{"id":7744,"date":"2016-02-08T17:19:50","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T22:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2016\/02\/no-one-awake-us\/"},"modified":"2016-02-12T19:05:02","modified_gmt":"2016-02-13T00:05:02","slug":"no-one-awake-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2016\/02\/no-one-awake-us\/","title":{"rendered":"No one awake but us"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the night\u00a0we got there, when we checked in, the lady at the front desk wrote out the wifi network and password on the corner of a pad of paper, ripped it free, and handed it to me. I slid it into my phone case, so that I wouldn’t lose it, and last week, three months later, I noticed it still wedged there.<\/p>\n

“How’s that Rancho Pescadero wifi working for you?” Brandon says, peering\u00a0over my shoulder. “Little slow, from 2,000 miles away?” I roll my eyes, yank out the scrap\u00a0of paper, and crumple it up. But when\u00a0he\u00a0looks away,\u00a0I press it flat again\u00a0and slip it back in.<\/p>\n

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I first heard about Rancho Pescadero<\/a>\u00a0was from a couple of Delancey neighbors and longtime regulars, Tom and Kate. Kate is a book editor, and Tom is a contractor – hard at work right now on Dino’s, actually – and they both like to be outdoors, hiking, boating, fishing for wild salmon in the Sound. At some point last year, they mentioned to me a trip they’d taken to a small resort an hour from Cabo San Lucas, near the southern tip of Baja, Mexico<\/a>, a remote, mellow spot where, from the beach, they’d been able to see humpback whales splashing around. And though I, \u2460 am generally allergic to resorts, and \u2461 wanted mostly in that moment to slump onto the pavement and sob extravagantly,\u00a0because a childless weekend felt, to this parent of a three-year-old, like the equivalent of\u00a0an oasis mirage to a\u00a0desert traveler, still, I mentally filed away the name of the place, just in case: Rancho Pescadero<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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So when I found out last fall that our friend and mentor Renee Erickson<\/a>, chef-owner-superwoman of The Walrus and the Carpenter, The Whale Wins, Barnacle, Bateau, Bar Melusine, and General Porpoise Doughnuts, would be headlining one of a series of\u00a0Guest Chef Weekends<\/a>\u00a0at Rancho Pescadero, and when we were invited, WHAAAAT, to go along, I said, of course, yes. (And then I ran around\u00a0pretending to be Debbie Hunt from\u00a0Singles<\/em>.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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We begged my mother to June- and Alice-sit, and we packed our swimsuits, sunscreen, four\u00a0New Yorkers<\/em>, my film camera, and three rolls of film, and on an early flight out of a rainy November day, we went.<\/p>\n

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We were not the only ones invited that weekend: Marian Bull<\/a>, who I knew a little from Food52, was there, and so was her friend Caro<\/a>, and Riley Starks, of Nettles Farm<\/a> on Lummi Island, whom I had wanted to meet for years and years, ever since my friend Kate<\/a> met him and later gushed\u00a0that he raised the most delicious chickens she had ever eaten. Rancho Pescadero was\u00a0exactly as Tom and Kate had promised: beautiful and unfussy,\u00a0with two small pools, a long stretch of beach, an organic garden(!) and a restaurant beside it, a salty margarita, everything a person could want on\u00a0vacation and nothing a person doesn’t. Renee cooked lunch in the restaurant on the first day\u00a0– shell-on shrimp in browned butter and lemon and Espelette pepper<\/a>, to be eaten with your hands slash dripped all over your bathing suit cover-up – and the next night, she cooked dinner. Afterward,\u00a0we met\u00a0back at the hot tub in our dinner clothes, took off our shoes, and perched around the rim to dunk our feet, and it was so\u00a0quiet<\/em>, ten o’clock, seemingly no one awake but us.<\/p>\n

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I can also\u00a0report that Caro does a very good faux-Australian accent, and that Marian is the person you want driving the rental car when your destination, a nearby cove beach Tom told you about, is hidden at the end of a dusty, bumpy,\u00a0unpaved, unmarked road along which towering saguaro cacti stand sentry.<\/p>\n

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I can also report that you may indeed have the absolutely electric pleasure of looking up from your magazine to see\u00a0a humpback whale breach off that beach, slapping the water with her great fin. I can report that you may meet a shy hermit crab over by the cliff, and that one of you may name her Deb.\u00a0I can advise\u00a0that you get in the car and head back to Rancho Pescadero by sunset to watch, along with a bunch of schoolchildren, when the local expert lady comes to release dozens of silver-dollar-sized baby sea turtles\u00a0from their hatchery in the dunes and set them waddling miraculously into the ocean.<\/p>\n

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In any case, I say all of this today because it is February, as you may have noticed. And while the sun is out in Seattle today and that is very nice, I woke up\u00a0wanting to look at these pictures, to feel warm for a few minutes, and to eat Renee’s shrimp again, then, now, forever.<\/p>\n

P.S. As an aside, I cannot stop listening to Sleater-Kinney’s\u00a0The Woods<\/a><\/em>. Actually, forget the shrimp: S-K FOREVERRRR<\/p>\n

P.P.S. Also, I just read this<\/a>, via Marian, and barely came up for air.<\/p>\n

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Recipe<\/div>\n

Renee's Messy Prawns<\/h2>\n

Adapted very slightly from A Boat, A Whale, and A Walrus<\/a>, by Renee Erickson<\/h3> \n \n <\/header>\n\n
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