As usual, I’ve been eating more in restaurants than cooking at home. But I am sitting here right now looking at a folder of recipes that come across as so delicious, I’m considering having a dinner party so that I can indulge in making them and enjoying the results with some of our foodie friends. I have these recipes because the cook who gave them to me already swears by them and they are also mementos of a recent trip.
We recently visited two couples from Orange County who moved to Tucson. Paul and Rebecca Swane, formerly from Dana Point, moved to the retirement community of Saddlebrooke, just north of Tucson, two years ago. Faith and Dennis Holt, of Turtle Rock, had their retirement home at Saddlebrooke ready a little more than a year ago.
We miss these two couples a lot, as we always seemed to be eating together in homes or restaurants here. We’d been trying to carve out a few days when we could temporarily abandon OC and take the trip. Finally, life cooperated and we drove the easy southern route through San Diego and Yuma.
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Paul, Rebecca Swane: gracious hosts with hotel-quality casita |
When we arrived, we found our friends are living well in spacious new homes, cooking up a storm with two gourmet groups they’ve formed in their new environment and enjoying the clear weather and skies of Arizona. I lived in Tucson for three years decades ago and had forgotten that the sky is such a brilliant blue and that you can almost reach up and touch the stars. It’s so clear that the moon at night is too bright to look at for very long.
Now, I’m not saying that it’s my kind of climate. I’ve never been keen on the desert in any season, and I can’t take the summer heat at all. But, when we found our plush accommodations and began sharing nonstop hugs and laughter with our friends, a twice-yearly trip to visit them became a certainty for us.
As retirement communities go, this is a superb one. The homes are quite lovely, the amenities for homeowners are enormous, and the Swanes and Holts live alongside the fairways of the golf course for added value. The undeniable beauty of the Santa Catalina mountains forming a semicircle on the other side of their homes is yet another bonus.
At first, we’d planned on staying in a hotel in Tucson, which is about 25 miles from them. But the Holts have a guest room in their home, while the Swanes had a private casita at theirs. The casita turned out to be our private suite.
Who would expect to find a complete suite comparable to deluxe hotel accommodations? Paul and Rebecca gave their casita lush carpeting, fine furnishings, upscale bed linens (on a wonderfully comfortable mattress), a full entertainment center, fine art on the walls and a bathroom and closet of big proportions. Toss in all the chic amenities a la a resort location and the breakfast coffee service en suite and it was some fine place to relax.
When we arrived in the mid-evening hours, Rebecca had a dandy meal waiting for us. She’d made a big kettle of shrimp gumbo and a dreamy little dessert. The Holts arrived. We shared more hugs, had cocktails together in the temperate evening air and then we all delved into our bowls of gumbo, just like in New Orleans.
The following day, we had a fine brunch at the home of Faith and Dennis. She also loves to cook and is so good at it, serving up the kind of breakfast food that some restaurants around here do. The one that comes to mind is Break of Dawn in Laguna Hills, where chef Dee Nguyen, formerly executive sous chef at the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, is dazzling everyone with his fashionable and affordable breakfast and lunch dishes.
We met many of the new friends these two couples have made. Everyone was so friendly and at ease and just relishing living in their lovely community.
It was not a trip built around trying a bunch of restaurants. We needed to just calm down and relax, so mostly we ate at home or nearby at casual places. I’ve been to Anthony’s in the Catalinas before,a fine, high-end restaurant for the serious diner and wine connoisseur,and there’s a Fleming’s there as well in the same view-intensive vicinity. But we settled instead for trying a new restaurant in downtown Tucson called Bakerzin. Judging from that experience, it would be nice to have a Bakerzin here.
It appears at first glance as a hip, trendy bakery with a huge circular glass pastry counter taking up the whole center of the room. But then we discovered it is a lunch restaurant and a place for tea as well. It is one of eight restaurants, seven of them scattered around Asia and this one in Tucson being the first in the U.S.
Our little group settled in and we were impressed with the menu. It’s a beautiful, full color booklet showing a picture and complete description of all menu items. That’s an expense seldom undertaken by restaurants. Pizzas are stacked like Napoleons, made with layers of crisp, thin squares of dough and all sorts of interesting ingredients. Unique sandwiches like brioche topped with spinach, fricassee of wild mushrooms and a poached egg and one of house smoked salmon topped with grilled vegetables immediately caught our attention. We tried some of its pastas, all in the al dente mode and more cleverly composed than regular Italian fare. For dessert, we shared a few things. Bakerzin has a tapas dessert that allows petit tastes of several of its amazing sweets.
It’s a fun concept and what a find for teatime. I guess, though, we won’t be enjoying Bakerzin until we get back to Tucson in the fall.
Locally, have an unusually creative and beautiful breakfast or lunch at Break of Dawn: 24351 Avenida de la Carlota (behind Trader Joe’s in Oakbrook Village Center), Laguna Hills. (949) 587-9418.
