A Valentine's weekend to remember, Part 1, 2009 Edition

A year ago, I celebrated Valentine's Day by taking Keiko on a romantic trip to Mendocino, where I proceeded to nearly get us killed.

This year, I celebrated Valentine's Day by helping Ed nearly kill himself...

I invited the whole NYC crew out for a weekend in CA. As it happened, the weekend we all agreed on was Valentine's Day weekend. The plan was:

Friday: everyone arrives on the evening JetBlue flight into SFO.

Saturday: breakfast at the house, I cook all day, and we have a V-Day dinner party

Sunday: we recover from Saturday

Monday: leave early and head to Napa for winetasting tour

Tuesday: more winetasting, and then everyone but Keiko flies out on the redeye

The entire crew was coming: MK & his wife Carrie, Alex & his fiancee Rose, Ed & his GF Alison, and J-Rob and Socci. And Keiko. Counting me and Joel, that's 11 people staying in the house. That's a high population density for the house, but high population for the house = heaven for Kona the Corgi, or as Joel calls her, Kona the Whore-gi:



Kona and Socci










Kona and J-Rob











Kona, Alison, and Ed








Joel and Karen had broken up a couple weeks previous, so he generously volunteered to give up his room as a guestroom, and sleep on the floor of the library. In the days leading up to everyone's arrival, we were frantically trying to get the place ready for all those guests, plus I was trying hard to get started on the cooking for the dinner party. I was attempting an 8-course meal for 11 people, my most ambitious dinner party ever.

I started the cooking on Thursday morning, making the marinade for duck confit. If you've ever had confit, you know that it's amazing. The reason it's amazing is that it's basically meat slow cooked in salty fat. Mmmmmm, salty fat. I made the marinade thurs morning and let the duck soak in it a little over 24 hrs. The rest of Thursday I had to work, and Thursday night was allocated toward doing all the shopping for all the ingredients.



Took a break from cooking, and saw this! If there weren't duck on the stove, I'd go look for a pot of gold...





Friday I slow cooked the duck in 35 ounces of rendered duck fat. I cooked it for over 12 hours, and then strained the fat, put the duck in a bowl, poured the strained fat over it, and put it in the fridge to chill for another 24 hours. It was looking good. I had to run into work to give an interview, for a guy I think I will end up hiring, and then it was time to run home again and bake the cupcakes. I had also baked a cheesecake with a chocolate wafer crust during the day.

The weather here in the Bay Area has been mostly gorgeous the entirety of 2009, which has translated to most of CA having a drought. But, with all my friends coming in for the weekend, naturally a massive storm system moved into the area, and the resulting downpours caused their flight to be late. So I ended up picking everyone up at 1130pm. They were all hungry, so we stopped at In-N-Out, because you can't get that in NYC and nothing in HMB is open past 10.

Upon arriving at the house, we first held a sleeping arrangments draft. Joel was adamant that Keiko participate in the draft, on the grounds that I should not assume she would want to sleep with me. So I reminded Keiko (who seemed to find this funny) that if she _didn't_ choose my room as her preferred sleeping place, at least 5 guys, 3 of them single, were going to be choosing after her, so she ought to consider carefully how far down this little jokey road she wanted to go.

Much to the disappointment of the aforementioned single guys, Keiko chose my room, and in short order everyone had a place to sleep, and we all bedded down for the night.

The next morning, I got up at 9 and started making a huge whitetrash breakfast for everyone: fruit salad, including marashino cherries, pillsbury cinnamon rolls, french toast, eggs, bacon, hashbrowns (those OreIda ones), and, just to balance all that, we busted open a bottle of Dom Perignon that a student had given me, and toasted to a weekend in Cali.



Dom and whitetrash breakfast- a classic combination






After breakfast, half the group went into town to buy the wine for the meal, and the other half lounged around while I started cooking.




Ed, heading for the ocean. Like one of those newly hatched sea turtles you see on the Nature Channel.






Fortunately, everyone was a veteran of my dinner parties, so no one expected that dinner would actually be served at my projected 8pm timeline. I cooked all day, and even with Joel as sous chef, and occasional drafting of other folks, the first course was not served until 9pm.



Kona looking typically ouroboric, Keiko looking typically slender, me looking typically Stay-Puft Marshmallow Gus.









The theme of the dinner, since it was Valentine's Day, was "red". Here's the food lineup for the evening:

1st course: appetizer-sized patties of a black-eyed pea/roasted red peppers/onion/garlic/spices, rolled in cornmeal and lightly fried, served with jerk beef, and a thick spicy tomato dipping sauce

2nd course: red lentil soup

3rd course: chopped salad of red cabbage, radicchio, red bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, served with a orange based viniagrette (some sweet to balance the bitters from the leafy stuff)

4th course: vegetarian calzones, topped with a vegetarian bolognese sauce (Joel is vegetarian), served with homemade spicy meatballs in a red sauce

5th course: duck confit, served with buttered polenta (to balance the salty of the duck), and radish flowers

6th course: salmon broiled in a red-wine butter, served with roasted red potatoes

7th course: orange slices in a red-wine sauce, with sugared orange zest

8th course: cheesecake with a chocolate-wafer crust, served with a warm mixed berry compote



Pre-dinner "Citadel" is a big hit. Except with Rose, apparently.







And of course, wine with every course. Alex and J-Rob went crazy, and bought a couple bottles of Opus 1. That is some good stuff. We ate and drank until 3am.



The journey begins...










We have a lot of drinking to do...









Time to eat!








Getting tipsy = getting touchy-feely. Keiko handles this with typical Japanese stoicism.










Well, that is to say, those of us who made it to the end, ate and drank until 3am. Since I don't have a table big enough to seat 11 people, we used the makeshift table we made for the dinner party last year. It's a low table, and we sit on cushions japanese-style. It's actually a very nice way to eat a dinner, but it also makes it very easy to tip over and fall asleep.

Here's where we lost people:

J-Rob:

- after course 3: insisted that the dinner was awesome, the wine was awesome, and that "There's no way we'd fall asleep after more wine. Absolutely no way."



J-Rob after course 4.







- We were able to wake him for the 5th course, the duck, although the next day he couldn't remember having eaten it. ("I did? Did I like it? Damn, I wish I could remember...")

- after course 5: tipped over again. We tried to wake him for course 6, but he flipped all of us off and went aggressively fetal.

Keiko:

- after course 5: she went downstairs to bed and said to wake her for course 6, which I did.

- after course 6: she went downstairs to bed and said to wake her for course 7. I was unable to accomplish this successfully. (me, speaking to a mound of covers on the bed: "Orange slices! They're delicious!" Mound of covers: "I can't baby, leave me alone and let me sleep.")

Ed, Alison, and MK:

- after course 7, they all tipped over and lay strewn across the living room floor. Along with J-Rob, it looked like a massacre had occurred in the room.



Alison trying to hang on...









...and failing.








Joel:

- made it through all 8 courses, and about 30 seconds after eating his cheesecake, said: "I have to go to bed. Now."





Right now.








Carrie, Socci, Alex, Rose, and I were chilling out after course 8, and they helped me bus the table and get some dishes going. For Alex and Rose, 330am is an early night, so they were fine. Socci is indestructible. Carrie is surprisingly tough- though, in retrospect, to be married to MK she must be tough.

Interlude:

For those of you who have had the pleasure of listening to the song MK wrote for me and Ed on the road trip- The Ballad of A&E, here's a link to yet another creation of his, which I promise you is worth a listen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0boXx-QMRU0


So, at around 330am, Carrie dragged MK off to bed, and Alex and Rose started getting ready for bed. At that point, Ed woke up, picked himself up from the floor, and went for the common bathroom, which was occupied. Then he came and found me in the kitchen, where Socci and I were loading the dishwasher.

Ed: "Dude, I think I'm going to be sick."

Now, here are some important things you should know about Ed:

1) He likes to eat.

2) He really, really likes to eat.

3) He is like a corgi, in that he will, if given the opportunity, eat and keep eating until he kills himself.

When J-Rob failed to muster anything for course 6 other than obscene hand gestures and low gutteral growling, Ed demanded he be given J-Rob's plate. He polished both his own plate and J-Rob's. Similarly, for course 7, he ate his own, and J-Rob's, AND Keiko's. Add to this the fact that he picked off Alison's plate, my plate, and Keiko's plate throughout some of the other courses, and the math adds up to Ed having something like 10-12 courses, plus about a bottle and a half of wine.

Anyway, back to the story...

Me: "Jesus. Just go outside on the deck there, lean over the side, and heave away right into the bushes."

Ed: "Really? You sure?"

Me: "Uh, it's better than having you be sick in here."

So Ed dutifully went outside, and heaved ho over the railing. I brought him a glass of water, and waited with him for a bit. Then I went back inside and resumed cleaning, and about 15 minutes later he came back inside and was standing next to me in the kitchen. Actually, after a few minutes I noticed that he was not so much standing as leaning over the counter, clutching his chest.

Now, for those of you questioning my powers of observation, I remind you that I am me, pretty unobservant in the best of times, and it is now almost 4am, and I am wasted.

Me: "Uh, dude, are you OK?"

(long pause)

Ed (whispering): "No."

Me: "Dude, what's wrong?"

Ed (whispering): "My chest hurts. I've never felt anything like this."

Me: "Your chest hurts? Is there numbness in your arm?? Shit dude, are you having a heart attack????"

Ed: "No... no... I don't think so. It's just a sharp pain right in my chest. I can barely breathe." He looks up. He is actually crying.

This is the point at which I really start freaking out. Ed is crying, we are not watching sports, Castro is not, to the best of my knowledge, actually dead, so something serious is happening. At this point, Alex, Rose, and Socci all realize something is happening, and crowd into the kitchen.

We decide to pull out the sofabed, and Rose wakes up Alison, who immediately comes to comfort Ed. Pulling out the sofabed requires waking up J-Rob, who is still fetal on the floor right where the bed opens up. Fortunately, after 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep he is less surly, and upon learning what's happening, sobers up quickly.

Now, we have the sofabed pulled out, Ed is fetal on it, Alison is spooning him and trying to calm him down, and he is writhing in pain. The rest of us are drunk and worried, and finally Rose says "We have to dial 9-1-1."

In the end, we had no idea if Ed was dying or what, so we did it. At about 350am, we dialed 9-1-1, and were on the phone with them a bit, and 90 seconds after we hung up, an ambulance and a fire truck showed up at the house. 5 EMTs came trundling up the stairs, and made a semicircle around the sofabed, where Ed was writhing in pain.

What followed was a lengthy interrogation of Ed- questions about his medical history, what had happened over the course of the evening, did he have any allergies, etc. It turned out that just a few days earlier, Ed had gone on Prilosec and Zantac to treat acid reflux, which he is apparently susceptible to.

Then they asked: "What have you had to eat tonight?"

All eyes turned to me.

Me: "Uh, um, well..."

I proceeded to list all the things he'd eaten. As I related the list, I realized that everything had tomatoes, or citrus, or hot peppers, or other acidic ingredients. Plus, we'd been drinking only red wine.

It had never occurred to me to try and pH-balance the meal.

Finally, they took his vitals with a nifty portable machine, at which point we figured out that one guy was being trained by the other guy (EMT tutoring- there's something I don't do).

EMT Trainee: "Your vitals look fine. But we can take you to a hospital. Do you want to go to a hospital?"

Ed: "I don't want to go to a fucking hospital."

EMT Trainee: "Do you want to see a doctor? Your friends can take you- you don't have to ride in the ambulance."

Ed: "I don't want to see a fucking doctor. I don't want to go to the fucking hospital. Just tell me right now: is there any reason to think I'm about to die? Am I dying???"

EMT Trainee (trying not to smile): "No, you're not dying. Your vitals are fine."

Ed: "Can you tell me how long I'm going to be like this???"

EMT Trainee (abjectly failing not to smile): "Well, that depends on your body. Probably what happens is that it's like this for another couple of hours, and then you have a lo-o-o-o-o-ng trip to the bathroom, and then you'll be alright."

Ed: "Fuck."

So the EMTs packed up and left at around 430am, practically giggling. And so me, J-Rob, Alex, Rose, and Socci sat around with Ed watching him periodically writhe in pain. I estimated that we'd start mocking him in ten minutes.

Forecasted time to mockery: 10 min
Actual time to mockery: 1.5 min

Forecast error: (10-1.5)/1.5 = +567%

Oh well, good thing I'm not in forecasting anymore.

I went downstairs to bed at 515am. Joel, Keiko, MK, and Carrie slept through the entire series of events.



Ed (and Alison), almost exactly 12 hours later.






Out of deference to the only real casualty of the evening -Ed's pride- I am not posting any photos of EMTs standing around Ed trying not to smirk as he writhes in pain. He was very adamant about that. You'll just have to picture it for yourself.

And that's how I almost killed Ed. Though, to be fair, I only supplied the rope. Ed's the one who almost hung himself with it.