Category Archives: Events

Matthew’s 20th birthday party

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Liver pate in ring mold

Today was Matthew’s big birthday blow-out.  About 20 guests were greeted at the door by Oma and ordered to take their shoes off (the light carpeting, you see) before being served appetizers.  I decided to produce a number of dips and other finger foods after abandoning my initial idea of ordering pizza.  I mean, good God, what was the point of busting my hump for two years in cooking school?  A little later, I thought, “The hell with it,” and made a badass chicken liver pate with aspic, as well.  Then, in the vein of “in for a penny, in for a pound,” I added a hot crab dip and some decorative work.  The dips turned out great.  I made Alton Brown’s California dip from scratch (as opposed to opening a package of dry onion soup mix) utilizing a boatload of real onions.  Find the recipe yourself on the Food Network, but note that it took me much longer to caramelize the onions than the recipe says.  Also, letting it sit for a day really helped it develop.  I will never, ever make it from mix again.  The second most popular was the muhammara, a ground walnut, red pepper and eggplant spread that has a bit of a kick from ground chili peppers.  Next in line was the pine nut sauce from Tapas:  Traditional and Contemporary Tapas Dishes (2004), published by Paragon Books Ltd.  This recipe is so easy and produces very big flavor.  I paired it with new potatoes that had been steamed and chilled to provide a diversion from the 15 Acme sourdough baguettes that accompanied everything else.  We also provided cubed foccacia, which, as I write this the next day, is in a crouton state of mind.  I threw together the spicy sauce from Nobu:  the Cookbook (2001), by Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, which is basically a homemade mayo with some chili oil and white pepper.  Honestly, that is one good sauce slash dip.  If you are too lazy to make the mayo part yourself, mix chili oil and white pepper with a good commercial mayonnaise.  I do this all the time when I want to serve a roast chicken with some zip to it.  Oh, yeah, back to the birthday party.  I managed to offer up blanched haricot verts (yes, I know I sound like a pretentious jackass) and sliced English cukes, but they were almost all still there at the end of the party.  Maybe the crab dip was to blame, but I will let you be the judge.  Mix one cup each of mayonnaise, sour cream, softened cream cheese and grated parmesan.  Then fold in at least one cup of lump crabmeat and a bit of white pepper.  Make sure all the ingredients are high-quality.  If you use cheap and/or terrible mayo (both do not always apply to the same product) you will have a terrible dip.  Do not, under any circumstances, use Miracle Whip.  Miracle Whip is a blight upon the earth.  Bake this mass in a heavy casserole for 30 minutes or so — until browned and bubbly — at 375 F.  Then take it out and serve it next to a crudités platter and report back to me.  I predict no leftover crab product and plastic bags full of baby carrots in the fridge.  The one thing that did not move was the pate, though I consider it a personal triumph.  Maybe it was poor marketing, but I did have it near the crab dip, which brought them in like flies.  Maybe it was just too rich for the Bay Area, or too 1950s.  Maybe the aspic was scary.  Many people find aspics frightening.  I can report however that we are eating it today and it is fabulous – well worth the work and ingredients.  The recipe can be found in Cooking with Bon Appétit:  Appetizers (1982), and is listed as a goose liver pate.  For fun I carved a few lemons, made a large tomato rose and curled scallions. 

Potato decoration in a martini glass

Potato decoration in a martini glass

I also did my famous “crazy potato,” scooping out balls all around a whole, unpeeled potato with a melon baller, dyeing the balls with food coloring, and then stuffing them back into the hollows, color side out.  This thing is really whacked out by the end of an event.  Oh, for crying out loud, Berry jumped into the onion dip again!  Get him out of there before the guests arrive!

Matthew's birthday feast with dips and veggies

Happy birthday, Matthew!

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Matthew Valencia one day old

Matthew Valencia one day old

It was 20 years ago today….

Matthew Valencia was born at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in New York City in 1987.  He was one day old in these photos.  To the left he is touching a little stuffed animal that his Uncle Mal and Aunt Carole gave him.  To the right we have him with his mom and dad.

Steve, Renate and Matthew right after Matthew's birth

The funeral

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My father's coffin

If we are told as kids that we have to go through a morning like this in the distant future we wouldn’t believe it and, even if we did, we wouldn’t be able to grasp it.  Thank God, since this is the kind of thing you really don’t want to know is coming.  It was a nice graveside service at Spring Forest Cemetery.  Would you believe that the funeral director’s last name was Fisher?  (When Matthew and I first noticed this at the funeral home we almost collapsed, having been faithful fans of Six Feet Under).  The vets did a military service and there were quite a few people, many of whom I have not seen in 30 years or never met.  No rain but it was frosty on the ground and cold  — cold in a way that never makes it to the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ll tell you.  My Dad sure packed in an eclectic group of mourners.  There was the New York Telephone cum (eventually) Lucent group, with whom my father worked for years.  Then his fellow musicians, which made up the creative group.  Then a kind of bizarre group I can’t possible describe (they kept asking me to pose next to his coffin for photos), his ex-girlfriend and, of course, his closest friends.  Overall it was the personification of diversity, though leaning toward the younger end of things.  After the service there was a coffee and cookie event at The Lost Dog Cafe.  Marie M. and Nicole H., who own/run The Lost Dog, made a gift of this event to me in honor of my father.  The Lost Dog is an inviting space, and these two women are wonderful, so I felt very good at that point and enjoyed those hours chatting with people who were telling me interesting things I didn’t know about my father.  One of the Lucent bunch told me about how my Dad pissed off “the suits” by refusing to build things (things = substations and the like) if he decided that the design was faulty and might result in injury.  He would demand that the “schematics” be changed and that they be given the materials and time to “do the job right.”  The music people gave me insight into Frank’s creative side.  While I knew of his musical bent — he was almost always in a band, sang and played rock, classical and flamenco guitar — it was great to hear things from the perspective of people he had a different kind of relationship with.  The folks at Lucent also commented on my Dad’s sandals and long hair, as he was a bit hippy-ish in the mid-1970’s when he started working in Binghamton.  Showing up at work “like that” was “simply not done,” according to the old-timers, but he was good at his job no one did anything about it.  The event wound down and eventually I was back at Marie and Nicole’s place for the night.  It was so nice to be able to go home with friends who really give a damn.  If I had to go through all this without local support I would have been pretty pathetic at this point in time.

They need to tell you about this kind of day in advance

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My father is in a coma and I spent the day glued to his bedside in a reclining chair with a string of Christmas lights on over his bed.  He loves Christmas lights.  The nursing supervisor, who is very nice, brought in a platter of sandwiches, chips and sodas in the wee hours of the morning for “the family,” figuring that there would be a group vigil.  Well, there was just me, eating a ham salad sandwich and a bag of potato chips every few hours around the clock and then picking at the regular meals that were brought in for him.  When you are a captive audience needing to remain awake in relative darkness you have few options other than eating and drinking coffee at regular intervals.

Why, oh why, was this not turkey breast day?  Or salami day?  Why did I have to hit ham salad day?  I didn’t know anyone still ate ham salad.

I’m telling you you have not fully experienced all that life has to offer until you spend 36 hours in a tiny room with your dying father under Christmas lights listening to Michael Jackson belt out “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” while eating questionable, and then later semi-rancid, sandwiches and drinking coffee out of a spill-proof cup.

Then there was the heat.

That room was a good 85 degrees F. and I was in a sweat suit.  The same sweat suit I had on when I jumped out of bed at midnight the night before, I might add.  I had the forethought to pack extra underwear and socks, so I went into my Dad’s little bathroom — where I could still keep half an eye on him — for a sponge bath and to hand wash unmentionables in the sink in case I needed them down the road.  I hung them up on the 35 handrails in there and all was bone dry in four hours, which gives you an idea of the heat situation.

Every two hours a nurse came in to give my dad his pain meds.  Every four hours a team of nurses came in to change his position and to make sure I was doing alright.  After about 35 hours I was getting to the point of seriously needing sleep, but I had to remain awake to keep a lookout for signs of pain or discomfort, and I wanted to be alert when he died.

I remember glancing at the clock and noticing the time was 12:25 a.m. (now 11/18/06) and then putting my head back in the recliner to rest my eyes for a moment.  Bad idea.  The next thing I knew I was jolted awake as if a gong went off in my head, and I shot a glance at the clock – 12:45 a.m.  In the fraction of a second it took me to turn my head I realized the raspy sound of my father’s labored breathing was gone, and knew that what must have woken me up was that sound stopping all of a sudden.  I did not want to look at his face because I knew he was gone.  I just sat there.  I didn’t know how to feel, and remember wondering if he was floating around the room.

He and I had spoken many times about what might happen after death, whether communication with the living was even possible, but no matter how often we spoke about all of that it didn’t prepare me for that split second when I knew he was dead.

I had been talking with him off and on about all kinds of nonsense.  Even though he was in a coma, he was still in his body and I knew where to direct my energy.  When I moved closer to him to say a final good-bye, I was not at ease because I didn’t know where he was contained — if he was contained at all.  His body was so still and somewhat scary to me, though I don’t know why it should have been.  I suppose I felt that my thoughts were no longer my own and that everything in my mind would be accessible.

I sat there for some time, then said I was sorry I fell asleep and eventually made my way to the nursing station.

My father, Frank Valencia, and I about 1964/1965

My father, Frank Valencia, and I about 1964/1965

Frank Valencia on 10/5/06

Frank Valencia on 10/28/06

Frank and Renate Valencia on 11/6/06