme there, and so the praline included some pumpkin seeds.

Okay...and then we rolled on home. The RV park is only about five minutes from the restaurant, which was nice. We slept well last night.

Today we awoke to a beautiful day. What a gift on the Oregon coast in December, let me tell you. We decided to try our luck whale watching at Ecola State Park. I've linked there to our previous visit, which also includes another meal at EVOO. We took the Crescent Beach Hike that day, and there are more pictures and more information about the park. As for today's adventure, here are all the ways we could have died today:

Any of you with a mind to climb on the cliffs...just get that notion out of your head right now. Also...no disturbing the marine mammals. Sheesh. How many times do we have to go over this?

Okay, so these pictures weren't that good because I was shooting directly into the sun, but it was beautiful standing here with the sun shining, blue sky, and some mist down near the water.

The viewpoint was closed. The recent deluge of rainfall destabilizes the cliffs here, and so they don't want folks wandering out to fall to their deaths on the rocks below. Instead, we walked down this short path, which simply took us to a different side of the parking lot.

From there, we could see the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse. It's quite an engineering feat, and cost many people their lives during the construction process. It's history is interesting, and if you are a lighthouse fanatic as I am, you might enjoy reading about it right here.

Here, I've zoomed in for a better look. It is no longer operational, but wow...what an impressive history.

Looking in the opposite direction, it was a pretty view.

But wait...what's that I see at the top of the rock?

It's two bald eagles! Cool!

There wasn't much else to do here, and so we headed in and did some window shopping in the little town of Cannon Beach. We didn't go inside any of the shops, and this being the Sunday before Christmas, many were closed anyway. Still, I did take some pictures of some of the window displays. I knew you'd enjoy this watercolor:

And I probably need this cup, don't you think?

There were quite a few of these interesting glass sculptures of breaking waves. This was the only one I could get without window reflections obscuring it.

This one is for you, Sher:

There weren't any blooming things at this time of the year, save for this blooming rosemary plant.

When we got back to the RV, we found these two sharing the bed like good friends.

And that's all I have for you today. We'll be heading home tomorrow. Depending on when we get home, and whether I have anything to tell you, I might or might not blog. Don't you love the certainty with which I've been making blog promises this week? I'm guessing I'll wait until Tuesday, but don't be surprised if I write before then.