Vegan Secret Supper

With my wife out of town last weekend Daniel was my date for the night and we met at the not so secret location at six o'clock ready for the feast to begin.

This was to be my first secret supper. What is a secret supper you`re asking? It`s an underground restaurant or supper club, which is hosted at somebodies home.

The Vegan Secret Supper used to be a regular occurrence in Vancouver. That was before chef Mérida moved out of the city though. It was also before vegan cuisine and her book were on my radar, so I never made it out to any of the events before.

Daniel and I welcomed ourselves into a nice home already filled with plenty of friendly and hungry people. Although our seats were right next to a huge french patio door it was almost unbearably hot. Thankfully the evening kicked off with a cold watermelon and red pepper gazpacho which was really delicious and refreshing.

I will not go into dissecting the food in detail in this post. I will however say that we enjoyed three more wonderful courses and some good company. My wife and I are proud owners of the Vegan Secret Supper cookbook and we love most of the recipes we have tried so far. Many of them are quite complex though and I can only imagine how long it must have taken to prepare the 4 course dinner for the 25-ish attendees. Especially since everything (including the pasta) was home-made from scratch with seasonal, organic ingredients.

All I have to do now is wait for the email announcement for the next event and hope that my wife and I manage to get two spots for ourselves. And maybe I`ll manage to work on my food photography skills until then too.

Bon Appetit,

Marc

My family went for a trip without me on the weekend and all I did was getting high ...

... to high places that is. Well if you happen to live in Colorado or some other place above the clouds then my high places still seem quite low by comparison, but for a sea level dweller like myself they are the spots that rise above most of the surrounding landscape.

 I summited 9 peaks and worked my way up Helm pass north of Squamish in the light of a full moon in the last 3 days. In my books that's a pretty good weekend of being outdoors.

From Sea to Sky. Peaks as far as the eye can see.

Mountain peaks seen from a distance often seem ginormous, massive and inaccessible, but when you commit yourself to the process of climbing to the top you become aware that they are being conquered like everything else. One step at a time. Now I am not talking about Mt. Everest-esque climbs here. I am no technical climber nor do I aspire to become one. I find it's a good metaphor for life though. I tend to be intimidated by certain projects or events in real life too and if I could just remind myself to break it down to one step at a time, I will be just fine.

Happy Trails,

Marc