Sunday, October 16, 2011

Affinity for Fall

Living in Southern California, some think, deprives you of the change of seasons so obvious in other, colder, states.  Not so, I think.  There's always signs of the passing of the months, subtle as they may be.  Autumn has always been crowned with colorful leaves falling from our liquid amber tree in the front yard and signals the start of the holiday season for me.

When I was a child, I used to check on the leaves of this tree as I would check a hour glass, waiting for that first yellow leaf to appear on the lawn.  Maybe it would happen in late August or early September.  Most always, though, it would seem to take forever for the leaves to change.  All the other trees up and down the block had pretty red and gold leaves hanging or floating down to their respective lawns - why didn't ours have any yet?

My mom would always say that because it was the biggest tree, and maybe one of the oldest, it took longer to turn.  I didn't understand, some of those other trees looked pretty darn close in size to ours, and I was impatient.  The sooner the leaves turned, the sooner Halloween would arrive - and I loved Halloween.

Halloween kicks off the beginning of the party season for most, but we started a little early here at WFS.  Somehow, our Fancy Food Truck Fridays, which is held every 2nd Friday of the month, just happened to fall the very day before the 3rd Saturday of the month and that's when we have our wine pairing events.  Even better, this month we planned to include a poetry reading with the wine tastings.  It turned out to be one fantastically busy, fantabulously fun weekend and we enjoyed every minute of it!

The food truck event Friday evening went off with nary a hitch, after having received the needed permit from L.A, County on Monday.  They cut it pretty close, but we still had a good sized crowd enjoying the offerings of the different trucks.  I ordered from Baby's Badass Burgers this time around and I must say that their food is mighty delicious!  It was wonderful to have our new event sponsor, Danny's Farm, back in Altadena, if only for one night a month.  The animals were a hit with the younger crowd, but of course the goats have a big following in our town!  Next month's Fancy Food Truck Friday will be on November 11th.

On Saturday, Linda Dove and Judith Terzi, local poets both, joined OddBallGrape.com's Anne Bannon and Michael Holland for an evening devoted to wine and poetry.....oh, and food!  Wonderfully tasty treats were provided to us by Lauren of Amy's Patio Cafe and I'm kicking myself in the pants for not getting pictures of them!  Lovely prosciutto-wrapped asparagus spears, the asparagus perfectly al dente and prosciutto lean and flavorful.  Mushroom caps filled with cream cheese and sun-dried tomatoes made savory bites and the fresh mozzarella, grape tomato and basil kebabs were unbelievably good, but it was the decadent brownies and the filo cups filled with a sweet blueberry compote that completely stole the show!

This evening Scott and I are taking it easy.  Well, better make that he's taking it easy, I'm writing a blog post.  Dinner's waiting, so enjoy your week ahead and we'll talk again next week....

Lori & Scott

3 comments:

Rose - Watching Waves said...

Your events always sound so fun! I know you and others put a lot of effort into these.

Rose - Watching Waves said...

Your events always sound like such fun!

Unknown said...

Thanks, Rose! We're planning our Holiday Open House and it should be spectacular!